Ephesians overview – 3:14-19, Pauls prayer (inner man: seeing the glory of God; the human spirit), part 10.

Thursday March 26, 2020

 

Read about an editorial in the WSJ a few hours ago.

 

A pair of public health experts from Stanford, Drs. Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya, warn Americans in a Wall Street Journal editorial that the current estimates about the coronavirus' fatality rate may be too high by "orders of magnitude."

 

"If it's true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified," they wrote. "But," and what a big one it is, they add, "there's little evidence to confirm that premise — and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high."

 

The two submit that because the United States and other countries largely focus their testing on symptomatic patients, the number of people who are infected with COVID-19 is likely much larger than the number of confirmed cases being reported by public health agencies throughout the country, which means the virus' mortality rate is likely significantly lower.

 

"Fear of Covid-19 is based on its high estimated case fatality rate — 2% to 4% of people with confirmed Covid-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization and others," wrote Bendavid and Bhattacharya. "So if 100 million Americans ultimately get the disease, 2 million to 4 million could die. We believe that estimate is deeply flawed. The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases."

 

The two Stanford Health Policy experts even said the virus' mortality rate might be on par with that of the seasonal flu:

Existing evidence suggests that the virus is highly transmissible and that the number of infections doubles roughly every three days. An epidemic seed on Jan. 1 implies that by March 9 about six million people in the U.S. would have been infected. As of March 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 499 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. If our surmise of six million cases is accurate, that's a mortality rate of 0.01%, assuming a two week lag between infection and death. This is one-tenth of the flu mortality rate of 0.1%. Such a low death rate would be cause for optimism.

 

Bendavid and Bhattacharya say that if they are right about the lower lethality of the epidemic, public policy experts should focus their measures on protecting the elderly and expanding medical capacity.

 

"Hospital resources will need to be reallocated to care for the critically ill patients. Triage will need to improve. And policy makers will need to focus on reducing risks for older adults and people with underlying medical conditions."

The pair conclude that if their estimates are right, then the universal quarantine measures "may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community, and individual mental and physical health."

 

"We should undertake immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns," they added. [end article]

 

Whether this was orchestrated or not, the state, and by that I mean the bureaucratic elite of this nation (the deep state of non-elected power) didn’t let the opportunity slip by, and they have used it to grab more power from the individual citizen as well as to weaken the US economy which gives further power, autonomy, and freedom to the individual citizen. The fearful citizen will hand over his right to freedom to the state for protection and security, which the state won’t give but will gladly take.

 

Stay calm believer. This is all inevitable. It always has been. In the end times the antichrist will accumulate all power and in so doing he must remove all freedom from the individual.

 

Rev 13:16-17

And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand, or on their forehead, 17 and he provides that no one should be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

 

Worshipping God everyday:

 

Rom 12:1-2

I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable [well pleasing] and perfect.

 

Worship is the natural response to the revelation of the Lord, whether in word or in act. We can see this in the life of Abraham.

 

Abraham built an altar to the Lord after the Lord appeared to him (Gen 12:7-8).

He built another altar after the Lord’s word of promise (13:18).

He paid tithes after the Lord gave him victory (14:20).

He took an oath after the blessing of Melchizedek (14:22).

 

He prepared the sacrifice and protected it after the revelation from God (ch. 15).

He bowed to the ground after the Lord appeared to him (17:13).

He circumcised in compliance with the Lord’s command (17:10, 23-27).

He interceded after judgment was revealed (ch. 18).

 

He interceded again after God directed Abimelech him (20:7, 17).

He rejoiced in the Lord after the fulfillment of God’s promise (21:1-7).

He swore by the Lord after the Lord gave him peace in the land (21:23-24).

He sacrificed Isaac in obedience to the Lord (ch. 22).

He bought a cave in Canaan for the burial of Sarah (ch. 23).

 

Paul prays that our inner man would be strengthened by the Holy Spirit so that we may see the person of Christ fully. By seeing Him, through living by means of the Holy Spirit, we would have the same attitude – “I have come to do Your will, O God.”

 

God does not prescribe church policy and procedure. It is clear that there should be a certain mindset among those who gather together. There is to be unity, encouragement, service, instruction, among the important things. How much teaching, for how long, how many days; singing, no singing, how much singing, etc., are not written. I have thought and prayed on it, and I think the most important thing to do at church is to learn God’s revealed word. It is also important that we serve one another, be unified to one another, consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, keep an impeccably clean and organized building, be welcoming to the public, and hope to have the impact that God desires. (Quite a bit is written about singing with joy as well.) All of this is work, and it should be anticipated, enjoyed, and approached with thankfulness and happiness, and all of that is but a minor portion of your time on earth before God. We gather more than most, and it is still only four hours in a week (3.5% of your awake time if you actually sleep 8 hours a night).

 

Gen.4:25 Adam had relations with his wife again; and she gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, for, she said, "God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel, for Cain killed him."

 

Gen.4:26 To Seth, to him also a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of the LORD. 

 

My point is that your worship of God is day in day out from waking to sleeping. It is not crammed in to four hours a week.

 

We are to spend our daily lives worshipping God in all things, not just in the church building. What does it therefore mean to worship Him?

 

To worship God is to live in the reality of our relationship with Him, moved by Him, taught by Him, responding to Him with praise and thankfulness, revealing Him to those around us, living with His hope and love within us, always resting by faith in Him, unafraid. This is what it means to worship God, and it is not restricted to the time you spend in your local assembly.

 

Every day we do that, we see more and more of the full revelation of God in Christ Jesus.

 

The second person of the Trinity was revealed in glory to various men and women in the OT. And now, through the Spirit within and the complete revelation of God’s word, the complete revelation of Him may be seen by us. There is something we should note about the witnesses of Him.

 

Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, Job, Paul, John, and more were overwhelmed with humble adoration when they saw Him.

 

Seeing the revelation of the glory of God in Christ, produces an overwhelming humility, adoration, reverence, obedient worship.  

 

When Job received direct revelation from God, he responded with reverential fear and self-disdain, as the others:

 

Job 40:3-5

Then Job answered the Lord and said,

4 "Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to Thee?

I lay my hand on my mouth.

5 "Once I have spoken, and I will not answer;

Even twice, and I will add no more."

 

Job 42:5-6

"I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;

But now my eye sees Thee;

6 Therefore I retract,

And I repent in dust and ashes."

 

God doesn’t command emotion from us, and some have used that to justify a life that has no emotional response to God. Perhaps God doesn’t command emotion from us because He doesn’t have to. When Jacob, Isaiah, John, and Job saw the Lord they all responded in the same manner. We would find the same in passages concerning Moses, David, Daniel, Thomas, Peter, and Paul.

 

Pro 1:7

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;


 


© Grace and Truth Ministries / Pastor Joseph Sugrue • cgtruth.org • All rights reserved.