One of my favorite pastimes is sitting on a beach early in the morning looking out over the horizon. I love the salty air smell and the intermittent sqawks from the gulls. It is so quiet, majestic and humbling and so very peaceful. In a few short hours however, the beautiful sea could be transformed into an enemy and cause great chaos and damage. Insurance companies place the label “an act of God” to describe the force behind the damage. Raging seas are certainly not “an act of God”, just as quiet beach contemplation really isn’t salvation. Whether it’s the ocean or beautiful mountains and scenery, this verse in Jeremiah puts things in perspective:
Jeremiah 3:23 Truly in vain is salvation hoped for from the hills, and from the multitude of mountains: truly in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel.
The rulership of this world and how it functions is not under God’s control. Good and evil co-exist on this planet. God is certainly the creator of the heavens and the earth, but something else exists in this world that seems to drive to topple God’s creation and cause depravation instead of abundance. God’s solution to it’s effect is set in the central theme of Genesis in chapter 3:
In Genesis 3:14-15 And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. (The use of the word ‘seed’ in Genesis is interesting. It is used 59 times. No other book of the Bible uses it that much.)
In Genesis, God wrote about His son who would come and provide the salvation necessary for man to survive and abound in this world and eventually to have access to eternal life with Him. Salvation requires a choice. Free-will choice is a just provision of God. He doesn’t push us, he simply laid it all out in the life of His son.
God is spirit, we can’t see Him, but throughout ages he has given His spirit (the very essence of what he is) and laid it upon certain men and women in the Old Testament. In the New Testament that essence is available by choice to every human being. It takes up residence internally in man now and is not conditional like it was in the Old Testament. We have the choice to become of God’s seed and in doing so become enmity to worldly seed. Our heels get bruised when we yield to the worldly influences, but it doesn’t have to effect our head. We have access to God by remembering what he has written in His Word or by reading it. We can pray with the spirit or with our understanding and the raging seas are quieted. I don’t even have to run to a beach to get that. It can be accomplished anywhere even in the middle of utter chaos.
Speaking the Truth In Love: Grace in The Old Testament 