Where is God in a Pandemic? (Part 2)
Message Description
Continuing to look at the Old Testament book of Joel, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund talks about continuing to look for the “The Day of the Lord” and how to continue to look to him for grace and mercy, not become numb to distraction and disaster around us.
Message Transcript
So, let me ask you this. Have you ever been in a place where you had to pull a fire alarm? Where you knew that there was a danger? And you were the one who had to decide? Is this enough of a danger that's worthy of pulling a fire alarm or not? And let me just ask the question this way, have you ever pulled a fire alarm just as a joke? Chances are some of you have. And maybe if you are sitting with your family, parents, that could be a story you could tell your kids a little later on.
I have never had to pull a fire alarm personally. But I remember one night a few years back, my wife and I were in a hotel. And throughout the night, the fire alarm kept sounding and we were on a higher floor and so you were not supposed to use the elevator. And so, three different times during the night we had to vacate our room, walked down all the flights of stairs out onto the street to be told it was a false alarm. And then we would go back up fall asleep and the fire alarm would go off again and all of this and there was never an explanation. My guess is there was somebody in the lounge who probably thought it was funny or something like that to make this all happen. But what happened was soon, you got to a point where you said this fire alarm does not mean anything. If people can say whatever they want to say, but I do not believe there is a fire.
Well, we began a series in the book of Joel last weekend talking about how and where God is in a pandemic. And what we saw in Chapter One, is that when life is disrupted God is inviting people to cry out to Him to see that we don't have as much control as we think we do, that our resources aren't as meaningful or as substantial as we think they are, that our pleasures aren't as lasting as we think they are. But that we are not as hopeless as we think we are either because we can cry out to God and God responds well to the people who cry out to Him.
But in chapter two, we begin with this and this is really about this this locust plague. It says, “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let at all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming. It is close at hand.” And so here, in essence, like Joel was saying, I want you to pull a fire alarm. Now they did not have fire alarms back then. But what he was saying was blow the trumpet, sound the alarm, the day of the Lord's coming is close at hand.
And so, he said, because of the Locust plague chapter one, verse four and following talks about this locust plague. And locusts were grasshoppers that basically came in mass and destroyed vegetation. This would be like a group of teenage boys at a pizza party just sweeping their way through the pizza and nothing is left. Okay, this is actually worse than that because it leaves devastation. And what Joel says is I want you to sound the alarm because when you see a disruption like this, it means that the Lord's coming is at hand, the Lord's day, the day of the Lord is at hand.
But what happens is sometimes we see disasters come and go. And we start to feel like I felt that night in the hotel room, maybe there is nothing to this fire alarm, maybe there will be no future, real Day of the Lord. But Joel says very clearly here, that he wants us to understand that there is coming a day and that the day of disruption and disaster that we experience is actually a harbinger of a different day, the day of the Lord.
How I gave you a definition last week from J.D. Barker. I want to read it again, I want to put it on the screen just so you see this because this is helpful and understanding this, this term the day of the Lord when it appears, especially in prophetic literature. He says this, “The day of the Lord is a significant recurring theme in the prophetic literature of the Old Testament. At its essence, it refers to a time of to have Yahweh’s unmistakable and powerful intervention. The prophets employ both the specter of the day of the Lord to offer both a warning and hope, announcing disaster and salvation.”
I could not read my own writing very well. So, it would be better to read it off the screen. But here is the point of this. And that is what the day of the Lord is, in the Old Testament is this day that has two different kind of connotations. One is this idea of disaster and hardship, and the other is the day of salvation. And the prophet Joel here says, when you see a problem or a disaster, know that it is a harbinger of this day to come. And here's what we tend to think in America, about our Christianity, and that is that that God brings victory to our lives over and over again and that if we just walk in faith, then we can have victory from one victory to another to another.
But here is what we see in the Old Testament. I love how J.R.R. Tolkien said this in one of his letters once is he said, Christian life, the Christian life is basically a long defeat with occasional victories. Until we get to the end when it is all victory.
And here's the point, we tend to think that if my life's going to be good, it needs to be full of good things, you know, good teeth, good hair, good skin, good spouse, good income, good job, maybe good genetics, good metabolism, good vacations, good retirement account. And if all those goods come together, then my life will be good instead of understanding that there will be hard days and when those hard days come, they can actually be a display of what I can look to and say this is telling me something about how God's going to interact with this world.
And so, Joel basically says it wants you to sound the alarm. Because when you see a disaster, when you see a disruption, it is a harbinger that there is a day of the Lord that is actually coming.
Now you may say, well, are you saying, Kurt, that God caused this pandemic? And my answer is I have no idea. And I do not think anybody really does. Because to say that you know, what God did would presume that you have knowledge of something that you really do not have knowledge of.
Now, biblically, we know that in Joel's day that God did bring the locusts. But we also know again, from job that when Job's suffered that it was Satan's work. It was not God who took credit for it. So biblically, you can get both sides but here is what we do know for sure. And that is that during this plague that came on the people of Joel's day that God was in there. Verse 27 of chapter two,” Then you will know that I am in Israel, that I am the Lord your God, and that there is no other…” What he says, is I am in the midst of this pandemic. And what that tells us is that God has not taken his hand off this situation. That God is not sitting around going, oh my goodness, what happened, COVID-19 I had no idea? But God is using it for something.
I like Tony Evans, a pastor and author put it he said, “He's not sitting by as a spectator. He is the invisible hand working behind the scenes of the good and the bad, and the ugly.”
And in the New Testament, we are told that God is one who is not slow concerning His coming. This is a first or second Peter chapter three verse eight and nine, “But do not forget this one thing dear friends with the Lord a day is like 1000 years in 1000 years like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
And what that is pointing to is this idea that when God kind of relents from the disaster, that what he is doing is he is extending the time of patience. And that is what we end up seeing in the book of Joel is that the people in their current situation, we are not hopeless. And I would say, what it points out to you and to me is that we are never hopeless in our current situation.
Let me just read you a part of what's later in this book, verse 19, “The Lord replied to them: I am sending you grain, new wine and olive oil, enough to satisfy you fully; never again will I make you an object of scorn to the nations.”
And so what God does is after the people have turned and we'll talk about this in just a moment, he says, I'm going to send you new grain, I'm going to send you so much then I will satisfy you completely. You will have everything that you want and need. Then verse 25 He says, “I will repay to you for the years the locusts have eaten.” I think the ESV says “I'll restore to you.” In other words, I will give you back what has been taken away. “The great locusts, the young locusts, the other locusts, the Locust swarm, my great army that I am sending among you. You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord our God, who has worked wonders for you.”
In other words, what he says here is, I am going to bring grace. And then in verse 20, He says in essence, I'm going to turn away this this army because the way that the book begins is this locust plague and then in chapter two, the locusts signify this army that might be coming. He says, I will drive the northern horde far from you pushing it to a parched and barren land. Its Eastern ranks will drown in the dead sea in the western ranks in the Mediterranean Sea, and its stench will go up and its smell will rise.
Here is what he is saying is I am going to give you grace, I am going to give you something you do not deserve. I am going to give you mercy. I am not going to give you what you deserve. I am going to satisfy you, verse 19.
Now, sometimes when we say mercy and grace and those things, we see him as all just interchangeable words, but here is maybe a way to think about it. Evidently, there is a shortage of toilet paper in terms of some of the stores right now. And so, people have been buying and trying to keep toilet paper.
Let us imagine just that you ran really low on toilet paper. And you heard that the Bjorklund’s had plenty. And so you came over to my house, you snuck into my house, and you tried to steal toilet paper from my house, but I caught you, my watchdog, Zion caught you in the middle of the night. And so, you were there red handed. Now mercy is me saying, I am not going to press charges, just go and I am not going to hold you responsible for what you have done, breaking into my house. Grace would be to say, I am going to give you toilet paper, since you need toilet paper here, take some toilet paper and go.
Now, satisfaction does not really work on that analogy. But if it was food, if you came into my house to take food, then I gave you food, that would be great. So, if I said, I am not going to press charges, that would be mercy. Satisfaction would be saying, let me give you the best food that I have so that you can be satisfied. That is what God says he will do in this event for the people of Joel's day.
Now, there is a condition, and the condition is this. And we see this in verses 12 and 13. It says this, even now declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your hearts and not your garments, return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding and he relents from sending calamity. Do you see the word return? It shows up here twice, verse 12 and verse 13. In other words, the hope in the midst of something has a lot to do with the people who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ saying, I am going to return to God.
In chapter one, there was a universal call, all people cry out to the Lord, here, this is a return, which means he's calling people who already have some kind of a relationship with the God of Israel. In this case, in our day, it would be with Jesus Christ, and he is saying, if you return to me, then I will be active in this situation.
And to turn, it's the Hebrew word sub, and it's a very common word for just physically turning, but it came to mean and when it was used, like this repentance or to turn from going one direction and go another direction. And so, the idea is, you are going away from God, turn and come back to God. And then he says in verse 14, who knows, maybe I will relent. Maybe, who knows, maybe God will relent. Maybe God will change what he is doing.
And so, what I would like to do is just point out a few things that returning means. It means returning, and I am going to say first, without pride. And I think we see this in verses 12 and 13, with just this idea of fasting weeping, morning, with the idea of saying returning because it connotes an idea of saying in essence that you or I don't have a perfect alignment with God.
In the New Testament, there is a story in Luke 15, about the prodigal son is how it is titled, but it is a really bad title. Because it is not about the son. It is actually about God. It is about the love of God and there are two sons.
One son goes to the Father and says, I would like all my inheritance now. And then he goes to the far country and we are told that he spends it on wild living. And he comes to his senses, and he comes home, and his father goes out to greet him and we are told that he runs to greet him and says, let us go kill the fatted calf. In other words, let us throw a feast for my son, my son who has lost his home, and I want to just shower this child with goodness. And the older son gets ticked off. Because the older son says, you know, I have been here the whole time and, and you have never thrown a party for me.
And here is why I say that turning to God involves coming without pride. Here is what some of us will do, is we will say, this is a good message and I hope somebody else hears it who needs to repent. And we will not think that we need to repent because we will think that we have lived at such a level that we have not needed to repent. And here's how you know that you're the older brother or that you're the person who has pride is whenever you say, I know that somebody else needs this more than me or you question somebody else's validity of their repentance.
I saw something recently, back when our country used to have concerts. Evidently, Lady Gaga was at a concert and she took some time in her concert to talk about a political figure who his wife had worked at a Christian school. And evidently, the Christian school had taken a historic position on sexuality, and had taught some things, and encouraged students to follow those things. And if students did not, then they said, you cannot be a student here.
And Lady Gaga was evidently quite offended by this. And so, here is what she said. She said, “You, and she named this politician by name, are wrong. You're one of the worst representatives of what it means to be a Christian.” This is a well-known person who has claimed to be a Christian. She said, “I'm a Christian woman. And what I do know about Christianity is that we bare no prejudice, and everybody is welcome. So, you can take all that disgrace, Mr. so and so, and you can look yourself in the mirror and you'll find it right there.”
Now, here is why I read this and why I point to this. A lot of fans are like, yeah, this is great. And I think it is great if Lady Gaga identifies as a Christian, and I have no reason to question anything around that other than this. And that is, when you infer that there are no moral absolutes, you know what lady Gaga did in that quote, she said, but there is a moral absolute, and the moral absolute is you have to, what? Accept everybody.
Now, she is absolutely right that Christianity bears no prejudice and it accepts everybody. But you know what she did? She said everybody except the person I do not like who holds a different view than me, and who I see as being reprehensible. And so all of a sudden, what she's doing is she's saying, I'll come to Jesus, but that person can't come to Jesus who holds a view on sexuality I don't like, who holds an absolute standard. Now without debating, and the reason I did not tell you the name and go into the exact issues, I do not want this to be about that issue.
But here is what pride does. Pride says, in essence, I do not need to repent, other people need to repent. And I do not like those people, those people do not do what I think they should do; therefore, they do not belong. And here is one of the real challenges of Christianity, is it is not who it keeps out, but it is who it lets in. Because the real Christian message, Lady Gaga is absolutely right. It does not bear any prejudice. So, in other words, when she says, anyone can come, anyone can turn to Jesus, anyone can return.
And how you know that you aren't actually ready to repent yourself is when you start to say, but I don't think that person has repented enough or I don't think that they're enough of this or I don't like their view of this. Therefore, they do not make the cut. And what that becomes is a way of pride.
Here is a second way or a second part of returning. And I am going to say it is returning without conditions. So, we return without pride, we return without conditions. This is in verse 12, “Even now declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart.” Do you recognize that phrase? It's the same phrase, by the way that Jesus used in Matthew 22, when he said, “Here are the greatest commandments, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength.”
And what Jesus was doing, was he was taking this Old Testament idea and saying that if you want to fulfill what Jesus asked, then you will say, I will love you with all my heart, not with part of my heart, not with some of my heart, but with all of my heart.
And so, when Joel says here, return to me with all of your heart, what he's doing is he's saying, you'll come back to God without conditions, without saying I'll give you everything but this.
I do not know if you have ever had a box in your house, that was your box and nobody else should go in that box. I have had one of those boxes for years. It used to be under my bed. It was just some memorabilia, some things that I thought were important and I just never wanted anyone to go in it because I did not want to lose stuff or anything like that. And a few years ago, we cleaned out our bedroom and took the stuff out from under the bed and the box went away. And it was a symbolic moment because there was not nothing in the box that was all that significant. I mean, there were tickets to like an all-star game I had gone to there were, you know, some letters, some things, stuff like that. But for years it was nobody can touch this box.
So, here is my question. Do you have a box somewhere in your life that you are saying, God, I will turn everything over to you accept this? God, I will turn back to you. But do not ask me to surrender to you, and you fill in the blank, whatever that is. You see, real returning to God, abandons conditions. It comes without pride and it comes without conditions.
But here is the third thing that we see. And that is, returning to God, I think also comes without show, verse 13, rend your hearts and not your garments, rend your hearts and not your garments. And at some point, what happens when we come to Christ for forgiveness when we return to God in repentance, is we come and we say, I don't care, who knows, and I don't care what it costs. To rend your garments was to do something for display, for show. It was a way of people saying, look, I am repenting.
In fact, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says when you do your fasting, do it in such a way that nobody knows. In other words, if you must tell everybody that you are fasting, you are fasting becomes null and void. If you must repent in such a way that everyone knows you are repenting. Then what you are doing is you are doing a repenting for everyone to know your best repentance will be of the heart. In other words, it will be internal authentic, not external, and on display.
Now, that does not mean there is never a time for a public act of repentance. In fact, this passage goes on to talk about that. But what the author's saying is there must be something that happens in your heart internally, that changes the way that you live, internally.
I heard a pastor talk about this. I have not been able to find the article. So, I do not know if this is entirely true or a pastor story, but he said that he read an article about a Christian leader who was caught up in the Ashley Madison thing a few years ago. I do not know if you remember that. But there was a website evidently where people who want to cheat can find other married people who want to cheat. And at some point, all the names were made public and a man with this national ministry name had been on there and his board asked him to resign forced them to resign.
And he said, at first, I thought that this was such a harsh criticism, harsh judgment from God. But he said what I came to see is that it was actually God’s mercy because by that coming out and he said he had never acted on, he just registered in an act of desperation one day and never acted. But he said, it allowed me to have conversations with my wife and saved my marriage. And even though it cost me my ministry, it was worth it because it saved me and my marriage in all untold pain.
Now, here is why I say this. When we talk about without show, what he said is, if that had not come out, I could keep repenting of things publicly for show. But because that came out suddenly, he said, I had to deal with the reality of what was broken in my own life.
And so when we say repent without show, what we're saying is, is deal with the reality that's there, whatever that is, and when you do, that's when we encounter the real mercy of God. I would add this and that is to repent without presumption or to turn with without presumption. Verse 14 puts it this way. It says, “Who knows? He may turn in relent and leave behind a blessing, grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God.” What does he say here? He says, who knows? And I do not think that this is a question as much of do we know what God will do, as much as a question of saying this is not about presumption.
Because here is what we have seen. We have seen the character of God. Verse 13, “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love, he relents from sending calamity.” We see that he does it for his own purposes. Verse 17, “Let the priests who minister before the Lord weep in the portico and the altar, let them say spare your people, Lord, do not make your inheritance an object of scorn.” In other words, God does this for his own purposes. That it is not something that by us getting our repentance just right, or us being somehow active in what we do that we obligate God to us. God does for us what God wants to do.
Here is what this means. A lot of times people think that Christianity is about us doing some big thing for God. But the gospel is about God doing a big thing for us. And repentance is not a way to obligate God to us. It is a way to say, God, I recognize my desperate need for you. And so, I come, and I am at your mercy, and who knows, maybe you will relent in a situation and give me something different. But as of today, I am coming, just simply to say here is who I am and where I am.
And then I would say lastly that we will see here to turn or return to God without delay. Verse 15 and 16 have the urgency. Verse 15 again, “Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast.” Now you had a trumpet at the beginning of warning, here you have a trumpet saying declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly, gather the people concentrate the assembly, bring together the elders, the children, those Nursing at the breast, let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber. These are images of urgency, saying if you are to come, come without a delay.
When David sinned in the Old Testament with Bathsheba, he had been married, he had looked around and he had beckoned Bathsheba to his chambers, he slept with her, ended up eliminating her husband, killing her husband, having him killed.
And when he prayed a prayer of repentance in Psalm 51, verse four, he said, “It's against you, Lord, against you alone that I have sinned.” In Hebrew, the language that underlies our old testament, there is no way of saying very sorrowful, so you repeat something twice. So when he says it's against you, you only have I sinned, the two times, what he's doing by repeating it is, he’s saying God it's against you that I've sinned. In other words, he is saying when I came to understand this, I understand that it was you that I was grieving. And, and the intensification becomes his way of saying now I have to do something about it when he recognized his need to turn. He said, okay, I need to do this, and I need to do it now.
Last weekend, we talked just for a moment about repenting and using the prayers of Daniel nine, Nehemiah nine, maybe Psalm 51, just as a way to say God, I come to you once again, and say, God I'm turning to you. But the point of saying do it urgently is if you are feeling any sense of conviction in this moment, anything from saying, okay, God, maybe you've got my attention in a way that you hadn't before.
Maybe, just as we have talked here today, there has been something that has been in your mind that you say I should really deal with what has been in my box. Maybe today is just a day to say do not let that feeling pass. Do not just say I am going to go eat and go for a walk and forget about it. But go to God and say, God, I am bringing it to you.
Now, just before I close, I just want to share something that has been helpful to me. Because sometimes I can feel like, you know as long as I have been at this Christian thing, I should be farther along. Like, why does God allow there to still be some remaining sin?
And John Newton who had written the song Amazing Grace, wrote in his journals late in his life, about this idea of remaining sin. And here is what he said. And the reason I find this helpful is, is if you're a person of real faith, and you come to Jesus without pride, you're going to find that you have to keep repenting over and over again. You see sometimes it is our goodness that keeps from Jesus, we get so good at what we do that we say, I do not need to repent anymore. But as you actually mature in your faith, what will happen is you'll realize that there are things you didn't realize you needed to repent for, that you need to repent for, and sometimes the very goodness that you do is not motivated correctly.
Remaining sin. Here is what John Newton wrote. “He said the gracious purposes of indwelling sin are manifold. Here by, his own power, wisdom, faithfulness, and love are more significantly displayed.” Then he goes on a little later and he says this, “The unchangeableness of the Lord's love and the riches of His mercy are likewise more illustrated by the multiplied pardons He bestows upon his people, than if they needed no forgiveness at all. When after a long experience of their own deceitful hearts, after repeated proofs of their weakness, willfulness, ingratitude, and insensibility they find that none of these things can separate them from the love of Christ. Love of God in Christ Jesus, it becomes more and more precious to their souls. They love much more because they have been forgiven more.”
So, here is the thing, you may be afraid today to say I need to return to God. You may be sitting here with pride saying, no, no, no, I am pretty good. But the more you can identify and return to God and experiences his grace, the more precious Jesus will be to you. The more satisfied you will be in Jesus. The more you will experience that grace and mercy, the restoration of the years the locusts have eaten.
Now we are living in a time of disruption, not unlike the time of Joel's day. And what happened then was God said return to me, basically, through the prophet Joel. And who knows, maybe I will relent, and I will restore the years the locusts have eaten away. But he wants us to know that it is a picture. It is a picture of his ultimate grace in Jesus Christ. And that although the disaster of that day was a harbinger, if you just see it like a repeated fire alarm, sooner or later you'll be kind of deadened to the sound that you won't turn back to what's sweetest and what's best.
But if you can say this is an alarm. And this is a time and an opportunity to say, God, I want to turn return to you, and experience and savor the goodness of your character. Then you can let this be a day or a season of that becoming true for you in a way that will satisfy your soul. God will restore the years that the locusts have eaten.
Let us take a moment and pray together. “Father, I thank you just for each person who's partaking and listening right now and God for those who maybe today is a day of recognizing their sin for the first time. I pray that there would be an understanding of that sin and a reality of saying I need to call on Jesus as my Savior. God, for those who have been Christians for a long time, have maybe just started to think that they do not have anything to turn from, anything to repent from anymore. God, I pray that just like Paul and David and Moses and so many throughout the pages of Scripture knew that they had to continue to return, Peter, that there would be that urgency, the setting aside of pride and presumption and conditions. To say God, I come back to you. I waive the white flag of surrender and say, God, I will do your bidding with my days. And God who knows, maybe you will relent and let this disaster be a fire alarm that just points us to the ultimate day of you returning, the day of the Lord. And that we would live with that day in mind because of the days that we are living in. And we pray this in Jesus name Amen.
