Have you journeyed to the vents of the sea or walked in the trenches of the deep? Sermons
I. GOD'S POWER OVER WHAT IS MOST GREAT. The sea strikes our imagination chiefly because of its vastness. It only consists of water, which, when we see it in the trickling rill or hold it in the cup, is one of the most simple and seemingly harmless things in nature. But in gathering volume it gains strength. The little rill swells into the roaring torrent. The water of the sea grows into a tumult of awful forces before which the strongest man is helpless. To the ocean Byron says - "Man marks the earth with ruin - his control II. GOD'S ORDER IN WHAT IS MOST TURBULENT. Nothing looks so wild and lawless as the sea in a storm. In the mixing of the elements, when the wind shrieks among the waves, and the waters leap up madly to the sky, we seem to be back in the confusion of Old Chaos. Yet we know that the raging sea is as truly under the laws of nature as the fields with their growing crops. Every drop of water is as absolutely obedient to law as the stars in their orderly courses. God rides upon the storm. He rules over the unruly. Wild tempests of human passion, the fury of the despot and the rage of the people, are all watched and controlled by God. When black clouds gather and angry waves rise on the sea of human life, let us remember that there is One who rules over nations and cities as well as over the wild forces of nature. III. GOD'S RESTRAINT OF WHAT IS MOST CHANGEFUL. The waters threaten to invade the land. But there is a limit to their progress. Each wave that tries most eagerly to outrun its predecessor is compelled to break and fall back in confusion, hissing with vexation as it is dragged down among the pebbles. The tide rises, higher and yet higher; but it has its limit. God gives man a certain scope for freedom. He can rise and fall like the wave, and ebb and flow like the tide. Sometimes he seems to have a very long leash. But it is not endless, and God has hold of it. At the right moment he will draw it in, and then all man's pride will be of no use. Our life is like the shifting tide, like the restless wave. We are wearied with its incessant changefulness. It is like the sea crawling up on the beach, and creeping back again, moaning on the shore night and day without intermission. There is monotony even in the changes. That is just the point to be noted. They are all limited and under restraint. So is it with those of life; they are limited and restrained by the providential care of our Father. - W.F.A.
Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth? What a fascination there is about a high tide! Passing through Manchester, I noticed that the railway company were running cheap trips to Blackpool, so that the people might witness the prevailing high tides. We love to see the triumphant march, to hear the shout of many waters. That there are similar tides "in the affairs of men" the greatest of poets noted long ago. Occasionally, or it may be only once, men are signally favoured by happy conjunctions of circumstances which send them bounding to a coveted haven. The politician achieves an extraordinary popularity, and exults that the flowing tide is with him; commercial men fondly recall years when the ships they sent for gold steadily and swiftly returned with propitious wind and wave. Usually the currents of life are sluggish. The spirit within us also has its spring tides, privileged periods when it transcends the dull levels of ordinary experience, when the billows of God lift it on high and it knows itself caught in irresistible currents of spiritual influence and grace. Most people know that oceanic tides are regulated by the sun and moon, and they know also that when these greater and lesser lights act in conjunction, as they do at new and full moon, the ebb and flow are each considerably increased, producing what we know as spring tides. The moon in her monthly revolution is at one time thousands of miles nearer the earth than she is at another; the sun also is nearer our earth in winter than in summer; and the highest tides are produced when the sun and moon both pull together at a time when each orb is in that part of its path nearest to the earth. The attraction of these orbs and their nearness to our planet have everything to do with the glorious tides we love to witness, although the crowd of trippers may not remember the firmamental cause. And thus the celestial universe governs the tides of the soul. We do not always remember the fact, but the eternal world acts directly upon our spirit, agitating it, setting in motion its faculties and forces, directing its currents to consequences of utmost blessing. There are hours and days when God comes specially near to us, as there are seasons when sun and moon approach near the earth, creating a majestic gathering of the waters. At those wonderful periods of spiritual visitation doubts are dissolved; we see clearly what at other times we miss or see but darkly; we conceive the thoughts and form the purposes which give new nobility to life. There is to the uninstructed mind much that is mysterious and inexplicable in the influence of the stars upon the tides which flow on our coasts, in consequence of the numerous complications — astronomical, meteorological, and geographical — which obscure the laws governing the tides. The greatest philosophers find it difficult, nay, impossible, to explain to the average man the wonderful phenomenon; and the action of the eternal world upon our spirit is a still greater mystery which none may comprehend or explain; but every spiritual man is assured of the fact, and has felt the rapture of extraordinary visitations of grace, when tides of spiritual influence surge through his heart and mind, making everything to live, move, and bloom. How precious are those days when God draws nigh to us, and our spirit is deeply moved! These rising and falling tides of emotion are in many ways most blessed. A soul like a duck pond is not the ideal state; our grandest days are those when mysterious effluences course through every artery of our being. They are days of purification. The mud and debris which would otherwise choke our rivers are cleansed by high tides. These high tides of blessing serve in another way; they free us from various injurious moods and habits which arise in ordinary life and which with ordinary grace we find almost impossible to overcome. Ways of thinking and acting, habits and associations that circumscribe us, that render us shallow, that may prove occasions of stagnation and shipwreck, are easily broken through and destroyed when a great tide of life surges through the soul. These days of spiritual effluxion are also days of power and attainment. What intellectual men strive after in vain during neap tides they reach splendidly in moments of inspiration. Pentecostal times are high-water marks, when the believer letting himself go is carried into higher, wider, and more satisfying experiences and attributes. These seasons of outpouring of love and grace, of pervading fulness, of vital influence penetrating the innermost recesses of the soul, are days of sweet and memorable delight. Andrew Bonar says, "I often cannot give praise or thanks in any words but those of such songs as 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty'!" These are the days of high tides. Blessed days when there is no surf, no mud bank, no weeds, no noxious sights or odours, but when, filled with the Spirit, everything evil is gone from us and everything human and temporal has become beautiful in the light of the Divine, as the tide racing up the beach turns the dull sand into yellow gold and the common pebbles into glittering gems. Let us beware lest in any way we impede the glorious flow when the Spirit comes in as a flood. Scientists teach that the observed tides do not correspond with the times of. the moon's setting, but that they are always behindhand by a greater or less interval. There is friction, such as is caused by currents flowing past the jagged edges of continents and islands, which more or less retard tidal action; and there is also the conflicting influence of contrary currents. And just so we may retard spiritual action by unbelief, worldliness, and unfaithfulness of life. Let us be sure that we get all that the great tides bring. All the purity they bring, until our soul is like the sea of the Apocalypse, glass mingled with fire. All the power they bring. Our scientists regret the wasted power of the tides, and anticipate the day when the energy now expending itself uselessly on our coasts will be utilised as a motive power. If we trifle away the strong, gracious impulses of God's Spirit, our life will be bound in shallows and in miseries of weakness, depression, and failure; and many souls are so poor and unhappy because they have omitted to improve those precious visitations of extraordinary grace vouchsafed to all. We cannot tell when we shall be the subjects of these blessed and memorable visitations. Long experience and observation have enabled astronomers to overcome all the difficulties implied in solving the actual problem of the tides, and they put at the service of mariners and others accurate tables of tides and tidal currents, in addition to the times of high and low water for every part of the civilised world. But we cannot thus calculate the inflowing of the Divine tides upon the souls of men. All great artists and poets testify to the apparent arbitrariness of their inspiration. The heart is strangely warmed in an unexpected hour; the air suddenly becomes clear, and things unseen display themselves, with strong, commanding evidence. We cannot command these seasons; if we fail to improve them we cannot recall them. When "the set time to favour Zion" is come, there are unmistakable signs of the present Lord; when the "set time" to favour any soul is come, there are solemn and yet delightful agitations within that soul. Let us be tremulously alive to these tides which bear us out to God. If we are busy here and there, the Spirit will be gone and the infinite blessings of the full sea lost.(W. L. Watkinson.) People Job, SatellitesPlaces UzTopics Deep, Depth, Entered, Hast, Places, Recesses, Search, Searching, Secret, Springs, Walked, WalkingOutline 1. God challenges Job to answer4. God, by his mighty works, convinces Job of ignorance 31. and weakness Dictionary of Bible Themes Job 38:16Library August 11 EveningWhere is the way that light dwelleth?--JOB 38:19. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.--As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.--The Father . . . hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, … Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path May 24. "Where is the Way Where Light Dwelleth" (Job xxxviii. 19). The Tragic Break in the Plan. God's Restraining Power. The Joy of the Lord. The Evil of Sin visible in the Fall of Angels and Men. The Old and New Creation. Whether it was Fitting that the Gathering Together of the Waters Should Take Place, as Recorded, on the Third Day? Whether this Name "Father" is Applied to God, Firstly as a Personal Name? Whether it is Proper to the Rational Nature to be Adopted? 'The End of the Lord' The Being of God Whether There Can be any Suitable Cause for the Sacraments of the Old Law? The Careless Sinner Awakened. The Blessed Privilege of Seeing God Explained They Shall be Called the Children of God "This Then is the Message which we have Heard of Him, and Declare unto You, that God is Light," The Eternity of God On the Animals That Deep Things Ought not to be Preached at all to Weak Souls. Links Job 38:16 NIVJob 38:16 NLT Job 38:16 ESV Job 38:16 NASB Job 38:16 KJV Job 38:16 Bible Apps Job 38:16 Parallel Job 38:16 Biblia Paralela Job 38:16 Chinese Bible Job 38:16 French Bible Job 38:16 German Bible Job 38:16 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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