What would Jesus say to us were he living in this world during the Coronavirus pandemic?

That’s the question I’ve been wrestling with the past few days. It sent me to my Bible because that’s the way Jesus speaks to us today. I turned to Exodus chapters 7-11 where we read of another time God used plagues to create a national state of emergency. I encourage you to read these chapters and ask God to help you hear his ever-relevant, ever-powerful Word. I want to focus on God’s message in chapter 8.

We can make two major mistakes when God sends judgments on the earth. We can under-estimate God’s judgments or we can over-estimate God’s judgments.

We can under-estimate God’s judgments in two ways:

  • We minimize them: We can do this by ignoring God’s judgments, by playing them down, by attributing them to chance, by false assurances that all will be well.
  • We equalize them. We wrongly think that human power is equal to the challenge of God’s judgments. Or we can equate God’s power with the devil’s power, seeing any battle as one between two equals with an uncertain outcome.

We can over-estimate God’s judgments in two ways:

  •  We catastrophize. We panic that it’s all out of control and there’s no way of escape. God’s just lashing out at everyone.
  •  We idealize. We are sure people will be scared of God’s judgments and turn to him in repentance.

We don’t want to fall into these errors and lose the spiritual profit that is available. Is there a way to approach these judgments of God that will yield the maximum worship for God and spiritual profit for us? In Exodus 8, Moses helps us to have a balanced view of God’s judgments that neither under-estimates nor over-estimates them.

For more, see my sermon notes.  Scroll down a bit further and you’ll find a one-page sermon summary infographic. Index to other sermon notes here.

Sermon Notes

Exodus 8 Sermon Notes pic

Infographic

Exodus 8 Infographic pic