How to Talk to Children About the Coronavirus
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to the podcast.
00:00:05.800 | This is another special episode related to current events.
00:00:09.320 | We don't plan to dedicate a lot of episodes
00:00:11.280 | to the coronavirus pandemic,
00:00:12.680 | but we will today speaking directly to youth.
00:00:16.400 | Pastor John is with me today from his home office.
00:00:18.760 | And Pastor John, as you know, just a few weeks back,
00:00:20.920 | I spoke to a youth group in Frisco, Texas,
00:00:23.640 | about 100 or so students packed together
00:00:25.720 | in a little room in the church
00:00:27.040 | to talk about smartphones and social media habits.
00:00:29.520 | It was a great time.
00:00:30.880 | But I started off by asking how many of them knew
00:00:33.440 | what Ask Pastor John was.
00:00:35.920 | And I think every single hand went up in the room.
00:00:39.800 | It was shocking to me, I wasn't expecting it.
00:00:42.400 | So I think a lot of youth listen to this podcast already.
00:00:45.400 | I suspect that's because their parents listen to episodes
00:00:48.040 | and car rides around town.
00:00:49.320 | For whatever reason, they know about this podcast.
00:00:51.520 | So let's take this moment to speak directly to those youth.
00:00:55.620 | You have 14 grandkids now.
00:00:58.260 | That's incredible.
00:00:59.640 | Become Grandfather John for a moment.
00:01:02.160 | What would you say to the youth in this season
00:01:04.760 | about God and coronavirus?
00:01:08.000 | - That's good, I didn't know you were gonna say that.
00:01:09.680 | But I had thought, I'm 74 years old.
00:01:13.360 | That means I'm old enough to be your granddad,
00:01:15.560 | and maybe your great granddad.
00:01:18.380 | My name is John Piper.
00:01:21.680 | You can call me Pastor John.
00:01:23.360 | I want to talk to you for a few minutes
00:01:26.360 | about the coronavirus,
00:01:28.560 | that sickness that is changing
00:01:32.400 | how people live all over the world.
00:01:37.040 | And I want to talk about God,
00:01:38.520 | I want to talk about Jesus, and about you.
00:01:42.520 | What does the coronavirus have to do
00:01:44.280 | with you and God and Jesus?
00:01:46.640 | So I hope you'll listen for just a few minutes.
00:01:48.760 | What makes the coronavirus so unusual and so dangerous
00:01:53.840 | is that you can catch it as a sickness
00:01:56.440 | by just being around people who have it,
00:01:58.240 | and you can't tell when they have it.
00:02:01.080 | And that makes it really dangerous,
00:02:04.200 | which is why everybody is staying inside these days,
00:02:07.640 | trying to stop the virus.
00:02:09.560 | And because it is 10 times more serious
00:02:14.560 | than the ordinary flu.
00:02:17.600 | And the reason our leaders,
00:02:20.240 | like the governor and the president of the United States,
00:02:24.200 | are so concerned is because maybe one or two
00:02:29.200 | or three people out of every hundred
00:02:33.280 | who get this sickness will die from it.
00:02:36.080 | Now that may not sound like a lot,
00:02:37.280 | like one or two out of every hundred,
00:02:39.800 | but if in my town, for example, Minneapolis,
00:02:43.360 | 100,000 people, which is not unlikely,
00:02:46.920 | 100,000 people got sick with this,
00:02:51.080 | that means 1,000 or 2,000, maybe 3,000,
00:02:56.080 | are going to die of it.
00:02:57.760 | So when you think of it that way,
00:02:59.400 | that's a lot of people who weren't planning to die
00:03:03.860 | that quick are now gonna die if it spreads that much.
00:03:08.720 | Now the Bible teaches, and the Bible is God's very word,
00:03:13.440 | the Bible teaches that God is stronger
00:03:16.400 | than the coronavirus.
00:03:18.280 | I hope you believe that.
00:03:19.880 | We know this because Matthew 4, verse 24 says,
00:03:24.880 | they brought Jesus all the sick,
00:03:27.880 | those afflicted with various diseases and pains,
00:03:32.440 | and he healed them.
00:03:34.720 | So Jesus is more powerful than diseases, every one of them.
00:03:39.720 | In fact, over and over again,
00:03:44.260 | the Bible tells us that God commands the wind, rain, snow,
00:03:49.260 | lightning, plants, grass, grasshoppers,
00:03:55.560 | flies, frogs, gnats, worms, whales, birds, everything else.
00:04:00.780 | He commands them where to go, what to do,
00:04:06.440 | and they do what he says.
00:04:08.900 | They have to, he's God.
00:04:10.400 | They do what he says.
00:04:11.760 | God made the whole world and everything in it,
00:04:14.740 | and he holds the world in his hand,
00:04:16.680 | and he does what he wants to do with the world
00:04:20.540 | and in the world, and you can see that again
00:04:23.320 | in Paul's letter to the Ephesians in chapter one, verse 11,
00:04:27.260 | where he says, "God works all things."
00:04:31.940 | That includes the coronavirus.
00:04:33.820 | "God works all things according to the counsel of his will."
00:04:38.980 | That means nobody is over God, telling God what to do.
00:04:43.980 | He's the highest.
00:04:46.120 | He's the strongest decision-maker in the world.
00:04:49.460 | Nobody makes God do what he doesn't choose to do.
00:04:53.680 | He made the world.
00:04:54.680 | He holds it up, so he does what he wants with it and in it.
00:04:59.680 | It never falls apart.
00:05:01.380 | It always does what he plans for it to do all the time
00:05:05.840 | and all of it.
00:05:07.080 | So, I hope you're asking, and it's right to ask
00:05:11.000 | if we ask humbly, ready to learn the answer from God,
00:05:15.960 | why is there a coronavirus?
00:05:18.960 | Why don't you, God, Jesus, please, take it away
00:05:23.960 | since you could, and that's right, he could.
00:05:28.720 | He's God.
00:05:29.960 | The coronavirus is not God.
00:05:32.400 | The coronavirus is not stronger than Jesus.
00:05:35.840 | Jesus could take it away just by snapping his finger,
00:05:39.880 | and the time will come when he has decided
00:05:43.840 | he will take it away, and it might happen overnight.
00:05:46.400 | We don't know how it will happen.
00:05:48.560 | So, why is it here?
00:05:50.960 | Why doesn't he just take it away now?
00:05:53.960 | And the answer's this, because he has wise purposes for it.
00:05:58.960 | God is perfectly wise.
00:06:04.740 | That means he knows exactly what needs to be done
00:06:09.500 | to bring about what's best for all time.
00:06:13.760 | That's called wisdom.
00:06:14.760 | When you know what's best to do all the time,
00:06:17.600 | you're a wise person, and God is perfect in wisdom.
00:06:21.540 | He knows what needs to be done.
00:06:24.320 | He knows how it needs to be done.
00:06:26.120 | He knows when it needs to be done,
00:06:28.000 | and since God is perfectly wise and knows everything,
00:06:32.080 | he knows way, way, way, way more than we know.
00:06:35.760 | Everything he makes happen and everything he lets happen
00:06:40.540 | fits into a perfectly wise and good plan that he has.
00:06:45.540 | We can't see all of it, all the plan,
00:06:51.020 | but we can see some of it.
00:06:52.720 | For example, let me give you some things that I can see
00:06:55.560 | and you can see in the Bible
00:06:57.540 | that God is planning to do with the coronavirus.
00:07:01.540 | Number one, Jesus said in Luke 13
00:07:04.320 | that things like the coronavirus happen
00:07:07.480 | so that people in the world who don't believe in Jesus
00:07:11.080 | would wake up and repent and think about God and Jesus
00:07:16.080 | and heaven and hell and salvation
00:07:18.800 | and the need for forgiveness
00:07:20.460 | and that they would turn to Jesus and be saved.
00:07:23.920 | That's one thing he's doing.
00:07:25.660 | Number two, Paul said that things like the coronavirus
00:07:30.720 | happen so that people would stop trusting in themselves
00:07:35.120 | and trust God, 2 Corinthians 1.
00:07:39.320 | Lots of people think, adults think, children think,
00:07:42.520 | that they're way smarter than they are,
00:07:44.600 | way stronger than they are, way more in control.
00:07:48.240 | The captain of my soul.
00:07:50.120 | There's a movie about that, I'm the captain of my soul.
00:07:53.840 | Baloney, you're not the captain of your soul.
00:07:56.600 | God is the captain of your soul,
00:07:58.760 | and that kind of pride needs to be brought down.
00:08:00.760 | If it needs to be brought down by coronavirus,
00:08:02.900 | God will do it.
00:08:03.760 | We have a lot of arrogant leaders in this world
00:08:06.560 | who need to be humbled,
00:08:08.160 | and if it takes the coronavirus to do it, God will do it.
00:08:11.520 | God wants us to know that he's in control
00:08:15.160 | and that we ought to trust him
00:08:17.520 | and not our own abilities or our own intelligence.
00:08:20.980 | That's number two.
00:08:22.680 | And the third thing that God is doing is this.
00:08:26.400 | The Bible says that things like the coronavirus happen
00:08:31.400 | to show us that we might be loving things
00:08:36.400 | more than we love God.
00:08:37.920 | We might be loving other people more than we love God.
00:08:42.380 | And there's nothing in the world more important
00:08:44.840 | than loving Jesus more than we love ourselves
00:08:47.940 | or more than we love other people.
00:08:50.120 | So the coronavirus is showing people what they love most.
00:08:55.840 | So God is in charge of the coronavirus,
00:08:59.160 | and he knows what he's doing,
00:09:00.820 | and he's perfectly good and perfectly wise.
00:09:04.640 | And here's the really good news
00:09:06.780 | we ought to want the whole world to hear.
00:09:10.120 | So I hope you will share with your friends,
00:09:12.380 | namely the news that Jesus, God's only son,
00:09:17.380 | came into the world and died
00:09:21.600 | so that God would never punish us if we trust him.
00:09:26.600 | He said that the punishment that you and I deserve
00:09:33.160 | because of our sin, that punishment was put on Jesus.
00:09:38.920 | And if we trust Jesus, that is if we receive Jesus,
00:09:45.360 | welcome Jesus as our savior and our guide
00:09:49.920 | and our treasure, the one we really love,
00:09:53.560 | then we never have to be afraid of God.
00:09:57.280 | We never have to be afraid of God's punishment ever.
00:10:00.780 | This is wonderful.
00:10:02.720 | That means we don't ever have to be afraid to die,
00:10:07.520 | not from the coronavirus or anything else,
00:10:10.140 | because when Jesus died and rose from the dead,
00:10:15.000 | he changed death from punishment into doorway
00:10:20.000 | to everlasting happiness with him.
00:10:26.000 | So what does it mean?
00:10:27.980 | You don't have to be afraid of the coronavirus.
00:10:31.360 | God is stronger than the coronavirus.
00:10:34.640 | And if you trust his son, Jesus,
00:10:37.480 | God will make everything turn out for your good.
00:10:40.400 | So be brave.
00:10:41.680 | Don't be brave because you're strong.
00:10:43.680 | That's called pride.
00:10:45.280 | All those TV superheroes, they're all proud.
00:10:47.920 | They're not basing their strength on God.
00:10:50.680 | They're just basing it on stuff
00:10:52.520 | that they have inside of them.
00:10:53.520 | Don't be like them because you're not them
00:10:55.820 | and you're not strong, you're weak.
00:10:58.040 | Be brave because you have a great savior, your best friend,
00:11:02.880 | Jesus, your savior and Lord is strong,
00:11:07.400 | strong enough to make everything,
00:11:09.240 | including the coronavirus, turn out for your good.
00:11:14.080 | I taught the kids in our church when I was a pastor,
00:11:18.400 | a two-line poem.
00:11:21.100 | It's especially for children who believe in Jesus.
00:11:24.320 | Hundreds of them said it over the years.
00:11:26.880 | Let me teach it to you and we'll be done.
00:11:29.440 | And I'm gonna say it once
00:11:30.880 | and then you say it with me the second time, okay?
00:11:33.840 | Goes like this.
00:11:35.120 | When things don't go the way they should,
00:11:38.960 | God always makes them turn for good.
00:11:42.880 | Okay, now you say it with me.
00:11:44.920 | When things don't go the way they should,
00:11:48.740 | God always makes them turn for good.
00:11:52.520 | You know, I bet if we say it one more time,
00:11:54.740 | you won't forget it 'cause you're kids,
00:11:56.220 | you remember everything.
00:11:57.520 | Let's do it.
00:11:58.360 | When things don't go the way they should,
00:12:02.080 | God always makes them turn for good.
00:12:06.120 | Maybe kids, we'll talk again later.
00:12:08.360 | I don't know.
00:12:09.200 | But for now, trust Jesus no matter what.
00:12:13.480 | You'll never be sorry.
00:12:15.280 | - No, you'll never be sorry.
00:12:17.160 | That's a great word, Pastor John.
00:12:18.840 | As Pastor John just mentioned here,
00:12:21.240 | in passing, we have an amazing opportunity
00:12:23.640 | to share the gospel with our classmates
00:12:25.780 | and with our friends in this season.
00:12:27.920 | And if you have access to social media
00:12:29.960 | or texting or phone calling or video messaging,
00:12:33.120 | or maybe you can even meet face-to-face,
00:12:35.120 | we would encourage you to reach out to your friends
00:12:37.400 | with the hope of Jesus.
00:12:38.580 | This is the time.
00:12:39.480 | The time is right. - Yeah, amen.
00:12:41.880 | - And as you do, may the Lord give you boldness
00:12:44.240 | and the right words to speak eternal truth
00:12:47.200 | into the lives of your friends during this season.
00:12:51.640 | Well, here at DG, once a week or so,
00:12:53.680 | we're producing special resources related to this pandemic,
00:12:56.460 | including this episode and other APJ episodes and articles.
00:12:59.840 | You can find all of those resources online
00:13:02.020 | at desiringgod.org/coronavirus.
00:13:05.520 | That's desiringgod.org/coronavirus.
00:13:09.920 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:13:10.840 | Thanks for listening to the podcast,
00:13:12.120 | and we will see you next time.
00:13:14.000 | (upbeat music)
00:13:16.580 | (upbeat music)
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