Faith and Wisdom Amidst Global Uncertainty

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In situations like this, it is very easy to lose faith and to live in fear of the headlines and the unknowns, and this global uncertainty has now reached into the States. But several days ago, we began hearing from podcast listeners around Southeast Asia who offered updates on the situation there. [00:58:46]

Jesus has all foreknowledge, all authority over the natural and supernatural forces of this world. He knows exactly where the virus started, where it's going next. He has complete power to restrain it or not, and that's what's happening. Neither sin nor Satan nor sickness nor sabotage is stronger than Jesus. [00:04:33]

When sin entered the world through Adam and Eve, God ordained that the created order, including our physical bodies as persons created in His image, would experience corruption and futility, and that all living things would die. Christians, by being saved through the gospel of God's grace, do not escape this physical corruption, futility, and death. [00:06:05]

The basis of this point is Romans 8:22-23: the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him, God, who subjected it in hope that the creation itself would be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. [00:06:36]

The difference for Christians who trust Christ is that our experience of this corruption is not condemnation. Romans 8:1: there is therefore now no condemnation. The pain for us is purifying, not punitive. God has not destined us for wrath. First Thessalonians 5:10: we die of disease like all men, not necessarily because of any particular sin. [00:08:03]

God sometimes inflicts sickness on His people as a purifying and rescuing judgment, which is not a condemnation but an act of mercy for His saving purposes. And the point, that point, is based on First Corinthians 11:29-32. That text deals with misusing the Lord's Supper, but the principle is broader. [00:08:44]

The Lord Jesus takes the life of His loved ones through weakness and illness—the very same words, by the way, used to describe the weaknesses and illnesses that Jesus heals in His earthly life, Matthew 14:14—and brings them to heaven. He brings them to heaven because of the trajectory of their sin that He was cutting off and saving them from. [00:10:01]

God sometimes uses disease to bring particular judgments upon those who reject Him and give themselves over to sin. Two examples: Acts 12:23, Herod the king exalted in being called a god. He exalted himself, and verse 23, immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down because he did not give glory to God. [00:11:09]

All natural disasters, whether floods, famines, locusts, tsunamis, or diseases, are a thunderclap of divine mercy in the midst of judgment, calling all people everywhere to repent and realign their lives by grace with the infinite worth of the glory of God. [00:13:13]

The basis for that building block is Luke 13:1-5. Pilate had slaughtered worshippers in the temple, and the Tower of Siloam had collapsed and killed 18 bystanders. The crowds want to know from Jesus, just like I've been asked, okay, make sense of this, Jesus. Tell us what you think about these natural disasters. [00:13:25]

Here's Jesus' answer in Luke 13:5: those eighteen on whom the Tower of Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. [00:13:48]

That's the message of Jesus to the world at this moment in history under the coronavirus—a message to every single human being, me and you, Tony, and everybody who's listening, and every ruler on the planet. Every person who hears about this is receiving a thunderclap message of God saying repent. [00:14:19]

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