HOW GOD WILL BRING ORDER OUT OF THE CORONAVIRUS CHAOS

Despite the multitude of prayers, prophecies, and proclamations, the coronavirus pandemic is still with us disrupting our normal way of doing church and throwing our worship programs into chaos.

Is it possible that God has allowed this for a reason? Is it possible that we had become settled, and even proud, in our charismatic way of doing “church” and had come to love and trust our outward forms of church more than Him?

Is it possible that this uprooting of our ways of doing “church” is necessary preparation for what God is about to do next?

A Time to Plant and Time to Uproot What is Planted

Ecclesiastes 3:1-3 tells us that there is a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted and a time to pull down and a time to build up. In a similar vein, God instructed Jeremiah that his prophetic ministry to Israel and the nations would be, to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah1:9-10).

The uprooting and pulling down becomes necessary when we become too comfortable, settled, and even proud in our outward forms of “church.” We may come to trust in the outward form while our hearts drift away from God. This is what the prophet was referring to when he warned, Woe to you who are at ease in Zion (Amos 6:1).

God’s Old Testament people turned from God in their hearts while keeping the feasts and outward forms of their religion. They came to trust in the religious form rather than God Himself. This was serious and God gave them a scathing rebuke through Isaiah, saying,

I am sick of your sacrifices, says the LORD. Don’t bring me any more burnt offerings. Why do you keep parading through my courts with your worthless sacrifices? The incense you bring me is a stench in my nostrils! Your celebrations of the of the new moon and the Sabbath day, and your special days for fasting—even your most pious meetings—are all sinful and false. I want nothing more to do with them (Isaiah 1:11-13; NLT).

Jesus was referring to this sort of thing when He said, These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me (Matthew 15:8). We may go through the outward motions of church--singing the songs and mouthing the confessions--but if our heart is not pressing into Him, the outward form has become a curse and not a blessing.

No Prescribed Church Order in the New Testament

We must remember that in the New Testament there is no sacred or prescribed church form, order, or structure. The New Covenant is about a heart relationship with Almighty God through faith in Jesus Christ and lived out in the power of the Holy Spirit. Church order and forms will vary in different places at different times and in different situations.

Professor Burnett Streeter, the well-known British biblical scholar and Provost of Queen’s College, addressed this matter of church order and form. After carefully examining the development of early Christianity, he wrote,

Whatever else is disputable, there is, I submit, one result from which there is no escape. In the primitive church there was no single system of church order laid down by the apostles. During the first hundred years of Christianity, the Church was an organism alive and growing—changing its organization to meet changing needs. Uniformity was a later development.

The order or form of church is merely a means to the end. The end or goal is to bring people to Christ and help them grow up into Him. C. S. Lewis put it succinctly when he said,

The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men to Christ, to make them little christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.

Throughout history the danger has been that those who name the name of Christ have begun to idolize their way of doing “church” and their church form becomes the end or goal that is defended at all costs. People are expected to find comfort in their form of “church” rather than in the Living God Himself. The means has become the end.

It is at this point that the old form and order must be disrupted, and a new wineskin formed that will carry the New Wine of God’s dynamic presence and power.

Old Wineskins Must be Replaced With New Wineskins

Jesus spoke of this principle in Matthew 9:17 where He said,

Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, and the wine is spilled and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins and both are preserved.

Old wineskins had become hard and rigid with no elasticity. New wineskins, on the other hand, would stretch and bend. Because new wine would ferment and expand, it was not put in old wineskins; otherwise the old wineskin would break, and both the wine and wineskin would be lost. New wine must be put in new wineskins.

Our old wineskins may have to be broken and replaced with new and more flexible wineskins to hold the new wine the Lord is about to pour out on His church. This may well be the reason for the disruption of “church” as we have known it. 

Life Out of Death – Order Out of Chaos

Out of this present chaos, God is about to bring forth fresh life and order just like He did at the time of creation.

In the creation account of Genesis 1:1-2 it says that the earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep. In other words, the earth was in a chaotic state. There were, however, two things that brought life and order from the chaos—the Spirit of God and the Word of God.

Genesis 1:2 says, And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Verse 3 begins with, And God said, and this phrase is repeated throughout the creation account as God’s Spirit and Word bring light from the darkness and order from the chaos.

I believe that the Spirit of God is even now hovering over the chaos that so many are feeling at this time. I encourage you to stop fighting the disruption and even for one day turn to God with all your heart. Settle into Him and ask Him for wisdom and understanding.

He will bring light out of the darkness and order out of the chaos. I truly believe that we are on the edge of something incredible and that this disruption of our traditional way of doing church is part of the preparation. A fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit—perhaps another Great Awakening—is coming and it will not fit in our old wineskins.

Dr. Eddie L. Hyatt is the author of 1726: The Year that Defined America, available from Amazon and his website at www.eddiehyatt.com. In 1726 he documents how the Great Awakening transformed Colonial America and had a direct bearing on both the founding of the nation and the ending of slavery on this continent.