God's Plan and the Sin of Racism - Revelation 5:9-10 - Let's Be Clear

All right.

Well, hey, guys. Welcome this weekend. If you have a copy of Scripture, I'm going to invite you to take it out and turn with me to Revelation Chapter 5. That's where we're going to spend our time here together this weekend. Guys, as you're finding Revelation 5, I want to prepare your heart because we are going to be talking about a pretty serious topic here this weekend. And we're going to be talking about God's plan and purposes for our racial differences. All right, we're going to be talking in clarity about the vision that God has for the world in terms of why He created things the way that He did. All right, so I want you to prepare your heart for that. We're going to pray over that in just a minute. But before we do that, I do want to say this. Guys, I had an incredible opportunity to go and preach at New City Church last weekend.

All right, and it was incredible. Some of y'all are brand new. You don't know about New City.

New City was our first church that we really parent planted in 2019. They've got international students that are there. They've seen people save from all over the world, really.

They've got seven people in their international missions pipeline right now. And this is cool. I know you want to clap. I want you to. Okay, look, I want to show y'all a picture.

I want to show y'all a picture, okay? This is a family that some of you guys would recognize from way back. This is the Glovers, all right? Now, the cool thing about the Glovers is they were the first time we've ever seen this.

This is a really cool story. It was three generations of one family moving to plant a church together. So they all moved. Grandma, parents, and kids all moved down to New City to help plant together. And man, four or five years later, and they're doing great. I had a chance to be with them, and they were serving front row and all that kind of stuff.

But here's the deal, guys. God is not done with their story. And what he's doing now is he is taking the Glovers to South Asia. They are in the pipeline right now.

They're being commissioned March 31st. And so, you know, here's why that story is so important to me, and this is what I want to bridge it over into real quick. Guys, I remember when Jeremy was baptized, okay? And I just think, you know, this whole progression of the story of what God has done in his life, I don't know exactly when it was.

I could probably ask him. There was a Sunday when he was a first-time guest. And this Easter, there will be hundreds of people that it is their very first time coming to Mercy Hill if we would only get out, go to the highways and byways, and invite them in and be ready for them when they're here. You guys, all of our campuses, man, y'all probably about sat on one of these, these Easter Inviter Cards. Man, these things are so important for us over the next couple of weeks to get the word out about what God is doing in our church. And hopefully we're going to see hundreds of people get to meet Jesus, maybe some of them.

And here's the thing. You have no idea what God is going to do with their story. There might be three generations that are going to go on a church plan and go overseas and international missions and all that. We have no idea the God dreams that he has over the people that will come in. And so who do you, I mean, your friends, your kids' friends, families in your neighborhood, coworkers.

Man, who is it that God is putting on your heart? Let's don't think about that two days before where we haven't prepared for them. We're throwing an invitation at them that they can't really respond to. Man, let's think about that ahead of time, all right? Let's do that. Hey, will you guys pray with me?

Here together this weekend. We're going to dive into Revelation 5 together, but let's pray before we do that. Father, I just pray right now, God, that you would, Lord, I pray you would hide me. And God, I pray that you would allow your word to shine here together with us this weekend. Father, I pray that we will be able to speak clearly and plainly. And Father, I pray that we would catch the vision that you have for what you want to do in terms of the purposes that you have in our differences.

You didn't make us all the same, and you did that on purpose for your glory. And Father, I pray that will be the message that shines today. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen. Revelation 5 is where we're going to be. And I've told you before, we need to be clear.

I could go back through it. Muddied spring. If you've been with us, you know. We live in a time when Christians need to be crystal clear about many issues in our culture. I mean, you walk outside of these doors. You get on the news.

You get all the stuff. It is confusion after confusion after confusion. One of the things that is so confusing in our world, at least to me, if I wasn't a believer, is that what you get from culture is that race is all that matters. But when you say, why are there different races? Well, I'm not sure that we got much of a purpose behind it. If all we are is stardust that bumped into one another and there's a no God beginning, then what is the purpose?

The end game. What is the chief goal in all of our differences? See, Christians, you're not muddied on that front. What we know from the scripture is that God has done things in our differences on purpose for His glory.

And here's what I want to show you this weekend. God created different races on purpose for His glory. And therefore, racism is a sin. Devaluing others because of their race or cultural background or language. It is a sin.

Why? Because it goes against one of the chief purposes and ends of the world. And that is that God would reap max glory. And listen, He has created the world and He can create it any kind of way He wants to. He could have made us all the same.

He didn't on purpose. You know, Christians, I think catch this real easily when we start talking about men and women. What do we say in our understanding, especially a church like Mercy Hill that is deeply on purpose? They're not the same thing. They have the same value, and God loves them, and the image of God rests in them, but they are not the same. And they are not the same on purpose because something about God's glory is magnified in our differences.

Guys, you can bridge that over and say, you know what, in a lot of ways, that's a very similar thing here. We've got to have the backbone to say, wait a minute, God created us differently on purpose for His glory. I think sometimes right now, we live in a cultural moment where people want to say, well, I don't see color. That's a bad thing. They want to say it like it's a good thing. That's not a good thing.

That's an immature thing. Well, especially for the Christian. What we need to do is say, no, no, I'm not going to be I don't see color. What I'm going to realize is that we are headed for a heaven that is filled with every tribe, tongue, nation, and language. Why would we like the idea of all different types of people worshipping God there? In 2 Timothy, you have a verse that says, there will be some of us that love His appearing when He comes. We will love His appearing when we have an accurate picture of heaven, and the accurate picture of heaven is that we will not all be the same, and God will be glorified in that. Does that excite your heart?

Does that thrill you? And how does that bleed in to our life and our lives? That's what we really want to get into, guys, because we live in a culture that gets this wrong. Racism is devaluing groups of people based on race, and what Christians ought to be thinking is more like, no, no, we not only want to devalue, we don't want to just move up to neutral, though. What we want to move into is there should be a valuing, because our God values our differences, whether you're talking about race or cultural background, language, different parts of the world. He is not a tribal deity.

He is a global God who has created all, and something about the way He has created is designed for max glory. I know the children's song that is highly out of, you know, non-PC anymore. I don't really care, okay? But it's this, I mean, you guys know the song.

You know, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. I know people are a little bit like, can you say that? Well, I just did, all right? Jesus, listen, why do I say that? Well, the Christmas song that John Lennon says that in, nobody cares, okay, when he starts talking about different people in the world. Here's the deal. What we have to do is say, wait a minute, what's the end of that song? Jesus loves all the little children of the world.

You guys remember that song from Sunday school? Some of you guys grew up like that. This is the idea that God has created all of them on purpose, that there is a reason that He has done it. Yet we live in a day where people are devalued. And you say, how are they devalued? They're devalued a lot of ways. They're devalued by cultural attitudes, norms, all types of political jockeying.

There's jokes, name-calling, different people getting put in a box and labeled as different things for their entire life. Man, it's all around us all the time. Where do we go in the Scripture to find the key, to be clear about what God has done? I think the positive vision for the Christian is to say, we need to get our mind around what God is doing in the end so that we can bleed back into the now, the value for each other that we should have.

And I know of no better place to go. Than Revelation chapter 5. Look what it says. And they sing 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 for 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. Now I don't know about you, but maybe you have been in a deep dive study of Revelation.

Okay, I'm not sure if you have or not. Actually, we're going to be going back into our fourth installment of a years-long study in the book of Revelation. We have not picked this up in a while. We're going into our fourth installment here in a couple of weeks. It's going to be called In the End, the Fall of Babylon. So we are going to be studying this stuff a little more in depth. But right now, we don't need all, I'm going to tell you, we don't need all the ins and outs of where we are in the book of Revelation to understand the big point that is here. And the big point that is here, I think that we're going to get to see is that there is something that God is doing in the chief culmination of all things and you know what it is? It's him bringing together a people from all the different types of people in the world and putting them together in one people in the place that he has prepared for him that he will reign over.

It's called the Kingdom of God. And this is the end. This is the, whatever you want to call it, the telos, the chief end, the culmination. All right, it's the end game.

You know what's funny? July 21, 2019, 89 days after it was released, Avengers Endgame became the highest grossing movie of all time. Okay, it grossed $2.9 billion. It was quickly taken over once they re-released Avatar and all that kind of stuff, but it was just this crazy. Why was there such a following around that movie?

I think some of it had to do with whoever named it, named it pretty well. What? 22 movies, seven years, this is the end game. What was it all about? This is what it was all about.

Of course, they've made another 100 movies and I have no idea what it's about. Okay, and you guys are probably in the same boat as me, but the point is that I want to get across, what is God's end game? What is the chief culmination of all things?

Where is it all going? Well, that's what we see in Revelation 5, 9, and 10. God's end game, you see, is to receive glory from all the peoples of the earth. God's end game is to establish his kingdom. God's people, God's place, God's reign, and that's what we see in Revelation 5. Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and by your blood you rant some people for God. Now, let's break down these two verses a little more here. The chief end, God is going to see a multitude, a multi-ethnic multitude praising him in the prison of thousands of languages. That's where this thing's heading, but let's break it down a little bit.

All right, so the first thing is this. Worthy are you to take the scroll to open its seals. Well, what's the scroll? Okay, and I know we don't want to go, you know, if you want to go back and listen, you can go, but here's generally what's going on in this part of Revelation. They are wondering who is worthy to open a scroll that is the script for the end of all things.

Okay, that's what the scroll is. All right, so they're saying, okay, who is worthy to open the script that reads off and really begins the end? Another way to say it would be, who is worthy to begin the end? Well, what we find in verse 4, which I didn't read, is that John, who is catching this revelation, is weeping.

Why? Because it seems for a moment in heaven like no one is worthy to open the scroll that is the script for the end of all things. And of course, if nobody is there to open the scroll, then all of the injustices and brokenness and sin and pain and tears in the world will never be wiped away.

Wouldn't you cry? I mean, if you're John and you're like, okay, that ends the world, but nobody can open it, then what we have is a beat up broken world that will just go on forever. I want you to imagine the world, think about things, corrupt governments, disease, domestic violence. You know there's a lot of hungry people in this world and yet half of the world's food that is raised ends up in landfills?

Why does that happen? Because there are people that are choking food chains and there's economic problems and there's wars and there's all, there is a brokenness, my point is, in this world, right? Can you imagine, can you imagine an entire nation in your mind where there's not one child who knows Jesus? There's no vacation bible school.

There's no little kids that sing Jesus love me. Can you imagine that? You don't have to imagine far. That's the nation of North Korea. And it's the world that we live in right now.

So I can understand John as he is saying to him, if there's nobody to open the scroll, I feel like it's a tragedy. I'm weeping. The things that we see in this world, the racism that we see in this world, the caste system in India, I mean things like this, right? I don't know about you guys, I grew up in sort of a racially charged environment. Man, grew up in North Florida at that time was a little bit of a rural environment and I mean it was just around us. My sister's high school got shut down for race fighting and they had to send a bunch of the kids to different schools and all of that because it was just kind of a race riot at the school.

It was just sort of crazy. A lot of South will rise again type of stuff. I remember, you know, I played my whole life, we would play football against a team from Jacksonville named Forest High School and I didn't realize till later that it was a public high school named in 1960 as a response to desegregation. They named the school, Duval County Public School, Nathan Bedford Forest High School, which Nathan Bedford Forest, if you remember, was the first Grand Wizard of the KKK. They did not change the name of that school until 2014. All right, so I'm just saying I know like, man, Florida, that's where I grew up, okay?

So I'm familiar with the conversation, been around the conversation, all that kind of stuff. I had never seen racism in my life in the way that I saw it when I went to Montana and lived on the Indian reservation for a month when I was 18 years old. And here's the point that I want to make, never saw it.

On the reservation, off the reservation, that cultural clash was something like I had never seen and I grew up around this stuff. Here's my point, whatever we kind of think it is, there's always layers to how broken this world can be, right? And so John is seeing how broken this world is and he's looking up and he ends up weeping. Nobody is worthy, but then finally what did we see in verse 9? Worthy are you, who? Jesus. Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals. Jesus is worthy to begin the end by opening the scroll.

Now here's what I want to go back to for just a moment. I know there's a little bit of a, we got to kind of follow the logic here. I hope you're with me, but here's the deal, all right? What is the end game of God?

We already mentioned, we already read it. I mean, to receive max glory and apparently He created us with a lot of differences on purpose so that He will receive that max glory when people are worshiping from every tribe, tongue, and nation, all right? But here's the thing, Jesus is the only one that is worthy to begin the end if the end game is that there would be a people that are purchased and ransomed back into the family of God.

Now what am I getting at here? Well, you know, of course, anybody could have just opened the scroll if we got what we deserved. I mean, what do we deserve? I mean, our sin deserves clearly that we would be judged by God. His wrath would fall upon us, right? That's what we deserve, and what we deserve is to be wiped away. Man, death in this world and this world and hell forever, that's what our sin brings. I mean, we deserve another Noah's flood, okay? We're going to study the story of Noah in the month of June, particular this year, all right, so that we can really figure out what the rainbow is about and God's salvation and all that kind of stuff, but what happens in the world? The wiping away, that's what we actually deserve, and anybody could open the scroll, I guess, if we were just going to get what we deserve, but for Jesus to begin the end. This is where our hope is.

Why? Because when Jesus begins the end, he does it in a way. He is the one who is worthy to open it because he gets us to the end game, which is you and I purchased or ransomed back into the family of God, and this is where we get deep into the gospel, y'all. The gospel is this, that in our sin we deserve death and hell forever. We have fallen away from the purposes that God had for us, but Jesus Christ has stepped in and he was the one, what did it say? Slain. He gave his life over because that's what we owed back to God. God gives us life, we sin, give me your life back. You don't deserve it. You deserve to be dead or in hell for all of eternity, and Jesus took what we deserved on the cross so that he could give us what he deserved in heaven.

Some of us are like, man, I don't like that. That doesn't seem fair. Oh, it's exactly fair.

It's fair. God is the one who brings, I mean, it's his world. He has set it up. He has given us the rules. In his holiness, there could be no other way. We cannot stand before him in sin. What we know is this, Romans 6 23, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. That's the standard. Have you ever sinned?

The answer is yes. You know what the wages for that are, what the penalty for that is, what you pay God to. It's your life, and this is the way that it's set up. You can never say, I didn't know, right? I think sometimes we don't like, it's funny, we want mercy and grace for ourselves and justice for everybody else.

We like the idea of fairness until it's about us, and I recently had an experience like that. This past week, I missed a flight for the first time, I think, in my life, okay? And it was crazy because I did not miss the flight for not being there. I missed the flight because I had not checked in even though I was there, which I didn't know was a thing, okay?

So, I get up to the gate. I'm in like group five. They're boarding group four.

I'm like, this is a little weird. I don't have a seat assignment, okay? And I'm walking up and they're like, nope, you don't have a seat assignment because you don't have a seat because, you know, you're, and I'm like, they're like, you're not checked in. I said, I know, but I'm here.

Not a great answer, right? I guess because, and I just didn't know this, all right? 45 minutes before, if you're not there, they would love the opportunity to sell your seat to somebody else, okay? And so, even though I bought the ticket because I did not tell them I wanted the ticket, which I thought would have been plain when I bought the ticket, but, you know, because I didn't tell them I was there, they're prerogative.

They're like, hey man, we're not gonna, and so they, I guess they gave my seat to somebody else or whatever it was. Now, that was hard for me, okay? I was very frustrated by that. I begged. I pleaded.

Didn't work out, okay? I drive home, and the funny thing was I'm telling my family about the story because I had to rebook a fight for a couple of hours later, and I, I'm telling them the story, and you know what I wanted to say? I wanted to say that's not fair, even though it's exactly the definition of fair, right? The definition of fair is, hey man, there's the standard. The standard is you got to do x to redeem your ticket.

I did not do that. If they were going to do something other than that, it would be their mercy or their grace, but they don't have to do anything else because I'm the one that broke the rule. Romans 6 23 tells us, for the wages of sin is death.

If God wants to do something other than that, it's not because he's not fair if he does or fair if he doesn't. It's all about grace and mercy, but look what it says, but the free gift of God is eternal life, and this is where I want to get into here. When I just, listen, the blood of Jesus Christ was the price for our ransom. It was the free gift that buys us back. We don't deserve it. What we deserve is to miss the flight. What we deserve is death and hell, but Jesus Christ has shed his blood to ransom us, or your translation might say purchase us. He has paid a great price to bring us back into the family, and here's the deal. He didn't just pay that price for you to come back in or for me to come back in, but he has paid that price for his own glory for a people that all look differently. Every tribe, every tongue, every nation, every language to come in, and this is what God has done.

Now I'm just glad to be at the party. I hope you are, but now we get to see what God is doing in this whole grand multitude. Look what it says, by your blood you rent some people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom of priests to our God and they shall reign on the earth. Revelation 7 gives us another glimpse of this where we see a multi-ethnic multitude of people praising God. Why does he layer up the language like this? Tribe, language, people, nation. There's multiple ways in the Bible that this is actually said, even in the Old Testament, this kind of idea.

Why does he do that? The universal scope of what God is doing in redemption, that it's not about a tribal deity over one group of people. He's piling up expressions so that even people a little thick like me can understand, oh this is not just about my people, whoever those are.

You cannot be a believer and this is about my people. Oh no, no, it's about all the peoples. It's about the peoples of the earth.

Now I know this sounds like a mission sermon, but I want to apply it right here at home. It's about the peoples that are around us. God is glorified in the diversity of people that hold him to be valuable. The different traditions that have come out, and the different faith, you know, backgrounds that people have, the different ways that people sing, the different churches even in our city.

God is glorified in all of those things. Same trip, okay, you know, okay, so if that wasn't enough, lost my flight, all right, same trip on the way back. You know, crazy, get stuck on a tarmac for three hours, don't take off, finally take off, land in Greensboro as my, I mean in Charlotte, as my Greensboro flight is leaving.

It's like 10 o'clock at night, you know how it is, okay? You've all been there at some point in your life, and so I, man, there's no, there's no cars left, there's no more flights going out. I'm like, man, I'm calling an Uber, okay, so I call Uber, you know, I hit the Uber thing, and a guy called, a guy messaged me on Uber that says, hey, you got to call me, and so I call the guy, and I don't know how it's all working, I'm looking at it, and all this stuff, I'm just, now I'm just talking to a guy with like a normal phone number, you know, and I'm talking to him, and he's like, hey man, I don't even know if he's from Uber or not, okay, he's like, hey man, I'll drive you to Greensboro, okay, but we got to do this thing off the books, you know what I'm talking about, and I was like, man, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't even know what that means, okay, but I'm like, can you, I mean, can you get me to Greensboro? He's like, yeah man, I got you, let's go.

I'm like, he's like, meet me at whatever, you know, meet me at the smoking section of the terminal at four and five minutes, seriously, and I was like, all right, man, let's do it, so I call Anna, and I'm like, hey dude, I think I'm getting on a bootleg ride back to Greensboro, some dude named Ahmed just called me, that's not a joke, and so I'm like, you know, she said, please, for the love of everything, turn the location app on your phone on. Okay, so I was trying to figure that out or whatever, but you know what's so funny, you get in a situation like that, and within about 20 minutes of the ride home, you realize like, oh, this is why God has moved my whole schedule around, right, and me and this brother, me and this dude, we talk for an hour, and it's, I mean, it's not a contentious debate, but it's a discussion around Islam and Christians, he's devoted, he's a devoted Muslim, we get a chance to talk about that, and I get a chance to raise things, and he's asking me about the Bible, and I mean, it's just, man, it's an hour long, I was super tired, okay, so I'm trying to, you know, have the conversation, all that, but I mean, oh, man, good guy, good dude, it was, it was, man, it was good, and one of the things that he said to me kind of shocked me, he used this apologetic that Christians use, and he said, well, you know, one of the great reasons why I follow Islam is that Islam is the most cosmopolitan religion on earth, and I said, what do you mean by cosmopolitan? He said, it's the most diverse, and I was like, um, no, it's not, I mean, I didn't really know how to say it, I'm like, I'm like, hey, I understand that there are Muslims from every single walk of life, like, I understand that there are Muslims from all different walks of life, but when you're talking about diversity, I was like, man, this is among the least, you know, it's, you know, when you just think about global religions by country in the world, there's a high concentration in a particular area, right, and then you look at Christianity, and you realize, wait a minute, this thing has spread all the way around the world, and there are people of, of all different, all different backgrounds and types and race, not just race, but cultural background and languages and all that kind of stuff that are holding Jesus Christ to be valuable in that way, and, and I, I mean, we had a good discussion, I was trying to bring some of this stuff up, but I thought to myself, you know, of course that's happening in a world where the end game of the real God is to be glorified by a bunch of different types of people that would worship him, and that's what we're seeing in the world, and it is what we're going to see in heaven, because God has purposes in our differences.

Here's the application for this weekend, give God glory for his global church, okay? God has created our differences on purpose for his glory, that is why racism, which I defined earlier as devaluing people based on their race, that is why it is a sin, that is why it is heartbreaking, because it goes against, it tears at the heart of what God is going to do at the very end. It's impossible for us to give God glory for his global church if we are devaluing groups of people that are created for his glory, in his image and for his glory, because they are different from us. See a good example of this in Galatians chapter 2, don't we, where Paul had to rebuke Peter, who walked with Jesus, so don't think any of us are totally immune, okay? You're talking about Peter here, okay? And Paul has to rebuke Peter because Peter don't want to hang out with the Gentiles, he's devaluing them. He's committing the sin of racism. And what God is, what Paul is saying to him is, man, we can't, he's calling him back.

I want to call our church to think about a few things practically here. Now remember, the big idea, the end game is all different types of people, right, that are going to be worshiping him, so how do we just apply that practically? I've got four or five things I think we can try to apply practically and then we'll be done this weekend, all right? The first one is this, we've got to all honestly ask ourselves the question, am I valuing or devaluing different races? Am I, am I, am I, am I valuing with my language? Man, do I pound a positive picture of what God is doing in our differences, that it's not an accident, that we're not all the same, it's not a bad thing that we're not all the same? Man, God is doing something for his glory in us. Sometimes we live in a culture and sometimes we step into this ourselves, maybe we don't even quite realize it at times, but we devalue. It can look like jokes, names, attitudes, it can look like, it can look like, you know, we don't want to talk about this at all with our kids and we don't want to, we act like it's not a reality and I'm, you know, and I know a lot of times in the south when we say racism, all we can think about is black, white.

Guys, we got to zoom out and realize there's a lot more than that just going on. Man, our kids are hearing a lot of things in school, they're seeing a lot of things on television, they're seeing a lot of things in our homes. Are we willing to speak in a way that shows them what God is actually up to in our differences? Man, it can look like in this country, one of the ways that I see it is having attitudes toward entire groups of people. We see this in our politics a lot of times, having attitudes toward entire groups of people that assume they're going to be down and out for their entire existence, that they're going to be, they're going to be down and out, they're going to be victims and just labeling that on people, just crushing people with that kind of view of them.

There's a lot of ways this can look, but we can't have any of those conversations if we won't even ask the question, am I valuing or devaluing? I think the climate of our culture is so polarized that many of us don't even want to entertain the question because we are so afraid of what the answer might be or we're just like, man, I'm not even going into it. It's all this political stuff.

Wait a minute. Did God create our differences on purpose? What is the end game for what he's doing with things like race and cultural background and different languages and different parts of the world? Then we got to be able to ask the question, do we value that or do we not value that? Another thing I would say is this, how can I take steps to value different races as God does?

Now, I don't want to make sure you understand. This is not putting one ahead of the other, but it is saying, just like we don't put men ahead of women or women ahead of men. We're not going to overcorrect here and be trying to make a hierarchy. What we're going to say is, wait a minute, are we going to value the differences in race because God values them and because he's doing something with it in the end? Man, how do we speak about what God is doing globally? Do we have what it takes to celebrate other churches and other traditions of church? This is one of the things that I've learned in the last few years that has affected our ministry here. Guys, I have become one who greatly values many of the different expressions of faith and church that I see all around us, whether it is shouting amen at the preacher all day long because you're in a rural context, whether it is the incredible gospel music that you see primarily coming out of the black church, whether it is high theology and high church that comes from a lot of our Presbyterian brothers and sisters. Listen, I'm just saying, as I have grown in this, I have learned, like, wait a minute, if we go one step up from the local church and see what God is doing globally in his church, we begin to realize, man, he's being glorified in all types of traditions, and it's an incredible thing. Man, I love the idea in our church. I love to see different types of people in our church, something we got to let God do, but we value that.

We want that to happen, but it can't be just because we all agree on this political thing or that political thing. It's got to be because we have fallen in love with the mission of God that he has this church on specifically. When he does, it is a beautiful thing to see people who don't look like each other being able to worship together. I think another thing on this, how can I take steps to value different races as God does? Y'all, I think it means that we got to lean on the Bible rather than leaning on culture to define a lot of this stuff for us.

Can I just shoot you super straight? When the white kid goes off to a big university and learns to hate himself because that's what it takes to be an anti-racist, it's like, no, that's anti-gospel. All right, when someone begins to go down that road of like, man, I'm kind of laughing at jokes at work in a blue collar environment, and I'm kind of using some language that's sort of a little bit, you know, it's off color, it's on that side, it's a little bit devaluing to people, but you know, that's what you got to do now to prove you're not woke.

You're anti-woke? No, no, no, that's anti-gospel. So like, no matter what form this stuff begins to take, we can't grab on to all these cultural definitions. What we've got to do is come back to the basics here and say we're going to get what God is doing with this stuff through being informed and formed by the word.

Third thing I would say is this, listen, these are just applications. God's big idea is crystal clear. God is doing something with the differences, right?

We need to value that. Here's just some thoughts though, okay? Third thought, man, are we entering into this conversation with our kids?

Are we forming their thoughts around what God is doing in this world with our differences, with race, cultural background, with, you know, with different languages, with different types, you know, people here and all over the world, or are we letting their school, are we letting the radio inform, like, what are we doing to form their thoughts? I think some of us, and I'm just going to confess, all right, I think some of us might want to try to run away from this conversation at times because you're a little bit scared of it, and that's what God is doing. It's because you're a little bit scared of it, and I have felt that, all right? I have felt like, what if I say the wrong thing? What if I say something to them that they can't repeat exactly the way I say it? They say it to somebody else.

What does it look like for our family? I mean, you understand, like, I think a lot of people can, like, we can sort of sag under some of the fear of what if I say the wrong thing? Because, as you know, I mean, some of you guys that work in a business environment and all that, I mean, one of the quickest ways to get fired, right?

One of the fastest ways to get cut off and ostracized in a social circle is to make a misstep in this area, so we get a little bit scared of the conversation. I'll tell you, by the time I was scared, one of my kids, who I'm not going to name, and they actually will not remember which one it was because they were very young, all right? We're watching a football game, and they said to me, they said, well, Dad, I mean, we're just sitting there watching the game, and he said, well, Dad, you know, I'm never going to be able to play football, and I said, I'm like, why wouldn't you be able to play football? He said, because you've got to be black to play football, and I was like, I didn't know what to do, okay? I was like, I don't know how to, I don't know what to say, that, you know, and I'm kind of like, of course you can play football. What are you talking about? Like, you can't say something like that, and he looked up at the television screen.

He was so little. Well, now I narrowed it down. He, okay, so he looked up at the television screen, and he looks up at the screen, and I look up there, and there's 22 guys on a football field that are all black, and he is so young. I mean, it's just, it just, you know, and I'm like, that, man, I'm like, man, that's not true, and I look up, and I see a white guy on it, and he wasn't the punter, okay, and I see a white guy, and I go, and I go, I go running up there. I'm serious.

I go running up there, and I go, look, look, look. I said, man, everybody can play football. You know, you don't have to be a certain race to play football. I was like, look, you know, and I pointed to the guy about that time.

Dude took his helmet off, light skinned black dude. Seriously. I'm like, what do I do now? You know, and then, and then it's like, here's what I'm saying.

You, we have, and that's not just white black guys. I'm telling, we're all, if you're raising kids, they're, they're, they're more, they're taking in info. They're saying things that are wrong. They don't know all the stuff around this, right, and I just thought I had that moment of thinking to myself, man, I can run away from this moment, or I can try to fumble my way through this, you know, and I mean, what do you say? God, it's like, hey man, I've played football my whole life, buddy.

There's a lot of really good black dudes that play football, okay, but you ain't got it. I mean, I start going, and then, then you get beyond that. Why, why is there differences? Why, why did God make it this way and not another way? Why are we not all the same, right? My point is, we've got to be trying to form some of their thoughts, and I know we're going to have different politics, and there's going to be different thoughts that we have about different cultural issues, but looking for ways that we can form things for them, and I'm going to tell you, in our church, listen, we reach a lot of people that are first generation college educated, okay. We reach a lot of people that maybe you grew up in a different place, and you've come here, and what, and what you're trying to figure out is, how do I, how do I address this, because it was never really addressed with me, and what I'm going to tell you is, man, you got, you got to do it by being formed and informed by the scripture, and try your best to step in.

Two more things, and I'm done. Learn to, we're going to have to do this. We've got to learn to disagree without dividing.

Now, why did I preach sermon last week, and then we preached this one, right? We've got to understand that unity is not uniformity. There are going to be people in this church that disagree even on the very definitions of racism, and the way oppression happens, and all that kind of stuff, and I'm not saying we can't have that conversation. We should be able to have that conversation, but we should be able to disagree without dividing.

I'm learning more, and more, and more. I'm like, man, I mean, we, you know, diversity of race is, is still only one level. If everybody thinking the same way about every single thing when it comes to an issue, is that really diversity? What I want is for us to be able to have the maturity to say, guys, we're not all going to see all this stuff the same way. I mean, and I don't just mean even, even in race. I mean, young people, older people, people from different parts of the country, and then certainly different people, whether you're black, white, Asian, Hispanic, then we're going to view all this stuff differently and have different experiences. Okay, can we learn to disagree without dividing?

Some of this stuff is really, some of this stuff is complex. I don't know if you guys saw this, okay? You know, a couple years ago, they took off, they took off the emblem for the Redskins helmet, all right?

And they said they got to do a new name and all that kind of stuff, right? And it was championed as a big win for people that are, you know, they're, they're the, you know, we got to, it was racist, and we got to get rid of that. We got to move beyond that.

Here was the problem. The problem was the guy on the helmet was a real dude named John Two Guns Whitecalf, and he was a respectable guy, and he was actually somebody that had a lot of respect among his nation and all that. You know what's happening right now? There are tribes and indigenous leaders who are leading protests, you know, whatever you call it, petitions, all that kind of stuff, to say, guys, taking Whitecalf off the helmet was racist. You're trying to erase our history. Okay, wait, let me try to get this straight, okay? So taking the thing off was racism, or not taking it off is racism.

You know, you get what I mean? Who gets to make the call on what's right in a situation like this? What I want to say in our church, and I'm going to continue to beat this drum, we need to be the type of church that could stand on either side of that issue and still be united in the gospel and in the mission, right? You may have a different opinion about that than I do, but we should be able to say that's okay, all right? We're still united in the mission together, so let's have opinions, but don't let them divide. Hey, and the last thing I want to say is this, guys, be charitable with one another rather than buying into the age of outrage that we live in now, okay? And this goes for every spectrum that I could say, man, I have seen people, you even begin to talk about race, and they immediately think you're the most liberal, woke, and they start throwing all these pejorative terms at you just because you're even willing to talk about it.

And of course, on the other side, you have people that if you have some conservative leanings or whatever, it's like, well, now you're, you know, you're labeled as this, you're a Christian nationalist, you're whatever, right? And I'm just going to tell y'all, man, the church by and large has got, we have to, I'm not going to speak for the whole church, Mercy Hill, all of our campuses, we have got to navigate our way out of the age of outrage. We need to be able to understand one another. We need to be charitable with one another. We need to be slow to speak and quick to hear.

We don't need to go from zero to 10, just become somebody said the wrong buzzword. We need to love each other more than that. You know, I've seen an example of someone who loved us, loved each other more than that. You know, we had someone in our church that was, she was black, she was black. And there was somebody she loved in this church that used a term in a conversation around a bunch of other people that was a racist term. And I, listen, I don't, you know, people get into microaggressions and I'm talking about, this is not a gray area, okay?

This was connected to plantation and it was just, it was not gray. It was very, but even in the course of conversation, the woman who would have, could have easily hit, I mean, could have easily, justifiably stepped into stepped into the age of outrage, kept her cool, tried her best to believe the best, later on pulled her off to the side. Hey, listen, I don't, you know, you said this, this term, I don't know if you know what that means. Turns out she didn't know what it meant. Then my family used that term for you. And of course, what was her reaction? Her reaction was like, I'm sorry, you know, I don't want to hurt somebody.

I don't want to, I didn't know that. And I just thought about that story because I thought about, man, that story could play out in a thousand different ways and it could really come from all sides of the aisle and all that. If we are looking to be offended, you know, if we're looking to buy into the outrage of it all, there's always something we can buy into, right? What about being charitable with one another? What about us saying, hey, even in this, issues as important as these, man, we're going to be clear, man, God has created race on purpose. He will reap glory from our differences and racism is a sin, but we don't have to step in like the world does into an age of outrage. Let's be charitable with one another.

We'll leave it there. All right, let's pray. Father, we come before you this weekend and God, we just ask right now that you will move in our congregation. You will continue to give us unity and strength and charity with one another. And Father, I pray that we would not move from devaluing into a neutral position, God, but if you have uncovered areas where we're devaluing, let us move into valuing one another as the image of God rests in all humanity. That you were doing something with our differences for your glory in Christ, then we pray. Amen.