Welcome to First Christian Forest Grove! Since 1882 First Christian Church has been a lighthouse of God's love on the corner of 19th and Cedar in Forest Grove.The building has changed over the years and the congregation has grown in size, but the timeless values of Faith, Hope, and Love found in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ are still alive and unchanging here.

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        We confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son  of the living God and Lord and Savior of the World

                                      

         Wednesday Bible Study Devotion May 27, 2020

                            By Rev. Spencer King

Matthew 18 20 “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

Have you ever noticed there are some words that are always used in the positive but never in the negative or always used in the negative but never in the positive? For example, when was the last time you ever heard someone describe themselves as gruntled, it's always disgruntled or nothing at all. Have you ever heard anyone say that they are chalant or plussed. it's nonchalant or nonplussed and that's it.

Today we constantly hear people use the word “unprecedented,” but the truth is our situation is entirely “precedented.” There have been plagues that have afflicted the human race throughout all of recorded history. And the United States has suffered through one plague after another since our very beginning. More U.S. soldiers died of the Spanish Flu during World War I than were killed in combat. In fact, America had only about one third the population that we have today but during the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 nearly 750,000 Americans died.

I think public health experts and epidemiologists probably lay awake at night worrying that there will be a new plague that will kill people by the millions again. I write “again” because that has happened over and over again in human history. The Black Death killed approximately one-quarter of the population of planet earth. The bubonic and pneumonic plagues have swept around this planet on a regular basis as have many other diseases. Some plagues, like for example leprosy, are described in the Bible. So, not unprecedented. 

Is social distancing and quarantine biblical? It certainly is! In the Old Testament Pentateuch we read that God gave Moses a number of public health regulations to be implemented among the ancient Hebrew people. Included in those were instructions about what to do when disease found its way into their community. God told them to quarantine the sick people, God told them to burn the tent or hut and the clothing and other possessions of anyone who was afflicted by an infectious disease, and God gave them special cleansing rituals to practice if they were deemed to have been exposed to something unclean. Now, of course, God would not have given them practices that are faithless and unchristian. If faithfulness is entirely contained in the admonition that we should pray and trust in God, then why would God have told them to do these other things too?

Our principal line of defense against any sort of misfortune is prayer. But just as we wear seatbelts in our cars, we take life preservers in our boats for every person on board, we have smoke detectors, we have locks on our homes and on our cars and when we jump out of airplanes (you can bet I'll never do that) we wear a parachute, we are also to use our God-given wisdom to stay safe.

I'm not an epidemiologist, nor am I a Constitutional scholar. But I do know that these situations are entirely “precedented.” That is to say that the laws governing public health emergencies have already been challenged in the courts many times over the course of American history and have been found to be entirely Constitutional. And I truly believe that the doctors around the world, did you see that, around the world, I'll write it one more time, around the world are not engaged in some sort of global conspiracy to embarrass certain American politicians, destroy our economy along with their own or damage the American Church. Israel depends on tourism for their economic survival and yet they have closed their borders to all visitors until they first spend two weeks in quarantine.

So I have made a decision to take the advice of those scientists who know how to keep First Christian Church as safe as possible from this disease. We will pray for one another, we will do what we can to come together as a Church through every means available to us, and we will follow the American Center for Disease Control’s guidelines and suggestions so that all of us, especially the most vulnerable among us, will survive this epidemic. When the time comes, we will engage in safe and healthy reopening practices as best we know how. That is my pledge to you as it has been from pastors throughout the history of this country, and the history of the church, and even from Moses himself. 

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