Deluge: Who or What?

Natural disasters have a way of waking us up to the reality of death, making us think about the sort of issues we don’t usually think about in the relative ease and comfort of our first world lives. To a Christian, coming face-to-face with death and the destruction of the highly predictable world we are accustomed to can confront us with questions about what caused the calamity.

The most common explanation is to say that “God did not cause it, but he can use it for good”. This sort of statement has become a kind of slogan which even people who are not saved affirm in the face of calamity. It sounds reasonable at one level because God is good and compassionate and He is not the author of evil. Deuteronomy 32:4 says “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.” Habakkuk 1:13 says “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?”

However, does this mean that God could not or would not act to bring about a flood like the one we experienced? Instead of trusting our fallen instincts we need to know what the Lord has revealed in scripture. We can’t believe something just because it sounds right, especially if it contradicts the clear teaching of scripture. So what does the Bible teach? Before we go looking for answers, let’s be sure to recognise that there is the potential for every fiber of our being to want to reject what the Bible says if the answers we find don’t fit with what we feel must be right. We are fallen and we live our lives immersed in a culture that has subtly but very effectively manipulated how we view the world we live in. Scripture says we should “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). So let’s be vigilant and tread carefully…

The book of Job is a natural place to start. The events in chapter one of Job present one of the most compelling incidences of suffering by natural calamity in scripture. Verse 19 describes how Job lost his ten children as a result of a “great wind”. Although Satan was the agent in Job’s affliction we see in verse 12 that it was God who gave him permission. In fact, in verse 8, God initiates the discussion that leads to the affliction by asking Satan “Have you considered my servant Job…?” In verse 21, in responding to the news of this natural disaster Job says “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord”.

In chapter 2, the heavenly discussion between God and Satan that initiated the events in chapter 1 is repeated – God asking Satan to consider Job again in verse 3. Then in verse 5 Satan says to God “…stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” Then in verse 7 it says that “Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores”. Here we see that Satan’s delivering this affliction is the result of God’s “stretching out His hand”. Satan is real and his intentions are evil, but he did nothing which God did not permit him to. Then in verse 10 after Satan afflicts Job, Job tells his wife, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?”

Moving further into the book, in Job 9:6 the inspired author says “who shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble” and in Job 9:12 he says “Behold, he snatches away; who can turn him back? Who will say to him, ‘What are you doing?” In Job 38:8-11 God asks Job “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, …and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?” Job’s understanding of what happened in the first chapters is confirmed towards the end of the book where in Job 42:2 he says in prayer “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Again a few verses later it says Job’s brothers and sisters “comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11).

There is little doubt in this instance, that God is ultimately decisive in this calamity. But what about the rest of scripture - is Job’s affliction an isolated case? The Psalms are another part of scripture that is filled with suffering and affliction and a number of verses specifically relate to our quest. Psalm 135:6 says “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.” Psalm 89:9 says “You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them. (89:9); Psalm 104:32 says [He] looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke! Also Psalm 147:18 says “He sends out his word, and … makes his wind blow and the waters flow”.

The book of Isaiah likewise makes it clear that God is sovereign over calamity when in Isaiah 45:7, God says “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things. Isaiah 31:2 says “And yet he is wise and brings disaster; he does not call back his words”. The book of Amos asks rhetorically "If a calamity occurs in a city has not the LORD done it?" (Amos 3:6). Similarly, Lamentations 3:38 says “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?”

The global deluge that destroyed the entire world with the exception of Noah and his family is described in Genesis 6. In verse 13, God declares “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” In response to the depravity of Sodom in Genesis 19, the Lord “rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” Another example from the Old Testament is the foreshadowing of the “lifting up” of the Son of Man in Numbers 21, when God responds to the grumblings of Isreal by sending “fiery serpents among the people” which bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.

What about the New Testament - do we see the same declaration of ultimate sovereignty over nature and natural disaster? Jesus showed His control over nature when He rebuked the waves in Luke 8:24-25, and commanded unclean spirits in Mark 1:27. The smallest events in nature are shown to be under God’s control including even the death of a sparrow (Matthew 10:29). Also, the very hairs on your head are all numbered according to Matthew 10:29-30.

In Luke 13, Jesus is questioned about the tower in Siloam which fell on and killed some Galileans. His response indicates that the event was an intentional form of temporal judgment saying in verse 5 “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” James refers in James 5:11 to the afflictions of Job as “the outcome of the Lord's dealings”.

Make no mistake, our conclusion is a hard truth. Floods are ultimately from God. In spite of the world’s tendency to attribute disaster to “Mother Nature”, the creation does not have a will of its own. God is sovereign and Satan has no freedom other than what God gives him. God governs everything in creation including natural disasters that result in pain and suffering. That is what the Bible teaches, and in light of that fact, no matter how good our intentions are we cannot say that He was not ultimately decisive in bringing the floods we suffered through.

There is good news though, and we’ll look at that next post…

For now, let us sing to the Lord as David in his Song of Deliverance:

“The waves of death encompassed me, the torrents of destruction assailed me. . . This God—his way is perfect” (2 Samuel 22:5, 31).



Deluge: Drowning…

This is a picture of what was a bridge to a neighboring suburb just a few days ago before the unimaginable happened. With my wife and three young children I drove across that bridge the day before this photo was taken. The world awoke that day to the horrific images of a violent deluge resulting from a deadly combination of a land soaked to capacity from many weeks of rain and a series of freak storms delivering masses of water over a wide area.

The Queensland floods last week, were and still are a calamity that is hard to come to terms with. The area declared a disaster zone is larger than Europe - this is a flood on an unprecedented scale. The torrent caused widespread devastation well beyond the borders of Queensland across four of Australia’s six states, bringing the city of Brisbane to its knees and washing away whole towns in regional areas. The news of floods in many other countries across the globe is staggering.

For many hundreds of thousands of people this disaster has cast a deep shadow over their lives. We watched helplessly as the silent unstoppable killer rose up and devoured everything in sight, witnessing this devastation first-hand. We were cut off from access to the outside world with no power and dwindling food stocks, and had no access to vital medicines. We were engulfed by the adrenaline rush in the frantic rescue of people, pets and possessions in the early hours of the morning, and worst of all many lost friends and family who were swept away in the raging waters. In the aftermath, the overwhelming scale of the clean-up and the grief we feel for friends and family who’ve lost everything brings our emotions to the brink even as the stench of death and disease still fills the air.

In the wake of this disaster, when the reality of what has happened starts sinking in, questions arise. Who or what has caused this tragedy? Why has this happened? How do we live after this and what should we do now? Answering those questions is not easy and it does not come naturally. Something inside us wants to run and hide and forget this ever happened. Nothing makes sense. Despair is all around.

Answers seem very far from our grasp, but for Christians having biblical answers for the sake of our own understanding and to enable us to respond appropriately is crucial. Many Christians will be tempted to answer the questions that arise after this disaster in the same way as the world. These answers may seem right and even sentimental but they are a hindrance. We need to know the truth.

The first glimmer of light comes when we remember that we have been given truth. Psalm 119 says that God’s Word is “a lamp to [our] feet and a light to [our] path” (v 105) and that the “sum of [His] word is truth” (v160). Fortunately, in His providence, our Lord has plenty to say in His Word about natural disasters. What follows over the coming days is a look at what our Master has revealed about calamity – who is responsible, why does it happen and how we should respond…

Treasure Christ

...press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus...(Phil 3:14)

Read Dead Men!



Although the Scriptures are paramount in the Christian diet, other resources can be helpful. We should search the Scriptures like the Bereans in Acts 17 who “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily”, but also we should recognise that God has used people throughout the ages to establish a beacon for biblical truth.

In fact, God ordains that there have been teachers throughout the history of the church to help us grasp and apply the truth of Scripture. God Himself says of this in Ephesians 4:11-15 “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ … so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” Also, in Hebrews 13:7 He says “Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.”

God has called a long line of godly people to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3) by producing resources which He wants us to use.

God has also ordained increasingly abundant access through technology to a rich array of resources from people like the early church fathers and the reformers of the 16th Century.

The reality is that although there are today people who are fulfilling this mandate from the Lord, it is of immense value that we leverage the full spectrum of additional resources God has provided. In short, we should “read dead men”!

Have you heard that a fish knows least of all what it is to be wet? You’re thinking this must be part of another blog post right? Wrong! This saying perfectly illustrates why we should “read dead men”. The benefit of reading books written by the leading shepherds in previous generations and era’s is that it provides a sort of portal through which we can escape the natural bias that is built into anything which anyone in your own time says or writes. This is critical because the lenses of your culture do have a distorting effect which you most often cannot even discern, never mind escape.

With hindsight, the distorting effect of culture can be seen in the mistakes or omissions that have been made by some of the greatest teachers that ever existed, who were unable to escape cultural bias.

This effect is especially magnified today when the average number of media messages each person is exposed to is in the thousands. The post-modern world distorts ideas and concepts in very specific and unhelpful ways, some even blatantly satanic. Our culture today is one in which there is an exponential numbing to things which even a generation ago would have caused an outrage.

All this is important for Christians, because we are supposed to be the stewards of a gospel message that never changes, and the lamps from which the light of the glory of God is seen by the world. Flowing on from that, the under-shepherds of the body of Christ especially need to be well equipped to teach away from the errors of our day.

Finally, we should  “read dead men” because the Lord has instructed us to do so.  

“Thus says the Lord: ‘Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” (Jeremiah 6:16)

Tethered



Sometimes we need to be reminded of the foundational issues in our faith. Going back to basics is often what yields the most fruit in our walk with the Lord.

There is really no more a foundational issue than what you believe about the Bible. As Christians, we should be tethered to it, and there are some very good reasons for this:

1. it is inspired by God or God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:20–21)

2. it is inerrant (contains no errors – Psalm 19)

3. it is authoritative (we must do what it says - Psalm. 119).

4. it is sufficient - 2 Peter 1:3–4; Psalm 19; 2 Timothy 3:17; Hebrews 4:12
5. it is relevant - totally relevant for every situation. (Psalm 19; 2 Tim. 3:17; Psalm 119:105; Isaiah 40:8)

Although these things can be denied by someone who is still a Christian, denial would raise questions about a person's salvation since accepting these shows the work of regeneration of the heart by the Holy Spirit. Given the biblical support for believing these things about the Scriptures, 1 John 2:4 reinforces this: “Whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him…” A fruit of the indwelling Spirit is agreement in word and deed with the scriptures.

Especially at this time of year, when many people break from home groups or are away from fellowship as a result of the holidays, drawing near to God through His Word is essential not to neglect.

The Word is the weapon of choice for the soldier of Christ. According to Ephesians 6, God’s Word is the sword of the Spirit which has been given to us to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might because we wrestle against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. So we must be sober-minded and watchful because our adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

For the word of God is living and active...