Colossians: Grace and Race

May be seated.

So we're going through the book of Colossians here at Redeemer, and we've been going through it I'm not sure how many weeks at this point, maybe five or six weeks.

So we're kind of back into it.

So just to review where we've been, Colossians 1 was just so clear for us, and really one and two are all about the promises of God to us, and then we see the shift at the end of chapter 2 into 3 and 4 about all the things because of the promises.

What does that mean?

What does that look like?

What's the application?

And what we've seen and what we're saying is, and what Paul's saying is that the application comes out of the promises.

And we can never leave the promises and move in the application.

As soon as we do that, we're headed into traps like moralism and legalism because the promises are our security.

They're our belovedness.

They are what fuels us.

And so Colossians 1, it's just so good that it says that Christ reconciles us to God, not ourselves.

What makes us right is the blood of Jesus.

So it's not about your effort, it's not about your merit.

It's not about you climbing up the mountain, like clawing up the mountain with your religious efforts or your achievement.

It's not about your religious pursuits to have right standing.

And we've seen, we've talked about how we used to be under accusation.

We used to be condemned because we didn't live up to the standards of what righteousness is.

We don't live up to our standards.

We're condemned by our own standards.

And it says that God through Christ pulls us out of that darkness.

And so, you know, God looks at us and he looks over at Peter or John or Billy Bob or your grandma or whoever's with him in heaven, and he looks down at you, and he says, There's no wretchedness in that man.

There's no impurity in that girl.

It has been cleansed.

There's no accusation toward them.

I have no condemnation toward that child.

Because they are chosen.

They're mine.

And they are made pure and holy and dearly loved by me.

See, by an act of God for us, Jesus on the cross, we are made right with him, not by your acts for God.

That's Colossians 1 and 2.

And so we're going to jump back in and we're actually jumping into the passage, that's a few verses in front of the passage in your bulletin.

The sermon was prepared later in the week, and I got into it, and I was like, man, there's some good stuff that we read through.

And we're actually reading through the same passage that we looked at a few weeks ago.

But there's some ideas and some content and some truths here that we just we have to go after.

And so just listen, listen as I read 11 through 14.

And by the way, the next two weeks are just absolute landmine topics for me.

Because this week is about race, racial divisions, your context, how you grew up, how you think about another race.

Next week is about roles and marriage and family.

I mean, these are landmind, like, you know, I'm gonna offend somebody and somebody's not gonna like me.

And, you know, it's like how many nuances can I have in one sermon to try to like not have to step on too many landmines but still be you know truthful to the text.

Anyways, some landmines coming out here, especially in verse 11.

So right away here, verse 11, there's the first word is here, which means kind of what I just said.

Because of this grace of God toward us, here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, scathian, slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all.

Okay, so maybe some of those people groups don't mean a lot to you.

These are people who didn't like each other.

Some of these people hated each other.

They were disgusted by how some of the other people groups behaved and their cultures.

They didn't understand them, they were wounded by them, they fought wars against each other, they were below them or above them, and there was prejudice downward, and there's bitterness upward.

There's all this hate.

Paul keeps going.

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone.

These would be good things, right?

Like this is needed when it comes to racial and socioeconomic divisions.

Forgive as the Lord forgave you, and over all these virtues put on love which binds them all together in perfect unity.

So to all these barriers that are developed racially, socioeconomically, Paul says, in Jesus we're equal.

It's a new way to think about community.

It's a new way to think about other people.

Because what the gospel does is as you come in more and more touch that you are imperfect and your culture is imperfect, and all the ways you do things are not the perfect way, when you get in touch with that, and that your value comes in what was done and given to you, all of a sudden, when you look at somebody else, pride and judgment doesn't have as much role as compassion and love.

I mean, it doesn't take deep cultural investigation for us to see that there's a lot of still racial uh divisions in our culture, right?

I mean, we we can look at maybe Paula Dean's comments a few years ago, and then all the backlash from that comment, and then that comment, and this comment coming over here.

I mean, it doesn't take maybe in the last six months, right, shooting in Ferguson, and then the backlash from that, and then this side to this side, and that side over here.

Or the gentleman that was uh killed in New York, and then the cops being prosecuted, and then the guy taking the train up and killing the other cops.

And maybe you've even heard yourself.

Or maybe you've heard a friend use language like, oh, oh, though well, you know those people.

Well, you would yeah, oh, though no, I don't know those people.

Oh, people like you, you, uh, you and I.

Okay, now I know those people.

Okay, go ahead.

What were you gonna say?

A few years ago, CNN interviewed uh comedian Chris Rock, who uh can be a little bit brash but can also be a little truthful along the way.

And CNN interviewed him and said, At one point in your act you said racism will never die, it will only multiply.

Uh why do you believe that?

And Chris Rock replied, he said, Well, it's never going to die, maybe it won't multiply.

Is racism going to end?

No.

It's not even race.

People are always going to, you know, find something wrong with people who aren't the exact same as them.

That's just what it is.

Black, white, short, tall, religions, whatever.

People are bad.

So Friday, I I just started to ask myself, this verse 11.

No Jew, no Gentile, no Scathian, no barbarian, no slave, no free.

I just started to ask myself, like, is this true in me?

Is that true inside of me?

Because I like you, I grew up in a particular context with particular experiences that formed particular thinking.

I I don't I don't remember, I don't remember my parents ever being racist at all.

But there was racism in my neighborhood.

I can remember the N-word being used.

I I I remember jokes about Black History Month.

And I never had I never had hatred toward toward any race growing up.

But ashamedly, I I can distinctly remember thinking, well, I am one of this kind.

And then there are these kinds, and my kind is better.

This started to fade as I got older and became a believer and had some more experiences with people of different backgrounds and went to some other cultures.

We moved to Atlanta uh 12 years ago, and we moved into Grant Park.

And so Chrissy and I moved into Grant Park, south of downtown, and we were surrounded by people different than us.

There were liberals, there were homosexuals, there were educated, successful black people, there were poor black people, there were I could come out of my house, I could walk 500 yards one way and find a homeless man, I could come out of my house and walk 500 yards to the left and find a lawyer.

We loved it.

I can't believe they act that way or say that, or how could you do that, or why would you do that?

And it forced me to go, why would they do that?

Like what culture, what culture creates that?

It stretched me to look at other people that are different than me.

It forced me, I was forced to try to attempt to understand somebody different than myself who was white, middle to upper class, raised in the suburbs of the South.

Since then we moved to Buckhead, which is mainly a whole bunch of well-off white folks.

And now we're here, and I'm observant, mainly a bunch of white people.

Not totally, but gratefully.

We don't have to pretend like racial and cultural differences don't exist.

That would be ignorant.

But what you have to understand is that you see through a lens of your own culture, your own experiences.

But you also have to understand that there are other lenses that other people are seeing through from other cultures.

And understanding these differences helps us to see humanity and help us to see the fullness of God's glory and how great He is.

That all of life, all of all of life is not understood through a uh Western, white, middle to upper class, individualistic culture.

I don't know if you're aware of Jesus wasn't white or Western culture, individualistic, middle to upper class.

I'm not sure if you realize that.

He wasn't.

He was Middle Eastern, which a lot of white, individualistic, Western uh middle to upper class people actually have prejudice against as they go to worship on Sunday morning.

What the gospel does is it just begins to break us because we're not perfect.

And you can look at another culture, another person, and go, they're not perfect either, but I'm not perfect.

And this way of thinking of them and us and dividing people, and we do that to make ourselves feel more important.

We begin to not have to do it.

Because we're new creations, and the new creation is based on what's been given to us, not what we're having to justify on our own.

So if we go back to the verse at verse 11, what Paul is saying is that racial and socioeconomic divisions and stereotypical definitions have no place in the community of grace.

See, the problem's not, the problem is not your color.

The problem is not your culture, the problem is not the way you do things.

The problem is only if you draw a line of who you could love and who you can accept.

Do you see it?

Look, I mean in these verses, in verse 11, it's talking about these races and these social divisions.

We go to verse 12 and it's talking about us being God's chosen people.

We go to verse 13, it's talking about forgiveness, which we're going to need to deal with all the racial divisions that we've had.

And then it goes to verse 14, it's talking about loving everybody in unity.

Maybe you're here and you have rooted in you deep bitterness and beliefs toward another race because of past experience.

It's how you grew up.

Because of your parents or your grandparents, because of your high school, your middle school.

And this passage is saying to you, those days can be over.

That sort of arrogance and ignorance and judgment and bitterness, the gospel can begin to create in you compassion rather than judgment.

Let's jump into verse 15.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you are called to peace, and be thankful.

Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your heart.

So, verse 16 there.

We don't have to leave our thoughts on race.

I don't think we have to necessarily leave the thoughts on racial and socioeconomic divisions to go into this.

We carry it in.

Because what he's talking about is being united in Christ and letting this message of Christ dwell amongst us as we are united.

We can teach each other, we can speak to each other, speak truth to each other, and we can sing together back to God, our Creator.

This experience for me just sticks with me.

It's been, I'm 35 now, so 15 years ago.

Uh the one time I went to Africa, I went to Ghana, Africa, and I so distinctly remember this experience, and so I've probably talked about it before, but I remember that maybe the second day we were there, it was Sunday morning, and I'm in church, I'm in an open pavilion out in the middle of nowhere.

There is no white guy anywhere to be seen.

I'm pretty sure a white guy had not been in that village in years.

And they're setting up the sound system for church, and I'm helping set up a little bit, and the music starts, and everybody comes into this open pavilion, and they're singing, and the hankies come out first.

Their hands are up.

You know, a lot of us are okay with our hands like this, and this is like, no, don't do that.

Okay, we can do this.

I'm comfortable with this, but I saw somebody in the front row do this, and I don't know if I can be at that church.

This church, I'm with you.

I'm comfortable.

No, yes.

They're up, hands are up, drastic, I know.

And then they start dancing.

The women form a line, dancing all around, and the men form a line dancing, and they are singing, they're dancing, they're having a party.

Right?

I mean, we get this idea, or I get this idea of heaven sometimes, like we're gonna be in somebody's landscape backyard, we're gonna have like our glass of wine, and maybe a cup of tea or something, and how was your weekend?

Did you go to the lake or you went to the lake?

Oh, I love highlands.

Do you love highlands?

I love highlands, you love highlands, and oh, what are you renovating?

What renovation?

Renovating your den.

Yeah, we're gonna add a sunroom, and everyone, everyone looks like you, and they love organic food and pottery barn, and they love your music and your TV and your books, and everyone just sort of looks like you.

But the Bible says a family of gods, every tribe, every tongue, every nation.

And what Paul's saying in verse 15 and 16, if we come out of that verse 11, we come into this idea of teach one another and sing together, doesn't this get bigger?

Doesn't God get bigger?

Than just middle class American Western culture.

And there's nothing wrong with our culture, but it's bigger than our culture.

He's bigger than our culture.

This idea of like, oh, I'm not sure if I can worship there, you know.

All they have is a guitar.

I can't get into it, I can't really get into, or oh, their music is too much, you know, that music's too much, I don't know if I can do that.

They dance in lines.

That was way over, you know, and I'm not sure what heaven will be like.

I'm imagining it'll be all of it.

I'm imagining it'll be uh it's gonna be a party, and then it's gonna be reverent, there's gonna be bowing, and there's gonna be dancing.

But I do know this.

We will be relieved of all of our need to compare against each other and draw these lines and to use each other to make ourselves feel more important.

And it won't matter what song we sing, it won't matter what style the song is.

Verse 17 sort of summarizes all this, and whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

So by grace we have reconciliation.

We have peace and love to all people, but this is for his glory.

When I was about seven years old, I can remember I got a Christmas present I got, and I'd picked it out.

Do y'all remember?

Some of you remember, uh, you get the Sears catalog.

And this is, remember, it was big and it was thick, and by the way, if you're younger, a catalog, it was paper, and you could fold, you could fold it.

You can't fold a tablet, don't try that.

And so you would get the Sears catalog and you'd lay down at night on the floor, and you would you would go through it and you would circle, you'd circle what you wanted for Christmas, and you would dog ear it, and then you would give the catalog to your mom or your dad.

Well, I had circled out of that or the service merchandise catalog, that was also kind of popular back then.

And so I had circled a red telescope.

And I Christmas morning, I got the red telescope.

This telescope probably worked about as good as a pair of binoculars, but to me it was like fantastic.

And that night we went out into the driveway and we set up the red telescope on this table, which by the way, I saw the table at my dad's house the other day.

He keeps his television on it now, so I'm like, Dad, you're sticking with the table.

Good for you.

Red telescope out in the driveway, and we're we look up at the moon, we look at these craters and these different seas of serenity and sea of tranquility and these different things, and I think we had a few ideas of what to look at.

And just you're right, you're kind of you're blown away as a seven-year-old.

This is incredible, it's unbelievable.

And it's not that the canyons and the craters and these seas were so small, and I and my magnificence, I can make them big.

It's that they're really big, and then I get a glimpse of how big they are.

This this is when we talk about glory, when we talk about glorifying God, making much of Him, this is the difference between a telescope life and a microscope life.

See, a microscope life takes something small and makes it big for us to see.

That's not how we relate with God.

We relate with God like a telescope, that we that's something that's so huge, bigger than we can imagine, and we can get just a glimpse.

It's paradoxical, right?

The more you seek to use your life to make much of yourself, a microscope life, the more you do that, the smaller your joy gets.

But the more you seek to use your life to make much of God, a telescope life, the larger your joy gets.

And this has everything to do with the context of these verses before about loving people, living in unity, not having judgment toward people, but having compassion and kindness and goodness.

Friday night we had some friends over to our house, and one of the couples, uh it's a white couple, and they have two white children, and they have an adopted black child.

She's four years old.

She walked in the door and she had on her frozen dress, just like my children had on their frozen dress, and she's absolutely darling, and everybody played together.

We had a killer night together.

About a year before that, I was just curious.

My friend Jonathan, he's one of my best friends, and so I just we were at lunch one day, and I said, Jonathan, I said, when you when you look at her, right?

This is a kind of question that you feel nervous to ask somebody, but with him, he was a good enough friend.

I said, when you look at her, I said, Do you do you that do you see that she's black and that your other child's white?

And he said, No, I I see them as my children.

And I'm going, okay, um, I'm maybe I didn't clarify the question.

Okay, so they're playing in the den and they're on the floor.

When you look out, when you look out, do you just see that one of your children is black and two of your children are white?

He says, No.

That is totally gone.

I just see my children.

I just came out of that.

I'm still thinking about it.

It's been a year.

I can't help but think how much glory that sort of purity and not judgment toward another culture or race, but an acceptance.

It's not ignorance, but just a love.

How much glory that brings to the creator of humanity.

Right?

We just use people to justify ourselves, right?

And most of the time, this pursuit, it builds prejudice.

It builds prejudice towards certain people because we feel threatened by them, or it builds favoritism to other people, and we draw the lines.

But the gospel frees us from having to do this.

It sets us at peace.

So do y'all uh from the beginning of class, do y'all remember this guy?

Are y'all here?

I I had to break it back out.

If you weren't here, and and what we talked about, this is my track jacket, by the way.

It was very exciting that day because I undressed.

Um that's not, you're not gonna be able to pick that up online on the podcast, but you just had to be here that week.

And so what we talked about was, I'm not gonna go all the way through with it about take off this sweater, what we talked about was at the beginning of Colossians 3, it talks about putting to death the old self.

And so we have in us this desire to perform, to show ourselves as so great in front of everybody, to present ourselves to God and try to build our righteousness and build our identity.

And what the Colossians says is that we are hidden in Christ.

And so we don't have to, we don't have to do this.

And this is what happens, by the way, Sunday, an hour from now, I'm gonna get home.

I'm taking this off, this stuffy, uptight sweater.

I'm taking this off.

It's wool, it's hot, I'm not laying on the couch with this sweater on.

So this is coming off, and it's gonna go side.

This is what comes on in my house, the track jacket.

This got ruled out by Christie, it doesn't go into public, it just stays at the house.

And this goes on, and this guy, this has been worn in.

This is perfect.

Oh no, do you have that hoodie?

You know what I'm talking about?

That sweatshirt from high school, you're still holding on to it, your spouse is trying to tell you to get rid of.

And when I put this on, this this is this is my belovedness.

This is my acceptance.

I'm covered, I'm good.

That's what this is.

It's sort of symbolic that it knows me and it covers me, and I don't have to perform and in this position of being given grace, I'm at peace.

And we looked at this in the context of verse 12 that we are God's chosen people, holy, pure, dearly loved.

We are his beloved, and out of this, out of this belovedness that's given to us, comes, right, all this.

We did this too.

Bear with me.

Comes compassion.

It says, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, goodness.

And in this and in the context of this passage, is it has everything to do with how we how we see people and how we look at people and people of different races, different cultures, that you clothe yourselves with that kind of love and that kind of peace, that kind of kindness and goodness, that when you see people, you're in, you're in touch with this.

You're in touch with your belovedness, the gospel that covers you, your imperfection.

And that you could have compassion towards somebody rather than judgment, so that when you see somebody, you see something, or some people grew up, you you could ask yourself something like, I wonder how he grew up.

I wonder how she grew up.

I wonder his experiences.

I wonder why they do it that way.

And we're gonna need this sort of love as people from different socioeconomic groups come to our church, different races come to our church, different cultures come to our church.

But but see, none of this, none of this, this kindness and this goodness, and all of this of kind of how we should be, none of none of this is possible without understanding your belovedness.

Because you're not going to be able to by your, by your might, earn your way out of your old shameful ways of thinking.

I I can't earn my way out of that.

But by the forgiveness and the grace given to us, we are broken and made new creations and are part of a new community that thinks differently.

In Jesus, we are forgiven of all the racial prejudice we have ever acted upon or spoken from, or even received.

You and I, the Gentile, the Jew, the barbarian, the scathian, the slave, the free, the black, the white, the Hispanic, the Asian.

Christ is all, and Christ is in all.

Let's pray together.

Father, we take a moment as we can easily reflect upon our own history, our own experiences that have been woven with great, noble thoughts toward other races and horrible thoughts towards other races.

Some of us with past experiences that form in us anger toward another race, or bitterness toward another race, or prejudice toward another race, or woundedness.

And we pause to reflect that we don't want to be the kinds of people that try to justify ourselves by being prejudiced towards another group of people.

We want to fully receive our justification by what you give us and be at peace, and that you can free us from judgment and arrogance and ignorance and pride.

Help us to understand how imperfect we are and how much you love us, that we might be able to offer compassion toward someone else.

As we come toward communion, would we come to receive that you, you, you received us and you accepted us when we were your enemies.

We were the ones walking away from you, and you come toward us, you come after us.

And so we come to receive your grace toward us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.