PSALM 9:17-20 – The wicked shall return to Sheol, all the nations that forget God. For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever. Arise, O Lord! Let not man prevail; let the nations be judged before you! Put them in fear, O Lord! Let the nations know that they are but men! Selah
THEME OF THE DAY. WILL WE LISTEN? Fear grips our world. With the Coronavirus pandemic, the world is united by fear. We hear it on the news. We see it in the faces of people. Yet, it is the wrong type of fear. It is worldly. It is focused on life in this world. And should God choose to deliver the world from this pandemic, sadly, most of its inhabitants will return to some resemblance of normal – a sad normal. It is sad because it will be a godless normal; a godless existence lacking the right type of fear – the fear of the Lord. The Apostle Paul would tell us this truth in the opening portion of his letter to the Romans – As it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:10-18). But Christian . . . . it is not to be so for us.
During this pandemic, God is speaking. To the world, His message is in today’s scripture – the smallness of man. We pray, all of us, that in showing humanity their frailty, they will run to His Son, the Lord Jesus for salvation. But God is also speaking to His church – His people. Are we listening? For a long time, certainly in our nation, the salt and light of the Gospel has been ineffective due to the worldliness of His people. Perhaps this pandemic is the embers of revival? We need it. But there is a warning as we go day-by-day in this trying season. Here it is . .
Christian, if God shows mercy and delivers us from this Coronavirus pandemic, we cannot go back to “life as normal”. This pandemic should make radical spiritual changes in our lives. So radical that we discover what New Testament Christianity looks like that goes beyond our words of profession. We must be what the Bible calls us to be; Gospel-centered, fervent-praying, Word-consumed, eternity-focused, Lord’s Day honoring, world-forsaking, self-denying, sacrificially-serving, self-forgetting, and holiness-pursuing people showing the world the Biblical reality of Jesus Christ.
The question we must ask – are we listening to Him? Do we hear the voice of our Teacher? And remember, if no change occurs in our life from reading the Scripture and prayer, then we haven’t heard from our teacher. So, will we listen?
PRAYER: “Father, prevent me from giving into the world’s fear, and listen to Your teaching voice in this trying time.”
QUOTE: “God is a teaching God. The question is are we teachable, able to drown out the noise of the world?”