Peace Amidst Destruction
Due to high winds at our outdoor service, we were unable to obtain audio of this sermon.
The following is a manuscript of Pastor David’s sermon:
Our focus is Psalm 29 this morning, but let me call your attention first to Mark 4:35-41
35 When evening had come, Jesus said to the disciples, “Let us go across to the other side [of the sea].” 36 And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat… 37 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling [with water]. 38 But Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And the disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
When I was a kid, there was nothing more terrifying to me than severe weather.
Anytime there were severe weather alerts — and the TV had that running ticker — I would ask:
Which counties?
How far away?
What county am I in?
Radar?
Direction of storm?
Rotation?
Funnel clouds?
I was terrified, specifically, of tornadoes.
And if the weather was headed our way, I would be the first one to head to the basement.
I’d be in the basement for hail.
Now, I have moved past that fear for the most part, but I still have the thought:
As miraculous as it was for Jesus to calm the storm, it’s all the more amazing to me that Jesus slept during the storm.
In fact, it says he slept so deeply during the storm, he didn’t even notice as water was coming into the boat.
How do you do that?
I went sailing with my uncle and cousin once and I freaked out when it started drizzling.
How could Jesus possibly be drenched in water, hearing the thunder, the wind howling, the disciples presumably screaming in terror … And he’s asleep in the stern?
That’s a miracle to me.
And you say: “Well, Jesus was God, he could turn off the storm like we do a light switch, of course he was never afraid.”
And that’s true, but Jesus was also truly human, which means he met with the same temptations humans meet with including our temptation to be afraid
And so I ask the question: How could Jesus sleep on the boat while the storm was raging?
How could Jesus find peace amidst the destruction the storm was causing?
And the answer, I’m going to argue to you is that Jesus read and knew Psalm 29.
The historical occasion for Psalm 29, as one commentator simply put it, was a thunderstorm.
This is a Psalm about a thunderstorm. This is a Psalm to read during a thunderstorm.
And notice how it ends: 11 May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace!
So not only peace, but strength are possible if we know intimately the truths of this Psalm.
And not only peace and strength for literal thunderstorms, but the variety of storms we encounter in this life.
And, as I’m going to argue, peace and strength comes from heartily trusting three truths from this Psalm:
1. The Kingship Of God
2. The Voice Of God
3. The Glory of God
And I hope by the end of our time together this morning that you yourself won’t be afraid of thunderstorms … or any other storm that comes into your life.
Now, I’m going to be working backwards in this Psalm, so I’m actually going to start us in verse 11:
11 May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace!
And I want to start this way by affirming to us here this morning that strength and peace are available to us amidst the storms.
And that’s important for us to realize because thunderstorms and other storms that come into our lives often make us feel weak and afraid.
And yet, we have verse 11: The LORD (YAHWEH) giving strength and peace to his people.
But this is not some inner, gut-it-out, white knuckle, pull yourself up by your bootstraps peace or strength. No it’s a trusting and believing (again) three truths about GOD:
1. The Kingship of God
Verse 10: 10 The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king forever.
Now, let me start by addressing the question that might be in the back of your minds
And I hate the fact I have to address this question during our outdoor service because this is not easy to answer, but this is all some of you are going to think about:
Verse 10 sounds cool: 10 The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;
That sounds cool to us, God is so strong, but this verse reads a lot different if you are actually in a flood.
Imagine reading this verse as you stare at two feet of water in your basement from heavy rain.
Imagine reading this a month or so ago as we thought about the flooding in Texas.
Imagine reading this verse as a Louisiana native in 2005 after Katrina decimated New Orleans.
Imagine reading this in 2004 after the Earthquake and Tsunami in Southeast Asia that killed more than 200,000 people.
The LORD sits enthroned over THAT flood, THOSE floods?
And the clear answer from Scripture is YES.
And the question becomes: What do we do with that? How could a sovereign God allow such tragedy and devastation to occur?
For a lot of people, this is their dividing line with God.
If God was really good, really trustworthy, really sovereign, then such pain and suffering would not happen.
Therefore, I cannot believe this God, I reject this God.
And there are so many nuances and pastoral comments I could make, pastor Tim Keller wrote a book on walking with God through pain and suffering that’s more than 300 pages in small print.
But let me offer you this from his shorter book — The Reason For God
“C.S. Lewis realized that suffering provided a better argument for God’s existence than one against it … Lewis recognized that modern objections to God are based on a sense of fair play and justice. People, we believe, ought not to suffer, be excluded, die of hunger or oppression. But the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection depends on death, destruction, and violence of the strong against the weak — these things are all [therefore] perfectly natural. On what basis then does the atheist judge the natural world to be horribly wrong, unfair, and unjust? [So] the non-believer in God doesn’t have a good basis for being outraged at injustice, which, as Lewis pointed out, was the reason for rejecting God in the first place…”
Point being: If God is not real, why are we complaining about justice or injustice? It’s just the natural outworkings of life.
If there is no God enthroned over the flood, then it’s all meaningless and we have no basis for complaining because this is just the world that we’re in.
Hurricanes and Tsunamis are natural selection — “Shouldn’t have lived near water, sorry about your dad, but human beings don’t have gills.”
But no we do have these complaints and questions and internal desires for justice and fairness and good and evil because God is real.
And we know inherently this isn’t how things should be.
Keller concludes: “It is therefore a mistake, though an understandable one, to think that if you abandon belief in God it somehow makes the problem of evil easier to handle.”
And so you go: “Alright, fine, God is real and my desire for justice proves it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not angry with him. That doesn’t get him off the hook for human suffering and being the king of the floods.”
And that brings me to my second point: Trusting the Voice Of God
3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over many waters. 4 The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty. 5 The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon. 6 He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox. 7 The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire. 8 The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. 9 The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, “Glory!”
And here’s what I think is noteworthy:
Why not just say “The LORD” here? Why write all these things as characterizing “The Voice Of The LORD”?
Well, if we’re thinking about this purely through an Old Testament lens, this Psalm is presumably a callback to Genesis 1, especially Psalm 29:3 that says 3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters.
Genesis says, “The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
But then 3 God SAID, “Let there be light,” God used his VOICE to create
So, Psalm 29 is reminding us of the power of the voice of God that creates and also (verse 8) shakes the wilderness
But from a New Testament perspective, we have a new understanding of the voice of God.
As the Apostle John tells us: 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him… 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
What do I mean?
Jesus is the voice of God revealed to us.
And we can reread Psalm 29 as: 4 [JESUS] is powerful; [JESUS] is full of majesty. 5 [JESUS] breaks the cedars… 6 [JESUS] makes Lebanon to skip like a calf… 7 [JESUS] flashes forth flames of fire. 8 [JESUS] shakes the wilderness… 9 [JESUS] makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, “Glory!”
And so we go back to that question: “How does God explain Himself when it comes to evil and suffering?”
The King of the Flood enters into the flood.
The King of the world enters into the world.
And we are reminded that God is not some distant deity, but the God who, as John said, became flesh and dwelt among us … full of grace and truth.
God and His voice are not distant, impersonal things to be learned about in an ivory tower, but someone to be experienced and related to.
And He relates to us.
The Word become flesh and dwelt among us.
You wanna know why we celebrate Christmas? Because it’s God entering into our world and experiencing what we experience with us.
It’d be like J.K. Rowling writing herself in as a professor at Hogwarts.
The author has entered into the story they are writing.
And God did not enter in as some angry deity with a white beard, but he came in meekness and gentleness.
And he experienced the very worst the world and humanity had to offer.
As Isaiah says: He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief… 4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
Keller: “In Jesus Christ, God experienced the greatest depths of pain. Therefore though Christianity does not provide the [exact] reason for each experience of pain, it provides deep resources for actually facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair… if we embrace the Christian teaching that Jesus is God and that he went to the Cross, then we have deep consolation and strength to face the brutal realities of life on earth. We can know that God is truly Immanuel — God With Us — even in our worst sufferings.”
And the greatest proof that we can have hope amidst the most confusing and unjust of pains is the resurrection!
Where Jesus triumphed over death, sin, pain, and suffering and rose again victoriously
And if God had a plan in the death of Jesus to bring the very best out of the very worst of evils then he has to, has to, has to have a plan amidst the storms we encounter in this life.
So yes, God is enthroned over the world and the flood, but he is not distant nor impersonal.
Though the LORD is majestic, we’ve seen him stripped of his beauty.
Though the LORD is powerful, we’ve seen him in weakness.
Though his voice breaks the cedars, his voice was broken on the tree of golgotha
Though the voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire, Jesus endured the fire of hell and the wrath of God on the cross.
And though the voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness, Christ has invited us into his kingdom that cannot be shaken and to believe a gospel that causes us to go out leaping like calves from the stall.
And if all that is TRUE, friend, and it is … then why would we doubt the goodness of God and His Son who are enthroned over the flood.
As Charles Spurgeon, who wrestled with depression most of his adult life said, “I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages.”
Which brings me to my last point: Amidst the storm, believe the glory of God.
Verse 1 and 2: 1 Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. 2 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness.
If you are familiar with the Bible you know there’s a whole book of the Bible that deals with innocent people suffering.
And it’s not pronounced job, it’s Job.
And most of the book is Job complaining about his life and how Job wants to vent his frustrations to God
He wants to see God face to face and let him know, “God you are wrong for making me suffer.”
And you get to the last part of the book and you’d think God gives Job this philosophical lesson on suffering and good and evil
Or at the very least, you’d think God would come down and give Job a hug.
But that’s not what happens at all.
God comes down, it says, in a whirlwind (in a tornado) and, to put it this way, all God does is glorify Himself to Job.
That’s his answer, glorifying himself.
And that might sound ethereal, so let me just read it to you:
Then the LORD answered Job from the whirlwind… 4 “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? … 5 Who determined its dimensions and stretched out the surveying line? 6 What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone 7 as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?
8 “Who kept the sea inside its boundaries as it burst from the womb, 9 and as I clothed it with clouds and wrapped it in thick darkness? 10 For I locked it behind barred gates, limiting its shores. 11 I said, ‘This far and no farther will you come. Here your proud waves must stop!’
12 “Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east? 13 Have you made daylight spread to the ends of the earth, to bring an end to the night’s wickedness?
16 “Have you explored the springs from which the seas come? Have you explored their depths? 17 Do you know where the gates of death are located? Have you seen the gates of utter gloom? 18 Do you realize the extent of the earth?
19 “Where does light come from, and where does darkness go? 20 Can you take each to its home? Do you know how to get there?
Or, as Ghost Ship poetically put it:
“Have you seen the armoury I hold
Snow and hail are stacked up in silos?
For the times of trouble, and war, and strife
Can you raise your voice to the storm cloud
Would the thunder answer and ring out?
Does the lightning ask you where it should strike?
“Who has cleft the channels for torrents
Rain to sprout the desert with forest
In the wilderness that my hand has built?
Can you hunt the prey for young lions?
Can you loose the chords of Orion?
Is this whole world bending beneath your will?”
And here’s the thing: I don’t think this is God yelling at Job.
After all, the book of Job opens with God saying twice, “There’s no one righteous like Job in all the world”
And in the end, God yells at Job’s useless friends and says “Job’s spoken rightly about me and unless he intercedes for you, I’m gonna kill you.”
And I also don’t think this is God ignoring Job’s questions.
So what God is doing at the end of Job is reminding Job of the God he serves.
Or, as God actually spells out to the prophet Habakkuk when the prophet asked similar questions: “The righteous shall live by his faith.”
Or, as Psalm 29 puts it: 1 Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. 2 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness.
What we need when the storms of life arise is not necessarily an escape from the storm, though praise God if that happens, but even more so a reminder of who controls the wind and the waves.
And Jesus could remain fast asleep on the boat not only because He Himself was and is God, but because He knew the glory and strength of His Father.
So, application, what do we do with all this?
Well, for those of you here suffering this morning, and I would assume that applies to all of us to a greater or lesser extent, do we know the God who is there?
Do we know Immanuel, God with Us, who is enthroned over the flood and the whole world?
And do we know the remedy for our confusion and anger at the storms of the world is not lashing out, it’s submission to and trust in the God who holds the world?
The God who became flesh and dwelt among us? Experiencing our griefs and sorrows Himself?
If you haven’t already, I hope and pray you’d put your trust in him.
Let me close in prayer.