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Three days ago, my plan was to do what I told you I was going to do last Sunday. And that is preach from Matthew 5, verses 33 -37, where Jesus talks about oaths and the importance of keeping promises.
But later in the day, Thursday, as I was following the news, it occurred to me that what we are experiencing right now is unprecedented. Most of you here have not experienced a global crisis like we have seen with the coronavirus.
There are certain Sundays when you scrap your original plan to focus on something that needs to be addressed. And this is indeed one of those times. The coronavirus has been around for a while, taking off in China a few months ago.
But it has reached a higher level of concern this week for many reasons. The president issued a travel ban not allowing any Europeans to fly to the United States. Big time. Hollywood actor Tom Hanks and his wife came down with the virus in Australia.
And I've joked that this really took off when Tom Hanks came down with the virus. We've also seen two NBA players from the Utah Jazz who were diagnosed. This virus has caused lots of cancellations where there are very large gatherings.
For example, professional basketball and hockey have suspended their seasons and baseball has moved their opener back. The biggest news sports wise is that the NCAA tournament, the NCAA basketball tournaments have been canceled.
This is one of the most watched sporting events every year. So canceling this is a very big deal. Disneyland has also closed in many other places. We're seeing businesses close. We're seeing concerts close.
But as I said in the email this week, we at Eureka Baptist Church have decided to meet today. And some other churches are also meeting. Some are not. The threat is not enormous here yet. As far as I know, nobody in the St. Croix Falls area has been diagnosed with coronavirus.
But we are keeping an eye on things. But we are meeting today. And what we're going to talk about this morning is that we must think biblically about the coronavirus. So this is my big idea. We must think biblically about the coronavirus.
And I have six reflections that I want to share with you as we try to process this. The first reflection is this. Viruses trace back to the fall of humanity. This past week, I was at track practice and I was running with a student when he asked me where I thought the virus came from in China.
What I told him is that I am not a scientist, but I am a pastor. And so I gave him an answer that he wasn't expecting. A biblical answer. What I explained is that God created everything good, but humanity fell into sin when Adam and Eve sinned.
What Genesis 3 tells us is that sin causes all the problems in the natural world, whether it be natural disasters, viruses, death, and decay of any kind. When Adam and Eve sinned, this is what the Lord told them about what was going to happen to the earth.
In Genesis 3, 17 through 19, the Lord said this. Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of you.
Through painful toil, you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground.
Since from it you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you will return. What Romans 8 verses 20 through 22 teaches us is that the creation groans. From the curse that it is under. This is what the Apostle Paul said.
He said the creation groans in the pains of childbirth until now. God cursed the world we live in when humanity sinned. And I've heard it said that God shows us through the catastrophes in the natural world how horrible sin is.
The coronavirus is a horrible virus and it is a picture of the great evil of sin. May we understand this as we think biblically about the coronavirus. And our first reflection is that viruses trace back to the fall of humanity.
Our second reflection is this. God is in control of this virus, just like everything else. What scripture makes clear is that God is in control of everything. There was once a Jewish rabbi by the name of Rabbi Kushner,.
Who wrote a book,.
Why do bad things happen to good people? His conclusion was that bad things happen because God is not big enough to stop all the calamities that take place in the world. And that's a horrible conclusion to reach because it's a false one.
The biblical conclusion is that God is in control of everything. What the Bible teaches is that everything happens according to God's perfect plan. Proverbs 16 .33 says, The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.
In ancient times, people would cast lots. It was kind of like gambling. It was kind of like a random thing that would happen. So like going to Vegas, the card that's going to be turned over, the Lord decides what card that will be.
So in other words, there are no random events. Everything has a rhyme and a reason to it. Ephesians 1 .11 says that God works all things according to the counsel of his will. The coronavirus did not catch God by surprise.
And he didn't stop it. It happened according to his perfect design. God uses everything for good, even bad things. When Joseph was talking to his brothers in Genesis 50, verse 20, what he told them is, what you meant for evil, God meant for good.
We don't understand this fully, but what we do understand, what we must understand, is that God loves to cause from bad things greater good to come. And we can trust that he is doing that with the coronavirus because he does that with everything.
May we understand this as we think about the coronavirus biblically. Our second reflection is that God is in control of this virus, just like everything else. Our third reflection is this. Do not be anxious about this virus you can't control.
Do not be anxious about this virus you can't control. There's been quite a panic this past week. If you watch or listen to the news, it is pretty much all they are talking about. If you went to the grocery store, people are stacking up on food and other supplies.
Nate from Walmart, he understands that the racks are being cleaned out and they're trying to stock as fast as they can to try to get all the food and all the supplies and all the drinks where they need to be.
Brianna's dad is a survivalist kind of guy, kind of like Mark. And he said to us that you have laughed at me to this point, but now you're not laughing because I'm ready. And then I joked to him that this is his time to shine.
And people stock up on things, people who stock up on things ahead of time don't look so crazy anymore when a crisis like this happens. But the point I'm making here is that a global virus causes panic among people.
But as Christians, we should not be panicking.
Like the world does.
We should carry the peace of God with us knowing that He is in control. His sovereignty that we saw in the previous point still stands. And so therefore, we should not fear. Philippians 4, 6, and 7 says this, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. The best antidote to worry is prayer to God. And what prayer shows is trust in Him. And when you go through anything that might cause concern with Him, He gives you His peace.
When you go through it with Him, His peace will go with you.
You can be in a situation when others tell you.
That you should not have peace.
But you do. And this is a supernatural peace that only comes from God, as Philippians 4, 7 tells us. There is no true peace without God. But with Him, there is. And it's not a peace that the world could ever give you.
We must trust Him to handle all the difficult situations.
In our life,.
Including this coronavirus epidemic. We can control very little. And God is the one who is truly in control of it all, as we saw in the previous point, as He is sovereign. And the Lord, we must be reminded that the Lord is writing your story.
And part of that story is that you are going to live on this earth when the coronavirus caused a global panic. Think about that. But God is going to take care of you.
No matter what,.
If you are a follower of Jesus Christ. And we need to trust that. When we do, this won't cause anxiety. But we will have peace. May we understand this as we think about the coronavirus biblically.
Our third reflection.
Is not to be anxious about this virus you can't control. Our fourth reflection is this. Our only true security is in God and Christ. Our previous two points implied this, but we need to stress it right here.
We have no true security, but from God. God is our creator. He is our sustainer. What Scripture teaches is that He decides the day we are born and the day we die. This is what Ecclesiastes 3, 1 -2 teach us.
That passage says, for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die. 1 Timothy 6 -7 says, we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world.
Hebrews 9 -27 says, just as it is appointed for man to die once, then after that comes judgment. James 4 -14, and we need to hear this here, you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
And during that short mist that is our life, God in His power sustains our life. As Acts 17 -25 says, He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. You would not be here right now without God and you will not be on this earth one day longer than you should be.
This is why it is so silly and foolish to find your security in other things. We find our security in family, jobs,.
Finances,.
Our health, health care, retirement plans. We can lose any of these at any moment.
And if you lose these,.
What do you have left?
What rock are you standing on? Are you standing on the solid rock that is the Lord? Only true believers understand that God is their only true security with both physical life and spiritual. Isaiah 26 -4 tells us to trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
If you have a relationship with Jesus Christ, you still have the most important thing when you lose something important. You have the one whom you will be with forever. When you come into a saving relationship with Jesus by realizing that you are a sinner and that He is the only Savior, the greatest security in the universe.
Begins.
You are secure for eternity, where before you were meant for wrath. And Jesus says this in John 10, verses 27 and 28.
This is what He says,.
My sheep hear My voice,.
And I know them,.
And they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand. The only true security you and I have is in God and His Son, Jesus Christ. And may we remember that as we think about this virus that has become a global crisis,.
May we remember this.
This is a great time to be reminded of this truth. May we understand this as we think about the coronavirus biblically. Our fourth reflection is that our only true security is in God and His Son, Jesus Christ.
The fifth reflection is this, and this is the most interesting point, probably, of our time here this morning. The fifth reflection is this, in the end times, there will be a virus that causes global chaos.
In the end times, there will be a virus that causes global chaos. For those of you who are interested in the end times, you may have thought about this as we have seen this virus spread. In fact, I was watching a secular network where a scientist was asked,.
Is this the end?
And he said, well, it's not the end, but it could get very bad. And so many are asking, Christians are asking, is this the end times virus? Now, it is my desire as your pastor that all of us would have a healthy interest in the end times.
And I emphasize healthy interest because sometimes people go off the rails. To have a longing for this world to end and for Christ to return is a good longing to have. In fact, Revelation 1 verse 3 says, blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it for the time is near.
If you can remember back to the Beatitudes.
About six weeks ago,.
We talked about two different Greek words for the word blessed in the New Testament. One of them is that God shines His favor and prosperity upon you, both spiritually and physically. The other is that you experience happiness by doing what God tells you to do.
That word for blessed, makarios in Greek, is used in Revelation 1, 3 that I just read. So remember back to the Beatitudes where it was blessed are the poor in spirit and what that meant is happy are the poor in spirit or happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness sake and so on and so forth.
Well, Revelation 1, 3 tells us is happy are those who seek to understand the end times and who long for it and who are preparing themselves for it by living closely with God. The end times is good news for you if you are a follower of Jesus Christ.
What it means is that you are much closer to dwelling with God on this earth. An enormously sweet experience that is difficult for us to imagine. The first dwelling will be with Christ during His 1 ,000 year reign on the earth.
The second dwelling will be forever and ever with God on the new earth where there will be no sin. Satan will be defeated and there will be forever bliss with God. But I say all of this to say that when you are studying the end times, you will notice that things will get very bad before the second coming of Christ.
This is where we will talk about this future end times virus. Let me give you a little bit of a lesson on the end times to set the table. Before the second coming of Christ, there will be a final seven year tribulation.
The second half of those seven years is known as the great tribulation. And we know that this period is seven years because that's what Daniel 9 .27 tells us. But before the seven year tribulation, there's an event known as the rapture.
Every believer will be taken to heaven to be with Christ for seven years. And that's when the marriage supper of the Lamb will take place. 1 Thessalonians 1 .10 says that we will be saved from the wrath to come.
And I take that to mean the wrath of God that is going to be poured out on this sinful world during the second half of the tribulation, the period known as the great tribulation. The rapture of the church before the seven year tribulation is mentioned in three places in the New Testament.
John 14 .2 -3, 1 Corinthians 15 .52, and 1 Thessalonians 4 .13 -18. This is good news for us because this means that we will not experience the horrible things that are going to happen on the earth during the great tribulation.
And let me tell you, things are going to get very, very bad. Matthew 24 -21 -22 say, for then there will be great tribulation such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.
And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short. The events of the great tribulation are worse than the flood. And what Jesus says in the verses I just read, is that if it kept going,.
Everyone would die.
But it's going to be cut.
To a period of seven years because people are going to be saved during that time. And that's why Jesus says, for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened. Many, many people are going to die, but some will be saved and will, in fact, survive the tribulation.
And this is what Revelation 6 -7 -8 says, as I've been setting the table here for this end times virus. This end times virus is going to happen during the great tribulation. So this is what that passage from Revelation says chapter 6 verses 7 and 8.
When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, Come. And I looked and behold a pale horse. And his rider's name was Death. And Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.
And as you notice there, Death takes the physical life of people and Hades takes the soul. And what we know is that the body is both body and soul. The pestilence here is referring to serious disease that will spread all over the earth.
Well, the text tells us is that from these calamities, including disease, one fourth of the earth's population will die. We have 7 billion people in the world. That would be about 1 .75 billion people dying.
With disease being one of the reasons that people die. Now, in world history, there have been two diseases that are well documented that are a precursor to this end times virus. And that is the bubonic plague, which happened in the 14th century, where one fourth or one third, in fact, of Europe died.
But what's different about that virus to today's virus is that that was localized because they didn't have all the technology. They didn't have these planes going all over the world. But in the 14th century, one third of Europe was killed by this plague.
The other one is the Spanish flu that took place at the end of the First World War. And this one is truly, truly remarkable to think about. 50 million to 100 million people died from the Spanish flu. That's about 5 to 10 of the world's population at that time.
Now, you might be wondering, and I asked this question at the beginning here, is if this virus,.
The coronavirus,.
The end times virus, this question that people are asking, and my answer is no. And the reason I say that is because we won't be there for it. Because we will have been taken from the earth before the seven year tribulation.
And this virus is going to occur during the second half of the tribulation. Now, I don't want to scare you in saying this, and it should relieve us a little bit to think, okay, this isn't the end times virus.
But I think God,.
He sends these things.
He sends earthquakes. He sends famines. He sends plagues.
He sends wars and rumors of wars. And all these things as precursors to what things are going to be like in a much more escalated form during the final seven year tribulation. And so, as we reflect on this virus, we should think about that.
That this is something like how things might be, only they will be much, much worse. May we understand this as we think about the coronavirus biblically. And my fifth reflection is that in the end times, there will be a virus that causes global chaos.
And the sixth reflection and final reflection is this. The spread of this virus opens up the door for evangelism. I mentioned in the first point that I had a student that I coach ask me where I thought the virus came from in China.
It became clear to me as I was running with him that the Lord opened up a door for me to share the gospel. What I explained to him is that God created everything good, but humanity fell into sin. And as I read earlier from Genesis 3, God cursed the world because of humanity's sin.
And as Romans 8 says, the creation is in the pains of childbirth until it's released when Christ returns. Then I told the student, this is why we need Jesus to come because of the presence of sin in the world.
People are sinners and they need a savior.
And Jesus Christ is that only Savior. And that's the purpose of the cross of Christ. He died in our place so that we would have eternal life. I don't know if anything happened right there as I was talking to him.
He did listen to me. However, I prayed on the way home that the Lord would open his eyes to see his sin and his great need for Jesus. What this showed me is that God is opening up doors all over the place through this virus to share the good news of Jesus Christ.
And so we need to be bold with the Gospel. And the Lord's going to give open doors. In fact, Paul tells us in the New Testament to pray for open doors. In Colossians 4, verses 2 -6, he tells us to pray for these open doors.
By saying,.
Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the Word. To declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.
Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. This is what Paul asked the church in Colossae to do for him.
And we should pray for ourselves and others to have opportunities to share Christ when this fear of the coronavirus is on their minds. What we need to tell them is what I already told you in the first five reflections.
People in the world need to know that viruses trace back to the fall of humanity. That God is in control of this virus. And he is good. That if we trust in Christ, then we will not be anxious about this virus we can't control.
That true security is only in God and Christ. And that in the end times, there will be a virus that causes global chaos. And they don't want to be here for it. And if they believe in Christ truly, they won't be here for it.
And as you share these truths, be clear on the gospel of Christ that Jesus went to the cross and rose again bodily to rescue anyone who believes in him from certain destruction. Our community and our world needs to understand the truth and find their refuge in Christ.
Then people will have no reason to fear. If we see the coronavirus as an opportunity for the gospel, then we are thinking biblically. It is at these vulnerable times when these opportunities are often greater to get the good news out.
So may we see the coronavirus as an open door for evangelism. So to conclude this morning, the Bible is the truth and it tells the story of life precisely and always accurately. And we must view everything through the lens of Scripture.
To look at the coronavirus any other way will only cause us harm.
And we will not be a deep.
And lasting help to anyone else unless we know Christ. We don't have all the answers. We don't know precisely what God is doing with this. But what we do know is that he works everything according to his perfect plan.
And he is always working for the good of his people as Romans 8 .28 says. So my hope and prayer is that these reflections were helpful to you. May we meditate on these truths from Scripture that we were presented.
And may we live trusting our Lord through this global crisis that we are even experiencing here in the St. Croix Falls area. Now next Sunday, we don't know what's going to happen. We'll keep you posted if things escalate a little more.
We may cancel next Sunday. But whenever I preach again, Lord willing, I will be preaching once again as we're going through our sermon series through Matthew. And we will be looking at Matthew chapter 5 verses 33 to 37.
And so Lord willing, we'll be here next Sunday. Otherwise, my prayer is that we will be together soon to hear from his word. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, I thank you, Lord, that you are taking care of your people during this time.
And Lord, nothing happens, but according to your will and you have a purpose for what you are doing here. And so Lord, may we trust that purpose during this time. In Jesus' name I pray,.
Amen.