If we "humble ourselves and pray" (2Chron 7:14), will God heal us of COVID19?

Everything that happens is according to God's plan, and so there's nothing that happens outside the will of the plan of God. God is not a reactionary God, but God is a sovereign God. That being said, no, those specific verses are written to a people that were in covenant with God, and God was trying to warn them that they are going outside covenant, outside of the promises that they have made between him and Israel.

And so those do not apply, and I don't even think on a secondary or tertiary issue, I don't think you can apply those at all to the United States or any country in general, because those promises were made to a specific people for a specific purpose.

So if someone's using that saying that, you know, whatever is it that they think is morality, or if more people go to church, or if they stop doing some kind of sexual sins, or whatever it is that they think America needs to do, I don't believe that that's what's going to remove the coronavirus or earthquakes or anything else, but that would be my initial answer, mostly because you have to understand context, redemptive historic understanding of scripture.

And we even mentioned this in our podcast that came out, what is today? Thursday? Yesterday, in Proverbs, understanding who context is and who is applied to. So I don't know if you guys have anything that you want to add to that, or we want to grab

Jimmy, go ahead, I'm happy to say.

Yeah, well, I mean, I think what I was going to say is there's all sorts of nonsense just being flying out right now from Christian social media. And I mean, I can't even bring myself to listen to Christian radio anymore, but that's neither here nor there.

But I mean, honestly, as we think about, I mean, just different pandemics, it's interesting that people would take that view, you know, if my people would pray and they want to throw these verses out, when it's like, well, I mean, if you want to do that reality, I mean, why are we not posting that sort of thing each and every day of each and every month of each and every year?

Because if it's not coronavirus, it's going to be an earthquake. And if it's not an earthquake, it's going to be a hurricane. And if it's not a hurricane, it's going to be this or that or whatever other thing.

And certainly, you know, on a top level, on an objective level, I mean, we want to be, as a church, a people of prayer, that we want to pray and we want to ask. I know I have. I know I have prayed daily that God would heal this globe, that He would show us His common grace and giving doctors and people who develop vaccines and people who develop treatments wisdom as we try to globally fight this pandemic.

I mean, nobody should be rejoicing in this pandemic. I mean, nobody should be taking advantage of this pandemic and saying, we'll see, you know, it's because we have this kind of people in our nation and this kind of people in our nation.

It's like, man, get that nonsense out of here. Like, I can't even hear you right now. I can't even listen to that stuff because, I mean, here's the thing. It's like, this is what I shared with my high school students in a devotional.

I said, your greatest problem is not a pandemic. Your greatest issue is not getting the flu or getting coronavirus. Your greatest issue is waking up and looking at yourself in the mirror and realizing that you're a sin-sick wretch and you're in need of Christ.

And so if coronavirus is the thing that helps you realize that, well, then praise the Lord, but I mean, at the same time, it could be anything, and if it's not coronavirus, it's going to be something else, and so, yes, we want to pray for our nation, we want to pray for all of the nations, we want to pray for the world, but at the same time, like, let's not go out banging our Bibles on our chest and telling people to repent as they're trying to buy toilet paper at.

Walmart.

I mean, that's not going to do any good. Rather, we should be the constant voice of hope in Christ throughout all pandemics and all peacetime. It doesn't really matter. But JP, you go ahead.

Sure, man.

You touch his microphone right now and you might get burned.

Yeah, that's right.

We need the fire emoji. So I've gotten this question from people in my own church in the last week or two and from other people that I've run into, even like the CrossFit box before it got shut down, and people are like, is this the judgment of God, this COVID -19 pandemic, and my answer, in short, is, well, no, not directly, because we can't make that statement.

So this is where I would go. I mean, we can say that any kind of sickness, death, suffering, horror is all the result of sin, and by that I mean sin is a condition in the curse, Genesis 3, the.

Fall.

Genesis 3 world.

Now, correct. We have to be very careful to draw straight lines from particular sins to particular judgment. We are told, when we read Scripture, the only time we can do that, in my opinion, and stand on solid footing is when God has revealed it to us in the Bible.

So God did give us a commentary on redemptive history and how he dealt with.

Israel.

It's called the prophets. And so he did tell us specifically at points, I am acting this way because of this transgression. So we can state that, but then we need to be really careful to not extrapolate that that was uniquely situated with God's covenant people in Israel, extrapolate that now to America in the year 2020.

The other thing I'll say is briefly, John, I know we've got to shut this part down and move the members' podcast. I take my cue from Jesus on this. I'm mindful of Christ's words in Luke 13, the first few verses of that chapter, where he is talking to a Jewish audience and he says, you've heard about the Galileans who Pilate slaughtered and mixed their blood with the sacrifices.

Do you think that they were any worse than you? He says, no, if you don't repent, you'll likewise perish. He goes on to say, or what about those 18 people that the tower in Siloam fell on and killed them?

Do you think that they were worse than you? No, they weren't. Truly, I tell you, no, if you don't repent, you'll likewise perish. Or there's John 9, the first three verses, where Jesus and his disciples come upon a blind man and the disciples ask the question, Jesus, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

And Christ says, well, actually, the answer is C, none of the above. Neither of them sinned, so the works of God might be displayed. The point is, we need to be very careful to draw those kinds of straight lines in terms of cause and effect.

What it should do for all of us, to Jimmy's point, is it demonstrates to all of us the frailty of life, the reality of suffering, and points us to our need for Christ, and it should cause us to long for the new heaven and the new earth in that regard.

Last word, very quickly, Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 is filled with people who are commended for faith. We are told in the latter part of that chapter that some of them were conquerors through faith. They conquered and were delivered and all these things.

But then we're also told that some of them through faith were killed and they were sawn in two, and it was clear that God had purposes in both the conquering and in the death and the suffering. And so that we can take confidence in, that God will always do what He means to do, and we are called to trust Him.

And so we just need to be very careful about overstepping and really just kind of speculating, but doing that with the kind of thus saith the Lord stamp on it. We do all kinds of bad when we start to go those directions.

All right, I'm stopping, John. Thank you for letting me talk.

He got it.