In graphic language, Psalm 107:23-31 describes the experience of those who go to sea. They are liable to experience storms – indeed, severe storms which may cause them severe “distresses”. One must remember that sea-going ships of biblical times were relatively small, and storms would have had a much greater effect on them than on large modern ocean-going ships (yet the ship in which the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked was carrying 276 people across the Mediterranean). But at sea, people “see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep”. Matthew Henry comments on verses 23-24: “Let all that go to sea be led, by all the wonders they observe there, to consider and adore the infinite perfections of that God whose the sea is, for He made it and manages it”. Storms are dangerous but if, from a place of safety, one can stand and watch the waves breaking on a shore or on rocks, we have an opportunity to observe the magnificent beauty of the scene. We then have another opportunity “to consider and adore” the wonder and the beauty of God’s creation.
Verses 28-29 speak of the seamen crying “unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm.” God has often heard the prayers of those experiencing severe storms and bringing about, in His kind providence, a calm on the sea – most obviously when the Son of God stilled the waves on the Sea of Galilee in answer to the pleas of the disciples, although they were so unbelieving. Henry comments here: “We have a saying, ‘Let those that would learn to pray go to sea’; I say, Let those that will go to sea learn to pray, and accustom themselves to pray, that they may come with the more boldness to the throne of grace when they are in trouble”.
But in these verses in Psalm 107 we may see a picture of believers sailing through the storms of life. David notes, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous” (Ps 34:19); they all experience trouble, but some of them experience more, and more serious, troubles than others. If anyone ever experienced particularly severe trouble, it was Job when he lost all his children, his animals, and then his health. But all this was followed by the tremendously-discouraging attitude of his friends. They came to comfort him, but they were totally mistaken in their attempts to understand the source of all his troubles. We know what the source was, for God’s revelation in Scripture shows not only the outcome but also the background – the devil was trying to prove the insincerity of Job’s religion. The devil was, of course, unsuccessful: the reality of Job’s religion was clearly demonstrated.
Yet the purpose of God lay behind it all; it was God who raised up the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea through which, so to speak, Job was sailing. We should note his faith, though there were many occasions when he could not see the Lord’s hand in his difficult providence. But he had learned to pray, to “cry unto the Lord” in his trouble, and the Lord heard him. One evidence that the Lord was hearing him was that he was given faith to say, “He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10). Job realised that the storm would subside – that although the Lord was trying him, he would be delivered and, as a result of the trial, he would be purified; he was being tried as gold is tried, to make it purer. Says W S Plumer, “Terrific as is the sea in a tempest, there is a God presiding over it. He can at will calm its agitations.”
Although “many are the afflictions of the righteous”, yet we are assured that “the Lord delivereth him out of them all” (Ps 34:19). That is according to the picture provided for us in Psalm 107: “He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still” (v 29). All the troubles of God’s children will come to an end and they will be brought into the blessedness of heaven – just as the ship that has been thrown around on the waves of the ocean reaches at last the still waters within the harbour which it was aiming for.
Heaven is the final destination for God’s children, and there is no trouble there, no “distresses”, no stormy seas, no mounting “up to the heaven” and going “down again to the depths” as the waves rise and fall. They are brought to a place where “there shall be no more curse” (Rev 22:3), and there shall be no more curse because there shall be no more sin. All the troubles and storms were part of life in a sinful world. When they believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, they were delivered from the guilt of sin and the process of sanctification had begun, delivering them from the power of sin in their hearts and lives. And when they reach the haven of eternal glory, all the other consequences of sin – including the thorns and thistles that represent the curse imposed in the Garden of Eden on fallen mankind – are finally left behind. There can be no storms in the haven which is heaven.
Jonah had the very difficult experience of being at sea in a severe storm and of being thrown overboard, at his own request. It was the result of his ‘Plumer, Psalms, Banner of Truth reprint, 1975, on Ps 107:29. disobedience, his refusal to go to Nineveh “to cry against it” and, instead, boarding a ship sailing, in the opposite direction, towards Tarshish. He acknowledged his wrongdoing to the crew members who challenged him, and they reluctantly cast him into the sea, where a great fish swallowed him up. We might say, on the basis of the prayer he sent up from inside the fish, that a storm raged within his soul also. In his cry to the Lord, he said, “I am cast out of Thy sight; yet I will look again toward Thy holy temple” (Jnh 2:4). In his trouble, he could only look by faith to the place where sacrifice was offered, where sinners could learn something about being reconciled to God, and where the special presence of God on earth was. Jonah was acknowledging that “salvation is of the Lord” (Jnh 2:9).
He too was one of those who “cry unto the Lord in their trouble” and, accordingly, he was brought out of his distresses. There was a strong element of chastisement in God’s dealings with Jonah, and who of us can say that we are without sin? Yet when God brings His children into storms of trouble, His purposes vary. In Job’s case, testing was the most prominent purpose; in Jonah’s case chastisement was most prominent. But both these men were brought at last into the haven of heaven. When he reached that haven, Job no doubt received further light on God’s purposes in bringing him into such a severe tempest. He would have seen how God used his experiences during that particularly stormy and difficult period of his life to purify him, making him more dependent on the Lord, and enabling him to learn also from the teaching he was given.
Jonah too learned obedience through his experiences in the storm. The next time he was called to go to Nineveh, he went. Yet he needed further spiritual training; no one learns perfect obedience through one experience. His disappointment when the gourd withered – and God’s response to his disappointment – was no doubt a further means of training. We can be sure that, by the time Jonah left this world, he had been made fit to enjoy the blessedness of the haven to which the Lord was bringing him. It corresponds to the perfect quiet of which the Psalmist speaks: “Then are they glad because they be quiet” (Ps 107:30). Plumer, Psalms, p 961.
We cannot avoid storms, whatever our spiritual state, but if we do not call on the Lord for His saving mercy before it is too late – before life here ebbs away – then we will never reach the haven God has prepared for those who love Him. The danger of perishing on the sea of life is real. How necessary then to heed the call, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found” (Is 55:6).