From Slavery to Brotherhood

Let me ask you to bow your head this morning. OK. Let's pray and let's ask God to help us to, Seize the opportunity that we have, It takes work on our part, but what Jesus did. He did the bulk of the work.

He died and shed his blood to obliterate. The hostility that once existed between us. And now it's a matter of just us walking in that unity that he has purchased for us. God, we, we thank you for your word.

Sometimes it speaks thrilling truths to us, Lord, that That are awesome to hear and then sometimes it, It roughs us up a bit and causes us to look at things in ourselves and even in our own history as a nation that we don't really prefer to look at, but there's value in looking at these things and learning from these things. But Lord, given the legacy that we've been handed, In this nation, help us as a church to seize the opportunity that it presents to us. To powerfully display your multicolored wisdom, your glory, to experience your love in the profoundest of ways as we pursue, enjoy, cultivate, protect, nurture a multi-ethnic unity of all places where this should happen, it should be in the church above all.

And so help us to achieve your dream for us, the dream for which Jesus laid down his life.

As we process these things in our care groups, And with one another in our homes, Teach us what we need to learn and grow us as a people. To reflect your image. We just give ourselves to You, Lord, in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said, Well, let me have you guys turn in your Bibles this morning to Ephesians chapter 6. For a time of study and the word this morning, Ephesians chapter, 6, for those of you that are visiting with us, we're doing a verse by verse study through the book of Ephesians and just taking the scripture verse at a time.

And seeing what each verse that we come to has to say, to us, And how we need to grow and change as a result of what we learn and frankly, we can't choose what comes next. sometimes we come across things that we really are excited about and other times things that are hard to hear. And, As we continue in our study of this book, we come this morning to Ephesians chapter 6 verse 5, and my goal this morning is to begin to look at this section of Ephesians 6 that begins in verse 5, and that is verses 5 through 9.

And the title of the message this morning is from slavery to Brotherhood, from slavery to Brotherhood.

today is not going to be so much of a verse by verse exposition. Of verses 5 through 9. We're going to do that the next time I am preaching here. but today we're going to be dealing largely with a topic that this passage brings to the surface and we're going to look at some ramifications of that topic for the church presently here in the United States.

But let me read this passage to, You, you'll notice in verse 5 that Paul begins to speak to slaves. Back in chapter 5, near the end of the chapter, he began to speak to wives and then to husbands and then in chapter 6 to children, then the parents. Now he begins to speak to slaves and to masters. And he says in verse 5, slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling in the sincerity of your heart as to Christ, not by way of eye service as men pleasers, but as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from the heart, with goodwill, render service as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatsoever good thing each one does, this, he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free.

And then in verse 9, he begins to speak to masters. these are people in the Ephesian Church that were slave owners, and he says, and masters do the same things to them and give up threatening, knowing that both their master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with God. So it's clear in this passage that Paul is speaking to slaves in verses 5 through 8 and then the masters in verse 9. Now, normally what people do today when they preach on this passage in the church, nowadays is they think to themselves, there are no slaves in this congregation and there are no owners of slaves in this congregation.

But there are employees and employers, and so what we'll do is we'll take the word slave out and put employee in its place. By way of application, we'll take the word master out and put employer or boss in its place and we'll learn what this passage has to say to us in terms of the workplace here in modern day America. What employees should we be, what employer or boss or production manager or what have you should. should we be in the workplace, and I'm a big fan of that approaching the passage in this way.

In fact, we're going to do that the next time I preach from this pulpit, but I would personally feel woefully remiss if we did not. today take the opportunity to deal with a pressing ethical matter that this passage brings to the surface, and that is the question of slavery itself. one could legitimately ask, as he carefully reads the scripture, including this passage, why doesn't Paul, now that he begins to speak on the subject of slavery, seize the opportunity to Condemn slavery.

Isn't slavery wrong?

And if it is, why does Paul not condemn the institution of slavery in this passage? And when he speaks to masters, especially in verse 9, of course slaves can't help their condition. They're slaves. They're owned by another human being, but masters had total power in a situation like this.

They could have released their slaves. Why doesn't Paul, when he speaks to Masters in verse 9 simply command masters to release their slaves. Why doesn't he say, Hey, slavery is wrong, and if you have slaves, release them and let them go free? That raises the broader question of what does the Bible teach about the subject of slavery.

And for those who are in the know and have searched the matter out, why does the Bible never condemn the institution of slavery? I don't know if you're aware of that, but you can read through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and nowhere on the pages of Scripture is slavery itself ever outright condemned. And so why does the Bible not condemn slavery? Why does Paul just speak to slaves, say, Here's how to treat your masters, and respond to them, and masters, here's how to treat your slaves without telling them to release their slaves and condemn slavery.

Now, this is a question that probably you guys did not wake up this morning asking, as you were having your devotions, just pondering, this question of slavery in the Bible, but it is a question nonetheless that does come up from time to time, especially in the mouths of those who are critics of the Christian faith and critics of the Bible. they will often bring up the subject and say, hey, slavery is wrong, and nowhere in the Bible does God ever condemn slavery. In fact, in the Bible, There's regulations for slavery in the Old Testament, God regulates slavery and tells the Jews how to do it right, but he never tells them that slavery is wrong, and they criticize the Bible and seek to invalidate our faith as a result of that.

In fact, one writer that I was reading this week in an article entitled Debunking Christianity, brings up this issue as one of the issues that he raises to try to discredit our faith, and he asked this question Why didn't God tell His people, Thou shalt not own, buy, sell, or trade slaves, and say it as often as he needed to?

Why was God not clear about this in the Bible? And at the end of the article, he says nothing in Christian theology remedies the appalling deficiencies of the Bible on what is perhaps the greatest and the easiest moral question our society has ever had to face. So, this is a charge that some will level against the Bible, against God, against Christianity. And honestly, it is a legitimate question that one might ask as he studies scripture and comes to passages like this.

What does the Bible teach about slavery and why does the Bible not condemn the institution of slavery? And so what I want to do this morning as we begin is I want to give you 8 facts regarding what the Bible does teach about slavery. We'll try to move through these quickly. but 8 facts regarding what the Bible teaches about slavery, and then we'll begin to look at some ramifications of that in terms of our own situation today.

By the time we're done, guys, you'll see how these 8 facts are completely relevant, all right? So, don't, don't tune me out. F, Number one regarding what the Bible teaches about slavery, folks, is that the Bible never outright condemns slavery. I've already said that, but let's stick that in the outline here.

The Bible never outright condemns slavery. We have to concede that fact. understand, folks, that there were a lot of evils that happened. In slavery in Bible times, and the Grecian Empire and in the Roman Empire, but understand also that slavery, was often, not always by any means, but often slavery was a voluntary choice.

On the part of the slave in Israel's history, if someone was a thief and they stole from someone and they could not make restitution, that thief was to become a slave of the person he stole from until he was able to pay off the debt. also, if someone became indebted to somebody else and they were not therefore able to, to pay on that debt, then they could give themselves to the person that they were indebted to and become their slave for a period of time. Like I'll be your slave for the next 5 years and serve you in whatever way you want if in doing that, That will pay off my debt and so he would become a slave.

The reason that the scripture says that the borrower becomes the lender slave is because that actually happened a number of times.

People would get so in debt they could not pay on that debt, and so they would choose slavery for a period of time. To pay down on that debt. There were also in the Old Testament, even speaks about this, there were slaves who committed themselves to their master for life because they loved them. there's actually prescriptions about this in the Old Testament that God says if you ever are releasing your slave and telling him to go free and that slave says, no, I don't want to leave.

I love you and I want to pledge myself to you for the rest of my life, then God says at that point you are to pierce the ear of your slave and he is to become yours for life. And so there were many People who were slaves voluntarily back in this day, slavery was often, as I just mentioned a moment ago, often temporary for a prescribed period of months or years. And believe it or not, in the Roman Empire during Paul's day, slavery was for some a stepping stone. To a higher station in life, people that were desperately impoverished could sell themselves into slavery, and when they were in that state of slavery, they were able to earn money, sometimes even doing other jobs other than serving their master to earn money.

And we actually have recorded instances of slaves who on the day of their release, the day that they became a free man, were instantly on that day more wealthy than the person who had owned them. And so many people viewed slavery as a stepping stone, those that were on the bottom rung of society economically. There were slaves back in Paul's day who were medical doctors, architects, managers of households and palaces, essentially CEOs, business owners, but technically they were slaves who were working for another person.

A number of slaves often were quite well to do.

I bring all that up to say that, not to deny that there were a lot of evils that happened in slavery back in this day, but understand that there were a lot of evils that happened outside of slavery between people who were not masters and slaves in relationship with one another. and so there were evils inside of the institution of slavery, outside of the institution of slavery, but we need to be careful that we do not look at the institution of race-based slavery in our country from our history and project that completely back up on slavery in, Paul's day and even in the Old Testament where much is said by way of regulating the practice of slavery.

And so nonetheless, the first fact is that we do need to concede that the Bible does not outright condemn slavery, but the Bible does have much to say about slavery that actually would shed light on the particular form of slavery that occurred in the United States in our history. Fact number 2 regarding the teaching of Scripture on slavery is that the Bible did prohibit any slavery that involved kidnapping.

The Bible prohibited slavery that involved any form of kidnapping. In Exodus 21:16, God says, He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death. And the Jews and the rabbis understood God in this verse to be talking about slavery. That if an Israelite ever kidnapped a person either to make that person his own personal slave or to sell that person to another, to traffic that person in a, in a, in a little slave trade, as it were, to sell that person to become the slave of another, that Israelite who kidnapped that person for that purpose is to be put to death.

So God not only says you're not allowed to do that, but if you do that and you're caught doing that, you die, you get the death penalty. And folks, that principle alone. Pulls out the foundation from underneath the institution of race-based slavery as it existed in the United States and also in Great Britain. The institution of slavery as it occurred in this country and was tolerated in this country for a number of decades, and years was based upon an industry of kidnapping of millions of souls.

For a time, Europeans would come Over and actually themselves kidnap people from the African continent, but then what it turned into is people, tribal leaders and warring tribes would go kidnap people from other tribes. We have stories even of them kidnapping their own kin so that they would have them available so that when the slave traders come, they could sell them and make a profit off of the souls that were being trafficked. And slavery in this country as well as in Great Britain and in other places of the world, encouraged unspeakable acts of evil.

And all of these kidnappings, over 25 million kidnappings just for Great Britain and the United States alone, just to feed the beasts of race-based slavery.

In these countries, but if everyone was applying the law of God back in this day, this would have been illegal. There would have been the death penalty for anyone on the African continent who was ever guilty of this or any European who was guilty of kidnapping for these purposes in any way, shape or form. And so while the Bible never does say slavery is wrong, The Bible, in my opinion, clearly says that the institution of race-based slavery and the whole slave trade upon which it was based here in the United States and in Great Britain was morally wrong.

The Bible speaks clearly to that.

A third fact that the Bible, regarding what the Bible teaches about slavery is that the Bible taught that abused slaves should be freed. here in the United States, slavery, abuse of slaves was tolerated, abusive conditions in the slave trade itself, were woefully tolerated, but the Bible taught that abused slaves should be, by virtue of being abused, freed thereby. And Exodus 21:26 and following God says if a man strikes the eye of his male or female slave and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account of his eye.

And if he knocks out a tooth of his male or female slave, he shall let him go free on account of his tooth.

And please understand that. The Jews did not look at that and say, OK, I can mistreat my slave, but don't touch his eye or knock out his tooth, but I can injure any other part of his body. No, they understood this to be just representative of any part of the body, any significant injury, so much as just knocking out the tooth, one tooth of the slave. That slave was instantly freed on account of his tooth.

At the bottom of the screen you see some other passages in Deuteronomy 23, we learned that if God tells the Israelites that if someone flees from his master, no doubt because the master was abusing him and treating him cruelly, even if it was among the Canaanites, the Jews were to provide asylum for that person, allow him to live among them, and God says, Don't you dare mistreat that slave who has fled from his master. In Exodus 21:20. God tells the Israelites that if you ever strike your slave and that slave dies, then you die.

You get the death penalty for that.

And so, the Bible taught that abused, slaves should not be abused and that if any slave is abused in any significant way, he is instantly, allowed to be free by virtue of that abuse. A 4th fact regarding what the Bible teaches about slavery is that the Bible, and this brings us to our passage today, the Bible commands masters to serve their slaves as if they were serving Jesus. Think about that. The Bible commands masters to serve their slaves as if they're serving Jesus.

Let me show you this in our passage this morning. Look at verse 7. Paul says, he's speaking to slaves, and he says, with goodwill, render service. In other words, render service to your masters as to the Lord and not to men.

He's telling slaves, you serve your master as if you're serving Jesus Christ himself. Because that's really what you're doing. Verse 8, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free. What Paul is saying is slaves, you serve your masters with goodwill, as if you're serving Jesus, because actually you are serving Jesus.

And when you stand Before Jesus at, at the judgment, Jesus will give back to you every good thing you did for him as you served him in the way of serving your master. You say, well, how does that make your point, Milton? He's talking to slaves here. Yeah, he is, but look at verse 9.

Verse 9, and masters do the same things to them. Hey masters, what I just told your slaves to do, to serve you as if they're serving Jesus Himself. I'm commanding you to serve your slaves as if you're serving the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. What a stunning instruction that Paul gives to masters in this passage.

There's a 5th fact. Regarding what the Bible teaches about slavery that we see in this passage alone, and that is that the Bible teaches that masters will be recompensed for how they treat their slaves. Paul says in verse 8, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free. Slaves, how you respond to your masters, you're going to be recompensed for that on judgment Day.

Masters, how you treat your slaves, you're going to be recompensed for that on judgment. Day. And so Paul is telling masters that you need to be careful how you treat your slaves, knowing that God is going to factor that into the judgment Day. You're going to be recompensed and judged based on how you treated your slaves when you stand before God at the judgment.

And what this really communicates to masters in the Ephesian Church is that God cares very deeply about slaves, and He cares very deeply about how you treat those who are your slaves. This would have been a startling thought to some people, not all, Aristotle himself. believed in slavery and he was offended at the notion of any talk of how to justly treat your slave. He says justice has nothing to do with it.

You don't talk about how to justly treat a slave any more than you talk about how a person will justly treat his hammer. Or some other personal property or tool. It's a slave is one's personal property. A slave is a tool, and so there's no sense talking about how to justly treat a tool or your own property.

All a slave is, is an animate living. tool with a soul, and he basically says you can treat your slaves however you wish to treat them. God says to the apostle Paul, two masters, you will be judged for how you treat those. Who are your slaves?

I care very deeply. There is such a thing as just and unjust treatment of your slaves and know that it will factor in the judgment Day. There's a 6th fact regarding what the Bible teaches about slavery, and that is that the Bible teaches masters that they should never so much as even threaten their slaves. We've already learned that masters should not injure their slaves, but Paul says in Ephesians 6 that masters should not even so much as threaten to injure their slaves.

Verse 9, and masters do the same things to them and give up threatening. So you're not even allowed to. Threaten your slave with any bodily or any other injury. So don't bring any injury to your slaves.

You are to serve them the way that you would serve Jesus Christ himself, and you are not even allowed to verbally threaten to bring any injury to your slaves. There's a 7th fact. Regarding what the Bible teaches about slavery, and that is that the Bible teaches masters that they, along with their own slaves, are all fellow slaves of God. This is equality, equality.

look what he says in verse 9. Masters do the same things to your slaves and give up threatening, knowing that both their master and yours is in heaven. In other words, Jesus is your master, and that makes you a slave of Jesus, and Jesus is your slave's master, and that makes them a slave of Jesus, that makes both you and your slaves, fellow slaves of the same master. You're equal, you're equal before the Lord Jesus Christ.

You stand side by side as slaves of the Lord Jesus. And there's an 8th and a final fact regarding what the Bible teaches about slavery that I want us to look at this morning and this is from Ephesians 6 again. And that is that the Bible teaches that God makes no distinctions and how he relates to slaves and masters. In other words, God makes no distinctions in terms of how God Himself relates Himself to masters and to slaves.

Look what he says at the end of verse 9. Speaking to masters, he says, you should be knowing that both their master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him, with God. And by the way, the word that is translated partiality here is a compound word in the Greek. It's the Greek word for face, and then the Greek verb to receive.

Literally, it means face receiving. And the idea of that is someone who shows partiality. is someone who receives or welcomes or relates himself to people based upon external factors, based upon one's attractiveness, one's race, one's wealth, one's status, the clothing that one is wearing, when you look at other people and you size them up based on these external worldly factors, and then you determine how you're going to relate to them or to what degree you're going to welcome them based on those factors, you are showing partiality.

Paul says to masters, God doesn't do that.

You need to know that God welcomes, receives, relates to you and your slave in exactly the same way. You're totally equal before Him. God makes absolutely no distinction. Both you and your slave have equal opportunity to come to God and prayer before His throne of grace, to enjoy a relationship with Him, to experience intimacy with Him.

All the privileges and the rights of the glory of salvation are just as much the entitlement of your slave as they are your entitlement, and God makes Absolutely no distinction. God looks at both of you as being completely equal, and on judgment day, God will show no partiality. He will not treat you as a master differently because you, had a higher status on earth. He will treat both of you and judge both of you by exactly the same standard.

And so, both, in fact, number 7 and 8, We see the scripture strongly affirming the equality of master and slave, and Paul is teaching masters to think this way. And so when you think of slavery, for example, in the Ephesian congregation, there were slaves in the Ephesian congregation. There were owners of slaves in the Ephesian congregation. But imagine those slaves and masters relating to one another in the light of God's revelation as it is revealed in this passage, it would indeed be a beautiful thing to behold.

But based on, folks, based on some of the facts that we have seen regarding what the scripture does teach, I think it's clear that the institution of race-based slavery that occurred in this country, the Bible would utterly have condemned, and it does condemn it. In fact, based on, let's do this for a minute because I think this is healthy for all of us. Let us consider in light of these principles that we've just seen, let us contemplate historically how our nation sinned against African Americans.

We sinned against African Americans by defending and encouraging their enslavement via kidnapping.

We tolerated a practice in this country that encouraged unspeakable acts of kidnapping and evil committed by Africans amongst themselves against one another. we encouraged an industry of slave trade with the unspeakable evils that were associated with that, bringing harm and death to so many. and I say defending their enslavement because the truth is there were, there were, there were a number of people who were Christians back in this day, such as Theodore Weld who was saved under Charles Finney, preaching ministry, and other Christian people that strongly were advocating for the abolition or destruction of the slave trade and slavery in this country, as well as in, Great Britain.

but there were also a number of Christian people and pastors and theologians and scholars, back in the days before the Civil War that were actually defending slavery as it existed in this country.

in fact, I have in my office, I brought it here with me today, a commentary by Charles Hodge on 1st and 2 Corinthians. This is one of the classic commentaries, on 1st and 2 Corinthians. I used this commentary when we were studying through the book of 1 Corinthians a few years ago. And it's an excellent commentary.

However, the man Charles Hodge, who wrote this commentary just before the breakout of the Civil War, wrote a 40-page essay defending the institution of race-based slavery as it existed in this country. This guy was a theologian, a scholar, a well-respected Christian. Who wrote and defended what the Bible clearly condemns. And so our nation sinned against African Americans by tolerating and even defending and encouraging their enslavement via kidnapping.

we also sinned against African Americans by failing to protect them from abusive treatment. not only abusive treatment when they got over here, but the abuse of their kidnapping and the deplorable conditions of them being crammed upon these ships and sent across the sea in just disgusting conditions that cost the lives of thousands upon thousands of these Africans, many evil, We committed in this way, and we as a nation failed to protect these fellow human beings from these abuses and evils.

Our nation also sinned against African Americans by failing to treat them once they were over here the way we would have treated our Lord. even Christian masters many times in this country failed to treat their slaves the way that they would have treated the Lord Jesus Christ in obedience to passages like this in Ephesians chapter 6.

We also sinned as a nation against African Americans by failing. In fact, this last thing at the bottom of the screen serves as really the philosophical foundation that allowed so many people to tolerate. The institution of race-based slavery, the enslavement of black people, and that is we sin against them by failing to view our black brothers and sisters as equals before God. As equals before God.

There was a mentality that that the white race is superior to the black race, and this was the mentality of people during the institution of slavery, and it was the mentality of people even after slavery had been abolished. There were people, back before the Civil War who were advocating the abolition or destruction of slavery. Who they, they believed it was a moral evil to enslave black people. Nonetheless, these people, some of them who even fought for the freedom and the liberation of black people from slavery, some of these very same people, though they wanted that, believed themselves that white people were superior to black people.

Black people should be free, but they're not equal to white people. In fact, Abraham Lincoln himself during the 4th Lincoln-Douglas debate that took place in 1858, said this in that 4th debate. And he was advocating the abolition of slavery, but then he adds this defense. He says, I say then, I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.

And I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe Will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality, and inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. Those are words of Abraham Lincoln in 1858.

Thankfully, And whether he actually believed this or not himself, who knows, but he was willing to speak these words because he knew that it would resonate with those who were listening to him and reading his speech because this was the mentality of so many people in our society during this time. It does seem like his position moderated by the time of the Gettysburg Address.

In fact, some people in their history of Lincoln's life would suggest that Lincoln came to know the Lord while he was president due to some tragedies in his own personal life, came to know the Lord, at least by the Gettysburg Address, he was speaking of the equality of all men, that that's the principle our nation was founded upon. But regardless of his viewpoint at the point that slavery was abolished, it is an undeniable fact of history that there were millions of people in our society who basically said, OK, blacks can go free.

They can go free, but we are superior to them. In fact, talking to our brother James Ward last night.

he basically said the mentality of many whites over the 100 years after slavery was abolished was their message to black people was, you are free, but you will never be equal. You are free, but you will never be equal. Think of the segregation that began to follow the abolition of slavery in our own, country. terrible segregation, and it wasn't just, OK, you're free, we're equal, and you do your thing, we'll do our thing and we'll be separate but equal.

That wasn't the viewpoint of many whites in our society. basically, the attitude was the best restaurants will be frequented by white people and those that are not so nice, black people can go to. The nicer theaters, white people go to, and there were signs that said white only, and the theaters that were not so nice, well, black people can go to. These theaters, swimming pools, the nicer ones like this one in Alabama said white only, but the swimming pools that were not so nice, black people could use those public swimming pools.

Restrooms, there were restrooms that were marked for white people and those that were marked for black people. And guess which of the two was the nicer. Of them. It was the ones for white people and those that were not so nice were for those that were black.

Water fountains, sometimes there was only one water fountain in a building and it was marked for white only, and then sometimes there were two water fountains and the nicer one was marked for those that were white and the one that was not so nice was marked for those that were not white. In terms of having seats on public transportation and the buses that ran, especially in the South, there was an allowance made for black people to have seats on the bus, but guess where the seats were located?

In the back of the bus. You can sit in here, but you sit in the back of the bus.

You can have a seat, but you sit in the lesser seats than we as white people are allowed to sit in. Waiting rooms. There were actually waiting rooms and hospitals and what have you and the nicer ones were, were for white people and those that were not so nice were for black people and sadly, sadly, In the church, you would think, well, things were different in the church, were they not? No, they were no different in the church across the country.

The church was just as segregated. The nicer churches belonged to the white people and the churches that were not so nice were attended by those that were black. And some of the more progressive states, as the 1900s rolled along. were progressive enough to allow black people to actually begin to attend their services, but black people had to sit in the balcony and could not mingle with those that were white.

What I want you guys to get a feeling for is that after slavery was abolished, the institution was destroyed, but the heart evil continued. It continued. You cannot legislate heart change. You can eliminate an evil institution, but you cannot legislate a dramatic heart change.

And so the evil of racism continued and was perpetuated over the next 100 years with not just the segregation. Don't just think of segregation, but it was a segregation in which there was white and black and whites were in the superior position. They always got the best of everything. This past week, and, and my, as I'm teaching my son, Benjamin in our history class, we, we're studying some of this stuff.

And I went on to YouTube.com this week and pulled up Martin Luther King's speech as he stood in Lincoln's Shadow in August of 1963. And, Yes. As I listened to the 11.5 minutes of his speech and just felt his heart cry once again, It's just really sad, the evils that, Black people endured not only while slavery was going on, but even after. Listen, listen to what he says 100 years after slavery is abolished.

He says 100 years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. 100 years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. And then listen to what he says. And, and, not every black person felt this way, but Martin Luther King began to express a dream as he stood there giving that speech and listen to his dream.

and it's a, it's a, it's a hard cry that the church should have been responsive to. He says, I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of what? A brotherhood. This is a man who lives in a society where whites view themselves as superior to blacks, and he's saying, I, I dream of a day when we're experiencing brotherhood where you guys receive us as brothers and we receive you as brothers.

He says, I have a dream that little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. Near the end of his speech, he says, with his faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. What he longed for, and by the way, this was not the dream of every black person. This was not Malcolm X's dream.

Malcolm X and others like him, dreamed of equal rights for blacks, but they didn't dream of brotherhood. Martin Luther King and others who followed him passionately, they wanted not just equal rights, just give us what other people have, but he also appealed to the conscience of white people everywhere and said, I dream of a day when we will look at one another and hold hands together and call each other brother and sister. That's what he dreamed. And sadly, He was speaking this in a nation that was full of churches.

That did not practice this brotherhood. Christian people who viewed themselves as superior to another race and did not receive them as brothers and sisters. Well, we've traveled some distance. We've talked about Ephesians 6, what the Bible says about slavery.

How then we should look at what's happened in our country in light of some of the things that we've seen. But what do we do with this? My goal is not to beat us all down this morning, but how do we respond to our history, That We observe here in our country. Let me throw a few things at you.

Number one, in terms of how to respond to our history, don't forget it. Don't forget it. We cannot afford to forget. I don't know if any of you are thinking, why are we rehashing this?

Isn't this in the past? Yeah. But we can't forget. What we allowed to happen in our country.

We also need to realize that these things are recent history. I was showing my son some of the pictures that I showed you and a couple of my children, and they looked at them like, that this is crazy. And their response, it, it just felt like, people were really dumb 400 years ago when this happened. But guys, this was in the lifetime of half of the people in our congregation.

When Martin Luther King stood in Lincoln's shadow in 1863, I was a one month old fetus in my mother's womb. So, I don't remember a lot of the details of it, but, But I was a living fetus when these things happened. And even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, that didn't solve people's heart problems, that created even new problems. And as I grew up in the Southeast, in South Carolina, in Georgia, and Florida, I, I witnessed a lot of racism.

In fact, it was not until We moved out to California back in 1988. When I attended Grace Community Church out here in California, it was the first church that I ever attended that had a black member. All of the churches that I had attended growing up were all white and we never even, most of us never stopped and said, what's wrong with this picture. One of the churches that I attended for three years in Albany, Georgia, after we left that church and moved away a few years later, the pastor of the church began to urge the congregation to allow a black man to become a member of that church.

This would have been in the late 70s, early 80s and the church split over that issue. One of the members of the deacon board stood up in a business meeting and said the day that this happens is the day that I'm out of here. And that church suffered a split over allowing a black man to Join and become a member. So we're talking about recent history.

And the reason it's important for us to know how recent it is, is I know for people in this congregation, these pictures that you saw, that's, it's ridiculous and it's unthinkable. But don't lose sight of the fact that we're, we're, we're 40 years away from that. And if we're 40 years on the other side of that, we could be only 40 years away from that evil again. And don't underestimate this, all of this stuff is a reminder of what's wrong with all of us, all of us.

If you would have gone to an average German in 1930 and said in 15 years, you're going to allow for the slaughter of 6 million Jews. Most of them would have laughed at you and said you're, you're insane. They had no idea how close they were to going to those depths with institutional racism and the evils and the hate that ensue from that. And so, let's not forget that this is recent history.

There are people in our church sitting in this room that bear in their own persons the scars and the wounds from mistreatment, the very mistreatments that we're talking about. We also need to respond to our history by confessing and renouncing any favoritism or prejudice that we find in us as we become aware of it. you can sit around and go, OK, do I have any of this in me? And I would encourage you to do that.

But what, most of the time we just, we notice it as it comes out and we're like, oh my goodness, I didn't know that was in me. James Ward was telling me yesterday that it's impossible given our history here in the United States, whether you're white or black or any other race, it's impossible to not be touched in some negative way by the race issue. And so when that stuff comes out, whether black or white or Asian or Native American or Hispanic, whatever, there's a lot of ugly history between all of the races, enough to confound things and And all of us have been touched by that.

And whenever any favoritism or prejudice or racism surfaces in our heart or comes out in our words that we renounce that and confess that.

And by the way, we're not just talking about racial prejudice and favoritism, but any favoritism and prejudice that we might show based on people's attractiveness or their wealth, their status, how they dress or how many teeth they have in their mouth, whether they have a home or not. I remember a few years ago taking a homeless man to breakfast at IHOP, and at the time I had been going to IHOP every week for breakfast, with, a guy in our church, and I knew the workers there and knew how they normally treated us, but when I brought this homeless man in, I watched the waitress and how she treated him, very stern, closed.

I, I couldn't believe the difference. I didn't even recognize that waitress.

And as I watched her face, I realized, what, my face has looked exactly like that before. I have been guilty of showing that same favoritism and prejudice as I see in her. And so we confess and renounce it when it shows up. And then also, folks, our ugly history provides us in the church a wonderful, beautiful, unique opportunity.

and that is for all of us to work together to help make this church a multiethnic church that experiences true oneness. And what, we have that to a large degree here. people of all races who are in this congregation where we do experience unity with one another, that, but what, we can grow, we can do better than what we have done. We have much to learn and all of us should have open hearts before the Lord and say, God, let's, we, we want to pursue this.

We want to show the world your greatness by how we love one another without regard to the ethnic distinctions that once divided us. what, guys, this is not just Martin Luther King's dream. This was Paul's dream. This was the dream of Jesus Christ for the church.

In fact, it's one of the significant reasons why Jesus died. Look at this. Paul in Ephesians 2 is speaking to Jews and Gentiles who once hated each other, ethnically diverse, culturally different, had nothing to do with one another. Before Christ, the Jews hated the Gentiles, didn't want to touch them, didn't want to touch anything that the Gentiles had already touched.

In fact, if they knew a Gentile had touched a piece of pottery that a Jew is now touching, the Jew would go wash his hands. They wanted nothing to do with the Gentiles, and the Gentiles often wanted nothing to do with the Jews. They hated one another, and Jesus came and died on. Cross.

Look what Paul says, for Jesus Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing in his flesh the enmity, which is the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in himself, he might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross by it having put to death the enmity. Jesus died on the cross, not just to obliterate the enmity between us and God.

But to obliterate the distinctions and the enmity and the walls that separated us from one another, Jew and Gentile, black and white, Hispanic and all of the races. We, we are so divided naturally because of the evil that is in all of us, but in Christ, the cross brings us together, eliminates the walls between us, the hostility between us, and creates us into one new man.

We are a new race of people. And regardless of the color of our brothers and sisters, hear me well, we are all more deeply and profoundly brothers and sisters of one another in Christ than we are even brothers and sisters of our earthly siblings. We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism. We have so much in common.

We are a new race of people. There are no hyphenated Christians. We are one race. We trace our lineage back to the second Adam, Jesus Christ, and we are profoundly related to one another through that.

Listen to Paul's dream as he expressed it. He couldn't believe his good fortune to be the one who gets to spread this news. And I give you a literal reading of this on the screen here. He says, to me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given to preach to the ethnicities, the unfathomable riches of Christ, literally, verse 10, so that the multicolored wisdom of God might now be made known through the church.

Paul says, I, I, I get to go to all the ethnicities, all the races, and preach the riches of Jesus Christ, and, and the riches of Jesus Christ through the cross brings these ethnicities together into one, so that now in the church, through the church, the multicolored wisdom of God can be displayed. Guys, you want to show off to the world the greatness of God? Let us have a multi ethnic unity. I, I, God is glorified to a degree, but he's not all that glorified by a bunch of white people getting along with each other.

Or a bunch of black people getting along with each other, or a bunch of Hispanic people getting along with each other, or a bunch of Asians getting along with each other. But you put all of them together with their cultural differences, the historical issues that create complications, even in our country, you put us all together and then we're loving one another and experiencing oneness through the cross, that shows the multicolored wisdom of God. And the world looks at that and says, there's no natural explanation for what I see happening in that church.

In light of our ugly history, folks, in light of our ugly history, we have an incredible opportunity.

To allow God to do a great work of creating a multi-ethnic unity. In our midst. And as we mingle and become unified with one another, In the church in this way, we come to experience God's love in ways that we would never fully experience. If we were just hanging out with people just like us or our own race.

Right after Paul speaks of God's multicolored wisdom being displayed from the ethnicities being together, he then says to the saints in Ephesus, he says, I pray that you will be able to comprehend in relationship with all the saints, all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ. As you guys are all together, you will come to know the fullness of Christ's love. As you experience this relationship with each other. Let me close with this quote from Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Washington.

Grew up in Alabama, a black man, horribly treated, grew up hating white people. so much so that he started playing football and he played as a linebacker, I believe, for the Dallas Cowboys and the Seattle Seahawks, and what he loved about football was it enabled him the opportunity to hit and hurt white people legally. That's what he, he says that in his testimony. That's what he loved, but God saved him, began to change his heart, and, he now pastors a church that is full of white people.

And he has learned to love his brothers and sisters without regard to their race. And listen to what he says. He says, if I have an all white church or an all-black church, I am missing what God has put into the other group that could bless and complete and help my fellowship. I also become less Sensitive, less tolerant, less willing to bend or stretch, less willing to move out of my comfort zone.

If I'm in a church of all alikes, I don't have to depend on the Holy Spirit to make me sensitive to the needs of my brother or sister from a different background and culture. I am less diminished. My heart is left smaller. And so there, there's power, there's beauty, we experience God's love, we show forth his multicolored wisdom to the world as we experience the multi-ethnic unity, which is part of why Jesus died.

He died so that we could experience this in the church. And so let's open our hearts even further to the Lord, to this reality and say, God, thank you for the unity we enjoy here at Cornerstone, but we open our hearts to you and we ask you, Lord, take us even further. So that we might show the world the truth about you. And the glory of your multicolored wisdom.