Water is amazing! We can’t live without it. Nothing can live without it.
So it shouldn’t surprise us that water is a key theme in the Bible.
Personally, I love water! Here in Minnesota we’re surrounded by it. Lakes, rivers, Lake Superior. I love to look at water, sit by it, be on it or in it. What a gift!
We know water is one of the most important players in our natural world. That’s why astronomers are so keen to find signs of water elsewhere in our solar system and beyond. No water, no life.
Water is often a major character in the Bible too, in both Old and New Testament. Let’s take a look at some of those places…
Days 2, 3 and 5 of Creation
The first time the Bible mentions water is right at the beginning in Genesis chapter 1.
On Day 2 of creation, God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters, separating water from water.” I think that means He separated the liquid water from the water in the atmosphere.
Day 3 is when He separated the dry land from the water in the seas.
And on Day 5 He said, “ ‘Let the water swarm with living creatures.’ So God created the large sea creatures and every living creature that moves and swarms in the water, according to their kinds.”
Water is foundational in God’s plan for the existence and flourishing of all life on earth.
Noah’s Flood
Genesis chapters 6, 7 and 8 tell of how God judges the sin of all the people in the world a few centuries later.
Chapter 6:5-6 say, “When the Lord saw that man’s wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every scheme his mind thought of was nothing but evil all the time, the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.”
The Lord decides He needs to start over with his friend Noah. Noah and his family are the only human survivors of a devastating worldwide flood. He judges the sins of every other human with water.
Afterward, God caused the first rainbow to appear in the clouds as a sign of His promise that never again would a flood wipe out all life on earth. That’s in Genesis 9:8-17. In verse 13 He says, “I have placed My bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.”
And of course, we see these beautiful rainbows when sunlight reflects on raindrops. Another way God uses water.
Water Events During the Exodus
When God delivered the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt through Moses, water was involved in several miracles.
Parting of the Red Sea
One of them was miraculous deliverance.
Pharaoh’s army cornered a couple million people at the sea. They thought they were doomed—but the Lord told Moses to “lift up your staff, stretch out your hand over the sea, and divide it so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground.” This is described in Exodus 14.
The Lord miraculously parted the waters, it says. The people crossed over to the other side while the pillar of fire stood in the path of the Egyptians. Then when the pillar moved out of the way and the army followed them, the sea collapsed back and drowned the entire army.
What a dramatic deliverance from slavery! And as an article on christianity.com points out, a dramatic sign of God’s power over nature.
The Bible continually reminds us that He is the Creator of heaven and earth, and so His power is unlimited over nature.
(Did it really happen?)
While so many people assume these are made-up stories, the Bible teaches them as real events. Not only the account in Exodus, but the writer of Psalm 78 believed it. Asaph writes in verses 12-16:
“He worked wonders in the sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt, the region of Zoan. He split the sea and brought them across; the water stood firm like a wall. He led them with a cloud by day and with a fiery light throughout the night. He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink as abundant as the depths. He brought streams out of the stone and made water flow down like rivers.”
And the writer of Hebrews believed the parting of the Red Sea was a real event too. Verse 29 of chapter 11 says: “By faith they crossed the Red Sea as though they were on dry land. When the Egyptians attempted to do this, they were drowned.”
Water from a Rock
Another way God used water during this time was through His miraculous provision. Psalm 78, just quoted above, says: “He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink as abundant as the depths.”
This happened in Exodus 17 and then another time in Numbers 20.
Parting of the Jordan River
And finally, God parted the flood waters of the Jordan River for their children when it was time for them to enter the Promised Land, which is present-day Israel. Joshua tells us about it in chapter 3:15-17:
“Now the Jordan overflows its banks throughout the harvest season. [So the river was at flood stage] But as soon as the priests carrying the ark reached the Jordan, their feet touched the water at its edge and the water flowing downstream stood still, rising up in a mass that extended as far as Adam, a city next to Zarethan. The water flowing downstream into the Sea of the Arabah (the Dead Sea) was completely cut off, and the people crossed opposite Jericho.
“The priests carrying the ark of the Lord’s covenant stood firmly on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, while all Israel crossed on dry ground until the entire nation had finished crossing the Jordan.”
Joshua tells the people both before and after this happened that God did this to let His people see His power first-hand. They needed to know He was among them and leading them.
And it literally put the fear of God in the surrounding nations that God’s people were called to conquer. Here’s a good article about that.
Ezekiel’s River
The first twelve verses of Ezekiel 47 describe part of a prophetic vision he experiences. Here are some key phrases:
- Verse 1 says there’s water flowing from the altar of the temple (that’s the temple in Jerusalem).
- Verses 3-5 describe the man leading Ezekiel further away in this water. At first, it’s up to his ankles, then his knees, then it was deep enough to swim in. It’s become a river.
Here’s where it gets really good:
- Verse 7: “I saw a very large number of trees along both sides of the riverbank.”
- Verse 8: “When it enters the sea, the sea of foul water (which is the Dead Sea), the water of the sea becomes fresh.” The salty sea becomes fresh water when the river reaches it!.
- Verse 9: “Every kind of living creature that swarms will live wherever the river flows, and there will be a huge number of fish because this water goes there. Since the water will become fresh, there will be life everywhere the river goes.”
There will be life everywhere the river goes. No more Dead Sea. Instead it’s a living sea because of the river.
It gets better…
Verse 12 says: “All kinds of trees providing food will grow along both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. Each month they will bear fresh fruit because the water comes from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be used for food and their leaves for medicine.”
(That sounds an awful lot like another river we’ll get to soon!)
This is truly a River of Life.
It comes from God’s temple—right from the altar, the place of worship. The river gets bigger and bigger and provides life everywhere it goes. It turns foul waters clean. And the trees along its bank flourish for the welfare of people and animals—for food and medicine.
Super cool!
The Waters of Baptism
We’re first introduced to water baptism in Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 3 and John 1. All four Gospels tell of John the Baptizer baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River.
Later, baptism becomes an important public confession for all new believers, all new followers of Jesus. It represents Jesus’ death—by immersion in the water—and His resurrection—coming out of the water—into new life.
The New Testament references baptism throughout, including in the Gospels, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and 1 Peter.
Baptism Story #1
Christians have different convictions about water baptism which I won’t get into here.
Here’s my story: My dad (a Lutheran pastor at the time) baptized me as an infant 59 years ago. Later we left the Lutheran church.
While a couple of my siblings decided to become re-baptized by immersion as teenagers, I never really felt compelled to do that.
My husband and I left it up to our own three kids whether and when they chose to be baptized by immersion. They all made that decision as children around 8 or 10 years old.
I guess while I believe full immersion in water is the scriptural model, I’m not going to fight over it with anyone! Sometimes immersion may not be possible, depending on the circumstances.
The important thing is that we are baptized in water somehow. That’s a definite New Testament teaching.
Baptism Story #2
Another quick story is one I heard from a friend of ours who recently spent a year in Japan working with a local church there. She told us of a Japanese woman she became friends with over several months.
This woman eventually decided to follow Jesus—which is super costly there because of the culture and religion. She knew a public baptism would change her life, and probably make it a lot harder in many ways. But she counted the cost and decided to move ahead with it.
Others have done the same thing over the centuries. This public declaration of faith through the waters of baptism is an important tradition of the Christian faith that’s very much alive.
The Holy Spirit can be in it today just as much as He was when John baptized Jesus 2,000 years ago!
Jesus Gives Living Water
He says this in John 4 and John 7, first to one woman at a town well, then to a whole crowd of people in Jerusalem in the middle of public event.
In verses 37 and 38 He says, “ ‘If anyone is thirsty, he should come to Me and drink! The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him.’ “ John explains that Jesus said this about the Spirit.
So the Water of Life springing up from within is the promise of the Holy Spirit living in us.
The Old Testament foreshadows this in different places too. Two of them are Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17.
Psalm 1 says the one who delights in the Lord’s instruction is “like a tree planted beside streams of water that bears its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.”
Jeremiah 17:7-8 is similar. It says: “The man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence indeed is the Lord, is blessed. He will be like a tree planted by water—it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn’t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.”
That water the tree is planted by is LIFE for that tree.
And the Holy Spirit is the LIFE we need to flourish in Jesus and His Kingdom.
The River of Living Water
Finally, we have the River of Life of Revelation 22.
This River mirrors the one we talked about in Ezekiel. I think it’s my favorite reference to water in the Bible. It’s the river coming from the throne of God in the New Jerusalem after Jesus’ second coming.
This is what the Apostle John saw in his vision (Revelation 22:1-2): “Then he showed me the river of living water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the broad street of the city. The tree of life was on both sides of the river, bearing 12 kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree are for healing the nations.”
Wow!
Water is vital and life-giving in the natural world. And the River of Life is vital and life-giving in every other way. For our spirits, minds and hearts.
Here’s more…
- How God Speaks Through Signs in the Heavens
- 20 Meaningful Bible Verses about Nature
- How God Uses Wilderness to Shape Us
- Water and Its Importance in the Bible - August 27, 2024
- How God Speaks through Signs in the Heavens - June 14, 2024
- 20 Meaningful Bible Verses about Nature - March 18, 2024
