Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

December 19– Evening

by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“And there was no more sea.”

—Revelation 21:1

It seems strange that we could rejoice at the thought of losing the glorious ocean. We have many fond thoughts of the ocean— it’s gleaming waves and shelly shores. To us, a real physical world without a sea is mournful to imagine. We cannot understand this metaphor properly unless we see it from the viewpoint of those who lived in the Ancient Near East. To them, the sea was a place of division, change, and even death. So, let us ponder the spiritual meaning here from their perspective.

In the New Heavens and New Earth, there will be no division. The sea separates nations and divides peoples from each other. To the Apostle John who wrote these words on the island of Patmos, the deep waters were like prison walls, shutting him out from his brothers and his work. There will be no such barriers in the world to come. Many waves of separation lie between us and of our fellow believers, but in the bright world to which we go there will be unbroken fellowship for all the redeemed family. In this sense there will be no more sea.

The sea is the emblem of change— with its ebbs and flows, its glassy smoothness and its mountainous waves, its gentle murmurs and its tumultuous roarings; it is never the same for long. It is a slave of the fickle winds and the changing moon. Its instability is proverbial. In this mortal state we have too much of this; earth is constant only in her inconstancy. But in the heavenly state all mournful change will cease; fear of storms to wreck our hopes and drown our joys will be gone. The sea of glass will glow with an unbroken glory. Storms will not pound the peaceful shores of Paradise.

Soon we will reach that happy land where partings, changes, and storms will be ended! Jesus will take us there. Are we in him or not? This is the grand question. [M&E]