DEALING WITH DISASTER
INTRODUCTION:
1.
On
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, tragedy struck America.
2.
Four
airplanes (carrying some 266 people) were hijacked by terrorists. Two
crashed into the Word Trade Center towers…bringing both buildings down…killing
thousands of people. Another crashed into the pentagon and the other went
down in Pennsylvania.
3.
This
may indeed be the greatest tragedy in the history of our great nation.
4.
Those
of us who follow Jesus Christ are trying to make sense out of the devastation
and disaster that has occurred.
5.
Where
do we go for answers?
6.
If we
merely look within ourselves, the natural response to these events for many of
us is anger. We naturally want to retaliate; to get justice; to seek
revenge and to avenge the thousands of innocent lives that were taken. So
searching within ourselves won’t help us deal with this disaster. We need
to look outside of ourselves.
7.
We
need to look to the only One who can make sense out of these events. We
need to look to God. And to find God’s perspective on how to deal with
disaster, we turn to His Word.
8.
We
could turn to many places in God’s Word to find our response, but the passage
God has laid upon my heart is in the book of Joel in the Old Testament.
It’s probably a book that few of us have read before; even fewer have
studied. It’s not a book that would normally appeal to us when life is
going well, because it is a book that describes horrific circumstances and
warns us of God’s anger at sin among His covenant people.
9.
But
it is also a book that contains an incredibly encouraging word to God’s people
who find themselves living in a time of disaster. And it shows us in very
clear terms how we should respond biblically to disaster and tragedy.
PLEASE TURN WITH ME TO (JOEL 1). THIS PASSAGE SHOWS US IN VERY
CLEAR TERMS HOW WE SHOULD RESPOND BIBLICALLY TO DISASTER AND TRAGEDY.
I.
FIRST, I
WILL READ SEVERAL OF THE VERSES IN CHAPTERS ONE AND TWO AND MAKE SOME BRIEF
COMMENTS ABOUT THE RELEVANCE AND APPLICATION TO US TODAY.
1.
The prophet Joel begins his book by
describing the historically unique disaster that his countrymen in the land of
Judah some 2700 years ago had just experienced.
1:1-2— The word of the LORD
that came to Joel son of Pethuel. 2 Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live
in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days
of your forefathers?
Some of you here have
lived through some awful times in the last century—two world wars, Korea,
Vietnam, a depression, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, traffic
accidents, sudden loss of loved ones; but can any of you imagine anything more
traumatic than the unexpected mass murder of thousands of civilians by an as
yet unidentified but certainly depraved gang of organized terrorists? Has
anything like this happened in your lifetime? Joel is about to describe an
event in his nation’s experience that was unparalleled in its severity; a
catastrophe so overwhelming that no historical precedent could be offered.
2.
The
video image of an aircraft flying into an office building and disappearing in
an explosion; the thought of thousands of office workers having just arrived
for what they thought was just another day; hundreds of rescue workers
themselves becoming victims as two of the tallest buildings in the world came
crashing down around them; the prolonged horror of a hostage situation on board
four aircraft; the grief and pain of hundreds of thousands of relatives as they
experience the loss of their loved ones. Has anything like this ever happened
in our lives before?
3.
Still
describing the horror of disaster in his day, Joel writes in 2:3—Before them fire
devours, behind them a flame blazes. Before them the land is like the garden of
Eden, behind them, a desert waste— nothing escapes them.
4.
Joel
describes an event where the disaster was like the movement of a forest fire—in
front of the leading edge of the flames, everything is just as natural and
normal as always. But behind those flames utter and complete destruction.
5.
One
moment the skyline of New York is as it has been for a quarter of a century;
the next moment two 110 story buildings disappear. The images from New York
City look like the war ravaged cities of Berlin or Beirut. They look like the
scenes from third world countries after earthquakes or floods or other natural
disasters. It isn’t that we haven’t seen such images before; it’s just that in
our lifetimes we’ve never seen such devastation in our country, on our land,
involving our people.
6.
The
disaster that Joel is writing about is an invasion not by a foreign army but by
an army of insects. Joel describes the devastating effects of a swarm of
locusts. This swarm of literally hundreds of millions of tiny insects moved
through the land of Judah and consumed everything in its path. The people of
Joel’s day could do nothing to stop their advance. They watched in horror as
their world crumbled in front of them. 1:4—What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have
eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the
young locusts have left other locusts have eaten.
7.
Tiny
insects, each individually no bigger than your finger, but able to cripple a
whole country. Interesting how seemingly small and innocent things can cause
such devastation. Who could have imagined that the destruction of the World
Trade Center complex and the gaping whole in the Pentagon could have been
caused not by a bomb dropped from a military aircraft, not by an
intercontinental missile launched from another country, not by an invading army,
but rather by a handful of terrorists using unsophisticated knives to
commandeer passenger aircraft. These aircraft are not tools of war or weapons
of violence, but rather they represent the backbone of our transportation
network. Aircraft designed to facilitate business, carry our mail, deliver
people to their vacations—these same aircraft were transformed into weapons of
war by an unseen army. And the vastness and sophistication of our own armed
forces were impotent to stop their assault. More American lives were lost and
more economic disaster was created within one hour than on any single day in
America’s history, including the attack on Pearl Harbor in the last century,
which claimed 2,300 American lives in a single day.
8.
And
as in Joel’s day the aftermath of this barbarous attack on American soil has
far reaching consequences.1:16-18— Has not the food been cut off before our very eyes— joy and
gladness from the house of our God? 17 The seeds are shriveled beneath the
clods. The storehouses are in ruins, the granaries have been broken down, for
the grain has dried up. 18 How the cattle moan! The herds mill about because
they have no pasture; even the flocks of sheep are suffering.
9.
It’s
not just the immediate horror of the loss of life, but the lingering horror of
the effect of this attack on the economy of our country. America’s real
strength in this world is not its ability to project military force, but rather
its ability to provide the world with both the necessities and luxuries of
life. It is no accident that the enemy who masterminded the attack struck at
the symbols of American strength: the World Trade Center—the symbol of the
banking and investment industry, and the Pentagon—the nerve center for
America’s military industrial complex. We’ll probably never know for sure the
target of the fourth aircraft. Best guesses are it too was destined to strike
at a symbol of American power. Possibly its target was Camp David, both the
retreat for the American President and the symbol of the Middle East agreement
forged between Israel and Egypt in September of 1978.
10. Joel’s prophecy written 2700 years ago is
as relevant and applicable to our day as today’s newspaper. But maybe you are
wondering if it is appropriate to pull from an obscure book in the Old Testament
written to a particular people in a particular time principles that can be
applied to our day. Maybe Joel’s prophecy of disaster and judgment and sin and
salvation is limited to the people of Judah or the Jewish people at some stage
of history in the future. Maybe the national judgment that is described in
these three chapters and the description especially in chapter 3 of the events
of what Joel calls the Day of the Lord is limited to the Jewish people in
either the distant past or the distant future.
11. I want to assure you from God’s Word that
while Joel’s prophecy had special relevance to the people of his day and to the
Jewish people of both the past and future, the Bible says that these things
apply to us as well. At least that is what the apostle Peter believed and
proclaimed as recorded in Acts 2. Peter understood that Joel’s prophecy had
relevance to his day as he reflected on the unique circumstances of Pentecost
when the Holy Spirit made his presence and power visible in a way that
corresponded with the predictions of Joel hundreds of years before. Peter
by inspiration of this same Holy Spirit understood that Joel’s prophetic book
was intended for God’s people in every age, but especially those of us who live
in the last days, the days that immediately precede the return of Christ. While
Peter quotes only a few verses of Joel’s prophecy, his sermon in Acts 2 is full
of references to the rest of Joel’s book, especially in Peter’s call to action
by those who heard his words.
12. So I believe we are on safe biblical and
theological ground in finding words of instruction to us as believers in Jesus
Christ in this ancient book.
13. So let’s see how Joel encourages us by
inspiration of God to respond to the tragedy and devastation of our day.
II.
SECOND,
LET’S EXAMINE SEVERAL STEPS FOR DEALING WITH DISASTER THAT JOEL GIVES US.
Mourn
Joel tells God’s people that the
first step we are to take in dealing with disaster is to mourn. We are to join those
who are suffering by joining in their suffering. 1:8-13— Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth
grieving for the husband of her youth. 9 Grain offerings and drink offerings
are cut off from the house of the LORD. The priests are in mourning, those who
minister before the LORD. 10 The fields are ruined, the ground is dried up; the
grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, the oil fails. 11 Despair, you
farmers, wail, you vine growers; grieve for the wheat and the barley, because
the harvest of the field is destroyed. 12 The vine is dried up and the fig tree
is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree— all the trees of the
field— are dried up. Surely the joy of mankind is withered away. 13 Put on
sackcloth, O priests, and mourn; wail, you who minister before the altar. Come,
spend the night in sackcloth, you who minister before my God; for the grain
offerings and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.
Our first response to the destruction and disaster should be to mourn.
Death, injustice, horror,
hatred—these things should cause those of us who know God’s life and justice
and mercy and love to recoil in shock and grief. Joel says our first response
to disaster is to mourn. Paul tells us in Romans 13:15 that as followers of Christ we are to—rejoice
with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.
Gather
But the book of Joel doesn’t leave us static and alone in our mourning. The
second step Joel gives us for dealing with disaster is to gather. 1:14—Declare a holy fast; call a sacred
assembly. Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the
LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD.
Joel doesn’t encourage God’s people to deal with disaster by themselves, he tells us to gather together. It is a time of finding strength in one another—a time for discussion and reflection that requires us to assemble together to experience.
In the aftermath of disaster we are called upon as God’s people to break away from the normal and the ordinary. All are summoned by God to gather together, from oldest to youngest, nursing mothers and newborn babies, not even the demands of caring for a young child or the arrangements involved in conducting a marriage ceremony are to pose an obstacle or an excuse for not gathering together.
As hundreds and thousands of
rescue workers converge upon the sites of the disaster, as state militias are
called out to provide order, as the military stands on alert awaiting orders to
strike back, God’s people can’t afford to stand on the sidelines and pretend
that life is normal. It is not business as usual; we face a national crisis and
God’s people need to respond with a sense of urgency and direction. We are to
gather together and seek God’s face. I commend you who are here today because
you are being obedient to God’s call to gather.
Pray
But it’s not just breaking the routine and seeking the comfort of others
through our gathering. When we gather we are told that we have a third way of
dealing with disaster. 1:14—Declare
a holy fast; call a sacred assembly. Summon the elders and all who live in the
land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD. When we come together, we come together
to pray. The third step in dealing with disaster is to pray.
When we don’t know what to do,
when we don’t understand, we are to turn to God in prayer. We are to call out
to Him to provide His comfort and understanding and peace. 1:19—To you, O LORD, I call, for fire has
devoured the open pastures and flames have burned up all the trees of the field.
When all the props of our sufficiency and comfort, our satisfaction and
complacency, are stripped away, where else can we turn? Where can those who
have lost loved ones, friends, associates, businesses, and property turn? What
can replace these people and things? Nothing can but the Person of Jesus
Christ. Only He can bring sense out of the senselessness. We need to turn to
Him with our questions and our grief. We gather to pray.
And when we leave this place
we need to continue to pray. As you watch the events unfold on TV or read about
them in the newspaper or discuss them with your friends and neighbors, take
time to pray. Model prayer as your first response to those who ask you to help
them make sense out of this. Admit that you don’t have all the answers, and then
look to the One who does.
Repent
Joel informs us that there is a fourth step we are to take as we deal with
disaster. He tells us that for us to deal with disaster we have to deal with
ourselves. He tells us that in the midst of our grieving about our disastrous
circumstances, there are issues within us that must be honestly and
deliberately dealt with. Joel calls upon God’s people in the aftermath of
national disaster to repent. 2:12-13a— ‘Even now,’ declares the LORD, ‘return to me with all your
heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.’ 13 Rend your heart and not your
garments. Return to the LORD your God...
Times such as we are facing challenge our normal emphasis on the here and now. God desires to shift our focus off of an exclusive preoccupation with the temporal present to an awareness of eternity. God will use the disastrous circumstances we’ve just faced to get our attention firmly focused back on Him. He tells us to return to Him. Prior to this catastrophe, God’s people in Joel’s day had hearts that were cold and calloused. They went through the motions of religion, but didn’t have hearts that were really inflamed with a passion for God.
How true that is of today’s American church. Our passions are for such insignificant things—the pennant race or the SuperBowl, an upcoming cruise, a new car, a new house, the ups and down of the stock market, a big sale, a date to homecoming, the latest Christian novel. But how often is our attention on God’s agenda? How often are our thoughts and dreams and actions focused on fulfilling His will rather than our own? Disaster awakens our need to return to God and seek His face.
Engage
Once we have engaged the heart of
God by identifying with the pain of those who are suffering, by gathering
together to pray, by repenting those things that dominate our attention and
distract us from God, then we are in a position to respond to the inquiring,
seeking the world around us with the next step.
Step five in dealing with disaster is to engage our neighbors. Look at 2:17—Let the priests, who minister before the LORD, weep between the temple porch and the altar. Let them say, ‘Spare your people, O LORD. Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?”
People of the world are wondering, “Where is our God? Where is the God of the Bible who would allow such a thing to occur in our land? Where is God in this terrible act?”
Christians claim that God is sovereign; that He is in control. Was He in control in New York City? Was He in control in Washington, DC? Is God to blame for these events? Is this the judgment of God upon America as a nation? Is it the judgment of God against sinners?
Well, the answer is more involved and complicated than the simplistic pronouncements by some that these events are the first signs of God’s judgment upon America.
Indeed we affirm that God judges sin. And indeed “the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” as we read in Romans 1:18.
But don’t miss our own responsibility for these events. Don’t miss the fact that real human beings conducted this act of war. It is the evil of misguided and enslaved humans that are to blame for the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
It is sinful humans, demonically inspired and controlled perhaps, but responsible nonetheless for their actions, who are the causes of this disaster.
So where is our God? What is
God doing in the midst of this disaster? God is where God has always and will
always be—He is still on His throne and actively involved in rescuing evil
humanity from its bondage to wickedness, evil and sin.
Proclaim
As we engage our world by addressing their questions, we are to proclaim the
truth about our God. The sixth step in dealing with disaster is to proclaim the
Good News about God. Look at the second half of 2:13b— … Return to the LORD your God, for
he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he
relents from sending calamity.
Our world wonders as it grapples with the senselessness of this disaster and asks, “Who is God?” And having taken the step to draw close enough to them to engage their questions, we respond by proclaiming the truth about the nature of God—God is gracious, compassionate, patient, loving, and merciful.
God is gracious—He gives us
what we don’t deserve. His grace extends to all and is free to all. The gift of
His love is available to all who will come to Him and seek His forgiveness
through faith in Jesus Christ.
God is compassionate—He feels the
pain and suffering of those who have been touched personally by the wickedness
and evil of this disaster.
God is slow to anger—He is patient with our complacency and has shown remarkable restraint in tolerating our rebellion against Him. There is a limit to His patience and His anger will flare up on a Day of Judgment, but that day, although nearer now than yesterday, is still future. Right now, in this present moment, God remains slow to anger so that many may respond to His love and be delivered from their bondage to sin.
God is abounding in love—His
love knows no limits. No one is beyond His forgiveness. No one has sinned so
far that He is beyond God’s ability to forgive and cleanse. God’s love extends
even to those who are right now angry and hostile and bitter because of these
events. His love encompasses you and me. His love even encompasses the
terrorists who conceived this awful plot to attack what they do not understand.
God is merciful—He relents from
sending calamity. It is within God’s prerogative and sovereignty to end the
world right now. He could bring all things to their conclusion and open His
final judgment, but He extends instead His mercy to all who will come.
This is the God that our world needs to hear about. And what a contrast to the descriptions of god given by a few misguided and deceived zealots. These zealots proclaim a god who rejoices over the loss of life and the humbling of mighty America. Their god proclaims that the pathway to salvation is to destroy their enemies. Their god urges them to seek revenge and to seek domination.
But the God we worship, the
true God, the only God, is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and
abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. [2:13b]
Invite
After we have taken the step of proclaiming the true God to a wondering world,
we need to take the next step of inviting them to respond to this God of mercy
and compassion. Joel tells us that the seventh step in dealing with disaster is
to invite those who are suffering to know their God. Look down at 2:32—And everyone who calls on the name of
the LORD will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be
deliverance, as the LORD has said, among the survivors whom the LORD calls.
Everyone is invited to know and enjoy a relationship with God.
“Salvation is found in no one
else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be
saved."
When asked by Wolf Blitzer to explain and make sense out of the disaster of Tuesday, the archbishop of Los Angeles dropped the ball. Instead of proclaiming the name of Jesus and the forgiveness and healing that is available in His name, this representative before the world of the church of Jesus Christ invited each person to seek his or her own path. To fall back on the comfort of whatever religion he or she embraced.
It was a missed opportunity to invite suffering people to come to the only one who can relieve their suffering—Jesus Christ. Notice in verse 32 that it is the survivors that have the opportunity to respond to God’s call and to call upon Him for forgiveness. It’s the survivors in our day that need for us to share with them the invitation from God to experience His mercy, forgiveness and grace. Those who perished in the moments following these despicable attacks have no further opportunity to respond to God’s grace. The decisions they made prior to Tuesday sealed their eternal fate.
But for us who survive, we
still have the opportunity to respond. We can heed the call of God to
experience His merciful love and receive forgiveness through faith in Jesus.
Rejoice
Those who respond to God’s call and come to Him in repentance and faith will experience
His peace. No, we don’t understand fully what has happened nor why, but in
knowing God and spending time with Him in the intimacy of His word and prayer,
we can experience His comfort. In the midst of this tragedy of enormous
proportions, we can nevertheless be enabled by God to take the next step. The
eighth step in dealing with disaster is to rejoice.
Let’s read 2:20c-22—Surely he has done great things. 21 Be not afraid, O land; be glad and rejoice. Surely the LORD has done great things. 22 Be not afraid, O wild animals, for the open pastures are becoming green. The trees are bearing their fruit; the fig tree and the vine yield their riches.
It’s hard to think of rejoicing so close to the events of this past week, but if we truly believe in the love of God and in His infinite mercy, then we have faith that this tragedy is not the end. Our faith looks beyond the grief to the reality of God’s purposes and the future He is producing.
Joel’s people, the people of Judah, though their land had been devastated by the invasion of locusts such that nothing green remained, yet in faith trusted God for the future. They trusted that a compassionate and loving God would restore and rebuild. And they praised Him for His active presence in their life and their hope in the future.
Those of us who know God, know
that even in the darkest valley we have His promise to be with us. And even
more than simply being with us, He promises to take us through the valley. We
demonstrate our faith in Him as we choose to trust Him and then rejoice in Him
and praise Him for all His works.
Remember
And rejoicing is the step that will enable us to accomplish the last step Joel
provides us for dealing with disaster. The final step in dealing with disaster
is to remember. Look back at 1:3— Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to
their children, and their children to the next generation.
We all have short memories. Yesterday’s disaster can quickly fade into the recesses of our memories and we can easily drift back into complacency.
The people of Joel’s day did. Despite the lessons God desired them to master in view of the disaster of the locusts, the people failed to take the steps God intended them to take. Their mourning was brief, their gatherings tapered off, their prayers grew cold and formal, their passion for God waned and became displaced by more immediate concerns, their engagement with their neighbors devolved into conversations about nothing, they failed to proclaim truth about God and consequently didn’t invite seekers to respond to God’s grace, and they ceased rejoicing in their Lord.
As we read the history recorded in Scripture of the steady decline of affection of God’s covenant people for the God who saved them and blessed them, we are struck over and over again at how short their memories were. They did not tell their children and equip their children to tell the next generation, and equip that generation to tell the next. Life drifted back to the daily grind and the disaster that had been unimaginable became just a distant memory—as has Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust and the Berlin Wall and maybe even this latest wake-up call.
We must remember.
CONCLUSION:
1.
As
significant and unique as the attack on America has been, the disaster is not
the final chapter in our history as a people or the final chapter in our
history as a nation.
2.
God
continues to have a purpose for our lives and a purpose for the nation of
America. But we are at a crossroads. Some, maybe many of us, will avoid dealing
with this disaster. We’ll quickly shift our focus back onto the everyday and
the routine. Business will get back to normal and we’ll miss out on what God
wants to teach us through these events.
3.
But
others of us will see the significance of these events and seize the
opportunity they afford to deal with our own sin and to respond to the
confusion of our neighbors. How will we respond, church? How will we deal with
this disaster?
4.
This
morning we want to remember and take this opportunity to pray. For the next
several minutes, I want you to just silently join hearts together in prayer. As
we join in a spirit of prayer together, I will suggest some areas to guide our
prayers.
Prayer
Let’s begin by praying for those who are mourning and grieving: those who lost
loved ones, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, friends.
Pray for a genuine compassion among us for those who are grieving
Pray for those who survived, but are in hospitals hanging on to life
Pray for those who survived who are emotionally scarred by their experience
Pray for those who are on the scene with the survivors trying to give comfort
and counsel.
Pray for rescue workers, disaster specialists, investigators and all those
involved in sorting through and cleaning up the chaos
Pray for those in leadership that they would have wisdom from God in this
situation
Pray for our response as a nation to these circumstances
Pray for our response as God’s people to the needs around us
Pray that God will be exalted and many would come to know him through the
tragedy of this disaster
Pray that we will remember
Primary
Resources Used:
Sermon by Mike Maggard