Central Abbotsford

It’s been five years since our world changed.

That particular week, in the middle of March 2020, bore some striking similarities to our past week, especially here at Northview. The previous Friday and Saturday had seen a busy and vibrant Apologetics Canada conference at the Downes Road campus. On Tuesday night, we gathered at that very same campus for a Special General Meeting, where we as a church voted to authorize the construction of an expansion to our main building.

Then came Wednesday. The paths diverge considerably there between 2020 and 2025. On Wednesday, March 11, 2020, the news came fast and furious. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic. The NBA suspended its 2019-2020 season (the NHL followed a day later). Tom Hanks and Sophie Trudeau publicly announced their positive tests. President Donald Trump announced a travel ban in the United States. We woke up on Thursday morning to a world that looked and seemed very different to the one that had greeted us the previous morning. We – as people, as a civil society, and even as the church – seemed underprepared for the change.

I understand that many of us shudder when we look back to those days, and the weeks, months, and years that followed. But I do think that we shudder for many different reasons. Some of us lost loved ones due to the effects of COVID. Many relationships were fractured or completely severed owing to disagreements over how to approach mitigation efforts, whether masks, vaccines, or the dreaded phrase that we all came to know: “social distancing.” Almost all of us missed out on full participation in one of life’s great milestone celebrations: graduations were done over Zoom, weddings limited to ten guests, funerals and memorials postponed for months or abandoned altogether.

Some of us shudder because we know that the pandemic was a time of great testing, and we remember the ways that we fell short. We disobeyed restrictions that we decided were inconvenient to us. We simmered with anger at those who didn’t follow the restrictions as closely as we did. We spoke with contempt and disrespect regarding the leaders who we were called to pray for. We questioned whether the people who came to different conclusions than we did were truly Christians. We may still even question that today. We shudder because many of us have wounds that have not fully healed. Some of these wounds were self-inflicted, the result of our own poor reactions to a challenging situation.

All of this is preamble to lead me to the point that I would like to make – what I, as a preacher, hope that you take away from a gospel-centered sermon. You have likely heard a sermon here where a big theological idea is discussed or a point is made, and then the pastor offers up one or more practical applications of the sermon – something you can actually go out and do in the week. You might wonder about this – after all, our Statement of Faith includes “We are saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ, and by faith alone.” Why do we then talk about things to do?

Every time one of the pastors at Northview preaches, we will seek to apply the text. We do this because we believe that the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4:12) and that through the knowledge of Him in His Scriptures, we have been granted all things pertaining to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). And so, one of the aims in preaching is to exhort you to life changes that serve to transform you daily further into Christ’s likeness.

This daily process of sanctification is one that requires God’s grace, of course, but it also requires our discipline. In the passage we heard preached last weekend, we read these verses (1 Corinthians 9:25-27a) from the apostle Paul: “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control.” Paul viewed discipline as essential to a life of faithfully following Jesus.

How does this relate to the COVID pandemic? Well, the purpose of discipline, and the purpose of applications in sermons (some of which are small, and some of which are bigger), are to train you – body, mind, and spirit. Just as a weightlifter does not start their first ever training session by trying to break a world record but must build up to that weight, so too are sermon applications designed to build you into someone who is closer and closer to the image-bearer of God that you were designed to be. 

Peter said in 1 Peter 4:12 “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” James presses this further at the start of his letter (James 1:2) with the exhortation to “count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” Sermon applications are intended, in part, to be small challenges – small trials – not because following through on those applications earns us anything, but because they prepare us for the fiery trial – the BIG one.

The COVID pandemic was a big trial that we all faced – as individuals, as a society, and as the church. But we should not be so shortsighted as to think that it is the only one, or even the biggest one, that we will face, in our lifetimes. It is easy to deceive ourselves of this – living in one of the most affluent countries in the world in the most affluent era of world history can have that effect. So, as we gather, as we hear the word of God preached, proclaimed, and applied – let us know that one of its purposes is to prepare us so that the next time the world changes, we are prepared.