There's several horrors. You
know how you have horrors around your kid? One of the main horrors
that we've always had is that our children will be exposed
to racism. It's actually one of those things that we go, okay,
we're never going to move back home because of that. But thankfully
God moves us around and we don't decide when we're going to move.
It's that important to us that we are that we are going to try
to hide our children from that. But then again, we don't want
to hide our children from the reality of hate. But we don't
want to raise them under it. And I feel like that growing
up in this area, no matter what your ethnicity, you have been
raised under a cloud of racism. Not intentionally, some of us
may have. Some of us may have been raised by parents or grandparents
that just were extremely racist. And so that's been boiling up
inside of us. And some of us probably indirectly
have been raised to just see some of these things. And so
as we begin today, I want you to review, in your own hearts
and minds, I want you to think about something. I want you to
review, and I say review because it's in us all, Consider and
contemplate the stereotypes that you have about certain peoples.
Now see, if I was in a mega church and it was church growth and
we were going to be doing this very light weight, I'd probably have
a string of jokes to do right now that would be ethnically
challenging, probably not quite politically correct, just to
get the point across. But I think that's tacky and
distasteful, especially when we're trying to glorify God.
I don't want to laugh at sin, and I believe racism is an abomination
and an affront to the Lord. And so I want us to internally
review our generalizations, come to the surface really quickly
with what you know in your own heart, the things that you can
put your finger on, of how you have ideologies and philosophies
and belief systems that deal with the issue of race. And then
I want us to ask the question of what we would do, how we would
think, or how we would act if one of our children or grandchildren
And I know those of you who do not have children, you have to
think about this. What would you think if one of your children
or grandchildren showed up to your house engaged to someone
of ethnicity for marriage? See, racism is seen in many ways. Racism is seen in many ways.
The primary way racism is seen is in the negative attitudes.
The negative attitudes and the stereotypes that we see across
the world today. I mean, if you think about it,
if you were in an African-American culture or a black culture as
we call it here, and the topic of white people or Caucasians
came up, they could give us some stereotypes or some generalizations
or some philosophies that would say white people are always like
this or or they always do this, or they always say this, or they
always think this. The other way we see racism played
out is in this mindset of racial superiority. We see racial superiority. There are some mindsets that
we have and that we see, and specifically, and I'm talking
generally in the population, but I want you as a Christian
to start thinking critically within this confines of the congregation. I want you to see that these
things exist inside the church, and that is the main thing. We
can't change what the world does, but we can confront who the church
is and who it should be. And so this idea of racial superiority,
this idea that there are better races, that white people are
better than black people, that are better than Mexicans, that
are better, and it keeps on going. This type of mindset has been
very much in the forefront for the presidential election, especially
for the Republican primary, where one of the candidates for the
Republican presidency has basically put his foot in his mouth several
times with racially degrading statements. These ideas root
from, and I'm not going to judge this man's heart, I'm just going
to judge what comes out of his mouth. This man says these things
and they appear as though he is superior in his race to other
races. There's also this racism that
is seen in science, seen in this biological idea that evolution
creates a subsect of people because they haven't evolved quite to
the same level as others. As a matter of fact, evolutionary
theory and teaching had its root in racism against Africans. And I know that's a big fallacy
to state something and not give a source. If you want to talk
about that, I've got volumes of books that will prove that
to you. Charles Darwin himself and the people around him, they
created evolutionary theory to prove that Africans were a sub-par
human. This is seen in the context of
heritage. We see racism and we see people
saying, well, this is our heritage. Well, let me tell you something,
white folks. If it weren't for African slaves, we could have
never come to this land because none of us could have farmed
and done what they could do. because we grew up in a privileged
society in Europe rather than a society of workers and farmers
and builders. And I would suggest to you that
everything we know as a culture today in the area of agriculture
and architecture, and I want to make sure that we do these
things, we learn from someone of ethnicity, either the American
Indians or the Africans and the Spanish. We also see racism in
the idea of adoption. We see people say, well, you
know, there are so many ethnic children to adopt and very few
Caucasian children to adopt, but we can't adopt an ethnic
child, see, because we bring him into a culture that was polarized
and it would cause him stress. What's a better stress? A black
child sitting in an orphanage for the rest of its life or having
a loving family that might not be of the same color. I tell you, we need to be careful
how we think. We see it in our politics and our political correctness
and how we want to make sure that we say things the way they
should be said. We see racism in our affirmative
responses and I try not to say affirmative action because I
believe in affirmative action. I believe it was a necessary
outcome of racial prejudice. It's something that needed to
take place, but I believe affirmative, and I've changed it to affirmative
responsiveness. Affirmative responsiveness has
come into the church in the sense, okay, for example, 29.9% of Evans
County and the surrounding area is African American, but yet
are 29.9% of the churches that mixed or of that composition? And so what some churches do,
and I've been a part of a church that put this as one of the forefronts,
one of the front burners of their mission, is that we need to go
out and then begin to reach this sect of people so that we can
say that we're racially diverse. I believe that that's worse than
being racist. Because now we're going to go
out and try to look the part rather than be the part. Here's
the issue. If we are actually people living
in a community together and not allowing race and culture to
divide us, then we naturally, through generations, will begin
to see a unique body forming in the people of God. the stylistic
ideals. Sometimes in the church, and
I'm going to move more into thinking about church, people say, well,
churches are divided and segregated because of stylistic issues.
Churches are, because there are some people, but some people
are looking to say, well, because we can't be culturally integrated
because, you know, I don't really like, listen to this, their music. Or I don't like their preaching.
or I don't like their style of food. And so when we see that
type of stuff and we begin to hear it, we need to pay close
attention that that's not what we think. I mean, I had this
argument with our elder staff years ago in Virginia in that
why are we not more diverse in our ethnicity? And then come
to find out we were extremely diverse. As a matter of fact,
we had more per capita in the sense of ratio people of ethnicity
than the city itself was ethnic. And so you're talking less than
10% of the entire population of Roanoke, Virginia in that
area being ethnic. But rather, our church had about
15% ethnicity. And so there's always room to
begin to look and see racism in our lives. I believe it's
there. I believe that we are in a place in America's culture
and in the culture of the church that we need to deal with it.
We need to deal with it. A couple of examples that help
us to understand the effects of racism. One of the greatest,
and I would say one of the most heinous expressions of racism
that takes away the black-white argument, because for us it usually,
especially in the South, it's more of a black-white thing rather
than anything else. And now there's a Hispanic-white
thing and a black-Hispanic thing, and it just sort of depends on
whatever race becomes a population. We have 10% of Evans County and
the surrounding areas now are Hispanic. We see the historical
examples of extreme racism in the Nazi Germany regime. We see
Adolf Hitler who had in his mindset an ideal that, matter of fact,
he did not even fit. An ideal that he did not even
fit. And so in that regard, we saw Adolf Hitler as a man who
actually thought that the supreme race was one of the blonde hair,
blue eyes. And if you look through historically
and we see what he did, he actually kidnapped women and sired them
with the right type of man and had babies that were owned by
Germany. to create a race of people. And
anyone who was not part of that race, he wanted to systematically
eradicate and he started with the Jews. Six million Jews were
killed under the order of the Nazi regime, under the order
of Adolf Hitler. That's a historical example.
We see through the conquest of America, we see through the revolutionary
times, we see slavery as we begin to move into this area. We see slavery of the Africans,
and we see the historical consequences of the slavery of the African
people. And we see people who supposedly,
for the founders of this country, and I'll tell you, I'm about
to step on somebody's baby right now, but we see people who were
the founders of this country who were elitists, and most of
them deists, who own their slaves. But then yet they're writing
and people like to do this and I love the way white Christians
say this. I said, well, see, look at the writing of such and
such. Look at the writing of this founding father. He treated
his slave well. You know what? I treat my Labrador
well. And it sleeps in the house and we love it and we bathe and
we feed it. But that's a dog, not a human being. So we can't
say that we're not racist if we own slaves, but we treat them
well and we love them dearly. That's garbage. And I believe
it's an affront to God. Segregation, we see the idea
of when we came to this country and we pushed the American Indians
and we killed them and destroyed them and we took their land and
then we were so generous to give them their casinos. What is this? Segregation even
in the 1960s as we saw with Dr. Martin Luther King and his peaceful
demonstrations saying that all men should be treated equal for
we all were created equal. These racial philosophies, and
I call it Satanism within our homes, to say, well, it's been
said, well, we love those people, but we don't want them marrying
our children. Or we are friends with them,
but you know, they're going to rob you. Or don't pull those
guys down there because those Hispanics, they'll stab you.
These types of ideas and these generalizations and we say this
stuff in front of our children and they hear it and they hear
us talk about the love of God and the power of God in the gospel.
And then yet they hear us say these things about other people
and it confuses them. And so they see or they hear
with their lips of their parents the power of God, but they see
no power in the life of the parents. And if some of us find ourselves
in that boat today, I'd say, let's repent. and trusting Christ
and His grace to free us from that. And I'll tell you one of
the greatest examples of, historically, of racism in America that's still
active today and perfectly legal is the sin of abortion. Abortion is the number one killer
of African babies in the world. And friends, I was given a DVD
about a year ago by a brother of mine in Oakland, California,
who's indigenous to that area. And he says, you need to watch
this, Tiffens, and he's going to make you mad. So when you
get mad, call me. Sure enough, I wanted to burn
something. The very nature of Planned Parenthood, its start,
started as a way of eradicating the black race from America.
That's not a lie. Planned Parenthood and abortions
were started with the mindset that African-Americans, they
didn't call them that at the time, that African people, if
they could sterilize them and get rid of their babies, they
could eventually die out in the culture and we could not have
to deal with them. Friends, you know what? We do
that with mold on our showers, not human beings. And yet the
largest population of abortion recipients today are black women.
It's genocide, it's murder, and it's of the devil. And it is
prejudice and racism. And so see the social issues
that come out of issues of race? We've got to deal with it as
a church. Martin Luther King Day, I had a wonderful time,
Terry, with all you guys down there. The parade was superb. And Craig and Terry, if y'all
don't know her, she's been a friend of mine since we were babies.
And we've been fighting this battle since we were kids. I
mean, it's always, you know, I've always gotten in trouble,
she's usually gotten in trouble, because our mouths have put us where
we shouldn't be, and we'd say the wrong things to the wrong
person. But Martin Luther King Day, my children and my brother,
we parked down at the middle school, at the old middle school,
and we're walking up to the beginning of the parade route, and as we're
walking, and my children were none the wiser. Some little child
out of one of the houses down there, which is a predominantly
black neighborhood, said, look, Mama, there's white people outside.
And I look at Jordy and I laugh and the kids of you notice, I
mean, because there's something about this culture. And that
child didn't say, oh, look at those terrible white people out
there. It just explains, hey, there's white people outside.
Not, look, there's people walking, but there's white people walking.
And I remember being a young boy and living in that house
right across the street and noticing if a black man walked down the
neighborhood, mama's going to look out there to see who it
is. Why? She didn't hate the man, but she's going to give
it a sec because it's not normal. Why are those people in our neighborhood? And why are y'all in our neighborhood? I mean, you know, why are we
doing it? There's a track that divides us and we stay where
we are. This segregation, this way of life was so normal, it
happened right under our noses. And until I left this area, I
didn't even see it. And I would have considered myself,
and I still do, to not be racist by any means. But the racism
of the world does infiltrate your belief system. It does affect
you. Now I'll give a caveat here. We, as the church, are the people
of Christ. We are those who know that alone
and only the gospel will heal these issues. We know that in
the culture and in the world, those who are not part of the
church, we can preach and talk and change as long as we want
to until we're blue in the face and die trying and nothing's
going to change. However, for the glory of God
and the sake of the gospel, we must speak on these issues and
we must preach boldly and we must speak out on this and we
must take stands on this in our own lives and as a congregation. In this area of Evans County,
in the recent census, the numbers that I have, are that we have
11,446 people in the county. There's 9.5 million people in
the state of Georgia and we have 11,446 people. In Evans County,
64.1% of all of those 11,000 are white, Caucasian, non-Hispanic.
29.9% are black, African, African-American. 10% are Hispanic. or of some Hispanic descent,
and then yet 3% are of other, 4% are of other ethnicities or
mixed ethnicities. Out of those, out of the 100%,
27.9% of Evans County population are in poverty. I also pulled
up educational statistics, which don't have anything to do with
what I'm talking about here today, but they were appalling. And let
me tell you what I've realized in looking just in this area.
And it's not just Evans, it's Bullock, and Tattnall, and Toomes,
and Bryan, and Chatham. It's all over the place. I'd
say the whole state of Georgia is this way. What we've done
is we have shoved people into a proverbial corner and said,
this is who you are, therefore you come out of this. You can't
do that. You can't have this. You can't
be that. Because you're this. And I can't
speak from a black perspective, but I can guarantee you there
are some parents who teach their children, you'll never have this.
You'll never do this. You'll never do that. Because
you're not white or you're not this or you're not that. And
I pray they don't. Same way some people would say to their children,
well, you'll never be able to do this because you don't come from
money. Or you'll never be anything because your daddy's a rogue.
You know, you hear stuff like that around with some of your
friends as they talk to their children. And so my point with
all this, and we got 30% to 64% black, white, 10% Hispanic, we
are racially divided in a place where we shouldn't be, but we're
also racially divided in the context of very small people
of ethnicity. We have three major ethnic groups
in this area, really, whereas in the Bay, hundreds and thousands
of ethnic groups. I mean, just with the congregation
that we had, there were nine different dialects of languages
in our congregation. Nine. There were four people,
five people, five families that were Chinese descent. They all
spoke different languages. It would be easy for me to go,
hey, y'all are all these Chinese people. You see the point? They're
all different. They're all from different places. And so when we're dealing with
race, much can be said. Much should be said. Much has
been said. Some things should remain unsaid.
But the ultimate reality of race and racism is this, is that for
each person, each individual, there will be a different reality
of their thought on this issue. Every one of us in this room,
every one of us who listen to this sermon later, if we ask
ourselves to define certain things, we will have a different idea,
ideal, philosophy, belief system on the issue of race or racism.
In scripture, when we start to look at it, we don't see a whole
lot of issue with race. However, we do see a word, and
we see it in the Greek New Testament. I'm just going to talk about
that for a moment. The word ethnos. And in the word Ethnos, and I
know this, you don't really want to hear this, it'll take about
one minute, I promise, we see that in the New Testament in
151 different verses just in the New Testament. Out of those
151 verses, it is translated into several different words.
It's translated as Gentiles, nation, and nations, plural,
160 times, while only translated as pagans once. And the word people twice. And
so if we want to get a good idea of where the word race comes
from in its definition in the scripture, it comes from the
idea of nations or nation people groups, ethnos. And so here we
need to keep that in mind as we understand this term. It's
defined as this, a tribe, a nation, a people group. Paul used that
term, ethnos, he used it when he talked about non-Jewish Christians,
what we know as Gentile Christians. He used the term ethnos. In the
sense of it being defined just as a word, it is the multitude
of individuals of the same nature or genus. In other words, it
is the human family, the human race. I'd like to suggest to
you, and in the next three weeks, we're going to look at the idea
that the Scripture teaches us that there is only one race of
people, and that is the human race of people. Although our
cultures are diverse, they haven't always been that way. God diversified
the world. and split the world into different
people groups because of sin. And so for us to remain indigenous
to our cultures and say we're going to bring Christ into our
cultures. Now listen, this is important. If we're going to
bring Christ and Christianity into our culture, so we're white
Christians and they're black Christians and those are Mexican
Christians and these are Chinese Christians. I believe that's
damnable and I believe it's abominable and I believe that it is ungodly
and antichrist. We are the people of God, or
we are not the people of God. There are two groups in this
world today, and those are those who are the elect of God, who
are His children, who are saved by grace and faith through faith
in Jesus Christ, and there's everybody else. no matter what
their ethnicity is, no matter where they may have been born.
Last week we finished up in Ephesians chapter 1 and in the last statement
there we finalized it looking at Christ as the head of all
things, who is in all, in all. He is the all of all things.
His body is the church. And in His body, He unified us,
He unified the church through justification that He made certain,
listen to my words, I've carefully thought about how to say this.
In His body, He unified His body through justification made certain
through His blood as He has predestined and adopted us as sons and daughters,
all one people. He has redeemed us, He has unified
us through justification, made certain. It didn't say possible,
it's certain. I want you to understand, Jesus
did not die to make it possible or plausible. He died to make
certain to save those who are the believing ones. It's a done
deal. The headship of Christ, we talked
about this last week, and I think it segues perfectly into this
series. The headship of Christ is the essence of the problem
with racism. We've lost focus of Christ's
headship. We've lost focus of how, remember
what I talked about? We need to understand what it
means when it says Christ is the head of His body, the church.
The reason we need to understand that is that's because how we
as His children relate to Him. Christ has one body, not many
bodies. He has one herd, one people,
one flock. He is the single soul shepherd.
He is the head of that body. He is not a polygamous that's
going to have this like weird multi-bodied head. It's going
to be one unified body. And in the church, we have messed
up the headship of Christ. And it is evident through racism. Some of the most racist people
I've ever met have been in the church. Some of the most racist
white men I've ever known have been deacons in churches that
I've served as pastor. And I'll tell you, with everything
in my soul, it took everything within me, and it took everything
the Lord had in His grace to keep me from truly ruining my
life. by not half-killing a man who
said certain things to me about people of ethnicity. And you're
thinking, well, I must have been South Georgian. I said, no, that
was also in the Bay of California. As some of these very men sitting
on the same Council of Elders were men of ethnicity. Some of the dearest brothers
in Christ have had some of the most racist
attitudes I've ever met. My own eyes were actually opened
as I moved to California and I became part of a culture that
was highly ethnic. Highly ethnic. And not just,
and you think, well it's just, okay, there's a lot of different
types of people. You don't know. There's not a lot of different
types of people. It's a bunch of people. It's just a bunch
of people and you can't put your finger on the group. Go buy groceries. There's not, and there are Hispanic
stores and there are Asian stores, but you can't go in there and
just say, oh, look at all these Asians. You can't see that there.
There's no place, although there do have your Chinatowns, but
there's no place that's safe from the ethnos. There's no place
in California in the East Bay that's safe from all the peoples.
There's no segregation, if you will, in the communities and
the economy like there are here. There's no place that a white
man or an Asian or a black or a Hispanic or whatever, it would
not be allowed or be frowned upon to go and you wouldn't do
that. Now there's probably exceptions
to that, but in a culture, when I say it's ethnically diverse,
I mean it's ethnically diverse. It's like taking one person from
every language in the world and dumping them into the same center
of town. It's the greatest thing I've
ever seen in my life. And as I was there, and I saw the ethnicity
in every avenue, I also began to see that most of the churches
were segregated. You can't go to Applebee's, and
your door greeter would be Chinese. Your waitress would be Punjabi.
The manager would be a Hindu. The cook would be Hispanic. The
manager, not the manager, the busboy would be white. And the bartender, who knows,
may be Sikh, may have a turban on his head. A little sword up
here, not kidding. And there you are. Banker, vice president of the
bank, Hindu. Teller, Buddhist, not exaggerating. General manager? Catholic, Hispanic. Person serving the coffee when
you walk in? Had no idea. Couldn't look at him and tell.
Japanese, I believe. What in the world? And so as
I started to look here at the diversity of everything in the
culture, but yet the churches were ethnocentric. The churches
were segregated to such a point that not just by language, but
by style and tradition and peoples. And this is what hit me. There
were people of my persuasion, Anglo-Caucasian, cracker, who
decided God called them to go there to reach all these pagans. And they say this to me, God
called me here to reach the pagan Buddhists, and I'm going to be
down there and I'm going to reach... You know, God may call you to
infiltrate a particular people group, but where are you going
to go infiltrate a people group when there's no people group
to infiltrate because everybody else is culturally and ethnically
integrated? And so you're going to pull them
out of an integrated society and pull them into an ethnocentric
church. Do you know what I'm making sense? It's wrong. The scripture prohibits that.
The scripture says that's not heard of. This idea, you know,
like the brother was talking about going to Uganda. How ridiculous
would it be if he were in Uganda and in Uganda he wanted to take
and start a white church in Uganda. Why not just start a church in
Uganda? Well, I can't speak their language.
Then get somebody who can. Have different services built.
Be one body. Speak to people the way they
understand you. And yes, language does divide
us. But it doesn't have to in the age that we're in today.
Another way I've been able to see my own slant in racism is
the lack of racial responses in my own children. As we begin
to make friends, and we had them in a couple of schools, and they'd
get teachers, and they would tell us about their friends.
And we'd meet those friends, or we'd meet these parents, or
we'd meet these teachers, and these people were not white.
And I assume they were. And you walk up and you meet
the principal, and the principal is from India. And it wasn't that I had anything
wrong with that. I was expecting to walk in and see a white woman.
Really. I was expecting one of my son's
best friends not to be Hispanic. but to be white. I just expect
it. I wasn't saying I know he is.
I didn't even think about it. So when I see these people, I
thought, wow, I have this, I have this racial, not racism, but
I have this racial idea that my children are going to make
friends with white kids. It's ridiculous. And what's amazing
about that is that they didn't come home and say, I made friends
with so-and-so, well tell me about them. They never once mentioned
the ethnicity or the color of their skin. They talked about
what they wore, what they liked to eat, the jokes they told,
what their parents do, the stuff they had, the toys they played
with, the cool things they talked about, and they never once mentioned
their color. It was beautiful, but it has
helped me to realize if somebody, if I'm sitting in a I'm sitting
at a restaurant and something goes down and the police ask
me, the first thing I'm going to tell him is what color the
perpetrators were. It was two white boys and one
black boy and a green man. I don't know where he was from.
You see what I'm saying? Because that's the way we think.
I believe, I'm not saying it's sinful to think that way, I'm
just wanting to understand that the idea of racism and the racial
tension and the things that we deal with in our culture today
have infiltrated our very thinking into a subconscious level. We
don't say there was a man there and he had on jeans and a pair
of red tennis shoes and a bald cap and the cop asked, well,
what color was he? Oh, he happened to be a Mexican
or olive skin. See, that shouldn't be the first
thing we do. But in this culture, this is the only place we do
that. In the cultures that are ethnically diverse, we don't
see that as much. Much is to be said about the
culture we grow up in. Let me tell you just a couple
of things, then we'll get into some scripture. I know that's what we're here
for, and I'm sorry. But this is a precursor to the foundation
of this series. There were some things that I
grew up with that were not weird to me at all, nor were they racist
until I left and then began to think on them. There were some things in our
schools. For example, prom queens. Black prom queen. White prom
queen. Black Miss CHS. White Miss CHS. Superlatives, I dug out the fame
but I figured I wouldn't embarrass us. Aja Anderson, the white girl
who was most talented was Aja Anderson. The black girl who
was most talented was Terry Easton at the time, now she's Powell.
White boy was me and the black boy was Roderick, Coach Williams. Couldn't see a lick but yeah
there he was. That's the way his peers voted him in. And there
was a white ballot, and only white people could vote for the
whites. And there was a black ballot, and only black people
could vote for the ballots. And the poor Hispanics and the
Indians, the Patels, couldn't even participate. Could they?
I don't think so. But I mean, so there it was.
It'd been like that forever. And it's just the way it was.
And we politic for one another and it was just there. It was
so weird because it didn't seem racist at the time because it
was normative for our culture. I remember some friends we had
that one white girl and this black guy and they were dating
on the side. Undercover, if you will, hidden
from their parents. And it came out they were going
to come to the prom together and the superintendent stopped
it. And threatened to expel them if they showed up as a mixed
couple. To expel them to school, but it was wrong. We're not going
to have this junk in our school system now. And we're like, well,
you know, you got to just chill. We don't want to cause trouble.
It is illegal in our minds. We don't want to do that. And
it's not just here, but a friend of mine in Oakland used to always
tell me the joke. He says, here's how my mom used
to put it to me. If she cannot use your comb, don't bring her
home. And I thought that was the funniest thing I've ever
seen in my life. If she can't use your comb, don't bring her
home. Well, let's look at what the Word of God teaches us about
race. Until I moved away, I didn't
see that stuff as racist. And if it were like that today,
oh gosh, I probably wouldn't be back in class then. Because
God would have to temper me a little bit more. And that was only 20
years ago. 1992. What did it look like when
you graduated? I'd like to know what year it
changed. And I bet you it changed because of a lawsuit. I bet it
changed because of a lawsuit. Somebody had to get written up.
Turn with me to Revelation chapter 5. I didn't mean to go on like
that, that long, but it gives you an understanding of where
we are. Revelation chapter 5. In verse 9, we see. And they sang a new song saying,
worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you
were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from
every tribe and language and people and nation and you have
made them a kingdom and priest to our God and they shall reign
on the earth. Did you hear that? and they sang
a new song saying worthy are you to take the scroll and open
its seals for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed
people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation
and you've made them a kingdom of priests and they shall reign
on the earth You know what we see there? There's a lot that
we see there. I use that text a lot in my personal worship.
That scripture pops into my mind more than anything else. There
is so much there. There's a lot there to be preached.
But in the context of what we're talking about in the next few
weeks, we see Jesus doing something. We see God preparing a perfect
and certain way to ransom himself a people. He didn't say a bunch
of different sects of people. He said a people that will be
a kingdom of priests. and will reign on the earth.
There is one race and those are the people of God here in this
text. Jesus ransomed the ethnos, the
tribes, the tongues, the languages. He ransomed people from all of
these groups to be his one people. We see the Old Testament where
God says that you who were not a people now are a people. You
are not people, I am your God. In Ezekiel chapter 36 where we
see God speaking and saying I will make you a people. I am not doing
this for your sake but for my great name's sake. I will put
in your heart. I will make you mine. You will
be mine. Here in this understanding we
see it in Luke chapter 1 verses 13 through 17. A lot of flipping
today. Luke. Records Zechariah actually went
through this a little bit on Saturday morning with brother
Neil. That's what made me put it in here But the angel said
to him in chapter 1 of Luke verse 13 through 17 Speaking to Zechariah
who was old in his age and he and his wife Elizabeth had been
barren for so long and at the fullness of time God had All
of history had pointed to this time when Christ would be born.
And the precursor to Christ, the evangelist John the Baptizer,
was going to be born of an old elderly woman who was barren.
And so Zechariah is in the area, in the temple to burn incense,
and standing to the right of the incense altar is the angel
Gabriel of the Lord, and the angel says, Do not be afraid,
Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth
will bear a son, and you shall call his name John. And listen
to what the angel says, And you will have joy and gladness, and
many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the
Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will
be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb.
Now there's a sermon in that. He was God's before he was born. And he was saved in vitro. There's some good stuff there.
And He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord
their God. Notice He didn't say all of the
Jews. He said many of the Jews to the
Lord their God. And He will go before Him, who
Christ, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts
of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom
of the just. Listen to this phrase. This is
what I wanted to get. to make ready for the Lord a people,
past tense, prepared. Revelation 5, and you ransom
a people for God. Christ ransomed a people for
God. John the Baptist was to speak and preach the coming of
Christ to ransom a people who were prepared before the world
began to be the singular race of priests. So we see here that the scripture
is teaching us that God has ransomed a people. In John chapter 10,
you can write this stuff down or you can ask me and I'll give
you my notes on it. Jesus speaking, he says, I am
the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays his life
down for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not
a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming
and leaves the sheep and flees. And the wolf snatches them and
scatters them. He flees because he's tired and
cares nothing for the sheep. I am the Good Shepherd. I know
my own and my own know me. Just as the Father knows me and
I know the Father, I lay my life down for the sheep. And I have
other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also
and they will listen to my voice. So there will be, listen, one
flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves
me because I lay my life down that I may take it up again.
No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.
I have the authority to lay it down and I have the authority
to take it up. This charge I have received from my Father. Christ
came to eliminate races. Christ came to eliminate ethnos
and to make us one people. The body of Christ is a race
of its own. Oh, that's John 10, starting
in verse 11, I believe. John 10, 11. In Ephesians, listen,
chapter 2, verses 11 through 13. Therefore, remember that
at one time you were Gentiles in the flesh. The Greek word
there, ethnos. Called the uncircumcision, quote,
by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by
hands. Remember that you, at that time, separated from Christ,
alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the
covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the
world, but now, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off, have
been brought near by the blood of Jesus. And so I'd like to
suggest to you this, is that the blood, and as Dr. Piper's
book so eloquently does, the whole second half, As he talks
about the one bloodline of the people of God, and that is the
blood of Christ. The blood of Christ. In Romans 3, then what
becomes of our boasting? There's no boasting. By what
kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by
the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified
by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God
of the Jews alone? Absolutely not. Is He not the
God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also. And Isaiah. 2, 3, And many people shall come
and say, Come, let us go to the mountains of the Lord, to the
house of the God of Jacob, and he may teach us his ways, and
that we may walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go the
law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. All the peoples
shall come and say these things. In Psalm 22, the psalmist writes,
"...all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the
Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before
you. The kingship belongs to the Lord, and He rules over the
nations." Friends, we are not going to see... Jesus is a Republican,
and He's certainly not an American, and He's certainly not white,
never was. And yet, we as Christians in
the South, we act like that. We act like that Christ is this
white guy, and we're doing well to let all these other ethnicities
coming into our church, into our fold. We feel like, and you
know who did that? Historically, the Jews. We're
the people of God, and we'll let y'all in. In the times of
Christ, in the preaching of the days of the apostles. And what
did Jesus do? He condemned them for it. So
friends, I believe that sometimes, and I'm not just saying white
people, but because I am, I have to call out our own. But I believe
pastors and churches of all ethnicities are guilty of this racial division,
and they're subconsciously seared to see it. And that's why we
must talk about it and preach about it. Some of us will say,
well, you know, We are surely one race in Jesus Christ. We
are absolutely one race in Christ. And this is great. And I don't
disagree with you one bit. But, you see there's always a
but. There's a big but in the way
sometimes of our theology and our doctrine. And we need to
move that out of the way. Because let me tell you, the
sixth commandment says this. What does the sixth commandment
say? Kids, you know what the sixth commandment is? Thou shalt not murder. And we have taken the Law of
God and we've bolted it into like little tasks that we should
not do. But the Apostles and Jesus, they expound the Ten Commandments. They expound the Law of God in
such a way that we learn a little bit more about it. And Jesus
in Matthew chapter 25, I mean Matthew chapter 5, excuse me.
starts in verse 21 and he says this, you have heard that it
was said to those of old, you shall not murder and whoever
murders will be liable to judgment. Jesus speaking, but I say to
you that everyone, listen, everyone who is angry with his brother
will be liable to judgment. Everyone who's angry with his
brother will be liable to judgment. And then Jesus qualifies what
it means to be angry with your brother. He says whoever insults
his brother will be liable. Whoever says you fool will be
liable to the hell fire. So if you are offering your gift
to the altar and remember your brother has something against
you, leave your gift there. Jesus says your worship is worthless
if you are not in love with your brothers. And guess who our brothers
and sisters are? all who are the people of God.
And how is that love expressed and illustrated and seen and
manifested? That the Father loves me for
I lay down my life for the sheep. Friends, I'm not saying we can't
die for people and make them right. We can't justify people.
Christ did that. But are we in the same mind,
which is Christ, that we are growing into, who is our head? We are His body. Do we love our
body? Ephesians 5, for some of you
who know what I'm talking about, that should start to make a lot
of sense for you. The husband and the wife picture.
It should teach you what's wrong with gay marriage. What an oxymoron
to say that. And so here we see Jesus saying
that murder is hatred, that murder is belittling, that murder is
animosity, that murder is anything that does not lay the life down
for those brothers. And those who love Him. John
teaches the same thing in 1 John. In his first epistle, he says,
if you say you have fellowship with Him, but you walk in darkness,
you lie and you do not practice the truth. And six or eight times he says,
and those who say that they don't love their brothers. If you don't
love your brother by giving him what he needs, when you say,
if you close your heart to him and you see him as a need, he says, you are not
of God, you are of the Antichrist. It's what God illustrates. So
if we are truly the children of God, we have an incredible,
incredible power within us to stand above the fold of racial
division. And we begin to unify, not for
the sake of affirmative action, so we can say, look at us, all
of us colors, all in one pile. And I'm not saying that we take
away from our individuality, but our individuality is going
away one day, baby. We're going to be one people.
And I'm no more going to be an American than I'm going to be
black at that particular time. The Westminster Catechism, the
largest catechism, question number 136 deals with the sixth commandment.
and they expound on that. Thou shalt not murder, it says,
they take it to mean, and I'll just truncate it because it's
pretty long, they take it to mean any sinful anger, any sinful
hatred, envy, desire of revenge, provoking words, oppression,
hitting, striking, wounding, and they go on to close, or whatsoever
else tends to the destruction of the life in any way, is murder. And they use John and Jesus and
Matthew chapter 5 and John and his first epistle and Peter doing
the same thing about gossip and slander is the spirit of murder. To prove that. We are all one
blood in the image of God. All that I just said right there
for the last hour, that's the point that I'm trying to make.
We're all one. Who are the children of God?
I'm not talking about just the idea that we're created, that
we are created in the image of God. All humanity. In Genesis chapter 1 verse 27,
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he
created him, male and female he created them. All people,
even unbelievers, are created in the image of God. All nations,
all ethnos, all tongues, all tribes in the image of God. And so therefore, we are not
to have superiority of our own ethnos because we are all in
the image of God. In our being, in our essence,
in our creative essence. In Acts chapter 17 verse 26,
listen to these words as Dr. Luke records, Many made from
one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth,
having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling
place, that they should seek God in the hope that they might
feel their way toward Him and find Him. Yet He is actually
not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and
have our being, as even some of your own poets have said,
for we are indeed His offspring. Racism says that others are not
in the image of me. So therefore, that they're not
as important. And we should act and approach them differently.
We should think of them differently. And friends, we're all convicted
right now. I guarantee all of us are convicted in some way.
All of us are convicted in some way. We have to be. We've got
a conscience. But God is a God of grace, and
this is the point of preaching. It should take us out of a comfort
level and make us extremely uncomfortable. Anytime you're comfortable when
you come together, expect to leave uncomfortable, and anytime
you're uncomfortable, expect to be comforted. That's what
Edward says about preaching. It ought to shift your position.
If you're content, you're going to be frustrated. If you're frustrated,
you'll be content. In Romans 1, Listen to this,
and you might say, what the heck is that got to do with wrath?
I think it has everything to do with grace. I know there's a lot of text
here, and I've almost done, I promise. For the wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who
by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known
about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For
His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine
nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the
world in the things that have been made. So they who man are
without excuse, for although they knew God, they did not honor
Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile,
useless, worthless in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were
darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged
the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal
man, and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God
gave them up. in the lust of their hearts to
impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,
because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and they worshipped
and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed
forever. Amen. For this reason God gave
them up to dishonorable passions, for their women exchanged natural
relations for those that are contrary to nature, and men likewise
gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with
passion for one another, men committing shameful acts and
men receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave
them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
They were filled, and this is what I wanted to get to, they
were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness,
malice. They were full of envy, murder,
strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers,
haters of God, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's
decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they
not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. Friends,
without God's grace, that's where we are, that's where we'd be.
And yes, there's the bold racism, the Aryan nation, the Ku Klux
Klan, you know, whatever, the Black Panthers in their day.
We saw some gray, we still see that gray, but that's not what
we're talking about today. We're talking about the subtle
sin that stepped down and sort of stuck, you know, that stain
on the rug. Instead of cleaning it, we just
put the rug over it. We put the chair over it. So we don't want
to deal with it. We have this exaltation of one
self erased above the other. That's what I like to call the
tabloid syndrome. We go, you know, when you're
checking out of the grocery and you've been working out for 10 years
and you just can't get it and you see, you see whatever. Whoever
it is, the most beautiful, most fit actress who's now 60 who
has some say a lot on the side of her leg. And the girls go,
I knew it. Makes you feel better to see
somebody who was up there being knocked down. That's the same
thing we do with our race. And we think we're a little bit
better and we like to see and like to prove our points by saying,
see there, see there. But friends, if it weren't for the grace of
God, there go we. We'd all be in those areas of sin. And I'll
close with this text, and then we'll pray. And Paul teaches
to the church of Philippi, do nothing out of rivalry or conceit.
But in humility, count others more significant than yourselves.
Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also
the interest of others. Have this mind among you, which is yours in Christ, who,
though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with
God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing. Taking
the form of a slave. Yes, it says slave. Doulas, Diakonos,
being born in the likeness of men and being found in human
form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted
him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that
at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth
and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And so when we see who
God is and who we are in the place that we should be under
his feet, and then we see how he came to become like us, to
take our sin and then in turn place his righteousness on us,
that we might be his race, his people, his ethnos, his kingdom
of priests, his children. How dare we come and not battle
the issues of race in our own hearts and minds, in our own
churches and in our own communities? Pray for me as we unfold a lot
that just came out of my mouth. Pray for us as we may be called
upon to be the catalyst for this type of expansion of truth. To go into churches, to go into
our workplaces, to go into our communities and begin to say
what things are and that they need to change. Not for the sake
of change, but for the glory of God that He may be lifted
up in the rightness of our affection toward each other. And the world
will look on and say we're fools, but we're not part of the world.
We're aliens. We're another race. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful that
you have given us life in Christ. Lord, I'm just really mentally
exhausted trying to Assume and consume all of thoughts that
I have and not rambling and so Lord There's a lot that's been
said this morning or this afternoon Really an outline of where we're
going to look at in the next few weeks. I pray that you would
do something with this in our hearts and and that it wouldn't
just be swept under the rug, and we wouldn't leave here right
now and go, that was cool, but it doesn't apply to me. It does
apply to us, Father. And I pray that if it be your
pleasure, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would convict each of
us in those areas, that we might know who we are and where we
stand in the area of these racial issues, Father. Help us to stop
being divided, intimately divided. We may not ever see it manifested
in our actions, or our thoughts, or our speech, But Father, it's
very visible in our intimacy with each other. This area of
the world is so segregated in the people of God. How dare we
call ourselves your people if that is the case? So help us to live out your wisdom
in front of the world. Help us to understand that this
is not a social gospel and it's not a social justice, but Lord,
it's about your glory being revealed, your manifold wisdom being seen
to the authorities and the heavenly places through all of the cosmos.
Lord, help us to know how we're supposed to deal with these issues
personally and corporately. And help us to actually go into
this community and begin to stand for truth. in the way you called
us and equipped us each one. Thank you for the grace that
we might be saved and be called your children. And I pray that
these children who are with us today, God, would just truly
be blind to the challenges of ethnicity.
Protect their hearts. We pray this in Christ's name.
Amen.