What Is the State of Race Relations in the Church?
00:00:00.000 | It's the third Monday of January, and that means in the States we are celebrating Martin
00:00:08.760 | Luther King Jr. Day, a fitting day to step back and assess the current state of race
00:00:13.840 | relations in this country.
00:00:16.180 | And a timely question comes to us from a listener named Mark.
00:00:19.600 | "Hello Pastor John, thank you for taking my question.
00:00:22.800 | What is your sense for where race relations stand, especially in the church right now?
00:00:28.120 | Are we making any progress, are we at a standstill?
00:00:31.800 | Since 2016 things have been tumultuous to say the least, and I find myself bracing for
00:00:36.120 | another hit to these relations in this presidential election year to come.
00:00:42.280 | Where are you at as you look around today?"
00:00:44.880 | Well, let's start with the easy one, the question, the glorious one.
00:00:51.040 | Where am I as I look around today?
00:00:54.240 | Where am I standing?
00:00:55.680 | I am standing joyfully and expectantly with King David as he says, "All the ends of the
00:01:03.360 | earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall
00:01:09.480 | worship before you, for kingship belongs to the Lord, and He rules over the nations."
00:01:14.960 | Psalm 22, 27.
00:01:17.000 | Kingship belongs to the Lord Jesus, and He is gathering His people from all the families
00:01:24.760 | of the nations.
00:01:26.120 | I'm standing with King David.
00:01:28.400 | Where am I?
00:01:29.400 | I'm standing in heaven, exulting with the 24 elders as they sing and praise Christ.
00:01:36.880 | Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your
00:01:40.720 | blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe, every tribe, and language, and people,
00:01:47.600 | and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they shall reign
00:01:51.300 | on the earth, every tribe, every language, every people, every nation into one kingdom,
00:01:55.880 | one priesthood.
00:01:56.880 | I'm standing with the Apostle John and the elders in heaven there.
00:02:02.040 | Where am I standing?
00:02:03.040 | Where am I as I look out?
00:02:04.720 | I'm running with Jesus, running with Jesus in obedience to His command to do our part
00:02:10.200 | in "Go therefore, make disciples of all nations," all nations, not just waiting for them, pursuing
00:02:18.720 | them, loving them, wanting them, uniting with them, every one of the ethnicities of the
00:02:24.740 | world.
00:02:25.740 | I'm standing with Jesus in the pursuit of that command.
00:02:29.960 | Where am I?
00:02:30.960 | I'm smiling with Paul on Mars Hill as he looks around at these proud Athenians, and he looks
00:02:38.620 | them right in the eye, and he tells them that the blood coursing in their veins is the same
00:02:45.160 | blood as in the barbarians that they despise, because he said God made from one man every
00:02:54.240 | nation of mankind on the face of the earth, Acts 17 25.
00:03:00.080 | No multiple forefathers, some better, some worse, you know, some one color, some another,
00:03:06.300 | some smart, some dumb, some fit for subservience, and some fit for rule.
00:03:11.160 | So one father, Adam, and every drop of every human's blood came from one man.
00:03:17.640 | Get ready, Ku Klux Klan, we are all cousins.
00:03:22.320 | Deal with it.
00:03:23.660 | And I'm standing there happy to have it so, smiling with the Apostle Paul, putting the
00:03:29.720 | Athenians in their place.
00:03:32.080 | Where am I?
00:03:33.080 | Where am I standing?
00:03:34.080 | I'm standing on the plains in Judea with Jesus, joyfully challenged by the commands, "Love
00:03:40.840 | your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who persecute you and curse you,
00:03:46.200 | and pray for those who abuse you."
00:03:48.560 | Meaning, even if you want to make a hopeless case for division, Jesus says, "Whatever
00:03:58.640 | your divisions, my people, my real people, don't hate back.
00:04:03.920 | They don't curse back.
00:04:05.160 | They don't abuse back.
00:04:07.160 | They love, they do good, they bless, they pray for."
00:04:10.260 | I'm standing on the plain with the God-man who ends all race-based hate, all race-based
00:04:16.960 | abuse, all race-based cursing.
00:04:20.000 | So where am I?
00:04:21.200 | I'm standing with the hated, cursed, beat up, jailed, sleepless, hungry, most radical,
00:04:27.480 | most happy Apostle, namely my friend, Paul, whom I love.
00:04:32.600 | And when he says, "Here, here in Christ, there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised
00:04:40.820 | or uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all," whoa,
00:04:47.540 | I say, "Well, do we see the difference, Paul?
00:04:50.380 | Do we even see the difference between these groups?"
00:04:53.380 | I think the answer is yes, but we see right through those seen differences to the new
00:05:00.780 | creation until the differences become no hindrance to unity, but only a help to joyful unity.
00:05:10.940 | So where am I standing?
00:05:12.820 | I'm standing finally at the bloody, wall-breaking, new man-making, hostility-taking cross of
00:05:21.860 | Jesus who made us both one and broke down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility
00:05:28.180 | to create in Himself one new man in place of two, so making peace and thus reconcile
00:05:36.180 | us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
00:05:42.580 | They don't get much better than those words right there.
00:05:45.620 | So that's my answer to Mark's last question, "Where are you at?"
00:05:50.940 | As you look around today, and I start there because I think that answer, that glorious,
00:05:59.180 | biblical, Christ-exalting position is a hundred times more, a hundred times more important
00:06:07.180 | than John Piper's fallible estimation about where racial relations are today in America
00:06:12.500 | and will always be more important.
00:06:14.980 | So let me give you three reasons why I say that, that is why it's so much more important,
00:06:21.620 | why I'm putting 95% of the emphasis there, and that will shed light on my other answers.
00:06:28.500 | Number one, God's grace and judgment are gloriously unpredictable in human culture, secular and
00:06:38.140 | religious.
00:06:39.140 | If you ask me, "How are you?" and I say, "Fine," the doctor may tell me tomorrow, "I'm dying
00:06:45.620 | of cancer," and I had no idea.
00:06:48.940 | But if I answer, "Not so good, I have cancer," the doctor may tell me tomorrow, "It's gone,
00:06:54.540 | it's gone."
00:06:55.900 | And so it is with God's grace and God's judgment in churches and in culture.
00:07:00.660 | The moment I tell you what trajectory we're on racially, God can blow it up.
00:07:06.820 | He's just gonna blow it up.
00:07:07.860 | He's gonna put me in my place.
00:07:10.180 | Beautiful things may be on the front burner for us, or more judgment.
00:07:16.500 | That's the first reason that I put so much emphasis on where we stand, not my predictions
00:07:21.420 | about where we're going.
00:07:22.760 | Number two, America is simply too big and too diverse, both secular and church world,
00:07:31.420 | for any assessment to be made that would cover every corner of the church and culture.
00:07:37.500 | Just when you point to 10 churches that vote to fly the Confederate flag on MLK weekend,
00:07:45.460 | somewhere else in this amazing land of ours, 50 churches have sat under faithful, Christ-exalting,
00:07:54.180 | soul-searching, biblically faithful preaching for the last 10 years, and a thousand sinful
00:08:00.960 | attitudes about race have been taken captive and destroyed, and a whole new day is dawning
00:08:08.380 | in those churches, right when the other churches are doing something absolutely outrageous.
00:08:14.100 | That's the second reason.
00:08:15.100 | It's the country's too big and too complex.
00:08:17.900 | God's doing more things than we realize.
00:08:20.180 | And here's the third and final reason.
00:08:23.500 | It's the most important one, too.
00:08:25.580 | Even though it's right and helpful to see sin and name it, it's a hundred times more
00:08:32.760 | important to see the Savior and name the beauty of the salvation He calls us to—salvation
00:08:42.080 | from the punishment for sinning and salvation from the slavery to sinning, salvation from
00:08:50.120 | final judgment, and salvation from indifference to present injustice.
00:08:58.120 | Another way to say it is, it's good when MLK weekend blows some fog away from past
00:09:07.160 | and present racial sins.
00:09:09.600 | That's a good thing.
00:09:11.640 | But it is a hundred times better when MLK weekend blows the fog away from the face of
00:09:18.640 | Christ and the blood He shed to make us radically out of step with this sinful world.
00:09:27.880 | So Piper's take on the state of the world is of very little consequence.
00:09:35.960 | God's take in the Bible on the truth and the power of His Word, His book, for the sake
00:09:43.800 | of every ethnicity, is of infinite importance.
00:09:48.680 | Amen.
00:09:50.040 | There's a great hope because the victory at the end is inevitable.
00:09:54.240 | And may that hope root us today.
00:09:56.440 | Thank you, Pastor John, for that perspective.
00:09:59.080 | And wherever you're listening in the midst of your day, driving to work, driving from
00:10:03.040 | work, at the gym, doing chores, walking the dog, whatever you're doing, thank you for
00:10:06.600 | making us a part of your day and week.
00:10:09.880 | Be sure to subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast app, in YouTube or in
00:10:14.160 | Spotify.
00:10:15.360 | And for our episode archive or to give us a question of your own, go online to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:24.080 | On Wednesday, we return to look at one of the dominant cultural mottos of our age.
00:10:29.200 | It's only evil if it harms somebody else.
00:10:32.520 | What's wrong with that definition of evil?
00:10:35.000 | We'll find out on Wednesday.
00:10:37.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we'll see you then.
00:10:39.160 | [END]
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00:10:42.660 | www.askpastorjohn.com
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