Eric Mason's "Biblical" Reparations - AD Responds

Eric Mason’s Claim That Reparations Are a Biblical Principle

All right. So here we go. We got Dr. Eric Mason. He allegedly preached a sermon. I refuse to call it a sermon. I think it's more like a TED Talk. Similar content, similar style, all that kind of thing.

Dr. Eric Mason has a TED Talk here on a Sunday. And we're going to watch the whole thing, I think. I'm not 100 sure. We might get bored of it. We'll see what happens. But this is, if you haven't heard this yet, I highly recommend that you give this a watch.

This is going to be one of the most revealing TED Talks that you've ever heard regarding what the woke church actually wants. Now you might remember Paul Tripp the other day saying that Dr. Eric Mason was one of the greatest preachers of our time.

And looking at the screen like he's reading a hostage letter, saying how great his woke church book is. Well, you know, you're going to see in this TED Talk here exactly what Dr. Eric Mason is after. Let me give you a spoiler.

He's after gold. Hallelujah. Silver. Hallelujah. Other things. I forget the other things. But he wants your money. He wants cash. He also wants counseling. He also wants free tuition for hundreds of years.

He also wants, there's some other things that he wants. This is better than I could have possibly imagined. I had a few people message me, have you heard this sermon? Have you heard this sermon on reparations?

And I only listened to the first, I don't know, maybe five to 10 minutes. And then I heard every clip that some, one of my friends pulled out some clips of the juicy bits. So I said, I got to do a review of this.

I have to. And so we're going to do it live. Some of the stuff I've seen before, some of it I haven't. But this will be interesting because I thought it would be bad when I heard someone say, oh, Eric Mason preached about reparations.

But I could not have been prepared for how bad it was. Now at the end of the day, I don't really have that many expectations of Dr. Eric Mason. He is most definitively a wolf. He's barely even in sheep's clothing, by the way.

I mean, he's like a wolf wolf. Like he's the kind of wolf that you look at his sheep's clothing and it's like, yeah, but I see you've got pointy ears and sharp teeth. Like that's not really that great of clothing, but, but somehow he's, this guy dupes a lot of people.

In fact, I'll never forget big Eva dispatched a henchman to my church. That's right. They dispatched a henchman to my church. And the reason that they dispatched this henchman, he's an X 29 guy. He wanted to stop me from doing what I'm doing.

He considered your future young man, stuff like that. And, and it was because of some things I said about Eric Mason's book, woke church. I went in on that book. You know what I mean? I went in on that book.

But anyway, let's let's watch this. We're going to comment on it. We're not going to get too triggered because I have very low expectations of Dr. Eric Mason. I don't think they could be lower, but I guess they should have been because I was actually surprised how bad this was anyway.

Um, but we won't get too triggered. Maybe I'll get triggered later when some moron defends this. You know what I mean? I'll try to save my triggering until for later, but let's just get into it and, uh, buckle up.

Cause this is going to be a long, long ride. Oh, hold on. I got to set up my audio here. I should have set this up ahead of time. This is very terrible at this. His product. I'll tell you what his production value compared to mine.

Fantastic.

Communion as “Biblical Means”

We are glad that you came, uh, to be with us today. We're excited, honored that you chose Epiphany Fellowship as your resource today for Sunday morning worship and gathering. Just, uh, one particular thing today.

We're going to start.

I, this is a small thing, but why does he describe church as a resource?

I don't know. It seems a little weird. Union every week. So what I want you to do, um, by the end, well, now if you can, or I'll give you time at the end, grab a piece of bread, anything to drink, anything to drink.

You can, it can be oranges, whatever. Um, if you got grape fine, uh, you know, I know some of y 'all got other things at the house. Amen. Um, but whatever you use, um, whatever you use, um, with in biblical means, um, utilize that.

And we want to be able to celebrate the Lord's death at the end of our.

Time today. Dr. Eric Mason doesn't have a freaking clue what he's talking about. Let's start there. Let's start there. Cause he's like, and he's laughing because he kind of like hinted that, you know, you should get crunk quick point of clarification here.

I said crunk, which, uh, isn't exactly correct. According to urban dictionary, uh, crunk really just means kind of like partying, that kind of thing, kind of excessive partying. What I should have said is get your swerve on, which has a little bit more of a connotation of drinking alcohol.

So what I should have said here was Eric Mason wants you to get your swerve on, uh, during communion, which actually I agree. I mean, you shouldn't get crunk, but, but you should be using wine because that's what the Lord used, right?

That's what the Lord used. But he started this off. He's like, well, get yourself a piece of bread and get your, whatever you got to drink orange juice. If you got grape, fine. It's like, but that's not actually not how this works.

Like Dr. Eric Mason doesn't really care what the Bible says. He doesn't care about how, how to understand it properly. And it hits you in the face instantly. The first 30 seconds of his sermon, he's telling you orange juice is appropriate for the Lord's supper.

It isn't, it isn't orange juice is not appropriate for the Lord's supper. And the thing is what I found interesting about this is he's like, get yourself a piece of bread. Why does it got to be bread?

Dr. Eric Mason? What if all I've got is Fritos? I like Frito, I like chili Fritos. So why can't I have a chili Frito with a grape soda? You know what I mean? So there's no, there's no consent. He doesn't care what the Bible says.

He doesn't care about, um, the reformed tradition. Obviously he would say it's racist and white supremacist and all these kinds of things. Um, and so the reality is like, like this whole, this whole, it starts off and most, most people would miss it because it's just a joke.

He's telling a joke, obviously. Um, you notice he kind of fixed it. He's like, well, within biblical means, because he knows that what he was talking about was something, you know, a little bit overkill, perhaps a little purple drank.

Maybe he's talking about purple drank, sipping on some Siserp. Maybe that's what he's talking about. I don't know. But that little he's like within biblical means. Yeah. Okay. Well, if it's going to be within biblical means and it's got to be the fruit of the vine, right?

It's got to be the fruit of the vine, right? Was that orange juice was, was the Lord talking about orange juice back then? So you see, there's no consistency here at all. He doesn't actually care how to interpret the Bible.

And this is good. This is a small thing. It's just a joke. I get it. Um, but this is going to be the theme of the entire Ted talk because nothing about this, if you had this, and this was like your, this is what you knew about Dr. Eric Mason.

You wouldn't, you might not even know if he knew how to read much less interpret the Bible. He definitely doesn't know how to interpret the Bible, but you'd walk away thinking, does he even know how to read?

I don't even know because the words on the page don't seem to add up to what he's saying. He, he, this is the kind of guy that he has a point and then he goes hunting for verses to make that point. Um, which is the exact opposite of how you should be preaching the Bible.

My, my pastor preached a great sermon about good shepherds versus bad shepherds. It was from the book of John where Christ says he is the good shepherd do driven from the scripture. Right. And he does a great job.

My pastor does an exceptional job with application, right? Applying it to our current situation. But the thing is like, you can't change the text to apply it to your, for your current situation. You have to actually drive the bus from the text and then say, okay, it means this.

It definitely means this, the meaning doesn't change. And so we need to apply it to our current situation as best we can. That's not what Eric Mason does here. This is just all, he, he's got an idea. He wants to defend reparations.

So he's going to go hunting for things that he can twist to make it sound like it's reparations. It is really a poor job too. Like some, a lot of pastors do this. Don't get me wrong. This is a common tactic.

Many of them, many people are more skilled at it than Dr. Eric Mason here. This is just, that's why I say like the wolf, the wolf's sheep clothing is very poor. It's like he must've bought it from like, you know, I don't know, the dollar store or something.

Luke 19 and Zacchaeus’s Repentance

Well, today we are still in our series on cancel culture, cancel culture. You know, we've been going through this series really to talk about the fact that Christians shouldn't be the one canceling culture.

We should be the ones engaging culture. And so because we're the ones that should be engaging culture, we're diving in. What is he talking about today? We're diving into canceling culture, reparations.

We'll talk about that in a second as we read the.

Text. All right. So let's stop there before he reads the text. Do you remember a couple of years ago when I was told by two social justice advocates that I was crazy for saying that Christians were actually promoting reparations?

I had a sneaking suspicion that they were lying at the time, that they had known many people talk about reparations. But you know, listen, I'm not like the smartest guy in the world. I'm not a prophet.

I mean, this was happening openly and they were pretending like it doesn't. Like this happens so consistently with this social justice movement, because the people that are pushing social justice in the church are satanic.

So they have the same language as their father, Satan. He's the father of lies. All he does is lie. And so you might have noticed like two years ago, no, no, no, we don't want reparations. Now everyone wants reparations.

A couple months ago, people were like, well, stop calling us Marxist. That's evil. Like we're not that slander. Now they're all coming out as Marxist. They're all soft peddling Marxism. Well, yeah, Marx has definitely influenced me.

It's like, you know, Tim Keller was admitting this, that guy Dante Stewart was admitting this, like they're all admitting it now. So it's like, you know, like this is the whole point. Like they're just constantly, it's lies all the way through.

That's basically how the social justice movement works. It's just lies on top of lies on top of lies. Do they ever apologize for being wrong? Very rarely do they apologize for being wrong. They just keep lying to cover up the lies.

It's lies on top of lies on top of lies because they have a different father. You see what I'm saying? Like, they don't feel bad about their lies. They just, they just go for it.

Zacchaeus, Restitution, and the Law of God

We're going through Luke chapter 19 verses one through 10. Luke chapter 19 verses one through 10. It reads thusly. It says, well, I guess he can read.

But what I, of course, when I said he couldn't read, I mean like critically, he can't critically read. Of course he can read words. Well, let's just go with it.

He entered Jericho and was passing through. There was a man named Zacchaeus who was chief tax. He was a wee little man. And he was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but he was not able because he, because of the crowd, since he was a short man.

So running ahead, he climbed up a sycamore tree to see Jesus since he was about to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said, Zacchaeus hurry and come down because today it is necessary for me to stay at your house.

That's interesting. So he quickly came down and welcomed him joyfully. All who saw it began to complain. He's gone to stay with a sinful man. The Bible says, and they said, but Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, look, I'll give half of my, of my possessions to the poor Lord.

And if I've extorted anything from anyone, I'll pay back four times as much. Jesus said to him today, salvation has come to this house. Jesus told them because he too is a son of Abraham for the son of man has come to seek and to save the lost.

I want to talk to you today from this text. I want to tag it, a biblical case for reparations, a biblical case for reparations. Let's go before the Lord, Lord, shower your grace and blessings on us. Lord God, as we dive into this text and to begin to work through, what is your view on reparations and where does it fit into the frame of scripture, the gospel, and the way you work and based on us loving one another.

So Lord God, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. In Jesus Christ's name we pray. Everybody agree with that? Say it.

Amen.

Okay. So, you know, this is a very famous story. And so this is where he's going to start his scripture twisting right off the bat. Any normal person understands that Zacchaeus, you know, he was a thief.

He himself had stolen from people. It said that he extorted people, right? And if you go to the scripture, because this is the thing like Jesus and the Israelites at the time and the people at the time, you know, they knew that what the scripture said about extortion, about stealing and about what the penalty for stealing was.

And so what Zacchaeus does is he sees Jesus, right? And Jesus shows him grace instantly, right? He shows him grace instantly. I'm going to come to your house, right? Because he knows he's a sinful man.

And then Jesus is a good man. He understands that. And yet Jesus comes to his house knowing that he's a sinful man, right? This is the amazing part of Zacchaeus because Zacchaeus has shown grace. Zacchaeus has shown grace before anything happens, right?

By Jesus. And so Zacchaeus, he knows the law. He's read the book of the law. I'm not so convinced that Eric Mason knows the law, but Zacchaeus does. Zacchaeus does. And the person who wrote this story, Luke, he knows the law as well.

He doesn't have to explain things. He knows his readers likely will know the law as well. And so what does the law say? If you steal from someone, right? If you steal from someone, how do you make restitution?

Despite what charlatans will like you to say, do not substitute the word reparations for restitution because reparations mean something different, okay? Restitution in the book of the law, it's kind of like a sliding scale, right?

So what you do is if you steal a little bit, you pay back what you stole and then you put a little on top, right? If you steal the medium amount, if you stole a medium amount, you give back the medium amount that you stole.

Plus you put a medium amount on top. So there's a penalty for stealing. So not only do you give back what you stole, but you give back more than what you stole, right? And if you stole a lot, if you stole a big, very valuable item in the way the Bible talks about this is livestock, right?

So if you steal a sheep, it's one thing. If you steal an ox, that's a different matter. An ox is worth way more than a sheep, right? And so in the book of the law, in Deuteronomy, in the book of God's law, if you steal a lot, you pay back what you stole.

Plus you add on top of it a lot. The penalty goes up depending on the value of what you stole. And so what does Zacchaeus do here? In repentance, he's been shown grace by God. He's already been shown grace by Jesus Christ.

Jesus is coming to his house to, he says he has to do it, right? Okay. He's coming to his house and Zacchaeus is amazed at this grace that he's been shown by Jesus Christ, the son of God, the son of David.

He's amazed by this grace that he's been shown. And what does he do? He repents of his sin. He extorted people, right? He extorted people. And so what is he going to do? If I've extorted people, I will give them back what I took, the people that I extorted, I will give them back what I took plus four times, 400%.

That's how that works. I'm not a mathematician. He's applying the book of the law. So he's going to the, he's not just saying, ah, whatever. No, no. He's saying, I'm going to go. And I, from a youth, from a youth, I've known what the law says.

I give back what I've stolen. Plus, you know, a sum, right? In this case, he's saying four times as much. He didn't just invent that. That's the book of the law. That's God's justice. God tells you what justice is.

And so he's saying, because I stole, I'm an extortioner. I'm going to take the stuff that I've extorted from people. I've stolen it. And I'm going to go back and find those people that I stole it from and give them what they've been taken back with interest.

Zacchaeus was demonstrating a repentant heart. Zacchaeus was also demonstrating that he cares about what God says is the case. In the situation that he was in, he had stolen from people. So he was going to pay the penalty for stealing from people, even though the law of the time didn't require him to, right?

Because he was a tax collector and the Romans didn't care what you took, right? They weren't going to charge him with anything. So he said, I'm going to take it upon myself to pay back what I owe because I owe it.

I'm the sinner. I'm the one who needs to repent and I'm going to go find those people and I'm going to give them money back with interest, the way the law requires. Beautiful passage, beautiful passage.

I love God's justice because it brings harmony back into the situation, right? Now, Zacchaeus, he's going to go back to these people. Can you imagine this? Zacchaeus himself, the guy who just stole from you, however long ago, right?

He's going to come knocking on your door and you're going to see him and you're going to be like, what now, Zacchaeus? I gave you everything I have. What more do you want? And Zacchaeus is going to be face to face with you.

The man who robbed you is going to be face to face with you. He's probably going to be crying, you know, but whatever, even if he's not crying, he's going to have visible, you know, repentance, right?

And he's going to say, brother, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done what I did. Here's what I took plus four times. And there's, and now there's restoration because the man who robbed you came to you and said, I'm sorry, I can't make it up to you.

I don't know how to go reverse time and not take it from you, but here is what I can do. What God's law requires. I will give you what I took. And then, you know, and then some, and then some. And that's beautiful because there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no more, there's no more, what's it called?

Conflict there. Like I could imagine the scene. I could imagine the scene. How many of you can picture Zacchaeus doing this exact thing, going back and doing what he can to find the people that he robbed and giving them money times four.

And then, and then seeing how that ends, right? Probably a little bit of trust comes back, right? Probably a little bit of harmony, maybe not right away, but it takes time, right? God's law restores harmony to the situation with thieves.

Not like our law, our law, you steal from someone, you never get your money back. Plus you pay for them to be incarcerated in a jail cell for however arbitrary amount of time. There's no harmony restored, but see God's law is beautiful because it restores harmony.

God's law. That's why we should stick with God's law, right? Because the social justice mess doesn't stick with God's law. As we will see, as we continue through this process, right? Instead, it makes up all this phony baloney stuff where other people pay for the things that other people did and stuff like that.

And it never brings harmony back because now there's new victims. Now there's new problems, but Eric Mason don't care. I mean, as far as he's concerned, grab your Doritos and your purple drink. I mean, it's the same thing, right?

It's wine and bread. He doesn't care what the Bible says. He doesn't care what the Bible commands. He doesn't care. What he cares about is how do I get you from, you know, to my position, twisting as much scripture as I can in the process.

That's what Dr. Eric Mason cares about. He wants to browbeat you into submission so that he can get some cash, right? He wants some of that cash. He wants gold. Hallelujah. Silver. Hallelujah. He wants counseling.

He wants 200 years of free tuition. He wants items. He wants goods. And so he doesn't care what the Bible says about the situation. He doesn't care that that will not restore harmony. He doesn't care that it actually creates new victims.

He doesn't care about any of that stuff because he doesn't care what God actually says. Zacchaeus did. Zacchaeus did. And so he's about to twist Zacchaeus into a story that is unrecognizable. You might quibble with some of the things I said and some of the liberties I took with the story of Zacchaeus.

I don't think I took liberties. I think I'm just, you know, trying to put some flesh on what happened probably with Zacchaeus after he went back to all the people that he stole from. But there is no question that Zacchaeus was applying the law of God in his situation.

He says, okay, I've been shown grace. God is great. I love Christ. Thank you so much, Lord. Now I'm going to make it right according to what your law says. Not according to what will make me look good to everybody.

Not according to what the way of the world is saying. Not according to any of that. I'm going to do it according to what God says is good. I'm done playing according to the world's rules. I'm done playing by these fake rules about what makes me look good to the world.

I'm going to play by your rules, God. That's what a repentant heart does, and that's what Zacchaeus did. He was a wee little man, but he had a bigger than we understanding of the scriptures. Now, this video has gone 20 minutes.

Let's go a little longer, and we've barely gotten into this sermon, but yeah, this is going to be a long one, guys. Buckle up. Buckle up. Get a nice comfortable.

Seat in the saddle, so to speak. If I'm honest about, you know, reparations over the years, I haven't thought a lot about it as much as I would have liked to as one of the outworkings of what it looks like to kind of fix things and deal with some of the racial tensions in our country.

You know, I started thinking about it a few years back when I was asked to speak.

Reparations, Social Justice, and Marxism

This is one of the greatest preachers of all time, according to Paul Tripp. Notice how he instantly leaves the text, and it's instantly forgotten. He's already talking about himself. He's a minute and a half into a sermon talking about himself instantly.

Let's see if he ever gets back to it. He probably will, but we'll see how he twists it. I've heard people talking about.

Reparations. I've even talked a little bit about reparations, but hadn't thought deeply about it biblically. I've even had people tell me reparations isn't a gospel principle. To claim that somebody owes you something because of their sin against you, forgiveness is enough.

But the question is, if that's true, does the gospel work that way? And we're going to see how that works. Is our forgiveness enough in relation to our relationship with God? Does God call for anything that not is a requirement for salvation, but an outworking of salvation?

And so one of the things that we want to do, and that we want to begin to dig into.

Today, is this idea... He's all confused, this guy. He's all confused. If you see me peek over.

To the side, I'm just looking and just seeing what's going on, because, you know, we out here. We out here. And so anyway, when you look at history, you'll hear people like Dick Gregory and others, and particularly the conscious community, tell them I'm talking about reparations for black people.

Yeah. And so leave that in there. And so one of the things that we saw with Dick Gregory and the conscious community over time, they began, and Dick Gregory is on.

A part of the conscious community. Do you see what just happened there? I don't even really know what to say about that. So someone, I guess, came up. They out here. So, you know, he's out on the streets.

Somebody said, what are you doing? He said, he's talking about reparations for black people. Leave that in there. I don't even know what to say about that. I don't even know what to say about that. I mean, it's not, everyone gets heckled.

I mean, anyone who's street preached before knows how it is to be heckled. I don't know. Something about, leave that in there, struck me the wrong way. I don't know. I don't really know. Maybe I'm just nitpicking at this point.

Yeah. Maybe that's a good time to stop. So we're going to stop for now. I'll do another video in just a bit. We'll continue this. Hopefully we'll get a little further than a minute into it. But, you know, listen, I love the story of Zacchaeus.

So, you know, I wanted to give you a proper foundation for the story of Zacchaeus, because even as he's saying, he's talking about reparations here. He's talking about it in a fantasy world because he's saying, well, it's a biblical principle.

If somebody wrongs you, they pay you back. Yes, that's right. If somebody wrongs you, they pay you back, the person that wronged you. But that's not what we're talking about when it comes to reparations.

And Dr. Eric Mason knows that. And so he's, I mean, I'm assuming he's a smart guy. So he knows that what he's saying, this is the Mont and Bailey. He's defending something that's very easy to defend in scripture.

A person wrongs you, that person should pay you back. That's how the Bible says, that's what Zacchaeus did. That's how it's done. But reparations, we're not talking about that because all the people involved, all the people that were wronged and all the people that did the wronging are long dead.

But he wants 200 years of free tuition. He wants gold and silver. Hallelujah. He wants counseling, free counseling, whatever that's supposed to mean for black people and all that kind of stuff. I mean, this guy, this guy knows what he's saying is wrong because all of his defense is not about this exact thing.

Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful. God bless.