The Antidote to Tribalism
Notes
Transcript
NOTE:
This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.
Engagement
Let’s begin with a question this morning:
Which sin poses the greatest danger to Christianity?
I won’t ask you to answer out loud, but I have given you a place to write down your answer on our sermon outline.
I’m not sure that there is just one right answer to that question, but I’m convinced that somewhere near the top of the list is the sin of tribalism. The reason I say that is that Paul spent a significant portion of many of his letters addressing that problem and Jesus also addressed this problem with both His words and His actions.
Some of you may be asking exactly what I mean by tribalism. For the purposes of our time this morning I’m going to define it like this:
tribalism =
a group attitude of undeserved pride and superiority based solely on identification with a group
It is the tendency to look down on other people simply because they don’t belong to my group.
Tension
Like all sin, I think tribalism is inherent in our fallen human nature. While some of you are probably thinking that you’re not guilty of that sin, I would suggest that it is a sin we are all prone to engage in. Let me illustrate.
This last week many of us engaged in one of the most common acts of tribalism when we went to the polls and voted. While there is certainly nothing inherently wrong with voting - in fact, as good citizens we ought to vote - the process has become increasingly tribal over the last few election cycles. It seems like every election our country has become more polarized and both sides have resorted more and more to demonizing those who aren’t part of their “tribe”.
And while I am certainly thankful that I was born in the United States and am a citizen here, it is even possible for our patriotism to become a form of tribalism when we begin to consider ourselves superior to others and make our citizenship in the United States more important than our citizenship in the kingdom of God.
Even within the church, the proliferation of so many different denominations is a manifestation of this sin of tribalism.
Truth
So this morning, as we wrap up our “How to Neighbor” sermon series, we’re going to look at an Old Testament passage that was used for centuries by the Jews to support their feelings of superiority that caused them to look down on anyone who did not belong to their “tribe”. And as we do that, we’re going to discover God’s original intent, which is actually an antidote to tribalism, not the source for it.
Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 12 and follow along as I read the first three verses of that chapter:
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Here is the big idea that we’re going to develop from these three verses today:
Good neighbors are blessed to be a blessing
Good neighbors are blessed to be a blessing
This passage is what is known as the “Abrahamic Covenant” and there are two important promises contained therein. Noted missionary writer Don Richardson referred to these two promises as...
The top line: I will bless you...
The bottom line: ...you will be a blessing
These promises reveal God’s heart to us. We are reminded that God’s love has never been limited to just one person or group of people. His plan has always been to offer salvation to all people. We are also reminded that every blessing we have received from God is not just for us to hoard for ourselves, but to share with others - especially those who are not yet part of God’s kingdom.
Or to put it in the terms we have been talking about this morning, God is not a tribal God. He is not the God of one particular race or nation to the exclusion of others.
Unfortunately, by the time Jesus comes to this earth, the Jews seem to have only remembered the top line and forgotten the bottom line. Their tribalism had become so entrenched that they considered themselves to be God’s chosen people and assumed that made them superior to all the surrounding nations, even though God had made it clear throughout the Old Testament that He had not chosen them because they were in any way better or more remarkable than any other people.
But before we’re too quick to judge the Jews of Jesus’ day, we need to first stop and evaluate our own hearts. Far too often, I’m afraid, those of us who are disciples of Jesus have viewed the Great Commission - to go and make disciples of all nations - to be merely an afterthought rather than at the heart of the gospel. We have a tendency to think that now that we’re in the kingdom, we don’t really need to worry about those who are not, especially those who might be of a different “tribe”.
But the apostle Paul gives us some clear insight into the importance of the bottom line - of being a blessing to others:
And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”
Probably most of us never really considered that God preached the gospel to Abraham. But according to Paul, that is exactly what happened here in Genesis 12. And what is really instructive for us is to note which part of what God said to Abraham is considered to be the gospel - being a blessing to others.
So it’s no wonder that both Jesus and Paul confronted and condemned the tribalism of the Jews, and especially their leaders, who considered themselves superior to others. But they didn’t only confront that tribalism with just their words, they also did it with their lives. Without participating in or condoning the sin of those outside their tribe, they intentionally chose to associate with and minister to non-Jews.
God’s selection of Abraham and Israel is no different than God choosing us to become disciples of Jesus. The very fact that we have been chosen by God is undoubtedly the greatest blessing we could ever hope for. But God didn’t choose us because He needed us or because we are somehow deserving of that or because we are in any way superior to those who are not yet a part of His kingdom. He chose us to be His instruments of blessing to those who are not yet a part of His tribe. As we have said in the past, God has chosen us to be conduits and not reservoirs of His blessings.
Application
So let’s see what we can learn from this passage about how we can be blessed to be a blessing.
4 WAYS TO BLESS OTHERS AS I’VE BEEN BLESSED
4 WAYS TO BLESS OTHERS AS I’VE BEEN BLESSED
By association
By association
We see this in Abraham’s life. His wife Sarah and his nephew Lot were blessed just by being part of Abraham’s life. And we see elsewhere in the Old Testament how even entire nations were blessed because of their association with God’s people. Probably the best example of that was Joseph. God kept blessing him and as a result those around him were blessed. Even the entire nation of Egypt was saved from famine because of its association with Joseph.
When the Israelites were taken into captivity in Babylon, God instructed them to be a blessing to the people there:
Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
The people of Babylon were blessed just because the people of Israel lived among them.
This is one of the reasons that we are instructed to be in the world, but not of the world. God knows that when He blesses us, if we will allow it, those blessings will spill over and bless others. As a church we have been placed by God in the midst of this community to be an outpost of blessing to all - not just to those who are part of our “tribe”. So we seek to be a force for good in our community, even if that doesn’t result in more people attending here.
By example
In his first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul wrote this about the nation of Israel:
Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.
We are still blessed today by Abraham and many of his descendents because we can look at their lives and learn what it looks like to live in relationship with God. Obviously neither Abraham or the nation of Israel lived perfect lives. In fact, one of the things I love about the Bible is that it is real when it comes to the lives of the heroes of the faith. It reveals that, like us, they were flawed men and women who were used by God to advance His purposes and plans. So we learn that the real hero of the story is God, and not any human being.
That means that we don’t have to live perfect lives, either, in order to be the kinds of examples that bless others. If you are a disciple of Jesus, God has blessed you by taking your messed up life and transforming you into a new creation who He wants to use to bless others. So when you live your life in a way that demonstrates the transforming power of Jesus, you help others to understand that God can do that for them, too. And that may very well be the most important blessing you can give to others.
By returning a blessing for a curse
By returning a blessing for a curse
Sadly, this seems to be a lost art in our culture today. No doubt, social media plays a big role here, but that is not the only place that we fail to see this principle applied. I don’t want to get all political here, but for me personally one of the biggest disappointments of the last four years is that our President has failed to model this concept for our nation. And while it would be completely unfair to blame him for much of the tribalism that we see in our country today, I do wonder if he had applied this principle more frequently how he might have helped to diffuse some of that at least to some degree.
Our example here is Jesus Himself. Here is what Peter wrote about how Jesus did this:
When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
A little later in his letter, Peter urges his readers to follow Jesus’ example:
Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.
This is not something that any of us do naturally. I know I certainly don’t. So I’ve learned over the years that I need to be really intentional here and not follow my natural tendency to immediately lash out when I’ve been attacked or someone disagrees with me.
By being willing to be uncomfortable
By being willing to be uncomfortable
In order to be a blessing to others, Abraham had to be uprooted from his own country and his own people to go to an unknown land. He had no idea where God would send him, but Abraham immediately obeyed God. And he did that knowing that even though he would get to see the land God promised to his descendants, he would never personally get to dwell there.
In a sense, the entire gospel is about Jesus doing something very similar. He left the glory of heaven to travel to this world and put on a body of flesh and suffer on our behalf. He was called names and reviled. He was beaten beyond recognition. And He was nailed to a cross where He suffered unimaginable pain on our behalf. He did all of that to be a blessing to us, even though we didn’t deserve it one bit. As Paul writes:
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
As we’ve talked about frequently in this series being a good neighbor is often costly. It may cost us our comfort, our time, our material resources. And if we’re going to move beyond just our own tribe to bless others, it will undoubtedly cost us our pride.
Action
We have seen this morning that...
Good neighbors are blessed to be a blessing
Good neighbors are blessed to be a blessing
This idea is actually a great way to summarize this entire sermon series. It incorporates everything that we’ve learned over the last four weeks:
It reminds us that if we want to have good neighbors, we need to be good neighbors.
We are reminded that when it comes to love, Jesus erases all the boundaries.
We are reminded that for Christians that partiality, especially when it is based on external factors, is sin.
Earlier I mentioned that Jesus frequently confronted the tribalism of His day. One of the best examples of that was the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus was speaking primarily to Jews who hated the Roman government and who, as we saw a couple weeks ago, hated their neighbors, the Samaritans. Knowing the hatred in their hearts for those who were not part of their tribe, Jesus said these words:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
What we learn here is that Jesus leads a tribe that isn’t tribal. His tribe loves everyone, serves everyone and blesses everyone, just like He does.
You have probably noticed that this morning’s message is quite a bit shorter than normal. One reason for that is that most of us don’t need more information about how to be a good neighbor. What we need much more is to take some concrete, practical steps to actually be a good neighbor. So as we close this series this morning, I want to challenge all of us, and I’m including myself here, to honestly evaluate our own hearts and see where we have failed to be a blessing to others because of our own tribalism. And as God reveals those areas of our lives and as He reveals specific people to whom we have not been good neighbors, we need to develop a plan with some concrete steps to address that, beginning with seeking God’s forgiveness. And then we need to actually follow through and take action to be a blessing to others as we have been blessed.
So right now, I’m going to give all of us a few minutes to spend some time in prayer asking God to help us all be better neighbors. I’ve given you some space on your sermon outline to write down anything that God puts on your heart during this time, so that you can follow up on it this week.
[Prayer time]
Inspiration
Unfortunately, tribalism has divided our country, and even the church, to a degree that is unprecedented, at least in my lifetime. But the good news is that each of us can help heal the division by being a good neighbor, one neighbor at a time.