The Eye Of The Storm Series

THE EYE OF THE STORM

TEXT- Mark 4:35-41

INTRODUCTION

I guess there are great emotions when a huge hurricane is bearing down on you. I’m sure this is how the people felt in Honduras in 1979 when Hurricane Fife was on its way to their coast. The storm toke its toll on the people and their property. The storm resulted in 8,000 people killed. There is a lot of information about this storm and these people, but I didn’t find anything that said they were greater sinners than any other people in the world.

In 1900 the city of Galveston was the great city of the south. They were often called the New York of the south because of their great port and business district. There future appeared at the time to be the greatest city in the southern portion of the United States, but then came the eye of the storm. The hurricanes in those days had no name, but they were just as destructive. Galveston was destroyed and 6000 people were killed in the storm and their future was changed. This storm resulted in Galveston building a seawall that still stands today.

There has been tons of information about this storm and the people, but nowhere can I find that they were considered greater sinners than any other people of their time.

The Bible is full of information about storms and I’m sure most of you have read about them. Many of the storms were very violent.

We have storms and then we really have storms! It happens in the oceans of the Tropical Regions, and for us during the months of August to October. Sometimes a special type of storm develops when a Low Pressure area develops and the winds exceed 74 MPH and turns counter clockwise. It forms an eye of about 20 miles and a wall cloud of about 200 miles. It will move West, then turn away from the Equator and might reach wind speeds of 150 miles per Hour. Last year, I think we had about 11 of these and several landed on our coast. Three of these storms landed in Florida.

Now several weeks ago we had the most destructive hurricane in our nations history in terms of money. I don’t know about the lives lost, because they are still counting those. They say it will be about 150 billion dollars to put things back in order.

Now some people have decided that Hurricane Katrina not only had an eye, but that it was an eye directed by God to New Orleans because there was so much sin in that town. I’ve never been to New Orleans, but people who have, say that there was a lot of sin down there. I don’t doubt it, but there is a lot of sin in Whitehouse Texas.

One Preacher put the following message on their church sign, “ The Big Easy is the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.” I’m sure most of you have seen the stir it caused on the television. Most seem to hate the sign and a few agreed with it. The preacher happens to be my next door neighbor up to a month ago when he sold his house. We lived next to him for 12 years.

I will not call his name, but several years ago he put up a sign on his front lawn that said, “Repent the End is near!” There are only a few of us in that neighborhood, so, I guess he meant it for us. Well the wind blew it down about 5 times and he gave up and took it down. I guess he decided there was no HOPE for us!

So the question before us this morning is, “Did God send the hurricane to destroy New Orleans because of so much sin, or was it just a natural occurrence?” From the scriptures can we really answer this question?

I ask several people, who I believe are very knowledgeable of scripture, they both said they thought maybe God did, but both said they could not really prove it by scripture, and one added but I don’t believe you can prove me wrong by scripture either. I believe he is right about that, even I might hold a different viewpoint.

Now, I could just end this sermon with the answer of, “I DON”T KNOW”, but I think there are some great lessons about God that can be learned about this storm, and other storms, like the one we read about in Mark 4.

SERMON

The first thing I want to look at is the mind of God. What do we know about the mind of God? Isaiah says

Isaiah 55:8, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.”