WEBVTT 00:00:00.239 --> 00:00:01.600 Good evening, everyone. 00:00:02.640 --> 00:00:05.360 We are continuing in our Imago Day series. 00:00:05.679 --> 00:00:08.880 We've actually reaching the end of our Imago Day series. 00:00:09.039 --> 00:00:18.800 We've done a lot of work talking about what it is and how it traces through the scope of creation to final new creation. 00:00:19.039 --> 00:00:25.120 And now we're in an area of talking about some of the implications of the Imago Day understanding. 00:00:25.280 --> 00:00:27.679 And we talked about the dignity of every person. 00:00:27.839 --> 00:00:29.920 We talked about how to care for the vulnerable. 00:00:30.079 --> 00:00:34.799 And this evening we're going to look at something every tribe and every tongue. 00:00:35.039 --> 00:00:39.920 And I'd like to start by perhaps you picturing a person by the name of Sandra. 00:00:40.079 --> 00:00:42.000 And Sandra grew up in the church. 00:00:43.039 --> 00:00:47.119 Her grandmother was sang in the choir, her grandfather was an usher. 00:00:47.520 --> 00:00:51.600 Her whole life was wrapped up around that one church experience. 00:00:51.759 --> 00:00:56.320 And everything that she understood about Christianity was bound up in this one church. 00:00:56.560 --> 00:01:08.879 From the way they moved in the service, uh, the songs that they sang, uh, the way the word was handled, and even how they pronounced the word amen or amen was all there. 00:01:09.200 --> 00:01:20.560 She'd never really analyzed her church culture and never even questioned whether or not her broader culture had had any bearing at all upon her understanding of Christianity. 00:01:20.959 --> 00:01:31.359 Until in her late 20s, she went to a home study that was hosted by a family from a completely different culture and country. 00:01:31.599 --> 00:01:38.319 And while she was there, she was able to see a video of a Cambodian church service. 00:01:38.719 --> 00:01:46.159 And the songs were different, the rhythms were different, the movement was different. 00:01:46.400 --> 00:01:54.239 And before her theology caught up to her instincts, she caught herself thinking, something's just not right here. 00:01:56.879 --> 00:02:08.000 And after that evening was over, she paused to reflect upon where that came from and asked herself, where where did that come from? 00:02:09.039 --> 00:02:35.280 And she realized uh what her reaction came from, this idea that she had bound up her understanding of Christianity by what she had been experienced and what she had been introduced to, rather than considering that perhaps some of that had been built into her understanding over the course of her years and had been bent by some of her cultural experiences. 00:02:36.319 --> 00:02:39.199 All of us are like that. 00:02:39.520 --> 00:02:45.039 All of us grow up with some particular understanding or focus about everything. 00:02:45.439 --> 00:02:53.759 I realized this very quickly when I had my sons, and I moved their toothbrush from one side of the sink to the other. 00:02:53.919 --> 00:03:01.039 And all of a sudden, I was getting scolded by my little boy saying, Daddy, the toothbrush always goes here. 00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:07.520 And I was like, uh, well, we could put it here or here or here up here if I wanted to do so. 00:03:07.680 --> 00:03:14.400 And I had to show him, like, you know, we've we've got a pattern, but it's not a fixed right or wrong thing. 00:03:14.479 --> 00:03:16.719 It's just what we do as a family. 00:03:17.360 --> 00:03:20.080 All of us have those kind of things built into us. 00:03:20.159 --> 00:03:32.159 We have these instincts that are framed within us that we think are right, that sound right, that feel right, and we feel comfortable in all of those areas. 00:03:33.439 --> 00:03:41.599 And the question is: what does God have to say about the human dimension, about humanity as a whole? 00:03:42.000 --> 00:04:00.479 And can it speak into those cultural expressions in a way that we can understand how God sees that rather than how we're used to seeing it, or how we're being told by the world we ought to see it, because there is a difference. 00:04:00.960 --> 00:04:06.479 And so this evening we're going to see this diversity in humanity as God's design. 00:04:06.719 --> 00:04:11.919 And we'll brush back in Genesis 1 and see it as God's declaration. 00:04:12.240 --> 00:04:17.920 But one thing we're also going to look at is to see it as God's destiny, his destination. 00:04:18.160 --> 00:04:22.319 So there's going to be three movements and two major texts that we're going to look at. 00:04:22.480 --> 00:04:26.879 And the first one I want us to look at is in the found in the book of Acts in chapter 17. 00:04:27.279 --> 00:04:29.199 Acts chapter 17. 00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:38.879 In this chapter, Paul is talking to the Athens about God who made all the nations. 00:04:40.800 --> 00:04:47.040 And once you get to Acts chapter 17, you can land in verse 26 and 27. 00:04:47.439 --> 00:04:55.040 And Paul is already standing on the Areopagus in Athens, that ancient hill of debate, and he has something to say there. 00:04:55.519 --> 00:04:57.439 Let's read these verses. 00:04:57.839 --> 00:05:05.680 From one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth, and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. 00:05:05.920 --> 00:05:13.279 He did this so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each of us. 00:05:13.839 --> 00:05:26.720 Well, the Athenians looked at the Areophagus, this ancient hill of debate, as the intellectual center of the most sophisticated culture in the world. 00:05:27.040 --> 00:05:28.879 That's how they viewed it. 00:05:29.600 --> 00:05:36.639 And they, above all peoples, were the most sophisticated people, and they came to hear these new ideas. 00:05:37.680 --> 00:05:44.160 And so they had heard about Paul preaching about Jesus, and they'd heard about the resurrection, and they wanted to learn more. 00:05:44.639 --> 00:05:47.360 The Athenians were nothing if they weren't curious. 00:05:47.600 --> 00:06:01.279 And so Paul begins to argue, and he does so from the point of creation, that the God who made the world, who made everything, had given to all people life and breath and everything. 00:06:01.920 --> 00:06:15.600 And in the middle of this argument, Paul, I think, very knowingly drives a stake right into the ground that would shake all of their roots and understanding about themselves. 00:06:16.240 --> 00:06:19.120 He lobbed a grenade right into the middle of it all. 00:06:19.199 --> 00:06:24.800 And we don't catch it because we don't understand exactly how the Athenians thought of themselves. 00:06:25.839 --> 00:06:41.839 The Athenians believed that they literally sprung up from the ground of Attica, that everybody else had to migrate in, but they, this was home and had always been home. 00:06:42.720 --> 00:06:54.000 That they were native, that they were original, that they were not like all the migratory people who had to come from other places to come to this best place on earth. 00:06:54.879 --> 00:06:57.120 They had not arrived from anywhere else. 00:06:57.199 --> 00:06:58.800 They were simply here. 00:07:00.240 --> 00:07:02.480 And it was a point of pride for them. 00:07:02.800 --> 00:07:08.079 There were the Athenians, and then there was everybody else. 00:07:08.800 --> 00:07:20.639 And even our term barbarian comes from an ancient Greek word for barbar, which is mimicking the unintelligible language of foreign peoples. 00:07:20.800 --> 00:07:33.439 And they considered those people as barbarians, as those babblers who spoke gibberish because they couldn't speak the refined tongue of the Greeks. 00:07:36.079 --> 00:07:45.120 And Paul walks right into this sort of presumption about themselves and throws a bomb in the middle of it all. 00:07:45.680 --> 00:07:47.759 And this is how he does it. 00:07:48.319 --> 00:07:54.240 From one man, God has made all nations on the face of the earth. 00:07:54.399 --> 00:08:07.920 Every language, every culture, every physical expression of the human race that has ever existed traced itself to one original ancestor. 00:08:10.879 --> 00:08:15.680 The Athenians weren't any different than anybody else. 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:30.399 And we're not tracing our humanity back to separate acts of creation, some of them home, and others just passing by the best place on earth. 00:08:30.720 --> 00:08:33.120 One source, one family. 00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:40.799 The Athenians came from one man and one woman, just like everybody. 00:08:41.759 --> 00:08:50.000 And so he tells them that they need to listen to this message because it was a message for them and to everybody else. 00:08:51.200 --> 00:08:52.639 But he has more to say. 00:08:52.799 --> 00:08:54.639 Take a look at verse 26. 00:08:56.080 --> 00:09:02.159 He's determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. 00:09:02.320 --> 00:09:08.240 And that term boundaries of where they live is the word from which we get our word horizon. 00:09:08.960 --> 00:09:21.679 The specific places where people have settled, the specific eras in which they flourished, the specific cultures that are placed in various places around the earth. 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:40.240 None of it random, all of it under the sovereign determination and intent of God, who had moved through human history and taken people in different times and in different places by his own sovereign hand. 00:09:41.679 --> 00:09:54.240 Which means that everything that we see and understand about humanity and all of its complexities and all of its cultural variations and national distinctives are not a problem to solve. 00:09:54.480 --> 00:09:58.240 They're actually a wonder and a part of God's divine intentions. 00:09:59.600 --> 00:10:07.360 And as someone said, it's not the leftover chaos from the Tower of Babel that God is trying very desperately to mop up. 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:13.200 This is something God has made with good intention and good purposes. 00:10:14.320 --> 00:10:24.879 And so he says also in verse 27 about them, so that they might seek God and perhaps they might reach out and find him. 00:10:25.440 --> 00:10:45.120 It's an interesting comment that God has scattered people across the full range of human experience and given them all of their culture and all of their history and all of their creative and cultural traditions so that they might turn themselves as they are toward Him and worship. 00:10:45.919 --> 00:10:47.519 A remarkable thing. 00:10:48.320 --> 00:10:59.919 That from the angle of their own particular experience and background, individually and even culturally, that they might be able to give God glory from that perspective. 00:11:01.039 --> 00:11:10.320 That there's something about the fullness of worship that comes from the diversity of humanity rather than singularity of humanity. 00:11:11.840 --> 00:11:25.840 Now, just for a second, let's stop and think about what all that meant about the Athenian perspective of being the best of the best, or ideas about racism in our world today. 00:11:26.480 --> 00:11:30.240 It means that racism is not just a social ill. 00:11:30.879 --> 00:11:36.879 It means that it's not simply an injustice or that it's a certainty. 00:11:37.120 --> 00:11:50.559 What it means at its core, that it's claiming that God's sovereign design to move people around the world and to set them in their places so that they might build their culture was wrong. 00:11:51.039 --> 00:11:56.399 It's a theological heresy, not just a social ill. 00:11:57.919 --> 00:12:12.720 This expression that some people are inherently superior is an affront against God because He built into the human family the kind of diversification that we know. 00:12:13.200 --> 00:12:22.399 And he didn't build us in a hierarchical place, but as a people of one blood, one man and one woman. 00:12:40.639 --> 00:12:47.840 And to use theological terms, it's more ontological than it is functional in its focus. 00:12:48.240 --> 00:13:01.039 It is about that special connection that God's made in stamping every single human, regardless of their abilities, with the fact that they bear the image of God. 00:13:01.279 --> 00:13:10.799 And so people have tried to take the image of God and define it by rule or rationality, our relationships, our righteousness. 00:13:10.960 --> 00:13:16.480 And when they get into that functional perspective, what it does is it sets up a ladder. 00:13:16.799 --> 00:13:20.240 I am more rational than other people. 00:13:20.639 --> 00:13:25.039 Or others are more relational than other people. 00:13:25.759 --> 00:13:32.080 And when they do that, they build the ladder in which there are people on top and there are people who are not. 00:13:32.960 --> 00:13:52.000 But when we see the definition of the image of God as something that God has made for all people, regardless, then there is a commonality that we can honor and a dignity that we should share and offer to others. 00:13:53.600 --> 00:13:58.320 And it has its basis even in our country, these ideas. 00:13:58.559 --> 00:14:14.320 Frederick Douglass made a comment that the defense of chattel slavery required as a theological core the claim that the enslaved bore the image of God less fully than the enslaver. 00:14:14.799 --> 00:14:21.759 You see how that theology had turned them into a justification for the kind of behavior that they continued. 00:14:23.919 --> 00:14:33.679 And he said, if they bore the image of God equally as a theological foundation, the whole system would collapse. 00:14:34.960 --> 00:14:42.799 And so we need to understand that we are made in the image of God, as is everyone else. 00:14:43.279 --> 00:14:57.840 And if God made nationality and cultures by his sovereign design and placed people in all the places that we are with his intention, then there's no culture at all that is the default best one. 00:14:58.799 --> 00:15:11.919 It might be the one we're more familiar with, the one we're more at ease with, and we might find ourselves in some sense of curiosity or perhaps even discomfort when we come into relationships with people from different cultures. 00:15:12.159 --> 00:15:23.600 But to call it better or worse, or more of the image God, or less, is to go into a theological category in which we are denying God's sovereign hand. 00:15:25.360 --> 00:15:34.000 Because God made every nation from one man, and he's going to eventually gather every nation before his throne. 00:15:34.080 --> 00:15:35.679 But we'll get there in just a moment. 00:15:35.919 --> 00:15:41.840 So we are to honor God's diversity or honor human diversity at God's design. 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:44.480 And we're also to honor it as his declaration. 00:15:44.639 --> 00:15:50.480 So let's go back to Genesis 1 just for a moment, and we'll land there for just a second and take a look at this. 00:15:50.960 --> 00:15:58.320 I don't want to repeat everything that I just said, but everything that I said is founded on this passage in Genesis 1. 00:15:59.919 --> 00:16:02.000 We've been here several times. 00:16:03.840 --> 00:16:05.200 Verse 26. 00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:11.120 God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. 00:16:11.279 --> 00:16:18.879 And they will rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky, the livestock, the wild animals of the earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth. 00:16:19.120 --> 00:16:21.279 So God created man in his own image. 00:16:21.440 --> 00:16:22.799 He created him in the image of God. 00:16:22.960 --> 00:16:25.600 He created them male and female. 00:16:26.639 --> 00:16:33.519 Now, Adam here is not just a proper name, and it is a proper name, but it's also the word for humanity. 00:16:33.759 --> 00:16:36.720 And you see this bled together here. 00:16:36.879 --> 00:16:45.200 You see Adam spoken of as an individual, but Adam used also as an expression of human humans broadly. 00:16:45.919 --> 00:16:49.200 And God declares his image over it all. 00:16:51.120 --> 00:17:03.840 His question here is not about how much reason do they carry, or how much rationality is expressed in their civilization, or how great their moral attainments are. 00:17:04.559 --> 00:17:08.559 Not talking about things that can be quantified to varying degrees. 00:17:08.880 --> 00:17:23.440 What he's saying is, is every single person has been given this special connection by God, an inherent quality that is not maintained by what we do or lost by what we do. 00:17:23.839 --> 00:17:30.240 That measurement cannot be quantified in the degrees of functionality. 00:17:30.799 --> 00:17:33.839 But he also talks about image as a destiny. 00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:42.079 Take a look at what he said here: that they are to go and they are to move all around the world. 00:17:42.640 --> 00:17:47.039 Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. 00:17:47.359 --> 00:17:48.960 Fill the earth. 00:17:49.920 --> 00:17:59.359 That people were to be in different places, all for the glory of God, doing probably very different things in those different places. 00:17:59.599 --> 00:18:12.000 And by those different expressions, able to show in all of the variations of human expression something about the greater glory of God in its collective activity. 00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:22.559 So let's go now to another passage in Revelation chapter seven. 00:18:23.039 --> 00:18:25.119 Revelation chapter seven. 00:18:27.920 --> 00:18:40.000 In Revelation chapter seven, we find not only that diversity is God's design and God's declaration, but it is also expressed as part of his destination. 00:18:42.400 --> 00:18:46.880 In Revelation chapter seven, we see something wonderful here. 00:18:47.680 --> 00:18:49.680 In verse 9 and 10. 00:18:50.559 --> 00:19:03.200 After this I looked, and there was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. 00:19:03.440 --> 00:19:15.359 They were clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands, and they cried out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb. 00:19:16.079 --> 00:19:25.599 Here John is exiled on the Isle of Patmos, isolated, the last of the original apostles, and God gives him a vision that he's to record. 00:19:26.160 --> 00:19:31.359 And as he takes it in, he describes what he sees. 00:19:31.839 --> 00:19:36.720 Verse 9: a vast multitude gathered before the throne. 00:19:37.359 --> 00:19:41.119 And he tells us what he sees. 00:19:41.920 --> 00:19:47.759 Not a crowd from which every particular origin that they're from has been erased. 00:19:49.920 --> 00:19:55.839 He's not showing us a uniform humanity that's indistinguishable from one another. 00:19:56.720 --> 00:20:02.799 He's seeing every nation, every tribe, every people, every language. 00:20:03.279 --> 00:20:07.119 Because that is the content of gospel gathering. 00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:17.839 The worlds coming together in the only way the worlds can come together, and that is through Jesus Christ and the gospel. 00:20:18.880 --> 00:20:37.839 And what God made in creation, and what the fall weaponized in our sort of cultural presumptions and hubris and pride, the gospel now takes and is the only thing on earth that pulls it together. 00:20:39.119 --> 00:20:50.400 They all have the same white robes, they all carry the same palm branches, and they're all before the one lamb, and their voice is one. 00:20:51.279 --> 00:21:02.480 But the nations and the languages and all of the tribes from which they come are not dissolved into some undifferentiated mass. 00:21:04.640 --> 00:21:08.720 They're declared with their diversity intact. 00:21:09.200 --> 00:21:11.440 What a remarkable thing that is. 00:21:12.640 --> 00:21:19.519 And what it says here is that God is not producing one ethnicity or one culture. 00:21:20.480 --> 00:21:23.920 He's not making uniformity by the gospel. 00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:31.839 He's making unity by the gospel, and that's a far, far, far greater thing. 00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:40.640 Let's take a look at Ephesians chapter two for a moment and just see this in action. 00:21:42.480 --> 00:21:43.680 Did I say Acts two? 00:21:43.920 --> 00:21:45.039 I meant Ephesians too. 00:21:45.279 --> 00:21:47.839 Ephesians did Ephesians chapter two. 00:21:51.279 --> 00:21:59.759 Paul here is writing about what was probably the most combustible ethnic division that the first century church had experienced. 00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:04.880 The wall of division between Jewish and Gentile believers. 00:22:06.880 --> 00:22:13.839 It was a wall that was so deep that they both had theological justification to armor their position. 00:22:15.119 --> 00:22:22.000 And it was a wall that was so strong that it threatened the body of Christ before it had even really begun to emerge. 00:22:22.240 --> 00:22:32.160 And you can see it in the book of Acts, and we'll look at it when we go through our Acts study, where there's this bewildered wonder that a Gentile could believe. 00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:38.240 Paul goes into that discussion here in Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 14. 00:22:38.960 --> 00:23:00.559 And there he says, For he is he is our peace who has made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility in his flesh, and he made of no effect the law consisting of commandments and expressed in regulations, so that he might create in himself one new man from the two. 00:23:01.839 --> 00:23:28.400 It doesn't say that he's eliminated the two peoples, but what he has done is he's created something new that contains both of them, so that they might find something that transcends their cultural, national, and even religious backgrounds, so that they might find a unity in Christ that supersedes it all. 00:23:29.680 --> 00:23:36.000 And that new humanity is visible, visible. 00:23:36.640 --> 00:23:41.759 So let's go to Acts chapter 13, and we'll see it here in some of its visibility. 00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:49.519 In Acts chapter 13, we're introduced to the leadership of the Church of Antioch. 00:23:52.160 --> 00:23:57.839 The first congregation in the New Testament where believers were first called Christians. 00:23:59.359 --> 00:24:02.799 And there were introduced some leaders. 00:24:03.920 --> 00:24:13.680 Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manion, a close friend of Herod the Tetriarch, and Saul. 00:24:14.079 --> 00:24:18.640 I don't know if you've paused and thought about those names for a second, but just listen to this. 00:24:18.880 --> 00:24:31.599 Barnabas, a Levite from Cyprus, Simeon called Niger, Niger being the Latin word for black, so perhaps his origins are from Sub-Sahara Africa. 00:24:32.640 --> 00:24:38.480 Lucius of Cyrene, so from the coastal areas of North Africa. 00:24:39.039 --> 00:24:58.799 Manion raised with Herod the Tetrarch, a man of Jewish background connected to the ruling Herodian class, and Saul of Tarshus, a Roman citizen, a trained Pharisee, a man of multiple worlds, and none of them easy. 00:24:59.519 --> 00:25:10.640 Five leaders, multiple ethnicities, multiple cultural histories, and multiple reasons for suspicion or separation. 00:25:13.599 --> 00:25:24.799 And yet, one body, one leadership, one congregation, working in unison with each other. 00:25:26.400 --> 00:25:39.279 It was from this community with all of its diversity and its multi-ethnic gathering that God says, separate out a couple of those guys, because I have them to do something. 00:25:39.759 --> 00:25:46.559 What you're experiencing as a church, I want the peoples to be a part of. 00:25:46.799 --> 00:26:08.240 And so here we have the first missionary sent out from a multi-ethnic congregation to build multi-ethnic congregations so that there might be churches on earth that reflect something of what Revelation's talking about, where it sees the gathered people before the throne. 00:26:09.599 --> 00:26:16.400 Because the end of the story is meant to be seen before we get to the end of the story. 00:26:21.519 --> 00:26:32.400 So the response here is very clear that the church ought to be looking forward to what we will be in the eternal day before the throne of God. 00:26:33.200 --> 00:26:39.599 That we should become even now the community that Revelation chapter 7 talks about. 00:26:40.880 --> 00:26:47.440 And we we see as we'll look at when we go through the book of Acts together on Sunday mornings, just very, very soon. 00:26:47.599 --> 00:26:51.279 But I want to take you to one place where the church had to wrestle with this a bit. 00:26:51.359 --> 00:26:53.839 And so let's go to Acts chapter 6. 00:26:54.240 --> 00:26:55.839 Acts chapter 6. 00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:02.079 We're soon to close here, but I want to give a couple, just a couple examples. 00:27:03.440 --> 00:27:11.680 Here in Acts chapter 6, in Jerusalem, the first generation after the Pentecost, the disciples are increasing in number. 00:27:11.839 --> 00:27:14.960 And you'll notice that there's some tension going on here. 00:27:16.160 --> 00:27:25.759 The Hellenistic Jews have a complaint against the Hebraic Jews that their widows were being overlooked and the daily distribution. 00:27:26.480 --> 00:27:38.160 So what was happening is they were all from Jewish backgrounds, but there were Greek-speaking Jewish backgrounds and there were Aramaic-speaking backgrounds. 00:27:38.400 --> 00:27:46.079 And the Hebrew women or the Aramaic-speaking widows were being cared for while the Greek-speaking ones were not. 00:27:46.559 --> 00:27:49.119 Now here they are in Jerusalem. 00:27:49.519 --> 00:28:00.319 And I just wonder if the oversight wasn't just accidental, perhaps built into sort of underlying prejudices. 00:28:01.039 --> 00:28:06.079 And so there's this ethnic conflict that's happened here. 00:28:06.559 --> 00:28:18.640 And the people that are running the distribution are from one cultural world, taking care of the people from their cultural world, while the other widows are saying, Hey, wait a second, what about us? 00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:22.000 And so the voice of complaint rises. 00:28:23.839 --> 00:28:26.400 And the apostles come together. 00:28:27.039 --> 00:28:34.079 The twelve summoned the whole company of the disciples and said, and off they went and they talked. 00:28:34.160 --> 00:28:42.880 And they talked about setting up a new office to take care of this problem because they needed to focus on the word of God. 00:28:43.039 --> 00:28:45.440 Now notice this new office that they filled. 00:28:45.519 --> 00:28:56.640 Listen to the names Stephen, Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenius, and Nicholas. 00:28:57.119 --> 00:29:03.200 Every one of those names comes from a Greek-speaking background. 00:29:04.400 --> 00:29:10.960 So what they did here is very specific and yet also very costly. 00:29:11.519 --> 00:29:27.839 They took the leaders from the overlooked group and said, We're giving you an office of responsibility to care for those widows so that they might receive the daily distribution just like everyone else. 00:29:28.160 --> 00:29:38.400 And so they recognized they needed to apply gospel truth overlaying the top of some of these ethnic divisions. 00:29:40.240 --> 00:29:44.000 So what does that look like for us today? 00:29:45.200 --> 00:29:53.599 Well, what it looks like is we need to put the gospel at the higher priority of our cultural understandings and comfort zones. 00:29:54.559 --> 00:30:04.480 That we need to build friendships that go across the lines at which we would at first find to be the default, and to be able to enjoy the diversity of that. 00:30:05.039 --> 00:30:30.640 A willingness to be changed by the presence of a people whose expressions are different than our own, and to not judge it, but to welcome the truth of God's word and the gospel in their hearts, spoken or evidenced in a slightly different cultural expression, and to realize that God is getting his glory there as well. 00:30:31.839 --> 00:30:42.559 And it means that we don't talk about diversity programs with metrics and initiatives or perpetual guilt like our culture tries to talk about. 00:30:43.200 --> 00:30:58.000 But we talk about it as something that is centered in the gospel, that is focused by God's original design and declaration, and it is an earthly expression of what will be a heavenly and an eternal destination. 00:30:59.519 --> 00:31:04.880 Before we close this out, I just want to say something very specific about us. 00:31:05.440 --> 00:31:07.200 Take a look in the room. 00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:10.000 Just take a look, right? 00:31:12.640 --> 00:31:14.400 Take a look at our elders. 00:31:14.559 --> 00:31:17.359 Our elders are from all over the world. 00:31:17.680 --> 00:31:20.640 Every one of us are from a completely different place. 00:31:22.640 --> 00:31:28.559 And we didn't do it because we wanted to have some sort of diversity program among the leadership. 00:31:29.039 --> 00:31:38.640 What we were looking for are gospel-centered men, irregardless of what their cultural expressions or backgrounds might be. 00:31:40.160 --> 00:31:44.079 And the elders only begin to describe what's happening here. 00:31:44.799 --> 00:31:52.559 To walk among our church family is to walk among a people whose families have roots in nearly every corner of the earth. 00:31:52.960 --> 00:32:00.720 We don't have any New Zealanders, but my son is married to one, so by some very loose connection, we've got at least a brush. 00:32:01.039 --> 00:32:05.359 Naomi will show up once in a while and we can claim a New Zealander for a visit. 00:32:07.920 --> 00:32:10.000 So just think about that. 00:32:11.279 --> 00:32:14.799 What does that mean that's happening here? 00:32:15.200 --> 00:32:20.960 What that means is the gospel is being preached without cultural favoritism, right? 00:32:22.079 --> 00:32:30.640 It means that we share a common commitment to the Word of God that's not bound by a particular cultural focus. 00:32:32.640 --> 00:32:50.240 That we have a willingness to receive people who can express something about their origins and their histories and their heritage that is different than ours, and to hold it with the same esteem and dignity and care and welcome. 00:32:51.759 --> 00:32:55.920 This congregation is not a picture of what every congregation should be. 00:32:56.079 --> 00:33:03.039 We're a very imperfect one, but we are moving toward that Revelation chapter seven picture. 00:33:03.359 --> 00:33:05.039 We're not there yet. 00:33:05.599 --> 00:33:11.599 We won't be there until we are the fullness of the stature of the measure of Christ, as Ephesians 4 says. 00:33:12.480 --> 00:33:22.559 But we are a partial picture of Revelation chapter 7, and that needs to be welcomed and it also needs to be guarded. 00:33:23.359 --> 00:33:28.400 We need to look at it and not let it become ordinary in our eyes. 00:33:29.359 --> 00:33:41.200 We need to understand that what is developed as a naturalness of our worship here really does stand as a contrast to what most people experience and understand in this world. 00:33:42.240 --> 00:33:59.839 And so we shouldn't mistake our ease here with inevitability or with comfort, but to applaud it and to protect it, because the gospel's doing a work that no human could engineer and the world can't even begin to understand. 00:34:01.279 --> 00:34:02.880 So, how do we do that? 00:34:02.960 --> 00:34:04.160 How do we guard it? 00:34:04.480 --> 00:34:26.960 By continuing to receive people who come to the gospel from every place, by naming the fact that every single person is made in the image of God, and that our different histories don't mark whether one's closer to that image or less. 00:34:28.639 --> 00:34:39.280 We can guard it by bringing people into the church who are have yet to ever see anything that's normal for us week by week. 00:34:39.760 --> 00:35:01.360 These people who come from our neighborhoods where their experiences are very much divided by their ethnic origins and where they maintain what they think is the superiority of it, but to come here and define themselves just a sinner, saved by grace, like the rest of us. 00:35:02.800 --> 00:35:11.199 And so what we're to do is to show people on earth that Revelation chapter 7 is possible on earth. 00:35:11.440 --> 00:35:22.880 And the only reason it appears in Revelation 7 is because the gospel is here, speaking to the nations and the people from every nation in our neighborhood. 00:35:23.360 --> 00:35:29.119 That's why this talk needs to come into our understanding of the image of God. 00:35:29.360 --> 00:35:38.400 It's God's design, it's his declaration, and it's included in the final destination of the renewed humanity. 00:35:38.639 --> 00:35:40.239 Let's pray together. 00:35:42.159 --> 00:35:55.920 Father, we thank you that at the center of all of this is not a celebration of diversity, but a worship of the Lamb, the Lamb who's at the center of the vision. 00:35:56.480 --> 00:36:23.679 To him, the reconciler, the one who breaks the dividing law of hostility, the one who created in himself one new man, he is the one we worship, because he is doing his work, not only here in this room, but everywhere, because the gospel is for every tribe, and worship will be from every tongue. 00:36:24.239 --> 00:36:30.400 And we thank you that you who made us all are not distant from any. 00:36:30.880 --> 00:36:36.800 As Paul told the Athenians, he is not far from each one of us. 00:36:37.519 --> 00:36:49.119 Father, thank you for enfolding us into your family and doing so in such a way that we can give you even greater praise by what you accomplish. 00:36:49.280 --> 00:36:51.280 And we pray this in Christ's name. 00:36:51.599 --> 00:36:52.239 Amen.