Acts: From Racism to Oneness

So we're making our way through the book of Acts.

We'll probably work our way through about halfway through the book of Acts before taking a break and heading somewhere else.

So last week we talked about Acts chapter 6 and 7.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

We talked about Stephen.

We talked about service, but we kind of cruised over something that's so easy to read.

It's one of those things that are in the Bible and you're reading the Bible and it just pops out and you almost don't even see it, and you keep reading, and you just move right on, and you don't ever stop and go, What was that?

There was a disagreement between who and who, the Hellenists and the Hebrews and what happened, but it was just one verse and off it went.

And so you just off you went as well.

So we're gonna stop and we're gonna dig into that a little bit uh today.

So I read an article this week where a psychologist in the 1980s was asked to counsel a group of Cambodian refugees.

So this was a group of people who had recently arrived to the states.

Uh you couldn't get a group of people that were more socially, economically, or culturally different than uh Western Anglo-Americans.

Not to mention these people have been through socially, uh, economically uh horrible, horrible things.

A genocide had occurred, their communities had broken down, starvation, murders, and then dangerous boat rides basically to the United States.

And the psychologist said, and here's what's interesting, the psychologist said, once you got in front of these people and then you talked to them, then you talk to them about their trauma and about the horrors they went through, and you talked about all that, at some point stuff like this would pop up where the person would say, So I met this guy when I was living in the refugee camp, and we fell in love, and I thought he really loved me, but then we were separated on different boats, and he took up with my cousin, now he's married to her, but he says he really loves me, and he keeps calling me, and I know I should tell him to go away, but I still love him and I can't stop thinking about him, and I don't know what to do.

Now, until the the last part, everything seemed quite different from your life, right?

Like, I mean, you're thinking, well, here's a group of people I've I have so little in common.

I mean, from the other side of the world, I mean everything about their culture is different than me.

I mean, their background, what they've been through.

I mean, this is they're so different than me, right?

I mean, they they don't sip sweet tea and talk about how the azaleas are blooming, they don't drive through Chick-fil-A four times a week.

I mean, we're so different, right?

We probably dress differently and eat differently and talk differently and even believe differently, and then you hear about love and you hear about heartbreak in a refugee camp and on a boat, and you go, oh, oh wow, like so we look different, and we do a lot of stuff different, but we're really, really the same.

And there's there's the glimpse.

And we've all felt it, haven't we?

We we felt at times incredibly different than someone, and we think we're incredibly different.

Oh, we're so different, they're so different.

And then in a blink of an eye, we finally understand them, right?

Past the things that either confuse us or make us feel afraid, past those things, and we realize we're not all that different.

So if you haven't figured it out yet, we're talking about race this morning, right?

Big issue Sunday at Christ the Redeemer, child abuse during the welcome, and now uh racism during the sermon.

All in one week.

So let's start with the obvious.

Uh, you probably remember the story, Genesis 1, Genesis 1, 27 and 28.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them.

Now let's be clear.

These were not Americans being created.

America had not been created.

Uh, Europe had not been created, Westerners had not been created, these were just humans.

Right?

They are you and they are them.

Whoever to you them is, these are them and these are you.

So point number one is this we are all the same in dignity and worth.

When you get under these costumes and the colors of our skin and the textures of our hair, we're people.

Even the culture you don't understand, maybe the culture you don't like.

That person is equal in dignity and worth before God.

See, you cannot exempt dignity and worth from a group of people because you're afraid of them or because you're ignorant about them or their culture.

You deal with that.

You have to go deal with that.

But know that if that person is a person, that person is created in the image of God as you are and deemed worthy by God as you are.

So obvious point number one, we're all created equal in dignity and worth.

Obvious point number two, we're all the same, yet we are different, beautifully different.

Years ago, I went to Ghana, Africa, and I ministered in a remote village, a village that had a white man had not been in that village in years.

So none of the children had never seen a man with white skin.

I was the strange person.

I was I was the anomaly, I was the minority.

My clothing, my habits, my language didn't make sense.

No one was wearing long shorts, no one was wearing vans like I was, no one was worried about reapplying sunscreen like I was, and oh, that's 35, I need a 50, I need a 50 for my face.

The always quotable Mark Twain said, travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

And what he's saying is, well, is what happened to me, right?

I sit down in this remote village to have dinner with a family, and I look for a chair.

There's no chairs.

They sit on the floor.

I look for a fork, there's no fork, they eat with their fingers.

And these things aren't right or wrong.

They're just different.

And then we go to worship, and I want to sit, and then I want to stand when we sing, and if I'm feeling real spirited, I might sway.

Maybe.

Maybe it's a stretch for me.

And they have hankies and they dance in lines, and it is fantastic, and I, the reserve westerner, am too uptight to even participate.

I don't know what to do with this, but it's fantastic.

And then we we start to talk, and if we can get past barely being able to understand each other, we find out we have so much in common because we have joy in common and loss in common, and we care about peace around us and peace in us and peace in our family, and we care about our kids, and we care about respect and we care about provision.

See, we are the same even while we are beautifully different.

Months ago, we we were in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 2 is this little moment in church history where you see amazing unity occurring.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And you read it and you go, oh wow, this is amazing.

Look at this early church.

Let's read that early church.

It's like a utopia, which apparently lasted for about 30 seconds because we're in Acts chapter 6 and we have a problem.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

Arguments begin and divisions begin, and they never stop, never will stop.

Problems will always exist.

What's wonderful about what plays out here in this Acts chapter 6 is the problem exists and it's a nasty, horrible problem, and it is raised to the leadership, and they immediately deal with it.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

And that's fantastic.

So this Acts chapter 6, verses 1 through 4, I'll read that again that Jill read for us.

Acts 6:1–4

Now, in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, so the church is growing, a complaint, a complaint by the Hellenists, that's one group, one culture, one race, arose against the Hebrews, another culture and race, because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

And the twelve summoned the full number of disciples and said, It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.

Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of spirit and of wisdom, whom we'll appoint to this duty.

So, hey, we're gonna we're gonna appoint some people, go fix, go fix this.

We have to fix this.

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.

So, point number three is this problems always exist, and this particular problem here was racism.

So apparently the people in charge had some sort of distribution problem.

Now you could say maybe this was a mistake, an oversight.

I sincerely doubt it because it's two groups of people that have historically hated each other and had racist views toward each other, demeaned each other, belittled each other.

But the problem is now they're in a new way of living, a new way of thinking, where all are created in the image of God, all are broken in sin just the same, and all are brought to salvation and oneness in Christ.

This God is not the God of one race and tribe, which is how all other nations thought of their gods.

This God broke free of that limiting view and said, He is the God of all people, created all people, and loves all people.

This is what God's been trying to teach from the beginning, from Genesis.

All humanity is created in the image of God.

Everybody, from the very beginning.

And then we see other hints throughout the scriptures, not just in the New Testament teaching, there's stuff in the Old Testament.

There's this book named Ruth.

We talked about it in our Sunday school class a few weeks ago.

There's this family in Bethlehem.

There's a mama and there's a daddy, and the mom is Naomi, the dad is Elamelech, and they have two sons, and in Bethlehem, a drought begins, the food dries up, there's nothing to eat, this family, they don't know where to go, they have to go where there's food.

Well, there's food in Moab.

Well, this is a problem because the Moabites don't like the Hebrews.

And this family is Hebrew, but they gotta move to Moab for food.

So they move to Moab, which is a risk.

They don't like each other.

And they get there, and Elamelech, the dad, he dies.

So now you're down to mom and two boys.

The two boys end up marrying two Moabite girls, Orpah and Ruth.

So one race marries another race.

They live there for 10 years, never a grandchild, no grandbabies, no heirs, and then the sons die.

So now we're at Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah.

So then food comes back to Bethlehem.

The rains, the rains return, and so Naomi says, it's time for me to go home, it's time for me to move back.

And she looks at her daughters-in-laws and says, Hey, girls, y'all stay here.

There's a chance, at least there's a chance here that you could remarry.

But your chances of remarrying back in Bethlehem because you're from a different race, you're Moabite, they're not gonna like you, is very, it's not gonna look good for you.

You should stay here.

And Orpus stays, but Ruth goes with Naomi.

This is a huge risk for Ruth.

She would be one race in a land of another race, the chances of marrying again are incredibly slim.

But then a man enters her life, this man named Boaz, which means Redeemer.

And this Redeemer marries this girl from another country, from another race.

And Ruth and Boaz go on to have a son named Obed.

Obed has a son named Jesse.

Jesse has a son named David, who is King David, who is the lineage of the Jewish Messiah, Jesus.

What's the point?

Well, the point is a Moabite is in the line of the Jewish Messiah.

The entire time God is trying to get us to see he is not the God of one group of people or one race or one culture.

God is breaking down the walls of an ethnocentric view of God, and he's breaking down racist views of each other that we hold.

And here's the good news: point number three.

The gospel dismantles racism because identity is received from God.

The gospel dismantles racism, our racism, because identity is received from God.

The gospel says you are beloved before what you look like, where you are from, or what you do, because God deems you beloved because of Jesus.

It means you're not first a southerner or northerner, Midwesterner.

It means you're not male, female, white, black, conservative, liberal, eastern, western, whatever.

You're dominantly using for your identity.

The thing that is dominantly your identity is that God has deemed you worthy and important as an individual, a human being.

By him we are children of God, all of us, despite and all of our beautiful differences.

Galatians 3.28.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there's no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

In other words, stop splitting people, belittling people, and demonizing people by these differences.

You are absolved and accepted, redeemed into an identity that's given to you, not earned by the work of Jesus, not your word.

And this is where you become secure enough that you can look at another culture, a person so different than you, and you know what?

It's fine.

You're not afraid of that.

Even if you're ignorant of it, it's fine.

You don't have to belittle them to make yourself feel more important.

It's actually when we cease to know this God and this gospel, when we're insecure people.

And then we will belittle people.

And we will demonize people that are different than us as to feel secure and important.

This poison is racism.

But gospel people are free from this poison as we're already deemed secure and important, and even absolved of the ways in which we have used racism to feel important and secure.

It's the truth of this gospel that takes away the sorrow of our mistakes, our society's mistakes, our parents' mistakes, our grandparents' mistakes, our community's mistakes, and begins to create a new way to relate to each other out of our belovedness and out of God's love of all people.

This is what enables the people in Acts 6, when the problem arises and surfaces, they so quickly deal with it.

And maybe you are here and you grew up thinking whatever about whatever group of people.

And you did this because you were told this by your family or your community.

Or maybe you're simply afraid.

Or maybe you're just ignorant.

Or maybe you're insecure.

But the good news is you don't have to live that way anymore.

Not in that sort of insecure, unloving manner.

You are God's beloved.

And in that, you no longer have to belittle or demonize other people as to feel or be important and loved.

This means you ain't no better than the black person or the white person or the brown person or the rich person or the poor person.

You don't have to split them off and belittle and demonize them as to feel more important yourself.

They don't have to be less for you to be more because you're already fine.

You already have everything you need to be in Jesus.

You are not ultimately your skin color or cultural habits or even your weight or even the clothes you wear or the car you drive.

My brothers and sisters, you are secure in a rich love that forever deems you worthy.

You were created in the image of God.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your good news that all people are created in your image and deemed worthy.

Not by what we look like, not by what we do, but because we are yours.

For forgive us for all the ways that we have belittled and demonized other people as to feel important ourselves.

It is a very small way of living.

Would you increase our trust in you?

Help us to see how worthy and important and loved we are in you.

And out of such security and belovedness of absolution, would we be able to love all people?

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.