Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/1415483
Pastor Tony Evans is the senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas and founder and president of The Urban Alternative. TonyEvans.org Pastor Tony understands that what our world has been going through is more than a pandemic. The challenges that we have faced and endured are more than physical. Our world is being weighed in the balances and our hope is in God. Tony writes, "We are in the midst of a series of pandemics. We began 2020 with the coronavirus pandemic. Then we had the death of George Floyd, which led to a racial pandemic, and that was followed by the economic and political pandemics, which still plague us to this moment. In every direction we look, there is chaos, conflict and instability. In the Book of 2 Chronicles, we find a similar situation. "In those times there was no peace for him who went out or him who came in, because many disturbances afflicted all the inhabitants of the lands. Nation was crushed by nation, and city by city" (2 Chronicles 15:5-6). He continues, "With all this chaos, I would have thought that we could blame the devil. But we are hit with a phrase at the end of verse 6: "For God troubled them with every kind of distress." The world was a mess, and instead of it being blamed on the devil, God said, "Blame Me." Now, suffice it to say, if God is your problem, it doesn't matter who you elect to lead you in the worldly realm. "What we are seeing in our culture, our country, and perhaps even in your home life, is what it looks like when there is a distance between God and a person or a people. The closer the God of the Bible is to a situation, the more ordered the situation will become. The further God is from a situation, the more chaotic it will be." What you and I have been going through is the passive wrath of God. In the Old Testament there is the active wrath of God, where God directly comes down and expresses His anger against sin. He rains down fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah. He floods the earth with Noah. He opens up the earth to judge Korah. But in the New Testament, something happens. The death of Jesus Christ reconciles the world to God (2 Corinthians 5), and in this New Covenant age, we have the passive wrath of God. Romans 1:18 says, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness." And in verses 24 and 28, we see the same phrase, "God gave them up." In other words, God released men to live life without Him. The passive wrath of God is not fire and brimstone being rained down like it was in the Old Testament. It is God saying, "Since you don't want Me, I'm going to let You experience life without Me." "One of the best things those of us in motorcycle ministry can do is humble ourselves and openly confess to those around us, that "we cannot do this" without God. Our humility and confession of personal vulnerability allows those we ride with to confess the same." ~Marty Edwards Tony continues, "So, what we are seeing in our culture, our country, and perhaps even in your home life, is what it looks like when there is a distance between God and a person or a people. The closer the God of the Bible is to a situation, the more ordered the situation will become. The further God is from a situation, the more chaotic it will be. While you may be able to manage a situation because of the education you have, the economics you possess and the people that you know, what you can't get is divine assistance—unless the presence of God is connected to it. The question is, why did God cause this distress? Second Chronicles 15:3 gives us three reasons. First, there was no true God. It does not say there was no God. It says there was no true God. The god that they were purporting to worship was not the true God that is in the Scripture. The Bible has a word for this. It is the sin of idolatry. Now, we don't typically have physical idols like some people in other parts of the world. We have American idols. Sophisticated idolatry. For example, some of the racial conflicts that we are having today are happening because race has become an idol. In Galatians 2, we find the Apostle Peter eating and fellow- shipping with the Gentiles—until some Jews showed up. Then he got up and left the Gentiles because he didn't want to offend his race. You can imagine how the Gentiles felt. The Apostle Paul condemned Peter's actions because he said they insulted the truth of the Gospel. By the truth of the Gospel, Paul wasn't talking about salvation. Peter was already saved. You see, there's the content of the Gospel that takes you to Heaven, but there's also the scope of the Gospel, which brings Heaven to earth. Peter was messing with the scope of the Gospel. And that's why Paul tells him in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me." Paul was saying, "Peter, you're too Jewish. My identity is in Christ, and yours should be too."