WORSHIP or CURSE

In 2004 my friend and I huddled on the floor, in the bathroom with couch cushions over our bodies, away from all windows, under the direct path of category 5 Hurricane Charlie in Orlando, Florida. Airplanes and big trucks were hurled across the tarmac and streets, rows of magnificent trees were evenly snapped in half, by the 120 mph winds. 

During the eye of the storm we walked outside into a perfect sunshining calm to see the devastation. Then, about twenty minutes later, we hid again against the backside of  the storm as it brought down small homes, reduce mobile homes to kindling and crushed cars under snapped-off oak limbs as thick as hundred-year-old trees.

God strolled the beach—
Our legs and faces could not bear the piercing, blasting sand.

God stepped ashore—Palms waved, scattering branches in his path. 

God strode inland—
Magnolias, pines, and oaks,
Who’d stretched one hundred years toward God, Fell to the ground before him.

God stood and breathed— While we—in dark, closed closet— Feared to face his glory. 

 It was a heart-wrenching, prayer-filled, worship-filled moment in the face of raw, unstoppable power. (Selah) 

The losses were painful, though nothing like the destruction of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras in 1998, which took 10,000 lives—and which in turn was small compared to the cyclone that killed 131,000 in Bangladesh on April 30, 1991, and left nine million homeless. 

Beneath the wreckage of such wind you have two choices: Worship or Curse.

It was wind that killed Job’s ten children. “A great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead” (Job 1:19). 

When boils were added to that, Job’s wife said, “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). But Job’s response to the death of his children was different: “Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said . . . ‘The LORDgave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD’” (Job 1:20-21). And when the boils were added to his grief, he said to his wife: “Shall we indeed receive good from God and not receive adversity?” (Job 2:10).

Both, not just the one, are the work of God and the ground of worship. 

Later in Job, Elihu says it clearly: “From its chamber comes the whirlwind . . . the clouds scatter [God’s] lightning. They turn around and around by his guidance, to accomplish all that he commands them on the face of the habitable world. Whether for correction . . . or for love, he causes it to happen . . . stop and consider the wondrous works of God” (Job 37:9-14).

That's good advice. Stop and consider it. 

Psalm 29 considers and celebrates this one wonder: the thunderstorm. “The God of glory thunders . . . the voice of the LORD is full of majesty. The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars. . . . The voice of the LORD . . . strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, ‘Glory!’” (Psalm 29:3-5, 9).

It is the glory of God to bare his mighty arm in wind and thunder. “The LORD is great. . . . Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth. . . . [He] makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses” (Psalm 135:5-7). 

How about this verse?

“Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word” (Psalm 148:7-8). Isaac Watts had his feet on the earth and his head in heaven when he wrote, “Clouds arise, and tempests blow, by order from Thy throne.”

Therefore it is not surprising that when Christ came into the world, all nature bowedto his authority. He commanded the wind and it obeyed. And when the disciples saw it they wondered. And then worshiped. “And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat. . . . And [Jesus] awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. . . . [The disciples] were filled with great fear and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?’” (Mark 4:37-41).

Water obeyed Jesus in more ways than one. When he commanded, it became “solid” under his feet, and he walked on it. 

When the disciples saw this they “worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God’” (Matthew 14:33). 

Another time, he commanded water, and it became wine at the wedding of Cana. In response, John says, he “manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11). Wind and water do what-ever the Lord Jesus tells them to do!

Be still. 

Bear weight.

Become wine. 

Natural laws were made by Christ and alter at his bidding.

Are you smarter than the wind & water?

The composition of all things was not only created by Christ (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2), but is also held in being moment by moment throughout the whole universe by his will. “He . . . upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). “In him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). Jesus Christdefines reality in the beginning and gives it form every second.

Fatalities, fevers, fish, food, fig trees. Anywhere you turn, Christ is the absolute master over all material substance! 

With a word he commands the dead to live again. “Lazarus, come out” (John 11:43). “Young man, I say to you, arise” (Luke 7:14). “‘Talitha cumi,’ which means, ‘Little girl . . . arise’” (Mark 5:41). He rebuked a fever and it left Peter’s mother-in-law (Luke 4:39). He planned for a fish to swallow a coin and then get caught with Peter’s hook (Matthew 17:27). He took five loaves and fed five thousand men (Matthew 14:19-21). And he made a fig tree wither with his curse (Mark 11:21).

Now you and I have a choice...how will we see God in goodness and suffering? 

Will you....

Worship or curse? 

There was a group at Lazarus’ grave whose facts were right and hearts were wrong. They said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” (John 11:37). The answer to that question is, Yes. Jesus timed his coming to Lazarus’ home so as to let his friend die. He waited two days, then said, “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe” (John 11:14-15). Yes, he could have saved him. Just as he could have saved Job’s children, and ten thousand more in Honduras and Guatemala by commanding Hurricane Mitch to turn out to sea, the way he did in Galilee.

Will we worship or will we curse the One who rules the world? 

Shall sinners dictate who should live and who should die? 

Or shall we say with Hannah, “The LORDkills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol [the grave] and raises up” (1 Samuel 2:6)? 

And shall we, with ashes on our heads, worship with Job, “Blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21)? 

Will we learn from James that there is good purpose in it all: “You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen thepurpose of the Lord, how the Lord is com- passionate and merciful” (James 5:11)?Should we not then face the wind and stand on the waves of all suffering and affliction and sing with Katharina von Schlegel,  

Be still, my soul! Your God will undertake To guide the future as He has the past; Your hope, your confidence let nothing shake; All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Be still, my soul! The waves and winds still know His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

“BE STILL MY SOUL” 

Let's Pray together: 

O Lord, the suffering in the world is so widespread and the pain is so great! Have mercy, and waken the souls of suffering millions to the hope of some relief now and unsurpassed joy in the age to come. Send your church, O God, with relief and with the word of the Gospel that there is forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ and that no suffering here is worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to the children of God. Protect believers everywhere, Father, from callous thoughts about calamities that leave millions destitute, and protect us also from cowing to critics, like Job’s wife, who cannot trust the wisdom and power and goodness of Christ in the midst of inexplicable misery. 

Oh, help our unbelief. Incline our hearts to your Word and to its assurances that you “work all things according to the counsel of your will” and that “no purpose of yours can be thwarted” and that you are doing good and acting wisely in ways that we cannot now even dream. Keep us in peace, O Lord, and forbid that we murmur and complain. 

Grant us humble and submissive hearts under your mighty hand. Teach us to wait and watch for your final and holy purposes in all things. Grant that we would “rejoice in hope” even when present circumstances bring us to tears. Open the eyes of our hearts to see the greatness of our inheritance in Christ, and send us with tender hands to touch with mercy the miseries of the world. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

I love coffee with you! 

Robbs