The Call For A Solemn Assembly — Douglas Small

Church and Kevin Jessup who put together had on his heart. He's carried this burden for the nation for three years and pulled together in Jonathan Kahn, the return in Washington DC. What a formidable lineup and I'm humbled to just be here tonight.

I wanna conclude with something that I even this afternoon, I got up early this morning and reviewed these notes. Two or three days ago, I scribbled out some notes and said I knew this is what the Lord had given me.

At least I thought it was what the Lord had given me. And then this morning I got up and reviewed this all day long. I've kind of worked through this on my heart for this evening. And I've had some doubts.

I've had some second thoughts. I've wondered about what I wanna share with you. Because in a sense, I don't want you to hear me as saying I'm giving up on the nation. But I do feel like a chord needs to be sounded for balance.

And we need to hear what God might be doing that we are not comfortable with that we don't like. And that's kind of what I wanna talk to you about tonight. So I'm gonna tell you what I wanna talk to you about.

The Extraordinary Purpose of a Solemn Assembly

And then you can decide whether you wanna stay with me or not. In 1992, that's a long time ago, I was asked by my denomination to write a manual for solemn assembly. And at that time, there were many other denominations, Southern Baptists being the leader in this, who were calling their denomination and their churches to have a solemn assembly.

Richard Owen Roberts, who's already been mentioned, was one of the voices. He probably is the principal living expert on the solemn assembly. So for 30 years now, I have been praying for a national solemn assembly.

Richard Owen Roberts says there were probably 12. Now, we're not talking about normal solemn assemblies. We're not talking about the festivals, the Jewish feast as solemn assemblies. We're talking about something that is extraordinary.

And these extraordinary solemn assemblies were days in which they were grappling with the soul of the nation and the survival of the nation. And they realized that their only hope as a nation, the nation of Israel, the nation of Judah, was prayer and repentance.

Of these 12 radical and special and extraordinary solemn assemblies, eight were called by kings or governors. And three were triggered by prophets and one by a priest. Now, just here's my thinking and here's my great concern.

If it is a king or a prophet or a priest that calls a solemn assembly, think about our own government here. The king is represented in terms of leadership by the president. He's the servant of the people.

We don't have a king. But he is the president, the lead citizen, who is serving the people. The Congress are the representatives of the people proper. And they stand in the place of a priestly community.

And the prophets represent the conscience of the people. I'm sorry, the Supreme Court represents the conscience of the people. And they stand in the role of the prophet. And when the framers were constructing our nation and the separation of powers, they were drawing off this idea of prophet and priest and king.

What is the possibility in your mind, honestly, that the Supreme Court, as we know it, will fall to its knees and cry out to God? I can tell you, despite David Ford's discussion about faith and creating an atmosphere of faith, I'm having trouble believing and seeing that.

And what's the possibility that Congress will fall to its knees and cry out to God and have an old-fashioned prayer meeting and repent before God? And there's reconciliation and neck-hugging and kissing between Democrats and Republicans.

I'm having a hard time believing that it's gonna happen. The last president to call a solemn assembly was Woodrow Wilson. That's 120 years ago. And by the way, the last really serious solemn assembly was called by Lincoln.

And that's over 150 years ago. And in that solemn assembly, Lincoln charged the nation to reckon with God about what was happening, the civil war that was tearing it apart. Now, I can tell you that in the days of George Bush, following the collapse of the Twin Towers, there was discussion about a call for a national solemn assembly.

But there were people around him who felt like that was too overtly religious a thing to do, so that was put on hold. The current president has been presented the idea of calling for a solemn assembly.

And he had earlier indicated that he would be at the return. Instead, he ended up campaigning. But there was some discussion among a handful of his leaders about the political advantage or disadvantage of calling a solemn assembly.

The Bottom-Up Assembly of Acts 2

Here's what I wanna suggest to you. That Acts 2 is a kind of solemn assembly that, in a sense, has given up on the priesthood, and certainly on the government, and the power to inherit and pilot. And, of course, the prophet, the lead prophet, the principal prophet of the land, and his predecessor, John the Baptist, have both been killed.

And in this vacuum, in this vacuum, when solemn assembly is typically for powers, for the lead powers of a nation to recognize that they have offended God and call that nation back to God in the vacuum where that does not exist, and where those powers will not do that, there is the wild card of 2 Chronicles 7 .14.

If my people will humble themselves, and pray, or repent, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven or grant them a hearing in my courtroom. This is the wild card. This is the bottom-up movement of prayer.

And this is, I think, what we need today. I think I have almost given up hope that Washington will have a radical turning to God. I pray that it will. I hope that it will. But let's stop right now and say, God, would you invade Washington, D .C., with an outpouring of your Holy Spirit?

Would you invade the White House and Congress and the Supreme Court and all the administrative buildings? And would you bring a fear that causes men to tremble before you? I want to keep praying prayers like that.

But in the absence of that kind of groundswell and movement and our continued petitioning and even natural disasters that should prompt a solemn assembly and a call from one of the three powers or the branches of government, then I think it becomes time, in the absence of that, for us to say, we're going to assemble ourselves together.

We're going to find some way to connect. And we're going to, from the bottom up, begin to cry out to God for a mighty move of his Holy Spirit. So this is a kind of break with the traditional view of solemn assembly.

And Acts 2 is not typically considered a solemn assembly gathering. But I would recommend that we reconsider that based on this. Christ has been crucified. He's left the earth. The nation of Israel has rejected him.

The hands of the priest themselves are bloody, as are the hands of Pilate, though he has washed them. And so the nation will not reckon with God. And because it will not, there is a need for a solemn assembly by the humble, by the open, by the common people, by those who followed him, to say to God, we realize our nation has gone astray.

And we're obeying you and asking you to intervene in behalf of our nation. You know that there will not be a solemn assembly, even if Christ has been crucified and he has risen from the dead, and there's evidence that he has.

Pilate is not going to call a solemn assembly. He is not going to say to the people, I did wrong. I made a mistake. And Herod is not going to call a solemn assembly. And the high priest who was complicit in the crucifixion of Christ is not going to call a solemn assembly.

So you have this wild card. If my people, if they will pray, if they will humble themselves, if they will seek my face, if they will turn from their wicked ways. And so here is a band of disciples whose Lord has been crucified.

And yet they know that he is not dead. He is risen. And not only risen, he has ascended. And he sends them to the upper room. And he tells them to wait, to conduct a vigil of prayer. And they are waiting for the promise.

And he has called them to be witnesses. And what does that mean? As far as they know, that means that he's calling them to the same kind of death that he died 50 days earlier. And they follow. And they are ready to give their life.

And they are ready to commit themselves. And they are ready to die if necessary for the cause of Christ. They have no premonition, no idea that what he is talking about is a mighty rushing wind and tongues of fire and breaking the language barrier and 3 ,000 people being saved and the whole city being stirred.

They can't imagine that kind of thing happen. All they can see is his death and then his resurrection and then his off and on appearances and then his teaching them things about the kingdom of God. And then the salt covenant that he does the last night, he's with them and then he's being taken away.

And they know now that even if they experience martyrdom, they'll live. And they know now that they'll not go to the grave below, they'll go above to heaven itself. And they know now that he will be with them in some mysterious way that they don't fully yet understand.

And so when this crowd becomes rowdy on the day of Pentecost, Peter boldly stands and declares, he does not cower anymore. He does not deny anymore. He does not distance himself from Christ anymore. He is no longer fearful of the consequences of following hard after Christ.

What does this mean? Peter said, well, it means you killed him. You killed the Messiah. Jesus was the Messiah, not just a good man. He was the Messiah and you killed him. He's not being nice. He's not playing Mr. Nice Guy with them.

He is being forthright. And what we've done for 50 years, we've tried to play Mr. Nice Guy with the culture. And we've continually backed up until we're now in an untenable corner. And it's time for us to call a solemn assembly to say, we're not sure that the nation, listen, I don't mean to be faithless.

We're not sure that the nation is going to turn around like we had hoped. We're not sure that Congress is going to fall on their knees like we prayed for. We're not sure that there's gonna be thunder and lightning dancing over Washington.

And the Supreme Court is gonna reverse all of its bad decisions over the last 60 years. We're not sure about that now. But one thing we are sure about, we have to obey God. We have to do what we have to do.

We have to give ourselves to full and complete obedience, even if it means death, even if it means persecution. And I'll tell you what, that is not where the church has been for the last 50 years. We've had an easy believism gospel.

We've had a sweet little sing these songs and hear this wonderful message about how to be successful in life. And that has to change. Here's what I'm saying, hearing the Holy Spirit say very, very, very clearly.

That has to change. I'm changing that. And it's as if the Lord is saying, I don't really care if the church as I know it, you know it, ever opens up again. I am calling for change. I am calling for radical change.

And I'm calling for a new kind of holy boldness. So the goal, the goal is not to save the nation. The goal is to become a nation, a holy nation, a peculiar people, banded together as a remnant, maybe a persecuted remnant, that nevertheless declares the word of God and stands the culture down and says with tears in our eyes, that's wrong, that's sin.

And if you do that, it will lead to destruction. It'll destroy your marriage. It'll destroy your life. It'll destroy your kids. It'll destroy you. And there is another way. The goal is to give birth to an humble, yet bold, valiant, witnessing church that is committed to witness even if it means death.

And by the way, the word witness, martyrius, didn't mean martyr then in the sense of losing one's life, but it came to mean that. And we have to remember that because we've had it very safe and very nice here in America, and it may get very messy before it's over.

The Collapse of Rejected Structures and the Remnant Church

Acts 2, I'm suggesting, is that moment when something happened that I don't think we commonly perceive. It was a watershed moment. And 40 years later, the political structure of Jerusalem would collapse.

40 years later, Jerusalem would be folded, its walls laid down, its gates burned with fire. 40 years later, the temple would be destroyed. The structure that had rejected Christ, listen, the structure that had rejected Christ would continue for a season, and then it would collapse.

And I'm saying to you, we're dealing with a structure. We're dealing with a nation that once knew God. It has rejected God. It's crucified Christ. It's silenced the church. It said, you can't pray, not here, not in that name.

And maybe it's time for us to say, and it gives me no pleasure or joy to say this, maybe it's time for us to say, all right, we may never have the kind of favor that we once had. We may never have the kind of privilege that we once had.

We may lose greater standing, more standing, tax exemption, etc, etc, etc. But none of that matters. We're not going to compromise on those issues in order to have our message toned down, we will not be the puppet of the state.

Because sooner or later, political systems, social systems, religious systems that stand against God, those systems collapse. And we can't guarantee that this nation will continue as it is and as it has been.

If there is not a great awakening, and if there's not a great awakening, I think we have to recalibrate our goal. We have to recalibrate our focus. I'm not suggesting for a moment that the church is a replacement for Israel or that America as any way a replacement for Israel or that we were a Christian nation.

We were never a Christian nation. We were a nation of Christians who used Christian principles to build a great and wonderful culture and society that favored the church and became a platform for the gospel to go around the world.

But that day may be over. So what do we do? Well, we need an X2 moment. We need to find our way back into our upper room. And we need to cry out to God for an infusion of the power of the Holy Spirit upon the church.

God, save the nation. God, send a spiritual awakening to the nation. God, turn Washington around. God, intervene in behalf of your own purposes. But if the intervention is not in the political, social, popular, cultural dimension, would you empower a remnant church to rise up and be what you want it to be for your glory?

Overcoming Hyper-Individualism Through Christian Community

I wanna go through about five things here that I'm concerned about. I'm gonna stop and pray after every one of them. So you've heard my thesis. You've heard where I am going with this. One of the problems that keeps us from getting where I think God wants to get us is that we live in a culture of hyper individualism.

And so we talk about personal salvation. And we choose churches that minister to our personal needs and feed our personal experience. And we switch churches if they're not ministering to our personal, felt, spiritual needs.

And we choose churches based on the quality of services that they provide for us. And unless we were born in that church and raised in that church and we have family in that church, rarely are there deep relationships in that church.

We worship around people, we shake hands and we are friendly with one another as we're told to do in church, but deep relationships don't typically form. We come for the singing, we come for the show, we come for the preaching.

We love to be in a church where there's an engaging speaker, a good children's church for our kids, a good youth group for our teams. And that is not enough. And that is not the purpose of the church.

The purpose of the church or the community is to find a place that's a good fit for the missional call that is upon my life. Because I have had a personal encounter with God and I have had a personal experience with God.

Let me say it again in a different way. Much of the Bible, the majority of the Bible is not about personal experiences with God as much as it is about what happens with individuals in the context of community.

Adam didn't sin alone, nor did Eve, they sinned together. And so even sin is a communal experience. And in Acts 2, Jesus calls the disciples to come together, to hang together for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

We need community, we need experience. So what is our obligation beyond ourselves to Christ and to others, to a group? We are social beings and we worship a trinity. And inside that trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there is a fellowship and a dynamic of love that goes back and forth between them.

And they empty themselves one into another and so fill one another up in ways that I can't understand. God himself is a social construct that works against the cultural norm of hyper individualism. So I want us to pray right now.

God, if you're calling the church to do something we've never done before, if you're calling us to deeper, more communal relationships for the purpose of mission and cultural impact, and I think that is what God is calling us to.

Not the church as a place of entertainment, but the place of genuine community, for additional impact and cultural change. God, help us with this transformation of the church. From our just going and picking a few grapes and bananas and the things that we like out of the service.

Help us to become a community of people, tethered together to accomplish your purposes. Father, you are wanting to change the church. And in Acts 2, you gave birth to the church. In Acts 2, you forged people together.

And suddenly, they were no longer just individuals who were looking out for themselves because of the crucifixion. They were not running and hiding. They were all together, standing together. Peter stood up in 11 with him, and then 120 began to testify all together.

Would you give us that kind of solidarity? Would you give us that kind of unity, God, in Jesus' name? Here's the second thing I would say to you. There is a community emphasis in scripture, a corporate emphasis in scripture that we're missing.

And we're missing it in a number of respects, not only with regard to the church and our obligation to the church and our partnership with the church and our being a part of that missional community, but we're missing in another sense.

Corporate Accountability of Churches, Cities, and Nations

God doesn't just judge individuals. There is a sense in which we will stand before God and give an account and even do now, but there's another sense in which nations will stand before God. And I think we miss this altogether.

In Genesis 10, there's a listing of some 70 nations or ethnicities. There are about 200 geopolitical nations around the face of the earth, and there are 17 ,000 or so ethno-linguistic groups on the face of the earth.

Gutenberg's project has identified 20 nations in the Bible, but Wikipedia identifies about 38. God is concerned about nations, and God is concerned about this nation, America. I can't go through the list, but today when I'm studying, I began to look at all the nations that the prophets speak to.

I mean, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Amos and Isaiah and Joel and Nahum and Jonah. Over and over, these prophets are speaking to nations. Zechariah, and not only to nations, they're speaking to cities. So have you even considered what is the prophetic voice of God to the nation?

What's the prophetic voice of God to your city? Because you see, what happens in Acts 2 is that they not only become a priestly community, they become a prophetic community. Normal Christianity is three things.

It's being a kingdom of priests, it's being a kingdom of prophets, and it's being a caring people who, because of God's love for them, love other people. And it's these wounded healers who are priestly and prophetic that we are to become.

It's not just living a good life so we can go to Disneyland when we die. That misses the point, and that's why we're so apostate. That's why we're in the mess that we're in. And God is calling us to a new normal, where a new kind of community emerges that's filled with the Spirit of God.

That's how we're priests. We operate under the power of the Holy Spirit. And we're filled with the Word of God, and that's how we're prophets. Because filled with the Spirit of God, quickened by the Spirit, the Word quickened by the Spirit of God, we speak the words of life to a culture.

And dead people live, and sick people are healed. And we do this emitting the compassion and the care of God. The Bible said that Jesus had compassion. The Bible says he was moved with compassion. And that's what God wants to happen to me and you.

That there is this priestly thing where I stand in the middle between God and hurting people, and I'm moved with compassion, and God quickens me with spiritual power. Jesus said he felt the power go out of him.

And not only does God quicken me with spiritual power, but God quickens me with a word of life to give to others. This is normal Christianity. And this is not what's happening in the church, but this is what the Acts 2 watershed moment is meant to do in the church.

And this is why every church needs a prayer meeting. This is why every church needs to gather to God. This is why every church needs to come together and cry out for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon every member individually, but simultaneously upon the church.

So Jesus, what does Jesus say about this? Well, Jesus talks about cities that will experience the judgment of God. He talks about Chorazin, and Bethsaida, and Tyre, and Sidon, and Capernaum. Be more tolerable for Sodom than it is for you because of the mighty works of God that had been done.

But here's what Jesus is saying. He's saying, he's saying, why have these cities not repented? Jesus expected cities to repent. We expect a few people to repent. Jesus expected cities to repent. He expected that the disciples would go out and engage cities with the gospel, not buy a building and offer music and an encouraging talk every week.

He expected the disciples would engage cities and the power of the Holy Spirit would work with them. And with the power of the Holy Spirit work with them, one of the things the spirit would do was call sinners to repent.

And when that didn't happen, and when Jesus didn't see that, he's talking about judgment on cities. Judgment on cities, is your city under judgment? Has your city experienced a profound move of God that has called it to repentance?

Has there been an evident manifestation of God in your city that has awakened the city so much so that it has called it to repentance? Let me tell you, this is exactly what I think God wants to take us.

I think we've gotten this vision of the church as a building, as a place that we go for a pleasant little service. And what God is saying is that is not my vision for you. I want you as a missional people to engage cities and engage nation.

Indeed, indeed, in Matthew 25, Jesus talks about sheep and goat nations. And by the way, in Revelation 2 and 3, out of the seven churches, five are rebuked. Five are called to repentance. And though there may be a handful of righteous people in each one of them, the churches themselves are under judgment.

Is your church under judgment? You see, God judges churches, and God judges cities, and God judges nations. And this was the whole idea of solemn assembly, that some corporate identity had sinned so egregiously that they were worthy of the judgment of God.

And a solemn assembly was called to negotiate with heaven and say, please, don't send what we deserve, send mercy, send grace. But we are not doing that because we so individuate our lives. We so isolate our life.

If something's not going on like we like at that church, we just withdraw. If we can't find a church that we like, we withdraw completely. And see, that is not the biblical norm. The biblical norm is to find a healthy remnant somewhere that is seeking God and full of the spirit of God and full of the word of God and full of the love of God.

And own mission with God to call their city to repentance and help that city understand you can't ignore God. You have to reckon with God. Here's the fourth thing I would ask you to consider. We have no regular means of dealing with this kind of thing.

Prayer, Holiness, and Recovering the Remnant

We have no regular means of dealing with sin. 95 of our churches don't even have a prayer meeting, and those that do spend their time praying for themselves. God, would you touch this, move him, heal me, change this, give me a million dollars, give me a better car.

It's not about sin, it's not about holiness, it's not about the glory of God. It's not about his presence coming in a way that not only satiates the church but spreads out in the community. We don't have a means of seeking God and asking him and inviting him to come Sunday morning, a five minute prayer, a one minute prayer on Sunday morning simply will not do it.

The congregation is not so much to be gathered to the preacher to hear from him. The congregation is to be gathered to God to hear from him. That's what a church is all about. Preaching is fine, teaching is wonderful.

But what you want to do is hear not from a preacher or a teacher, you want to hear from God. And you want to discern together, this is what God is saying to us. This is what the Holy Spirit is saying to us.

Because a church is driven by mission if they hear from God and discern together what God might be saying to them, they're emboldened. When the spirit comes upon the church together, they're emboldened in a way that no preacher can inspire that kind or level of boldness.

God wants our churches to impact cities, to impact nations. But we ignore the macro and we focus on our narrow slice of piety. And so when the church fails, or the city is set on fire, or the nation is teetering, we have some vague sense that something must be wrong.

That we've forgotten God, haven't we? Wow, we should pray, but we don't know how to go about a solemn assembly in which we genuinely reckon with God, and we repent of our sins. What we have to learn to do is read the spiritual climate in which we live, in which we work, in which we shop.

We have a vague sense that we feel safe, a vague sense that we're concerned about how our neighborhood presents. But we don't discern the spiritual dynamics that are going on behind that. We don't discern or contemplate about that very much.

We only see the natural. Here's what Jude, the brother of Jesus said. When you have a situation where apostasy dominates, and you have a problem with Christology, and you have a problem with basic theology, and you have a problem with eschatology, and you have a problem with the morality of the church.

If you look at the book of Jude, it is the most concise catalog of apostasy anywhere in the New Testament. And here's what Jude said, here's what the brother of Jesus said. But you, beloved, plural, when the church itself has gone too far, book of Jude, you, beloved, there's gotta be a remnant.

There's gotta be two or three. There's gotta be five or ten. There's gotta be ten or twenty. But you, beloved, you build yourself up on your most holy faith, a faith that makes you holy, and a faith that is by nature holy.

You keep yourself in the love of God, guard the love of God, center yourself in the love of God. You pray by the enabling of the Holy Spirit. You look for his mercy. And what he's talking about here is he's talking about the strengthening and the edification and the fortification of the remnant in the church in prayer.

And then he says, you start pulling them out of the fire, hating the garments spotted with the flesh. And you look out for that one, and you give that one more time, and you realize that one will probably never be converted.

But one by one, you begin to draw other people into this fire that you started, this remnant, until it begins to take over the church, until it purifies the church again, until the church overflows into the city, until the city becomes an impact on the nation.

You can't capitulate. You can't say my church has gone too far. God is calling us to be transformational agents of change. And so, Father, we just stop and pray. To the extent that we've withdrawn, to the extent that we've looked for somebody else, to the extent that we've tried to elect a president or a congressman or somebody else who will go to Washington and fix everything.

And see, this is really what I'm concerned about, is that we pass this off to something else. If that could only change, then this would happen when the real deal is we have to call a solemn assembly.

We have to humble ourselves. If my people, it has to be a ground movement up from the bottom, from the bottom up. Here's the fifth thing I would have you consider, is that we are not considering the accumulating effect or residue of our corporate decisions of sin.

The Accumulating Residue of Corporate Sin

We see sin as kind of invisible and immaterial. And we don't realize that it piles up. It piles up. It piles up. God has a record, and there's page after page after page after page after page. And as this sin piles up, we don't realize its effect on us.

We're going to a church. We're living in a house that has not been purged, that has not been purified. We're going to churches where there's been no real deep repentance for a decade or maybe more. And so we're worshiping in the piles of rubble, just like Ezra and Nehemiah in that day.

They're worshiping in the face of the piles of rubble. And the rubble is the debris of judgment because of previous sins, and they've never really dealt with that. We can't see our piles of rubble, but they're there.

And we're asking for the blessing of God, and here's the pile of rubble. And we're asking for the grace of God, and here's the adultery, and here's the moral failure, and here's the leadership failure.

And here's the anger, and here's the unforgiveness, and here's this side that won't talk to that side. All this rubble. And we want the blessing of God, and we think we're going to get a blessing in a church like that.

It's not going to happen. And you see, because of this incremental accumulation of sin and the disfavor of God because of that sin, that it affects us in ways that we don't realize. And this is why the church is so apostate today, because imperceptibly, our own values are shifted.

Imperceptibly, our own love languishes. Imperceptibly, we no longer witness. We no longer share our faith. One to two percent of Americans share their faith. We're no longer passionate. We don't weep over the loss.

We don't cry because there is a hell, and we have a brother or sister or uncle or aunt that may be going there. Our heart is not broken before God. We come to accept the subnormal as normal, and we drift into a kind of idolatry.

And we don't even realize that behind these idols, the idols are only masks. Only masks for the demonic powers that are now beginning to influence our life. Underneath it all is a loss of our love for God.

Not only our love for God, but a realized love for God, an experience of healthy love with God. And finally, we end up seeing people around us that we never thought would do it abandon their faith and turn to alternative religious symbols.

And apathy turns to inquisitiveness about this or that. Shortcuts to power. And then we adopt a kind of eclectic pluralism. And that turns to paganism. And that turns to nihilism. And that's exactly where the nation has gone.

That's exactly what's happened. Whole denominations have drifted away like this. And maybe you're in a movement or church that you're beginning to see that shift take place. Here's what I think Acts 2 is all about.

A New Race and a Holy Priesthood

It's a parallel to Exodus 19. And Exodus 19 is when the law is given. And in Acts 2, the law is given again, except it's the law of the spirit. And it's written upon our heart. We'll no longer be led by external do's and don'ts.

We will be led by an internal do this, do that. And the check of the Holy Spirit. The reins will not be on the outside of us. They will be on the inside of us. Here's what Peter said. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood.

You are a holy nation. You are a people of his own possession. And your purpose is to proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Here's what was happening in Acts 2.

Oh, it's mind blowing. God was creating a new race. So what race are you? What ethnicity are you? Well, if you're a Christian, that's the race you are now. You are a new race. In fact, the word is genos.

It means family or offspring. And from it, we get the very word genes. I've got new genes. They may not be manifest in the natural, but they are in the spiritual. I've got a new spiritual DNA. I am a part of a new race.

I'm neither Jew nor Gentile. I'm neither male nor female. I'm neither black nor white or brown or red or yellow. I'm stained by the blood of Jesus Christ and wrapped in his glory. And I'm a child of the king.

And I've been declared righteous. So I'm red and white and blue and purple. Those are the colors of the tabernacle, by the way. This is all I am because this is the purpose of God. He has made me a royal priesthood.