Thursday, June 8, 2023

Sermon of the Deep – 8 June 2023, Anno Domini

 


 

T

HY throne is established of old: thou art from everlasting. The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; 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 93:2-4)

 

            There is an unfathomable depth in the Deep of God’s Love and Providence for His people. As the beloved hymn goes:

 

Could we with ink the ocean fill,

and were the skies of parchment made;

were ev’ry stalk on earth a quill,

and everyone a scribe by trade;

To write the love of God above

would drain the ocean dry;

nor could the scroll contain the whole,

though stretched from sky to sky.

 

            The Bible often ascribes, symbolically, voices of praise to heavenly bodies and trees, etc. The same is true of the sea. The sea has a voice in its tumultuous billows and stormy gales. But it is also implicitly obedient to the laws of nature with which God has established its boundaries.  . . . who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb(Job 38:8) That, in itself, is an unwritten sermon to the Christian to be obedient to His Maker and Redeemer. God has established boundaries of acceptable conduct for His people to which we must conform if we will claim allegiance to our Lord, Savior, and King.

 

            Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.  (Psalm 42:7) I have written often of the profundity of this verse. There are deep mysteries shrouded in mystery of the things of God that have yet to be revealed to His people, but we can rest assured – all that is needful for our faith and salvation has been fully revealed between the pages of the Holy Bible. But even so, from a purely academic stance, even those revelations remain a mystery revealed fully only to those who seek the truth in earnest faith and to whom the Holy spirit will guide into all truth.

 

            The deep of the human heart is that which responds to the deep of Love of God as an echo of that love with which He first loved us. We love him, because he first loved us(1 John 4:19) The Great Ocean Deep of God’s love is a mighty reservoir of the Waters of Life that overflow the Christian heart. If our hearts have become the Temple of God, then the love that is manifested from that fountain should be a semblance of His love for us.

 

            The depths of the sea are repository to more dead than any other cemetery of the world. Many nameless bodies are dispersed across the ocean deeps awaiting the same resurrection day as those graves of land dwellers. Seaman and sea captains, innocent passengers and men of war all share the same grave of the ocean caves. I very much like the words expressed by Thomas Gray in elegy concerning the Ocean deep:

 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

 

Just as every human being born to woman shares a common grave on land and sea, so do all share a day of resurrection. Just as many of the race are buried in earthy tombs, many others in the waters of the sea. So shall many be resurrected to a Heavenly realm and others to the heart of the earth and to the eternal punishment awaiting all sinners who reject their Lord and Maker.

 

The sea contains many secrets that we shall never grasp, but one thing we know, its mighty waves and persistent tides obey the primitive commands of the Creator. Their limits are set firmly just as all other of the natural laws apply to our world. God made both the Natural Laws and those Commandments He scribed with His own Finger to Moses at Sinai. Do we obey those commands as readily as the Ocean Seas obey theirs?

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