How to Stand Firm When the Storm Is Coming

When Pastor Ben was eight years old, a hurricane was headed straight for his house in Florida. His parents sat him down and walked him through everything: 150 mph winds, potential flooding, duct tape on the windows, the bathtub filled with water, canned goods stacked in the pantry. The more they talked, the more terrified he got.

Then the Cunis showed up. Friends and neighbors from down the street. And something shifted. People were laughing. They were joking around while taping up windows like it was a Saturday project. And Ben, eight years old and full of dread, was watching them like, What is wrong with you people? Are you not scared right now?

What those neighbors were showing him, even if they could not have put it into words, was this: we cannot control the storm. A storm is going to do what a storm does. What we can do is prepare, stay together, and not fall apart. That is exactly what Jesus is trying to do in Matthew 24. A storm is coming. He is going to tell his disciples to be prepared, and he is going to tell them not to panic.

The Temple Is Coming Down

In Matthew 24, Jesus and his disciples have just left the temple in Jerusalem. The disciples are doing what anyone would do, looking around at the scale of the thing and saying, Look at all of this. And they have a point. The temple in Jerusalem was one of the most impressive structures in the ancient world. Covered in white marble, gold overlay on the facade, some individual stones weighing close to 600 tons. When the sun hit it, it was almost too bright to look at directly. For these disciples, most of them from small towns of a few hundred people in Galilee, this was the house of God, the center of the world.

Jesus looks at it and says: Not one stone here will be left on another. Every one will be thrown down.

The disciples want answers. Three of them, specifically: When is this going to happen? What will be the sign of your coming? And what will signal the end of the age? Jesus spends all of Matthew 24 working through those questions. And the answer he gives is not what they expected.

The Beginning of Birth Pains

Jesus tells them: wars are coming, and rumors of wars. Nation against nation. Famines. Earthquakes. And then he says something that is easy to skip past: all of these are the beginning of birth pains.

Anyone who has been present for a labor and delivery understands what that phrase means in your bones. The beginning of contractions is not the same as the baby arriving. It is the signal that everything has been set in motion, and there is no stopping it now. But it is not over yet, and you cannot afford to check out before the end.

Jesus is telling the disciples: a lot of hard things are going to happen. Do not read each one as the signal that it is all over. Stay present. Stay faithful. Do not get lazy because you think the end is imminent, and do not fall apart because the storms keep coming. The birth pains mean something is being born. Not that everything is dying.

When Love Starts to Go Cold

Then Jesus says something that, the longer you sit with it, the harder it lands.

"Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold." (Matthew 24:12)

When people treat you badly day after day, when the world around you gets crueler, when people are more interested in themselves than in the people around them, your natural instinct is to respond in kind. To decide that from here on out, people get what they deserve. You stop showing up. You stop extending grace. You protect yourself.

Jesus says that is exactly the pattern he wants his followers to refuse.

The world getting worse is not permission to let your love get smaller. It is the precise moment when love is most needed and most costly. It is also the moment when it matters most. Jesus weeping over Jerusalem in Matthew 23, "How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings," that is the posture he is modeling and calling his people into. The eagle (Rome) is coming. The hen does not run. She spreads her wings and stays put.

What Actually Happened in 70 AD

Here is something that matters for understanding this passage: Jesus is not speaking in vague abstractions. He is describing something that is going to happen within the lifetime of the people he is talking to.

In 70 AD, roughly forty years after this conversation on the Mount of Olives, the Roman army besieged Jerusalem. The city covered about 450 acres and had a population of around 50,000. By the time the siege began, it was Passover, and Jewish people from surrounding towns had flooded in. The Jewish historian Josephus, who was present during the siege, writes that 1.2 million people were trapped inside those walls. The Roman army cut off all supply lines. People ran out of food and water. Bodies were left in the streets because the living were too weak to bury them. Roman soldiers breaking into homes found them filled with the dead and did not even bother to plunder them. They were too shocked by what they saw. Josephus records that 1.1 million people died and 97,000 were taken captive.

Jesus had told them ahead of time: when you see this coming, do not stay inside the walls. Run. Get out of the city. Do not go back for your belongings. The whole reason cities had walls was to protect the people inside, and Jesus told his followers to do the exact opposite of what every survival instinct said.

That is the nature of trusting Jesus. Sometimes what he is asking you to do does not make sense by the world's logic. But his words, he says, will never pass away. Even when heaven and earth do.

You Are the Plan

Here is where this sermon lands, and it is the part worth sitting with the longest.

After the resurrection, Jesus entrusted the continuation of his story to his followers. Fishermen. People who, just days later, would scatter when he was arrested. People who were still arguing about who was the greatest among them. That was the plan. There was no other.

And those same disciples, the ones who hid, the ones who doubted, the ones who thought they were signing up for a political rebellion, became the people who carried the message into the world. Six of them were crucified. One upside down. Two were beaten to death. One was beheaded. One was run through with a spear. John alone died of natural causes.

Not one of them lost the faith.

They were ordinary people who stayed in the storm because they knew they were not in it alone. And because of that, two thousand years later, someone passed the same message to you.

That is still the plan. It has always been the plan.

You may feel unqualified. You may be in the middle of a storm that feels like it is going to take everything from you. Jesus does not promise the storm will not come. He promises to be in it with you, and he promises that the people around you are part of how he shows up. If you are in a storm right now, find someone in your community to walk through it with you. Tape up the windows together. Laugh when you can. Grieve when you need to. But do not try to outlast it alone.

The love of most may grow cold. Do not let yours be among them.

Taking It Into Tuesday

Come Be With Us This Sunday

You do not have to have it all together to show up. Real Life on the Palouse gathers every Sunday at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM at the Eastside Marketplace in Moscow, and every week, we take communion together as a family. It is one of the ways we remember we are not in this alone.

If you have kids, Lifer Kids runs at both services and is a great place for them to experience the same things you are.

Whether you are walking through a storm right now or just starting to feel the clouds roll in, there is a place for you here.

Plan Your Visit today!