No Plague Shall Come Near Your Tent

Satan tempted Jesus, and Jesus answered with scripture.

Again Satan tempted Jesus, and Jesus answered with scripture.

And so a third time, Satan tempted Jesus, this time using scripture. He tells Jesus to leap off the top of the temple, and quotes Psalm 91:10-11: “He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you . . . in their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” It seems like Satan knows a high-quality, twistable scripture when he hears one. Satan attempts to use Jesus' own book against him. He calls him to take a beautiful song of reassurance and turn it into a promise to be claimed. But this isn't a laundry list of things that God promises to do for his people; this is a poem where the psalmist expresses a deep sense of trust in the God that he loves because that God loves him. And yet both the psalmist and Jesus know that there is a deeply complex fallen world outside of the doors of the sanctuary in which these words were penned. There is a world where no one, including the people of God, is spared pestilence or plague or destruction or arrows or stones or serpents.

We have confidence that God can do great things. We have confidence that God does do great things. But ought not use that confidence in God's nature to “claim” some sort of shallow “not today, Satan!” (where is *that* even in the Bible???) “promise” that we won't get sick because Psalm 91:10 (no plague shall come near your tent). And even if this was a list of promises for the people of God – Deuteronomy 28, for example – it's still an old covenant promise. And we have to be very VERY (did I say VERY?) careful about drag-and-dropping old covenant promises onto the new covenant people of God.

So maybe cool it a bit with the Psalm 91 quotations, and the “Christ Over Viruses and Infectious Diseases” memes. God has not called us to declare victory over COVID-19. He has called us to be faithful, in life and in death. He has called us to kindness and compassion for the vulnerable and disenfranchised. He has called us to self-sacrifice. He has called us to a profound trust that the right man is on the throne of the universe.

Be calm. Be wise. Take steps to protect the vulnerable around you. And trust that you have a God who loves you in the midst of this complex world of snakes and arrows and COVID-19.