Storms
Notes
Transcript
Preliminary:
Preliminary:
Invite to Psalm 93.
Thanks for testimonies and special
Thanks to everyone who helped at VBS - felt like it was a success this year -
Thank you for giving to the Penny March it funds it
Thanks for everything everyone does to keep us going - Be not weary in well doing for you shall reap if you faint not.
Looking at Psalm 93 I want to talk to you about STORMS this morning
Read Psalm 93
1 The Lord reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; The Lord is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: The world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved.
2 Thy throne is established of old: Thou art from everlasting.
3 The floods have lifted up, O Lord, The floods have lifted up their voice; The floods lift up their waves.
4 The Lord on high is mightier Than the noise of many waters, Yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.
5 Thy testimonies are very sure: Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, for ever.
Notice especially verse 3
3 The floods have lifted up, O Lord, The floods have lifted up their voice; The floods lift up their waves.
This is picturing tumultuous tempest, raging waters, stormy seas,
Les Goins told the story to Libby Hamilton and I yesterday (7/8/2023) at camp workday about Sis. Knipmeyer (Bro. Wayne’s Mother)
Their wheat had some stuff growing in it that was keeping it from producing well. Sis. Knipmeyer prayed that the Lord would do something about it. It wasn’t too long and a big storm came and just took it wheat and all. She testified she didn’t pray specifically enough.
Biblical Senses of storms:
storm — noun. a violent weather condition with winds and precipitation and often thunder and lightning.
to be stormy — verb. to be or become affected by a violent weather condition with precipitation, thunder, and lightning.
sea storm — noun. a violent weather condition at sea; possibly with emphasis on the wild and confused motion of the sea resembling an earthquake to those on a boat.
to be bestormed — verb. to be or become subject to stormy weather.
to be stormed upon — verb. to be rained hard upon, often with thunder or lightning.
to bestorm — verb. to subject to stormy weather.
to storm — verb. to rain, hail, or snow hard and be very windy, often with thunder or lightning
In the Bible storms have various images sometimes even contradictory images.
The storm is a danger and a necessity
It gives life through its water but death through its violence
As an uncontrollable force of nature storms can be both a tool of judgment in the hand of God and yet an evil threat to God’s people. An agent of chaos, if you will against God’s ordered world.
There are storms of wind,
There are storms of wind,
wind is an unseen force - but has very evident power and effects.
The Hebrew “ruah” and Greek “pneuma” words for wind, breath, and spirit don’t require the speaker or hearer make a distinction among those ideas.
Sometimes these storms are referred to as a “tempest” a “whirlwind”
The songwriter Mary Ann Baker also thought of the disciples out in the ship in the storm as being in a tempest and wrote:
1 Master, the tempest is raging!
The billows are tossing high!
The sky is o'ershadowed with blackness,
No shelter or help is nigh;
Carest thou not that we perish?"
How canst thou lie asleep,
When each moment so madly is threat'ning
A grave in the angry deep?
Then they move to personal storms:
2 Master, with anguish of spirit
I bow in my grief today;
The depths of my sad heart are troubled,
Oh, waken and save, I pray;
Torrents of sin and of anguish
Sweep o’er my sinking soul!
And I perish! I perish, dear Master:
Oh, hasten and take control. [Refrain]
Refrain:
The winds and the waves shall obey thy will.
"Peace, be still!"
Whether the wrath of the storm-tossed sea,
Or struggles or evil, whatever it be,
No water can swallow the ship where lies
the Master of ocean and earth and skies:
They all shall sweetly obey thy will.
"Peace, be still! Peace, be still!"
They all shall sweetly obey thy will.
"Peace, peace, be still!"
3 Master, the terror is over,
The elements sweetly rest;
Earth’s sun in the calm lake is mirrored,
And heaven’s within my breast.
Linger, O blessed Redeemer,
Leave me alone no more;
And with joy I shall make the blest harbor,
And rest on the blissful shore. [Refrain]
storms of rain
storms of rain
Mark Twain and another individual were leaving an event and it started to rain pretty heavy and the other person asked Twain, “do you think it will stop?” and as only Twain could he quickly quipped, “it always does.”
storms of the sea
storms of the sea
in fact in ancient times the sea monsters were seen as storms -
Job talks about Leviathan - who thrashes in rebellious raging against God and his order in a somewhat mythological sense.
Job 41:31 “31 He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: He maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.”
A storm can be a flood - Symbolically a storm is the Sea out of its borders. The water that lashes the land in an invasion from the stormy sea.
If floods the land and threatens all that breathe.
I remember standing on the railroad tracks in 1993 about a block from my Uncle and Aunt’s house and watching the flooding Mississippi River creep over the tracks. The railroad tracks are on raised beds of gravel and I stood there and watched as it ever so slowly pushed its way over the tracks - we were doing what we could to salvage our church and my Aunt and Uncle’s house - but knew it was probably wasted energy.
By the next day if I remember correctly the water made its way down the other side of the tracks and began to stretch across Highway 79 and before long the very ground I had stood at just hours before was over 6 foot deep in water.
Floods - one has quipped that floods happen when rivers get too big for their bridges
but I can stand here and assure you they are not fun. I spent hours volunteering that summer and into the next School year helping to rehab our church. We had to tear up old carpet, tear up the hardwood floor, pull down the old moldy sheet rock - it was just a mess - the storm though not thunder and lighting and raging water - had come through and left devastation and destruction in its wake.
Storms of suffering - storms of life
Storms of suffering - storms of life
One’s problems or predicament can be depicted as a personified storm - an enemy and agent of destruction
Job 9:17 “17 For he breaketh me with a tempest, And multiplieth my wounds without cause.”
Job 30:22 “22 Thou liftest me up to the wind; thou causest me to ride upon it, And dissolvest my substance.”
Sometimes our doubting and unbelief brings storms Jas 1:6 “6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.”
one beset by unbelief is like a boat bobbing on the deep, driven aimlessly
“Rain doesn’t create rainbows; rain reveals the colors that are already present in the atmosphere” Christopher Maricle, Deeply Rooted
Man Rescues Dozens of Drivers Left Stranded by Winter Storm
Using his chains, ropes, and four-wheel drive, over the course of two days, Ryan Sivley helped rescue about 150 people stranded by the side of the road in Austin, Texas. A brutal winter storm was battering the state. Sivley told KVUE, after thinking about what it would be like to be stuck outside in the freezing temperatures, he knew he had to do something.
Well, put yourself in their shoes. If you were sitting on the side of the road with your wife and your kids and you're freezing in the car and it's not running and you don't have anywhere to go and you don't have anyone to call, what do you do? I've seen wreckers turning people away because they won't pull them out due to liability. What? You need to stay in your car and just freeze to death? I if I was in that spot, I would beg and hope that somebody would help me. So that's what I'm doing. I do a lot of off-roading with different groups in Austin, so I had recovery straps and chains and I have two trucks that are four-wheel drive.
In addition to pulling cars to freedom, Sivley has also helped get stranded nurses to work and has also driven patients home from the hospital. His rescue service is free, and everybody he encounters is "really happy," he said.
maybe your storm is cold and freezing - and you feel stuck in it - Ryan Sivley can only help those around him - But I have a friend who sticks closer than a brother
who is in control
and doesn’t need off-roading equipment, recovery straps and chains to reach you
O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.
You can build ever so securely as the wise man who builds on the rock - but you can’t stop the storms
The Storms will come
another song writer said - that in my opinion no one could sing like Ann Baldwin - When the storms of life are raging stand by me
There are people who are said to be “storm-battered” or “storm-tossed” tossed with a tempest. One in need of comfort or haven is “storm-tossed” and I’m glad there is a Haven and Jesus is His name.
I’m like the Psalmist
Ps 55:8 “8 I would hasten my escape From the windy storm and tempest.”
When the Andrea Gail left Gloucester Harbor in Massachusetts on September 20, 1991, and headed into the North Atlantic, no one could have known that this fishing boat would never be seen again. Only a bit of debris ever turned up, and the six crew members vanished forever. In his book The Perfect Storm, author Sebastian Junger immortalized the fate of the Andrea Gail. A film followed, but the real star of the book and the movie was the storm itself—a terrifying, relentless oppressor born of fierce wind and mountainous waves. No wonder meteorologists called it "the perfect storm."
Three deadly elements came together in October of 1991: a front moving from Canada toward New England; a high pressure system building over Canada's east coast; and the dying remnants of Hurricane Grace, churning along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Strong weather was coming from three of the four points on the compass, all of it converging on the little Andrea Gail.
On their own, warm air, cold air, and moist air are hardly noticeable. But when wind patterns force them together the result can be lethal. The last radio transmission of Billy Tyne, the captain of the fishing boat, came at 6:00 P.M. on October 28, 1991. He reported his coordinates to the captain of his sister ship, the Hannah Boden, saying, "She's comin' on, boys, and she's comin' on strong."
The book and movie brought the term "perfect storm" into common usage, but the concept is as old as humanity. People have always had to deal with the convergence of multiple rough circumstances. So much can go wrong so quickly that we shake our heads and say, "When it rains, it pours."
Adapted from David Jeremiah, What Are You Afraid Of?(Tyndale, 2013), page 169
Perfect storms happen in life
I don’t know what kind of storm you’re going through
Grief, pain, sorrow, drama, turbulence, temptation, trial, whatever it is....
...I like the fact that the Bible consistently places God as victorious over storms
Ps 107:29 “29 He maketh the storm a calm, So that the waves thereof are still.”
He’s the One who sails with me, He’s the Master of the sea
Ps 29:10 “10 The Lord sitteth upon the flood; Yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever.” -
Hab 3:15 “15 Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, Through the heap of great waters.”
Ps 93:3 OUR TEXT - “3 The floods have lifted up, O Lord, The floods have lifted up their voice; The floods lift up their waves.”
Then the Psalmist answers this later in the next verse
Ps93:4 “4 The Lord on high is mightier Than the noise of many waters, Yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.”
Woman Boldly Asks God to Address Storm
Pastor and author Tony Evans was in Columbia, South Carolina, to preach at a crusade being held in the University of South Carolina football stadium. Thousands had gathered for the evening session, but news reports indicated a serious thunderstorm was on the way. In fact, the storm was expected to hit at 7:00 pm—the exact time the meeting was scheduled to start.
As the sky grew darker and darker, the threat of cancellation was a valid possibility. A group of preachers and other church leaders decided to gather for a prayer meeting. Evans noted that all the preachers prayed what many would consider safe prayers—ones quite undemanding of God. Then, a woman named Linda spoke up, asking if she could pray. Linda's prayer went something like this: "Lord, thousands have gathered to hear the Good News about your Son. It would be a shame on your name for us to have all these unbelievers go without the gospel when you control the weather, and you don't stop it. In the name of Jesus Christ, address this storm!"
So ended the prayer meeting.
Everyone took their places under the dark, threatening sky. The leader of the crusade told the people, "We'll go as long as we can." Umbrellas sprouted up among the crowd. A man sitting next to Linda opened his umbrella and offered to shield her as well. Linda refused.
Evans says he and his wife watched as the rain clouds came up to the stadium and then split in two. The storm rained on both sides of the stadium and came back together on the other side. All of those gathered for the crusade stayed dry.
As Evans points out: "How did Linda get what the preachers didn't? She had the boldness, the shameless audacity, to ask."
Source:
Taken from a sermon by Tony Evans at The Brooklyn Tabernacle Pastors and Leaders Conference (4-16-07); John Beukema, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
It’s just like Jesus to roll the clouds away
It’s also just like Jesus to stand in the storm with you
4 The Lord on high is mightier Than the noise of many waters, Yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.