Embracing Distress

Thank you very much, Courtney, for that beautiful special music.

We'll see if I'm coming through there. Okay, very good. So thank you very much for that special music.

I just apologize for a little bit of the sound quality there on the announcements. We'll see if we can summarize a few of those. I think Mr. Miltie is just going to check his sound. We did a sound check before, but you know, internet could be a million things. So anyway, but thank you very much for the special music, and thank you for sharing those announcements.

As we gather today on Zoom, and I consider the coronavirus and its impact on each of us, I'm reminded of the words of Winston Churchill when he said, it's not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but perhaps it is the end of the beginning. I think it's the end of the beginning of a new reality, a reality that may be facing, that we may be facing, really the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression nearly, well, about 90 years ago. A $2 trillion economic stimulus plan passed yesterday, unprecedented in American history, and in a week when 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits, which is four times more than the highest number ever recorded, how do we wrap our brains around all of this? It just happens so fast.

Three weeks ago, I was in Africa. Today, I gave a sermon there in Kinshasa, and I was thinking about a whole set of goals and plans for the coming weeks and months, really, that today all canceled. Everything's changed. Months of planning, plane tickets, travel plans, everything, and probably many of you face the same things. For me personally, as many in the Bay Area who are listening, I know we have guests from outside the San Francisco Bay Area, but as many of you in the Bay Area know, my mother died of a heart attack suddenly three weeks ago today. She died in front of many of you after church, in the fellowship time after church, just three weeks ago today. For me, that is a shock that I'm still dealing with, and I thank you for your cards and messages of support. It's been very encouraging for the whole family, and we thank you for that. But since that day three weeks ago, just three short weeks, 21 days, in 21 days the world economy has come to a point where it's really teetering on collapse. According to the Agence France press, also one-third of the human population on this planet is under some sort of lockdown. 2.6 billion people. That is more humans than were even on the planet during the last great worldwide catastrophe of World War II in 1939. Ezra Klein, writing for Vox on March 23rd in an article titled, How COVID-19 Recession Could Become a Depression, says that we will see four waves of economic impact in the coming months. Wave one is what he calls the sudden stop. The unexpected cessation of economic activity all across the world. A decline of a magnitude nearly two and a half times the size of the largest quarterly decline in the history of modern GDP statistics for this country. Wave two will be a loss of jobs. Matthew Iglesias, and again I'm quoting from the Vox article, writes, the surge in job losses is unprecedented in historical terms. Last Sunday, James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said unemployment could reach 30 percent, higher than even the Great Depression of 90 years ago. Wave three will be a collapse in consumer spending as people seek to conserve cash, cut expenses, and ride out the storm. And this will slow economic growth long after the direct virus crisis ends. And wave four will be a business cutback in investment, slowing economic growth for the foreseeable future. And all of this, and again I'm quoting, all of this assumes we get this virus under control by summer, and the stimulus package works. If the two trillion dollars, which is hard to imagine, if the two trillion isn't enough, or the virus takes the rest of the year to the control, and I quote now, the ground could collapse underneath the economy. And it's, and when you think about this, it kind of puts in perspective the inconvenience of waiting in line for 30 minutes at Trader Joe's, right? These things in front of us are much greater than just the inconveniences that many of us are dealing with. If there was ever a time when we needed clarity of thinking to know we are going to make it through this, as we heard in the first message, we need it now.

And I would like to say to everybody listening to me now, or perhaps in a recorded message later, that we're going to make it through. Everyone's going to make it through, but I think that kind of surety would be a lie, and I think it would deny the biblical fact that Satan walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. When we read that Scripture in 1 Peter 5.8 about that roaring lion, we have to understand that he would have to devour somebody. You can't have a roaring lion and not have anyone devoured. That's the warning in the Scripture. It doesn't work that way.

Some are not going to make it spiritually. That is the crisis ahead that will reveal some underlying issues. This crisis we're going through, it may reveal some underlying issues that have not been dealt with. And those issues can lead to fear and panic, and that leads to doing things that are contrary to God's laws and being taken out by this crisis. And I've seen this in Africa with certain individuals over the last few years.

And I say Africa because unless you've been to certain parts of Africa, it's hard to appreciate the kind of enormous stress that people are under. Job stress, family stress, health stress, a society plagued by corruption. And when you're in that kind of stress constantly, and it's in just endemic, it wears on you. And I've seen people in God's church end up just leaving. And a lot of times it starts with something simple like, it's okay to steal money to help my family. My family member needs to go to the hospital, and this is church money, and there's nothing wrong with me taking it because it's for an important need.

And then it, that kind of goes to, it's okay to lie to help my family. And then it's okay to steal and lie to help myself. And then pretty soon that slippery slope just keeps going and going and going. And as we face economic uncertainty, and as we face personal family challenges, this can weigh on us. And we can be tempted to make compromises with God's law, and our own personal integrity. And I don't mean to scare people, I just want to be realistic.

I think, I think now's the time for us to focus. It's a time for focus, not distraction. It's a time for self-examination, clearly before Passover, and not blame towards others or blame towards God. It's a recognition that whatever pain we're going to feel, somewhere, it's probably hard to understand, but somewhere in the world, one of your brothers and sisters in Christ is probably going through it worse than you. And I can tell you just from what I've seen among the faithful members that we have in various parts of Africa who are just under enormous strain and stress, that, you know, even there, it's, there are situations that there always seems to be something worse.

The going is going to get tough in the next few months, but if God is for us, who can be against us? That's what the Scripture says, and we heard an encouraging message from Mr. Crow about that. I'd like to turn to Matthew 24 verse 9. We're going to read some scriptures relating to prophecies in the future, for which I think we're getting a foretaste. Matthew 24 verse 9, if you turn with me to that, I've got my Bible here in front of me, I'll look down and see it. Matthew 24 verse 9 says, then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations.

You'll be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And we generally associate the fifth seal of the book of Revelation that comes after the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, the pale horse, with the great tribulation. And we see here in verse 9, and we won't read it, but you can look over in verse 21 and 22, this discussion of tribulation. Now, tribulation is not a word that we often use today. You know, I don't tend to walk around saying the word tribulation, but the Louis-Ségond French translation of the Bible uses a different term.

It uses the term de tres, or in English, de stress. It calls it le grande de tres, or the great de stress. And I can relate a little bit better to this term because we use the term stress a lot in our modern vocabulary. We talk about stresses being stressed, I'm stressed out, don't stress me out. We tend to use the word stress a lot, and there's a correlation between stress and distress.

The Newport Academy of Mental Health Resources says the difference between stress and distress, and they define it this way, and I'll quote, over time, the accumulation of everyday stress responses in the body and mind can erode our sense of well-being and lead to low mood and a feeling of being on the edge all the time. That's when stress becomes distress.

And so the time ahead, I think, is going to be a time of an accumulation of stress, such that it can be called distress, or perhaps a great distress, or perhaps a foretaste of the great distress, or the tribulation. So today I want to talk about being in distress and receiving help in that distress. We're going to look straight in the eye of the pale horse prophecy of revelation. I'm not saying we're in that. I'm specifically not saying we're in that, but I think we're getting a foretaste of what that would look like, and how God is willing and able and certainly capable of rescuing us from our distress, and really internalizing what that prophecy means. And then we're going to consider what Job must have felt like when he was in distress. We're going to talk about 39 chapters of distress in his personal situation. And finally, we're going to consider the great answer to Job's trial in distress and its implication for us as we face distress over this coronavirus pandemic, and potentially these waves of economic impact, which are no doubt going to touch all of us. The title of the message today is embracing distress. Embracing distress. So let's begin by turning to Revelation 6, verse 7 and 8. I'm going to turn over here in my Bible, and let's look at the pale horse, the fourth horseman of the apocalypse in the book of Revelation. And let's read this prophecy which has been interpreted and reinterpreted over the years. Prophecy relating to the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Revelation 6, verse 7 to 8. It says, when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them, that is death and Hades, over a fourth of the earth to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth. The fourth and final horseman of the apocalypse that is described is named death. He is the only horseman named. And the apostle John writes that Hades, that is hell or the grave, followed with him. And together they would kill 25% of the world's population. Now the Greek word here for death is phantenos, which according to Thayer's Greek lexicon is closely linked to the Greek word phanteno, which is the word for plague. And this is often why we have this understanding of this fourth horseman as being a plague or a pestilence. According to the most recent issue of Time Magazine, the COVID-19 death rate or mortality rate is a 4%. Now many experts believe the actual mortality rate is lower because we don't really know how many people have the virus. But imagine how coronavirus has crippled our economy and forced in a matter of weeks a fundamental change in our way of life with only, let's say, 2 to 4.5% mortality. Imagine what a 25% mortality rate would mean for the world. And we should know that this that there is precedent for this. That same Time Magazine article reported that in 2012 the MERS outbreak had a death rate of 34%.

And so I think we see around us today literally a just a little tiny foretaste of what a plague could do to our world and to our lives. We've spoken in the Church of God for more than 80 years of the pale horse and how we feel for ourselves really just how devastating this future event will be. It means being worried about finding things in a grocery store, clearly. It means potentially losing our job. It means potentially getting sick and going to the hospital and that hospital not having enough staff and equipment to treat us. It means that potentially some of us who are older or not in good health may die. It means, of course, it also means, as was the case for a member in France just last week, she had her husband taken to the hospital not with coronavirus, but with a life-threatening condition. He was literally in a coma and he was on the verge of death and she could not even go with him to the hospital because of the quarantine situation in France and the risk to her of being in that hospital and contracting COVID-19. This is stressful.

I think we are in a great distress and yet this is just a tiny foretaste of what this prophecy would mean when we're talking about a two and a half percent mortality rate and not a 25 percent mortality rate. But now imagine we have this crisis today and during this crisis we were to have a coordinated terrorist attack on our country, a coordinated dirty bomb attack across multiple cities. This would give us an idea of the compounding impact of the Red Horse represented in verse 3. We won't read it there. I think we've read this before. And then while we are under this coordinated terrorist attack, the world's commercial shipping and air traffic is interrupted such that our grocery stores are not resupplied. And that, I think, gives us a feeling of the Black Horse in verse 5 and 6 of scarcity. And imagine that this whole time there is some great leader, likely a religious leader, who captures the popular imagination of the world and begins to wield that power to create divisions, to turn sons against fathers and brothers against brother and to tear communities apart based upon his rhetoric, such that those communities are not cohesive and they are divided and they can't weather the storm together. And so there's an internal division and food shortage and coordinated terrorist attacks and plagues. And then into this chaos comes persecution and martyrdoms for the saints in verse 9. Let's read in verse 9. This was the parallel account to what we read in Matthew 24. And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, until you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth. And a white robe was given to each of them, and it was said to them, They shall rest a little while longer until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed. That future time, we're looking straight in the eye of it right now. We're looking straight in the eye of these prophecies, feeling what we're feeling. And I think we can begin to imagine just the great distress. And how will we process that distress? I think we have been focused, brethren, a little bit too internally on our little petty differences, our little disputes, our minor issues of doctrine and interpretation. And I think it's time to let God sort that out and get back to knowing whether we are close enough to God to understand and accept His will during that coming time of great distress and during this time. I hope that we can ask those hard questions of ourselves that we might be ready to go through, even probably what is a minor, compared to what we would see in the future. Are we ready? Let's go to our second point. What Job must have felt like through his distress. Let's turn over to Job 1, verse 1. We've just digested in a very short time here in this message the magnitude of what that prophecy would be. And it's kind of hard to handle. And it can be, frankly, just distressing just to hear about it.

And we'll see that there is hope, and we'll get to that. Let's read about Job. And let's see what Job dealt with. Let's look at Job 1.1. As I said, Job 1.1, there was a man in the land of us whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil.

There are 42 chapters in the book of Job, about 18,000 words. And the book opens with a statement that sets a high standard for that kind of man, for the kind of man that Job was. And I wonder how many of us could say that we are at that standard. This is a man who was truly righteous, and yet still had lessons to learn in his life. And then in chapter 1 and 2, we see an incredible set of personal trials that come upon Job, as per God's design. Well, perhaps not his design, but certainly God allowing it.

Losing his children, losing his wealth, finally suffering great personal health issues. I'm sure many of you have read the entire book of Job from cover to cover, but I know my proclivity, and I think I'm not alone in this. For most of us, when we read the book of Job, we start in chapter 1 and chapter 2, and it's actually quite insightful to see kind of the dynamic and to imagine in God's throne, this dialogue, and what Job went through, and so forth. And then we continue reading in chapter 3, and maybe we make it through 3, 4, 5, maybe we might even make it to chapter 10, and at some point we kind of give up, because it's just so many monologues and seemingly contradictory statements, and woe is me tone, and it's just it's just oppressive. And a lot of times what we do is we skip to the end of the book, because we know the ending. We know that we get to the end in Job 42 verse 5. We read something where we understand that there was something that Job needed to understand. I want to go to Job 42 verse 5, just to remind us of what that says. The very end of the book, after 17,500 words, a long discussion, it says in Job 42 in verse 5, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. We want to skip chapters 3 and 41 and go from trial to resolution and realize that there was a point to this, that there was a purpose behind what God had allowed to happen in Job's life, and we want to feel that purpose. But let's feel the pain and the uncertainty together to know that we can feel the pain and uncertainty as well. Let's experience some of what Job went through. Let's go back to Job 2 and verse 10, and let's just read a few of these verses.

Job 2 and verse 10, it says here, Job 2 and verse 10, he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women who speak, shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity? And in all this Job did not sin with his lips, but shall we accept good but not adversity? Job understood that adversity was part of personal character development and part of God's plan for him. He understood this at the outset of this, and I think many of us do understand this, but look in Job 3 verse 16.

He says, or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child, like infants who never saw light? Job wished he had never been born. This is grief. This is pain. This is how he felt, and sometimes how we might feel as well. Look at verse 25. For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me. Are we ready to face our worst fears, to understand that God is greater than the worst thing that we could fear?

That there is no fear that is greater than God. There is no thing that can happen to us that is greater than God's plan and purpose for us. Go to Job 5 verse 17 and 18. Job 5, 17 and 18, he says, Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects. Therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty, for he bruises but he binds up. He wounds but his hand on earth, and not his days also like are not his days like the days of a hired man, like a servant who earnestly desires the shave, like a hired man who eagerly looks for his wages. So I have been allotted months of futility, and wearisome nights have been appointed to me. When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise, and the night be ended? For I have had my fill of tossing till dawn. How many of us have had sleepless nights, or will have sleepless nights? How many of us have heard the expression, Life's hard and then you die? That's what he's describing. Job felt it. He lived it, and yet he says in Job 13 verse 15, in Job 13 verse 15, he says here, Job 13 verse 15, Though he slay me, yet I will trust him. And as Job wrestles with his trial, he writes in Job 16 verse 7 and 8, he says, But now he has worn me out. And it is a witness against me, my leanness rises up against me and bears witness to my face. And he tears me in his wrath and hates me and gnashes at me with his teeth. My adversity sharpens his gaze upon me. We could continue reading and we could see a man struggling with the truth he knows of God's love, the truth of his belief in God's greatness and power, but also of the reality of what he sees going on around him, of what he sees happening to him personally. And through these 39 chapters, he learned the lesson that God wanted him to learn. This lesson that Job had not really understood who God was. 39 chapters of distress. And I think we are going to be somewhere in those 39 chapters in the months ahead. And certainly, this is a foretaste of what that future time would be. I think this is the great personal walk of faith for us. That we have these words of Scripture to read. We have sermons. We've heard the words. We've read the words. Maybe we're even hearing the sermon right now. We're thinking, okay, maybe. But when the great distress comes, will we have seen God in the way that Job saw God? Or will we need to start to learn that lesson now? Let's go to our final point. Let's go back to Job 42. Job 42, verse 5 and 6. And let's consider the great answer to Job's trial and its implications for us. Job 42. Now we're going to read 5 and 6 this time.

We're actually starting verse 4. Listen, please, and let me speak. You said I will question you, and you shall answer me. I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.

I think the great error of our time in God's church is thinking we are the good guys. We think we know better. We think we're closer to God than the people who are hurting us or causing us problems. In other words, we see in other people, we see the wrong, we see the error, we see the bad attitudes, we see the mistakes, and we conclude that that means we're good and they're bad. We're right and they're wrong. More likely, we are just as bad, but in other areas, and we can't see those areas because we're so focused on the other guy, right? That's what we know. That's what it says in Matthew 7 verse 3.

Maybe we are right in the errors that we see in others, but our errors are much more serious.

I think once we understand what it means to constructively abhor ourselves and then to repent in dust and ashes, we will be ready for the great distress. Now, I say constructively. He says I abhor myself.

This has to be not random, not uncontrolled self-hatred.

I think if we're in that space of, and some people are in that space, they just say, I hate myself. Some people are in that space, and that's listening to the adversary's wavelength. That is self-destructive. But constructively, what Job is saying here is he's examined himself. He's looked at himself, and he's put his sin in front of him, and he wants to get rid of it. And that's what we're picturing as we're coming up to these days of Unleavened Bread. This is a constructive thing. This is an intentional thing. And if we do this, we will be ready because we will have been tried. We will have traversed and moved through those 39 chapters. We will have been tested so that the great distress will either not be necessary for us, or we will be carried away to a place of safety, or the great distress will just not distress us in the same way. I'm not saying I've obtained this. I'm talking just like we would talk if we were having a conversation. I'm just saying that this is the standard that we see in the Scripture, that God is just, and he gives us a chance to understand this individually for ourselves, to get to a point where we can see God and not just have heard a sermon about Him. That we can have that close, deep relationship with God and not just read the Bible. Let's turn to Romans 8 and verse 31.

Romans 8, 31, one of the most encouraging sections of Scripture. We're just going to read that because we've talked about some pretty heavy things today. We've talked about some pretty scary things. We've talked about a lot of hurt, but God doesn't leave us in that state. I think Paul understood that he finishes Romans 8 here, and we'll just finish this last section in verse 31. He says, what then shall we say to these things? He's talking earlier about a number of difficulties, and we have been talking about great difficulty, about distress. What shall we say about these things? How do we think about all this distress? Well, he answers it here. If God is for us, who can be against us? Now, why would God be for us if we trample His grace under our feet, thinking that somehow we're good? He follows that up in verse 32. He makes it clear. He says, He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? We have found grace in God's eyes as we recognize this great sacrifice that is pictured by this Passover that we will take soon. Look at verse 35.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? You know, I think if we're in something right now, we're in peril. We go to the store and we think, am I going to get it? Somebody gets close to us. You know, if I pick up a package, I put gas in my car, am I going to get it? And if I get it, am I going to give it to somebody else? We're in peril. And it says, as it is written, for your sake we are killed all day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. And this sounds to me like we're destined to experience all these things, all these difficulties, so that we might understand that we will never be alone, that God will be with us, and what it really means. I think our very identities are created in these experiences. Who we are as an individual, as a body of Christ, these things are forged in these moments. Yet God doesn't leave us just there in verse 36, in suffering. The Apostle Paul concludes this thought in verse 37 and 39. Yet in all these things, all these things, right, the peril, the distress, the famine, the nakedness, all these things, yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come, neither height nor depth nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. We have a loving God who knows what we are made of and how often we are made of. We have a loving God who knows how often we don't know that we can go before God and we can claim this. Will we be ready for the fourth horseman of the revelation? Will we be ready for what's in front of us right now? And again, I'm not saying this is that tail horse time, but there will come and some of us may experience that future time. We have a little foretaste in front of us. Will we be ready? The answer, I believe, lies in embracing the distress of these times, starting with the reality of 2020, staring into the eye, and knowing that God is greater than anything that will come our way. But that doesn't mean we won't be like Job living through 39 chapters of uncertainty and living in difficult times. Brothers and sisters in Christ, stare this virus down through wisely conducting our affairs and humility, and most of all, through the power of God's spirit. Times like these are when our Christian identity and our character is forged.