Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 1001 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
What Walking on the Water Really Means - Wisdom Wednesday


Wisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge.  Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy.  Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1001 of our Trek, and it is Wisdom Wednesday.  Creating a Biblical Worldview is important to have a proper perspective on today’s current events.  To establish a Biblical Worldview, it is required that you also have a proper understanding of God’s Word.  Especially in our western cultures, we do not fully understand the Scriptures from the mindset and culture of the authors.  In order to help us all have a better understanding of some of the more obscure passages in God’s Word, we are investing Wisdom Wednesday reviewing a series of essays from one of today’s most prominent Hebrew Scholars Dr. Micheal S. Heiser.  He has compiled these essays into a book titled  ’I Dare You Not to Bore Me With the Bible.’

One of the most well-known Bible stories from the New Testament is about Jesus walking on water in the midst of a terrible storm.   Most of us miss the underlying significance of this story.

Today’s essay will explore:
What Walking on the Water Really Means
Tales of tempests battering ships have inspired respect for the sea over the eons of time.  On their way to Capernaum while on the lake, Jesus disciples watched these stories become a reality as the roaring wind transformed the waters around them. As they fought against the waves and wind, they witnessed a miracle as recorded in John 6:19-20: They had rowed three or four miles when suddenly they saw Jesus walking on the water toward the boat. They were terrified, but he called out to them, “Don’t be afraid. I am here!

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 worldview, the unpredictable sea is a common symbol of cosmic disorder which are 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; Psalms 89:5-14). This imagery is applied even to the exodus from Egypt (Psalms 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 as described in Isaiah 27:1: In that day the Lord will take his terrible, swift sword and punish Leviathan, the swiftly moving serpent, the coiling, writhing serpent. He will kill the dragon of the sea.