For those returning from earlier installments: thanks and welcome to you. Those largely dealt with “what” we’re called to do when there’s plague in the land. Years ago, this content was framed as a letter to local pastors during COVID. My son was 7 at the time, and I believe he understood the matter better than most. He looked at one of the original recipients during our meeting and said, “Let’s go to church, and get sick!” A tad cavalier perhaps, but no one can call my boy a coward. What forces so motivate a seven-year-old; can they, do they, should they so motivate us?
Solomon’s Prayer For Worship During Plague
This whole chapter (1Kings 8) bears rereading to remind ourselves of the atmosphere of the moment- the grandeur of the setting, the 20-year suspense during construction, the cloud of the glory of the Presence as He descended upon the place He had chosen to make His Name dwell there… but I’ll beg you to open your Bible for that, and reprint just these few verses here:
If there is famine in the land, if there is pestilence or blight or mildew or locust or caterpillar, if their enemy besieges them in the land at their gates, whatever plague, whatever sickness there is, whatever prayer, whatever plea is made by any man or by all Your people Israel, each knowing the affliction of his own heart and stretching out his hands toward this house, then hear in heaven Your dwelling place and forgive and act and render to each whose heart you know, according to all his ways (for you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind ), that they may fear you all the days that they live in the land that you gave to our fathers.
1Kings 8 is Solomon’s plea to the LORD to answer the prayers of the people when they gather and worship in times of sickness. Solomon presupposes such gatherings are normal; greater still, the Lord’s presence and blessing indicate public worship is the appropriate response to sickness in the land. Public worship is God’s ordained means to evoke His healing and forgiveness.
Lessons From Araunah’s Threshing Floor
Reading 2Samuel 24 reveals many facts pertinent to our modern COVID/Hanta situation:
- V.14 Disease is from the hand of the LORD, and His mercy is great.
- V.15 This particular disease is perhaps the most deadly in all Scripture since it killed 70,000 throughout Israel in less than 24 hours, and there were 0 cases the day before.
- God’s mercy is indescribable because He had threatened 3 days of pestilence, and relented before the end of the first day.
Don’t just read or remember the text; instead, hear the dying groans of 70,000 men, weep with David who bears sole responsibility for so many innocents, smell the hot-dry dust of the road to Araunah’s threshing floor in downtown Jerusalem, where you see “the Angel of the LORD working destruction among the people”. Araunah wouldn’t build a threshing floor in the center of a continental political capital unless he was threshing a lot, and I mean a lot of grain. Threshing that much grain requires a lot of servants… who were probably on the scene from working earlier that day [now either in agony from the disease, or agape at the angel of destruction, or to see King David coming]. David came with his servants in verse 20. Verse 25 tells us “David offered sacrifices,” which is almost certainly shorthand for the fact that David commissioned these sacrifices, and priests offered them on his behalf. Other parts of Scripture remind us that God severely punishes the consolidation of the priestly and executive powers [except in the person of Jesus Christ]. Therefore, from these reasonable inferences, we have David and his servants, Araunah and his servants, and likely a small team of priests [easily 20-50 people] gathered to worship in the very midst of perhaps the most lethal and contagious disease recorded in the Bible… as though gathering to worship is God’s ordained answer to disease.
The Blood Of The Lamb
This section requires a different kind of challenge because I need you to hold the broad strokes of the first half of Exodus in focus as we consider the themes of disease and worship developed there. Remember that Scripture broadly categorizes all of the sign judgments against Egypt as “plagues” even though mice, frogs, locusts, and darkness are not themselves communicable microbes… while we understand “plagues” to be broader than just bacteria, how many bacteria and viruses did these mice, frogs, and insects carry into the Egyptian food and water supply? The Exodus narrative records boils, sores, leprosy, fever, and finally death. The rest of the Old Testament recalls “the diseases of Egypt”. Was it appropriate for the Jews to suspend worship during these diseases, or was the public assembly of God’s people the only hope for the survival of both Jews and Egyptians?
Exodus 5:3 reinforces public worship as a preventative measure against sickness, and the restorative response to sickness. “Then they said, The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days ’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.” It wasn’t just the Egyptians threatened with plague in this story…
God says of the tenth plague that a cry went up throughout the land of Egypt such as had never been before and never would be again. This “destroyer of the firstborn” was likely a violent microbe in the hand of one of God’s heavenly warriors. And on the very night of the “disease of diseases,” as it were, God instituted not only that the people gather by ‘clans and households’, but that those families too small or too poor for a lamb should share with neighbors… God commanded His people to gather; large families were gathered, small families and poor families doubled up into larger units; the custom in that part of the world is to eat from large “communal platters”, with their hands… The scene is a pathologist’s worst nightmare, and it takes place on the very night when God had ordained the worst disease in Egyptian history [or future]. All that stood between these people and the same contagious death of the Egyptians was the blood of a lamb… Do we have faith like that?
Lay Hands On The Sick
The previous texts have viewed the themes of worship and disease from a national scale. Do these same concepts still bear upon the individual level? James 5 tells the sick to call for the elders of the church, and the elders are called to visit, touch, and pray for the sick man. Furthermore, if Old Testament saturation colored James’ writing this text, and our reading of it… the unspoken consummation of this healing is when this man presents himself for consecration during public worship and God’s people rejoice in a God who heals… They would have had a party [so to speak] featuring lamb, beef, pita, wine, and horseradish. Wouldn’t that be a fantastic environment to spread whatever disease had recently inundated this newly recovered Christian? Only the heart which fears disease more than it trusts God asks such questions.
What If Jesus Didn’t Touch Sick People?
The examples are too numerous to present them all; I’ll just quote a few [in a moment] to give the flavor of this idea. How different would the New Testament read if Jesus and the apostles had been too afraid of germs to touch and worship with sick people? How many healings would never have happened if Jesus didn’t touch lepers? Wasn’t He known for ministering to beggars, prostitutes, and low-lifes; weren’t those social classes just as disease-ridden then as they are now [if not more so]?
We can’t dismiss this saying Jesus was immune to disease, because Hebrews tells us He shared in all our weaknesses and infirmities. As assuredly as Jesus knew hunger, thirst, and fatigue, I’ve no doubt He bore His share of fever, congestion, nausea, and headache. These are integral parts of the sinner’s miserable condition. These things attend and exaggerate our temptations to sin; therefore Jesus must have endured them without sin. While He could certainly heal Himself of leprosy, He could also have caught it. While Jesus displays His power to heal by His word alone, His predominant and seemingly preferred method of healing is touch. Why? If Jesus had always healed through command, He might have appeared only as a powerful Master, providing the needs of His servants, so that they can attend and obey Him, while He remains separate from them, above them. Instead, He most often touches sick people, even when His command would have sufficed, because He loves us, and touch is an affectionate expression. You don’t touch strangers.
Mark 16:18 “they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
Mark 5:23 “and implored him earnestly, saying, My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.”
Acts 3:6-7 “But Peter said, I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk! And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.”
Luke 4:40-41 “Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many, crying, You are the Son of God! But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.”
Quarantining The Healthy
Here’s Biblical precedent for quarantine, some say. Yes, for quarantining sick people, not healthy ones. The idea is preposterous! I know of no Biblical or historical precedent for quarantining healthy people. The text assumes public worship services will continue while the sick are in quarantine because the first required act upon emerging healthy is that the healed man must present himself in a public worship service.
Honor the King
How often through COVID did they remind us of the importance of honoring our rulers? Some even accused me of the sin of “dishonoring our government”. Nevertheless, I would once again urge the importance of context which informs the desire to obey. NT Wright developed some fantastic work on the New Testament’s use of allusion. “Peace, Justice, Security, and Salvation” were propaganda words for the Roman empire. The “caesar-god” was the sole possessor and dispenser of “peace, justice, security, and salvation”. He would save the world from self-destruction and lawlessness, rendering favor to his loyal subjects and just destruction to rebels.
Of the infinite blessings and wonderful qualities which Christ possesses, Paul clings to “Peace, security, justice, and salvation” because these serve a dual purpose. In truth Caesar neither had nor gave any of these things, and Christ abounds them to His children. With these 4 words Paul can simultaneously elevate Jesus Christ as supreme and depose Caesar for the hack he truly is. My own reading of Paul, as I try to account for his perpetual reminders that “Caesar is a hack; Christ is LORD”
This is the very reason early Christians cemented that phrase “Christ is LORD” into our liturgy. When asked at sword-point to declare “Caesar is lord”, our fore-fathers replied “Christ is LORD” … and so entered into their rest. They chose to simultaneously elevate Christ and dishonor Caesar.
As I try to account for all of the New Testament data [some of which commands us to honor the king, and some of which outright mocks the king], my own reading sounds something like this: Obey every good and proper moral law from your rulers. However, the kings of this world are predominantly pompous, pandering prima donnas posturing for public opinion; don’t further inflate their egos, don’t think of them more highly than their pretending deserves.
Furthermore, I think these recent protests and riots honor politicians, while dishonoring policemen. As I read the New Testament, I think if Paul could survey our system of government, he would more likely honor Policemen and assess most of our politicians as lying parasites. Paul’s command in Romans 13 is specifically to honor those members of government who reward the good and punish the wicked [that’s our police]. I doubt Paul had any more honor for Roman senators and bureaucrats than they deserved.
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