Savage Street Church of Christ

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11262017WhatAboutRacismDonRuhl

What About Racism?

Acts 17.26–29

Don Ruhl • Savage Street, Grants Pass, Oregon • November 26, In the year of our Lord, 2017

Prelude:

1. It is written,

   26 “God] has made from one [man] every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising” (Acts 17.26–29).
   

2. When I was growing up “racism,”
   1. was not the popular term, but
   2. “prejudice” was.
      1. Prejudiced meant that you made a judgment about someone
      2. based on the behavior of some others in that person’s group,
         1. whether of a different skin tone or language or something else, but
         2. you judged that person to be like the others before knowing him.
3. Have you noticed that everything seems to be racist these days?
   1. The term is thrown around so much, so easily
   2. that it will soon lose its power.
      1. Like the boy who cried, Wolf!,
      2. people will ignore the real charge when someone makes it.
         1. I thought that our nation had made great progress on this issue, but
         2. someone put us back decades.

Persuasion:

1. There Is Only One Race
   1. Technically, you cannot have racism at all, because
      1. we are all the same race,
      2. the human race, for
         1. we have all descended from Grandpa Adam and Grandma Eve,
         2. or even closer in time, from Father and Mother Noah.
   2. However, it is my judgment that the teaching of evolution
      1. has promoted the belief that there are different races of people.
      2. Just think of the full title of Charles Darwin’s book,
         1. which most people know as, The Origin of Species, but
         2. in those days book titles tended to be long.
            1. The full title actually reads,
               
               The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
               
      3. Clear back in 1868 and 1869 Sir Archibald Geikie observed:
         
         “… what specially struck me was the universal sway which the writings of Darwin now exercise over the German mind” (Nature, November 4, 1869, Vol. 1, p. 22).
         
         1. You know the result of that German thinking.
         2. Unfortunately it is going on here in America.
   3. You will see that Acts 17 affirms that we have all come from one man.
      1. We in the church need to remind ourselves of what Paul said here.
         1. The world needs to hear what Paul said, for
         2. the world is tearing itself apart through hatred of other people groups.
      2. Also, what I am about to read to you,
         1. even evolutionists to a certain degree believe.
         2. I will explain the difference
            1. between the evolutionist and the creationist
            2. after I read part of Paul message,
               
               26 “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising” (Acts 17.26–29).
               
      3. First, Paul revealed that every nation of people on all the face of the earth.
         1. have come from one,
         2. a way of referring to Adam.
      4. Second, the Lord let each nation have its own time and boundaries.
      5. Third, the Lord so arranged the history of every nation that the people in that nation might seek Him.
      6. Fourth, every nation
         1. has the capability to find God, because
            1. He is not far from us,
            2. we live in Him,
            3. we move in Him,
            4. we have our being in Him.
         2. Paul quoted a non-Hebrew poet, since the Grecian poet saw this truth.
      7. Fifth, we are like God.
         1. We are all the children of God, and
         2. we can see that we are gold or silver or stone or something man invented, and
         3. so it is with God.
            1. He is not gold, silver, stone, or the invention of man.
            2. No, God is spirit and so are we.
      8. Hebrew prophets and Greek poets recognized
         1. that we all have something common in the flesh.
         2. Both evolutionists and creationists affirm the same thing.
            1. The different between the two is this:
               1. Evolutionists say, Out of Africa;
               2. creationists say, Out of Mesopotamia.
            2. Evolutionists believe that every human on earth
               1. descended from an Eve in Africa.
            3. Creationists believe that every human on earth
               1. descended from Eve around the Garden of Eden,
               2. located in northwestern modern Iraq.
   4. My point is this:
      1. There is not a black race and a white race,
      2. nor all the alleged races in between.
         1. Every single male on this earth is my brother.
         2. Every single female on this earth is my sister.
   5. At the Tower of Babel humanity did something that it should not have done.
      1. After the Flood,
         1. God told Noah and the successive generations
         2. these words, which later generations rebelled against,
            
            1 So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 9.1).
            
      2. In Genesis 11,
         1. Moses said that everyone spoke the same language.
         2. They decided to dwell in the area we now know as Babylon.
            1. Then they made a decision
            2. that cursed the world with multiple languages,
               
               “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11.4).
               
      3. God prevented humanity from ever doing that again
         1. by dividing the people up into language groups.
         2. Then people migrated all over the earth and
            1. we are still migrating.
            2. In time, those different groups,
               1. as they reproduced,
               2. had dominant traits, and
                  1. various ones did better in the various climates and
                  2. sunlight areas of the earth.
                     1. And they may have spread for different reasons also.
                     2. Genesis 10.5 makes sense now,
                        
                        From these the coastland peoples of the Gentiles were separated into their lands, everyone according to his language, according to their families, into their nations (Genesis 10.5).
                        
                     3. Genesis 11 explained why this happened.
      4. My point being this:
         1. In the episode of the history of the earth
         2. where we learn why and how the peoples became different,
            1. Moses by the Holy Spirit never referred to them as races, but
            2. languages, families, and nations.
   6. In Matthew 24.30 Jesus referred to the tribes of the earth.
      1. Compare that with the references to the twelve tribes of Israel.
         1. The tribes of Israel were all of one race,
         2. if I can use that term temporarily,
            1. they all came from Jacob or Israel.
            2. Yet, looking at them there may have been little difference.
   7. Revelation 7.9 says
      1. that the numbers in heaven saved from the earth
      2. will consist of all
         1. nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues.
         2. The record says nothing of races.
2. The Church and Different People
   1. The Bible recognizes these different groups and
      1. while they wanted to stay as one in their own way,
      2. disregarding the Lord’s instructions on spreading over the earth,
         1. the Lord still seeks to bring people together in His way.
         2. He is the Creator, He can bring it about as He pleases.
   2. Therefore, of all the different tribes, nations, and languages of the earth,
      1. He chose one man through whom He would bless the rest of the world.
      2. Anyway, why did the different language groups go where they did?
         1. We can answer on at least one.
         2. After the Lord broke up the people at the Tower of Babel,
            1. you will read this in Genesis 11,
               
               31 And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt there (Genesis 11.31).
               
            2. The rest of the story of the Old Testament follows this man Abram,
               1. later known as Abraham, and
               2. the family and nation that grew out of His family.
            3. Why did they leave the coastal area of Iraq and
               1. head for the Land of Canaan,
               2. which we now know as Israel?
      3. The story continues, answering that very question,
         
         1 Now the LORD had said to Abram:

         “Get out of your country,
         From your family
         And from your father’s house,
         To a land that I will show you.
         2 I will make you a great nation;
         I will bless you
         And make your name great;
         And you shall be a blessing.
         3 I will bless those who bless you,
         And I will curse him who curses you;
         And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
         (Genesis 12.1–3)
         

         1. Yahweh God had told Abram to leave that area.
            1. He wanted Abram to move to the Land of Canaan.
            2. There the Lord would turn Abram’s family into a nation
               1. for the purpose that He stated
               2. at the very end of those instructions,
                  1. that in Abram, or the nation that would arise from him,
                  2. God would bless all the families of the earth.
   3. When you come to the New Testament,
      1. you discover that
      2. Jesus of Nazareth,
         1. the forgiveness He offers, and His church
         2. fulfill of the promise of Genesis 12.
   4. Among the Books of the New Testament that address this issue,
      1. showing that we all come together in the church
      2. is the Book of Galatians.
         1. In chapter 2, Paul set the tone when he divulged that Peter, a Jew,
         2. would associate with Gentiles,
            1. until he saw some other Jews coming from Jerusalem,
            2. then Peter would pull away from the Gentiles and
               1. associate only with Jews.
               2. Paul rebuked Peter for it.
      3. As you move into chapter 3,
         1. Paul introduces Abraham and the promises God gave him,
            
            8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed” (Galatians 3.8).
            
         2. Having shown God’s intention all along
            1. to include all the nations of the earth,
            2. Paul argued further,
               
               26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3.26–29).
               

Exhortation:

1. Jesus is not about characteristics of the flesh,
   1. such as the tone of your skin.
   2. If you use Jesus or the Bible to justify prejudice, you do not know God.
2. Peter said that we should speak as the oracles of God (1Pe 4.11), or
   1. another way of putting is
   2. speak as the Bible speaks.
      1. Therefore, we are not different races of man, but
      2. we are all equally creations of God.
3. God Himself will separate people at the coming Judgment,

   31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats” (Matthew 25.31–32).