The Church's responsibility during the pandemic.

Lesson Transcript

Well, good morning, everyone. This is going to be the first in a series of sermons that we're going to be doing by video. Hopefully, this won't be going on a long time, but none of us really know how long this is going to be going on. And we thought instead of—we've been recommending different online sermons that you can listen to, which are all good and that—but we thought it would be good to have messages from us locally because we don't want to lose touch as a congregation during this time.

And I know I miss seeing all of your faces and the personal contact with everyone. So Justin is, I think, next week going to be speaking, and we're going to be having different local speakers. And I have no idea, this being the first one, the production might be terrible, and it'll be a learning process as we go. I want to start off with the question, well, why aren't we having church? Why aren't we meeting? I don't think the answer is any mystery to anyone.

It's because of the coronavirus disease 2019, which is known as COVID-19 for sure, and that's what I'll be calling it. I think that's what everyone is using nowadays. And I'll talk about it just for a moment. Probably you all know as much as I, or more than I do about it. I'm no authority whatsoever. And we're filming this on a Friday to show on Sunday, and by Sunday, who knows? Things keep changing every day. They have something new. They've learned about it. It's a learning curve. It caught everybody by surprise.

And even the people at the—at who? The World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control here in the US totally caught them off guard the way this has acted. So every day they're learning something new about it. But in addition to that, right now we can't meet at our church because they have closed the building and do not allow us to meet there. So officially that's for one more Sunday, but I'm guessing it's going to be at least through all of April.

It's going to be the government, you know, not allowing meetings of that size. Now, okay, so why is all the quarantine? Why are so many businesses shut down and churches can't meet and that sort of thing? Well, the reason behind it is the government is trying to slow down the spread of COVID-19. It's not going to stop it. No one is imagining that, but it's going to slow it down. The more you put people together, the faster it's going to spread.

And if it spreads extremely fast, I mean, and it's already on a curve that's going up steeply, we're definitely in the accelerating phase of this. It could overwhelm the hospitals. It could overwhelm the health system pretty easily. I mean, that hasn't happened yet. Certainly not in most places, but that's what they're concerned about. I mean, the number of ventilators and respirators in hospitals are limited. The number of beds are.

The number of doctors who are able to treat this or the medicine and that sort of thing could very easily overwhelm things. So the government is, in caring for us, is trying to make sure this thing doesn't just spike so fast that the system can't care for it. So that's the reason for all of these fairly unprecedented measures. Now, ultimately, of course, the government would like to stop it altogether, but I don't think we're going to be able to take those kind of measures that would be needed to do that.

It will run its course like other diseases. But it's moved so fast. None of us heard about this until like late December, maybe January. I remember talking about it for the first time that there was this new disease in China called the coronavirus. And was it the Wuhan province, I think, where it started?

And with, you know, Daniel here in our church, you know, was able to talk a little bit knowledgeably with, you know, China and the way things are there and the people he was in contact with and what they were doing at that point to try to slow it down. And they were taking pretty drastic measures at that point when we were talking in January. I do have a friend who is over in China. I assume he's back in the States now, but he was in China then.

He was actually just preparing to come back to the United States, and then he couldn't. The travel ban was on. And not only that, they had a severe quarantine going on. When we talk about a shutdown or a lockdown here in the US, what we're meaning is people aren't supposed to go out unless it's to get groceries or to go to the doctor or go to work if they work at a job that hasn't been closed down. Now, in China, when they were doing it, I mean, it was very different.

This brother reported that there were literally soldiers outside of his house. I mean, they were in the street patrolling the street. It wasn't like a recommended, "You don't go outside your house." It was like, "You are not going to go outside your house. If you tried to, the soldiers would make you go back inside." And if you thought, "Well, I'll wait till it's dark and I'll sneak out," well, they had actually set up tents in this street where the soldiers could sleep there. So even at night, they were on patrol.

Now, I don't think you could do that here in the United States. I don't think politically it would be possible to do it. The epidemic would have to be so bad and so many people dying that before the government could do that sort of thing. So all we can do with the measures we're doing is to try to keep it from spiking so fast that it overwhelms the system.

Now, when all of us first heard about this in China, I know what I thought, and I think actually most health authorities was SARS that had come through back in like 2003, 2004. And some cases reached the United States. They weren't very many. They were quickly put into quarantine. Now, it was pretty deadly. People died from it, but it didn't impact the population. Stores didn't close. Restaurants didn't close. Businesses went on. You know, we all had maybe a little concern, but nothing happened.

And so I know I thought, "Well, it's going to be like that. No big deal. No reason for anyone to panic." And the health authorities thought that. But what they're learning is COVID-19 is different. SARS did not spread efficiently. That's the term that they use. It wasn't something that just quickly spread. And it pretty much only spread from people who already had symptoms. They clearly had this, and then they could spread it to other people. And they thought that COVID-19 was going to be the same way.

And what they have found out, it's different. It spreads efficiently. And what has made it so bad, why it has spread so fast across the world in just a few months, is that it can be spread by people who don't have any symptoms. See, SARS was mostly different from that. So with COVID-19, there are two groups of people without symptoms who have the disease. Okay, one of them are people, the term is pre-symptomatic, if I can say that. They have it. They're going to have symptoms.

They're going to have, you know, fever. They're going to be in bed sick with it. But that hasn't happened yet. And they're spreading it before they even know they have it. Okay, so you have that group of people. And then another group, for some reason, there are a number of people who get COVID-19, never come down with any major symptoms. They don't even know they have it unless, for some reason, they get tested because they're part of a group where it spread or something like that.

But most people aren't going to get tested. They would have no reason to. Doctors wouldn't want healthy people coming in and saying, "I want to do a COVID-19 test." I don't think they would even allow it at this point. That may change down the road, but so who knows how many people might actually have it and are spreading it and have no symptoms. So that is what has made COVID-19 very different and why it has spread pretty fast.

As of this recording, it, you know, went over the million mark a few days ago, and the next million is going to be much faster. It took, you know, that many months to reach that point of reported cases. Again, unless you're really sick, it's not going to get reported. So who knows how many people have it? Number one, don't even know they have it. Or number two, they're sick in bed and, yeah, they don't need to go to the doctor. It's not that bad, and it doesn't ever get reported.

So there's a lot more cases than what are reported. Now, as I said, we're not going to be able to do what China does unless things got really, really bad. And then politically, you could do that, but I mean, the government would be really, really slow. I mean, what we're seeing now is unprecedented. I'll be 70 in 10 days, and there has never been anything like this in my lifetime here in the United States.

There have been in other countries, but where jobs were shut down, the schools were just permanently closed for the rest of the school year. Colleges closed. I have not seen this in my lifetime. There have been some flu epidemics, some things like that. There was SARS, but never this kind of response. So this is all new to all of us. I think we can be happy that, blessedly, COVID-19 isn't an extremely deadly disease. I mean, it has killed, I don't know what, I think 50-something thousand people across the world.

I think 7,000 people here in the United States or 6,000. That's not huge by the measures of other epidemics. So even though over a million people have caught this, thankfully, you don't have 100,000 people dead or anything like that. But still, a lot of people have died. It's not something to fool around with. And things could change for the worse. You never know. Viruses can change as it progresses. So that's why the government has taken these measures, why this unprecedented thing of churches not meeting.

So I probably haven't told you anything new, but just, you know, to put this all in the setting of this message, if someone is somehow looking at this a year from now, for some reason, it's out there circulating and they're wondering, "What is this guy even talking about?" That's the reason we're meeting by video, and this message is being videotaped rather than being given live to you. I do want to talk a few minutes. This isn't going to be a long message, but just what is the proper Christian response?

What do we do when something like this happens? Maybe it'll never happen again. It probably won't in my lifetime, and it may not in your lifetime, but it could. I mean, some people are saying maybe we're going to be seeing pandemics more consistently now. Who knows? I mean, with the world with so much global travel and commerce now, diseases spread a lot quicker. So this might be something every 10 years is going to happen. I don't personally think so, but I mean, nobody knows.

But how should we respond when the government says, "All right, we don't want churches meeting. We don't want any meetings above 10 people," or they may come down to, "We don't want any meetings at all, period. You know, just stay with your family. Don't go out except to get groceries and then go right back in." Well, there are several scriptures that come into play. The first one is, and these are principles that we should all, all Christians should know that it's second nature.

And I think for the most part, we have. I mean, there wasn't this big discussion among the leaders of the church or the people of the church, "What should we do?" I think we automatically knew what the scriptural principles were. But just to review them, I think it's a good idea. And the first one that comes to mind is Romans 13. We obey Caesar unless Caesar commands us to do something that would cause us to directly violate one of Jesus' commandments. In other words, Jesus is the ultimate ruler.

He gives us commands. We obey his commandments. But now one of his commands, given through the apostles, who he authorized, he and the Holy Spirit, are that we obey the government. So unless the government tells us to do something that is going to cause us to disobey Jesus, then that is obeying God. Obeying Caesar is obeying God when Caesar tells us to do something. As Christians, we should be even more conscientious than the world. If the government has said this, "Oh, wait a minute.

The Bible says that Caesar is God's minister." And I'll just read to you. It's Romans 13. This is from the New King James. It says, "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority?

Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same, for he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is God's minister and avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore, you must be subject, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake. For because of this, you also pay taxes, for they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing." So Caesar has spoken on this here in Pennsylvania, in our county.

We're under, I forget the exact term, I think lockdown. We are not supposed to go out from our houses except to work, except to get groceries, except for medical things like that. So it's nothing like the shutdown in China. Lockdown isn't really maybe the best description. I think it's the word that they're using. A stay-at-home order maybe is a better term. Now, there is an exemption here in Pennsylvania right now for churches to have meetings of 10 people or less, that we can do that.

Of course, our church as a whole is more than 10 people, but we can meet two families together. That's normally not going to be over 10. I don't know if the 10 is counting little children and that sort of thing. But we're going to obey this as a congregation because this is a lawful order of Caesar, and it's for a good reason. I mean, he's our minister for good. I mean, if Caesar wasn't giving these laws, well, people, I mean, restaurants would be open.

Some might be conscientious and say, "Man, we don't want to spread this," but then their competitor would be open, and they're thinking, "Man, if we're not open, we're going to lose all of this business. We're not going to get any help from the government." I mean, we better open too. And pretty soon, everyone's open. Every business is open. Life is going to go on as normal, and the virus is going to spread. So Caesar is doing us something good. It's something God wants him to do.

He's supposed to be looking out for our welfare. So this is why, as a church, we're not meeting right now, except in groups of two families or less than that. And we're trying to do things by video like this. But you might say, "Well, now, wait a minute. The Bible says we're supposed to assemble ourselves together. So don't we have a command of Jesus that overrides that of Caesar?" No, we don't. Jesus didn't say you have to meet together in groups of a certain size.

I mean, in the New Testament, we read about meetings in houses. We don't know how big they were. Some of them were definitely, definitely over 10 people because they're right on the day of Pentecost. It says there were 120 assembled together in an upper room. So under Caesar's law right now, they wouldn't have been allowed to do that. But there was no law forbidding that, you know, at that moment. So they were doing something perfectly lawful. There would be no reason for us to meet in groups of that size.

This thing came up once in the early church. It probably came up a number of times, but persecution was very sporadic. When it was really bad, of course, Christians met in small groups just to escape detection. It would have been dangerous to meet openly. But the persecution in the early centuries was very sporadic. A lot of people have this notion that the Christians met all the time underground. And in fact, one of the myths is the Christians met in the catacombs.

I mean, I heard that all my life as a boy growing up and as a young man. And that's total nonsense. I mean, the catacombs were never a meeting place until persecution was all over with. And I'll explain that in a moment. The catacombs are where Christians buried their dead. They bought that land specifically as a burial ground, and that's what they were used for. The rock there is called Tufa Rock. It's very soft. You can dig out, you can go down and dig out these passageways, which they did.

They made this maze, this labyrinth of passages, not to hide from the authorities or anything, but just to have places to bury the dead. And then they carved out little niches in the wall where they put the bodies kind of cramped up. They're very small spaces that they have there. And then once the rock is cut out like that and it's exposed to air, then it hardens. And so it was really nice. Now, groups would have had the possibility of meeting there, but they never did it. There's no record of that.

Now, after persecution was over, then the church, they thought, "Oh, it would be neat to have a communion service there where all of these faithful Christians have been buried." Many of them were martyrs, you know. And so they dug out rooms that were large enough to have meeting places and all that. But that was in the fourth century after the persecution was over.

But anyway, in Carthage, around the year 200, the government passed a law that if the Christians were going to meet, they would have to be, they would be fined, and they would have to pay a fine. And they weren't sure whether they should do this or not. I don't remember. It's been many years since I read the account. I don't remember what the specific issue, if they felt like paying a fine was some kind of compromise or if it was more in the nature of a bribe. I don't remember.

I just remember Tertullian wrote about it. He was against paying anything to meet, which meant then they couldn't lawfully meet, I guess, there in Carthage, which was a big city. There had not been persecution there for a while, and they were meeting in larger assemblies. He said, "What we do is we meet in groups of two or three." Jesus said, "Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." That's Matthew 18:20.

So we don't have to be in a group of 50 or 100 or 200, however size our congregation meetings usually are. He says, "If two or three of you meet together, that can be a family. It can be a couple of families meeting together." He said, "I'm in your midst." So the size isn't important to Christian assemblies. And if persecution comes to this country at some point, well, or I should say when it comes, that's how we may have to meet just to escape detection.

And that's what they do in other countries that are under persecution. So yeah, there's no commandment that we have to meet together in a larger assembly. So it doesn't conflict with Caesar's law or with Jesus' law. So we obey Caesar. So that's one reason we're not meeting. But even if Caesar did not install that commandment, that law, there would be a greater law on us as Christians.

And that is the second greatest commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." And it is we don't want to spread the virus. As Christians, we should be more conscientious than all of the rest of the population that, wow, we love other people. We do care about them. And this is a virus that spreads pretty easily from person to person. And as I was talking about, you don't have to have any symptoms to be spreading it.

So because I care for my neighbor, then I'm going to do what I can to help keep this virus at bay. I don't want to be the cause of my neighbor catching the virus, and I don't want to play some kind of role in this where it spikes because it spreads from this person to this person, and it gets totally out of control, which it may face that at some point anyway. Now, our congregation is largely a young congregation. I'm the oldest person, no, second oldest person in the congregation.

And yeah, so many of you are in your 20s, you're in your 30s and all of that. The odds of you dying from the coronavirus are minuscule. It can happen. I mean, young people have died from this already. But again, the chances right now, now things could change, but right now the chances are not very high, particularly here in our county. There have been only, I don't know what, 12, 15 reported cases, maybe 20, something like that. It changes every day. So yeah, you're not running a great risk to yourself.

But what about your neighbor? I mean, this thing spreads because people are passing it one person to another. I mean, who knows how many people brought this to the United States? It was probably less than 100 people, I'm guessing. I mean, you're not listening to a medical authority here, so I might be wrong on that. But I'm guessing it may have been, you know, 100 people or less who actually brought it here. And now we have a quarter of a million cases in the United States.

It's because it's spreading from person to person. So the only way to stop that is to have less social contact. I mean, that's what the government is doing. But even if the government was just saying, "Hey, it would be good not to do this," I should be thinking as a Christian, "Wow, even if I'm not concerned about myself because I'm young and healthy, I could pass this on to somebody else." And you know, the thing is, the odds are very slim that you would ever find out who died because of you passing it on.

In other words, let's say you're young and healthy and you meet with other young and healthy people and you get together in a group that's 20 or so and you do this at, you know, Caesar never notices it. And just setting aside Caesar's law for now, let's say there was no law against that. You could have it, not even know you have it, maybe never develop any symptoms. Or when you do, it appears just to be a cold or something like that. No big deal. But because you met together, you gave it to some other young person.

Well, they don't ever get any bad symptoms either, but they pass it on to someone else. And it passes on eventually to an older person like myself who has a much greater chance of dying from it if they get it or somebody who has diabetes or something like that. But you may not even know that person. You may not even know you passed it on. You may not know you actually had the virus. Like I say, there's a lot of people, they're thinking, I mean, you hear all sorts of things.

It could be up to 25% of the cases of COVID-19 are people who never develop any symptoms. Now, that's just a guess. If that's the case, like I say, a lot of people are passing it on. They're quite certain a lot of people are passing it on who have no idea they have it. So that is the big concern.

So you as a Christian should be thinking, "Okay, I don't want to be the cause that somebody died because I didn't want to be bound to my house for a month or for six weeks or however long this is going on." Now, again, the government is allowing you to get out and have a little bit of contact and that sort of thing. But yeah, we should be cautious as Christians. Unfortunately, you know, a number of Christian institutions have gotten some bad publicity because, yeah, they haven't been exercising caution.

Now, everything I have looked up, I mean, the media, of course, always wants to ridicule Christians. And so they're going to do whatever they can to give us bad publicity. They don't report very much on churches that are obeying Caesar. And nearly all of them are. In fact, I'd say close to 100% are. It's on the ones who are either disobeying or they're not using wisdom.

There's just recently in the news, a church in Arkansas, I think was at a meeting of 500 people, and they're just openly saying, you know, I just looked at it today because I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth. They're saying, "Jesus had COVID-19." And I thought, "What? What are you talking about?" And it's this really false teaching that Jesus bore all human sicknesses on himself, not bore our sins, which the Bible says, but bore our physical sicknesses. And that's what he carried to the cross.

So if you really have faith in Jesus, then you're protected from all diseases. Now, that is not the historic Christian faith. That is something that started in the late 1800s. It's usually known today as the word of faith movement. And it's a false teaching. The people who teach that, they get sick and die. I remember back in the 80s, I'd never even heard of it. Deborah and I were managing a Christian bookstore, a nonprofit Christian bookstore. And I had no idea who most of the authors were. We had these books.

They were picked out by the Christian book distributor. And we were just carrying general evangelical books. And I was talking to a customer one day, and he pointed to a book there. I think the author was E.W. Kenyon. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure that's who it was. He said, "You know, that man was so amazing." He said, "Nobody in his church ever got sick." He was a pastor. They really believed in God's healing, and not a single person in his church got sick ever.

And I said, "Well, is he someone who lives now?" "No, no, he lived. That was a number of years ago." "So he's dead?" "Yeah, he's dead." "Yeah, yeah. In that congregation, they're all dead." Well, I didn't say anything. I didn't want to start a controversy there in the bookstore. But I thought, "Well, that's total nonsense. If he's dead, he died of a disease." It's a total myth that people died. I used to believe that, "Oh, you got old and you just died because you were old, you know? Maybe you're 85 years old.

Okay, you just fall over dead, you know?" That's not the way it works. As an attorney doing title work, I've probably looked at a thousand death certificates because of trying to track down airships and that sort of thing. And always it's listed a cause of death. And I never saw one that said a person was just too old. That's why they're dead. No, there's always something. They died of pneumonia or they died of heart failure. And then that was brought on by pneumonia, which brought on by something else.

I never saw a death certificate where there wasn't some kind of disease, pneumonia, heart disease, something like that, that they died from. So if you're dead, then that means you did get sick. And so that's a total false teaching. And people who belong to the word of faith movement and go to those churches, they certainly have not been able to show any statistics that, "Oh, those people live longer than anyone else," or that they have fewer, you know, diseases or that sort of thing.

One of the things they do is to deny disease. Like people in that church right now, where they are in Arkansas, it's not a great risk of getting COVID-19. What they did is very foolish and particularly putting it out online for everyone to see and for the world to mock Christ because of it. But if some of them come down with it, they're going to deny they're sick. They're going to say, "Nope, I just need more faith. I may look like I'm sick, but I'm not," you know?

And they're not going to get tested to see if it's COVID-19. And then later they're going to say, "See, God protected us. No one in the church got COVID-19," you know? And that's the way that sort of thing works. But that's not the way the historic faith works. There was a plague that went through the ancient world around the year 240, 250 in that time period. And a lot of people died from it. It went through North Africa, and a lot of Christians died from it. And some of them thought, "Why should we die?

We should be protected as a Christian." And Cyprian said, he was a bishop there in Carthage at that point. He said, "You know, God hasn't promised us riches in this world. He hasn't promised us perfect health in this world. He hasn't promised to protect us from diseases. That's not what the gospel is about. We suffer the same thing that the rest of people do. If there's a famine that goes through, Christians suffer the same as other people.

If a plague goes through, Christians suffer like everyone else." That's not what the gospel is about. Not that God can't do miraculous healings. I mean, miraculous healings did happen back then. Prayers were answered. It's why we pray for sick people today. But there's no promise we're not going to get sick if we're a Christian. That's nothing in the Sermon on the Mount or anything that Jesus said. And he pointed out there's a good reason why it's that way.

If Christians didn't get sick while everyone else did, well, then everyone would want to be a Christian. You'd have all of these fake Christians. We would call them today rice Christians. Yeah, Christians who, "Hey, I want to be a Christian because I want to avoid the plague." Well, it doesn't work that way. We're going to have suffering in this life. In fact, as a Christian, we should expect to have more suffering than the world, not less suffering. So that's not how it works.

Okay, now, so I've mentioned Caesar's law. I've mentioned loving our neighbor. And that's why, particularly if you're young, you need to think about other people. Yeah, the danger to you is not great. That is the danger of you dying or you even going to the hospital. But you're spreading it to other people. The danger is fairly great that you will do that or that you'll be one link in the chain that eventually reaches somebody else.

But that someone will be in the hospital because of that, that you formed a link in the chain. And that's what we don't want to conscious. We want to try to avoid that, even if there was no law saying what we should do. Okay, the third and final reason I want to talk about is as Christians, we do not put God to the test. In other words, if one of us comes down with COVID-19, we're going to pray about it as a church. We're going to believe God can heal that person. We also believe God can protect us.

I pray throughout the day that none of us in our church will come down with the virus. And I definitely believe God can protect us from that. I pray for my family. I pray for myself and my wife. But there's no promise that none of us will come down with it. Now, it does not show faith in God, and it does not please God if we say, "I'm going to just take this thing lightly. I believe if I get sick that God can heal me. And so I'm going to put myself in harm's way and then pray to God.

I'm going to do like what those people in that video were doing." Now, I will say the pastor said there is no law there in Arkansas at that point in time forbidding that. He said, "If the government forbids it, then we will not do it. We will obey Caesar." So like I say, I'm not aware of any church that has said, "We are going to disobey Caesar." They're disobeying advice from the government, recommendations, but not a specific law. It's still wrong.

It's putting God to the test, and it's not showing love for their neighbor. And I think one reason we read about the second temptation that Jesus had after he had fasted for 40 days and was tempted for 40 days, then at the end, Satan appears to him and gives him three tests. The second one was, "Go up to the pinnacle of the temple." It says he took him there. "And jump off. If you're really the Son of God, then jump off. God's angels will catch you and protect you." And Jesus's answer, it was from Deuteronomy.

Different Bibles read differently. But he said, let me see if I have it written down here. Jesus said, "It isn't written, 'You shall not tempt the Lord your God.'" That's Matthew 4:7. Some translations, and I think a better translation, "You shall not test the Lord your God." In other words, even if God will protect you, and certainly we believe he can protect us, we don't put ourself in harm's way and then depend on God to come and rescue us. Jesus didn't do that. The Son of God.

And if he didn't, we certainly as Christians are showing lack of faith if we do that sort of thing. If we say, "I'm not going to worry about this. You know, God can protect me." Well, we're showing a disobedience to God. We're showing an unchristian attitude, an attitude that's not expressed by Christ. His attitude was, "I am not going to put my Father to the test. Sure, I could jump off the pinnacle and sure his angels would catch me.

But that's not the right thing to do." We don't test our God by doing things just to see if he'll come and intervene. So Finney Kuravilla gave a message this week about COVID-19. And he mentioned in there that the whole process of quarantining people, that was something God originally instituted. As far as we know, the first instance of any people practicing quarantine were the Israelites. And this was a law given to them while they were in the wilderness. So this protected the Israelites.

And Christians followed this practice often because they read the Old Testament. So Christians practiced measures of quarantine when a lot of the other world wasn't doing it. So God protected his people that way. It wasn't an absolute protection. But you know, the interesting thing, after listening to Brother Finney's message, I was thinking about this last night.

And it's interesting that God gave the law to quarantine different people, different diseases, while the Israelites were in the wilderness during that 40-year period. Now, why that to me is particularly interesting is because during that period, God every day miraculously supplied the Israelites with food. In other words, every single day they experienced a miracle because they went out and got manna.

They complained and grumbled about it, which is unbelievable that you're complaining about being fed miraculously, but they did. But nevertheless, none of them starved to death that we read about. They did go out and eat manna. Also, during that whole period of 40 years, the Bible says their shoes didn't wear out. That would have been sandals. And their clothes didn't wear out. God miraculously kept that from wearing out for 40 years. He fed them for 40 years all by miracles.

And yet, when it came to diseases, he could have done the same thing. But instead, he said, "No, this is what you're going to do. If someone has leprosy," which the leprosy of the Old Testament is not, we're almost certain it's not what is called leprosy today. That's a misuse of terms there, a wrong translation. But whatever disease it was, it was highly contagious. And God had all of these measures that those people were to be quarantined, their houses were, that sort of thing.

Now, he could have done all of that through a miracle. But he chose, that was his measure that you're going to practice quarantine. You're not going to put me to the test. I could cure every one of your diseases easily, but that's not the way I'm going to choose to operate. You're going to obey my law. So we show respect for God by not putting him to the test. And Christians who do that not only are sinning by putting God to the test, they're also bringing reproach on the name of Christ.

Okay, but what can we do as a church? We are not going to fold during this time period. Hopefully, this will be, like I say, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Probably in my life, it'll be the only time I experience this. It's something we can talk about years from now when we couldn't meet, you know, as a church in our building and that sort of thing. Something you can talk to your children and grandchildren about. Like I say, hopefully this isn't going to become a recurrent kind of thing.

Right now, we can meet in small groups of 10 or less. We should honor Caesar's law there and not go over that. And we should be concerned that, yeah, we don't somehow be a link that starts this thing spreading to other people. Outdoors is the safest thing as we enter now into warmer weather. At first, the health officials thought that it could only be spread if you're coughing or sneezing. And they were saying, you know, make sure you cover your mouth. And that still applies.

That's definitely going to be the way it will spread the easiest. But now they realize just by breathing, you can spread it. And so that's why they have this social distancing recommendation of, I think it's a minimum of 6 feet or 10 feet. Again, you all probably know from the news on that. But yeah, we should practice that. Sometimes it'll be impractical, and you know, you won't be able to do it for a particular reason. But yeah, let's try to practice that.

We don't want to be either putting God to the test, showing lack of love for our neighbor, or disobeying Caesar. Now, Caesar doesn't command the social distancing, just strongly recommends it at this point in time. Outside, though, I was just reading today, is the safest because you've got the breeze that will blow the virus away. And so it's actually safer outdoors. You could do things more safely out there. I think the plan is every Sunday we'll have a message like this.

So we are going to be able to hear our brothers from our church teaching each Sunday. And we've been being blessed by Daniel's Sunday schools that he's been doing. Hopefully, he'll still be able to do that. He might not be able to put the same amount of time. If you don't realize that the ones that he has been doing, you're talking about days of work to do that sort of thing. It looks easy when you're watching it, but it takes a lot of time doing video editing. We can hopefully do more things by video conferencing.

A lot of churches across the United States are doing this. Not just big ones. I mean, little ones. You know, the ones there in Boston that a lot of us listen to their messages. That's what they're doing right now. There's different software, free software to use. And I know one of the churches is using one, and another one is using a totally different one. The one I'm familiar with is Zoom. The reason I'm familiar with it is that we do our Sattler College, the board meetings are done by Zoom.

It's usually about seven of us. They're present. And it's really neat that now I'm sitting in front of my laptop. The others are either sitting in front of a laptop or in front of a desktop that has a camera and a microphone. And we can actually see each other live. So we can have a discussion. And just like in any other group discussion, if one person starts talking, I mean, you don't interrupt them. And the screen lights up, and you can see who it is, who's talking. And it even zooms in on them at some point.

I don't even know how all of that works. For me, it's just I'm just looking, and it's all automatic. I'm not the one hosting the meeting. But it's pretty neat. And then when they get through, someone else, you know, can just start talking and just like in a live conversation. So I would encourage everyone, if there's a software you know of that you think would be better than Zoom, let the leaders know. But if not, download it right now.

We had a brothers meeting, I guess, was it this week or was it last week, using Zoom. It didn't go the best. It was still, I thought, you know, fairly successful. But a lot had not downloaded Zoom onto their laptop. It was kind of a last-minute kind of decision to go with it. And we weren't sure even up to the last moment if we were still going to do it or not. And so when we started, a lot did not have Zoom on their phone or on their laptop or whatever.

So we had to wait for this person to download it and get on, and then somebody else, and then that sort of thing. So what we need to do is do it right now. I mean, you just go online. Zoom is the name of it, Zoom Video Conferencing. You could Google that in, and it'll take you to the site. It's free. If you don't have a laptop, the laptop works best because you have a bigger screen. But it works on a phone. It's just the squares are smaller. But the audio and all that's, you know, is still there. It's a free app.

You know, put it on your phone. And so if we start doing this more, everyone will already be set up. And then I think from that one experience, we know a little bit now about sending out an invitation. That's how we do it with Sattler. I get an email, an invitation. At 9 o'clock, there's going to be a Zoom meeting. And so usually five minutes before 9:00, I click on the link, and I go there. And maybe there's one person there, or there's even a blank screen sometimes. And I just wait.

And then at some point, Finney comes on or somebody else, and then this person, and then pretty soon we're all there, and you can see everyone. So it really does work good. And so we're blessed to live in a time that with free technology, yeah, we can meet together and talk that way. We've been staying in touch with WhatsApp. I'm glad we had all of these chats set up long ago as a church. They've really proved handy to be in touch with one another. Kevin mentioned the other day we should be doing more phone calls.

I should. I have been really, really busy ever since the virus. For me, it hasn't upset my personal life because I've been working on this commentary. I'm so close to getting it ready for the printer. I'm hoping late next week or maybe the week after that, I'll be able to send it off to the printer. And so I've been doing that night and day, literally. Last night, I worked till 10:30 or so on it.

Right now, I'm doing a final checking of the final file that's going to be going to the printer to catch any last-minute errors or any errors that were introduced when it was typeset. And once that's over, then it's pretty well ready to go. And I hope to do more personal calls. But yeah, all of us need to be doing that. Call up people and, yeah, how are you doing? And don't just depend on the WhatsApp. That keeps us in touch, which has been nice.

But a personal call and maybe even a video call, I don't do a lot of that. Maybe I'll start doing more. It is nice to see somebody's face and that sort of thing. And right now, while it's still not widely spreading here in our little area, yeah, we can still visit people. I don't think we want to do it more than we have to. But again, we can still have small group meetings. Dean Taylor likes to quote a quote from Winston Churchill.

If I'm quoting it correctly, Winston Churchill said, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." And this would be a good application. Okay, one thing, we're getting some practice. I doubt we'll have persecution here in the United States in my lifetime where Christians would be forbidden to meet. If you're a young person, you might experience it in your lifetime. Who knows? You know, I'm not predicting that, but it is certainly possible. It's good that we can get practice in times like this of, okay, what do we do?

What things can we automatically go into place when this sort of thing happens? The other thing that Kevin had mentioned this in his message the other day to all of us. And Kevin, again, I think we were all really, really blessed by your doing that. And hopefully, we'll have some more. And I'll try to do a little bit more from my end. I haven't contributed very much, I feel like, during this time. But increase your family devotional time.

If you don't have one already in place of daily reading the Bible with your family or maybe some other kind of devotional book, start it right now. Don't waste this crisis. This is a good time to start it and then keep it going once this is over. I mean, this is something you need to be doing every day, reading the Bible together, praying together as a family. I think most of you are doing this, but if you're not, start it right now.

If you're doing it, can you make it even better or stronger than what it presently is? If you aren't working as long hours right now, which I know many people aren't, use it as a time to do more together as a family. Just good family time to get together, whether you can go outside and start gardening and that sort of thing, projects around the house. A good time to do reading, just wholesome reading of any kind, but particularly devotional reading.

I mean, there are books, if you've never read A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. And if this is a time when you have more time on your hands than normal, I really recommend get hold of that book. You can get a free PDF online or you can order one from Amazon or whatever, Christian book distributors. It is really a good book that has made a big difference in my life. Or you may have another book that you've heard of or that you like. Again, don't waste this crisis.

Use this time to increase your Bible reading, increase your prayer time, increase your family time, increase your time of devotional reading. Well, I'll end on that note. Again, it's nice to be able to talk to all of you. I'll be glad when we're all back together in person. I don't think it'll be until April is over with, and who knows how much longer after that. At some point in time, this will just be a little blip on the screen that we'll all be talking about.

But during that time, it is nice knowing we are together as a church, and it's important we stay together as a church by phone, by WhatsApp, by seeing each other on a small basis, that sort of thing, and staying in touch through these kind of meetings. Okay, God bless all of you. Bye.