Day 2541 – Theology Thursday – What Walking on Water Really Means – I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible

Welcome to Day 2541 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom – Theology Thursday – What Walking On Water Really Means – I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible. Wisdom-Trek Podcast Script - Day 2541 Welcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! I am Guthrie Chamberlain, and we are on Day 2541 of our Trek. The Purpose of Wisdom-Trek is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before.   Today is the thirty-eighth lesson in our segment, Theology Thursday. Utilizing excerpts from a book titled: I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible written by Hebrew Bible scholar and professor the late Dr. Michael S Heiser, we will invest a couple of years going through the entire Bible, exploring short Biblical lessons that you may not have received in Bible classes or Church. The Bible is a wonderful book. Its pages reveal the epic story of God’s redemption of humankind and the long, bitter conflict against evil. Yet it’s also a book that seems strange to us. While God’s Word was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. Today’s lesson is: “What Walking on Water Really Means.” Tales of tempests battering ships inspire respect for the sea. En route to Capernaum, Jesus’ disciples watched these stories become reality as the roaring wind transformed the waters around them. As they fought against the waves and wind, they witnessed a miracle: “They saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat” (John 6:19). Appearing in three of the four Gospels, this event inspires Sunday school lessons and has become ingrained in our portrait of Jesus’ life. As spectacular and unforgettable as the event is to us, however, a Jewish audience would have seen in it a profound theological meaning against the backdrop of the Old Testament. An Old Testament Symbol In the Old Testament, the unpredictable sea is a common symbol of cosmic disorder—conditions contrary to God’s design for an ordered world. This symbol for cosmic anarchy is also personified as a sea monster, known as Leviathan or Rahab. The image of chaos as an untamed monster in a churning, erratic sea was common throughout the ancient world. People accustomed to land would naturally view the vast, raging ocean as uncontrollable and potentially deadly, filled with terrifying unknown creatures. Religions across the ancient Mediterranean often depicted their important deities destroying or subduing the sea dragon, thereby calming the sea and restoring order. In the Old Testament, it is Yahweh, the God of Israel, who conquers the forces of chaos and imposes order in the cosmos (Job 26:12- 13; Psa 89:5-14). This imagery is applied even to the exodus from Egypt (Psa 74:12-17), where God split the sea to deliver His people, thereby conquering the forces of evil that sought their demise. Final Victory God’s ultimate victory at the end of the age is also depicted as God dominating the forces of the sea: “In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the twisting serpent, Leviathan the crooked serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea” (Isa 27:1). This is why the description of the final paradise of the new heaven and new earth contains the phrase, “the sea was no more” (Rev...