The Bible & Race Relations

This is a special message from Sharon Arby Church on how to understand what's going on in our society today, wrestling with biblical and theological principles. This is not our normal weekly broadcast, but we pray this will be helpful to you as you begin to wrestle with how to understand what's going on in our day right now. Hey Sharon RP family, this is a video that's meant for you. I've been really concerned over the last few days as we've seen our country thrown into upheaval and turmoil.

So I wanted to come and just sit down with God's Word with you and talk about a few things. This isn't going to be the normal type of video. This isn't going to be where we look at what we did last week. I'm not even going to edit this video for content or anything. I just want to have a heart-to-heart with you.

Consider this our fireside chat or as I've been having conversation over the phone and text messaging and messages with people over Facebook and Instagram. There's been many of you who have asked a lot of questions and had a lot of things you've been wondering about. And so normally on a Sunday afternoon, you and I would get together and we'd sit down here in the basement and we would have a meal and we would talk about these things.

So I wanted to open up God's word today. I wanted to sit here and just share with you some theological insights, some biblical insights. for how things in this world should be understood by God's Word. This is by no means comprehensive, but it is going to be long. And so I'm going to encourage you to stick around and to think and wrestle with me biblically. To see, have you been thinking about things in a biblical train of thought?

I want you to interact with this. I want you to ask questions. I want you to leave comments. I want you to send text messages. And I want us to have a spirit of unity about this. So where do we start with everything that's going on? I want to start with a little bit of a history lesson.

Our country was founded with a great sin. Our nation, in our constitution, enshrined the legalization of slavery, of institutionalized racism. Our nation and its constitution had the three-fifths. A black person was only worth three-fifths of a man. And for that reason, our forefathers in the faith did something that did not make them popular. They said this type of chattel slavery And this type of hatred and subjugation of one race is ungodly and not in accord with God's Word.

So I'd like to take you for a moment just to the book of Colossians. Turn with me to Colossians chapter 3. In Colossians chapter 3, we find something that Paul says. And this is not just in Colossians 3, but this principle is found all throughout the New Testament. Colossians chapter 3, verses 8 through 11.

But now you yourselves are to put off all these anger, wrath, Malice, blasphemies, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed according to the image of him who created him. where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. See, there's neither barbarian, nor Scythian, slave, nor free, but in Jesus Christ. See, the gospel of Jesus Christ made it absolutely clear that we are not a whole bunch of different races with one race above another, but no, we are all equal opportunity sinners. But in Jesus Christ, There's equal opportunity grace. I do not deserve grace. You do not deserve grace. None of us do.

But Jesus Christ saves people of every tongue and every nation and every people. what we would say races today from every continent all over the world, the gospel of Jesus Christ shows us in no uncertain terms that racism is evil. That racism butts against the gospel.

And this idea that somehow one race is better than another, again, lies in the face of scripture. We believe in the reality of the scriptures, all of it. And so if we believe that the book of Genesis is true, that means we have one common ancestor, Adam, and we can go a little bit forward from that, and we can say one common ancestor, Noah, that we all come from him. It's not one race better than another, but we need to recognize the reality that all people are made in the image of God.

God made us. God knit us together in our mother's womb. God gave every single person the breath of life. God is the one who has fashioned your soul. God is the one who has made you with your body and with your melanin and with your hair color and with your eye color. Jesus has made us this way.

I was extremely concerned just today as I was on Facebook and I was there just browsing through and a man that I highly respect had someone post on his wall, these people are animals. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I don't engage in Facebook arguments very often. I had to delete a few comments.

But no. No, every single human being has the mark of God on and within them. Not animals. Not problems. but people, people whom God fashioned. They are conscious people. They make moral decisions. That's what makes us different from the animals. We are morally culpable for our decisions. We think, we make decisions, moral decisions, not just instinctual decisions.

This is extremely important. We're made in the image of God. Brothers and sisters, we should rightly be upset as God is upset when one of his images is marred. What does God say? Do not murder. We must protect our own life and the life of our neighbor. We must not be callous to the smothering of a human life. We must not be callous to somebody being murdered, to somebody being killed. It's unrighteousness, it's injustice, and God hates it. I'm gonna encourage you, there are going to be people who will make character assassinations against some of the people who have been shot lately.

But I wanna ask you a question. If you went to God's word, even if you went to the Old Testament law, And you tried to see what is the law that says that a man should be killed for stealing. You'll be hard pressed to find it. You wanna know where you will? For man stealing, for kidnapping, slavery. And yet, and yet, We have seen time and time again. Again, don't callous your heart here. Don't callous your heart. These are human beings whom God loves.

I can't vouch, I can't personally vouch for the integrity of every single person who has been shot. Obviously, I can't do that. I cannot say that George Floyd was a perfectly righteous man. I cannot say that he didn't have any sin. But let me encourage you. Are you perfect? I remember a story of a Puritan pastor where a woman walked up and she said, you're one of the most godly man I've ever known. And he said, ma'am, if you looked into my soul, you would spit in my face. Or as the apostle tells us in 1 John, that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and we make God to be a liar.

I am not here to say that any one of the people who has been killed didn't have any speck of sin in them, quite the opposite. Every single day, my ministry is to sinners. Every single day, we fight sin together to put off the old man and to put on the new man. And from what I have heard from this one man's family is that he was trying. He was fighting against sin. He was fighting for Christ. I can't say that he was sinless. But I can say that if he was in Jesus Christ, he sure was sinless. We should grieve. We should grieve over the loss of life. We should stop and realize that there are ramifications of a system of oppression, of slavery in our country, that it is still affecting people today.

My boys can do things that some of my friend's boys can't do. I just, it was before all this, but a while back I remember hearing one of my black friends tell me that he was talking to his son and he has to tell his son when he gets stopped in a neighborhood how he is going to respond to police officers, how to make sure he goes above and beyond to be a Christian man and show Romans 13 to them, because there is a system against him. And this is a Christian father telling his young boy, discipling his young boy. When you come into law enforcement, there's going to be an automatic, not all the time, But there are going to be times where you are going to be prejudged based on the color of your skin and not on the content of your faith.

This is a sad world we live in. If we truly believe in total depravity, we should not be surprised if there are systems of oppression. And again, don't mishear me. I am not bringing in critical race theory here. I'm not bringing extra biblical things here.

I'm saying to you the reality of what sin is. Now, We need to talk about something else though. Because what has happened in our country has gone far beyond protesting and far beyond voicing. And now there's anarchy and riots in the streets. So I'd like us to turn our attention biblically to another portion there.

The civil magistrate, the government, president, senators, mayors, governors bear the sword to enforce moral law. One of those laws is with the protection of life, but also the protection of property. I just did a video not too long ago on COVID about balancing the sixth commandment and the eighth commandment. We have to preserve life, but we also have to preserve livelihood.

Do you remember that video? It applies here too. Stealing is sin. Stealing is evil. And there are many things that have happened that are just outright evil. And we need to be able to call it that, evil. It is wrong to destroy other people's property. It is wrong to destroy other people's livelihood. But I'm going to encourage you that not everything going on at these protests is just the riots.

I've spent the last three days just watching videos from different people of different factions within this movement. And I'm going to tell you that there are some Martin Luther King juniors in this movement right now. There are pastors who are walking the streets with their congregants and praying as they walk through their neighborhoods, as they go through the city, as they protest peacefully. There are Christians Black, Asian, white, Indian, who are protesting this. I have friends all throughout the country who are marching in peaceful ways. But not everyone marching is of the same mind. There are anarchists. There are people of lawlessness right now.

And we should rightly condemn that. We should rightly say that it is wrong. We should, we should tell. be able to tell the difference between someone who is just there because they want to loot and destroy and take away and injure and harm because they're so... I can't even say that.

There are some who are pent up with frustration that they don't know any other way to do it. And before you necessarily condemn all of them, I just want to hold on one second. I just want to say that's what happened at the Boston Tea Party after they had exhausted every lawful means. Some of them are I don't want to say unjustifiably, some of them are just plain out upset. That's understandable.

But some people also just want to burn the world to the ground. We should recognize that there are those who hate the government, hate America, hate our civilization, and they just want to see the world burn. There are some who just want to loot and steal.

And so we should, we should call sin, sin. In both of these places, we should call sin, sin when someone's life is unjustly taken from them. When someone is starved of oxygen until their brain starts to shut down, that is sin. And when someone purposely decides that they are going to take someone else's good and harm their estate, that is also sin. Both of them are sin. And so we should be careful to not pit these against each other. We should be careful about this.

I do also wanna encourage you, though, as you browse social media, as you watch the news, when you flick on your TV, when you open your app, I wanna encourage you to be very careful about what you hear and what you believe. The ninth commandment is, thou shalt not bear false testimony against thy neighbor. And the Westminster Shorter Catechism is also clear that the Ninth Commandment requireth the promoting and preserving of truth between man and man, especially in witness-bearing. We must promote the truth.

So I'm going to encourage you, if something seems just outrageous and you cannot find the testimony of at least two or three witnesses towards that, I would encourage you to hold off on sharing that theory. Hold off on sharing that idea. Hold off on judging a specific person or people group or protest. There are many factions that are operating within these riots. There are many things of disinformation going out, but we must be those who promote the truth between man and man. So be careful about what you hear, be careful about what you believe, be careful about what you see.

Lastly, lastly, 1 John chapter four, First John chapter three tells us this, and this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he has gave us, as he gave us commandment.

Now, he who keeps his commandments abides in him and he in him. And by this we know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given us. God has given us his commandments. God has given us his word. We should look to his word to guide us as we try to parse out, as we try to weed through the wrong things and the right things about what's going on here. We should seek to follow His commandments as Christians. We should want to bring Him glory even in this situation. God is even using this now.

Might this be a time where I can repent of sin? where you can repent of sin, where our country can finally repent of sin. Might this be the time when we might say that people are longing for finally having some peace and we might be able to speak, not according to the media's dialogue, not according to the world's storyline, but we can tell them where true peace is. That we can bring people to Jesus Christ where they will truly have their hearts overwhelmed with peace. where we can say, you are right. There is something desperately wrong in this world. But one day, everything will be made new again.

Brothers and sisters, be angry and do not sin. Be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. For the wrath of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God. But yet don't also fall into this idea that God is sovereign, I don't have any way to think about this either. God hates sin and he will punish it. So will we this day have our hearts broken, and weep with those who weep. Or we hate sin, or we call sin for what it is, or we look to God's word as we try to understand what's going on in our broken times.

Please pray with me. Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, please care for us. Lord, we pray that you might heal our land. Lord, we pray that you would give repentance. Lord, we pray that we would turn from sin as individuals and as a nation. Please, God, let your kingdom come. Let your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. In Jesus' name, amen. I'll see you later.