1 Corinthians 9, verse 19-23. Follow with me as I read that
and then we'll talk for a few minutes and we'll jump right
in. Paul says, For there I am free from all. I have made myself
a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews,
I became as a Jew in order to win Jews. To those under the
law, I became as one under the law, though not being myself
under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those
outside the law, I became as one outside the law, not being
outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ, that I might
win those outside the law. To the weak, I became weak, that
I might win the weak. I have become all things to all
people. That by all means, I might save some. I do it for the sake
of the gospel that I may share with them and its blessings.
My friends, as we remember what we've talked about in the last
few weeks in the month of February, as we've understood that Christ
came to eradicate racial division, eradicate nationalism, ethnocentrism,
we see that Christ came to save us from unbelief, save us from
religion and save us from slavery to sin. We've seen in the last
few weeks that God created one race of people, the human race,
and that he will divide the human race into two races, those who
are his children, those who have come to know Christ by faith,
those who are saved, regenerated, alive, and those who are not
his children, but his enemies, who he will cast into the lake
of fire. We understand that this is not popular today to hear,
for it does not accommodate the felt needs of culture. It does
not accommodate the felt needs of cultural diversity. It does
not accommodate the feel-good mentality that most people desire
when they go and they worship God. What is greater than God? What can cause more joy than
Christ? What is more powerful in one's life than the gospel
of Jesus Christ? And so last week we dealt with
the implications of the consequences of racism in the church specifically.
And keep in mind as we talk about these things, we're not talking
about the sins of the world, but rather the sins that are
within the church. Not just the fact that we see
racism and all types of sin all over the place, but specifically
we don't want to try to ignore our own sin while looking so
passionately at the sins of others. As a matter of fact, Paul prohibits
the judging of the world, but rather says we ought to be judging
each other and holding each other to the standard of holiness to
which God has saved us and prepared us for. And so when we think
of that, we have to keep in mind that there are consequences of
racism, of hatred, of bigotry in the church. And I talked last
week, I gave us about seven or eight of those, is that the primary
thing is that it is an affront to God. It is a slap in the face
of God in the sense that it denies the power of the gospel where
God in his judgment diversified the peoples of the world and
made different nations and in his grace he is bringing them
back together under one banner who is Jesus Christ the gospel.
And so today we're going to look at one of the most difficult
subjects to deal with in racism from an academic point of view
and from a philosophical point of view, and that is the theology
that is derived from bigotry, hatred, and racial division.
Because what we've seen in the world in the last, well, the
last 10,000 years, but specifically, especially in America, we are
Americans, we are part of a church that is in America's soil, or
on America's soil, so therefore we must deal with it from the
perspective of being Americans. And most of us in this room lack
ethnicity today, it seems. So we, as a people, need to understand
the implications of theology that is derived from this partiality,
is what I like to call it, or this bigotry, the racism that
is so prevalent in the church today. In James 2, you don't
have to turn there, but we see throughout that chapter that
the apostle teaches us that partiality in any form is a sin. That it
is to respect one person over another because of the color
of their skin, or because of the car they drive, or the house
they live in, or the influence they might have, or the amount
of money that you may think they have in the bank, or the lack
thereof. To treat them differently because of any Well, for any
reason, it's actually a sin of partiality. We should not do
that. As Christians, James is not talking
to the world, the unbelievers. The Bible is not written for
unbelievers to follow. It's written so that the church
might be empowered to live the way Christ has called us to live.
The Great Commission says that Jesus, all authority has been
given to me on heaven and earth. He says, therefore, because of
that, because all authority is mine, then the result of my authority
is that you will go make disciples. And then he tells us what that
means. And it means that you will teach others to obey Me.
Obey Me. Teach them all that I have taught
you. Teach them to obey Me. Baptize them in the name of the
Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's the only prescription
of the Great Commission that Jesus has given us. But yet we
see throughout the nation, we see throughout the world that
the church is engaged in everything else but that. And then we take
the Bible and we want to use it and we want to say the Bible
is written for unbelievers. It's not written for unbelievers.
It's hidden from unbelievers. Unbelievers can't see it. They're
looking at it through a film that keeps them from understanding.
And I'm going to close today's message with one of my favorite
texts in the world, 2 Corinthians chapter 4. And I want you to
see, I wish I could just preach that today and just scrap all
this, but it doesn't fit with what I'm going to talk about. In the sense of
how the church acts and responds, I believe a lot of the doctrinal
problems that we have in the church, and I'll use some big
terms here, like Pelagianism. Like Arminianism. Like some of
these issues that we see. Nationalism. Liberation theology. I'm going to talk about some
of those things. Dominion theology. We'll talk about those in just
a second. But all these things that we see are because there
is this ethnocentric ideal and this centrality on man rather
than the sovereignty of God in the church. And we see pastors
preaching man-centered gospel. We see pastors preaching a man-centered
Bible. We see, as I was several years
ago, Someone who just used the Bible for his own benefit, not
purposely, but subconsciously. And all the knowledge I had of
Scripture was that I had this little case, if you will, like
a vitamin box. And I had just enough Scripture
to... to move on. And if I needed a scripture for
that, I'd go, OK, here's my pill for my headache. Well, here's
my pill for my spiritual headache. Here's my pill for my spiritual
joy. Here's my pill for my spiritual... So we have this vitamin box idea
and philosophy around scripture. And what it does is it makes
us vitamin-popping Christians. We're never engaged in the text.
The Bible ought to be taught from word to word to word, to
phrase to phrase, sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph,
book by book. How do you know what Paul is
teaching in Romans if you haven't read the letter? It's one letter.
We added the numbers and the headings so that we can organize
it. We aren't good like the people of first century were. We're
not that intelligent, really, as they were. Now, we have a
lot of smarts, but our brains don't process the way they did
in that day, where they would memorize large passages of text
to heart in different languages. Jesus spoke Aramaic. He read
Greek and wrote Greek. And he worshipped and read in
Hebrew and taught in Hebrew. It was common. He wasn't a seminarian. He was a common man. That was
the problem that the Jews had with him, that he wasn't this
astute leader. He wasn't the pedigree that they
were looking for. They wanted a king material, not a slave
material. They didn't want their king to
come through on the celebration of kings and come into the city
of Jerusalem, the city of David. They didn't want him to come
in on a mule. They wanted him to come in on a stallion as the
king of kings, but he came in on a mule as a mockery to that
exaltation of earthly kings and to the Creator of all kings.
Then came and humbled himself as a slave. And that's the main
point that I want you to see today, is that Christ came to
defeat ethnocentrism. He came to lay it to waste because
it is antichrist. And so let me share with you
a couple of ideas and ideals and philosophies that is going
around the world. Now, I'm not going to do this justice today.
I'm not going to be able to dig into this. This would be more
for a lecture rather than a service. But as a way of introduction
to this text and to this understanding of what Paul is teaching here
in First Corinthians, chapter nine, I want you to understand
what nationalism is. Now, of course, it sort of speaks
for itself, but nationalism has many meanings, and I've looked
up two, and I'm going to read them off the paper. I hate to
do that, but I'm going to read them off the paper. And these
are the two meanings that I have printed here. Number one is it's
the attitude that the members of the nation have when they
care about their identity as members of that nation. So keep
that in mind as nationalism is when a group of people of a specific
nation, you see nationalism on a broad scale, you see nationalism
on a smaller scale and it just keeps going down. We could have
Claxtonism and Evans Countyism and Southeast Georgiaism and
you keep going. Rebelism. Redneckism. I mean,
you know, you just keep going. It could just be more and more
and more. And it just even goes out with
the Southern states and Dixieism. And you see the point? And I'm
even using some terms that are just striking that nerve. You know what I'm talking about.
Well, the first thing you need to do is realize that none of
us are immune to that. We all have this nationalistic ideal
in some aspects of our lives. We all feel proud of heritage
in some way, no matter how wicked. or demonic or antichrist that
that heritage may be. Like the murder and the rape
of millions of Indians. Like the murder and selling and
ill-treatment of millions of African slaves. I'm not proud
of that as a heritage of an Anglo-American. I'm not proud that my great-great-great-great-grandfathers probably were part of the people
who shipped these people over here so that they could work
on the backs, so that they could prosper on the backs of these
people and treat them like animals. Actually, I would say less than
animals. I'm not proud of that. I'm not going to teach that to
my children as something that they need to embrace and be proud
of. I'm going to teach that to my children as something they
should see God's grace and that He didn't give us what we deserve.
And for our fifth generation or fifteenth generation or twentieth
generation to go to annihilate our families that we might not
even be born. That's what God should have done, but He didn't.
I thank him for that. Another definition of nationalism
is the actions that the members of a nation take and seem to
achieve or sustain some form of political sovereignty. There's so much, but each of
these definitions center around people identifying themselves
as a specific people group and that the whole centrality of
that passion boils down to the esteem they have for being a
part of that group. What am I saying? I'm so proud,
you see the stickers, I'm a proud parent of a whatever. Proud parent
of a whatever. I'm not bashing. I'm not saying
put that on there. Be a proud parent if you want
to. Be a proud student. Be the son or be the one that
is actually being talked about there. But I'm telling you that
this is the type of heart that boils up in nationalistic theology. And it is a worldview. Nationalism
stands 100% opposed to Christianity. Christ is the central point of
Christianity and his truth claims, he is the truth of the 21st century.
Christ's truth claims are absolutely in opposition to nationalism
and governmental sovereignty. Because the scripture teaches
that Christ himself is the author and the creator of all governments.
And that Christ is the king of all kings, and the lord of all
lords, and the governors of all governors, and that one day he
will subject all authority under his feet. And for we, as we just
finished up Ephesians chapter one, we who are his children,
we will be not under his feet, but rather we will be his body.
We are his body. And so as his body, then all
governments will be under our feet. Christ will be the sovereign
rule. He won't partner with governments. He will destroy them. The scripture
teaches in John's Apocalypse that all those governments are
called metaphorically Babylon. And of course, we know the Babylonian
ideal and philosophy and the paganism thereof. And we know
that God throughout the Old Testament put judgment against Babylon.
And He will continue to do that even in the days to come. And
I would suggest to you that America is just as much Babylon as any
country has ever been. And so in that, nationalism,
it deals with the sovereignty of the specific people. And these
people who are part of this nationalistic worldview are ones who would
actually push and manage and do everything in their power
and with their resources to establish a sovereign kingdom of these
people. Now, you might say, well, isn't
that what we are as Americans? Absolutely. that I'm talking about theology
deriving from nationalistic ideal. Friends, I'm not a nationalist.
I am proud that God chose for me to be an American. I am thankful
that I live in the land of free, that we don't have to take all
week to get here, so that we could worship with the windows
spray painted black and arm details on the top of the trees, like
they do in certain parts of China, Saudi Arabia, India, Afghanistan,
and the like. If they get caught with Bibles,
their heads are chopped off. I'm glad we don't have to deal with
that, but it may come to that one day. But what is the purpose
of the church when it comes to nationalism? How is the church?
What does this have to do with racism? Well, it moves straight
on down. Because nationalism as a broad
sense, what we see in the liberation theology that comes from that
is that liberation theology is sort of like nationalism, but
at the same time, it's set against nationalism. Nationalism says
we're all Americans. But from the time of actually
in the 1940s and 50s, we saw this what was called black liberation
theology that grew out of a nationalistic, I can't even talk. nationalistic worldview and it
says this, and a really rough paraphrase, it says that because
we are not really part of these people as a whole, though we
have rights and liberties and these things, we must think about
ourselves and we must set ourselves apart and we must preserve our
own culture and our own ideas and our own philosophies. You
see that? Now, if you know anything about
your Old Testament, you know that that's one of the main things
that Jesus condemned and damned the Pharisees and the Jews for.
Is that they set themselves apart, not in a sanctified way, but
as in a, this is our culture and we must protect it. Matter
of fact, the Pharisees after the Maccabean revolts, We have
a pig in our little tabernacle model in the other room, because
Antipas Epiphanes actually sacrificed a pig in the altar in the Holy
of Holies, and it caused mass mayhem. And the Maccabees revolt
came from that act, that was like the straw that broke the
camel's back, but the Hellenization of, in other words, the Greekifying
of Palestine in that day had infiltrated the Jewish people
to such a way that when they finally got their right to do
sacrifices and to worship God, that there was a lot of Greek
influence even in the Jews. The Pharisees were those orthodox
people who came along and said, look, we can't just blend cultures
in with the worship of God. We can't allow pagan cultures
and Greek cultures as much as we've learned from them. And
that was part of God's plan. Because if it weren't for Common
Greek, we wouldn't have the Bible today. And I'll tell you, that's
a church history class in itself. But God used all of that to bring
them to where they are. However, they're thankful for
that. But we can't allow the Pharisees would say, we can't
allow that. to influence our faith and thus
influence our doctrine. That's not what I'm talking about
when I say this nationalism. I'm talking about what they did
once Christ came. Once the fulfillment and once
they got their act together and they started to rule Israel,
even under Roman occupation, their pride came from their nationality. We are the people of God. When
really, they weren't. or the people of God at all.
They had the title of people of God, but they weren't the
people of God because Paul says all who are in Christ are Israel.
And so with that, liberation theology, and it's very akin
to dominion theology. I'm not doing justice for this,
but I don't have time to go through two or three hours of dealing
with this in depth. But liberation theology is sort
of like a Western attempt to return the gospel of the early
church to a politically Christian and culturally Christian decentralization. So basically what's happening
is it proposes that liberation theology proposes that when we
see a culture within a culture, if it's a Christian culture and
we see people that are suffering in that Christian culture, that
that's an injustice. So if family A has an income and family B
has been offered an injustice because family A should give
family B some of their money. And family A ought to stand on
the street corner and say it's wrong. Hire family B. And I'm not saying that there's
not times we need to be vocal on things, but the church now
has come along and adopted this theology in many parts of America
and parts of the world. And now nationalism or ethnocentric
liberation has become the mantra by which and through which or
for which these churches march. You see, just as Dr. Martin Luther
King, God used him in a mighty way to bring about civil liberties.
However, he stepped out of ministry and went into politics. There's
a big difference. And God used him in that way. But wow what
people do after his death and they say, okay, let's take Dr.
King and let's make him Reverend King and let's bring Reverend
King's work into the church. And now this is the purpose of
the church that we go out and we stand against this type of
stuff. This political activism. This issue of social injustice
and human rights and poverty and things of that nature. I've
heard very recently in the last, well, since January. The week
of Martin Luther King week. I've heard a very prestigious
orator say in the black community that it is an injustice when
there are people who live in poverty in the same city that
we live in. Is it injustice? I don't know. That's not saying
it's justice that people don't live in poverty. It's a tragedy.
But is it injustice? I think we've watered down what
justice and injustice really is in that regard. And I have
to be very careful here because for people who know me, they
understand my heart on this issue. I am talking from a very philosophical
point of view, not with any racial slant, not with any racial prejudice,
but in a theological prejudice. I'm highly discriminatory when
it comes to doctrine. And I am dogmatic because the
Bible is dogmatic and the Bible is discriminating. The word discernment,
the root of that means to discriminate. So we must discriminate against
good teaching and bad teaching. Almost right teaching and false
teaching. If it's almost right, it's wrong.
There is no such thing as a gray area or debatable issues. Yeah,
you can debate that we want to pass a plate or have a box. You
can debate, do I dunk you forward, backwards one time, three times,
hold you under? I mean, what do we do? We can
debate those things, but the issue of doctrine, the issue
of who God is, and how God saves, and who we are in Him, cannot
be up for interpretation. The Scripture interprets itself.
And therefore, what the mission of the church is, has been highly
affected by racial division in America. I believe the word of
faith, get this, and I could prove this for a little bit longer
if you want to debate it with me, I'll be glad to go on record
and give you my data. But I believe that racial prejudice
is the mother, of course Satan is the father, but racial prejudice
is the mother of the word of faith and the health and wealth
gospel in America today. I have friends who are in parts
of impoverished Africa. I have friends who live in Kabul,
Afghanistan. And I have friends who live in
Russia, in impoverished parts of Russia. And they tell me month
after month in their reports and our calls and our text messages,
they tell me month after month that missionaries from America,
that white men and women from America are coming into their
ethnic places and into their poor places, and they're telling
them if they just come to Jesus, God will give them prosperity. And they tell me if they just
come to Christ, if they just have faith that their babies will
not get AIDS, No, the babies are getting AIDS, and their crops
are still dead, and their hogs are still dying, and they're
still getting raped, and savaged, and murdered by the guerrilla
warfare effect. It's still happening because
there's nowhere in Scripture that says that's going to fall
away from those who have faith. It is a lie from the devil. Surely
God did not say you would die. He's been lying from the beginning.
He's the Father of lies. And He's been lying to the church.
He's been lying to the pastors who are supposed to spend their
time on the Word. But instead, they've spent their time playing
golf and doing all sorts of things instead of really focusing on
what God has called the church to be, which is a people to display
its glory. Ephesians 3, chapter 3, verse
10. And so with this liberation theology,
This dominion theology, it says that the church ought to rise
up and take positions of power. That the church ought to put
Christians in the White House. That the church ought to put
Christians as mayor. And that we ought to bring in and usher
in this kingdom, this great kingdom, ready for Jesus to come and accept,
worthy of His time. Friends, you know, we've got
something called eschatology, which is the study of last things,
end times, if you will. And I don't want to get into
that. Maybe in the Q&A session one time, you can ask me about
my thoughts on end times. You better sit down for about
three hours, because I'm going to start with Genesis and we're
going to walk through the entire Bible. And it's going to take about
that long. But in that, we understand that the ultimate end of the
Kingdom of God is that the earth and everything in it is going
to be destroyed. People will be resurrected. The
righteous and the wicked will be resurrected into new, immortal
bodies that will never die, and those who are in Christ will
live eternally with Him in a new earth. Heaven is a place of spiritual
rest, where the spirit of the consciousness of the body lives.
The new heaven, the new earth, after the second advent, the
second coming, Jesus will recreate the world with the power of His
mouth. He'll just speak it, and there
it is. It's the same thing He did in the beginning in Genesis
chapter 1. God said, and there it was, and it was good. And
so Christ will recreate it. Then we will live as a kingdom
of priests, a holy nation forever. And those who are not His will
live apart from Him in eternal destruction. And the Scriptures
say in John's Apocalypse, and the word Apocalypse, That's where
we translated Revelation. And it says that the smoke of
their torment will rise forever and ever and ever. And so there
are two camps in this liberation theology, although I see why
it has been so adamant. I see why. Because the oppression
of minorities, especially in America, is as sinful as anything
I've ever seen. And I believe that most of it
comes from within the church. Most people use Christ. I mean,
the Ku Klux Klan was started as a Christian organization to
hold true righteous acts and deeds in America. And then they
targeted and said, well, people of color, people of ethnicity
are not righteous, and so we need to keep them in line in
the name of God, in the name of Christ. That's wickedness.
It's wickedness. But then black liberation theology
deals with this idea that God wants to deliver ethnic groups
from stereotypical, impoverished ideals and positions, and wants
them to come and have political justice in society. Friends,
that is not in Scripture, and I'll come to show you how Paul
and Timothy and even Jesus proved that. I've been saying this forever.
Don't hear what I'm not saying. Don't hear me say that it's not
important when people are treated unfairly. Don't hear me say that
we shouldn't have a voice and that we shouldn't do all that
we can when it comes to being political or being active in
politics and casting a vote. We ought to cast our vote based
on the conscience of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God in
our lives. And if there is not a candidate to vote for, then
abstain. I'm not saying you don't participate in the rites. Paul
himself actually appealed to Caesar. He was a Roman citizen.
And he was wrongly beaten without trial. And when they found out
he was a Roman citizen, they were scared to death because
the penalty of whipping a Roman citizen, they could not be flogged.
The penalty for whipping a Roman citizen was death penalty. It's
a capital crime. And they were trying to get Paul
and the disciples out the back door of the prison. He said,
absolutely not. I am going out the front door. And I want people
to see me. So he gets up there without his
shirt on and they see his body torn to shreds as a Roman citizen. And were fearful. So here is
Paul invoking his rights. He evoked the rights as a citizen.
So we do have rights as citizens. But what's most important is,
is that what Paul preached? No. Did Paul teach that this
is what the church should be doing? Absolutely not. It was
something he did. I vote my rights as an American citizen as well.
I take advantage of the tax cuts that pastors are able to take
advantage of rather than paying the 38% self-employment tax.
Why not? I have friends who say that that's
a sin to do it. And then they'll run around and say they don't
pay the IRS. What? I thought Paul says, Jesus himself
says, when there's a Caesar, what is Caesar's? Paul says in
Romans 15, we'll go there in a few minutes, but not this part.
He says that that we are to subject ourselves to all authority. For
all authority, governmental authority, we ought to do it with joy. We
ought to respect, we ought to obey, we ought to submit because
it's all ordained by God. We ought to pay taxes to whom
it's owed and pay any debt to whom it's owed. Black liberation
theology was started by a man named James Cone. Right after
the Malcolm X proclamation in the 1950s, he taught that Christianity
was a white man's religion. And Cone created this idea. And
there's an expert By the name of Jonathan Walton, let me read
a quote to you and then we'll move to the Bible because I'm labored
with this. James Cone believed, he says,
that the New Testament revealed Jesus as one who identified with
those suffering under oppression. The socially marginalized and
the cultural outcasts. And since the socially constructed
categories of race in America, example, whiteness and blackness,
have come to culturally significant dominance, whiteness, and oppression,
blackness, from a theological perspective, Cohen argued that
Jesus refills himself as black in order to disrupt and dismantle
white oppression. So from black liberation theology,
Jesus was a black man fighting against Rome and the Pharisees
who were white. And that's where the liberation
theology movement began. And it's so active today. You
won't see it much here, but in Oakland, California, it's wide
open. Wide open. And the whole idea is that it
goes off the premise of injustice. Injustice. It's an injustice.
It's an injustice. Is it injustice that there is
poverty? No. It's not injustice. I believe,
and I said this on national radio about a year and a half ago,
and I got a lot of flack for it about two years ago. And we're
talking about this very issue. And I said, if someone breaks
into my house at night in Haley, California, and murders my children
in front of me, I said, there's nothing to say that that was
an injustice toward them or me. For we deserve far worse, which
is hell. So why should I be exempt from
attack when it's less than what I do deserve? And the phone lines
just lit up. Who the heck do you think you
are? And then I said, the only real injustice, the only true
injustice from heaven down, now there are injustices, I'm not
demeaning them, I want us to get perspective on them. You
understand that? I'm not saying that we all deserve
to be raped and pillaged. I'm saying that let's call it
what it is. From a theological point of view,
from the doctrinal point of view, from a Christological point of
view, the only true injustice that ever took place on this
earth is that the holy God in the person of Jesus Christ was
crucified for the sins of a wicked man like me. He did not deserve it. I did. And you did. but he took it upon
himself. He who had no sin became sin,
that we might become the righteousness of God. Now let's look. It is injustice when all men
are free in a government, and yet they're discriminated against
because of their former status or the color of their skin. It
is an injustice socially. It is an injustice when society
ignores and treats harshly a certain people because of their environment,
their background, their skin or their passions. But it is
not an injustice when some are unable to obtain some things
that others have. It is not an injustice except
that it is a tragedy when those opportunities are not given to
them. It is a social injustice. But what is the church's role
in those things? Do you see the question that's
on the table here? The question that's on the table
is, what is the church's true mission when it comes to social
issues? What is the church's true mission when it comes to
racial division? Well, I'll tell you what it is. It's the first
thing I said in the first part of this series. It's the gospel
of Jesus Christ. It's the word of God and the
power of the Holy Spirit to infiltrate those who are lost and blind,
that they may come to life through the hearing of the word. Hearing
brings faith and faith comes from hearing. And the Word brings
hearing. That's Romans 10.17, by the way. So Paul stops here. He says in
1 Corinthians 9.19, he says this, For though I am free from all,
I have made myself, and anywhere you see the word servant or bondservant
in the New Testament, the actual word is either a derivative of
one of two things, diakonos or doulos in the Greek, which actually
translated literally slave, owned person. Not servant, not waiter, not
waitress, not helper, not, you know, minister, slave. So I am free from all. I have made myself a slave to
all, Paul says. That I might win more of them. Sometimes in the Greek it's translated
as some of them. Some of who? Some of those who
are lost. And then he goes into this spiel. To the Jews I became. Now listen to his language. He
uses simile here. And if you know anything about
literature, simile means like or as. He's not saying I become
a tree. I became like a tree. Blessed
is the man who is, what? Stable and steadfast like a tree,
like the teburin. Whose roots go deep and stand
by the water and is so rich as Psalm chapter 1. It doesn't say
blessed is the man who is a tree. There are some people who think
blessed is the man who is like a tree. Blessed is man this.
So here Paul says, to the Jews I became as a Jew. Now how ironically,
Paul was a Jew. Matter of fact, he was some of
the best pedigree of Jew there was. from the tribe of Benjamin. He was trained as a Pharisee.
He was part of the Sanhedrin. He supervised the stoning of
Stephen in Acts chapter 7 under Roman occupation and Roman government.
Then the Sanhedrin took power back into their own hands to
begin to kill people who were apostate. And he was the one
who supervised that. He was the one who started out
against the church. So to the Jew I became as a Jew in order
to win Jews. Now when he says win, he doesn't
mean that he's convinced, tricking them. And I'm going to go through
this in a minute. What he means is that I'm going
to do what I can within the power of the gospel so that I might
be able to lead some to faith. How does he know they'd come
to faith? He didn't ask them to repeat a prayer. There's no evidence of that anywhere
in the Scripture. There's no evidence of action on anybody's
part except obedience and a lack of submission and repentance.
Faith is not a one-time act and repentance is not a point in
history, but it's a present reality. And salvation is not something
that we have done, it's something that we have. We are either saved
or we never were. And then he says, and to those
under the law, I became as one under the law. Though not myself. He qualifies not myself being
under the law. That I might win those under the law. To those
outside the law. I became as one outside the law. Not being outside the law of
God, that is. He clarified that. But under the law of Christ. That I might win those outside
the law. To the weak. Listen to this.
I became weak. There's no simile there. that I might win the week. I
have become all things to all people that by all means I might
save some. I do it for the sake of the gospel
that I may share with them in its blessings." Friends, the
issue here, when it comes to this dominion theology and this
nationalism theology and this liberation theology, this racially
motivated division of doctrine, And when I say race, it's not
always about color, it's about nationality, it's about beliefs,
it's about worldviews. This issue is not that people
should allow injustice, it's just that when groups stand,
when groups stand and place Christ and the gospel and the holiness
of God at the center of all of this stuff and say that this
is what the church is supposed to be about, it undermines the
whole of Christ's teaching. So here we see Paul is free.
He says, for though I am free, what is he free of? Have you
ever thought about that? Let me sort of just walk you through
loosely this text in the next few minutes. He's free from what? The issue that we see here is
that Paul says first and foremost that he's free from all. He's
free from all what? He's free from all men. He's
not bound as a slave to any man. He is a free man. As a matter
of fact, later in some of Paul's teachings, he actually teaches,
as a matter of fact, to the Corinthians, if you have an opportunity to
go free as a slave, go free. Go free. So the apostles teach
that it's good to liberate slaves. The apostles also teach that
slave owners should treat their slaves as brothers, which would
mean setting them free. Eventually, when the Holy Spirit
brings that to their realities, we're like, wow! We see that in Philemon, where
Paul The man stole from him, Onesimus,
his servant, stole from him. And Paul writes to Philemon and
says, you treat Onesimus as me, as though you were receiving
me. And whatever he owes, I owe and I'll pay it. And you no longer
have anything over him. Set him free. So in other words, no one owns
him and he's free to do as he wishes. Paul is a slave to no
one. And the Scripture teaches that
no man should be a slave to another man. So freedom from what? But freedom from what always
leaves freedom to what, doesn't it? Freedom unto international
slavery. That's the way I look at it.
In the context of our thoughts and our feelings, Paul is free
from men so that he might be free to become an international
slave. That's what he says. He says, I am a slave to no man. I'm free. But yet, I made myself
a slave to all so that I might win some. I have made myself
a slave, but why? That I'm not winsome. Paul is
saying that in God's sovereignty, listen carefully to what I'm
about to say, that in God's sovereignty, God has called him, Paul, to
lay down his liberties, his freedoms, his rights, in order to show
God's grace and mercy and couple that with the message of the
Gospel in reality. Paul says in the church of Colossians,
in Colossians 1, he says, I rejoice therefore in my sufferings, I
think in verse 24, for your sake, that is, that I may fill up what
is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Paul says that his
life of suffering, he laid down his liberties, he laid down his
rights, he laid down all of his abilities and his legal rights
and his personal rights so that he would suffer that the world
might see what is lacking in Christ's suffering. It's not
that Christ's suffering wasn't sufficient, it's that Christ's
suffering wasn't visible. And so we as the children of
God are to suffer. And you might say, so what? Well, so what is
a big question. What's the consequence in your
own life? Well, here's the point. We're never then to define ourselves
or our theology by our culture. I'm not an American, though I
am. I'm a priest. A royal priesthood. A holy nation. A child of God. Not a priest
in the world's terms. And you are too. As a child of
God. You are part of God's family. Not part of America. Not part
of a nation. Not part of a group. Not part
of a worldly separated individuals that should be Christian Americans
or American Christians or white Christians or Jewish Christians
or black Christians. That's oxymoronic. We are either
children of God or we're something else. What is it? We should never separate ourselves,
excuse me, we ought to forever separate ourselves from other
cultures, from our own culture, and from our own people. That we ought to become a slave
to all people. Let me give you some examples
of this. In thought and in knowledge, how do I do that? How do I become
all things to all people? What does that truly mean? Well,
here's some examples. We become all things to all peoples in
our thoughts and our knowledge. For example, I say that too much
all of a sudden. For my friend who goes to Afghanistan,
he has to speak the language a little bit. He has to speak
Farsi to speak with the people in Kabul. He has to know some
Dari. He has to dress and grow a beard
when he goes over there so that he doesn't stand out so drastically
against the population there as a white American. Because
he wants to be able to get into that culture in such a way, not
that he becomes Muslim, even though he dresses like a Muslim,
but so that he can get in there and bring Scripture to them without
dying the very first time he went. One of his contacts was
sniped and killed just a few hours before he got there, a
year before last, by the Taliban. And when he arrived at the place
where she was staying and asked for her, some Taliban members
walked up to him and asked him who he was and why he was asking
for her. And by God's grace, he was with another Afghan family
who took him into safety. But he may die this year. He
may not make it. But he's not going in there with
his American flag on, his boxer shorts sticking out of the back
end of his pants, saying, hey, y'all, what's up? He's not going
to do that. He's going to become all things
to all people. But you know what he doesn't do? He doesn't stand on Islam. He stands on Jesus. And his feet
never leave that position. Paul did the same thing in thought
and knowledge. He understood a little bit about who he was.
Paul, standing in the midst in Acts chapter 17 of the Areopagus,
I always say that backwards, Areopagus said, Men of Athens,
I perceive that in every way you are religious. For as I pass
along and observe the objects of your worship, I also found
an altar with this inscription, and he quotes, to the unknown
God. that therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to
you." And Paul proclaims to them, he says, this unknown God is
the God who made the world and everything in it, being the Lord
of heaven and the earth, does not live in temples made by man,
nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything,
since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything,
and He made from one man every nation and mankind to live on
the face of the earth, having determined a lot of periods of
the boundaries of their dwelling places. and they should seek
God and 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, as even some of your own poets have said."
You notice that? He sees what they do. He knows
their philosophy. He even knows their poets. For we are indeed
His offspring. Being then God's offspring, we
ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver
or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
The times of ignorance, God overlooked, but now He commands all people
everywhere to repent because He has fixed a day on which you
will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed.
And of this, He has now given resurrection of the dead. Some
mocked. But others said, we will hear
you again about this. So Paul went out from their midst.
But some men joined him and believed. Among also were Dionysius and
a woman named Damaris. and others with them. And so
Paul, in knowledge and in thought, he leaned into the position of
the Greeks, of the Athenians, and he learned stuff he knew
about them so that he might have a conversation. You see the difference? He didn't jump in and become
a Greek philosopher. He just leaned over in that direction. We see this. We do this in thought
and in knowledge and in practice and in principle. The whole issue
of Paul's teaching in chapter 9 of 1 Corinthians right here
is that he's exhorted the Corinthian church. Here's what they were
doing. They were eating meat that was sacrificed to pagan
idols. They were eating that meat. And some of the Christians
were getting offended by that and going, you can't eat meat.
They would say, it's unholy. It wasn't. It's just meat burned
to a fake god. There's nothing wrong with it.
But that it was causing stress and frustration. It was luring
other people back into paganistic ways. And so Paul tells them,
do not eat that meat if it causes a weaker brother to stumble.
Lay down your liberty. You have the freedom to eat.
There's nothing wrong with it. But are you going to carry your rights
and stand? I can do what I want to do. You're
just such a weak Christian. No. Paul says to die to yourself.
And don't do that to your brother. They had the right to eat it,
but God didn't care if they ate it or if they didn't eat it.
What God cared about was the heart they had for the sake of
their brothers, those who were not yet in the faith. And I want
to review just a moment the deep things of God and His sovereignty.
God elects and He saves, but He uses human instruments to
bring hearing and faith, made certain, that as God's conviction
determines in your heart, To manage your slavery toward others,
it is God bringing you to the table for His glory. It is God
causing you to say, I'm not going to eat that, so that I might
not offend my brother. There's somebody, I don't know
who it was, I forget, but in the news, it's somebody burned
a Qur'an. Americans died. Hundreds of people have already
been killed. Why would we do that? There was a pastor in Florida
just last year, the year before, that burned a Qur'an as an example.
Friends, why would we do that? Why would we do that? It's wicked. And I would suggest to you that
a man who could do that in good conscience and not repent is
not saved at all. Because we are not doing what
Paul has prescribed. We are mocking them rather than
affirming what they do hold. Well, the Quran itself points
to Jesus because it's a requirement for Muslims to study and know
the New Testament. And if most Christians would
just take a moment to sit down with one, you'd be surprised how many
questions a Muslim... I had a Q&A every first Sunday
night of every month. I had an open question and answer
at our church in California, and many times I had Muslims
in that congregation asking questions about the New Testament and how
it related to their faith. Beautiful opportunity, and they
always got the Gospel. Here's another example of letting
down one's rights. Timothy, his mother was a Jew.
His father was a Greek. He was not circumcised. And in
Acts chapter 16, it says Paul came to Derbe and Lystra. A disciple
was there named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was
a believer. But his father was a Greek. He was well spoken of
by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy
to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because
of the Jews who were in those places. For they all knew that
his father was a Greek. As they went on their way through
the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions
that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were
in Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthened in the faith,
and they increased in numbers. These are Christian Jews. who
had walked away from Judaism, but Paul knew that if he took
an uncircumcised Jew into that place, they would not receive
his teaching. Why? Because they were ignorant
and weak in their faith. But Paul, concerning himself with
the discipleship and the growth of the church, went to Timothy,
who was a grown man before there was Tylenol, before there was
antiseptics, before there was anything, and said, buddy, we've
got some cutting to do. Now that's being all things to
all people. But you know what Paul also taught? That circumcision is a waste. There's nothing good about it. It's just ridiculous. As a matter
of fact, Paul to the Galatians goes so far as to say, if you
think circumcision is good, just go all the way. Emasculate yourself. That's the term he uses in the
Greek. Cut it off. If you want to be holy, be holy. That's how his hyperbole, his
sarcasm went when it came to the act of circumcision, the
legalism to say that if we do this act, then we're pleasing
God. There's no act that pleases God. God is pleased with Christ,
and we who are in Christ are pleased. He is pleased with us.
Faith alone pleases God in Christ. And if we're trying to work to
please God, we're working in the wrong direction and nothing
we do is going to please Him. We have good works that come
as an outflow of what God has done in us. It's a natural response
that we desire to give glory to Him and to serve Him and to
be a slave to Him in righteousness. The willing act of circumcision
in 1st century Palestine. This was not an easy feat. But
the ultimate issue and the last thing I want to talk about today
is becoming all things to all people. And I want to give you
some nevers. I want to give you some nevers and help you understand
what this means and what it doesn't mean. What it does not mean is
it never means that we compromise the gospel. We never go into
a place... Paul went into Athens and he
went into the Areopagus. I always say that wrong. And
he did not sit down and start the philosophy of these people.
He went to their great philosophy and his whole intention of being
there was that he might preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. And
he saw all these statues of all these gods that the Athenians
had, and he praised them for their faith in these things.
And he says, you are men of faith, men of great religion, but you
have one statue here that says, to the unknown gods, because
they were so careful that they didn't do like the Hindus. Oh,
we forgot about this god. They'd make another one. That's
what the Hindus do. They create new gods. Anybody
can create a god at any time. And so they didn't do that. They
just had one to the unknown. If there's one we've forgotten,
we're going to honor Him. And Paul says, I'm going to make that
one known to you today. It is the Creator of all the
universe, He who is now called Jesus, who died and rose from
the dead. And the Gnostics, the Greek people,
they couldn't understand the body was a vile place. They were
looking forward to getting out of the body. Getting away from
the vileness of things. Moving into a spiritual zen,
if you will. And so for them, the resurrection
of the flesh was like a slap in the face. And many people
scoffed and laughed at that, but many also said, I want to
hear more of what you have to say. Paul went there and didn't hide
behind false religion. He came bold with the gospel
in the midst of that. So it doesn't compromise the
gospel. The issue of becoming all things to all people never
places oneself in identity outside of Christ. Paul didn't say, hey,
I'm a Roman. So I'm a follower of Christ.
And I say, hey, I'm just like you people. You see this with
young people, especially high school students. Well, I'm going
to go with my friends and try to influence them in Christ.
Where are you going? I'm going to go to this party. I'm going
to go to this club. I'm going to go to this thing. I'm going to college students.
All the time I'm going here, I'm going here. And I'm going to
be a good influence. You're not a good influence when you're in the
midst of sin. Jesus never went to the brothels. He never went
to the pagan temples. He never went into people's homes
during their sinfulness. Yes, He ate with them. He met
with sinners. He reached out to sinners, but
He would not engage in their sinful activity. Never would
He be seen coming out of a pot-filled room and illicit drugs. Jesus
wouldn't go there. He wouldn't do that. And name
one person that you've ever known to go into situations where sin
was abounding, where people came to faith and walked out of there
and repented of their sin. Never happened. This never happened. I can't
say never, that's a fallacy. To my knowledge, this never happens.
And I know a lot of people. So, some of you may know somebody,
that's a fallacy in itself, ad populum. A lot of people I know. But it never compromises the
gospel, it never places one's identity outside of Christ. This
should remind us that Paul is clear in Galatians. He didn't
say about legalism. He didn't come up here and say,
OK, Timothy, you've got to be circumcised so that the Jews
will accept you because it's required of the law. He didn't
say that. In fact, Paul says this, see
with what large letters I'm writing to you with my own hand. It is
those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would
force you to be circumcised. And in order that they may not
be persecuted for the cause of Christ. See, the Jews in Galatia,
the Judaizers were trying to come and get the Galatians to
be circumcised so that they could stop being persecuted by the
Sanhedrin. You just come, if you just get
circumcised, you Greeks, the Jews will stop hunting you down.
And they did check, by the way. That's how Jews identified each
other in the covenant. They checked. You wouldn't teach? You proved you were circumcised.
But they want to keep you from that. They also desire for you
to be circumcised that you may boast in the flesh. That you
may boast that they may boast. Oh, these are our brothers. Look,
these people came to the Messiah, to the Jewish Messiah. Now they're
circumcised like we are. See? Paul says that's anathemas.
The word there means to be damned. He says that that is anathemas,
that that's another gospel. But that wasn't the issue that
was going on with what he did with Timothy. He was telling
Timothy, for the sake of those who are elect, for the sake of
those who are the church, let's not offend them. You're going
to be a missionary with me. You're going to be the pastor
of a Greek culture in Ephesus where a lot of Jews are living,
or a lot of Christian Jews are. You can't shepherd someone. That's
not having a ministry to alcoholics, but drinking every day when you
come in there, moderately. Or drinking a glass of wine,
which is not a sin. Right there at your meetings
with these people, knowing that they're only thinking about drinking
that wine. Why would we do that when we
want to hold a steak in front of a dog on a short chain? See,
God sees no partiality for those who act on His law. We cannot
keep it. We will always break it. The
commandments of righteousness and the covenant of the law are
different, but neither are able to be kept. Timothy gave his
flesh for the sake of his brother's faith, that he might have the
opportunity to preach to them, but not to be like them. Peter,
on the other hand, was rebuked for sitting with the Jews and
forbidding to eat meat. To be all things to all people,
It doesn't mean that you sin. You don't compromise the gospel
by sinning. It does not mean cultural adaptation,
although there may be some cultural understanding and knowledge.
It does not mean language adaptation. In the last few years, I was
shown in Oakland the hip-hop Bible. I'm not kidding you. And it was an urban hip-hop rap
style New Testament. and was written in a very slang,
sometimes profane way so that gangstas, as I was told, could
understand the Bible. And it ruined the text. I preach
out of this version of the text because it is the best in my
studies through the years to the Greek. I study the Greek. I read from the English Standard. There's no sense in that. Now,
I'm not talking about language also. We do have to have Chinese
Bibles. But you know what? They have to be translated from
Greek. German Bibles have to be translated
from Greek. Why? Because they wrote it in Greek.
They wrote it in Greek. But the final authoritative example
is not of Timothy. It's not of Paul. It's of Jesus. To become all things to all people.
The final thing we understand about this just blowing up ego,
ethno, Nationalism is Jesus. In the March Gospel, we hear
Jesus speaking these words, But it shall not be so among you.
But whoever would be great among you must be your slave. And whoever
would be first among you must be the slave to all. For even
the Son of Man came not to be served, but to be a slave, and
to give his life as a ransom for many. The pastor says to
Romans, we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the
failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Listen to
that church. So even as we know people, I have many brothers
and sisters on both sides of the racial fence who believe
in dominion theology as Americanism and they believe Jesus is a white
American Republican. I hope not. I'm moving around.
I'm going to go see something else. Same reason I'm glad he's
not a white American Democrat. And there are some brothers and
sisters that I have who are of African American ethnicity who
believe that the church ought to be about righting social wrongs
against blacks. And I'm not saying we don't speak
out on these things, but that's not the purpose of the church.
The purpose of the church has been given to us through the
Word of God. And Jesus is the ultimate, not only the example,
the ultimate Lord over the church. He's the head of the church.
And He says that we who are strong have an obligation, listen to
His words, listen to Paul, to bear with the failings of the
weak. It didn't say to put up with.
It said to bear. That means we see the failings,
the failures of the weak. And we get up underneath them
and we hold them up until they learn to walk on their own. And we do not please ourselves.
Let us each please our neighbors for His good, to build Him up.
For Christ will not please Himself, but as it is written, the reproaches
of those who reproach You fell on Me. So how are we to be a
slave, church? We're to be a slave when we gain
freedom from stereotypes. We've been given freedom from
religion. We've been given freedom from prejudice. We've been given
freedom from freedom. We should be slaves that do all
things for the glory of God. We should willingly serve others
at the command and call of God. We are not serving, for example,
when we serve those who are weaker, those who are hurting, those
who are oppressed, as we saw in Matthew 25 last week. We're
not serving them. We're serving Christ. When did
we see you naked and blind and imprisoned and sick and clothe
you and feed you? and visit you. When you did it
unto the least of these, my brethren, you did it unto me." And then
the goats would say, well, when did we have opportunity? When you
did not do it unto the least of these, my brethren, you did
not do it unto me. Go now into the lake of fire,
prepared for the devil and his demons and his angels. And so we are not serving others,
but we're serving Christ. It's sort of like at a job. We
have customers, most businesses have customers. Well, you're
to serve the customer, but are you really serving the customer?
What's the ultimate end of business? Profit for the owner. You're
really serving the boss. You're not serving the customer,
although by serving the customer, you're what? Serving the boss.
By serving each other, we're serving God. By serving each other, we're
serving God. So, by the nationalism, liberation
theology, you see how all this falls down this path? We are
to be concerned with injustice, but as Christians, our goal is
not to right the injustice of the world, and not to change
the path of culture. Jesus didn't do that. Jesus is
the Lord of a new kingdom, a new era, that is not earthly, but
heavenly. The church should be vocal when
social injustice takes place, But the answer to social injustice
is the gospel. The church shouldn't be involved
in social injustice, which often times it is. Christian groups
who spew hate, I won't mention them, but there are some I may
mention next week. The Christian groups who spew
hate against people groups because of sin and race and problems
and issues. How dare they stand in the name
of Jesus instead of looking inward in their own self-righteousness. Be prepared, Jesus says. As you
judge, you will be judged in the same manner. So when you
judge, be sure to remove the log from your own eye so that
you may rightly deal with the speck in your brothers. And notice
it says brothers. It doesn't say outsider. The
church's goal and mission is to display the wisdom of God
and to labor for the advancement of the gospel by standing firm
and being anchored in Christ while leaning into the atmosphere
of other cultures and the atmosphere of other thoughts or actions,
but never moving our feet. We lean into this area, but we
don't walk into them. We're not trying to get people
to become black Christians, or white Christians, or Hispanic
Christians. We're trying to get people to
walk away from their culture and to become children of God.
That's why I don't believe in ethnocentric missions. Oh, let's
go get those poor folks in the jungles. Well, let's go reach
them. And let's not try to make them white. Let's not try to
make them Western. Let them wear their loincloths.
I can't help it, you've got a problem. You're the stronger brother.
If you're not, get out of the mission field. We are to bring people to Christ's
gospel and His grace. Never are we to place the gospel
in a shadow. Let me read this and we're done.
If we're having this ministry by the mercy of God, Paul in
2 Corinthians 4, we do not lose heart. that we have renounced
disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning
or to tamper with God's Word, but by the open statement of
the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience and
the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled
only to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this
world has blinded their eyes to keep them from seeing the
light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of
God. For what we proclaim is not of ourselves, but Jesus Christ
as Lord, with ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake. For God
who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone into our
hearts to give us the light and the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ. For we have His treasure in jars
of clay. to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not
to us. We are afflicted in every way, but we're not crushed. We're
perplexed, but we're not driven to despair. We're persecuted,
but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed.
Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life
of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live
are always being given over to death for the sake of Christ,
so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal
flesh. So death is at work in us, but life at work in you.
since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has
been written. I believe, and so I spoke. We also believe,
and so we also speak, knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus
will raise us also with Jesus and bring us into His presence,
and you with us into His presence. For it is all for your sake,
so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase
thanksgiving to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart,
though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being
renewed day by day. For this, this is strong. For
this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal
wake of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things
that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things
that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen
are eternal. That is probably, under the Roman
chapter 3, verses 21 through the end, that's probably my favorite
text in all of the Bible right now, this week, for the last
few years. We are the children of God. And we are not identified by
our ethnicity, our nationality, or our prosperity, or the lack
thereof, or our position, or roles, or families, or jobs,
or anything. We are either Christ's, or we're
the world's. And there's no merging of grey.
If we have a career, it's for the glory of God that we may
be a slave to those around us so that they would see the love
and the generosity and the mercy of God and be heard and hear
the truth about His holiness and the vengeance of His wrath
against sin and the hope that they can have in Christ. If we're poor, then we praise
God and we're poor. If we're rich, then we give away
our wealth so that those might see the generosity in Christ. And God has called us all to
live for His glory, and we as a church must do just that. And
must hold tight to fight against false doctrines and false theologies,
and be careful to be gracious, even with our brothers and sisters
who believe this stuff, that we might lead them in gentleness
and humility, knowing that if it weren't for the grace of God,
we'd be just as ignorant as they are, and if we look at other
topics, we are. So we must be very careful not
to become proud. But I believe this part of the
world is in for a wake-up call when it comes to the sin of racism
in the church. And we as a congregation, those
who covenant with Grace Truth Church, will be part of just
that movement. To preach the gospel to anybody
and everybody, despite who they are and despite what culture
they come from. And my prayer for you church
is that through this, through these series of messages that
you would be able to discern, to see, to look, to test yourself
to see if you're in the faith. But the Scripture says that if
you say you have fellowship with Christ and you hate your brother,
you're not a believer. You lie and you deceive yourself.
So deal with prejudice. Deal with animosity. Deal with
those hatred feelers and those things that come up and repent
of them. And ask God to break your heart over the least of
these so that you might have compassion And you might consider
yourself a slave to those who are not desirable in your eyes. And it's only through that that
God may use you to bring the gospel to someone who has not
yet believed. It's often easy to talk about
the sovereignty of God and to sit here and preach and not do
anything about it. But friends, God has throughout the beginning
of time always used a voice of a human being to bring people
to faith. And you might say, well, he'll use somebody, but
why would you want to stand in disobedience? He will use somebody. Do you want to disobey? And then
I would say, test yourself to see if you're in the faith. For
the Scripture teaches that those who are the children of God love
His law, and it is not burdensome to them. Let's pray. Father, we're just delighted
to be and a place in history where
we have the freedom to stand for the gospel. Father, we have
the freedom to be able to just read publicly in our faith. Father,
that day may not be tomorrow. Give us urgency in our spirit
that we may give glory to You even in the good times. Father, I pray for all of us,
Lord, as we soak in this difficult thing of learning about racism
in our own heart, learning about prejudices. And it may not be
on racial lines, but it may be on social lines or economic lines.
Father, we are divided. The church is divided in many
ways. Help us not to tamper with Your
Word. Help us not to tamper and say, well, we're looking for
a church that gives A, B, C. Father, help us to look for being
the church. Look to be the church with the people who are the church
to learn the Word of God so that we might grow to worship You
more. We thank You that we who are not a people, You called
us and created us to be Your people. That we will be called
Your people and You are going to be called, are not going.
You are our God. Thank You for Your grace. Thank
You for Christ who gave us life. Who took my sin and put it on
Himself and destroyed it and brought His judgment. Lord, You are a mighty God. And
You are a mighty God who certainly saves you all. God, I pray You
bring salvation to all who are here. That we might be transformed
by Your power. That we might worship You in
spirit and in truth. And Lord, we pray these things
in Christ's name. Amen.