How to Pastor Amidst Racial Strife

2:17And Kevin, my wife and I had not married at that point. I shared a house with four other guys in a sort of a dig setup. And he phoned me and he told me what happened. And my wife, to be and her mother and brother, were in the church at that time. So, what followed was a horrendous night of trying to find out if Gigi was still alive and if her mother and brother were alive. And I knew that I would never get anywhere near the church.

2:46And it was etched to my memory. But the very next Sunday, the church still held a service. And the pastor, well, it was Bishop Frank Ratif, as I say, it was Church of England. Who is an evangelical church in South Africa? He preached probably the, it was probably the most profound presentation of the gospel I've ever heard. The church was full. There were over 1,500 people there. There were still large craters in the aisles. There were still nails in the wall. There was still blood on the carpet. And he preached the sermon, and he said one thing: he said, the gospel will prevail. He said, Christ will build his church. And he presented the gospel and exhorted that in none of us as Christians should the root of bitterness grow up, but rather we should be marked by forgiveness. All those who died were solid believers and they were now with the Lord. We will see them again. And so this sermon was, I would say, a changing point in my life because I realized that if you know Christ and if you realize what you deserve and the judgment you deserve, you have no cause for hatred and bitterness.

3:58And so nobody in that church actually sank into bitterness at all. Because that is not the way of the gospel of Christ. We knew, and it became so stark and clear to me on that day, that he who had purchased our salvation and the price that he had paid was of infinite value, more than anything that humans could do on earth. And we just knew that so clearly. This terrorist act was not outside of his sovereign purposes. I don't know the reasons. But as the pastor preached that night, he had sufficient good reason to put his glory on display at this event, and we needed to rest and be content in that. Now, if that isn't a perspective in the gospel that the way it should be, then I don't know what is. And I think the question then is that certainly comes up with this backdrop of the racial tension in the society when I live. And St. James, by the way, it was called the St. James Massacre because it was the first time a church in South Africa had been attacked. But since then, there have been many racial incidents.

5:06Black people dying, white people dying, all kinds of people dying in this violent society. Death knows no color. It really does. But how do we maintain unity in the light of such terrible events? And so I think as I look at this, I just wanted to maybe, I mean, we could go and talk about the fact that we could go to Genesis and we could look at the fact that we all come ultimately from one race. We could go to Acts 17. We could look at that. We could go to Romans 5, which is a profound passage that we're all of Adam and Christ is a second Adam. But I just want to probably mention three points to maybe put a sort of a theological foundation to this. And then we'll look at some practical aspects of how we actually implement this. The first point is this, and I think this needs to be very clear. This is very clear from Scripture. Is that Christ and the gospel, if you like, is not a respecter of persons. What do I mean by that? Well, if you look at John's Gospel, there's an interesting chapter, chapter 9, where Jesus actually, in this section of the Gospel, in chapter 9, you see the contrast between those that received Christ and those who did not. And so a new people are being called out in this section of John's Gospel. And so the first event ever related by John is a rejected man, a social outcast, a man blind from birth, a beggar, a blind beggar at the temple. He's an outcast. He's socially unaccepted by people in Jerusalem. Everyone had rejected him. His family rejected him. And even the disciples condescendingly referred to him as a sinner, which is kind of a derogatory term in terms of a Jewish person referring to this beggar. And so, as you see in this dialogue in John chapter 9, you can see how the society at large is radically divided. It's a religious world, but the leaders evaluate people. This is a man born blind, and later we're told he was born this way so that God's glory could be displayed through him. But to the society, he was the dregs. He was a social outcast, and no one would have contact with him, let alone touch him as Jesus chose to do.

7:31And so we need to remember that even as you read the Bible, it was a radically divided world between Jew and Gentile. Even among the Jews themselves, there were many divisions. There was racial hatred. And so you see Jesus come in John chapter 9 and he touched him and he placed clay on the eyes of the man. I mean, he touched him. The Jews would never do that because they'd be unclean. And he placed clay on the eyes of this man and he healed them. healed this man and this man had never seen the light of day for his entire life and so the blind man the picture was this blind man who was utterly lost and he was not capable of seeing jesus and so we we realize the lesson certainly very clearly is that sinful man can't save himself he cannot see god and if jesus had not initiated his healing and restoration he would have remained in this lost condition for the rest of his life and so the main point of john 9 is the fact that jesus is the light of the world he is go incarnate god incarnate was put on display and so salvation came to the man that day now if any of you know christ you should be able to relate to that blind man but for the grace of christ you would have remained separated from God and it was simply the mercy and the kindness of Christ through the mercy and kindness of Christ that you are saved through no merit of your own and so what I'd submit to you then that the starting point For any racial harmony, obviously then, it's just a simple question: Are you saved? Are you saved? You've got to begin there. Have you been saved in the same way that this utterly lost blind man experienced the grace of Christ on that day? No family, no neighbors, no pastors, no government would receive him. Who was left? Only the Lord Jesus Christ. It was Christ who sought him out and received him when no one else would receive him or even rejoice in his healing. And so that's the main point of the passage. But there's an ironic twist in this passage which I just want us to look at. And this highlights the racial, put it this way, difficulties and differences and ethnic, even religious differences that existed in Jesus' day. So just turn to John chapter 9, verse 25. And here you see this dialogue between the seeing Pharisees, the religious leaders, puffed up in their pride over their positional superiority, and they question this man who has been healed by Christ. And John 9:25, the man answers and he says, Whether he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I do know that though I was blind, now I see. Now, watch this dialogue. So they said to him, What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? And so he answered them. He said, I told you already, and you do not listen. Why do you not want to hear it again? You do not want to become his disciples, too, do you? Verse 28, they reviled him and they said, You are his disciple, but we are the disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he is from. The man answered and says, Well, here's an amazing thing: that you do not know where he is from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is God-fearing and does his will, he hears him. Since the beginning of time, it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. And look how they answered. They answered him, You are born entirely in sins. In other words, you're a sinner, and you're teaching us. And so they put him out. And so the words left ringing in this passage is they put him out. And so the unbelieving religious world in John 9 put people out. And so they make distinctions between people on the basis of wrongful belief and hearts that are full of pride. And this is where the problem comes in. Right? The Pharisees, not knowing the heart of God, not even in the Old Testament, did not even know what to make of this. They consider themselves better than this blind man. They were more qualified than this blind man. And this man is blind. He's in this social outcast condition, which must mean that I'm better than this man. That's what it means. We must be God's favored ones. God would never put him in. Place his love on such a worthless person. But thanks be to God that God is not like them. So if we're saved like that bad man, that blind man was saved, and by Christ alone, we no longer evaluate any person on any external basis according to the paradigms of the day, as the Pharisees did that blind man in John chapter 9. And so, as believers, in a real sense, we should see the light of the world. That is Jesus Christ. And yet, in another sense, we ought to become blind to the societal and cultural thought patterns that would seek to divide us. We should be blind to those things. Because we know what grace was given to us. I know when I was sitting in that church with bullet holes through the pews and nails in the walls, I knew what grace had been given to me. I knew it. I felt it. I understood it. And what the culture claims today really doesn't matter. What race-based organizations say today does not matter. What the government does or does not do, it does not matter. But in Christ, we develop into a distinct community, externally diverse, but set apart by the gospel of Christ. And then by that same gospel, internally, we ought to have our minds transformed and not be molded by the philosophy of this world, but to be able, as Tom referred to, but to be able to be genuinely, genuinely to love one another. And test and live out the will of the one true God of the Bible. And so, I think the first point, then, if you're making notes, is that's really that point, that Christ is not a respecter of persons in any way. And so, neither should we. Neither should we. The second point, then, is recognize that, really, in effect, there are only two families on this earth. There's only really two families in this earth. Scripture must move us, move us to live out the world, the word of God. You know, we can talk about our experiences all day, what's happened to us in this situation or that situation, but we really have to move beyond that and we have to apply the word to our daily life. And so, if you're under the blood of Jesus Christ and this by his grace alone, then you should live this out because you are of his family. And you need to realize that in 1 John, for example, chapter 3, John tells us there only, in reality, there are only two families in this world: those who belong to Christ and those who do not. Just turn to 1 John chapter 3. There, I'm not going to read the whole passage, but I'm just going to read verse 10 because of time. But I would encourage you to read the whole of chapter 3 of 1 John so you can understand the context. So, I'll give that to you. But I'm just going to read verse 10 here. And he says, This in 1 John 3:10: By this, the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not. Of God, nor the one who does not have love from his, sorry, who does not have, who does not love his brother. And so you see here in this passage, John makes really two distinctions. This verse is really a summary and conclusion of everything that what has gone before, and it's a transition to what follows. And you see here, John's purpose is to supply a final test, if you like, a test of salvation by which two groups are recognized, or two families are recognized. And there are only two families in this world. There are not three. There's not one. This is very plain. It's pretty straightforward. They are really the children of God. And who else does the passage tell you? The children of the devil. That's it. And so John wrote this in a multicultural society, right? Where there were great divisions of class and status and race. And when he gets to writing 1 John, he recognized at the deepest level, at the spiritual level, there are only two families in this world. No external differences are mentioned in 1 John 3. Simply that God, by his mercy, has bestowed on us a membership of one family, his family in Christ, calling us out of the other family that exists in the world, and that is the family of Satan. So in reality, there are only two families in this world. And knowing that is crucial to living out the gospel in your daily life. Not only do you think that is the same thing. Does this mean that cultural distinctions, I mean, there are cultural distinctives between us, so this doesn't mean those things are eliminated, but we need to realize that the greatest and the most deepest level is that there are only two families in this world, and those are the children of God and the children of Satan. And when I say that cultural distinctives are not eliminated by God anyway, just turn across to Revelation 5, verse 9. Just look at verse 9.

17:03Revelation 5, verse 9. This is what it says. And they sang a new song, saying, Worthy are you to take the book and to break its seals, for you were slain and purchase for God, purchase for God with your blood. Now, notice this: men from what? Every tribe, and tongue, and people and nation. Verse 10, you made them to be a kingdom and priest to our God, and they will reign upon this earth. And so, you can see here, and even in Revelation, once again, John, it's recognized as he writes this down, as he writes down what he's told to write down, is that tribal tongue, language, and distinctions are not necessarily going to even be eliminated in heaven. They won't be eliminated. There's nothing wrong with these distinctions, cultural distinctions.

17:52And so, that's a critical thing to realize: that even though cultural distinctions remain, they are only ultimately two. Families on earth, and those are the children of God and the children of Satan. The third point, just maybe a theological point I want to make here, is that we have to realize something else. And the third point is this: is realize oppression will reign until Christ returns. Did you get that? Oppression will reign until Christ returns. We're not going to be on this earth, we will not be apart from oppression in some way or another. This is a very real reality.

18:33Answer this question: Do you think that we will be free from oppression in this world? No, of course not. Will there always be injustice in this world? Of course. Will there be any government that will come along and change the oppression in this world? Not at all. Now, if you answer those questions biblically, you know that without Christ, sin will always dominate any culture, doesn't matter what it is. And so you have to say that oppression and injustice will always exist in culture. But there's another very important question: Should it exist in the body of Christ? And the answer is no, definitely not. It should not. So, thinking biblically, then, Christ's own ought to be counter-cultural and distinct. As I referred to before, that doesn't mean the tribes will disappear, and now some of our distinctness disappear. We all have certain non-moral cultural characteristics. That remain part of God's glorious creation, so that people groups and tribes are still identifiable in Revelation 5, and they worship God together. But yet it does mean that we form one body in Christ, and in the power of Christ together, we are able to transcend external differences, worshiping Him with one song.

19:54If this is what we are to do in heaven one day, then this is what we ought to be doing in the church now, as a foretaste of the glorious hope of the fulfillment that is to come. And so we need to also be warned because if prideful judgment of another person is exercised by us purely on the basis of external characteristics or class or social status or what is called racism of any kind, we need to be even warned as a church, as Peter warns the church in 1 Peter 4:17, where he says that judgment begins with where? The house of the Lord. In other words, God will chastise his people as such a thing ought not to be among those who name the name of Christ as their Savior, Christ as their brother. God will purge and he will cleanse his church, and that can be a painful purging. But if you love Christ, you will want nothing more to say, as I said this morning on that day. Well done, my good and faithful servant. Now, as the redeemed body of Christ, there are many passages that inform us then. What this redeemed body should look like, what the new heart, what the new nature ought to look like. And I don't have a lot of time to get through all of it today, but I just exhort you to read Ephesians 4, 1 to 6, Romans 12, 9 to 21. And you can see then how we should behave as one body in Christ. But I just want to talk about some just about three things now, maybe just three practical realities so that we can maintain unity in Christ. The first thing is this: you've got to recognize that racism is the result of human sin. You've got to realize that. The nature of man's heart is continually evil. Jeremiah 17:9, the heart is more deceitful than anything else and is desperately sick. Who can understand it? And verse 10 says, I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, and I give each man according to his ways. And so the question you have to ask is then, how has sin impacted the group that I identify with? Because if sin is all over, and if man is depraved, then sin is obviously going to impact whatever group you identify with. And so you have to examine your own heart and make sure you take ownership of your own personal biases. If you have racial biases, then determine the origin of those biases. And you'll find that the root ultimately is going to be pride. If someone Says they have no pride. If anyone came to me tonight and they said, Well, I don't have any pride, and I'll say, Well, we must be in heaven already. That's amazing. Because we all have it. Deep down, the root is pride. And so you have to ask, How can I counteract these biases? Well, the first step is to be fully aware of the biases of the group that you might identify with, and then bring them under scrutiny of the Word of God. And so realize that racism is the result of human sin.

23:02Secondly, consider cultural differences in relation to your own. We have many cultural differences in South Africa, right? Many. There are many differences. And so the simple thing is where we see that none of these differences contradict the Word of God, then really I ask you, and we instruct ourselves not to develop an arrogance or pride over these differences. Rather, see them as preferences. Biblically, then, where the practice does not obviously contradict the scripture, then we need to understand it and accept it rather than consider ourselves more superior in some way or another. The second thing is, don't make it your mission to correct things, correct things foreign to your culture that don't contradict the Bible. In other words, have a godly biblical response to cultural differences. Don't maximize or minimize a cultural difference. With the goal of thinking that, well, we do things in a better way. All right? Rather, maximize Christ. All right? Have an attitude of humility. Learn to seek and serve one another. Romans 12, verse 7 says, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. And so, practically, this means don't walk into a situation and think, well, obviously, I've got all the answers because I come from this culture and I'm going to save the world.

24:31Rather than have a parent attitude, you need to develop a partner attitude when it comes to cross-cultural relations. And so, when we look across the room, yes, there are cultural differences, but don't allow them to become the motivation for relating to another believer. And so, we acknowledge this is where you come from, but now in Christ, this is who we are together. In other words, don't minimize or maximize the cultural differences, but rather magnify Christ in your life and seek to magnify Christ in the lives of others. And so, don't use cultural difference as a pretext for distinction and sinful pride. Rather, use the eyes of Christ and look upon the heart and seek to maximize the formation of Christ in each person that you meet. And if you're chosen by Christ, then put on humility, put on gentleness, put on compassion and kindness. This is what Paul tells us to do. Colossians chapter 3, bearing with one another and forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, also should you. And so that's a practical application right there. And that's my third point. You need to prepare for misunderstandings and misjudgments. It's going to happen. In any church in South Africa where there's black, white, Indian people, all kinds of people, there are going to be misunderstandings. All right? And often when there's a politically charged situation in society and it's in the media and it reaches a peak, you know, it comes into the church. And so people are sensitized and they adopt wrong attitudes. And the danger is you totally miss the gospel.

26:15And so what happens is, you know, you need to realize people make mistakes in the church. They say wrong things. They seem culturally insensitive. And they can be hurtful because we can create a false standard of our righteousness. And so we don't give grace for failure. And we don't allow time for repentance in other persons. And so you need to remember we're all in different places of sanctification. We forget that Jesus had to show us mercy and he had to forgive us. I was not even able to do that on my own. Jesus is now continually working on me and he's sanctifying me daily. So before you hold someone to a higher expectation of what you feel is the standard from your culture, We need to realize you can't even meet that standard in your own family. You can't even do that. And remember how Christ forgives you and continually grants you forgiveness, grace, and mercy. So don't be surprised then if biases rear up their ugly heads. Be realistic in the church. Misunderstandings will occur.

27:20If you remember, Peter, when he wrote Peter, he wrote 1 Peter in a very difficult situation. Christians were about to undergo a fiery trial. They were about to be persecuted. And when there's huge pressure in a society, the tendency is to take sides, the tendency is to forget the gospel. And if you just turn quickly to 1 Peter 4, verses 7 to 10, here are our marching orders in a situation, even of a racially charged society. Here it is. These are the marching orders that we ought to follow as Christians. 1 Peter 4, verses 7 to 10. The end of all things is near. That is critical. Right? You ought to realize the end of all things is near. How do you want Christ to find your church? Full of racial division or full of brotherly love? The end of all things is near. Therefore, be of sound judgment and of sober spirit for the purpose of prayer. Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another. Do you hear that? That's what you've got to do in situations of extreme pressure, of persecution. Of trial. You'd almost think that Peter would say, pick up your weapons and go and kill the other side. Do what you can. No, these Christians are under this kind of pressure. That's who he's writing to. He says, be fervent. Keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers over a multitude of sins. And then he says, This, be hospitable to one another without complaint. Wow, try that. Reach across the cultural barriers and be hospitable. As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. And so if there's misunderstandings, they will, sure, we're going to get misunderstandings in our church. There are situations where they will offend you in some way or another. There are times when I've offended brothers in our church because I was culturally insensitive about something, and it's not a gospel issue. It's not a moral issue. And so I've had to go on to them and say, sure, they'll come to me and they say, well, you said this and this. I remember I had a Bible study, and we broke up into groups in the church. And I looked at the names on the list, and I put seven names in one group, and I just looked at the names and I put them in various groups. And then we discussed a passage. And then one of the brothers came to me and he said, Did you do that on purpose? I said, Did I do what on purpose? Did you put us seven black guys in one group? Group.

30:02I didn't even seen that. I haven't even seen it, right? I just saw the names on the list. And so this brother felt quite offended. He thought that I'd done this on purpose. And so I said to him, Brother, I'm really sorry if I offended you. That wasn't my intention. Can you forgive me for that? I wasn't thinking. Because we live in a racially charged environment. And so that's fine. He said, oh, I understand. And so you've got to speak to people, right? And so fervent love should mark our walk in situations like this. A fervent love should mark our walk in unkind comments. We need to be, if you read 1 Peter there again, we need to be good stewards of what? Of the manifold grace of God, of Christ.

30:47Sorry, the manifold grace of God, the grace of Christ, which He has lavished on us. He's lavished that grace on us, has he not? And so we need to lavish that same grace on our brother or sister, even across the cultural barriers. And if needed, we need to talk to that brother or sister in humility. All right? So we have the situation in South Africa where racism now, even now, is being whipped up, and it affects all of us.

31:16My children experience it every week at the university, and some will argue that the country is more polarized than before. But the minute that you take sides as a believer and you place your affiliation with one race group. Or another race group, you've just missed the gospel. You've just missed the gospel. And it's important that your affiliation to the kingdom of his son is held high. Because when you affiliate yourself with one of these groups that are politically and racially charged, we lose what becomes the center of our focus is an issue that detracts us from the gospel. It totally detracts us from the gospel. We cannot be like the world. And when these things come center, the central concern of the gospel in the world is lost. And we cannot lose that. We need to be a spirit-transformed people, making disciples for Jesus Christ. That is what our marching orders are. The prince of the power of the air, Satan himself, promotes these things. But remember, don't forget, there's only two families in the world.

32:20So this is important. So I just want to leave a bit of time here for any questions. I don't know if there's any questions. Just those three points again. Recognize that racism is the result of human sin. Consider cultural differences in relation to your own, and then just prepare for misunderstandings and misjudgments in the church. It's going to happen.