Our hearts go out to those who have suffered in the disaster in the Gulf states. I want to say nothing this morning that would disparage the people of the stricken area or the relief effort that continues as I speak. Yet with this disaster we’re reminded once again of how fragile life on earth really is, how little we actually control the forces of nature around us, and how easy it is to go to bed one night feeling secure and wake up the next morning utterly destitute.

On August 13, Tropical Depression 10 formed in the Atlantic. Officially, it died a day later. But on the 17^th, The Weather Channel’s Senior Meteorologist, Stu Ostro, emailed an Advisory:

"We still need to keep an eye on this one. The ones that won’t go away – the ones that are still spinning like a top when they shouldn’t be, are the ones we worry about."

[I’m reading from the transcript I made of a video clip from The Weather Channel Website, called "Expert Traces Katrina’s Timeline"(1) – DR]

On the 23^rd, that spin became Tropical Depression 12. Two days later it hit South Florida as a Category One hurricane, its intensity catching them by surprise. Dr. Steve Lyons, a hurricane expert:

"I think, in general, people think "Oh, its not going to hit me – and they tend to always believe its going to hit somebody else and think that its going to not be that bad."

Katrina swelled into a monster in the gulf - with hurricane winds nearly 200 miles wide and tropical storm width 400 miles across. On August 29, at 6:10 in the morning, sixteen days after it first started spinning, Katrina hammered into the Louisiana coastline as a category four hurricane.

[Hurricane expert]:

"It was a very large hurricane. The extent tropical force winds extended out in this hurricane was about five times the distance it extended in Hurricane Charlie."

Katrina weakened slightly before landfall, but too little to matter. Weather Channel Senior Meteorologist Stu Ostro again:

"There’s no question that unfortunately, this is going to go down as one of the worse natural disasters in this country’s history."

[The video ends with the statement of one of the many hurricane survivors, a tearful man clutching his son beneath his arm]:

"We have nothing… nothing…."

With wall-to-wall, around-the-clock TV coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina which hit the Gulf Coast last Monday - a land mass of some 90,000 square miles, an area nearly as large as the size of Great Britain - I probably don’t need to give you much more description of the magnitude or results of this disaster. You’ve probably seen as much as I have - and perhaps more.

Many of those people, like the man and his son in the video clip I described, have lost everything. Their homes. Their belongings. Some have lost their relatives. Some (and the death toll has yet to be fully tallied) have even lost their lives.

Our hearts go out to those who have suffered in this disaster. I want to say nothing this morning that would disparage the people of the stricken area or the relief effort that continues as I speak. Yet with this disaster we’re reminded once again of how fragile life on earth really is, how little we actually control the forces of nature around us, and how easy it is to go to bed one night feeling secure and wake up the next morning utterly destitute.

While we as observers from a distance haven’t lost everything as some of the survivors of Katrina have, and the only part we may experience beyond our sympathetic feelings for the victims might be higher prices at the gas pump, I think it is important for all of us to learn what we can about life and human nature with our powers of observation of such a great disaster from afar.

Proverbs 22:3 says, "A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it."(NIV)

From that verse and others like it, we know that God intends for us to learn from our observations and act upon our learning. This includes the things that happen to us directly and the things that others experience.

It was Jesus who connected approaching judgment with the concept of a storm. In Matthew 16:2-3 he said to a group of religious leaders:

I’ve called this message "Storm Warnings" and in it I want to point out four things that a disaster like Hurricane Katrina reminds us of.

First, it reminds us to:

By that I mean that we need to have a healthy respect for things more powerful than we are.

The Tsunamis that occurred in the Indian Ocean late last year killed an estimated 150,000 people and destroyed the coastlines of a number of different countries. But for us living here, I think that most of the lessons from that disaster fell on deaf ears because we were so far removed from it geographically. One the media moved on to other stories, the tragedy disappeared for us.

It has been very easy for modern Americans to be lulled into a false sense of security when it comes to our place in this world. Spared many times of these kinds of natural disasters and with modern technology accomplishing things that only a generation or two ago would have been considered miraculous, we’re inclined to think that we are in control. Disasters happen only to others, perhaps only in so-called "third world" countries.

Don’t misunderstand me. Our accomplishments are real. We build massive water projects that divert and contain immense volumes of water. We track a hurricane from the time it is a tiny tropical depression. We literally move mountains with mammoth earth moving equipment. Yet disasters like the one last week that reach our own shores show us, more than anything else, that we’re still very open and vulnerable to the violent forces of this world – things more powerful than we are.

One of the things atheists like to throw up against people who believe in God is that religion is the invention of ancient man because there were so many things about the world that confused, scared, and humbled him. He was afraid of the great and powerful acts of nature, so he invented the concept of God to give himself a sense of security. Today, says the atheist, we’ve conquered the things that used to frighten us so we have no more need for the concept of a God more powerful than we are.

To any who hold such an arrogant world view, I have a newsflash. We’re still vulnerable! The need for a God more powerful than we are has not diminished. Further, to the atheist, if he is listening, I say that man didn’t create God out of fear. It was God who created man out of love.

There are still things out there that we cannot stop that can hurt us and even kill us. The President of the United States can’t stop them. Congress can’t stop them. Our military can’t stop them. Our technology can’t stop them. We’re still vulnerable and we need the knowledge of our Creator today just as we always have.

Perhaps that’s part of the reason that God allows such tragedies to happen.(2) Perhaps if such things were taken completely out of the world, our recollection of our Creator would evaporate entirely from our memories. If a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina reminds us to have a healthy respect for the power of nature, I’m reminding us that even more, we need to have a healthy reverential respect for nature’s God.

Secondly, a disaster like we’ve seen this past week reminds us to:

By "be realistic" I mean, to realize that bad things can happen to us. We’re not invincible.

Perhaps you have heard that though evacuation notices were issued by authorities well in advance of the landfall of Katrina, and many did leave, others, for whatever personal or other reasons, did not leave the hurricane area. I know that some could not leave, as I read that over 27% of the households of New Orleans had no means of personal transportation. Yet others stayed because they had the unrealistic notion that nothing bad would really happen to them.

I watched the news late last Sunday night after I came home from our evening service. Just before I turned off the television to go to bed I saw a video shot of Bourbon Street in New Orleans where a party was going on. Jazz music filled the air as the reporter said that the people inside were not at all concerned about the approaching hurricane – that they were there to bring it in with a party. It couldn’t happen to them!

A report on the Fox News website on Sunday, August 28^th read, "The bands were blaring on Bourbon Street, the bar tables were packed and the drinks were flowing. ‘The only dangerous hurricanes so far are the ones we’ve been drinking,’ said Fred Wilson of San Francisco, as he sipped on the famous drink at Pat O’Brien’s Bar.'"(3)

While surely most of the citizens of New Orleans were not as presumptuous as these revelers, such an account does illustrate what I’m saying – that in the face of obvious warnings of danger, people need to be realistic.

It reminds me of Harry Truman. Remember the elderly man with a cabin at the base of Mt. St. Helens back in 1980 who refused to leave in the face of warnings that the mountain was about to erupt. He mocked the mountain and the geologists who were begging him to evacuate. He and his lodge were buried in the first blast of hot ash.

But there is an even greater need than our being realistic in the face of approaching hurricanes. The Bible warns us of a much larger storm that is approaching - the storm of God’s judgment – and just like those oblivious revelers of New Orleans, many don’t believe it can happen to them.

No, we cannot tune into the Weather Channel to track the progress of this storm. Nor can we look at the history of hurricanes to project the probability of it hitting us, but the warnings are posted, nonetheless.

Listen to one such alert posted in 2 Peter 3:3-7:

"But nobody believes that stuff anymore," someone says. "That’s ridiculous!"

Just like it says, "Mockers will come with their mocking…."

Here’s another of the posted warnings of the approaching storm of God’s judgment from 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10:

There are more warnings in the Bible about the coming storm of God’s judgment than these two. Yet as you probably know, despite God’s warnings of Scripture, many people persist in thinking either that it will never happen or it will never happen to them. Like the revelers on Bourbon Street a week ago, they scoff at the warnings and mock those who try to alert them. "If it comes, we’ll welcome it with a party!"

Nobody is partying in New Orleans.

Neither will anyone be partying in the wake of the storm of God’s judgment. When you know a major storm in approaching, the time to get out of the way is now!

Thirdly, a disaster like we have seen this past week reminds us to:

Perhaps you saw the anger expressed by some of the people in New Orleans this past week when rescue and relief supplies did not arrive for several days to help them. The rage was so bad that reportedly, the Secret Service wouldn’t even let President Bush get out of Marine One and walk around the city as he had done in some of the other stricken locations - a move that I fully understand and support. While perhaps we can excuse some of this anger because of the stress people were under at the moment, at some point there needs to be a reality check along lines of personal responsibility.

I watched one TV interview where one of the refugees was particularly vocal about blaming the President and the Governor and the relief agencies for the plight of the people around him. He went on and on in his tirade until finally, after hearing enough, the reporter interjected this question: "Sir, didn’t you hear the advisory warnings to leave the city?" The man stopped his complaining long enough to admit that he had heard but disregarded the warnings, ultimately waiting too long to fill his car up with gasoline and get out.

Hello? There is an element of personal responsibility involved in all this, too, don’t you think? If a man has knowledge of an approaching storm and can get out of its path, yet refuses or neglects to do so, is he justified in blaming others?

When the storm of God’s judgment of this world makes landfall, it is possible that there will be those who complain. Perhaps some will say they were never warned. Others may grumble that they didn’t have enough time or that, in their skewed viewpoint, it isn’t fair that they be judged. But I’m telling you, excuses don’t stop storms. All that will matter when the storm of God’s judgment comes onshore of this world will be whether or not we have gotten ourselves out of its path. Besides, according to the Bible, there will be no excuse that will stand in the presence of God when judgment comes.

Romans 1:20 says, "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse."

Excuses may give people a false sense of security now, but in the judgment they will melt away like wax in a flame.

Fourthly, a disaster like we have just witnessed reminds us to:

Another piece I transcribed from the Weather Channel website:

On Monday, New Orleans’ 40-year lucky streak came to an end.

It was back in 1965 that the Big Easy took it on the jaw from Betsy. Since 1965, New Orleans has led a charmed life, despite being a prime target for hurricanes.

Dr. Steve Lyons: "Once a hurricane or tropical storm gets into the Gulf of Mexico it has to hit some land area or else it has to dissipate."

In 1969 devastating Hurricane Camille came close before landing in Pass Christian as a Category Five.

In 1998, Hurricane George looked like it was heading straight for the city when it veered into Biloxi very close to land fall.

In 2002, another near miss – Lilly, striking Intracoastal City, Louisiana.

Last year it was Ivan’s turn, bashing Bell Shores, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida instead.(4)

If one were inclined to be candid, this seems like a pretty long list of warnings – at least sufficient to cause an able person to heed an evacuation order. Yet perhaps some took these near misses, not as warnings, but as some kind of misguided assurance that it could never happen to them. "After all, we’ve had all these storms and not a one has ever hit us directly. We’re safe."

I’m reminded of the word of the mockers of the judgment that Peter mentioned earlier in 2 Peter 3:4:

In the same way a person living in a place that had repeatedly cheated fate by near misses of a hurricane might say, "In all this time there has not been a direct hit," so these mockers will say that "Judgment isn’t hitting us. In all this time, it never has happened. Therefore, we conclude that it never will."

Yet what they forget, according to Peter, is that all it took was a single word for God to create the heavens and the earth, and likewise, only a single word to bring the world under judgment of the flood in Noah’s day. Oh, and one more thing: The storm of God’s judgment has hit before. Men deny it but the truth of it remains. And it will one day hit again. Peter speaks with certainty in 2 Peter 3:10:

Yet according to the Bible, some will not figure it out until it is too late.

Listen to the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:38-39 as He spoke of the lack of preparedness of the world when the judgment of the flood came:

Will it take the actual appearance of judgment to make some of us take God’s warnings seriously? I hope not. And I also hope that any who have not made provisions for it will do so soon, as we don’t know when it is coming.

This morning we grieve along with those people in the Gulf Coast cities who have lost so much.

Yet we do wish, with all of our hearts, as we contemplate God’s gathering judgment of this world, not to make the same mistakes that some made in the path of Hurricane Katrina.

We want to be respectful. We are humbled by the lesson that there are still forces in this world that are far more powerful than we are – forces that leave us absolutely at the mercy of the elements. We must remember that we are not as self-sufficient and invulnerable as we are prone to think. Such arrogance is a false sense.

We want to be realistic. We don’t want to be among those foolish people who, in spite of adequate warnings, don’t believe that bad things can happen to them. We take disasters like this as reminders that no one is immune to trouble and that adequate preparation and precaution is necessary.

We want to be responsible. We don’t want to be among those who never assume accountability for their own actions and who constantly blame others for their own poor choices. We want to remember that excuses will not matter when storm of God’s Great Judgment comes upon this world.

Finally, we want to be ready. We want to be sure that each one of us is adequately prepared for the coming storm of judgment should it come in our lifetime. This is done by learning about and accepting the claims of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, whom God sent to this earth to die and take away our sins so that we can stand in judgment. We want to be sure that none of us grows lax or is inattentive to those things that keep us faithful to our commitment to Him, something else that is essential if we are to survive the judgment.

There’s a great storm coming – the great day of judgment. Are you ready for it?

Footnotes: Please use your back button to return to your place.

1. Expert Traces Katrina’s Timeline, http://www.weather.com/multimedia/index.html?clip=2654&collection=topstory&from=wxcenter_video
2. Please see my message, "Why Does God Allow Tsunamis, Earthquakes, and Other Natural Disasters?" based on Romans 8:18-26.
3. New Orleans Parties On, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,167242,00.html
4. A History of Near Misses for New Orleans,http://www.weather.com/multimedia/index.html?clip=2655&collection=mostpopular&from=wxcenter_video

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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