A Greater Sickness I: Oh, How They love | Behold Your God Podcast

Fear, Sickness, and the Greater Pandemic of Sin

Welcome to the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Teddy James, content producer for Media Gratia with Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and author and host of the Behold Your God study series.

Right now we're in a season where I think a lot of people are afraid, where they're fearful, and it's all due to the coronavirus and COVID -19 and all of the things that are associated with that. And so, John, we thought that it would be a good time to really focus in on two themes.

Based on this current pandemic, and one of them is how does the Christian respond, not just to individual sickness, but to global, to national sickness. But there's a bigger issue here, and it's the pandemic of sin that we really want to focus on.

And the question at the heart of it really is not just how do we survive. The world has tons of information how you can survive this time. But we really want to focus on how can we benefit as believers.

In 1 Thessalonians, Paul has to write to the believers because of the issue of death. And he says, I don't want you to be uninformed. And if you can get the truths of Christ in your mind, he says, then you won't mourn like the unbeliever who has no hope.

And what he says there about facing death could be applied to facing a virus. And that is, as a believer, we mourn when we face death. We mourn differently than the unbeliever. There's a lot in common.

There's loss, sorrow. You know, there's waves of sorrow, and there's going through stages of grief. But a Christian, while we have that in common with an unbeliever, there are things that are unique about a Christian because belonging to Christ changes fundamentally how we approach death.

Now, we could apply that even to sickness. We have a lot in common with an unbeliever when we face sickness. If a person is sick, there's pain, there's isolation, there's temptation to be frustrated. You know, I'm ready to get on with life.

But a Christian responds differently because belonging to Christ changes how we respond to sickness. And as you mentioned, the pandemic that, you know, virus that we're facing right now, is a good time as we're preoccupied with the fear of sickness.

We would like to speak about some things that might help us. So we want to enlist, again, help from some believers who've gone before us, who had to face terrible sickness personally without the benefit of modern medicine, but also who helped other people walk through this dark valley.

And, you know, what advice did they give and does that apply to us today?

Plagues in Roman History and the Witness of Christian Love

Yeah. Now, the approach we're going to take is we're going to take two episodes. First, we're going to look at, in this episode, we're going to look at some Christian response during some of the worst plagues in the history of mankind that we know of.

And we're going to see the spiritual advice that they gave to those who were quite literally staring death in the face every single day. And next week, second episode of this, we're going to walk through a particular sermon from J .C. Ryle.

Now, if you're a longtime listener, you're familiar with J .C. Ryle. We recommend his commentary on the Gospels or his expository thoughts on the Gospels. But in that sermon, he gives some really helpful and practical guidance for us today as we face sickness in our lives.

Yeah. So this first episode, we want to see how Christians lived during these difficult periods, two plagues in particular. And the way that they lived became a bright, shining witness to the gospel of Christ.

And that's very helpful for us today because every Christian might feel, you know, frightened. You know, I want to avoid contagion of a virus. There's the financial things that we're seeing happen in our country, the financial ramifications of, you know, shutting down and everything kind of going into lockdown mode.

And then there's just, you know, the frustration of having to kind of reorganize your entire life. My youngest son is planning to get married in May. And so he and his fiance are having to ask some questions like, well, is that going to be possible?

Are we going to have to adjust things? And so I don't actually have anything to do with wedding plans. I try to stay as far from that as possible. But I do hear my wife and his sisters and him and I hear people talking about it.

So, you know, the Christian faces all those things just like an unbeliever. But we have an opportunity in the midst of all of that to walk with God as children do with a father. And that simple childlike determination to trust him, to rely on his goodness.

And when we're able to do that, then that really does free us up. I mean, if you just think of it in very simple terms, if the king of the universe has engaged himself, promised himself, obligated himself to take care of you, then that allows you to rest.

And you don't have to be paralyzed by, you know, this preoccupation with yourself. You say to God each day, you know, OK, so I will do the things that are wise and appropriate in this situation. But I'm not going to be paralyzed by fear that as I entrust myself to God physically, spiritually, then I am free to think about other people's needs.

And I am free in that selflessness. I am free to do things that can be a real billboard to the world, a real witness to the world of the beauty of Christ.

Now, we mentioned earlier, we're going to be looking at some of the worst plagues in history. The first one in particular is the Roman plague that happened from about 249 to 262. So we're looking right at about 13 years.

This was a pandemic that we don't know the name for. We don't actually know what it was. However, looking at some of the descriptions of the symptoms, we can say that it's something close to smallpox, maybe close to modern day Ebola.

Some of the symptoms were dysentery, burning fever, constant vomiting. A lot of people lost their limbs to infections. They were left lame or even left blind. At the height of this particular plague, over 5000 people a day were dying simply in the city of Rome.

So, you know, if you were to expand that outside the city of Rome, the numbers would just be absolutely massive. And when you consider the number of population of the globe, the percentage of mortality must have been through the roof.

One ancient historian gave us a description and he said that afterward, there broke out a dreadful plague and the excessive destruction of this hateful disease invaded every house of the trembling population in succession, carrying off day by day with abrupt attack, numberless people.

All the people shook with fear, attempting to flee the city in hopes of avoiding the contagion. They would exclude their friends from shelter in hopes of excluding death itself. During these years, there lay about over the whole city the decaying bodies of plague victims.

Some regarded nothing besides how to take advantage of the plague for their own monetary gain. No one did for others what he himself wished to experience.

Another thing that occurred during this plague was, and this is a time prior to Christianity being made legal in the Roman Empire. So there were still empire wide waves of persecution. But a new wave of persecution rose up against Christians and it's called the Decian persecution.

It began in Carthage and basically it was rooted in the assumption that the Roman gods were punishing the Romans with this plague. Because the Romans were allowing Christians to live within the borders of the empire and Christians refused to worship the Roman gods.

At this time, the emperor made a new law that a Christian had to, every person in the empire had to come and present themselves to an official, to present sacrifices to a Roman god and to pronounce allegiance for this Roman god.

Now you could be a Christian, they would say, you can have your god, Jesus, but then, but you have to also honor our gods. And the Christians, of course, couldn't do that. And when they refused, then they were put to death.

And so the Decian persecution is happening at the same time that the plague is sweeping through the empire.

The Plague of Cyprian and the Christian Duty to Stay and Serve

Yeah. Now just for a little bit of historical context, let you know some of the results of this. In 375, so roughly a hundred years after this plague passed, Rome fell. It couldn't keep up, could not keep its borders strong simply because there wasn't enough food to feed the armies.

And the interior of Rome completely imploded just by the simple strain of the crisis.

Right. And the reason we mentioned this plague, which was called the Plague of Cyprian because he was a famous bishop, a Christian bishop during this time. The Plague of Cyprian is important because historians have noted, contemporary historians and then later, that during this time when Rome was at the height of the infection, many of the wealthy left the city.

And that included the priests and priestesses of the Roman, Roman idolatry system. But the Christians often made the choice to stay within the city in order to reach out to the plague victims and to serve them.

And many of the Christians gave their lives being infected with the disease as they served those who were diseased. And it brought about the coining of a phrase, behold how these Christians love. You know, it's shocking.

Years later, some of the Christian apologists writing against the Romans who were saying that Christians were a danger to the empire. And the Christian apologist gave a long list of reasons why actually Christians were the best citizens to have in the empire, even though you're killing them.

And one of the arguments that the Christian apologist made was this, that the Christian following Jesus Christ makes a person serve the enemy, treat their enemies better than the Romans treat their own family members, who they abandoned to the plague years ago during the Cyprian plague.

So we mentioned the plague in Rome because it really is one of those early, it's one of the early evidences of the impact of the gospel on Christians during a time of severe illness and fear. And how the Christians lived became a living witness to Christ.

And we're not done talking about sickness and plague yet because there is one more that we want to look at. And that comes in about the mid 17th century in England. Now, this is one that a lot of you are going to be a lot more familiar with, the bubonic plague.

This was the one of the worst plagues that ever broke out, but it wasn't just the bubonic plague. During this time, about 15 of the population, so one out of every six people were killed, and just about 100 ,000 died in the city of London alone.

So in this season, there were three types of plague. I didn't know this. This was fascinating to me. Not just the bubonic plague, which is what most of us are familiar with, in that you had about a 30 chance of dying within two weeks.

But in addition to the bubonic plague, there was the pneumonic plague, which attacked the lungs and then that spread through other people through coughing and sneezing. And then lastly, the septicemic plague, which is bacteria entering into the bloodstream.

And we have to remember too, there wasn't an awareness of germ theory. There wasn't a real awareness of hygiene. And so these things would all just spread rapidly within communities. It's interesting though, some of the treatments included bloodletting, attaching leeches to people so they would just put a leech on your arm and let it suck.

Because the theory was that you had bad blood. And getting the bad blood out would cause you to get better. But one of the other, we'll call it interesting treatments, was it was thought that it was bad air that was causing a lot of this sickness.

So they would encourage children to smoke, thinking that smoke would cleanse the lungs out. So it didn't really work.

And others walked around with a sponge soaked in vinegar. Before we go on, I really think that the parallels here are so striking. It was bad air in many ways. The pneumonic plague was transferred through coughing, sneezing.

It was bad blood, the septicemic issues. But like humanity, we see the problems. We see crime, we see cruelty, we see war, we see poverty. We see the abuse of children or the way that women are treated.

And our culture has a response. But it's a misdirected response. Well-meaning, but misdirected, not knowing Christ. So many of our responses to cultural ills, to moral decline in a culture, many of them are no better than a child being told, you know, if you smoke, your lungs will get clear.

Or if you breathe through this sponge, you know, you won't catch it. Or maybe we can put a leech on you. Another problem that happened during this time was the financial crisis. So 1664 -65, we have the plague sweeping through London in particular.

Some of the outlying areas, not as much the outlying areas, because the way the plague got to London was that it was through foreign trade. So a ship shows up and there are rats on the ship, pretty common.

But the rats have a flea that's carrying a bacteria. And the flea, as the rats spread through London, especially through the poor areas of London, then the fleas bite people and then the plague is spread.

Now, while this is happening, London shuts down all trade. And so financially, many people lose their jobs. It's so bad that not only does London shut down trade, but eventually England doesn't trade at all with any other countries during this time.

Scotland closes the border between Scotland and England because England has it and Scotland doesn't have the plague. Mainly it was centered in London. And during this time, you know, there's a financial collapse.

And so much like, you know, what people would fear with the coronavirus, like, are we going to face a financial collapse? While this is happening, the rich flee London.

Because they can't.

Yes, because they can't. The king and the nobility and the parliament leave London and go to Oxford where the disease hasn't reached. And even ministers in churches, now you have to understand that this is after the ejection of the Puritan preacher.

So King Charles II has seen to it that all Puritan ministers are kicked out of their churches and anti-Puritan ministers are placed in the churches. But now in London, the pastors fearing the plagues leave London and the Puritans who are being persecuted at this point in time decide that these pastors will go into London, into the diseased area, and will fill the empty pulpits and go from house to house and minister to the dying people.

And again, another opportunity for Christians in this situation, they chose self-sacrifice in order to bring the gospel to the people.

The Christian Response to the Plague of London

So now if we have thoroughly depressed you discussing plagues and sickness and death, all of that is simply background because you need to understand the world in which these men were living, in which these men were ministering.

And so John, it wasn't just that they were going and doing, it was what they were saying. If we go to a place that's filled with sickness and death, it's one thing to be there, that's self-sacrificing, and frankly it's admirable.

But that's only part of it. We really need to know what did these men have to say? What did they have to offer?

Yeah, if we go to the scripture and we consider the metaphor of sickness and how that's used in Christ being a physician, how that is used as a picture of the spiritual disease that we have, the disease that makes me wake up every day and say, what's in it for me today?

So is there any cure for the me, me, what's in it for me disease? You know, sin. And there is. Early on in Israel's history, God promises Abraham that he would have a people and that this people would be his people.

And through this genetic, through this lineage of Abraham, the Jews, the Messiah would come. And through the Messiah, all nations, people from every part of the planet would be blessed. In the process of keeping his word to Abraham, God brings his people out of Egypt.

So he brings them out by this mighty display. They're rescued by these ten plagues, and then there's the Red Sea, and Pharaoh and his army are drowned, and the people rejoice. And in the same chapter that describes this great song of happiness to God, at the end of the chapter, basically immediately, it says they travel out three days into the wilderness.

Now this is hundreds of thousands of people, and they don't have any water in this place where they're stopping, and so they begin to grumble, and they wish they could go back to Egypt. And so God gives them water miraculously, and then he's teaching them a lesson, and he says to them, I am the Lord.

In English we would say, I am the Lord who heals you. Strange, though, that he uses that term. He doesn't say, I am the Lord who supplies you. He says, I am the Lord who heals you. And it does seem strange to us because the people weren't sick.

They were thirsty. They were needy, but not sick. But the Hebrew word for healing there, heal, heal is a fine translation, but it can be more than that. It means, I'm the one that makes you whole. Health in the widest sense of the word.

Later in the Bible, this wholeness, this health that God alone can provide becomes much clearer when God begins to describe the coming work of the Messiah, particularly through the pen of the prophet Isaiah.

Like Isaiah 53, where we see what he does to his son, the Messiah, in order to provide health for his people. TJ, you want to read us those verses?

Yeah, so Isaiah 53, starting in verse 4.

So wonderful, in the sense of really, it does fill us with wonder. Wonderful chapter in the Old Testament, where the atoning work of Christ is explained prophetically, centuries before he comes. The beginning of that chapter, actually, in the Hebrew Bible, doesn't start with chapter 53, verse 1.

It starts back at the end of chapter 52, where God says that you will see something that will astonish you. Just the way Israel was astonishing, when people were astonished to see Israel carried off into exile in Babylon.

It's quite shocking that God would do that to his people. God says, what I'm about to do through my son is going to shock you as well. To see how God treats the perfect God-man is quite shocking. It's the amazing part of amazing grace.

I mean, listen to the verbs that describe the Father's action toward the Son. He pierces the Son. He crushes the Son. He chastens or punishes the Son. He scourges the Son. And the result of all of that, that atoning death, is that the sin sickness of humanity is able to be cured.

Every man, woman, or child that comes to this risen Savior is able to find hope in what he suffered. So, we want to look at that sickness and words that we give to people from that kind of God that would help them as they face the fears of a physical illness.

We love to look at the old writers. We love to look at really helpful writers. There's a plethora that we could choose from to help us out today. But particularly, we want to focus on William Bridge. And the quote that we're going to use, we'll post the link to it in the show notes, MediaGratia .org.

Trusting the Lord in a Time of Plague

Yeah. So, Bridge writes during the plague in London that we mentioned. And he gives some advice to the people, spiritual advice. How, in light of this fearful time physically, how can that be a time that you go through that is spiritually beneficial?

So, he doesn't give them medical advice, but he gives them spiritual advice. And we're actually going to just read three short quotes from Bridge where he gives this advice. And they kind of follow on the heels of one another.

What do you need to do during a time where physical illness is pretty frightening? What do you do spiritually?

Yeah. And we have updated the language just a little bit to make it a little easier to read and to hear. What is my work this day? Now, the work of this day is to trust the Lord. This is the work that protection and deliverance in the time of a plague calls for.

Who is there that does not desire to be protected and delivered from this plague? You pray that you and your family may be preserved. Here is your antidote to keep you from the plague. Trust in the Lord.

As ever you and your family may be protected now in this evil day, trust in the Lord and call upon yours to trust in the Lord.

Now, we've taken this quote out of a work. And so it could be misapplied. He's not saying to the Christian, if you just trust God, you're guaranteed that you'll never get sick. But what he is saying is this, how can you be kept in the midst of these terrible plagues?

How can you be kept safe in the Lord? And you're going to have to trust Him. And God will keep you through the midst of all of this, even if a person contracted the virus.

And this is one of the things that we discussed in family worship. I've got an eight-year-old who is, she's hearing these things, you know, and she's just hearing conversations that my wife and I are having, that we're having with family members.

And she's beginning to get a little scared. And so I was able to, you know, just in preparing for the podcast, I was able to point to this and just say, you know, even if we were to get it, God is still good.

God is still kind. And I do feel like that's part of what Bridge is saying here.

Repentance, Self-Examination, and Turning to God as Refuge

Yeah, so the next quote that he gives, he answers more specifically this kind of really religious, vague-sounding kind of cliche. Well, trust in the Lord. Well, what does he mean by trust in the Lord?

Yeah.

But what shall we do that we may trust in the Lord in this day of the plague? First of all, you must repent of your own sins and be sorrowful for the sins of others and of the times wherein you live. When the plague came in David's time, you know what David did.

He repented. Lord, says he, I have done foolishly. It is I. Lord, it is I. So let everyone do. This God expects. This God expects in the time of plague.

So what do you do in a time where you're very fearful about your physical health? Well, like in our day where there's social isolation and many of the plans and things that we had and even just going to work, that's all been put on hold.

We do have, a lot of us have extra time. Give that time to do honestly with God. God, we're not saying that if I did a bad thing, then the coronavirus comes to my house. But God, ultimately, sin is at the root of why sickness even exists in the human race.

We'll talk about that in further episodes. But God, you know, what about my life? Have I lived it for you? I mean, so, you know, just to come clean with God. God, I've trusted myself rather than trust you.

I've thought that because I live in this country that, you know, I'm basically safe or anything. Who would have thought two months ago when you hear about, well, there's a virus on the other side of the world, who would have thought, well, like that would shut my job down?

Well, I didn't. So God, I have trusted in myself. I trusted in my country. I trusted in the many kindnesses you've given me. And I kind of felt, you know, above any fear. And now I don't feel that anymore.

God, I've lived on my feelings. What I think is right. God, I've really just lived for myself. I woke up every day and asked myself what I want to do with my life. And so we want to break our hearts over that.

And now's a good time to really just open your Bible and say to God, okay, what's the truth about me? But also, Bridge says, but also to really break our hearts over the sin of our nation. There are plenty of things.

And I'm not saying that these are why that a virus has come. God has used epidemics in the past to get our attention. And we want to give him our attention. But we're not saying there's a one-to-one relationship.

Because of this ruling in the Supreme Court, this happened to the world. But Bridge is giving us good advice. Just stop and back up and ask yourself, God, what about my family?

My home?

What about my workplace? You know, my school? My nation? Where have we offended you? And it's a good time just to take that seriously and to turn our hearts to the Lord. Now that brings us to Bridge's final direction.

Again and so to the end, go to God and tell the Lord that you do trust in him and make him your dwelling place, your fortress, your refuge. Do this so you can truly say to God through the work of his Son, my refuge, my fortress, my God, in you I will trust.

It is not enough to trust in the Lord. But you must go to God and tell him that you do trust in him, that you make him your habitation. Say, Lord, I make you my spiritual home. I trust in you. You are my refuge and my fortress.

And in you I do trust.

So good advice from William Bridge. In times when things are particularly scary, when we're frightened financially, physically, whatever, to turn our hearts to him that God himself would be the habitation, the fortress, the place where we find rest.

Not just in our clichés, but a real handing of the life into his hands, a turning away from all that offends him, a turning to him through the work of his Son. One thing I think really is a good question to ask ourselves and to bring us kind of to a close is, am I giving an appropriate degree of effort to the spiritual health?

My spiritual health, my family's spiritual health, my friend's spiritual health. Am I giving an appropriate amount of effort to that? And you could just measure it, contrast it to the amount of earnest response you're giving to a physical virus.

So we have changed everything in life in order to avoid contagion of a physical virus. And I'm not saying that that's wrong. I mean, I'm glad our government is taking it seriously. But would we be able to say, but I am also giving an appropriate amount of time to focusing on the spiritual condition, the spiritual virus that I see within myself.

This thing in me that prefers me to God, that prefers me to everybody. And, you know, when I look at my family, I don't want my family to be infected with a physical virus. But am I OK with a spiritual virus running rampant through our home, my marriage, my kids, you know, my friends that I work with?

So am I giving adequate response to the spiritual issues compared to how I'm responding to the physical issues?

Behold Your God and John Newton on Sickness and the Soul

There are many ideas about God in our culture today. Many are not grounded in Scripture, and some are actually the opposite of what Scripture teaches. The best way to identify these ideas is to go back to the Bible and allow God to speak for Himself.

Learn how God describes His character, His work in salvation, His definition of repentance, and much more through the 12-week multimedia Bible study, Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically. The heart of this study is its daily devotional workbook participants study at home in preparation for the small group session.

Each session is led by a video containing three segments. First, a biographical sketch of an individual from Christian history who was gripped by the reality of God you were studying that week. Second is a sermon from Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church, New Albany.

Lastly, are interviews from contemporary Christian pastors and authors who help apply the lessons from the week. To learn more or to see what others are saying about Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically, visit mediagracie .org or click the link in the description of this episode.

Well, we want to bring this session to a close by mentioning a letter written from John Newton, not a Puritan, not 17th century, but 18th century and into the 19th. Newton wrote a friend who was an unbeliever who had just been seriously ill, and he recovered.

So Newton was glad he recovered. But the problem was, Newton notices, that while the man is sick, he begins to have some spiritual thoughts. You know, I need to take life seriously here. I'm pretty sick.

But as soon as he's recovered, all spiritual resolutions fade. And Newton is concerned that the man hasn't learned anything passing through this hard time. It's just not benefited him spiritually at all.

And so he writes a letter, and we just want to read a quote from that.

Yep. He says, Many a time when sickness had brought me, as we say, to death's door, I was as easy and insensible as the sailor who, in the height of a storm, should presume to sleep upon the top of the mast, quite regardless that the next tossing wave might plunge me into the raging ocean beyond all possibility of relief.

But at length a day came, which, though the most terrible day I ever saw, I can now look back upon with thankfulness and pleasure. I say the time came when, in such a helpless extremity, and under the expectation of immediate death, it pleased God to command the veil from my eyes, and I saw some things in some measure as they really were.

Well, we don't need to wait until we're afraid of a coronavirus to deal with the soul issues, but it is a good time to run to the great physician, not just asking him, you know, to keep us healthy physically, but what about our soul's health?

To go to the great physician to be healed of the hyphenated viruses that plague all humanity, self-sufficiency, self-rule, self-righteousness, self-centeredness, and to come to Christ and say, is there a cure for this?

And for your honor, will you do that now? You know, make me yours so that the rest of this day might be lived for a king and not squandered on, you know, this mud puddle of selfishness that I thought was, you know, the seaside vacation.

And we hope you'll do that. Take time to consider those things.