Christ, the Corona Virus and the Cross, Part 1| Christ, the Corona Virus, and the Cross

Selected Scriptures

The Bible describes a God who is both transcendent, high and lofty and on his throne, never changing, always consistent, faithful, perfect, eternal, infinite. At the same time, that God is imminent, he is near. And that God visits every single land with its own particular trial, judgments, challenges, graces. Our God is a God who is both far and near. He is transcendent and he is imminent.

And our God rules and reigns not just over his chosen people Israel from back in the Old Testament, but every single nation on the earth at that time and every time since. God has direct involvement in every nation on the earth and every single human being. But don’t think of him as remote and uninvolved. Don’t think of him as watching as something he didn’t plan take effect.

Also, I want to caution you not to recoil from the fact that Christ is sovereign over the Corona virus. I don’t want you to back away from the thought that Christ sovereignly directs the spread of the Corona virus, its effects, all the reactions to this disease. Don’t draw back from the truth that he planned it, that he ordained it, that he has executed this trial according to his perfect will and for all of his purposes.

Because, beloved, if you think that somebody else or just the virus itself with its own thinking is in control and Christ is not control, you’re severely mistaken. There is no hope if Christ is not sovereign over this virus. Beloved, there is no other Savior. There is none. So don’t withdraw from the truth of his sovereignty. If you pull away from the sovereignty of God that he’s in control, that he planned this, that he’s in charge, that he controls every single instance of spread, if you pull away from that, you’ll wander into a hopeless abyss.

The fact that we have a God who is sovereign and in control, though it’s difficult to bear, though the affliction is troubling, you need to embrace that. Because that God is our Savior. And if we embrace the fact that he is sovereign over the Corona virus, sovereign over this time, sovereign over the reactions, counterreactions, and all the rest, if we embrace that fact then we need to step back and think and learn from what he wants to teach to all of us.

So we’re gonna talk about Christ, the Corona virus and the cross. We’re gonna ask a key question: What is Christ doing with this Corona virus? And then we’re going to address that question, what is Christ doing with the Corona virus, we’re gonna address that question in three ways. Here’s the first. What is Christ doing with the Corona virus in the world? When I say “in the world,” I mean the unbelieving world.

What is Christ doing with the Corona virus in the unbelieving world? What’s the answer? Number one, Christ is judging the transgressing world. Christ is judging the transgressing world. We sometimes watch children at play. I don’t know about you. I love to watch children playing. I think the older I get, the more I count that to be precious.

And as children go out to discover the world that they live in, especially the young ones, they, they wander around and fields or in forests or whatever and they happen upon an anthill. An anthill that’s fairly perfectly formed. You know, it’s got the mound. And there’s thousands upon thousands of little red ants hurrying there inside and out. Here and there, all over this anthill.

And most children seem to find themselves at that moment of discovering this anthill, observing it for a moment, they’re overcome with an irresistible temptation. An impulse to pick up a stick and to poke it into that little anthill and to disturb and disrupt the ants from their routines. They teem, seem to take a little bit of pleasure in that, don’t they? When a little girl holds the stick, there seems to be a little bit of compassion that restrains her hand from moving it around too vigorously, but a boy, he’s gonna stir it up with great aggressions.

As the child sits back to watch what happens next, he sees those ants scurrying around and they’re trying to recover from the great stick. They are immediately scurrying around, hustling and bustling about their little disrupted dirt pile. And they’re trying to put their world back together. Those little ants just get busy, don’t they? They just scurry about to put the world back together, to return to normal.

That is exactly what’s happened in our country and around the world, too. God has taken this great stick called the Corona virus and he has stirred up all of our little kingdoms. And he’s disrupted our peace. He’s disrupted our routines. He’s put an end to our normal. We’re trying our best to blunt the effect of  great stick, mitigate the disruption, treat the afflicted.

We’ll also making plans right now to repair our little kingdoms and get our lives back to normal. And there are ants that we have in our times specializing in government and economics and social rebuilding. And they’re hard at work too. And trying to do all that. And they’re trying to make sure we have good plans for the future. And they’re having to do it in a changing world, having a great deal of uncertainty. No firm numbers or numbers that continue to be changing all the time.

At the end of the day, who is it that stops to think about the hand that is holding the great stick? God asked rhetorically through Amos the prophet, Amos 3:6, “Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has done it?” Said something similar through the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 45:7, God takes full responsibility, he says, “I formed light and create darkness; I make well-being and I create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.”

Listen, don’t back off, try to get God off the hook for things like this. God takes full responsibility as the primary mover, primary cause. Same thing in the prophet Jeremiah, Lamentations 3:38, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?” I realize that there are certain prejudices and biases in the unbelieving world view. Prejudices biases against God, against supernatural thing, and they predispose unbelievers to scorn everything that I just said.

It’s not my word. It’s what the Scripture teaches. They scorn the Word of God. They have no regard for it. They just call this utter nonsense, and they make fun of what I just said, what I just read from Scripture. They make fun of it as some superstitious mumbo jumbo. Mad ravings of a premodern world. Well they didn’t know better. Well they didn’t know things like gene studies. And they didn’t understand anything like viruses and bacteria. They don’t understand how things like that spread and they make fun of it. This angry Old Testament deity.

Well the Apostle Paul warned against that attitude in 2 Thessalonians 1:7, that God will recompense the ungodly, and that’s what that attitude is, to scorn scripture. That is an ungodly attitude. God will recompense the ungodly with affliction. It says in 2 Thessalonians 1:7 and following, “When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who did not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.”

Christ himself is coming back to earth, folks. The Scripture is very clear about that in both testaments, Old and New Testaments. In fact, if you think this is just about the Old Testament angry God, think again. In Revelation 19, we read about Christ the sovereign King. It says this in Revelation 19, “Then I saw heaven opened, behold, a white horse! And the one sitting on that white horse is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself.

“He’s clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. […] From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”

Very Old Testament sounding, isn’t it? “Tread the fury of the wrath of God in the winepress.” When grapes are tread upon, it has a blood red appearance. You think the Corona virus is bad, you think the social economic political fallout from the response to this pandemic is bad, my friend, consider the Word of God. Judgment is coming. Judgment is coming. And it’s not just a judgment upon the earth.

It’s not just physical. It’s not just temporal. That is coming. But that is a prelude to a spiritual judgment, an eternal judgment for all those who despise Christ, despise God, turn away from his salvation, turn away from the Christ. They will suffer the judgment of eternal hell. What we’re experiencing now? Just a short preview. Just a light momentary affliction to prepare our minds for the coming wrath.

My unbelieving friend, I’m speaking directly to you. Don’t be like the little ant. Don’t be like a dumb animal. Don’t be like an ant that pays no attention to this stick or the hand holding the stick. In my little silly illustration, it was a child holding that stick. In truth, the one who holds the great Corona virus stick is the hand of the living God and he is no child. He is no one to be trifled with. He is no one to dismiss or disregard.

That God is infinite and eternal. He is holy and he is mighty. He is perfect and his judgments are true. And when he plans, he will execute and he will execute all of his fury on all the ungodly deeds of the ungodly, who despise and scorn him. My friend do not be like a little ant. Don’t be like a dumb animal by refusing to reflect on the meaning of the Corona virus.

You, my friend, are created in the image of God. And being created in his image, you have by his hand the gift of reason. The gift to reflect, to think, to the ability to recognize beauty and goodness and all of his common grace, his kindness to you. You have the necessary sense that he has given you in your heart, in your conscience of morality.

You understand coming from that morality a sense of righteousness, of good and evil, right, and wrong. You have a sense of morality and from that al, morality, a sense of ethics. How you ought to relate to your fellow human beings. You have the ability to understand matters of both right and wrong, good and evil. You make moral judgments. In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, when he formed and filled the earth, the crowning jewel of his creation is mankind.

By creating us in his image as male and female, God endowed us with honor. He elevated us above the rest of his creatures in order that we would care for all the creatures of the world. In order that we would exercise care and dominion of all the earth. Friends, God gave us these gifts and abilities that we might not act like the rest of the creatures that we exercise over, but that we would rise above them as human beings created in God’s image and exercise our reason. That we might think that we might reason and find out the meaning of things.

So what does Christ want the world to think about now that he has sent the Corona virus? What does he want to think, us to think about with all this fallout, all these repercussions, all these consequences? Let me suggest a few thoughts for your reflection. My family and I have been working our way through Deuteronomy and Romans at various times and we’re just reminding ourselves of themes that we don’t want to forget. Themes about the righteousness and justice of God. Themes about his mercy and his grace.

In fact, you might want to turn there to Romans chapter 1 because in Romans, the, Romans is well-known as really the Gospel that’s expanded and filled out. God, God has given us a great gift in Paul’s letter to the Romans. This is expanded book on the Gospel itself, especially those first 11 chapters to talk about all of God’s thinking and how the, how the Gospel is unpacked from start to finish.

And in Romans, as Paul traces the revelation of God’s perfect righteousness in the Gospel, he starts in the very first chapter, chapter 1, and verse 18 with the revelation of the righteousness of God in this. The righteousness of God revealed in the wrath of God. Romans 1:18. So what is God so angry about? How have we provoked this deity, the only true and living God, how have we provoked him to wrath? Why is the world guilty? Why is the world under God’s condemnation? Why is the world fearing his wrath?

Well it starts with idolatry. God takes that very seriously. There is only one true living God and anybody who turns away from him to worship anything else is an idolator. And idolatry is really exchanging the truth of God for any lie. Worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator. So all of this wrath of God being revealed, it starts with our false worship. It starts with our unbelief, turning away from him, turning away from his goodness and his grace, elevating man over God.

Celebrating the pride of human achievement and thinking, autonomous human reason. Coming from an unbelieving God-rejecting set of premises. We’ve watched our own country, along with the rest of the world, the western world, the developed world. But really, it’s really spread all over as, that the same modern, modernistic culture has kind of covered the entire earth, being transferred not only by, by technology that allows us to travel from one place to another, but Communication technology to transfer to images and video and words from place to place until we’re all participating in the same culture.

We’re taking part in the same sins. We’re taking part in the same thinking. And so we’re all together in this world, we’re this, world community. We’re taking pride in our own learning. We’re, we’re thinking so much of our own discovery, our own science. Come to trust in the god of progress. Progress is gonna fix it all. Tomorrow there will be a solution. We’ll find an answer to this and a cure for that. We just keep chasing one mirage after another. And we’re congratulating ourselves that we have evolved beyond the need for a God, for any divine crutch.

So the world, the unbelieving world refuses to honor God as God. They refuse to give thanks and God is angry over that. He’s angry because he is the source of all their ability to develop, to grow, to build technology, to discover things, to think their way, to reason their way to anything, to find cures for anything. They don’t see the divine hand that blesses. They don’t honor him as God, and they don’t give thanks.

And therefore, Romans 1:24, look at it there. “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.” Listen, our, our land has become saturated in sexual immorality, fornication, adultery and, now in the digital age, pornographers spread that garbage all over the place. They turn men and women alike and they get into our homes, into our boys and girls and they train us to be a nation and world of leering, sexually depraved Peeping Toms watching each other commit lude and vile acts with one another. It’s degrading. It is dishonoring. It is destructive and God hates it.

From all of that sexual immorality, there are consequences to that. None of this is, oh, just a sin that I commit, and it doesn’t hurt anybody else. Divorce comes out of this. Because when love and covenant is broken, when love is offended and spurned and scorned, people are hurt. People, do, covenants are broken. No-fault divorce means adulteries are multiplied exponentially. Children grown up without one or both of their parents. They’re passed around from relative to relative. These poor grandparents having to take care of generations below them after they’ve raised their own children. Then they’re handed over another set of children. But they no energy, no time, no ability.

So cruelty abound in this cold heartless age. Most graphically, most vividly, most violently in this social scrouge called abortion, which is really just a vile euphemism for such a crime. Let’s call this sin for what it is, shall we? The crime is the murder of innocent children. While they are still in the womb, while they’re utterly helpless, when they are supposed to be nurtured in the warmth and the safety and the sanctity of their mother’s protective womb, they are ripped apart. They are torn asunder, poisoned, torn limb from limb.

And to the tune of more than a million babies every single year. It’s been going on for decades in our own country. Not to mention the rest of the world. Who knows that the real number is? Beloved, not even, not even the pagans in the Old Testament days, not even the pagans, who were living in the land of Canaan and sacrificing their own children to the evil god Molech could have developed the kind of sophistication that we have in murdering the innocent.

Our own flesh and blood in shedding innocent blood, our lands our covered, drenched in blood. And still, God is patient. Why is he patient? What is he waiting for? Tell you what he’s waiting for. He’s waiting for us to see this degradation. He’s waiting for the unbelieving in our land to wake up to the defilement. And to see the depths to which they have fallen. And recognize the horror and to repent of their sins.

But they don’t, do they? In Romans 1:26, “For this reason,” look at it there. “For this reason God gave up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise also gave up natural relationship with, with women. They’re consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

Homosexuality has become the sin de rigueur. It’s a kind of immorality that’s now considered fashionable and cool and trendy. “But let’s not get too fashionable with homosexuality, they say, “lest it lose it risqué transgressive appeal.” Because, after all, that is what makes all sexual immorality and now homosexual immorality and every other perversion so appealing is its transgressive element. That sense of guilt and violating the conscience that heightens the experience.

So bored with normal transgressions, they’re inflamed with lust for further and deeper and even more defiling transgression. But rather than waking up as they receive in themselves the due penalty for their error, rather than turning to God to confess their sins and to repent, to follow him in faith and obedience, the transgressors seem to have won the day in our time, haven’t they? They’ve taken the power in society and culture. All the children of the sixties and the seventies are now in positions of, of influence in our universities and colleges and they’re creating greater transgressions than themselves. Their ruling on high in our government, in our, in Washington, the state governments as well. They put pressure on judges and lawmakers, presidents, governors to celebrate this perversion. No one can rest, it seems, until tolerance is replaced with outright celebration, rejoicing, giving hearty approval to those who practice sin and iniquity and transgression.

And the more it goes, the more we rip ourselves apart. And so Romans 1:28, “Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” Are we not seeing that? A debased mind is so evident. It’s so self-evident, the face of it in the ludicrous insane causes that many people seem to be so eager to champion in these dark and evil days. Everything from Critical Theory, Social Justice, transgenderism, denying the reality of something as basic as this fact that there are two sexes: male and female. That’s it! Obvious!

But they, the moral revolutionaries, are trying to change the language. They’re forcing everyone to use words that reinforce moral norms in defiance of God’s love. They’re even trying to change laws and customs, allowing the state the step in between the parent and the child. Giving children the right to sue their own parents.

I don’t know if you’ve heard the story in Canada. The state stepping in to take away the parental rights of a father who doesn’t want his child to transition from one gender, the gender, I believe it’s a girl in this case, she was born with. And transition to a, a, a boy. Taking hormones and going through irreversible destructive surgery. The father’s loving concern to, he’s not even opposed in principle. He’s just saying, “Let’s wait until she’s a little older.” But he’s now, all of his loving concern is being interpreted as hatred. He’s being branded a criminal, doing violence by restraining his child’s folly.

What’s the point of this moral revolution? What’s the point? What are they after? It’s to force everyone to accommodate and celebrate their debased worthless useless minds. This is the modern version of Babylon’s idolatry, that when you hear the sound of the horn and the pipe and the lyre, the horn, the bagpipe, the harp, every kind of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image. And the golden image in this case is a phallic symbol. Get with the program. Do not stand. Do not impede. Do not stand in the way.

Listen, folks, and especially you, my unbelieving friend, listen. God has taken this Corona virus stick and he has intentionally disrupted your world. It’s intentional. He’s taken away your peace. He’s added anxiety to your life. He’s brought disorientation and discombobulation into your mind. He’s put an end to your normal. You want to get back to normal? You want to get back to normal life and normal living?

Because normal in what I’ve just described means getting back to your fornication and your adultery and your pornography and your divorce and your abortion, your abusing and being abused, and your sorrow and sorrowing. You want that? You want to get back to your homosexual behavior and celebrate your perversion, continue to defy the living God? Please, please, don’t long to get back to normal.

Instead, my unbelieving friend, wake up from your sin-induced coma. Repent of your sins and put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who died on the cross 2000 years ago to bear the sins of everyone who would re, repent and believe. Don’t, don’t wait another day. Don’t wait another day. Time is running out, judgment is coming. And the Corona virus, you need to understand, is only a brief and very weak preview.