What I Learned From Black History Month

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,