God’s Plan is Bigger
Genesis 9:1-16 Ephesians 2:11-22
I thank you for the opportunity to be with you this morning as we continue our theme of Racial Reconciliation. Today we consider, a view from the other side.
This past week we had the privilege of observing the inauguration of President Biden as he laid out the beginning of his plans for the next four years as all Presidents have done before.
Yet we serve a God who does not speak in terms of here’s the plan for the next four years, He speaks in terms of centuries.
Who but God can tell someone, your people will be slaves for 430 years, but then I am going to liberate them and bring them out of Egypt. That tells me that God’s plans are far bigger than I could ever imagine. It tells me I can only get a glimpse of what God is doing in any point of time in history.
Why is it that when God creates things, God simply goes out His way to put variety everywhere all over the planet. It does not matter whether it is fish, birds, monkeys, flowers or trees, we always find a variety springing out off the imagination of God in creation.
Why wouldn’t God create a variety and diversity among human the race.
What is it according to the Bible that separates human beings from all other life forms? We as human beings have all been created in the image of God.
That one single fact lifts us all above the animal world and at the same time places us all on the same level of standing in the eyes of God.
In the eyes of God, all of humanity began as one race. Every member of that race is entitled to a certain amount of respect and dignity simply because he or she is in the image of God.
When God created Adam and Eve, what color was their hair. What were the color of their eyes. What was the color of their skin? How tall were they? Which shape type of human face did they have? The answer to these questions has been found in a book that’s over 2000 years old and its known as the bible. It tells us that we do not have the faintest idea to the answers to these questions.
When God created humanity, these things were not in the least bit important to God? What mattered to God, was, would they love God by choosing to obey him or would they choose to believe lies about God’s character and do their own thing.
After Adam and Eve deliberately rejected God’s one command, things went from bad to worse. The more people multiplied upon the earth, the more they rejected the things of God and God Himself. Evil and violence was the norm of the day.
I find it interesting that nothing is mentioned in the history of humankind before the flood about racial divisions among the people.
The only race that exists in God’s eyes is the human race. When God regrets that He had created humanity. It’s the human race that had broken the heart of God.
Humankind’s self destruction led to God’s judgment on the world with the flood. God’s love for humanity was demonstrated through God’s preservation of Noah and his family through the ark. God’s bigger plan included a second chance for humanity after the flood.
At this point, everyone is in relationship to the one true God. God tells them again to be fruitful, increase in number and fill the earth. God also tells them that God consider every human life valuable because it is created in the image of God.
God also makes a promise to never destroy all of life again by a flood. He gives us the rainbow as a sign of his promise. For the next 350 years everybody speaks the same language, but not everybody is willing to obey God.
God told them to scatter over the face of the world and fill it up with people. Instead the people got together and decided to build a great city that would reach high into the sky. They wanted to make a name for themselves. They were not going to be scattered all over the earth as God had told them to do.
Even though they knew God had a plan for them, they rejected that plan and were not willing to help God with it. They decided they were not going anywhere. There is something in us that just does not want to do what God tells us to do.
The scriptures tells us that God decides enough is enough with this rebellion. In the midst of their great building project, God confuses their language. One group of people can no longer understand another group. There is confusion everywhere.
There was a oneness in thought that existed in humanity that all of a sudden no longer exists. The Hebrew text suggests more than simply a misunderstanding of words, there is a misunderstanding of concepts on an emotional level as well.
There was a common language that we all spoke that has been lost to us all. This great city that was to be a name for humanity was called “Babel” which means confusion.
I don’t know how God did it, but God instantly placed groups of people all over the world. Those different groups gave birth to children that looked most like them. The original division of people was not based on race but on language. We lost the ability to communicate with one another and with God. Once again we reached the point where no single group of people is serving the true God.
Even though we talk about race as though it was some distinct scientific definition, it is not. The truth is we are related to one another in some very complex ways. If I need a blood transfusion, you can’t just find another Black person and put their blood inside of me.
You need to know that my blood type is B positive. I need B positive blood or O positive blood from a person regardless of whether they are red, yellow, black, white or brown. God always intended for the human race to be dependent upon each other physically and spiritually.
God wanted to make himself known to a people, who could then tell other people what God was like and what God’s laws were. God wanted to be in relationship to the human race.
He did not choose a group of people based on their race. God started with Abraham and Sarah and from there the world was divided into two main religions. Those who served Almighty God, and those who served other gods. Those who served Almighty God became known as the Jews.
But God made it clear, there was nothing special about the Jews from the start. They were not the largest or most powerful nation. They were a very small and humble group. Yet God set his affection upon them and did a work in their lives for the benefit of the whole world. Throughout the whole book of Genesis, you do not find racism as a basis for people interacting with each other.
When Moses led the people of God out of Israel, he led a multiethnic group of people. There is no way you could be in Egypt for 400 years and not have people of a variety of colors.
The first indication we have of racial prejudice in the Bible is in Numbers chapter 12. The people have left Egypt and have seen a number of miracles from God. They have not yet made it to the promised land.
Moses was being exalted more and more by the people. His sister Miriam and his brother Aaron started to get jealous. They wanted to be seen as Moses’ equal. It wasn’t enough that Miriam was seen as the leading prophetess in the nation and Aaron was the high priest over them. They wanted more.
The only thing they could do was to attack Moses personally in order to erode his leadership. They began to say to others, “Aren’t you disappointed that Moses took a Cushite to be his wife.” Some translations use the word Ethiopian instead of Cushite. Cush is the land south of Egypt where Ethiopia is today.
Miriam and Aaron were the first recorded persons to use the race card as a means to separate and divide the people. “Don’t you think we would be better off if Moses had of married one of us.” “Don’t you think he should not have married a black or dark skinned woman.”
God didn’t like people playing the race card then and God does not like it now. God called the three of them together. God gave Miriam and Aaron a stinging rebuke and God left them in anger.
Miriam instantly turned into a leper with her skin becoming as white as snow. Aaron found himself confessing to Moses that both of them had been wrong and he starts begging Moses to pray for her.
Moses starts praying, please God forgive her. God forgives her but she has the illness for seven days. If someone wants to know what’s your opinion on interracial marriage just say I agree with Numbers 12.
It’s something how an issue is not an issue until certain people bring it up. All those people were getting along okay, until Miriam got jealous. She thought she could use racial tension for her own power and personal gain.
She got Aaron to go along with her. God held her accountable almost instantly for what she did. What if we did the same thing in our country for those who race bait us? What if we just refused to go there?
What if we really saw everybody created in the image of God. How many of us have a friend of another race whom we would lay down our lives for or who would lay down their lives for us. If we can’t think of anyone, it probably means that we have not gone of our comfort zone to love someone who is different from ourselves.
It’s amazing how God has put stories in the Bible to help us see how skin color does not have to be a factor in choosing to do what’s right. Did you know that if it had not been for a Black man, we might be missing the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations.
Here was the situation. Jeremiah the prophet had warned the people for years that if they did not change, God would send the Babylonians to destroy them and the city.
They didn’t listen, the Babylonians came and surrounded the city. God told Jeremiah, to tell the people their only of survival was to voluntarily go out and surrender themselves to the Babylonians.
The high officials in the King’s court, demanded of the King that Jeremiah be thrown into a deep pit full of mud. King Zedekiah, said, “all right do as you like, I can’t stop you.” (Jeremiah 38, 39)
Jeremiah was placed in the pit, where everyone expected him to die. But there was an important court official by the name of Ebed Melech who was an Ethiopian. Right here God tells us that Black people have always been just as smart as the rest of humanity and can hold high positions of power and influence.
Ebed-Melech knows that the other powerful people have turned against Jeremiah the prophet and that he’s taking a huge risk going against the majority.
But justice means something to Ebed-Melech as well as his being faithful to God. He goes to the king, and says, “King this is an unjust decision concerning Jeremiah. He does not deserve the death penalty.”
The King who had been spineless before, took courage from the strength of Ebed Melech and gave him permission to go and rescue the prophet Jeremiah.
If Jeremiah had died in that pit, we would not have the Scriptures as we know it. Here was a black man willing to lay down his life for a fellow servant of God who was of a different color.
What was his reward. The Lord told Jeremiah, tell Ebed melek, even thought I am going to destroy this city by the hand of the Babylonians, you don’t have to fear because I am going to rescue you. Because you trusted me, I will give you your life as your reward. I will rescue you and keep you safe.
Racism is real. But everything we call racism is not racially motivated. If my goal is to make a lot of money, then where I put my business is going to impact how much money I make. Is my decision a racist one if I choose one neighborhood over another?
No, but it feels racist to me when lines are drawn for insurance coverage and my zip code pays more for the same coverage you have and most of the people look like me.
If I want my house to increase in value, where I build my house will impact how much it increases in value. Is my decision a racist one to build in one city and not another?
No, but it feels racist to me when my neighborhod was targeted with high risk loans wiping out the equity in my neighborhood when the system collapsed. The banks who caused the problems were bailed out, I wasn’t. We paid $273,000 dollars to build our home but today its valued at $89,000 on the tax rolls.
If I want my kids in a particular school system, is it racist to decide to leave my struggling district to go to a better one? No.
But it feels racist to me when the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled three times that the method of funding schools is unconstitutional, but nobody does anything about it.
God doesn’t send us into the past to try to make things right. God deals with us and the choices that we are making today. You have been entrusted by God with power in certain areas. What are you doing with it. Remember, God’s plan is so much bigger than ours.
God has never wanted the human race to stay divided in itself or to stay away from God. When God first chose Abraham, God’s plan was to come up with a system that every nation on the planet could be blessed.
God called Abraham to get the process of sending Jesus Christ into this world further along. You and I have both always been part of God’s larger plan.
In the gospel of John,
John writes, John 3:16-18 (NIV2011)
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
God’s division of people has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with belief in Jesus Christ. It is in yielding to Christ that racism gets removed from our hearts.
Jesus prayed, John 17:20-21 (NIV2011) 20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
The apostle Paul tells us that one of the mysteries of Christ coming into the world was to be our peace and Christ was to reunite us into one humanity by destroying the barrier’s between us and dividing the wall of hostility. Part of the reason that Christ suffered in the beating and in the crucifixion was to create in Himself, one new humanity.
God’s plan was to use Christ to reconcile all of us to each other and to God, because on the cross he put to death our hostility. Do we want to let go of the hostility or do we want to hold on to it and tell Jesus that he died in vain as far as we’re concerned?
You see when we are joined to Christ, as the church we become his body. Ephesians tell us that we are rising to become a holy temple in the Lord. The purpose of the temple is to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
You are not only going to be part of the final temple building, you’re part of it now. God is a colorful God. I think we’re different colors because God wants his temple to be a beautiful one.
It was God’s plan to put humanity in a variety of shapes and colors. God’s made it possible for us to continue adding different shades and colors to all of humanity.
As the body of Christ, I urge you to reject the notion that we can’t do what Jesus told us to do. The church becomes its weakest when we think we have to follow the world in doing things its way to bring about justice.
We hear a lot about the phrase institutionalized racism. It makes it sounds as though we must begin tearing down institutions with riots and protests. What we really need are believers in Christ, who are willing to become like Ebed Meleks in the position that God has placed them.
Be willing to go against what’s popular in order to stand for what is right. We change lives and hearts one at a time by choosing to speak out against injustice and bad decisions aimed at people right where we are and being willing to suffer the consequences. It’s a price of following Christ.
It does not matter where God has placed you, you can be part of the solution. What is it that we want from our brothers and sisters in Christ who happened to be white, we just want to know that you have our backs when we are not there to speak for ourselves. In communion, we recognized a special oneness that we all share together in Christ.
Let’s demonstrate that unity by sharing in the Lord’s table together.
