Weather! It’s everywhere, amen? Duh … pretty obvious. We’re surrounded by it. No matter where you go, you’ll encounter … weather … and it has a pretty big impact on our lives. We wake up in the morning and look out the window or turn on the radio or TV or go on our computers and look up the day’s forecast. Is it going to be sunny … cloudy … hot … warm … cold … is it going to rain or snow … and then we plan our day accordingly … what should I wear, am I going to get to work in the yard today, walk around the lake, ride my motorcycle.
Weather is all around us and it is changing all the time … whether we’re awake or asleep … and it has a major impact on our lives. Sunny days are beautiful … unless you have too many days in a row without rain. Every living thing needs water to survive but too much rain can be devastating as we were recently reminded, amen? A cool gentle breeze is nice but a hurricane or a tornado can be deadly.
And so, like our ancient ancestors, we keep an eye on the sky … whether it is with our naked eye or with a ring of weather satellites. And because the weather involves the atmosphere above us, our ancient ancestors assumed that the weather was under the prevue or control of the gods. They saw the weather as an expression of the gods’ moods. When the gods were pleased, then all was pleasant but if the gods were unhappy, they would express their anger or displeasure with violent flashes of lightening and terrifying crashing of thunder. Like the moods of the gods, the weather could change in a split second. And like the gods, the weather could be frightening in its is power and its violence.
We find plenty of examples of this in the Bible. When YAHWEH looked down on the earth and saw “that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually [and] the LORD was sorry that He had made humankind on the earth” (Genesis 6:5-6), how did God expresses His disappointment and displeasure? Rain! Lots and lots and lots of rain, amen? And when God’s anger had subsided and the rain stopped and the flood waters receded and dried up, God made a covenant with us promising never to flood the earth again and He placed the symbol of His promise where? In the clouds. “When I bring clouds over the earth and the [rainbow] is seen in the clouds,” says God, “I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh” (Genesis 8:14-15).
Listen to what the Israelites saw and heard when they gathered at Mt. Sinai in the wilderness after their dramatic escape from bondage in Egypt:
“Have [the people] wash their clothes, and prepare for the third day, because on the third day the LORD will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. … On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled. … They took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the LORD had descended upon it in fire … As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder” (Exodus 19:11, 16-17, 18-19).
It is important to see the connection here between Heaven and earth. God descends to the top of Mount Sinai and Moses climbs to the top of the mountain to convene with God. Mountains were seen as a connection between Heaven and earth and weather was seen as Heaven’s way of communicating and interacting with the earth. God would express Himself in terms of thunder and lightning, wind and rain. He would punish the earth with floods and droughts and then display His promise of mercy with a rainbow.
Ever the skillful poet, David uses the force and power of nature to paint a vivid picture of the relationship between Heaven and earth, between all of His creatures, Heavenly and mortal, in Psalm 29. David describes God as a conquering king returning home from a victorious battle. The language, the image of God, that David creates was one of the “Storm God” … a common poetic and literary image in David’s time, given, as we have talked about, the connection between Heaven and earth and the gods’ uses of weather as a way of expressing themselves. “The speaker in the psalm is an official in the heavenly court who sees the victorious Lord returning from battle and commands the assembly to bow down and recognize the supremacy of the returning victor” (Clifford, R.J. Psalms 1-72. In Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries. Nashville: Abington Press, 2002, p. 154). The poem is a celebration and an acknowledgement of God’s power and authority over Heaven and earth and over all of His creation.
The poem opens with the narrator, a heavenly official, commanding the “heavenly beings” … the angels and divine servants who serve the needs of the King … with a capital “K”… to “ascribe” to the LORD glory and strength in verse 1. If you look at the word “ascribe” you see two words … “a” and “scribe” … Latin for “to write.” To “ascribe” the LORD’s glory and strength is to not only praise Him in the moment but to write down His glory, to make a list of His strength, His accomplishments so as to preserve this victorious moment for all time … which is what David is attempting to do in this poem. When this poem was read at the end of the old year and the beginning of the new year … signaled by the start of the early fall rains … it was a call for the people on earth to join with the inhabitants of Heaven to remember and recount this and all the other great victories “ascribed” or written down “acknowledging the unique sovereignty of the Lord” (Clifford, Ibid., p. 157) … and this is done by reading what David has ascribed or written about the LORD in this psalm.
David mentions the “voice” of the LORD seven times in the following seven verses. The “voice” of the LORD is “understood specifically as thunder” (Clifford, Ibid., p. 154) … referring to the same thundering voice of the LORD that they heard on Mount Sinai.
What David describes next in verse 3 is the LORD rolling inland from the Mediterranean Sea as a massive thunderstorm. The sight of a bank of thunderclouds on the horizon is a frighting and impressive sight … the dark clouds, the lightning flashing, the sound of distant thunder growing louder as the storm moves closer and closer. “The luminous thundercloud is the chariot of the victorious Storm God, and the thunder, rain, and lightning are the soldiers of [His] army” (Clifford, Ibid., p. 155). The “voice of the LORD” heralds His arrival to His royal court in Heaven and His earthly court in Israel.
The thunderstorm of God’s victory procession follows the typical pattern for thunderstorms in Palestine … which usually come from out of the Mediterranean Sea and move westward through Israel, Jordan, and then Syria and David follows that pattern in his song. The voice of the LORD moves from the waters of the Mediterranean in verse 3 to the coastline and the mountain ranges of Lebanon. The power that stirred up the waters of the Mediterranean now crashes into the mountains. What I picture is a hurricane, which starts over the Atlantic ocean, organizes and gains strength as it heads to our shores, where it comes crashing inland, breaking trees and destroying buildings. The thunder, the rain sweeping across the trees, and the lightning that lights up trees appear to shatter the cedars of Lebanon in verse 5 and causes the oaks to whirl and strips the forest bare in verse 9. God’s thunderous procession strikes these mountains so hard that they appear to move, to shake and shift and skip around like a calf. Even significant mountains like Sirion … which is Mount Hermon on the westernmost end of the Lebanon mountain range … is insignificant in the face of God’s power and majesty. Once past the mountain ranges of Lebanon, the storm moves into the desert regions of Syria known as “Mot” or “death” (Clifford, Ibid., p. 155).
In David’s mind’s eye and the minds of his readers or listeners, the movement of God’s victory procession signifies God’s dominance over the sea, over the fertile lands of the earth … signified by the fertile coasts of Israel and Lebanon … and the desert regions of the world … signified by the arid steps of Kadesh in Syria.
Water represented chaos and disorder to the ancient Israelites. They described the chaos before the creation of the universe in Genesis as a “formless void” just as the ocean or sea is a formless mass of constantly flowing and moving water. Just as God’s breath, God “ruah” or spirit passed over the waters of chaos in Genesis, God’s power in the form of a thundercloud flashing flames of fire passes over the “flood” in verse 10 and it becomes His servant … something that He sits on … reminiscent of God’s declaration to the people of Israel through His prophet Isaiah: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” (verses 1-2). The image of the throne in verse 10 symbolizes God’s victory over the sea, over the chaos and confusion of nature.
“Ascribing to the Lord” this great victory “gives strength to His people” (Psalm 29:11) and knowledges the One … with a capital “O” … who created our world to be an orderly and beautiful place sits enthroned over it forever.
The weather presents us with a difficult theological conundrum. The natural forces governing this planet are troubled and unstable. As one author put it: “Nature is gorgeous and inspiring – and also monstrous and inhuman” (Jeremiah, D. What are You Afraid Of? Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers; 2013; p. 3). If God is the Storm God … if God is, as David reminds us in Psalm 29 … “enthroned over the flood” (verse 10), what do we do when a flood or a hurricane or some other natural disasters destroys and kills and turns our beautiful, orderly world and lives upside down and inside out … often in minutes without warning? If God is over it all, is He not responsible?
That problem has been resolved in a number of ways. In pagan cultures, the solution is simple … you give different powers and different responsibilities to different Gods. The Canaanites, for example, worshipped the god Ba’al and the goddess Astaroth. Ba’al was their “storm” god and he was often depicted as holding lightning bolts in his hand. Ba’al’s wife, Astaroth, on the other hand, was the goddess of nature and fertility. Ba’al would cause the rain to fall upon the earth, represented by Astaroth, who would produce the plants. For the Romans, the storm god was Jupiter or Zeus, also depicted as hurling thunderbolts at the earth in wrath. The advantage of having multiple gods is that you could attribute all the bad to one or more gods and still seek comfort in the more compassionate and kinder gods.
But what do you do when you have only one God … and He is responsible for everything … good and bad … that happens in this world? One thing that you can do is to completely remove God from any disaster, to absolve Him of any responsibility. This is called “deism” … the belief that God is some distant, cosmic watchmaker who put this whole thing together, wound it up, and just sits passively by and watches. He created wind and sun, clouds and rain and He set our atmosphere into motion and just lets it do what it’s going to do. This concept “accepts the existence and goodness of God but distances Him from anything that happens in the world [that] He created” (Jeremiah, Ibid., p. 8).
While deism accepts the existence of God, does it also maintain the “goodness” of God? If, as David points out in Psalm 29, God is “enthroned” over His creation, what kind of king would just sit back and do nothing while his subjects suffer great harm, amen? If God created the universe, then He has power over it … and if He has power over it and does nothing … well, you see the problem, I think.
Sometimes we speak of “Nature” … with a capital “N” … as something that exists separate and apart from God. The Canaanites called it “Ashtoreth,” some call it “Mother Nature.” This still presents us with the same problem that we encounter in deism. Does God allow “Mother Nature” to just do her own thing? Or is He powerless to stop “Mother Nature” from doing her own thing?
Another solution is to deny the very existence of God. The universe and everything in it and everything that happens in it is just the result of random forces and circumstances. Atheist George Smith’s explanation is a pretty typical one: “The problem of evil is this,” says Smith. “If God knows there is evil but cannot prevent it, he is not omnipotent. If God knows there is evil and can prevent it but desires not to, he is not omnibenevolent” (Smith, G.H. Atheism: The Case Against God. New York: Prometheus Books; 1979; p. 81).
We can actually use natural disasters as an excuse to distance ourselves from God or comfort ourselves by denying His existence. After the tsunami hit Japan in 2010, Allen Laing, a reporter for the Scottish newspaper The Herald, wrote this:
“God, if there is a God, should be ashamed of Himself. The sheer enormity of the Asian tsunami disaster, the death, destruction, and havoc it has wreaked, the scale of misery it has caused, must surely test the faith of even the firmest believer. … I hope I am right … that there is no God. For if there were, then He’d have to shoulder the blame. In my book, He would be as guilty as sin and I’d want nothing to do with Him” (Laing, A. “Wave That Beggared My Belief.” The Herald, January 4, 2005).
How would you answer someone like this? The Bible is clear. God is a hands-on God who is intimately involved in controlling and sustaining all the events that happen in the universe and the natural world. So, what do we do, what are we to think when we stand in the rubble of our once beautiful and orderly lives?
Well, we could blame it on Satan, right? But again, we run into the same problem that we did with deism and with Mother Nature. If God can’t stop Satan, then an like atheist George Smith could argue that God is not omnipotent. If God let’s Satan do evil, as He did in the case of Job, then an atheist like Allen Laing will say that God is not a very kind or caring or loving God.
Which leads us to another view that some Christians take … that natural disaster is a punishment or a judgement from God. After 9/11, for example, some people were quick to point out that the disaster was God’s judgment on our nation for our rebellion against Him. Really? Would God kill innocent people for the sins of a group or a nation? Rick Scarborough, president of Vision America, argued that the hurricane was God’s punishment for homosexuality … pornography … the removal of Ten Commandments monuments … and the United States’ support for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. Michael Marcavage, who leads the anti-homosexual group “Repent America,” also claimed that Hurricane Katrina was a “act of God” pointing out that the hurricane struck just before “Southern Decadence,” the annual gay rights parade in New Orleans. Marcavage also linked the destruction of New Orleans with Mardi Gras and the “Girls Gone Wild” videos (Kaylor, B. Good Faith Media, September 9, 2005).
Perhaps. As I mentioned earlier, God created a flood to destroy a sin-blackened world, sparing only righteous Noah and his family (Genesis 6-8). When Dathan, Abiram, and Korah, rejected God, the “earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up … with all their goods” (Numbers 16:32). God rained down the fire of His judgment on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness (Genesis 19:24).
But Jesus raises the question that I raised earlier. Pilate had just murdered some Galileans and a tower in Siloam had collapsed, killing a number of people. “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things?” Jesus asks in reference to those who had been murdered by Pilate. “I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dealt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:2-5). Disasters happen and they happen to both evil and righteous people without distinction or explanation. What’s important, says Jesus, is that we are ready, that we have repented, should disaster befall us.
Sometimes God uses disasters as a form of punishment, sometimes He uses them to get our attention, to wake us up, and sometimes disasters just happen … they are the natural result of time and situations … and sometimes they’re necessary. Forest fires, like the ones that frequently ravage California are part of nature or God’s way of clearing up or controlling the growth of underbrush or creating new forests. Rain is a good thing … it is necessary for all life on this planet … but sometimes it can create a situation like the one that flooded this area. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornado, and volcanic eruptions are all natural phenomena … but they can also have devastating effects on our lives as well. It’s something that we have had to learn to live with. But here’s the key … what ever the cause, whatever the reason, it is God … the Master of All Creation … who will sustain us and carry us through the tough times like the flood.
Disasters can bring out the good in people, amen? Sometimes we’re at our best during times of trouble. Like we saw and continue to see here in our community, the flood brought this community together. Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, Baptist, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Jews, atheists, you name it … all came together and worked together to help our neighbors in need, amen? I just wish we could hold on to that unity when this is all over and not wait until there’s another disaster to bring us all together again, amen?
Disaster can show us what we’re made of. It brings out the survivor in us and we find ourselves doing things that we never knew we were capable of nor would ever know were it not for the challenges that we have had to face, amen? Nor would we know what God is capable of either. If God protected us all the time, insulated us from all unpleasantness like an overprotective father, then we would never know what God can do and we would never grow. As we all know, you don’t do your children any favors when you wrap them in cotton and try … and I emphasize the word ‘try’ … to protect them from the realities of life on our fallen planet.
When Job’s wife told him to curse God and die, he responded: “You speak as a foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God and not receive the bad?” (Job 2:10). Some of us have this unrealistic notion that our lives should be nothing but a bed of roses. The Israelites felt that they were exempt from the hardships of life because they were God’s “chosen.” It doesn’t take long, however, to figure out that that just isn’t ever going to be the case … but life isn’t just one long list of woes either, amen?
I have what I call a magical pair of glasses … I always find what I’m looking for. If I only look for the bad things in people or God, guess what? I’ll find it. If I look for the good, guess what? Now, I don’t know about you but I’ve never created or run a universe but I don’t seem to have any problem pointing out all the things that God’s done wrong in creating His, amen? It’s so easy … to easy … to sit back and judge God’s handiwork … to point out all the evil and the brokenness … and blame God for it … but is that fair? I love the way that Pastor Erwin Lutzer describes this in his book “Where Was God?”:
“Often the same people who ask where God was following a disaster thanklessly refuse to worship and honor Him for years of peace and calmness. They disregard God in good times, yet think He is obligated to provide help when bad times come. They believe the God they dishonor when they are well should heal then when they are sick; the God they ignore when they are wealthy should rescue them from impending poverty; and the God they refuse to worship when the earth is still should rescue them when it begins to shake” (Lutzer, E. Where Was God?: Answers to Though Questions about God and Natural Disaster. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers; 2006; p. 100).
As Dr. David Jeremiah points out: “God is loving, and His gifts abound in our world. So does His discipline. That is why we must refuse to let only one side of the equation define God for us” (Jeremiah, Ibid., p. 17). Yes … the world and life are full of tragedies but they are vastly outnumbered by the blessings and the good things of life. Trust me … you’ll see that it’s true if you look for them.
We all know the saying, “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone,” right? Sometimes we don’t appreciate the things that we have until we lose them. Author and nationally known speaker Mark Mittelberg makes this point in his book “The Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask”:
“It’s common in the middle of a drought … to forget that rain is the norm. Or in the middle of a flood to forget that floods rarely happen. Or when bad news comes from the doctor to forget that, for most of us, this comes after many years of relatively good health” (Mittleberg, M. The Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers; 2010; p. 137).
Disasters can cause us to blame God and pull away as it does for atheists like George Smith or Scottish reporter Allen Laing or it can draw us closer to God and strengthen our faith in Him as He carries us through the disasters and tragedies of life, amen? Again, I refer to Pastor Lutzer:
“Disaster might drive some people away from God, but on others it has the opposite effect, driving them into the arms of Jesus. The destruction of nature has helped them distinguish the temporary from the permanent. Disaster reminds the living that tomorrow is uncertain, so we must prepare for eternity today. Today is the accepted time; today is the day of salvation. When disasters come, God is not on trial, we are” (Lutzer, Ibid., p. 104).
Remember, we live in a fallen, broken world … not because of anything that God did but because of something that we did a long, long time ago, amen?
One reason that we fear disaster is that their occurrence makes it seem like God is not in control. That’s how it looked when Jesus was arrested and nailed to the cross but the truth is that God was very much in control. Everything that happened, everything that Jesus went through was for our benefit, for our salvation, our redemption. God used the awful, horrifying reality of the crucifixion of a perfect Christ to accomplish His good and perfect purpose in us and through us.
The cross reminds us that God doesn’t intend for this fallen world, with its death, disaster, and corruption, to be our home forever. In the midst of life and all that it has to offer, we cling to this promise: That Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us and when that place is ready He will come back and take us to where He is that we might be with Him forever (John 14:1-3). “Each disaster,” says Dr. Jeremiah, “reminds us that a disaster free eternity awaits us and inspires our hearts to long for it” (Jeremiah, Ibid., p. 27). In his book “What’s So Great About Christianity,” author Dinesh D’Souza writes:
“The only way for us to really triumph over evil and suffering is to live forever in a place where those things do not exist. It is the claim of Christianity that there is such a place and that it is available to all who seek it. No one can deny that, if this claim is true, then evil and suffering are exposed as temporary hardships and injustices. They are as transient as our brief, mortal lives. In that case, God has shown us a way to prevail over evil and suffering, which are finally overcome in the life to come” (D’Souza, D. What’s So Great About Christianity. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing; 2007; p. 274).
Despite what the media tells us … despite what our eyes and ears tell us … despite what our friends and neighbors tell us … despite even what our hearts tell us … God is in control. He made every star in the heavens and every hair on your head. He loves you and chose to pour that love out … not in words … but in blood … His blood.
Let me close with a few reassuring words from another poem or song from the Bible … Psalm 46:
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. … ‘Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.’ The LORD of hosts is with me; the God of Jacob is our refuge” (Psalm 46:1-3, 10-11).
