LESSONS I HAVE LEARNED FROM BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Text: Acts 17: 16–28
Introduction:
1. Isn’t this a wonderful day the Lord has made. A day to – “Rejoice and be glad in it.”
2. Open your Bibles please to Acts 17: 24-28.
3. Read text.
“For we are indeed his offspring.”
4. The Title of today’s lesson is, “What I learned from Black History Month.”
5. Did you know February is Black History Month?
6. The first time I heard of Black History Month? I thought to myself, why do we need a Black History Month? After all, we don’t have a White History month.
7. Then on further reflection I realized that we need it because for much of my life we had 9 months of White History every year.
8. History has always been one of my favorite subjects.
9. As a teenager, my plan was to go to college and become a band director or a history teacher.
10. And yet, one day I realized that I had studied history in school for years and graduated from high school knowing almost nothing about African American History.
11. I knew about slavery, segregation, and that George Washington Carver was a brave and bright black scientist who had invented peanut butter.
12. I had never heard of giants of history like
a) Sojourner Truth
b) Frederick Douglass
c) Harriet Tubman
d) Booker T. Washington
e) W. E. B. Dubois
f) Carter G. Woodson
13. As early as the 6th grade I was a news junkie. So, I knew about the people in the news at the time.
a) Thurgood Marshall who argued the case before the Supreme Court that outlawed segregation which was then known by the canard “separate but equal.”
b) Martin Luther King Jr. and Cloretta Scott King
c) And my favorite aunt Rosa Parks (just kidding).
14. As I have gone back and studied Black History, some Biblical principles keep pressing into my mind: principles that could have saved mankind so much sin, suffering and sorrow.
Discussion:
I. We have all been created in the image of God.
Acts 17:25-26 (ESV) 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,
Genesis 1:26-28 (ESV) 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Ezekiel 18:4 (ESV) Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.
A. Racism is a sin, an affront to God.
B. It violates the royal law.
C. James 2:8-10 (ESV) 8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. 9 But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.
II. God looks at the heart not the skin.
A. When David was chosen to be king.
1 Samuel 16:7 (ESV) But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
Proverbs 4:23 (ESV) Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
Matthew 15:18-20 (ESV) 18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”
Romans 6:17 (ESV) But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,
B. This is why stereotyping is un-Christ-like.
1. “A stereotype is a popular belief about specific types of individuals.” Wikipedia
C. Example: “She has red hair, be careful she probably has a short fuse.”
D. People with tattoos.
E. Anyone different than us.
F. Jesus never judged people by external appearance.
1. He spoke to the woman at the well
John 4:9 (ESV) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” ( For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
Galatians 3:24-28 (ESV) 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
2. He called a Zealot and a Tax Collector.
Romans 14:10-13 (ESV) 10 Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; 11 for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” 12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. 13 Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.
III. Beware of being influenced by the constantly changing twisted wisdom of the world around you.
A. One of the things that spurred this sermon into reality was an article written by journalist Aaron Hightower and published in the February 16 edition of the Detroit News Titled, Legacy of Courage.
B. In it he writes of his uncle – award winning journalist Lucious Wilson,
Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus was so rabidly opposed to integration that he defied the 1954 Supreme Court ruling of Brown v. the Board of Education. Never mind that the court declared segregation unconstitutional; he ordered the 10,000-member Arkansas National Guard to stop the nine students from entering Little Rock Central.
On Sept. 23, 1957, a mob of angry whites who had congregated outside the high school grew violent as word spread that the students had entered the building. At the same time, a car with four black journalists pulled up just south of campus to cover the story for their newspapers. . ..
The four black newsmen tried to discreetly work without being noticed by the mob, a nearly impossible feat, especially for the 6-foot, 3-inch Wilson.
Newson, now eighty-five, was on his first assignment for the Afro-American Newspapers in Baltimore. He recalled how the mob turned on them:
“They started yelling and calling us the n-word and all that nonsense,” said Newson in a telephone interview from his home in Baltimore. “Then someone hollered that the black children were in the school, and they went into attack mode.”
The mob grabbed and punched three of the reporters. Newson and Hicks managed to run for help. Davy’s camera was smashed to the ground before he got away.
“But your uncle,” Newson said, “he wouldn’t run.”
The mob closed in on Uncle Lucious.
A man kicked him in his lower back, jerking his large frame off balance, but he never turned to even see who did it. He kept walking.
Another kick to the lower back made his hat fall to the ground. He turned and picked up his hat while being pushed in the back.
Another man jumped on his back and held him in a chokehold.
The beating was proving to be too much for my uncle, as he collapsed to the ground more frequently under an onslaught of feet and fists.
But each time he slowly rose, picking up his hat, re-creasing it and continuing to walk, staying true to his promise to never run again.
Then, a man armed with a brick ran up to Uncle Lucious and hit him in the back of the head. Again he fell, again he stood, and the man with the brick hit him again.
Newson said he and Hicks ran to a motorcycle policeman for help, but the officer kick-started his bike and sped off.
The beating Uncle Lucious took in Little Rock resulted in permanent injuries that our family believes caused him to develop Parkinson’s disease, which led to his early death only three years later in 1960.
C. I know what you are thinking. Dave why does this story belong in a Bible based sermon, and that’s a good question.
D. As I examined the picture of the crowd and, the man with a brick in his hand, I thought, “That took place in 1954 Little Rock Arkansas.
E. Little rock was part of the famed “Bible Belt.” Almost everyone in Little Rock claimed to be a Christian in the south in those days.
F. How many of the men in that crowd claimed to be Bible believing Christ followers?
G. Even Governor Orval Faubus Claimed to be a member of the largest denomination in the State
H. Where was his preacher? Where were the leaders of his church? Where was his third grade Bible Class teacher?
I. In the days of the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin and others supported the execution of Heretics.
1. Where could they have found justification for this in the New Testament?
2. They were all allowing the twisted wisdom of the world to influence their faith!
J. The same thing happened in Germany.
1. Germany was the birthplace of the Protestant reformation – and Hitler’s atrocities.
2. Where were the preachers and people who claimed to be Christians?
3. How many of the millions who manned Germany’s army and concentration camps claimed to be Christians?
4. Only a few like, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoeller spoke up.
Martin Niemöller was a decorated U-boat captain in the First World War but subsequently became a minister of religion and a relatively high-profile opponent of the Nazis as they increasingly gained firm hold of the reins to power in Germany.
Niemöller was active as a leader in a so-called Pastors' Emergency League and in a Synod that denounced the abuses of the dictatorship in the famous "Six Articles of Barmen." Such activities finally led to his arrest on 1 July 1937. When the subsequent court appearance was followed by his release with only a modest 'slap on the wrist' Hitler personally ordered his incarceration with the result that Niemöller remained in concentration camp, including prolonged periods of solitary confinement, until the end of the war.
Niemöller occasionally traveled internationally after the war and delivered many speeches and sermons in which he confessed of his own blindness and inaction in earlier years when the Nazi regime rounded up the communists, socialists, trade unionists, and, finally, the Jews.
In this regard he framed a now famous quotation that is often presented in a corrupted form. Niemöller himself however lived through the events associated with the Nazi seizure of absolute power and knew which groups had been persecuted by the Nazis, and knew the order in which those groups had come under persecution. He said,
• First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a communist;
• Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a socialist;
• Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a trade unionist;
• Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a Jew;
• Then they came for me-- and there was no one left to speak out for me.
K. In the Middle ages Leaders of the Catholic church and some protestant churches burned people at the stake for disagreeing with the religious opinions of the time.
L. Where in God’s name would anyone find authorization to burn a person at the stake for disagreeing on a matter of religious doctrine?
M. Do you find it hard to believe that people who wore the name of Christ would support such a bloody thing as that? Or the evils of segregation today?
N. All over America today Preachers and religious leaders who claim to be Christian are supporting the death of one million unborn children a year in the holocaust of the womb.
O. Never mind that God said
All souls are mine
John the Baptist jumped in his mother’s womb when Elizabeth met Mary.
God said thou shalt not kill.
Psalms 139:16 (ESV) Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
1 Corinthians 1:19-20 (ESV) 19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” 20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
Job 38:2 (ESV) “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Isaiah 5:20-21 (ESV) 20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!
IV. Remember and forget
A. We do live in a world where sin is rampant. But our lives are filled with God’s blessings.
B. Like the apostle Paul we must both remember and forget.
C. He remembered his sin. But he left it behind.
1 Timothy 1:15-16 (ESV) 15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. 16 But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.
Philippians 3:13-15 (ESV) 13 . . . One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, . . .
Isaiah 43:18-19 (ESV) 18 “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. 19 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
D. We must remember the wages of sin is death.
E. But like Paul we have been blessed
F. He wrote from Prison
Philippians 4:4-8 (ESV) 4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Philippians 4:11-13 (ESV) 11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:19 (ESV) And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
G. It may be hard when you are pulled over by a policeman and you wonder was it really because of my tail light or was it because I’m black or Hispanic?
H. But don’t let Satan fill you with rage and hate
I. Rejoice in every circumstance.
Sermon History:
02-19-2012 AM Waterford.
David E. Parks
