I was able to go to Bondi Beach today with Alison (aka Spally), and whilst worrying about being attacked by sharks and the salt water sting in my throat, I managed to find time to ponder upon the sea in the bible. We're often told that the Israelities did not like and viewed it as a place of evil; the beast in Revelation comes from the sea, and the Leviathan is spoken about as being a sea like creature. However, the people of God also pass through the sea in a proto-type of baptism.So what is the bible's view of the sea. My next post will be on this very question, so if ANYONE has any thoughts, let me know.
10 comments:
Hi Matt
THE LAND AND THE SEA
Genesis lays a literal foundation for many Bible images. Dry land is formed (life out of death), then the land is submerged in judgment*, and God begins a new world after land is again brought from the sea under Noah. The land is now divided (into continents) and later the people are divided (at Babel). God begins again with one man and creates a symbolic new land (Canaan), with a symbolic Eden** (the tabernacle) with the Sea of the Gentiles surrounding it.
In Revelation 7, the four angels/curses which come from the Scroll (the Law/Deuteronomy 28/Matthew 24)*** are ordered not to hurt the Land (Israel) or the Sea (the nations) until both the firstfruits of the Gospel (Christian Jews) and the multitude (Christian Gentiles) are sealed. Then the judgment of the harlot (the "we have no king but Caesar" 1st century Jewish polity) and the beast (Rome, the final Gentile kingdom to rise from the Sea****) could begin. At the end of this 1st century judgment, 'Babylon/Egypt/Sodom' (Jerusalem, the great city where our Lord was crucified, who is drunk with the blood of the prophets and the saints) has been stoned (the punishment for adultery), burned with fire (the punishment for priests who sin and bring the abomination that makes desolate) and cast into the Sea. Jesus has cast 'this mountain', Mount Zion, into the Sea, the nations. Earthly Israel is no longer the land of God.***** Israel is no longer God's representative, ruling spiritually over the nations before him. The Revelation prefigured God's legal divorce from the whore and his marriage to a new bride. The corporate marriage supper has begun, but still continues (Rev 3:10).
In Daniel, a new spiritual mountain (Zion/Eden) grows from a heavenly stone and fills the entire world. Through the work of the new Adam, God deals with the Jew/Gentile, Land/Sea division, and Christ is seen with one foot on the Land and one foot on the Sea announcing that the mystery of God revealed to his prophets would be completed. We know this mystery was the union of Jew and Gentile into one spiritual nation. The occurance of tongues at Pentecost is also perhaps symbolic of the spiritual reversal of the division of the nations at Babel.
Finally, John sees a new world where THERE IS NO MORE SEA. Now that Jesus reigns, there is no more Sea, no more 'unrulable living grave' because life is offered to all. There is only Land, God’s land, God’s territory, rescued miraculously from the Sea. Our Joshua with his sword rides out into all the earth on his white horse (the church, Zech 10:3) leading his people to total conquest of the Land under the New Covenant. And it will end with a new earth that is entirely Eden, with not just one tree of life. It is a river surrounded by trees of life.
FINALLY, the New Jerusalem, a present reality, is a city made of precious stones collected from the Land (as the high priest's breastplate), Old Testament saints. But now, she has open gates made from pearls, which come from the sea - Gentile saints! As the Holy of Holies was a cubic room inlaid with gold, so now God's entire people are pictured as either a giant holy of holies (if the shape is a cube), or a giant golden mountain (if the shape is a pyramid) with perfect dimensions. Praise God!
And I think this has a great deal to say about the mode of baptism, don't you? Sprinkling? Bah!
*After the flood, judgment from God is often pictured as coming 'like a flood'.
**We know Eden was on a hill or a mountain because four rivers flowed out of it. Babel was perhaps an attempt to recreate Eden in our image (ziggurats etc.). Then there was Mount Sinai (Mosaic), Mount Zion (Davidic), and now a new spiritual Mount Zion/Temple (Christian) with rivers of living water flowing from it. The river of life, the Gospel, was seen flowing down from the temple bringing life almost wherever it flowed, even the Dead Sea.
***Only the Lamb was worthy to open the Scroll because only Christ, as the true Israel, has kept the Law. Breaking the seals released punishment on the disobedient covenant nation.
****After 42 months of the seige of Jerusalem, and the destruction of the earthly temple, God's holy city can no longer be downtrodden by the Gentiles because it is now in heaven.
*****In Revelation, the word "earth" can be translated "land". All the tribes of the land DID mourn. Suddenly the book makes more sense.
Read more: Recommended authors are David Chilton "Paradise Restored" and "The Days of Vengeance", Kenneth Gentry "Before Jerusalem Fell" and his audio series on Revelation, and particularly James B. Jordan's "Through New Eyes".
Mike Bull
Sorry - para. 3 with more Bible references!
In Daniel, a new spiritual mountain (Zion/Eden - Rev 21:10) grows from a heavenly stone and fills the entire world. Sinai (Rev 8:8) and earthly Zion (Matt 21:21) are gone (Heb 12:18)...
Mike
Thanks Mike, that's a lot of material.
" In the new heaven and new earth, according to Revelation 21, there will be no more sea. Many people feel disappointed by this.
The sea is a perennial delight, at least for those who don’t have to make a living on it. What is going on? The sea is part of the original creation, part of the world of which God says that it is “very good.” But already by the story of Noah the flood poses a threat to the creation, with Noah and his floating zoo rescued by God’s grace. From within the good creation itself come forces of chaos, harnessed to enact God’s judgment. We then find Moses and the Israelites standing in front of the sea, chased by the Egyptians and at their wits’ end. God makes a way through the sea to rescue his people, and again to judge the pagan world; like the Noah story, though now in a new mode. As later poets look back on this decisive moment in the story of God’s people, they celebrate it in terms of the old creation myths themselves: the waters saw YHWH and were afraid, and they went backwards. But then, in a passage of enormous influence on early Christianity, we find in the vision of Daniel 7 that the monsters who make war upon the people of the saints of the most high come up out of the sea. The sea has become the dark, fearsome, threatening place from which evil emerges, threatening God’s people like a giant tidal wave threatening those who live near the coast. For the people of ancient Israel, who were not for the most part seafarers, the sea came to represent evil and chaos, the dark powers that might do to God’s people what the flood had done to the whole world, unless God rescues them as he rescued Noah. This sets the biblical context for any reflection on what happened on December 26 last year.
It may be, indeed, that one of the reasons we love the sea is because, like watching a horror movie, we can observe its power and relentless energy from a safe distance, or, if we go sailing or swimming on it, we can use its energy without being engulfed by it. I suspect there are plenty of Ph.D. theses already written on what’s going on psychologically when we do this, and I haven’t read them. We would, of course, find our delight turning quickly to horror if, as we stood watching the waves roll in, a tsunami were suddenly to appear and come crashing down on us, just as our thrill at watching a gangster movie would turn to screaming panic if a couple of thugs, armed to the teeth, came out of the screen and threatened us personally as we sat innocently in the cinema. The sea and the movie, seen from a safe distance, can be a way of saying to ourselves that, yes, evil may well exist; there may be chaos out there somewhere; but at least, thank goodness, we are all right, we are not immediately threatened by it. And perhaps this is also saying that, yes, evil may well exist inside ourselves as well: there may be forces of evil and chaos deep inside us of which we are at best only subliminally aware; but they are in control, the sea wall will hold, the cops will get the gangsters in the end."
- NT Wright
I think it's cool that the God of the Bible is always shown to be bigger/more powerful than the sea, which could well be one of the scariest things on the planet.
Psalm 93:3-4
"The seas have lifted up, O LORD,
the seas have lifted up their voice;
the seas have lifted up their pounding waves.
Mightier than the thunder of the great waters,
mightier than the breakers of the sea—
the LORD on high is mighty."
Hey Lachlan, how you doing?
I'm well. I still have a book of yours to return.
Hey, did you know I'm working at uni now too?
Oh yeah, you can keep the book :)
What are you working as? We should have lunch.
research assistant in languages and culture
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