Race and The Cross

Ephesians 2:11-22

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. In 1983, Congress established the third Monday of every January as a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and what he stood for. King’s birthday is January 15 and, if he had not been assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, he would have been 81 years old tomorrow. Imagine what our recent history might have been had Martin Luther King lived during the seventies eighties and nineties and trumpeted his vision during all those years!

John Piper started in 2010 by preaching a sermon on racial relations every year on the Sunday before the national holiday is celebrated. As we begin our new series, this story will help us understand where this series is going to take us.

Listen to his story: He made these comments in one of his sermons “Why do I mark this day with a sermon on racial relations each year?—this is the fourth year. There are more reasons than I can tell you. But let me tell you some of them. The main reason is it has to do with the glory of the cross of Christ. But there are personal reasons that might help you understand why it is something I feel a burden to do.

I grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. You need to know something of the psyche of this state where I spent the first eighteen years of my life. The population of South Carolina in 1860 was about 700,000. Sixty percent of these were African Americans (420,000) and all but 9,000 of these were slaves. That’s a mere 140 years ago. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union, largely in protest over Abraham Lincoln’s election as an anti-slavery president. And it was in Charleston, South Carolina that the Civil War began. Ninety-five years later, when I was nine years old in Greenville, the segregation was absolute: drinking fountains, public rest rooms, public schools, bus seating, housing, restaurants, waiting rooms and—worst of all—churches, including mine.And I can tell you from the inside that, for all the rationalized glosses, it was not “separate but equal,” it was not respectful, and it was not Christian. It was ugly and demeaning. I have much to be sorry about, and I feel a burden to work against the mindset and the condition of heart that I was so much a part of in those years. And it goes on. South Carolina today will not give state workers a holiday tomorrow and many pride themselves on flying the Confederate flag. John Piper January 16th,2014.

Across town from where I grew up, in the same city, five years older than I, another little boy was growing up on the other side of the racial divide. His name was Jesse Jackson. I learned last summer that his mother loved the same radio station my mother did: WMUU, the voice of Bob Jones University. But there was a big difference. The very school that broadcast all that Bible truth would not admit blacks. And the large, white Baptist church not far from Jesse Jackson’s home wouldn’t either. This was my hometown. And as an aside I ask, should we be surprised that some of the strongest black leaders got their theological education at liberal institutions (like Chicago Theological Seminary, where Jackson went), when our fundamental and evangelical schools, especially in the south, were committed to segregation? John Piper began his seminary work in California the year Dr. King was shot.

One of his professors wrote a 200 page syllabus of readings called “ Readings in Racial Prejudice” The introduction of that syllabus ended like this: And now let us listen to the groans of Frederick Douglass, feel the lash with Amy, endure the satire of DuBois, and measure the wrath of Malcolm X; let us contemplate the pathos of black childhood and the tragedy of black womanhood. And let us not forget that “he who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” And let us also remember that if God has given us a revelation of the true nature of man, surely we will render account if we do not live in the light of that revelation, and especially so if we are called to the holy office of the Christian ministry.

Those were powerful days in his life. And he said this declaration” now, thirty years later, by God’s amazing grace, I am called to “the holy office of the Christian ministry,” and God has given me a revelation of the true nature of man, and I will render an account of my life and ministry to God as to whether I have lived and preached in the light of that revelation. Hence some of my passion for this weekend and this message.

John like all of us have a story to tell. And the reason I chose his story is because he had some soul searching and he chose to use the lense of the bible to tell the truth and help to make his life and purpose on earth meaningful. It resonate to his passion, purpose and perception. For us its the why, where, when, what and even sometimes the why me? Now that’s a glimpse of the sermons to come. Don’t forget about bible class to receive even more in depth study on this topic.

As secular as the Civil Rights movement was in the sixties, there is no denying the profound Christian impulses that throbbed at the center of it, especially in the life and background of Martin Luther King, Jr.—as imperfect as he was. One little glimpse of it can be seen in the way his father responded to King’s receiving the Nobel Peace prize in 1964. King and other dignitaries were gathered in Oslo, Sweden, and about to celebrate, when the elder King stepped in and said,

“Wait a minute before you start all your toasts to each other. We better not forget to toast the man who brought us here, and here’s a toast to God.” Then in a quavering voice, he told what his son’s prize meant to him. “I always wanted to make a contribution, and all you got to do if you want to contribute, you got to ask the Lord, and let him know, and the Lord heard me and, in some special kind of way I don’t even know, he came down through Georgia and he laid his hand on me and my wife and he gave us Martin Luther King, and our prayers were answered.”

We are called to be more than We are

Let’s see how look at Ephesians 2:1-3 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. This is an important reality check to truly understand who we are in Christ Jesus. We need to recognize who we were without him, we were dead. In the Bible there is more than one kind of death, and death is not an extinction, but a separation physical death is separation of the person from the body, but verse one is about spiritual death the separation of you from God, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. Every lie, act of greed, lust, arrogance, hypocrisy, hatred all of it separated you from God. It killed you and verse 2 says you lived in it. The Greek word here is “walk” your every step when you followed the ways of this world. I’m not saying you’re every move was wicked I’m saying your walk gave you away. When you follow the world and the devil that is separate from God. The lies, cheating, rage, lust, greed, that’s dead stuff and that makes you like the walking dead. Verse four, but because of his great love for us, God, who is rich and mercy made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions, it is by grace you have been saved. God God loves us so much and in that love and deep Mercy, he made us alive. He did it when we were dead, right in the middle of sitting against him he loved us. Which means he has made us for greatness. We are to rise against the spirit of indifference, alienation and hostility in our land, we will embrace the supremacy of God’s love to take new steps personally and corporately toward racial reconciliation, expressed visibly in our community and in our church.We are called as a church to be something more than we are in living out a manifest, visible racial harmony at the center of the city.

All of this has a purpose that is bigger than you or me. it’s for us, but it’s also bigger than us. God is accomplishing something Verse 7 tells us that God seated us in order that in the coming ages, he might show the incomparable riches of his grace. God is an artist like no other. His works are beyond words nothing compares, and he shows off His works in the most spectacular ways. Look to the sunset to the galaxies to the majesty of all creation but the work that he will show off for ages to come is the work of grace that is non comparable to anything else.

To help you see this, and to call you to it, I turn with you now to listen to one clear word from God about racial harmony in our church. This is the ultimate reason for preaching on this issue: God has something to say about it and about how we live together as a church.

verse 8 is big, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast Memorize that verse it changes everything you were saved forgiven brought from death to life by grace and you don’t deserve.

Grace is a gift and you receive through faith. The gift arrives at the door of your heart and you open the door to accept the gift by faith in Jesus but you don’t earn anything none of the salvation is from yourselves it’s all God‘s gift in verse nine not by works so that no one can boast. This is Big. This is the reason that God plan salvation this way the challenge for God is if you let people earn salvation let them work for it then they could boast brag and walk with an arrogant swagger looking down on the unsaved Short self righteous but God hates boasting.

If my Christianity makes me arrogant in anyway I’m doing it wrong I misunderstood and we do it, but it’s wrong. Grace humbles us

Verse 10 four we are God‘s handiwork, ”The Greek word for “workmanship” used here is “POIEMA,” and it means “that which is made” The word signifies that which is manufactured, a product, a design produced by an artisan. It is the word from which we get our English word “poem.” We are God’s poem—His work of art. Good works do not gain us salvation, but they do affirm that salvation has been received into our lives. Like a poem it’s a work of art a masterpiece. God is an artist, and he expresses himself. He tells his story through his art, and that’s us. We are the story of his grace, the expression of his love back in verse 10 created in Christ Jesus to do good works, so we do good works, not to earn them, but in gratitude. Good works which God prepared in advance for us to do

This is that path God marked out for us this is our meant to be good works but the way we go about our walk is different. Now it’s humbling changed by grace in verse 11 causes us to remember where we were. He brings us back to how things were before Jesus between Jews and gentiles or non-Jews. This is old testament, the Jews, God people were brought near to God. They had a temple, where they could come close to God‘s presence gentiles were allowed to visit, but they were separated by a dividing wall, kept at a distance, and that picture pretty well describes where most of us stood with God other people got close, but we stood in a distance and verse 12 Separate from Christ excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope, and without God in the world, and that wall that separated Jews and gentiles well that wall created some hostility religion does that it creates division, but God has a plan, but now in Christ Jesus You who once were far away, have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for he himself is our peace who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier the dividing wall of hostility watch that Jesus made peace. Jesus is peace. He destroyed the wall that divides us picture two brothers fighting sins started one got greedy, the other revenge and the fight is on enter God‘s law, and one kid embraces it, but he’s arrogant about and kind of a hypocrite. He uses the law on his brother more than himself and a wall goes up between them. That’s not what God wants. Enter grace Jesus paid the price, so both are forgiven. Both are humbled and the walls come down verse 15 his purpose was to create in himself, one new humanity out of the two thus making peace, and in one body, to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which he put to death their hostility Sin separated us. The law built the wall between us and the cross tour it down. That’s the power of grace, and now in verse 22 we were one enemies are all being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit together. Together we don’t just get close to the temple. We are God’s temple.

Closing

But let us also dwell on this: that God ordained the death of his Son to reconcile alien people groups to each other in one body in Christ. This too was the design of the death of Christ. Think on this: Christ died to take enmity and anger and disgust and jealousy and self-pity and fear and envy and hatred and malice and indifference away from your heart toward all other persons who are in Christ by faith—whatever the race.

Now here is one concluding implication of this. Paul says in Galatians 6:14—and I hope we say with him—“May it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Is this one of the great aims of our church—never to boast except for the cross of Jesus? Does this not mean, among other things, that week in and week out we want the meaning and the worth and the beauty and the power of the cross of Christ—the death of Christ, the shed blood of Christ—to be seen and loved in this place? Do we not want that? Is that not why we exist—to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in the death of his Son?

And if the design of the death of his Son is not only to reconcile us to God, but to reconcile alienated ethnic groups to each other in Christ, then will we not display and magnify the cross of Christ better by more and deeper and sweeter ethnic diversity and unity in our worship and life? If Christ died—mark this! DIED—to make the church a reconciled body of Jew and Gentile, “red and yellow, black and white” and every shade of brown, then to glory in the cross is to glory in the display of the fruit of that cross.

WE ARE MADE TO DO GREAT THINGS LIKE FIGHT FOR RACISM, HATRED, BIGOTRY, BUT WE WHO ARE ALIVE AGAIN FIGHT IT WITH GRACE

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DR. KING