THE SEA

One of the attractive things about sunny Queensland is the turquoise ocean, palm trees and the golden beaches on its coast. Sun, sand and surf! It was on the third day of formation week that God ‘placed the sand as the bound of the sea’ Jeremiah 5:22. On the fourth day He made the sun, the moon and the stars. Afterwards the earth’s topography would have been altered by the global flood. The volcanic turmoil during that time would have brought on the ice-age, the subsequent melt-water of which would have helped produce the seas as we know them today.

The sea is the lungs of the earth. It is also its kidneys. Its saltiness is a disinfectant of sorts. Micah says that God ‘will cast our iniquities into the depths of the sea’ Micah 7:19. Its evaporative-cycle produces rain that cleanses the earth. Says Elihu, ‘He draws up drops of water, which distil as rain from the mist, which the clouds drop down and pour abundantly on man’ Job 36:27-28. Says Solomon, ‘All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again’ Ecclesiastes 1:7. Peter likens the Flood to baptism symbolising the washing away of our sins, ‘In it [i.e., the ark] only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolises baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God.’ 1 Peter 3:20b-21a.

The Gulf Stream, from the Gulf of Mexico, helps keep Scotland temperate. Indeed, a lush, tropical garden can be found at Inverewe in western Scotland. David spoke poetically of sea-channels three thousand years ago, ‘The channels of the sea were seen, the foundations of the world were uncovered, at the rebuke of the LORD, at the blast of the breath of His nostrils’ 2 Samuel 22:16.

Isaiah uses the sea to illustrate, ‘The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt’ Isaiah 57:20 (with Jude 13). Perhaps Jesus calming the sea (and walking on it!) also symbolises His subduing the wicked with His Word. Indeed, the priests were to wash with water from the calm sea depicted in Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 7:23-26; 2 Chronicles 4:2-6 with Exodus 30:18-21). John saw in his vision on the Island of Patmos, ‘Before the throne there was a sea of glass, like crystal’ Revelation 4:6a. Reginald Heber paints the picture, ‘Holy, holy, holy!  All the saints adore Thee,/ casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;/ cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,/ which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.’

Around 2,000BC God invited Abraham to number the stars, (if he was able!), saying, ‘So shall your descendants be’ Genesis 15:5. With the naked eye Abraham would not have seen much more than 2,500 stars yet he trusted God’s Word that they were without number! For later the Angel of the LORD said, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed’ Genesis 22:17b-18. ‘If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise’ Galatians 3:29. As Abraham’s seed Christians will become a multitude without number (Rev. 7:9). Then ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea’ Isaiah 11:9b.