What is God doing through the Coronavirus?

At this moment, I am sitting in my house, theoretically enjoying my remaining vacation days left, but in reality, my family and I are in close-contact quarantine because of coronavirus exposure.  Having some time on my hands and unable to really go anywhere, I got to thinking about how COVID-19 has affected our lives so profoundly this past year.

Each of you reading this has experienced it.  Fear, especially at the beginning, of the unknown regarding this virus.  Loved ones dying or becoming seriously sick because of the virus.  Our lives being shut down and constrained to prevent the spread of the disease.  Enduring the social distancing that is required.  Suffering with the discomfort of wearing a mask in public settings.  Vacations being cancelled and visits with loved ones limited to phone or video calls because of travel restrictions or border closure.  Disagreements between families and friends over COVID-19 “facts” and mask wearing.  And now, with vaccines becoming available, being told time and time again that the vaccine is our salvation for this thing.

All of these things and more are reminding me that, as believers, we need to have a proper theological perspective on this whole matter.  I don’t see a lot of that happening.  I see a lot of angry Christians.  I see a lot of fearful Christians.  I see a lot of Christian spending a great deal of time and energy figuring out ways to skirt government mandates like mask-wearing requirements.  I hear Christians grumbling about how this whole virus situation has been politicized.  I see Christians putting their own comfort ahead of the safety and health of the corporate body.  But I don’t see a lot of Christians resting in God, assured of his sovereign control in the midst of a pandemic.  I don’t see a lot of Christians that reflect an assurance, deep in their hearts, that God is big enough to use even this for his great and gracious purposes.  And admittedly, I have been guilty at times of a number of the things I just listed.  It is hard in these circumstances to rest in God.

But rest in God is what we must do.  This is a prime opportunity for believers to show
the difference Christ makes in a heart.  This is a prime opportunity to demonstrate the fruit of a mind that is being renewed (Rom. 12:2).  This is a great time to display the transformation that comes as part of the new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17).  And those things involve trusting that God is in charge, that God is purposeful and that we can live our lives trusting in His plan.

Recently I finished an excellent little book entitled Coronavirus and Christ by John Piper.  John Piper seeks to assure us that though times are not normal, and sometimes life seems to be spinning out of control, God is still worthy of our trust.  He is still righteous, holy and good.  He is sovereign over the coronavirus.  And he can use even the coronavirus to fulfill His good purposes.

At the end of the book, Piper lists 6 things that he believes God is doing amidst the coronavirus pandemic.  I want to share them with you to remind us of how we should be looking at this pandemic as believers.

 What is God doing through the Coronavirus?

1.         God is giving the world in the coronavirus outbreak, as in all other calamities, a physical picture of the moral horror and spiritual ugliness of God-belittling sin.  Human sin has corrupted everything.  The coronavirus is another picture of the horror of that sin.

2.         Some people will be infected with the coronavirus as a specific judgment from God because of their sinful attitudes and actions.  Not all individual suffering is a specific judgment for personal sin, but some is.

3.         The coronavirus is a God-given wake-up call to be ready for the second coming of Christ.  The pandemic is part of the birth pangs (Matt. 24:7-8), evidence of the groaning of creation awaiting the full redemption of the people of God (Rom. 8:18-25).

4.         The coronavirus is God’s thunderclap call for all of us to repent and realign our lives with the infinite worth of Christ.  God is showing us – graphically, painfully – that nothing in this world gives the security and satisfaction that we find in Christ.

5.         The coronavirus is God’s call to His people to overcome self-pity and fear and with courageous joy, to do the good works of love that glorify God.

6.         In the coronavirus God is loosening the roots of settled Christians, all over the world, to make them free for something new and radical and to send them with the gospel of Christ to the unreached peoples of the world.  The pandemic will ultimately serve God’s invincible global purpose of world evangelization.

Is this all God is doing through the coronavirus?  Surely not.  But this is enough to rest on right now, enough to assure ourselves that God is sovereign and righteous and holy and good and that He is worthy to be trusted, even in the midst of a pandemic.

Coronavirus and the Prayer of Daniel

I was reading through Daniel 9 the other day and there were two verses that leaped out at me as soon as I read them.  Daniel 9:13-14 reads:

As it is written in the Law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us; yet we have not entreated the favor of the Lord our God, turning from our iniquities and gaining insight by your truth. Therefore the Lord has kept ready the calamity and has brought it upon us, for the Lord our God is righteous in all the works that he has done, and we have not obeyed his voice. (Dan. 13:13-14, ESV)

Immediately after I read those verses, I was struck by the parallels between Daniel’s situation and our own in the midst of a pandemic.  Both of us are experiencing a calamity, and our nation’s response unfortunately seems to be the same as the response of God’s people during Daniel time.

I want to be clear – Daniel’s situation is not an exact parallel of ours.  In Daniel 9, we are told that Daniel recognized that the 70 years of Jewish exile in Babylon predicted by the prophet Jeremiah were almost over.  As a result of his realization, he devotes extensive time to prayer, confessing the sins of his people and asking God, in his mercy and forgiveness to restore them to their land.  His prayer can be found in Daniel 9:3-19. 

The calamity that has come upon them is one predicted by the Law of Moses.  In places like Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, the people of God are warned of the curses for disobedience, which included defeat at the hands of their enemies and captivity far from their homeland.  In his prayer, Daniel confesses that his people deserved such a calamity – they were aware of the price of disobedience and disobeyed anyways.  Daniel seeks God’s face, asking that this time of calamity would come to an end.

We too are experiencing calamity.  While it would be unwise to tie the COVID-19 situation to a specific Scripture passage, the pandemic we are experiencing is the result of sin.  In the broadest sense, since human sin has corrupted each of us as individuals and all of this world we live in, we can fairly say that sin is ultimately behind the COVID-19 epidemic.

What I was struck by as I read Daniel’s prayer was the response of his people.  Despite the calamity they experienced at the hand of God, the Jewish people did not entreat God’s favor, they did not turn from their sins and they did not gain insight from God’s truth.  As a result, the Lord has “kept ready” the calamity.  This phrase refers to God watching over the calamity and allowing it to continue until the time allotted to it has passed.  Because God’s people had not obeyed God’s voice, their calamity continued.

We too are in the midst of calamity – a worldwide pandemic.  How have we responded to it?  We have social distanced ourselves.  We have shut down our economies.  We have sought out drugs and researched vaccines.  All these things are likely necessary responses.  But have we turned to God?  Statistics show that instead of turning to God, we have turned to other things.  Streaming services are up 34% as people are stuck at home and turn to entertainment as an answer.  Alcohol sales are up 25 to 40%, depending on the type of alcohol, despite the fact that alcohol is readily available and liquor stores remain open.  Marijuana dispensaries, open because they are deemed “essential” businesses, have seen sales spike between 33 and 75 percent, depending on the state.  And pornography use has spiked in the US and worldwide by 18%, with some major pornography companies seeing the pandemic as an opportunity to get more people addicted to their “product.”

Let’s remind ourselves of Daniel’s words.  God’s people had calamity brought upon them, and they did not call out for God’s favor, they did not turn from their sin and they did not seek insight into these things in God’s truth.  Sadly, we are no different as a nation.  This is a time for us to be different as believers.  To use our extra time to entreat the favor of God.  To use this time for gaining insight into God’s truth as found in God’s word.  And instead of diving even deeper into sin, to ask for the transforming grace of God to empower us to increasingly turn from our sins and seek the face of the One who loves us and gave his One and Only Son so that we could know Him and live for Him, both now and for eternity.

Best Books of 2019 - Fiction

This is third of 3 yearly lists of the best books I read in 2019.  This post contains the best fiction books I read this year.

The Black Prism by Brent Weeks.  Brent Weeks’ Lightbringer series, of which The Black Prism is the first, is a wonderful addition to my collection of fantasy epics.  While it has the seemingly prototype clueless hero, it has a very unique power/magic system and wonderful world building.  With many story arcs and characters you either love or hate, Weeks’ books keep you coming back for more.  I am patiently waiting for the 5^th and last book to come out in paperback.  The other titles in the Lightbringer series I read this year are:  The Blinding Knife, The Broken Eye and The Blood Mirror.

Empire of Glass by Tad Williams.  William’s series, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, still remains one of my favorite fantasy series.  Empire of Glass is book 2 of a series set in the same world, but decades after the first trilogy.  This book picks up where book 1 ends and drives the various threads of the story along.  And, not surprisingly, Williams leaves you hanging at the end waiting for book 3.  GRRRR!

Tombland by C. J. Sansom.  This is another one of Sansom’s magnificent Shardlake historical mysteries.  Set in 1549 in England, after the death of Henry VIII and during the reign of his son Edward, lawyer Matthew Shardlake, while investigating a mystery, gets caught up in a peasant revolt against the ruling nobility.  The book is long and imposing looking – 866 pages! – but is well-paced and fascinating, both as a mystery and as history.

2^nd Tier reads – good, recommended, just not up to the level of those above:

Fire and Blood by George R. R. Martin

Malice by John Gwynne

Outcasts of Order by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

The Death of Dulgath by Michael J. Sullivan

Twelve Kings in Sharakhai by Bradley P. Beaulieu

Deep Fathom by James Rollins

3^rd Tier reads, somewhat disappointing:

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Best Ministry-Related Books of 2019

This is the second of three blog articles about the best books I read in 2019.  This list is about the ministry-related books I read, which span from church history to theology to analysis on current cultural trends.

Love Thy Body:  Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality by Nancy R. Pearcey.  Hands down the best ministry-related book I read last year.  Pearcey does what she claims in her title – she unmasks the evils of personhood theory and relates in stark, logical detail how a denial of our created body affects many areas of life, including abortion, sexuality, marriage and even parenting.  This should be required reading for any Christian serious about understanding our times.

Holy Sexuality and the Gospel:  Sex, Desire and Relationships Shaped by God’s Grand Story by Christopher Yuan.  I heard Dr. Yuan speak at Montana Bible College’s Pastors conference a few years back and was eagerly awaiting his book.  Yuan is a celibate, same-sex attracted believer who teaches at Moody Bible Institute.  His book speaks to same-sex attraction, marriage and singleness, as well as the need for all believers to find their primary identity in Christ above all else.

Union with Christ:  The Way to Know and Enjoy God by Rankin Wilbourne.  I read Union with Christ with my associate pastor and we both enjoyed it greatly.  Wilbourne blows the dust off the doctrine of union with Christ, a reality that all believers enjoy but few understand or truly embrace.  The book is very practical and applicable in many ways.

 

Gospel Eldership:  Equipping a New Generation of Servant Leaders by Robert H. Thune.  This short book will likely become a wonderful tool in developing and training elders.  It has some great homework at the end of each chapter.  It is so good it might replace my usual go-to book – They Smell Like Sheep.

The Question of Canon:  Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate by Michael Kruger.  I find origin of the Bible a fascinating topic.  Kruger’s book addresses the whole debate about the origin of the New Testament with a fair, but thoroughly conservative position, all the while excellently rebutting the assumed liberal positions about how the New Testament was written and came into its final form.

Even Better than Eden:  Nine Ways the Bible’s Story changes Everything about Your Story by Nancy Guthrie.  This is biblical theology done well.  Guthrie traces nine redemptive themes that span the entire Bible.  Each theme is traced all the way through to its ultimate fulfillment in heaven, encouraging us to remind ourselves that heaven will be even better than the life Adam and Eve lived in the garden of Eden.

God’s Design for Man and Woman by Andreas and Margaret Kostenberger.  This is an excellent survey of a difficult topic – gender roles in the Bible.  This husband and wife team survey the whole Bible, examine what it says about roles and when necessary, critique the egalitarian and feminist interpretations that challenge or question what the Bible says.  The footnotes and appendixes are also worth mining for more valuable information and resources.

Sacred Marriage: What is God designed Marriage to Make us Holy more than to Make us Happy? by Gary Thomas.  This is an older book, and some of the examples are dated, but the truths are timeless.  Thomas tackles many of the usual topics of a marriage book, but delves deeper than most.  He also addresses topics that most books of marriage do not cover in a thought provoking way.

2^nd Tier Reads – still very good and recommended.

Letters to the Church by Francis Chan

Unlimited Grace:  The Heart Chemistry that Frees from Sin and Fuels the Christian Life by Bryan Chapell

2000 Years of Christ’s Power, Renaissance and Reformation, vol. 3 by Nick Needham

A Shelter in the Time of Storm: Meditations on God and Trouble by Paul Tripp

Handbook of Church Discipline:  A Right and Privilege of Every Church Member by Jay Adams

Psalms by the Day:  A New Devotional Translation by Alec Motyer

Give them Grace:  Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson

Church Discipline:  How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus by Jonathan Leeman

Journey Through Philippians by Tara Barndt

Man Overboard:  The Story of Jonah by Sinclair B. Ferguson

The Prodigal Prophet:  Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy by Timothy Keller

Ecclesiastes by Douglas Sean O’Donnell

Ecclesiastes by Craig G. Bartholomew

Ecclesiastes:  Why Everything Matters by Philip Ryken

A Life Well Lived:  A Study of the Book of Ecclesiastes by Tommy Nelson

Living Life Backward:  How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End by David Gibson

God’s Glory Alone:  The Majestic Heart of Christian Faith and Life by David Vandrunen

Christianity at the Crossroads:  How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church by Michael J. Kruger

Uncomfortable:  The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community by Brett McCracken

The Church in Babylon:  Heeding the Call to be a Light in the Darkness by Erwin Lutzer

How Does Sanctification Work? by David Powlison

Isaiah by the Day:  A New Devotional Translations by Alec Motyer

All That’s Good:  Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment by Hannah Anderson

3^rd Tier Reads – disappointing in some ways

Developing Female Leaders:  Navigate the Minefields and Release the Potential of Women in Your Church by Kadi Cole

The Book of Ecclesiastes by Tremper Longman III

Recovering Eden:  The Gospel according to Ecclesiastes by Zach Eswine

Why Everything Matters:  The Gospel in Ecclesiastes by Philip Ryken

Uggh!!  I am amazed I finished it

Tyndale:  The Man Who gave God an English Voice by David Teems

Best Reads of 2019 - History/Biography

I have already been asked by a few people, “Jeff, where is your list of best books for 2019?”  I admit, I am a bit behind.  Having a 2-year old in your house will do that to you….

This is the first of three blog articles about the best books I read in 2019.  I typically divide my reading into three broad categories – fiction, ministry related and history/biography.  Here are the history/biography books I read that stood out as exceptional, in the past year, as well as a list of the others I had the privilege of reading.

Hoover:  An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte.  This book was hands-down the best biography I read this year, perhaps the best I have read in a number of years.  I did not know much about Hoover before reading this book – I knew he had fed Europe after World War I, had been president at the beginning of the Great Depression and I had heard about the “Hoovervilles” during the Depression.  But I had no idea how accomplished or fascinating his life was before his Presidency and even after his Presidency.  Excellent book on one of the more interesting American presidents.

Sword and Scimitar:  Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West by Raymond Ibrahim.  Ibrahim, who is an Arab Christian, surveys 8 pivotal battles between Islam and the “Christian” West.  There is no political correctness in this book – he tells it like it is.  There is also no attempt to whitewash history and portray Islam as a “religion of peace.”  Don’t get me wrong – the Christians are not always the heroes here, often there are no heroes.  But this is necessary history for every Christian to know and absorb.

Rampage:  MacArthur, Yamashita and the Battle of Manila by James M. Scott.  This is a grim, grim book.  Read it at your own risk.  Scott paints a powerful portrait of one of the last episodes of World War 2 in the Pacific, the American assault on the Philippine capital of Manila.  The fanaticism and brutality of the Japanese forces is obvious.  MacArthur does not come off well either.  The only heroes are the ordinary American soldiers who endured and ultimately conquered and liberated a ruined city.

Churchill:  Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts.  Roberts is one of the great biographers of our time, and his one volume biography of Winston Churchill does not disappoint.  While Churchill was one of the great leaders of the 20^th century, Roberts does not shy away from his faults.  All in all, a great, even-handed portrayal of a fascinating man.

Midnight in Chernobyl:  The Untold Story of the Worlds Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham.  Another grim book, displaying the power and control of Soviet totalitarianism.  When the Chernobyl meltdown happened, the Soviet response was a mix of ignorance, denial and then desperation.  The ordinary people of Russia were merely pawns to be used to prop up the Soviet regime.

Accidental Presidents:  Eight Men who Changed America by Jared Cohen.  This one surprised me.  I was not expecting much from this book, but it is excellent.  The book is a collection of 8 brief biographies of the men who, as vice-presidents, succeeded to office when the president died.  Some of these men are well-known, like Theodore Roosevelt, others are rather obscure, like Chester B. Arthur, but all of the stories are fascinating.

The British are Coming:  The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 by Rick Atkinson.  Atkinson is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and historian whose Liberation Trilogy about the American army in World War 2 Europe is excellent.  In this new series, he turns his attentions to the American War of Independence.  I look forward to the next volumes in what promises to be another excellent set of books by Atkinson.

Prisoner of the Vatican: the Popes, the Kings and Garibaldi’s Rebels in the Struggle to Rule Modern Italy by David I. Kertzer.  This book surprised me as well.  Kertzer’s expertise is on the history of the Popes in the last two centuries.  This book tells the amazing story of how the Pope lost his country (the Papal States), but more importantly, how he moved from being a political and spiritual ruler to being a spiritual ruler only.  Also recommended – The Pope who would be King and The Pope and Mussolini by the same author.

2^nd Tier reads – still very good and recommended

The Spy and the Traitor:  The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben MacIntyre

Frederick Douglass:  Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight

Heirs of the Founders:  The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, The Second Generation of American Giants by H. W. Brands

John Marshall:  The Man who made the Supreme Court by Richard Brookhiser

Spearhead:  An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy and a Collision of Lives in World War 2 by Adam Makos

American Moonshot:  John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race by Douglas Brinkley

The Pioneers:  The Heroic Story of the Settlers who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough

The Cinderella Campaign:  First Canadian Army and the Battles for the Channel Ports by Mark Zuehlke

The Pope and Mussolini:  The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer

Fire and Fortitude:  The US Army in the Pacific War, 1941-43 by John C. McManus

The Pope who Would be King:  The Exile of Pius IX and the Emergence of Modern Europe by David I. Kertzer

African Kaiser:  General Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck and the Great War in Africa, 1914-1918 by Robert Gaudi

The Aleppo Codex:  In Pursuit of One of the World’s Most Coveted, Sacred and Mysterious Books by Matti Friedman

The Last Mughal:  The Fall of a Dynasty, Dehli, 1857 by William Dalrymple

3^rd Tier reads – somewhat disappointing

Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense:  The Courtroom Battle to Save his Legacy by Dan Abrams and David Fisher

Edison by Edmund Morris

Spying on the South:  An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horowitz