Salvation through the waters (Acts 27)

One way of thinking about the story of the Bible is as salvation through the waters.

Salvation through the waters.

 

You may remember that in the beginning, in Genesis 1, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters and God brought order to the creation.

God rules and separates the waters, creating the habitable world.

God is effortlessly in control and provides for human beings.  

 

In the Flood, the waters bring judgement, but Noah and his family are saved through the waters.

Christians have often thought of the church as a new ark: God’s provision of the place of safety from the waters of judgement, where God’s people can be kept safe.

Again, if we believe and obey God and enter the ark of the church, we will be saved.

And so it is in our chapter that the soldiers and sailors are saved by obeying Paul and sticking with him.

Staying with Paul and the boat means salvation.

 

In the midst of the storm, Paul gives the others the good advice to eat something.

But I wonder if we’re meant to think of Jesus taking bread and giving thanks and breaking it and eating.

Here’s the Feeding of the 5000.

Or the risen Jesus meeting with the disciples on the Emmaus Road and recognised by them as he breaks bread.

Or the Lord’s Supper, celebrating God’s salvation.

God will feed his people and bring them safe to glory.

 

In the Old Testament, the foundation story of the people of God is the Exodus is salvation through the waters.

The Lord’s Supper was a Passover Meal that looked back to that deliverance.

Maybe there are some other hints of Passover here:

Eating on the 14^th Day.

Staying in the house or the boat.

Getting rid of the grain / no food left over.

After the Passover, in the Exodus, God’s people are saved through the waters of the Red Sea and again God’s enemies are judged and experienced a watery grave.

 (cf. Paul and Jonah) 

 

The Jews weren’t generally great sea-farers.

To them the seas represented chaos and danger, threat and death.

They thought of it as monstrous.  

The seas and the fishes could represent the pagan nations.

 

Jesus, of course, was often in a boat.

He taught on the Sea of Galilee.

He calmed the storm.

He walked on the waters.

He ruled over creation and chaos.

He saved from danger.

 

In the Old Testament, the typical leader was a shepherd.

But in the New Testament a number of the apostles are fishermen.

Jesus calls them to be fishers of people.

They are to take the gospel to the nations.

 

Paul is a great sea traveller.

He is the Apostle to the Gentile nations.

 

John the Baptist had spoken of salvation through the waters.

God’s people needed a new Exodus, they needed to be made clean.

 

And Jesus spoke of his death as a baptism he must undergo.

Judgement would flood over him and drown him.

He would die and rise that his people might live and be saved.

Salvation through the waters.  

 

And Jesus said his disciples would face a similar baptism.

They too would suffer and enter into the promised glory of the Kingdom.  

 

We’ve said before that Paul is like Jesus.

Both are tried but are innocent.

For much of Luke’s gospel, Jesus was on a great journey to Jerusalem.

And Paul is on this great journey to Rome.

In the final chapters of Luke and Acts we find a favourable Centurion.  

This storm and shipwreck may be Paul’s passion narrative, Paul’s suffering and cross – followed by a kind of vindication, a resurrection.

 

And in the end, the Bible tells us, in the New Creation, there will be no more sea:

no more danger, or threat, or chaos, or judgement, or death.

And no more Gentile nations because all who trust in Jesus will belong to the people of God.

 

So the message of the Bible is salvation through the waters.