My subject today will be coming
out of the creation of man as God's highest and greatest creation. And the subject is the development
of the races. And this is always a pertinent
discussion, an interesting discussion, because we know from the scripture
that man started with Adam and Eve. Two people. And yet, the world is full of
people today who do not look like each other, that if you
just put a bunch of people from different places in one room,
you'd think there's no way these people are even remotely related. But we do know that all generated
from animals. So there's got to be an explanation
for the development of the races, and that's what I'd like to look
at today. I've got some texts that we'll start with. Keep these
in mind, and then we'll take the discussion from there. The
first text is from Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 through 30, and
it's kind of a restatement of what we talked about last time.
Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. and let them have dominion over
the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and
over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man
in his own image, the image of God he created him, male and
female he created them. And God blessed them and said
to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue
it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds
of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the
earth. Now, I'm not going to read the
second passage, but I would reference it, and you all in your time
later today, in a week, whenever, can go back and read and remember
this. But Genesis chapter 3 records
the disobedience of man, his falling into sin, and his expulsion
from the garden. So we've got that in the story. Man has been created. Man, Adam
and Eve have disobeyed and they are now put out of the garden
into the world, into the creation at large. Then reference as well
Genesis 6-8 and this is the story of the flood. Man's numbers have
grown over the years and the sin that has entered the human
race has come to a head so to speak. Man is evil and God threatens
and then destroys the entirety of the human race with the exception
of Noah and his immediate family. So the human race has been created
as two, grown into countless numbers and now reduced again
by God's direct intervention down to eight people. In Genesis
9, verse 1, we read this, And God blessed Noah and his sons
and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Now, they were a fruitful bunch. In the chapters following, chapter
10, Primarily we see the genealogy, the table of generations for
Noah and his descendants. They did indeed fill the earth.
They were very prolific. In chapter 11 we come to the
account of the Tower of Babel. And I read this beginning in
chapter 11 verse 1 and going through verse 9. Now the whole
earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated
from the east They found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled
there. And they said to one another,
come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they
had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. And they said, come,
let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the
heavens. And let us make a name for ourselves,
lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. And
the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the
children of man had built. And the Lord said, behold, they
are one as one people, and they have all one language. And this
is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that
they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down
and confuse their language so that they may not understand
one another's speech. So the Lord dispersed them from
there over the face of all of the earth, and they left off
building the city. Therefore, its name was called
Babel because the Lord confused the language of all the earth,
and from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all of
the earth. Now, we'll draw from the New
Testament to a passage from the book of Acts, chapter 17, verse
26-28. And this is where Paul is now
on Mars Hill speaking to the philosophers, the Greek philosophers
who have gathered there to discuss the weightier matters of life
as they understood it. And Paul tells the Stoics and
the Epicureans there Breaking in on Paul's speech, Paul says,
And He, that is God, made from one man every nation of mankind
to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted
periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they
should seek God in the hope that they might feel their way toward
Him and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from
each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being,
even as some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed
his offspring. Keep those passages in mind as
we look to some matters that I'll speak about today, primarily
the development of the races in mankind. As I said before,
when I preached a couple weeks ago, mankind is God's highest
and greatest creation. Mankind was made in the image
of God. That's a very weighty statement.
Scripture makes it, acknowledges it as fact, and we should take
it to heart as well. There's a lot of things that
are built into that statement to say that we are made in the
image of God. It's worthy for us to study mankind. Now this morning we heard that
there are different branches of thought or study, and one
of them that Brother Bill mentioned was anthropology, and I guess
that's where this message today falls in. This is the study of
man. And it's worthy, as I said before, because man is made in
the image of God. So this study of man or any study
of man should drive us to a better understanding of ourselves and
a better understanding of God. And that's always good for us.
Always good for us. Let me preface this today with
a few comments. The broad topic about mankind
And His creation, mankind being created by God uniquely in an
instant, begs questions. It begs questions brought by
either the believer or the unbeliever because the scripture is short
and concise. It states as fact that God created
man. There's very little said about
the process that God went through to create man. So we're left
to wonder some things and some wondering into the quiet places
of the scripture where God doesn't necessarily give us the details.
Some of that wondering can go off into vain speculation and
some of it's very reasonable to wonder, to try and fill in
the gaps, so to speak. When we're talking about the
creation of man, we know the beginning point, and then later
in the Scripture, we recognize that there are races. Scripture
never once denies the difference in the races. We see references
to Ethiopians and the color of their skin. We see references
to the people of Crete being one way or another. The Scripture
does not deny, hide, or gloss over the fact that races of men
have developed in the creation. But at the same time, it doesn't
necessarily tell us how the races came about. We're left to wonder
sometimes, and this I don't think is vain speculation. I think
it's reasonable to wonder these things. I think it may be out
of line at times to be dogmatic about our answers. But I don't
think that it's unreasonable to wonder, and I don't think
it's unreasonable to seek an answer. Today, hopefully, we
will be looking for an answer, a reasonable answer. Today we
will look at mankind in a very generic way. I understand that
man was created in perfection, fell into sin. So we can talk
about man if you will, positively or negatively. And today this
will be somewhat of a positive discussion. What I mean by that
is I will be talking about mankind with very little reference to
his corruption in sin. We'll be talking about mankind
for the most part without a discussion of the impact of sin. Now, the
more negative, and these are just terms and I use in terms
of one pole or the other, the negative presentation of man
would be one that reflects his condition and sin. And that's
a reasonable discussion and a needful discussion as well. But that's
not my point today. We're looking strictly at anthropology,
if you will. Study of man and his races. Our
beginning point has to be in the scripture. Has to be. We're Christians. We're here
in what we call the house of God. We're gathered as believers
and it would be just completely wrong for us to look to any other
source of inspiration other than the scripture. And that's where
we will begin. We've read again about the creation of man. Built
into this discussion is the principle understanding, number one, that
God created man. Never will I question that. The
second understanding that's built into this discussion, and let's
hold to this as well, is that God was and continues to be intimately
involved with mankind. Now at times that can be in the
sense of the miraculous where God has stepped in and intervened
in miraculous ways. But for the most part, It is
through His providential guiding of the affairs of men. But let
us keep in mind as we look at the discussion of mankind and
the development of the races that God is intimately involved
in the entire process. There is not a single aspect
of the development of the human race that has been left to chance,
Circumstance, evolution, whatever you want to call it. Every single
aspect of the development of mankind is within the providential
control of God. And those two things are base
understanding for this entire discussion. Let's keep that in
mind always. Let's look at a few basic facts.
Presently, there are 7.2 billion people on earth. 7.2 billion people on earth. The
United States has a population of almost 360 million. 7.2 billion people on earth. That's a lot of folks. That's
a lot of folks. Secondly, these people live everywhere
in the world. Everywhere. This is an amazing
fact when you think about it. Mankind exists on this planet,
lives and thrives on this planet in every possible environment. From the harshest, most terrible
cold that you can imagine on either pole, all the way to the
hottest climates on the equator. Mankind exists everywhere on
the planet. This is amazing. God told Adam
and Eve and then reiterated, restated, recharged Noah and
his family to fill the earth. And the descendants of Adam,
the descendants of Noah and his family have done that. This is
amazing when you think about it. Mankind exists in every human
condition you can think of from stone age peoples all the way
to automated societies of machines. Think about that. There is such
a diversity within mankind. Y'all were in Africa recently. You saw some of, maybe, the Stone
Age end of things. But you also saw some of the
higher ends of human civilization. All there on one continent. Isn't
that amazing? Mankind exists the world over,
everywhere, and in every state of human condition. This is amazing
when you think about it. Absolutely amazing. Something
else that's just as amazing, probably more amazing than all
of that, is the fact that mankind exists in an incredible variety
of sizes, shapes, and colors. This is breathtaking when you
think about it. Everybody on the planet, 7.2
billion people came from Adam and Eve. But as I said, you put a handful
of us in one room and you wouldn't think at all we were even remotely
related. But we are. We are. Now all of this, the various
conditions of man, the different lifestyles they possess and live
out in their days, all of this must be reconciled in some way
with the scripture and in some way with the Christian message,
because God's word is pertinent for all of the people of the earth, whether
they know it or not, whether they know it or not. Today, we're
going to talk about the development of the races, and this is a very
divisive subject. It can be. For us as Christians,
it should not be divisive. It should be just another discussion
about the condition of mankind. And I hope that's where it is
for us. That it is not divisive. That
it's an inquiry we make. And an inquiry we make, may I
say, that causes us to wonder and awe about what God has done
with the human kind. But I do know that some people,
the minute you mention race, just fall to pieces. We're not going to fall to pieces,
I hope. Let me say there are many theories
that have been put forth over time about how the races developed. There are secular theories about
how the races developed. The primary secular theory being
that of evolution. and an understanding built within
evolution about where the races came from. And then there are
also religious theories about how the various races developed. And truthfully, I find most of
the religious arguments pretty weak and uninspiring at the very
least, and some of them are just crazy and insane. We'll look
at some of these. Let me say first, and we discussed
it before, and Brother Bill has discussed in sermons past, the
theory of evolution. And this is where the secular
humanist types will go for an explanation of race. This is
where, unfortunately, some Christians will go for an explanation of
race. And I find it completely wrong
on a number of levels. Of course, first and foremost
is that evolution begins without God and proceeds without God's
providential care of his creation. But the primary theory within
evolution about how the races develop is that these proto-humans
you find when you start looking at some of these scientific and
historical studies. The word proto is used quite
a bit. We'll talk about that more later
as well. But the development of some of these proto-humans
half apes, half people, under this theory, got to a certain
point, and then the tree branched. And some of them went this way,
and they became white people. And then the branch went this
way, and those are the black people. And some of it branched
and went this way, and those are the Asians. And they recognized
that's the origin of races. Again, built into this whole
deal is that God has not created man and that we have all descended
from apes. That cannot be reconciled with
the scripture. So we discount and throw that
out. There must be another explanation
for the development of the races. The various religious theories
are a couple in number. One is what we've talked about
before, it's called theistic evolution, where they will, these
people who hold to this, these Christians who hold to this,
will tell you that God created in an instant, but then through
the process of evolution has brought about all that we see.
So they will recognize evolution, and they will, to make it work,
they will claim God's guidance in the process. So they're relying
not on His unique God's unique creative power, but his providential
guidance of the process. I find that not particularly
edifying either. We still have developed not as
a unique creation of God as the scripture says, but as an evolutionary
offshoot of an ape somewhere. I don't find that particularly
edifying. I don't see where that fits with
scripture either. Another theory that is popular,
that is used to explain this, and I don't know if you've heard
of this or not, but I'll mention it, and it's called the gap theory.
And that is that between Genesis 1 and Genesis 1 verse 2, there
is a gap. Something happened between the
first verse that says God created the heavens and the earth, And
the second verse, which said that the earth was formless and
void. And what the gap theory people
say is that God created the entire world, people and all, and then
sin entered into the creation. And that's what crumbled the
whole thing and set it in disarray. And then God basically recreated,
reshaped, rebuilt the creation. and then remade man in his image
and put that unique man in the garden of Eden. The gap theory
recognizes, states, presents that there were people created
in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. But when God reshaped the world,
they were put outside of the garden so they're out there. And those are the other races,
basically. And then as Adam and Eve sinned
and were put out of the garden, and their children mixed with
the surrounding peoples, that's where
we get the races. Built into the gap there as well,
although some state it and some don't, is that the flood of Noah
was not universal. That it was not universal. So
Noah and his family were not the only people on earth after
the flood waters receded. They say that the flood was only
in the area of Noah. And then when Noah finally settled,
when he washed up where he washed up, and they came out, there
were other people there. And those are the other races. Now, I don't find that acceptable
either. You have to build a whole bunch
of theology between two verses in chapter 1, when there's no
theology presented there. Reading the Scripture doesn't
indicate to me, and it doesn't seem to indicate to anybody else
I've read or talked to about this, that there was this gap
in there. But this theory loads a gap into
that and presents a whole theology built on that gap, a whole creation
of people, And then builds on that, builds on that, builds
on that. I don't find that particularly acceptable either. I think there
is a reasonable explanation presented to us in the scripture that can
be understood and presented and can be meaningful and may very
well explain the development of the races. There is a third
religious approach to the question of the development of the races.
And I find this equally as unacceptable. And that is just don't talk about
it. And we've all run into people
like that. When a touchy subject, be it
the races or election or whatever touchy subject, controversial
subject we may come up with in discussion. When it starts coming
up and really we should address it, in honesty we should address
it. The approach then is, well, no,
no. That is really not particularly
beneficial to the message. It's not pertinent to my Christian
life. I'll leave that to the theologians,
the eggheads, those who want to pursue that kind of matter,
but it doesn't really matter. Well, that's a shame. That's a shame, because an honest
pursuit of any matter presented in the Scripture, an honest pursuit
enlightened by God's guidance, is always to our benefit. Always. Regardless of whether
it's controversial or not. We forge our theology in controversy. It's not until our ideas, our
personal theology, our faith is tested that we number one,
know what we believe and number two, why we believe it. So it
is unacceptable to bury your head in the sand and just say,
well, that's not really a pertinent issue. I'll leave that to somebody
else to sort out. But me, I just love Jesus. Sounds very pious, but it's Not
very uplifting. Don't be afraid. Controversy
in biblical matters. It tests our faith. It builds
our faith. It encourages our faith. I'm not going to spend a lot
more time on this. I probably spent more than I
needed to on that, but let me say this. We look at the world and there are all kinds of people
in this world. All shapes, sizes, colors. All
kinds of problems in this world because of misunderstandings
about these things. Who has the answers for the questions
that plague this sin-filled world? We do. We do. The Islamic people don't have
an answer for these things. The Jews don't have an answer
for these things. The Hindus don't have an answer
for these things. But those who are God's people
in Jesus Christ do have real answers for the hard questions
in life. the things that we face as people
all over this planet. And part of the tensions worldwide
are centered around race. Rightly
or wrongly, they're centered around race. So it is incumbent
upon us as Christians to try and figure the issues of race
out. Today, the topic is the development
of races. And that's where we'll go. As
I said earlier, this, fortunately, unfortunately, has turned into
what may be a series spread out over years. But today we talk
about the development of the races. Later, in following sermons,
we'll talk about what the various races mean and how to deal with
the various races. All of these are important questions.
But let's look at some basic facts from the Scripture about
mankind so that we can get our feet firmly planted on the ground
and understand where we are coming from, which will help us to go
where we need to go and answer. The first thing that we know
from the Scripture is, yes, that God created mankind. God created Adam and Eve. As I said, this is not a questionable
fact. This is just a fact. This is the way it is. That's
where we must begin. God created man. And furthermore,
God created man in His image. Secondly, all of humankind from
the day of creation until the flood were descendants of those
two people, Adam and Eve. There were no other people created. There were no populations beyond
the Garden of Eden. All that inhabited the earth
prior to the flood descended from Adam and Eve. Then, because man was corrupt,
and sin was within the human race, The world was plunged into
all kinds of evil and darkness and God did destroy all of mankind
with the exception of Noah and his family. That is Noah, his
wife, three sons and their wives. Eight people. Eight people. The entire race
of man that we know today, 7.2 billion people descended from
Noah's family. These are the facts. Not questionable. They're the facts. They're just
the facts. Now, from the time of creation
until the building of the Tower of Babel, there was one race, one language. I don't know how many people
were on earth at the time. You can do all kinds of math
on that, figuring ages of people and childbearing years and all
the potential there. It could have been millions and
millions of people even in that short period of time. The human
race is extremely prolific and can reproduce itself rapidly. I don't know, and the scripture
doesn't tell us how many people were on earth at the time of
the Tower of Babel. But there were a goodly number.
It wasn't just a handful of descendants of Noah. But from the time of
creation until the Tower of Babel. There was one race, one language. With the building of the Tower
of Babel, the vanity of man, vanity of man, because we were
indeed corrupted by sin. The vanity of man was such that
man had discounted the glory of God, set it aside, and they
were looking for glory for themselves. They would build this magnanimous
city and a tower that reached up to the heavens, what the Scripture
says, not for God's glory, but as a monument to themselves.
The command of God was to go forth and fill the earth, and
men said, no, let us join up together in this city. The vanity of man had caused
man to join together to do that which was contrary to the basic
command of God to go forth and fill the earth. decided to separate the people,
to place barriers between them and to force them in doing so,
to force them to fill the earth. God said that their language
would be confused. And in an instant it was. The
people were angry, frustrated, confused, and they scattered. They left. The scripture says
they left Babel. They left. So at this point in the scripture,
what we see, one race and now different languages. Somewhere between this time And
later scripture, when race becomes a discussion, there is the development
of races within mankind. Now this is where we speculate. And I hope you find this to be
reasonable speculation. But we look to science and history. to help us understand what may
have happened. And in doing this, I hope you
don't think I do injustice to the Scripture. Science and history,
when properly understood, never, never contradict Scripture. The problem we get into now,
today, is that science as a whole has an anti-God bias. The science itself is not wrong. The bias, the interpretation
that you put on the science is what's wrong. Let us look to
some basic scientific and historical fact to see if we can understand
the process through the providence of God that gave rise to the
races. And this, for me, I found to
be very, very, very interesting. Because as I said, somewhere
between the tower and later Scripture in the Old Testament where race
is mentioned specifically, they went from one race to multiple
races. Identifiable, visibly identifiable
races. How did that happen? How did
that happen? Let's look at some interesting
facts. Linguists, that's those who study
language, and etymologists, those who study words, have defined
and recognized that there are four language families in the
world. Four language families. Now,
that's not to say there are only four languages. That's not what
I'm saying. What I'm saying is that there are four base language
families. And then within any given family,
there's multitudes of languages in that family. But the linguists
have recognized there are four language families in the world. And they also recognize that
these have all come from one Proto-language. Original language. One original language gave rise
somehow, now the linguists won't tell you how, but they do recognize
the fact that one proto-language, one original language gave rise
to four distinct language families. I find that real interesting. The Bible presents that we had
one language up to a point. Then God intervenes and confuses
the language. Does this parallel what the linguists
and the entomologists tell us? I think it does. I think there
could very well be an explanation contained within
this. The truth is that God had created
man. There was one language. Then
He confused the language and the people scattered. The linguists tell us there was
one original language. Then there were suddenly, without
explanation by them, four languages. I find that very interesting.
I find that very interesting and may I say very pertinent. Now, what does that have to do with
race? So far I've talked about languages. Language and race
are not the same thing. We know that. But there is, to some extent,
an overlap. Now, the Bible tells us the languages
were confused and the people scattered. This is where the
anthropologists come in. Look at an overlap, a coincidence
if you will. There was one language, then
there were four. The scientists will tell us that
at a point in evolution, now I'll use the word evolution here
and talk about that, but let's recognize what science is saying
as far as what's happening. They will tell us in their mind
that at a certain point there was this proto-human. They call
this proto-human Lucy. I don't know if you've ever heard
that in any of your reading or listening. But they talk about
Lucy. This is that unique human animal
that gave rise to the entire human race. And they will talk
about the development of the proto-human language. The original
human language. And then they talk about the
development of the proto-human race. And then their tree forks. There are four branches on their
tree. The linguists talk about one language, then four. The
anthropologists talk about one original Human and then four
families within the human race. I find that to be incredibly
coincidental. Incredibly coincidental. Now
where did these four families take root? We have the African family. We have the Eurasian family. We have the Asian and Pacific
Rim family, and we have the family of peoples on the Americas. We have blacks, we have whites,
we have yellows, and we have reds. The four human races. One proto-language. One proto-human. Four languages. Four races. I find this incredible. The facts in no way do an injustice
to God's Word, to the Scripture. Now the interpretations placed
on these things by various people absolutely slaughter the Scripture.
And I don't mean that they can break break or destroy the truth. But I mean, their interpretation
is not the Scripture. But the base facts in no way
do any injustice to the Scripture. None. Now, put yourself in the
place of the people at the Tower of Babel. And this is where it
gets interesting. The languages are confused. All of a sudden, the guy next
to you is just... What are you saying, fellow?
I can't get anything... I can't understand this guy.
And he's doing the same thing. What is the deal? This guy is
just over here mindlessly babbling. By the way, there's that word
babble. And it's chaos. And not only that, what happens
when we can't understand people and things are going on? Typically,
we get mad. So we say, I've had enough of
this. I'm out of here. I'm out of here. So they start
to leave. It's pandemonium. It's frustration. It's confusion. They can't take
it. They leave. And they start walking around.
And then they hear somebody who is sounding like them. So they walk over there. And
handfuls of them here and handfuls of them there start to join up. They say, look, I can't take
it. These idiots over here are just,
it's gibberish. It's noise to my ears. I can't do this. Let's get out
of here. I said, well, look, that hill over there looks pretty
good. Let's go over there. Off they go. They're away from
all this other noise. They're by themselves. Set up
camp. I can see that happening. Experience
in my own life makes me understand the principle. For some years
I worked with Mexican tree planters. Part of my job. Guys were over
from the border. At the time I spoke no Spanish. and it used to make me so mad
I wanted to hurt somebody when they started speaking Spanish
around me. Number one, I couldn't understand
them, and I didn't feel like they could understand me, so
work was not getting done. And secondly, I just knew. Oh,
I knew they were talking bad about me. I knew that. Were they? They know, I don't. But the assumption
on my part was made that they were talking bad about me. And
I guarantee you, as we are all human, that's what the people
at the Tower of Babel thought too. I can't take it. That guy over there is talking
trash about me. And I'm either going to leave
here or I'm going to bust his teeth out. So they left. And it is within the heart of
man to wander. God built into us by command
to go and fill the earth. And mankind has filled the earth. And that's what they did. They
gathered up in their little groups where they could understand each
other and they said, let's get out of here. Let's go find someplace
we can live without these guys over here. And they scattered. Some of them went to Africa. Some of them went up into what
we call Europe. Some of them went over into China
and that area. And some of them, full of wanderlust,
travel all the way over to the Americas. And then another little scientific
thing takes effect. Within the study of man, within
the study of genetics, you learn about what is called limited
gene pool. If you have a hundred of a body
of something, that's a lot of genes that can mix and create,
or not create, but come forward. There's a lot of
genes in that, right? But if you cut that number in
half, that's half the possible combinations of genes that will
be passed on. If you cut it again in half,
that's even more genes that will not be passed on within that
breeding population. I see this in a practical basis
working with trees, you know, in terms of what I choose to
grow or plant. But it's true also in human populations. This is also, by the way, the
reasons there are prohibitions against incest.
Not to be coarse, but the reason that you don't want that happening
is because you've got a gene pool that is limited within the
family, which is never a good thing because as gene pools are
limited, those traits which are considered recessive, and that
is, in other words, held down in the gene pool, come to the
top. And you start seeing what were
once limited variations become the dominant traits. Well, I
will speculate here for you that as people's languages were confused,
and as they went yonder to set up their encampments, they, without
knowing it, limited their gene pool, and recessive traits came
to the top. And within a relatively short
period of time, because genetics can be very rapid at times, especially
when you're talking about a limited gene pool, the races developed. Physical traits were passed on
from close family. Recessive genes rose to the top
and the races developed. Now, we know that this happens. The whole process of And again,
this is going to sound weird mixing this discussion with what
we're talking about, but dog breeding. The whole process of
dog breeding to come up with poodles or great danes or whatever
is the process of applying limited gene pool to genetics in dogs. But we know this as well. What happens if you just turn
your dogs out on the street and they breed with any dogs on the
street. The next batch of dogs is not
poodles. They're not. Hybridization breaks
down quickly. And human race is a hybridization. We see this in mixed races. When you have a person of one
color mixed with another, what happens? You get a combination
of the two. The hybridization that led to
one specific color starts breaking down in the genetic process and
meeting in the middle. I can see all this. This is an
amazing process. I can see from what we know in history
and science about languages and about races, and then what we
know is fact from the Scripture, I can see application here. And
it amazes me, it amazes me to think about this. We are created
in the image of God, and within each one of us is the potential
for every human race. I look at us, we are all white.
but buried deep down in us is a recessive trait that, when unlocked, could produce
a black offspring or a brown offspring or a yellow offspring
or a red offspring. The potential for all of humanity
is built into the image of God. And isn't that appropriate? Because
God Himself is unlimited. And the potential that is built
into each one of us is almost unlimited. Now we're finite creatures
and we are limited. So I say we're almost unlimited
in that. But the human potential that
is built into each one of us is incredible. And it is based
clearly and wholly in the fact that man is made in the image
of God. All of this All of this is under
the guiding hand of God, who created mankind and has molded
and shaped mankind today into the races. Now, you discuss race,
people get sideways in a big hurry. That's not my intention
in saying any of this. And we will, in the weeks to
follow, have to talk about issues of race, There are issues of
race. Today I hope we have an understanding
of where the races may have come from. Now the practical outworking
of what all that means in terms of human relationships is another
issue and that will be addressed. We will talk about race relations
in a sermon to follow. But today let us end with this
in mind that God has created mankind All of humanity has come
from Adam and Eve and then again from Noah and his family. The
races are diverse. People are diverse. There are
7.2 billion people on earth of every shape, size, and color. And each one in some way bears
the image of God. And as we stop and think about
that, I hope that we gain a sense of awe I hope that inspires us. I hope that does inspire us.
And again, as I said, that's not without its problems. Because
we're fallen creatures. And that adds a level of complication
to the fact that there are races. But as we just look out and see
the people of the earth, let us gain some sense of awe in
the magnificent work of our God in Christ. He has done a wonderful
thing. And even as God said, after he
created man in the garden, this is very good. Let me end on this
note. This is a reading from the book
of Revelation chapter seven. And this is a picture from the
throne room of God. John tells us, After this I looked,
and there before me was a great multitude, that no one could
number, that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people,
and language, standing before the throne and in front of the
Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches
in their hands, and they cried out in a voice, Salvation belongs
to our God who sits on His throne and to the Lamb. Let us leave
today with a sense of wonder. God has created man in His image. What a glorious and wonderful
truth that is.