It's the third Monday of January, and that means in the States we are celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a fitting day to step back and assess the current state of race relations in this country. And a timely question comes to us from a listener named Mark. "Hello Pastor John, thank you for taking my question.

What is your sense for where race relations stand, especially in the church right now? Are we making any progress, are we at a standstill? Since 2016 things have been tumultuous to say the least, and I find myself bracing for another hit to these relations in this presidential election year to come.

Where are you at as you look around today?" Well, let's start with the easy one, the question, the glorious one. Where am I as I look around today? Where am I standing? I am standing joyfully and expectantly with King David as he says, "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you, for kingship belongs to the Lord, and He rules over the nations." Psalm 22, 27.

Kingship belongs to the Lord Jesus, and He is gathering His people from all the families of the nations. I'm standing with King David. Where am I? I'm standing in heaven, exulting with the 24 elders as they sing and praise Christ. 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, 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, every tribe, every language, every people, every nation into one kingdom, one priesthood.

I'm standing with the Apostle John and the elders in heaven there. Where am I standing? Where am I as I look out? I'm running with Jesus, running with Jesus in obedience to His command to do our part in "Go therefore, make disciples of all nations," all nations, not just waiting for them, pursuing them, loving them, wanting them, uniting with them, every one of the ethnicities of the world.

I'm standing with Jesus in the pursuit of that command. Where am I? I'm smiling with Paul on Mars Hill as he looks around at these proud Athenians, and he looks them right in the eye, and he tells them that the blood coursing in their veins is the same blood as in the barbarians that they despise, because he said God made from one man every nation of mankind on the face of the earth, Acts 17 25.

No multiple forefathers, some better, some worse, you know, some one color, some another, some smart, some dumb, some fit for subservience, and some fit for rule. So one father, Adam, and every drop of every human's blood came from one man. Get ready, Ku Klux Klan, we are all cousins.

Deal with it. And I'm standing there happy to have it so, smiling with the Apostle Paul, putting the Athenians in their place. Where am I? Where am I standing? I'm standing on the plains in Judea with Jesus, joyfully challenged by the commands, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who persecute you and curse you, and pray for those who abuse you." Meaning, even if you want to make a hopeless case for division, Jesus says, "Whatever your divisions, my people, my real people, don't hate back.

They don't curse back. They don't abuse back. They love, they do good, they bless, they pray for." I'm standing on the plain with the God-man who ends all race-based hate, all race-based abuse, all race-based cursing. So where am I? I'm standing with the hated, cursed, beat up, jailed, sleepless, hungry, most radical, most happy Apostle, namely my friend, Paul, whom I love.

And when he says, "Here, here in Christ, there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all," whoa, I say, "Well, do we see the difference, Paul? Do we even see the difference between these groups?" I think the answer is yes, but we see right through those seen differences to the new creation until the differences become no hindrance to unity, but only a help to joyful unity.

So where am I standing? I'm standing finally at the bloody, wall-breaking, new man-making, hostility-taking cross of Jesus who made us both one and broke down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility to create in Himself one new man in place of two, so making peace and thus reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

They don't get much better than those words right there. So that's my answer to Mark's last question, "Where are you at?" As you look around today, and I start there because I think that answer, that glorious, biblical, Christ-exalting position is a hundred times more, a hundred times more important than John Piper's fallible estimation about where racial relations are today in America and will always be more important.

So let me give you three reasons why I say that, that is why it's so much more important, why I'm putting 95% of the emphasis there, and that will shed light on my other answers. Number one, God's grace and judgment are gloriously unpredictable in human culture, secular and religious.

If you ask me, "How are you?" and I say, "Fine," the doctor may tell me tomorrow, "I'm dying of cancer," and I had no idea. But if I answer, "Not so good, I have cancer," the doctor may tell me tomorrow, "It's gone, it's gone." And so it is with God's grace and God's judgment in churches and in culture.

The moment I tell you what trajectory we're on racially, God can blow it up. He's just gonna blow it up. He's gonna put me in my place. Beautiful things may be on the front burner for us, or more judgment. That's the first reason that I put so much emphasis on where we stand, not my predictions about where we're going.

Number two, America is simply too big and too diverse, both secular and church world, for any assessment to be made that would cover every corner of the church and culture. Just when you point to 10 churches that vote to fly the Confederate flag on MLK weekend, somewhere else in this amazing land of ours, 50 churches have sat under faithful, Christ-exalting, soul-searching, biblically faithful preaching for the last 10 years, and a thousand sinful attitudes about race have been taken captive and destroyed, and a whole new day is dawning in those churches, right when the other churches are doing something absolutely outrageous.

That's the second reason. It's the country's too big and too complex. God's doing more things than we realize. And here's the third and final reason. It's the most important one, too. Even though it's right and helpful to see sin and name it, it's a hundred times more important to see the Savior and name the beauty of the salvation He calls us to—salvation from the punishment for sinning and salvation from the slavery to sinning, salvation from final judgment, and salvation from indifference to present injustice.

Another way to say it is, it's good when MLK weekend blows some fog away from past and present racial sins. That's a good thing. But it is a hundred times better when MLK weekend blows the fog away from the face of Christ and the blood He shed to make us radically out of step with this sinful world.

So Piper's take on the state of the world is of very little consequence. God's take in the Bible on the truth and the power of His Word, His book, for the sake of every ethnicity, is of infinite importance. Amen. There's a great hope because the victory at the end is inevitable.

And may that hope root us today. Thank you, Pastor John, for that perspective. And wherever you're listening in the midst of your day, driving to work, driving from work, at the gym, doing chores, walking the dog, whatever you're doing, thank you for making us a part of your day and week.

Be sure to subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast app, in YouTube or in Spotify. And for our episode archive or to give us a question of your own, go online to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. On Wednesday, we return to look at one of the dominant cultural mottos of our age.

It's only evil if it harms somebody else. What's wrong with that definition of evil? We'll find out on Wednesday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we'll see you then. Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast app. www.askpastorjohn.com