Turn with me to Matthew's Gospel,
chapter 25, and we're going to sort of start here, read this,
and then we're going to move into some thoughts that I've
had from this, and we're going to come back to this as we move
through. Today is week number three in
this series on the gospel and racism, and the title of today's
message is The Dilemmas and the Consequences of Racism and Bigotry.
And as you'll see here, as we get started, it'll make some
sense as it fits in. Next week, we're going to be
looking at problem doctrines and difficult theologies that
are the cause of racism and bigotry. And so let's look at Matthew
chapter 25, starting in verse 31. And when the Son of Man comes
in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on
his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all
the nations, and he will separate people one from another, as Shepard
separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the
sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will
say to those on his right, You who are blessed by my father
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world. For I was hungry and you gave
me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger
and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me.
I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came
to me. Then the righteous will answer him, saying, Lord, when
did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink?
And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and
clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit
you? And the king will answer them. Truly, I say to you, as
you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did
it to me. Then he will say that goes on
his left. Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire
prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and
you gave me no food. I was thirsty, and you gave me
no drink. I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me. Naked,
and you did not clothe me. Sick, and in prison, and you
did not visit me. Then they will also answer, saying, Lord, when
did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick,
or in prison, and did not minister to you? then He will answer them,
saying, Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of
the least of these, you did not do it to Me. And these will go
away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal
life. Now, I'm not going to, as you
know, exegete that text or preach this text. It would take for
months and months and months to go through all of that. But
I want to use this, as I alluded to last week, as a way of showing
The separation of two races. The people of God and the people
who are the enemies of God. His children and his enemies.
Those are the only biblical separations that we see in the entire Word
of God. Are the people of God. and everybody
else. And as we've looked in the last
few weeks, we've seen that it is not about race or nationality,
that the Jews themselves were not a race of people, but rather
pagans plucked out of paganism, out of Assyria, out of the land
of Ur, and called a new race of people. It's a shadow of just
what God has done with His salvation of those who are unworthy to
be saved. God has chosen His children and
He has plucked them out of the world, out of darkness, and He
has called them His for His namesake and for His glory. In the last
few weeks we've seen God, as the creator of all humanity,
that God has created the human race in His image. Those who
are opposed to Him and those who are His are still created
in His image. He created all human beings to
display His mark, to display His essence. However, the fall
corrupted the whole man. The radical corruption or the
total depravity of the human being is a true biblical doctrine. Though some might argue otherwise,
I can see no evidence for there to ever be any man except the
Christ who lived good and holy and perfect in this world. David even says that he, in his
mother's womb, was a sinner. And so we understand that all
who are from Adam are, of course, under the judgment of God because
they are sinners. But God did not leave us in that
state of destruction, in that state of depravity. He became
a man so that he might live a perfect life. He might die as the perfect
sacrifice so that he would be just in forgiving us who are
unworthy of his grace and unworthy of anything but wrath. His mercy
and His grace. He gives us that because He lived
the perfect life as Jesus Christ. He, God-man, God the Father,
God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, three persons, one God. Jesus
lived a perfect life as a man and therefore was a sufficient
sacrifice to take the sin of those who believe, of the believing
ones, on Himself to become sin that we might become the righteousness
of God. Jesus, as a perfect man, lived
a holy life and died a perfect, spotless death, burying the sins
of all who believe. God prepared a people in history
to shadow His eternal plan. Just as I've said about Him pulling
a pagan out of Ur and calling him a Jew, through Abraham and
through the people and the descendants of Abraham, God said that all
the nations would be blessed, all the ethnos, all of the tongues
and the tribes and the peoples of the world would be blessed
through Abraham. So even in the beginning of God's
covenant with the Jews, it was not a covenant for the Jews,
but it was a covenant with the Jews that God may one day include
all nations as Jews. Now, of course, that's a semantical
issue where our language, what I might say Jew, other people
might say Israel. Either way, we know that God
has saved his own. God has sent Jesus Christ to
come and seek and save the lost. And Jesus did just that. He has
found all and has saved all and will save all that are His. Jesus
came to destroy diversity. Jesus came to destroy disunity.
Jesus came to destroy racial tension, bigotry, which is all
sin. He came to destroy the works
of the devil, as John says, which includes racism. And I believe
that racism and bigotry is one of the greatest sins in the world
today. But I'm not talking about the
sins of the world. I'm talking in this series about the sins
of the church. Those who claim and profess to be God's elect. Those who say that they are truly
the children of God. But yet we still, all of us,
none of us without, if we are honest, none of us can say there
are not racial sins in our hearts and minds. Even in the slightest,
there are things in our hearts that cause us to stumble, that
cause us to look at others, maybe not even their color, but maybe
their social status, maybe their upbringing, maybe their attitudes.
We have bigotry in our hearts. And I bet if we all looked at
the stereotypes that we hold so loosely, we would probably
see that they are just that, sin and bigotry. Jesus came to
unite all people into two peoples. He's going to unite all His own
into His body. Those who will be His sheep.
And He will separate us from the goats. And He will unite
all the goats into one body. A body of destruction. So we
see that the body of destruction are those who are not His, and
they will all settle in what we know as the lake of fire for
God to destroy them forever. to put his wrath and judgment
on them forever. But yet his children who he has saved through
his own flesh and blood will be his forever into eternal life. Jesus came to do away with racial
diversity, racial tension and hatred. And unfortunately, friends,
when this exists in the church, we have a big problem. We have
a problem that we need to call Sin. Because that's what it is. Sin is sin is sin. Nothing that
is outside the plan of God and outside His holiness is good. And so friends, I want you to
know that we should, as Christians, as we identify racism in our
hearts, as we identify bigotry among us in the fellowship, we
need to call it out just as that. Now, it may be hard for some
of us. It may be hard for some churches to say, well, I know
that we have racist tensions or racist attitudes. But look
at the church of Jesus Christ. Look at the professing groups
of believers. You have ethnic churches all over the place. Everywhere you turn, we have
ethnic churches, and they're racially divided at every turn. Friends, I want you to know that
that is displeasing to the Lord. It is not something that God
wants to continue. It is not something that should
be a label of the people of God, bigots. We must realize this
sin in our lives. Racism and bigotry do several
things, and today what I want you to see is the dilemmas of
racism and the consequences of racism, especially in the church. I'm not even going to talk about
the world, for the world is going to do what it does. It is going
to do what it always does, and that is to sin. And so, we should
not worry about the world's sin. We should make sure that our
sin is being put to death daily, and that we pray for God to save
those who are in the world, for they are doing what they know
they can do, and they are doing what is natural to their nature.
However, it is unnatural to the nature of the saint to continue
in sin. Listen to just John out of his
first epistle. Many passages. This is the message
that we have heard from Him and proclaimed to you, that God is
light and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that
we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and
we do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as
He is in the light, we have fellowship with Him and with one another.
And the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all
sin. Whoever says, I know Him, but does not keep His commandments
is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His
commandments, whoever keeps His word, in him truly the love of
God is perfected. By this we may know that we are
in him. Whoever says he abides in Him
ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Beloved,
I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you
had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word
that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new
commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in Him
and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true
light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light
and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his
brother abides in the light. And in him there is no cause
for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness
and walks in darkness and does not know where he is going, because
the darkness has blinded his eyes. Whoever makes a practice
of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from
the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy
the works of the devil, and no one born of God makes a practice
of sinning. seed abides in him, and he cannot
keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it
is evident who are the children of God and who are the children
of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness
is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
By this we know, love, that He laid down His life for us, and
we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone
has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes
his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?
Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed
and in truth. If anyone says, I love God and
hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his
brother whom he can see and has seen, cannot love God whom he
has not seen. And this commandment we have
from Him. Whoever loves God must also love
his brother. The writer of Hebrews says, For
it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened,
who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the
Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God
and the powers of the age to come, and have fallen away, to
restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once
again the Son of God to their own harm and holding Him up to
contempt. For the land that has drunk the
rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to
those for whose sake it was cultivated, receives a blessing from God.
But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being
cursed. And in the end, it is burned. And I hope you can see that little
rant of texts. the reality of what bigotry and
hate is. Let's call racism what it is.
Racism is hatred. And I know this goes so much
further in so many aspects of relational lives. It goes into our marriages. It
goes into our ex-marriages. It goes into our siblings and
our friends and our neighbors and our church members and the
politicians and those who hate us and those who love us. It
goes into all of these aspects. But we know that. We see that.
And we go, oh, I need to work on these things. What we are
blinded to is the aspect of race and ethnicity inside the body
of Christ. And it needs to stop. And it can stop because we who
are His have been empowered by Him through His grace to stand
and stamp out the sin in our lives. We need to call it what
it is. It is sin. Let me give you a
few thoughts about what racism does inside the church. You might
say, well, what's the big deal? We've got our own. We like our
music. We like our singing. We like our food. We like our
dress. We like our style. Friends, listen to that. There's
no our and them. There's no us and them. There's
no them and us in the body of Christ. It's we. We all are one
body. We all are one people. We all
are one race. And that is the race of a holy
nation. A race and a kingdom of priests.
And that is where we're looking. Our worship culminates at the
coming of Christ who will then make his blood one people. And
we need to understand that. When racism exists in the church,
several things happen. Number one, it shows an extreme
lack of immaturity in the believers who experience racism. who hold
racism in their hearts. And it's either of one of two
things. Now, notice I said the believer. If an unbeliever is
in the church, racism would be one of those areas that we would
notice and say, OK, this person says he loves the Lord, but he
is hating his brother. Now, keep in mind, you may say
to yourself, well, I don't really hate people who are not like
me. You may not on the surface But deep down, ask yourself why
you hold them to this specific standard. What about the stereotypes?
What about the ideals and the philosophies that you have? That
in some sense you feel they are not as good as you are because
of the way they act as a people, or talk as a people, or dress
as a people, or behave, or think, or preach, or sing. It shows a lack of immaturity
in the church. Either because of ignorance,
because the believer has been sitting under teaching that is
so superficial that it wouldn't ever convict anybody of anything,
it would never talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so
we as the church, we remain immature and we just go on. And what we
do in our immaturity is we find other things to accomplish. We
find other ways of trying to get busy about the kingdom works.
So we create programs and we create this and we create that.
And we create all these things and we think, well, let's do
all this stuff. And everything that we are doing
is not prescribed by Scripture. So therefore, then we just continue
to stay in our ignorance and in our immaturity and we fail
to see sin in our lives because the Word of God is not actively
being preached or taught to us. When racism exists in the church,
it reveals immaturity. It also prohibits true worship.
Now, this is the area that sometimes we don't grasp. What is worship? I've actually preached about
15 messages on answering that question, and I'm not done. It's
difficult to really put your finger on worship as a single
thing. It's not a single thing. It's
the whole of the man trusting and loving and affectionately
working for and from and because of the whole of Christ. It's
the whole of the man with faith in the whole of the Christ. And
so it prohibits true worship. When hate is in the church, when
racism is in the church, when ethnic diversity is in the church
and in the hearts of the church. And notice how I say church.
Some of us may go automatically to the building and to the things
that we do. And we're like, well, I don't see it around me. It's
not around you. It's in you. You are the church. Change your
thinking, church. We don't do church. We don't
have church. We are church and we assemble.
And so if we were out across the street over there, the church
would be there. The church would be wherever two or more of us
are. I would argue that when one of us is together, the church
of God, the people of God are still there. It shows a lack of immaturity.
It prohibits true worship. You know, I thought about this
this week. Wouldn't it be great if hate was illegal? But see,
God has given the state the authority to have the sword, to kill if
it needs to kill, to incarcerate if it needs to incarcerate. However,
hate is not a crime, is it? They're trying to make it a crime.
They're trying to make it a crime to hate people. And it's not
too far from what Scripture teaches, but right now in our world that,
and of course I'm not a proponent for hate crime legislation, but
in the sense of looking at how God deals with it, hate is one
of the largest crimes. that you could stand against
God and against each other. And so when we see hate in the
church, it prohibits. It denies worship. It denies
worship as an act. We don't come to church to worship. We worship as the church. We
bring our worship together as an assembly. And we worship as
an act. We worship as an act. And people
have argued with me when we put our clothes on, when we brush
our teeth, when we fix our hair. We are either worshiping ourselves
or we are giving worship to God. We are worshiping something.
And so true worship is prohibited every time there is hate in our
hearts towards someone else, especially because of ethnicity. We cannot worship as an act.
We cannot worship in submission. We can't obey the Lord in every
aspect of our life and live righteous before men when deep in our heart
lives wickedness and hatred toward others. There's no way possible
that you can say that we live, I say you and I mean we, we all,
that we live in submission to the Lord and in obedience when
there is hatred in our hearts. Friends, the church needs to
wake up and understand that. And we say, well we go, listen
to this, well we go, we're not racist, we're not bigots, we
serve those people all the time. See how bad that is? That in
itself is a racist, bigoted, hated statement. And people go,
what do you mean? How is that hateful? Because
we have already separated ourselves with them. We don't want to go
tend to people who happen to be different because they are
the same body. We want to go help those helpless
folks and take care of them and then go back home and live in
our nice beds. Is it homeless? Is it ethnicity? Is it social status? Where is
it that our bigotry lies? We can't even serve. We can't
even worship God in our service when this is in our heart. And
here's something that most people don't realize about worship.
Worship happens in prayer. When you pray to God, the Scripture
teaches us that when we are praying with a heart that has hate in
it, and this is just so that y'all can understand it, God
does this. He plugs up his ears. He doesn't listen to the prayer
of those who harbor hate. Nor does he receive the offering.
The Scripture teaches us that if we have hatred or animosity
or even friction toward a brother and we come to bring our offering,
to leave it and go and reconcile with our brother before bringing
the offering because God will not accept it. It's an unacceptable
offering. Why did Cain's offering get rejected? Cain's offering, according to
the law, was perfect. It was the first fruits of his
harvest. But Cain hated his brother. He
hated his brother because his brother was righteous. How do I know that? Because that's
what John tells us. Apostolic authority defines Old
Testament theology. Remember that. It was not a sin
for him to bring the grain because that's what he was. He was a
grain farmer. He couldn't have taken his brother's
sheep and sacrificed it. He would have been a thief and
a murderer. Prayer. We cannot worship in
prayer when we have hatred in our hearts. When racism exists
in the life of the church, it shows a lack of maturity. It
prohibits true worship as an act in submission, obedience,
and service, and in prayer. It prohibits true worship and
affection. How can you love a God that created the same people
you hate? You can't. You can't love the
God Creator who created those people who you don't like. And ultimately, I believe that
racism in the church prohibits true worship toward God's worthiness. God said that all He created
was good and it displays His glory. Even the wicked have a
purpose in displaying God's glory. The third thing that it does
is racism is when it's in the church, it denies the power of
the gospel. The very power of the gospel.
Where Paul says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel. For it
is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. To each one
who believes. To the Jew first. And then also
to the Greek. Look at that. Do you know what
that means in the context of Paul's writing? That means every
nation and tribe and tongue. See, in the apostolic idea and
the authority of the apostles, in the apostolic writing and
the vernacular of that day, especially the writing of the New Testament,
there were two sets of people. There were Jews, who were the
people whom God had chosen, and the lineage of Jews, Israelites,
of which some of them weren't, none of them were Jews, really.
Abram wasn't a Jew, but he was called one. And then you see
several times where there were recorded people from pagan cultures
who became part of the bloodline of even Jesus. So this is a redemptive bloodline
by God's choosing, not a true blood, as we see in John's gospel
in the very first few verses. It's not by the blood, nor the
will of the flesh, nor the decision of the heart. but by the will
of God that you are His children. But I'm not ashamed of the gospel,
for it is the power of God's salvation for all who believe, first to
the Jew and then also to the Greek. That means every tribe,
every type of person in the world will be saved. There is not one
nation of people, one ethnicity of people who are not part of
God's elect, who are not part of God's children. Paul even
says it in Galatians 3 chapter 28. Then you are Abraham's offspring. Heirs to the promise. There is
neither Greek nor Jew. There is neither slave nor free.
There is no male nor female. You are all one in Christ. And if you're Christ, then you
are Abraham's offspring. So pray there in Galatians, talking
to them. I'll tell you, the Galatians
dealt with racism. And now Paul is saying, look,
you're one offspring. You are all Abraham's seed. Think
about that. That blows a lot of this separation
theology away. That's what we'll look at next
week. Heirs according to promise, Paul says. Wow. How does it truly deny? The gospel. Well, it denies the gospel in
three ways, I think, in many ways, but three ways it sort
of just sort of formed in my mind. It denies the gospel by proving
that sin still reigns without check or conviction in the heart
of those who profess Christ. The whole aspect of displaying
the manifold wisdom of God, one of the greatest things is that
there's a people groups that don't have anything in common,
but they come together and they live in community and having
all things in common in Christ, who is the founder and the perfecter
of their faith, who is the one who brings unity amongst disunity. Christ. And so when we can see
that there's unity there, or that there's disunity there,
we see that it's because of sin. And so if sin is remaining unchecked
in our lives, then the power of the gospel has been laughed
at. It's been belittled. It's not there. It denies that
the gospel... What is it that the Scriptures
say? That you have the form of godliness, but deny its power.
That's what racism is in the church. We can look godly, but
we deny its power because we still do. Now friends, I'm not
saying, I'm not talking about, I mean of course it's obvious,
I am talking about those people who actually publicly display
hate. I'm talking about when you're sitting in your chair
or laying in your bed and the thoughts that come to your mind.
I'm talking about the intrinsic-ness of your being. Which is the place
that sin truly breathes. I don't know of hardly anybody
that I've met in the last few years as a majority who just
blatantly send out in public all the time and claim to be
Christians. It's not that. Those are really immature believers,
if they're even believers. I'm talking about the heinous
sin and depravity that boils inside the heart and the mind
of each of us, that we need to understand that sin does not
run free. with full reign in our bodies. It denies the gospel when sin
still stays there and is not given conviction. It denies the
gospel because it creates in some of us this attitude that
we are, in some sense, superior. Even if we have compassion toward
other people, we say we feel sorry for those people, but we
feel sorry for them and have pity on them, which is a good
thing. It's a good characteristic to pity people and to feel bad
for them and have empathy and things like that. We don't do
it in the sense of holding ourselves up and saying, oh, I'm so glad
I'm not like them. I pity them that they can't be
like me. Because the only place that we see that in Scripture
is where Jesus condemns a man for it. But the Pharisee, thank you God
for all that you've done in my heart. Thank you God that you've
made me who I am. Thank you God that you've saved
me from being like that tax collector. And Jesus says, that man who
has given praise to the Father for all the righteousness in
his life is condemned, but the man who cries without even looking
toward heaven and tears his clothes and beats his chest and says,
have mercy on me, O God, a sinner, that man is justified before
me. And denies the power of gospel
because it rejects humility. And without humility, we can't
be slaves to others. See, we are called to be slaves
to one another, not to make others our slaves. In Romans 6, Paul
says very clearly, Do not present your members to sin as instruments
for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who
have been brought from death to life, and your members to
God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion
over you, since you are not under the law, but under grace. See?
If we still have this unchecked sin in our hearts, we have denied
the power of the gospel in our lives. Especially that it's expressed. It's one thing to battle it like
Paul says he battles covetousness in the soul. But it would be
another thing if we're just expressing it. If we're acting on it. If
we're allowing decisions to be made based on prejudices and
racism. But it also denies the bond of
peace. The fourth thing, racism in the church denies the bond
of peace. It does it in several ways. One, by causing a justification
of one's hatred. Well, you know, we love everybody,
but we just aren't going to fit together because of differences.
So therefore, you know, we're just going to have to keep doing
what we do. Well, we live in a community where if we adopt
a child of color of another color, then it's going to cause problems
in our home. Aren't you glad God doesn't justify
that way? Because every man, woman, and child that ever lived
on this earth would be damned to hell for all of eternity. And what happens when we deny
the bond of peace and we just keep covering it up? We justify
our sin, we justify our hatred, and we don't even call it hatred
anymore. And after a while, it's just being socially correct.
It's just being politically correct. It's just being good stewards
of what we've been given. We live in a different place.
We live in a different world. We live in a different culture. What missionary isn't
in a different culture? You've got to reach your indigenous
people. I believe this indigenous, ethnocentric mission baloney
almost said something else. This baloney drives me crazy. And I pray that God one day would
stop these mission arms from doing this trash. Let's see the power of the gospel
in our lives when people of other cultures and other races can
reach people of other cultures and other races and then live
together in harmony for the kingdom. It diminishes the reality or
existence of hatred when we do this. In Acts 21, the Jews from Asia seeing Paul
in the temple, they stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands
on Paul, crying out, This is the man who is teaching
everyone, everywhere, against the people and the law of this
place. Moreover, he even brought Greeks
into the temple and he has defiled this holy place. For they had previously seen
Trophimus, the Ephesian, with him in the city, and they supposed
that Paul had brought him into the temple. Then all the city
was stirred up and the people ran together. And they seized
Paul and they dragged him out of the temple, and at once the
gates were shut. They put him on trial because he dared to
bring a Greek into the temple of God. Racists. The fifth thing that happens
when racism is in the church, and the most important, but the most that
we need to take note of, is that it brings judgment to the church.
It brings discipline to the church and it brings major consequences
to the church. Do you know what racism in our
hearts does? It feeds hatred. It feeds the
hatred of the world. The church should be opposed
to hatred. It should not have it present. But yet we still
see it. We still see division and tension.
We still see racial tension in this part of the world like no
other. Friends of mine who live in Alabama and Mississippi, it's
just the brush of the wind that can cause a racial strife. We see Oakland where a white
cop shoots a black man and there's really no justification for it
and racial tension. Even between pastors of different
races, the tension and the division begins to feed because the church
is not standing against the injustice and the sin of racism. It brings
judgment and discipline and major consequences. It feeds hatred.
That is a consequence. That is a judgment. When it feeds
the hatred of this world, we should not have hatred in the
church. People should hate us because we stand for righteousness,
not because of our color. The church also loses her light
and salt. And you know what Jesus says
about salt? It's lost its saltiness. It's worthless. It's not even
worth to be put under the feet and stamped on. He said that's
the only thing good for it. Throw it on the ground and cover
the roads with it. The church loses her light and salt. The
church is powerless. The church is powerless. And
here's the other consequence and the other judgment that God
has put in the church of America. When the church is powerless
and people aren't living righteous lives, and they don't hunger
for the Word, and they don't hunger for righteousness, they
don't worship God in spirit and in truth, they go out and they
create other methods of evangelism. They create corrupted and coerced
and contrived ways of reaching people with everything but Jesus.
Because God no longer is bringing people to faith. Because the
church has sin in it. and is blind to see it. Because
pastors aren't studying the Scriptures, they're reading books and doing
ten-point outlines on how to live a better life. We don't
need God for that kind of lifestyle. We don't need God to teach us.
We need Dr. Phil and Oprah Winfrey and all
these other people who if they are not faithful to come to faith
in Jesus Christ, if they are not repentant of their sins and
trusting in Christ alone, they will stand in judgment and all
of their philosophy and wisdom will go with them. And forever
their smoke and their torment will rise and rise as a fragrant
sacrifice and an offering of holiness to God's nostrils. God
is pleased with the destruction of wickedness. The Scripture
says that it pleased the Father to put the death to Son. Because
He put sin on Christ and He cussed sin. He loved His Son. He hates
sin. But now we can be free. It causes
apathy toward racism. It causes blindness. What's the
difference? Who cares? The consequences of
that are that generation after generation after generation after
generation are affected. And I would say not just affected,
but infected with the sin of racism and the sin of hatred
and the sin of bigotry, the sin of ethnic diversity, the sin
of cultural centrism or ethnocentrism, the sin of nationalism. It's
garbage. And people hate God when they
see this. Those who are in the world and they look and they
laugh and they scoff at the church, this is one of the main ways
that you see people have an excuse and a reason and are justified
in their observation that the church is full of hate. Don't
believe me? Go online to secular places and look at the conversations
that spiritually minded people are having about Christianity. I don't want anything to do with
Jesus because all of His followers are bigots. And I believe that. Why? Because
I know Him. And chances are if I look deep,
I might be one. So let's all stand up and feel good about
ourselves today. Because it's there. It feeds the foster system. Bigotry and racism feeds the
foster system. People don't want to adopt. People
don't want to care. They say it doesn't matter about
that group of people or this group of people or that. Why
are they even in our country? I hear that a lot. Whose country? You
talking about the American Indians? The Native Americans who we raped
and murdered and sold and slaved and cut their heads off and let
them die for 3,000 miles while we pushed them west into the
ocean? Those people? How dare they take our country
that we took from them? And men who said that they stood
for God and justice planted this country on the backs of slaves
and American Indians. It feeds the foster system. It
feeds abortion. Planned Parenthood was founded
as a way of destroying the Negro child. About trying to sterilize
Africans so that they could not breed and populate America. It feeds divorce. It feeds an
established satanic code for marriage. I've had friends of
mine who happen to be African-American, who happen to be professing Christians,
who happen to be in churches that tell me that it's okay when
a man cheats on his wife because that's just what men do in his
culture. I said, brother, if I can call you that, that's what
I'm thinking, there's no way. That's ungodly. It feeds poverty. Racism in the church feeds poverty.
This is the judgment and the discipline and the consequences
of not dealing with sin and the sin of racism. It rejects the
love of God. It rejects the love of Christ.
And most heinously, the judgment and the consequence of racism
going unchecked in the church is that it assaults God directly.
Now, let me explain that. In Genesis chapter 9, you hear
Moses write, And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to
them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. You realize
at that point in time that the only Americans, look at this,
the only people who were alive in the world right then were
Noah and his family. What color were they? Who knows? Who cares? So Noah, Adam of course,
but Noah for sure, We are all descendants of Noah. And God said, multiply the earth
and fill it. And the fear of you and the dread
of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird
of the heavens, upon everything that creeps from the ground and
all the fish of the sea, into your hands, God said, talking
to Noah, they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives
shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants,
I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with
its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood, I will
require reckoning." Listen, from every beast, I will require it.
And from man, from his fellow man, I will require reckoning
for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed. God made man in His own image. So when a white man murders a
black man, the white man should die according to God's law. And
He gave the stake, the sword, to do so. When racism isn't gone
unchecked, that kind of stuff just goes by the wayside and
we begin to start looking at our own race and our own ethnicity
as people and everybody else as subpar. Now, that's actually an introduction. Back to Matthew, chapter 25. When the Son of Man comes in
glory, we see there's a lot here to talk about. But I want you
to see the ultimate consequence of sin unchecked, the ultimate
reality of what Jesus is saying, how the sheep and the goats are
measured. Friends, what He's saying here
is He puts the sheep, He separates the sheep from the goats. The
sheep are those who are His, those who believe, those who
have been saved and regenerated by faith or through Jesus' grace. And the goats are those who reject
that, even though most of them think they are His. Understand,
He separates them. You see the point? He's not even
talking about the people who hate him and fight against him.
He said, there's a big group of you guys standing here. I'm
going to put my finger down the middle. I'm going to sort you
out like this. I'm going to show you just who are mine. He's talking
to the church here. I'm going to separate my church.
I'm going to clean my church. You say you have fellowship with
us, but you hate your brother. You say you love the Lord. You
profess the name of Christ, but you walk in darkness. You have
bitterness and hatred and bigotry in your heart. How do you know if you have bigotry
or hatred? Well, it's not these good deeds that saved and justified
these peoples. It is God's justification and
salvation into the heart of these people that called them to desire
to give themselves to others. Come, you who are blessed by
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world. I was hungry, and you gave me
food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was stranger,
and you welcomed me. I was naked, and you clothed
me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you
came to me." The righteous will answer, when did we do these
things? You see that? The righteous don't
even know they're doing it. They just do it. It's a response.
When did we do these things to you, Lord? I don't remember ever seeing
you. I don't remember ever knowing that I was serving you and doing
this to you. And Jesus answers them and says,
when you did it under the least of one of these, my brothers...
Who are the brothers and sisters of Christ? The church. When we
don't love each other, we deny the power of the gospel. We bring
judgment on ourselves and discipline and consequences that are immeasurable. Are we loving? Do we give of
ourselves because it is joyful to do so? Because those said,
when did we ever not do that? And Jesus says, when you did
not do it to the one of the least of these, you did not do it to
Me. And these will go away to eternal punishment. That the
sheep to eternal life. Now imagine. When Jesus says,
Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Last week I dealt
with the Canaanite woman who said even the dogs get crumbs
from the master's table. And I showed you the parallel
that all of us are dogs and we've all been given not just crumbs,
but the full bread, the full meal of Jesus. Those who are
blessed by my Father are of every nation and every tongue and every
tribe. And if you don't love them enough
to give your life away for them, you're not one of them. One of the greatest and most
damaging apologetics I've ever had toward a human being when
they were arguing about eternal life and they looked at me and
says, well, you know, this, that, and the other, and all these
people do all this kind of stuff, and when I'm ready to blah, blah,
blah, well, you can hear it. You've been there. And they started
talking about specific peoples, naming them one by one, and this
person, and this person, and this person, and this person,
and that's what they do to me, and they do to me. And I said, and by God's grace
and eternity may stand beside you and worship Christ. And this
person said to me, if that person's going to be in heaven, I'd rather
be in hell. And I said, well, you can bet you that's where
you're going to be. And only by God's grace will
that person ever be saved. Jesus reveals his sheep and exposes
the goats. He divides them. The apostles
show this all throughout the New Testament. As Paul teaches, as we'll get
to in a few months, to the Ephesians, saying, you are no longer strangers
and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and
members of the household of God, building the foundation of the
apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone,
in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a
holy temple in the Lord. In Him you are also being built
together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Be kind
to one another, Paul says in Ephesians 4. tenderhearted, forgiving
one another as God and Christ forgave you. He's not talking
to us to look to the people who look like us sitting to our left
and our right. He's talking to us to be like
that toward every human being and most certainly to those people
who are brothers and sisters in Christ. Put on, then, as God's
chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness,
humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another, and
if one has a complaint, forgive one another as the Lord has forgiven
you, so you must also forgive. And above all these, put on love
which binds everything together in perfect harmony. The world
understands that better than the church does. The pagans of
the world, if I can label them like that, it's probably wrong
to do, especially in the context of this message. The pagans of
the world probably get that better than we do. The problem is, is
they don't have the power to do it. And we do. Do we deny
the power of the gospel in our hatred and our bigotry? Love binds all things together
in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your
hearts, to which you indeed were called into one body, and be
thankful. Let the Word of Christ dwell
in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing
songs and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your
hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word
or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,
giving thanks to God the Father through Him. See, church, we
are not to present our members. Remember what I read out of Romans
earlier? We're not to present our members for sin, but as instruments
of righteousness. We are to live our lives. We should present ourselves to
God holy and blameless as those who have been brought from death
to life, Paul says. Are we alive in Christ? And if
we are, the sin of bigotry, the racial diversity, the racial
tension in the body of Christ will be less and be being put
to death more and more each day. I didn't say it will be gone,
because there are a lot of unbelievers in church, among the church. But they're not the true church,
and God will separate them one day. Sin will have no dominion
over you. We are not under the law, but
under grace. As Jesus says, I give a new commandment to you that
you love one another. Just as I love you, you also
are to love one another. By this, all people will know
that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. The trouble is, are we including
all peoples as one another? Or do we see still this dividing
line of us and them? Why preach something on this?
Why deal with this in four weeks? Why not just one big sermon,
go through five points, be done with it? Because, friends, we
live in a place where the professing body of Christ is probably the
most racist. And doesn't even know it. The
South. And I'm probably preaching to
the choir, but I'll tell you what, somebody will hear this
message series one day and they will see the truth. And some
of them may hear it and burn down my house. They'll have a
hard time burning this one. But they may try. The reality of
the gospel is that God took a divided people who were divided because
of judgment. The ethnicity, the nations were
created as a judgment. All humanity was together until
Babel, until Ham, Cain. You see, where people are divided
and sent away from God's people, it's because of sin and judgment.
God didn't create the ethnos because of blessing. He created
Israel, but not everybody else. And so in the end, they'll just
be Israel and Babylon. That's what we see in John's
Apocalypse. Israel and Babylon. Israel are
all those who are in Christ who receive the promise, who are
sons of Abraham, offspring of Abraham. And Babylon is everything
else. Every nation, every government,
everything, everyone who is not the children, who are not the
children of God. So my prayer for you today, church,
is that you would truly see deep, deep, deep, deep, deep within.
And that you would come to realize that there are seeds of racial
tension and diversity and racial discrimination and bigotry. And
not only just in race and ethnicity, but in many ways. Even amongst,
quote, your own people. And I pray that the Spirit of
God would allow you to see it and that you could repent of
it and that you could put it to death through His grace and through
His Word. Because only then, I really believe,
will God give us a heart for the nations. And the nations
are right here. We don't have to leave our borders
to see nations. And as a group, as a congregation,
my prayer is that God would bless us in that way, that we could
be diverse, because it is what God desires. As we stand under
the banner of truth, not under the banner of culture. Let's
pray. Father, we are greatly humbled,
overwhelmed. Lord, You have given the victory.
Victory in Jesus, as we sang this morning. Lord, You are our Savior, not
us as a people, not as Americans, not as Caucasians or Africans
or Hispanics or whatever. Lord, You are the Savior of Your
people. Every tongue. Every nation, every
tribe, there are people who are yours. Lord, help us to be mindful
of that. God, as we see the consequences
and the dilemmas that racism causes in the church, Lord, maybe
this is what's happening in this area of the world. Maybe this
is why there's so much man-made fault and philosophy around the
gospel. Lord, would you just give us
clarity and not pride, but Lord, humble, just pity? and worship that we could definitely
still be in our sin and still be blinded if it weren't for
your grace. God, give us a hunger to be able
to lay our lives down and our comforts down and our finances
down and our material possessions down and our physical lives down,
Lord, so that we might bless our brothers and sisters no matter
what the color of their skin might be. Father, protect the
eyes and hearts of our children from having the same poison that
has infiltrated so many adults inside the church. God, we praise
you for saving us. We are not worthy, but God, you
declared us worthy, and you placed our sin, even racism, on Jesus
Christ, and you were pleased to destroy it. Thank you. As we leave this place today,
as we go, let the Word of God dwell richly in our hearts. We
pray this in Christ's name. Amen.