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00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] let's open the word of prayer lord we uh thank you that your people are gathered here today we ask that your spirit is here you ask from humility whatever i say lord comes from you and not from man and lord this is a difficult topic we are there with some humility and really to have the spirit just prompt us and we say this in jesus name amen i need water one minute uh i had to run back home to get my powerpoint just give me a minute i'm starting a monthly series on i have this struggle let me just tell
00:01:01 you on people call it gospel-centeredness i always wondered what does it mean when you say gospel-centeredness so i want to do a series about the gospel and what we call everyday issues so today let me take an issue which i think is very relevant to all of us and it is this issue ah hot potato now let me let me just begin on one thing have you ever met a person who admitted he was racist nobody admits his racist but everybody acknowledges is a problem so there is your dichotomy now there are two types of sins the bible talks about
00:01:48 one very obvious sins you still you commit adultery then there's the other scenes which are very subtle i i propose this is one of those and whenever you meet someone who says that i think you're racist he'll give you a long story how his friends are chinese indian got many friends how can you say i'm racist so i want to explore this a little bit and i'll go and show a few slides to get me this point okay um this is a very old movie carries if you're there you will notice all you young people you may not it came out in
00:02:17 1961 very famous movie how many of you know this movie or some of the old people some of the younger more educated people does now there's one character in there which is very controversial which is this character mr yunoshi hi now of course you can tell it's played by a white guy uh he got gong teeth you know now of course when he came out 1961 and here's my point people had no issues as he went on it became to be seen as racial stereotype he got so worked up about it years later he issued a statement
00:03:01 you can get in wikipedia never in all the 40 years after we made it not one complaint every place i got in the world people say you're funny asians and chinese come up to me and say mickey you out of this world rooney also said they had known people offended i wouldn't have done it those they didn't like it i forgive them wow god bless america god bless the indians god bless japanese chinese indians all of them and let's have peace you can tell the reactionary so i want to show you the character in this
00:03:27 reality and the reason why their live services is that we want you to engage i want you to tell me whether you think is a racist stereotype this is exactly how it looks like how many of you think is a racist portrayal of a chinese or japanese what none of you are all too polite seriously or none of you think is the racist portrayal you don't think it's a stereotype portrayer okay seriously how many of you think there is a racist or stereotypical portrayal of a asian come on raise your hands okay we have
00:04:01 fuel we have a few we yes correct it is no but here is the point how do you look at it i want to take you through a bit of history and then we're going to go to the text okay you go back it's even worse you know um all of these open sources are in the 19th century this is how they portray chinese you know and we look carefully at the bottom line very it's very not very clear it says church and state the chinese opium then which are driven under the police the police are all tied up are broken up by the priests wow the
00:04:32 church is the one who broke up the opium then of the chinese and in case you didn't really see how the chinese look like this exactly actually how you look like you know i mean that's how they think you look like now not only that let's take a picture of this you try to post a picture like this now to indian friends today you see what happens to you on social media but during that time no problem so here's a question to you have we gotten less racist and is it due to the actions of the church in action of the church or if the church
00:05:09 complicit in it today we have another form of racial tension going on and nothing says it more than this matter and this issue is very sensitive to christians because if you're what we call center right or far right christians should have nothing to do with this because it's atheists run by democrats god's not in it is pro-lgbtq you just go on youtube a lot of people say so here's the question but they did a pure research on this you know and in pure research on this black americans say topics such as race
00:05:44 relations should be a priority for summers white americans disagree and you'll find the percentage of evangelical black christians who would attend a black lives matter is double of that of whites look at the percentage you look at black partisans 62 white evangelical 39 undeflated 61 black white 32 is double so religion and race is very connected now more damning is this book this book is by a reformed scholar five point calvinist jamaat this be he's also and has a doctrine in race relations he
00:06:26 pushes it to say not only is the church not doing enough in raised relationship the church is complicit in aggravating racism kedera that means that if there are two types if you talk about racism non-christian and christian and you take a vote the christian in america is more racist now there's a hot potato huh i'm gonna take it to the local context in a while ah but let me just give you some history so you say how can look at people like wilberforce he fought against slavery is true you can talk about john newton william
00:07:04 wilberford john wesley now taba says they are more the exception than the rule and you do a very careful study through history majority or evangelical christians are racist let's start a little bit our founding fathers of prostitutism those of you who know your scripture and your history know that he was deeply anti-semitic the last few years before he died he wrote the knuckle tickle literally saying jews should not be given property he blasted jews for destroying germany and people who know the history knows
00:07:41 hitler used luther's article as the basis for the genocide go read it up there's some whitewashing attempt but there's history for you this is jonathan edwards father of what we know as the puritan fathers the great awakening he was a strong defender of slavery last years he wrote a small booklet to say maybe not for black's law you know blacks should belong to africa but slavery is okay you never seen a white guy being and slave during his time he had two slaves because he had two slaves he could study
00:08:12 now there's a long history long history about this but my point is when we take it locally and if i do a survey today and i say christian non-christian who is more racist and you throw it to the races out there i wonder what the statistics will come out remember jamal's book with gospel correlation had gotten very heavily into it that to deconstruct and study basically posits this you know evangelical christians are more racist than non-believers there's a very big indictment on us and i asked you this morning
00:08:50 for us in our relationship with the malays indians because many of you are chinese here do we have that same problem so it's a difficult topic i want us to just go through and it's indictment on myself we're going to look at this and let me just give you what is the solution and kanye west our future president candidate put it the best is there anybody here that can save no matter how much he hits it was the blood it was the blood it was the blood that cleansed me and you know what you may not like him
00:09:24 you may not like his rap his theology is correct it is only the blood of jesus that can break down hostilities between jews and gentiles and other races and we're going to look at that today so we're going to look at gospel and racism if you have bibles with it open up we're going to do a bit of reading and we're going to take ephesians 2 11 to 22. again open up your devices let's go [Music] this comes after a very famous text where paul tells us that we all been saved by grace and not by works so
00:09:56 that no one can boast early on chapter 1 he talks about how the gospel brings the whole creation under him remember that we're going to get to that and then immediately that he dies into this he starts off with the greek word duo which connects with earlier text therefore remember the formerly you who are gentiles by birth and caught uncircumcisions by those who call themselves the circumcision which is done by their body by human hands remember that at that time you were separate from christ excluded from
00:10:26 citizenship in israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope and without god in the world but now in christ jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of christ for he himself is our peace who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier the dividing wall of hostility but setting aside his flesh the law with his commands and regulation his purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two thus making peace and in one body to
00:11:01 reconcile both of them to god through the cross by which he put to death their hostility notice the word hostility comes out again he came and preached peace to you who are far away gentiles to peace to those who you're near the jews through him we both have access to the father and by one spirit what's the reason and here's the reason consequently you are no longer foreigners and strangers fellow citizens with god's people and also members of his household built on the foundation of the person's
00:11:28 prophets requires jesus himself the chief cornerstone in him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the lord and in him you two are being built together to becoming a dwelling in which god lives by his spirit a little bit of the generic if you read carefully two motifs come up motifs that means the background one is the motif of nationalism the commonwealth of country is citizenship he using what we call language of a country pr refugees citizens the second language
00:11:58 coming out is temple language the dividing world of hostility when you read it the jew understands this is the inner chord owner called gentile chord so he has two languages here and he has nationalism pick that up as we go through right we're going to go through four points the gospel the rules of racism the gospel responds to racism how racist are you and the gospel purpose of racial reconciliation and now this you know we live in the age where everything must be egalitarian one you know so the
00:12:31 christian is a bit on a push back and while we do this i my heart is mainly for the young people because the christian is seen as a bigot so you see years ago you do friends on the show you can have four white people you get away with it now cannot must have hispanic law must have black law must have a gay person maybe a disabled person also have you seen that and you must have representation so we are now in that that place and we got to see what scripture says about it but the first question i want
00:13:00 to ask is why do we have racism what gender generates that hate towards other people i mean sometimes you know like you you enter to live in a hotel you know and then another person enters from another community in a hotel center everybody will keep quiet [Music] they leave where you can see the little face very very sure cannot turn the smell hey chinese people you're very racial and you know let's go into that a little bit all right now you hear what he says we're going to take the first part and he sees the jews
00:13:36 and gentiles but i want to pick up the first line as we go therefore remember that formerly you were gentiles again before that the early 1-10 talks about salvation by grace okay we did in our sins when it comes to this and he says and caught uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision and then to add to it which is done in the body by human hands he's making a point that means people divided you by saying you were what you were uncircumcised and then he pushes it is that's not the kind of division he
00:14:07 wants the division the only division god looks at is you are separate from christ not that kind of division you see that the two are put in parallel one the human division is your circumcised i'm circumcised you're not i put a wall of hostility before you paul counter balances it that's that's not the kind of separation god you're looking at there's only one type of separation god and you all right let's pick that up all right and then what is the solution now in christ jesus your words were far
00:14:34 gentiles have been brought near by the blood of christ now what does it mean on circumcision you can go back to acts 10 we all know the story a big net comes down has all the food the chinese like to eat bad slaw that causes virus lah all the things are and peter says surely not i've never eaten anything in pure clean i don't take bakutei i don't take exotic food all of this and the voice speaks to him do not call anything impure god has made clean is god concerned about his diet habits it's not
00:15:10 and of course we do in matthew jesus says he declared all foods clean what is he saying because after this we have the story of him seeing cornelius what is god trying to tell peter as thick skin as he is as racist as it is as we are people are not unclean the only thing unclean going to the matthew text is what comes out of a person's heart that's what he's trying to say people are not unclean now galatians picks it up you are all sons of god through faith in christ jesus very famous verse you all baptized the christ have crossed
00:15:44 yourself with christ again the word christ comes again and again there is neither jew nor greek whatever race you come slave or free whatever standing male or female whatever gender you're all one in christ jesus you belong to christ your abraham seed and ass according to the promise now what it's all telling us i suggest he's telling you the word identity racism according to the scripture finds its place in identity who you see yourself as and who you see the other person you see when i look at
00:16:20 the person he is the other no i am something else you are what according to the jew you are uncircumcised that's that wall of separation i'm circumcised ma now there's of course a connotation to that right meaning what you are unclean ma let's go on you are pandatangma you are we all know how the original is very flippant but you all know where your white goes right middle kingdom mentality ma everybody else savages uh you know quite low you know now it's all in our culture you are ah who do you vote
00:17:03 i hostility you see paul takes it to a different level he's saying sinful man is tribal you know we call this in secular terms identity politics you open your mouth already and you say i support this party i labor you already you must be unclean you must have betrayed your race you must have gone liberal america is the same in america is the same you just say that you know in evangelical circle if you say i i'm i'm middle right i support the democrat you see the kind of look they'll give you how can you do
00:17:41 that it's about gays they support this so the issue is racism finds itself in identity now before you say you know no i'm not like that i'm none of that really really it's very subtle you know you have i've spoken to people who say you know honor the way you preach the bible are not very not very gospel centered you know it's me and you again you know we we do we do church you and we are church you you do church we practice mentoring and and discipleship you you're very activity based it's very
00:18:18 subtle and you do not realize you already put up that wall and all of us do this we do it again and again and again there's a very subject innuendo in it if you're on the inside there's a very subtle sanctimoniousness now that sounds painful but i suggest that it's so rampant in evangelical when i was brought up in in and you know you're scarred by your upbringing right i was brought up in a university context where you know they were all very into scripture and then they would look at the charismatic groups you know the
00:18:49 charismatics were like that we know scripture we are bible-based when i came back to malaysia they're the same disdain we must continue to fellowship because the malaysian churches are not very biblical you see that kind of segregation there is a very subtle form of racism remember paul is basically saying you're going down to the heart there's only one separation and here's how it goes the separation between god and man and then it leads to the separation between man and man that's how the flow goes
00:19:20 from 1 to 10 to 11 to 22. i want you to take this a little bit so it's identity so let's go through what is his solution his solution to this his purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two thus making peace he develops this in chapter 4 by telling you to put on your new self and in one body reconcile both of them to god through the cross by which he put to death here's the key word hostility so even though i don't like you i have to love you even though i don't agree with you
00:19:55 i make a point to understand you i make a point to get into your mind and your heart and your place i don't sit there with a disdain that you know what you're unclean no you know what you you don't really know the bible as much i mean you know what you know you're not baptized in the holy spirit you know what you're not you you are the other and paul is reminding you there's no such thing there's only one separation god and man and that leads to separation between man and man and if you reconcile with god
00:20:25 and self what then do you do you reconcile yourself with the other party even though you disagree with a lot of things they stand for and that has a context within church and outside church in missions let's pick this up a little bit now what was the issue they had the issue was this if you go back into the book of acts because the jewish christian is so embedded in their culture they basically say gentiles must circumcise and follow the law of moses we find it in quite heavily in acts and in galatians meaning
00:21:00 can gospel can but gospel plus you must follow my culture that's what he's saying they basically tried to hijack the christian faith into jewish culture you find it again again from the beginning of the book of ex two groups of jews hellenistic jews oden jews one party doesn't get food goes on you must get circumcised et cetera et cetera and paul says do not make it difficult for those gentiles want to be believers now what's the point very early on from ephesians and galatians policing that's a danger where
00:21:37 your faith gets hijacked by a culture during that time is jewish culture and i'm going to say something controversial here but it's not from a bad place guess what culture hijacked christianity the western culture and you ask yourself is the christianity being practiced here now a western form of christianity that has been hijacked you say no no no no no you're overreacting overreacting okay let's put this to the test huh next year we got cam speaker and i give you a few options first crime speaker and most people when they when
00:22:16 we tell them this person comes from tinder colorado they don't really know because they're not theologians they just say oh wow marsali you know from america phd this college he should be a good speaker what if next year i get a speaker from the philippines do you think the same number of people will come what if i tell you next year's camp speakers from bangladesh i bet you some people say bangladeshi speaker sure no standard one nah i don't come la now you you think i'm i'm i'm stoking the fire i humbly suggest to you
00:22:52 and this is in love go look at the statistics of speakers that come to malaysia and you tell me where what nationality do they come from are we saying asia does not have good speakers i mean there is this subconscious thing about that uh i was in dubai years ago uh and i was in the queue and this from the heart the guy in front of me was a white man and then buffet table now no at the buffet table hi how are you sir you're very fine sir you did you want a croissant sir come to my time i've got to take my own croissant you
00:23:42 know now before you point fingers do you not do that let me give you example years ago i spoke on a similar topic and we said let's hold hands we all brothers hallelujah we are the world no we didn't sing that we say we are the people of the lord whole getting evil so i saw the bag it's just no like somebody told me later this person put up their hand all emo they turned around african we are the world you see where we're going and that african brother was so insulted he came and talked to me later
00:24:21 and it was very what we call it you know it was instinctive and i bet you you talk to that person no i'm not racist i love my african brothers how much money does he want but you know you you can be an overcomer just don't come over here brother hallelujah overcomer but overcome over there not here oh hallelujah hallelujah john piper says i was in those years manifestly racist as a child and a teenager my attitudes and actions assume this is the key word the superiority of my race in almost every way without looking or
00:24:57 one thing to know anyone who was black except lucy our family kinder lady let me recast that i wanted to know anyone who was nepali except our guard at the condo who was filipino i said our cleaner who was bangladeshi who's a construction worker on my side you see where we go with that right and it's very subconscious and you can take that to a theological level we know how to do church you don't we are filled with spirit you are not we are biblical you're not yeah yeah we're brothers brothers but
00:25:38 but brothers you know actually not brothers and brothers you i'm not racist not real i don't discriminate come on sure you do if piper can say he was if peter was racist what makes you think you and i not racist we are all races here it's just the degree of it is a subtle sin so how does the gospel responses to it the gospel responses the point he now goes back and casts a very big net he says you are no longer foreign strangers notice is his language in his pr language you know you want to apply for citizenship is
00:26:12 that can follow citizenship in other translation it says common wealth and then built on the foundation apostle we cry jesus our chief cornerstone and then his temple language in him the whole building is joined become a temple now gentile gets it because to a gentile a i'm a second-class citizen to you be in the temple i'm only the court of the gentiles i don't get there because the priest doesn't allow me and now he sings no the spirit is in awe the war of hostility torn down you are now one what is he saying the
00:26:44 two have become one why because god is moving everybody to a new nationality where you're no longer malaysian or singaporean or whatever it is and universal race built on the blood of christ now that finds his foundation where he finds his foundation in chapter one if you read later ephesians 1 he talks about bringing the gospel and the whole of creation under the gospel he's moving from what from creation to re-creation and he picks this up with the first word again the the greek word here deal therefore
00:27:22 and the earlier text is talking about what you would date in your sins universally you're dating sins and now we bring you back from that we come to this you will reconcile with god now reconcile with others why because god is going to reconcile the whole of creation he's painting your creation stories and then in chapter 3 chapter 3 he talks about the church the new man from the new humanity he talks about the new man you find in chapter 3 in chapter 4 he talks about the new church the new body so you have new humanity
00:28:01 new body new a new person new body and then afterwards in chapter five new relationships so let me just put it to you in a simple way uh he's trying to tell you if you talk about being gospel centered you have to take a global missiological whatever call it view of it that means god goes from creation with the end purpose of recreation from jerusalem to new jerusalem from a physical temple to a new temple to eden to a new eden that's the function of the gospel now what has happened i think on christians on the left or the right is
00:28:38 that we have truncated the gospel you can call it gospel plus gospel minus let me put it this way if you give the gospel narrative that's what it is creation to recreation genesis 2 revelation in between is the gospel story now if you are social activities what you call a social gospel you see injustice you read into the bible jesus spent time with the prostitutes jesus loved these people jesus freed the slaves i mean he didn't he spoke against bondage you know he said all men are made equal that's true genesis wasn't born with any
00:29:17 slaves in the new heaven had no slave you then go from this to this you jump you say yes discipleship yes yes but we have to cure the world we have to do feed the poor and after a while sin is diluted and you go to what we call liberal christianity this is where is gospel plus it's the gospel plus doing good racial injustice and suddenly you are making disciples but not necessary of jesus christ here's the right what i call the right side of it and and i think conservative angelica church you have
00:29:53 more of this problem you focus only on this can i humbly suggest there's an issue on balance and a real gospel perspective ties all together i was brought on the church we had so much emphasis on personal discipleship that the only thing they taught you you must be accountable you must find a mentor anything they did with the poor was tokenism i remember going to my pastor in australia i said i want to sign up with city city mission and do work with the drug addicts he reluctantly signed and my friend man who became a pastor
00:30:27 lectured me later he said the world has enough problems arnold you should spend time in your bible study group i never forgot that and i will tell you it shaped what i thought so let me just come clean right i suggest the gospel all of this and this is why christians are racist because evangelical christians i suggest you tend to go on personal discipleship and after that it leads to issues i'm going to explain how it leads to issues number one we're going to see this because once you concentrate on that
00:30:55 you find you have some imbalance nowadays you come to church you take your temperature 36.3 can go in 38.1 you stay out there so we're going to take a thermometer all of you now see how racist all of you are okay i'm going to ask you four questions i'm going to ask myself the first question is alienation you see you're not racist i got a lot of friends who are indian and malay i bet you they all speak english i bet you they all have the same taste as you paul is saying it's not just that he's like saying i have a friend
00:31:29 i'm a gentile my friend is a hellenistic jew no no no no you want you go to the hardcore you see girlfriends find me a malay friend who's in a camp find me an indian friend who is deep rooted in hinduism can't speak your language and completely completely has nothing in common with you because the tax flows from there the tax flows basically from reconciliation reconciliation with god leads to reconciliation are the races and that's where we fail and it's difficult to do this again i remember i was in australia
00:32:02 formative years that time ma speak english also very fanima and there was an aussie guy in my church and he sat next to me and he and i were all water nothing in common he said good day my yeah you saw the game last night yeah it was a good game right asian wiggle watch footy one don't understand what he said so he was very uncomfortable yeah good game oh yeah yeah are you ski by do you do skiing yes ski blue blue mountain skiing asian way go go skiing completely nothing in common the only thing we had in common was this
00:32:36 we were washed in the blood of the lamb the only reason i could talk to him were we were both sinners reconciled by god and that's the only reason we became friends you see where we're going with this the whole idea is that your filter is the cross but what we like to do is that some people we call it an awesome you just you know the hawking called betahan you know you just beta is the way they dress they look the way they talk to you you know they just get on you so you just go through life by subconsciously
00:33:11 excluding them i can think of one race in malaysia which a lot of chinese subconsciously exclude i'm very careful what i say up here so the first sign are there people that you intentionally alienate that's one two imposition never forget the gospel came a lot with colonization at a sword do you know why they are tearing down statues of columbus after all these years have you ever read what columbus wrote columbus was a big believer in the great commission and he believed his word work was to bring the gospel
00:33:56 to all the countries he went but there was only one poor problem he expected you to look like him and dress like him and you didn't do it he'll take out the whip on you that's my struggle is is our christianity been hijacked have we imposed onto them not a game that finds itself in scripture galatians we all know the story about paul peter eating with the gentiles and then when a jewish christian came he pulled away and paul landed him not following matthew 18 where you might do privately and rebuke
00:34:32 a brother he did it in full probably humiliating him just saying when i saw they were not acting like the truth of the gospel i like that i said to shaykh fast in front of them you are a jew yet you live like a gentile not like a jew how is it then you force gentiles to fully follow jewish customs you you must understand something with human nature human nature needs to feel accepted so if i'm not a upper income chinese guy and i come to fbc there's a big desire to be like that so that i'm accepted by
00:35:01 all you fine people so if i'm poor i'm from another race i don't speak english very good i'm not so educated i don't feel like i conform so i feel that there's a subconscious desire to make me conform so that you will respect me and treat me as your equal infor we're all guilty of that subconsciously import because human beings are are wired to being community we are all wired to want to belong and the world practices that way unless you talk like me speak like me you know you ask all the young people
00:35:37 you're teenaged they all tell you that you don't belong but paul is saying something radical you know what i don't care whether your your male or female slave or whatever your social standing so long you and i believe that lord jesus died for my sins we are equal under the cross i will eat with you at the same table but very often when we say we're multi-culturally you're not you're multicultural or long very likely for us your same social income status second point third one entitlement ah this one hot potato malaysia
00:36:15 because in malaysia these are the reasons that causes fault lines in race religion because we look at i'm going to really couch this very carefully we look at say another group and say they are entitled to certain things i'm not i can't get into university because of the color of my skin i build resentment now i'm going to try very carefully on that and that may be true that may not be true oh very carefully i want to see these things so you get upset and so because of that subconsciously you want nothing to do
00:36:48 with that race or it could be a lot of things but but understand one thing this tax flows from one to ten you know what is the key word in one to ten you have been saved by grace so that no one can boast not by your works so i want to throw you another question now if say you live in an egalitarian complete egalitarian society would you share your wealth with another community you see jeremiah tisbee's book was this his accusation to white evangelicals was in america was this white evangelicals are very prepared to
00:37:22 say we are equal on a spiritual plane but white evangelicals will not share power with a minority group will not share their wealth and their social benefits to the point where it hurts them now you think about it carefully you look at you look at issues like china u.s things when you're very used to being in control being in a position of power and being a position of benefit very difficult to give up and i think paul try and pull to it let me let me put it something for you we all are technically baptist you know
00:38:00 i mean most of us don't know what it means i also don't really know i'm an accidental baptizer i came for my anglican church before i came out brad rancher so i'm a confused baptist but nevertheless i'm in the baptist do you know your roots do you know your roots do you know what why the southern baptist was formed it was formed to defend slavery in 1845 when american baptist foreign mission society declared that any slave owner would be disqualified from consideration for missionary service baptist churches in the south seated and
00:38:36 formed the southern baptist convention so that members will not have to choose between their slaves and their callings to be missionaries so the question is do you know why they did it because the south made their money in the cotton industry fully backed by slaves jonathan edwards had two slaves that allowed him to teach you take away the slaves your entire way of living changes and the south was not prepared to do that so here's a question if we turn the things around and there's egalitaria in
00:39:10 this country would you share your wealth with other groups if you cannot give up like christ gave up on the cross entitlement you are just as guilty and we see this today right when you go out there and you see how our nepali brothers are out there your bangladeshi workers and all of that what goes through your mind or is there this entitlement that i'm entitled my social status that's where they are and that's racism for reason by grace you have been saved through faith and this not from yourself
00:39:47 it is the gift of god not my works so that no one can boast let me just end with this last one distortion one of the most famous books out there is the art of war the art of war is great because the other world teaches you how to fight without fighting and what it teaches you is to you want to fight now you move the fight to an arena which you can basically uh push and distort the truth you know so here's one simple example uh uh you will bypass for promotion what's the easiest thing to say i got bypass because i'm chinese
00:40:27 because the guy who went over me was another race you know how many times you heard what what if the real truth is you are bypass simply because you were a slacker no no no no i'm chinese you don't listen to me because i'm indian no we don't we listen to you you just we just don't agree with you because nothing to color your skin we call this playing the race card that's how you can change a lot of things uh you shift the battle to what a racial platform and you place the race card when you place it you dilute the issue
00:41:00 you distort it you know so ask yourself do you have this victim mindset where this keeps playing up again and again and historically the church has been so heavily indicted in that they use noah's curse noah's curse of his son ham to justify slavery they use the mark of cain to say that's why people are black and for hundreds of years the southern baptist church practiced this theology to justify why africans should be enslaved here's something for you to do it's very easy to distort the truth and that's why
00:41:36 ephesians 4 later says then we will no longer be infants thoughts back and forth by the ways blown here and there by every wind of teaching by the cunning and craftiness of people in a deceitful scheming instead speaking the truth in love we will grow and when you talk about the body here the body is intentionally jew gentile that's where the story flows let me now give you just as a closing a few ways where we can move forward and i i do believe it's a heavy topic what's your starting point first starting point i suggest is to ask
00:42:10 yourself where have we gone wrong here if the american white impact jelly culture is so indicted on that make no mistake i think the local church here is quite indicted i think the first point is lament you have to learn man if i look at my life summer behavior have been very very very racist women the second is what you learn to love you learn to love and why because later on paul tells you i wish you know how wide and long and high is the love of christ that surpasses all understanding you intentionally to love and when you
00:42:59 learn to love you do something else love teaches you to speak the truth in love it teaches you empathy you put yourself in the shoes of the nepali you put your shelves in the shoes of the malay villager you put your shoes of other communities you begin to see their point and you learn to learn and one thing i've been doing lately is reading church history it is is mind-boggling if i really say this in love the the history of the church is tainted with racism it really is on you know jamaat this b is right the few people we
00:43:39 go about and we say the martin luther king the john wesley they are the exception the rule is the church is heavily heavily racist i'm not even talking about current politics i don't want to go there but we learn let's look at our local history look at our church history look at that the way the way we interact here look at your makeup war manchester united if i'm an indian i come in here if i'm a i'm a i'm a mid i'm from another race how do i feel i fit in or very likely you say yes yes yes but
00:44:12 we make no attempt to really assimilate so you do that by getting into other cultures and primarily because we are so heavily chinese we need to be intentional in understanding other cultures indian cultures indigenous culture you have to do that i think that's biblical that's what paul says to a jew or become a jew to a gentile become jacob i become all things to all men for the sake of the gospel but we want to say you come you come to church on my terms unless you're a graduate unless you got money
00:44:40 in the bank unless you speak good english you sit on the other table oh i'm not racist i'm not racist no recess so let's go and the last you learn to live together and when you live together you bring the gospel here and then you go out and you show people how they're different uh i told this story before but it's important i became a christian in university and what struck me was when i landed there some of you know don't know this story i i sat on a table where full of all this and nobody spoke to me
00:45:15 i was staying in the halls of residence not one person spoke to me i sat there i felt miserable i wanted to go home and then one australian from another table came over and said in front of me he looked at me he had nothing in common with me without any silence he introduced his name made small talk nothing but i was thankful for that action he was trying to eat with me and later on i was invited to the church and i saw him there and he clicked the only reason why he came over what he saw that he must learn to live
00:45:57 with me and that added and added and i became to know the lord never underestimate small little things you do to the nepali guard to your maid to the workers on the ground to people think they add you know they add to the gospel story and one day when god really changes your heart you will be able to do this to the point of john piper adopting an afro-american and loving her like his own daughter and i know we have one pastor we've also done it i'm not going to embarrass him but that's the extent
00:46:45 of racial reconciliation this is living together this is family let me end with the words of martin luther king i think he took this from ephesians 3 was not jesus an extremist for love anyone asked the worship team to come up love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despise you and persecute you what's not aimless and extremists for justice that justice rolled down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream was not paul an extremist for the christian gospel
00:47:30 i bear my body the marks of the lord jesus was not martin luther an extremist here i stand i cannot do otherwise so help me god and john manyan i will stay in jail to the end of my days before i make a butchery butchery my conscience so the question is not whether we will be extremist or racist or any kind of is but what kind of extremists we will be will we be extremists for hate or for love as the worship thing prepares the song i want to just lead us in a in a word of prayer lord we just come before you now
00:48:08 and we want to start with lament and before we sing o lord we ask your spirit to just move in this place oh lord and this moment of silence i would like all of us here whether you're watching at home to just have a moment of silence and i want you to think of christ who died and he has reconciled everyone broken down the wall of hostility and doesn't want to begin to ask have we been hospitable to people who are different from us let me give a moment to just the men
