"They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep." (Psalm 107:23-24)
God's everlasting power and Divinity are seen in all the things that He has made; but in no other part of creation is it so wondrously apparent to the senses of man as in the great waters and seas.
Nothing can produce greater feelings of awe, or strike greater terror to the soul than the sea in a terrible storm. Before nothing else does man have such a sense of utter helplessness; and therefore it is that when in the Scriptures special comfort is to be given to the weak and disheartened, and it is desired to encourage them to trust in God, their attention is most frequently directed to His power as revealed in and over the waters.
To the foolish and rebellious people, God says: "Do you not fear me? will you not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it; and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it?" (Jeremiah 5:22)
Sand is as much an emblem of instability as water is; to build on the sand is to have no foundation at all; yet the shifting sand is that which God has set to curb the fierceness of the raging waves of the sea,--to show how His power is manifest through weakness.
God lays the beams of His chambers in the waters; (Psalm 104:3) and His pavilion round about Him is dark waters and clouds of the skies. (Psalm 17:11) Thus it is that:
"The Lord sits upon the flood," (Psalm 24:3) and, "The voice of the Lord is upon the waters." (Psalm 24:10)
God is at home on the sea, and the waters know Him and obey Him. When He led Israel out of Egypt, "The sea saw it and fled; Jordan was driven back." (Psalm 114:3)
Or, as picturesquely put in the Danish, "Jordan turned, and ran back," as though frightened at the presence of the Lord. In the 93rd Psalm there is presented to us the idea of a contest between the seas and the Lord. Thus, "The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up theirvoice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea." (Psalm 93:3-4)
No matter how loudly and madly the waves roar, God's voice is powerful enough to quell their fury. "You rule the raging of the sea; when the waves thereof arise, You still them." (Psalm 89:9) "[He] stills the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people." (Psalm 65:7)
His power was seen at the Red Sea, when "[He] divided the sea, whose waves roared." (Isaiah 51:15)
The primary meaning of the Hebrew word here rendered "divided," is "to terrify, to restrain by threatening." All those statements of God's power over the mighty waters, and of how His voice can bring their voices to silence, are vividly illustrated, and shown to be real, and not figures of speech, by the incident of Christ on the sea of Galilee in a storm. "There arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full." (Mark 4:37)
But Christ was the Son of Him who builds His house on the waters, so He lay "in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow," (Mark 4:38) unmindful of the raging of the sea. Then the disciples came and awoke Him, and said reproachfully, "Master, don't You care that we perish? And He arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm." (Mark 4:38-39)
The word here rendered "Peace" is the word that one would use to children who were too boisterous in their play, namely, "Hush!" It may be very quietly spoken, yet if spoken by one who is known to have authority it carries with it a warning of punishment to follow if it is disregarded. So it is said that Jesus "rebuked" the winds and the waves, or as in Isaiah, He restrained them by a threat. They recognized the voice of their Master, and obeyed. Thus we see how the voice of the Lord is upon the waters.
All this is wonderful, but it ought not to be surprising, for it is but a continuation of the working of the Spirit that in the beginning brooded upon the face of the waters, and brought order out of chaos. To disbelieve the record in the 1st chapter of Genesis, and yet to profess to believe the Gospel narratives, is foolishness. In the beginning God gathered the waters together, marshaling them in groups, as a general does his troops, and said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." (Genesis 1:6)
So what more natural now than that "When He utters His voice there is a multitude of waters in the heavens, and He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth." (Jeremiah 10:13)
Here we have warning to the rebellious and comfort for the timid. "The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest." (Isaiah 57:20)
But though they rage against the righteous, God can with a word cause their strength to fail, and their fury to cease. "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when men rose up against us, Then had they swallowed us up alive, when their wrath was kindled against us; Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul." (Psalm 124:2-5)
But the floods of evil man, or of evil itself, cannot prevail against those who trust in the Lord; for when they pass through the waters He is with them. He is at home there, for the dark waters are His pavilion round about Him. "He made darkness His secret place; His pavilion round about Him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies." (Psalm 18:11)
So though war and persecution rise against us; though, worse still, the devil with his temptations comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against the billows, and we can abide quietly in the secret place of the Most High. "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him." (Isaiah 59:19) "He that dwells in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." (Psalm 91:1)--Present Truth, July 9, 1903--Psalm 107:23-24.