Is The Bible Racist?

Um, that he tried to argue that miracles cannot occur because there is a universal experience of the scientific laws always being obeyed.

But this only works if all reports of miracles are false. And the only way to say that they are false is if we already know that miracles never occur.

And so it just goes around and around in a logical circle. Um, moreover, we also thought about how when we talk about quote unquote scientific laws, like what are those really from a

Christian worldview? That in fact they are a reflection of God's character and nature.

That God is orderly, logical, and immutable. And the scientific laws are simply, to put in a very pithy way,

God being consistent. God being consistent. And so ultimately, when we're talking about science and nature and God and the

Bible, we also said that, you know, that we rejected this idea of the God of the gaps theory.

Which was this idea that science can explain the observable, the rational, there's the scientific realm, and then

God explains everything else. God explains the unexplainable, and that's the

God of the gaps theory. And no, that's incorrect. That in fact God explains everything, both the rational and the miraculous.

And that really we're talking about a debate here, not between miracles and science or the

Bible and science, but naturalism versus theism. And that naturalism, despite all its claims as being scientific, is really just not science.

It is a presuppositional worldview. And most especially that we talked about how miracles report in the

Bible, they are consistent with God's character because they, their purpose is revelatory or redemptive.

Most miracles in the Bible occur to give credibility to the prophets or the message of the prophet.

And sometimes to be a word of message in and of themselves. And most especially and importantly, the greatest miracle of the

Bible, which was the resurrection of Christ, yes, validates the effectiveness of his sacrificial death on our behalf.

So that was last time. If you weren't here, aren't you sad you missed it?

There you go. All right. So that's all of it in a nutshell. So here we go. This time, this week, if you saw in your bulletin, if you took a peek, you know that we have a very much different challenge.

And in fact, it's one that's much harder to grapple with. And the question is, is the

Bible racist? Is the Bible racist? As I did in week one,

I want to give the challengers their fair shake in these lessons. So to deliver the challenge, I'm going to quote here, probably the world's most famous living atheist,

Richard Dawkins, who's heard of Richard Dawkins before? Yes. Okay. Most of you. So here it is.

This is going to be tough to read, but I'm just going to, I'm going to blast through it here. The God of the

Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Of course, he believes all of the

Bible to be fiction. So he just throws it right in that category. Jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, philicidal, pestitential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

So there you go. That's Richard Dawkins' view of our Lord. Now this is a hard challenge to answer because it assaults the

Bible on moral grounds, on moral grounds. Scientific arguments, they were tough enough because we don't want to appear ignorant or backwards.

And I think that most times when Christians cave and compromise on scientific arguments, it's because no one wants to look unintelligent, right?

But moral challenges to the Bible, they're an attack on the Bible's home field. The Bible is supposed to be the source of morality.

It's supposed to be the source of upright living, not immorality or abuses of human rights as Dawkins accuses it.

And so moral questions, they have to get dealt with on both a rational and an emotional level.

So if you spend any time at all on social media, please stop. Okay, no.

But you'll live a happier life if you stop. But alas, since we are all mostly going to still spend at least some time on social media, you're going to get these little soundbite hand grenades, right?

That people are going to drop in from time to time. These pithy little comments that they love to quote

Dawkins and some of the other folks I'm going to quote later here. And they're going to say things like, the Bible endorsed slavery, or God commanded the

Israelites to commit genocide, or Christians use the Bible to justify racism, right?

And so we're going to talk about how to deal with these, all right?

How do we deal with these little hand grenades? Is the Bible racist? Well, if you went to our recent

VBS that we held a few weeks ago here in the summer, it was called The Incredible Race, you already know the answer.

And the answer is no. Very good. Thank you very much. Let's pray. All right. No. But for those of you who did not go to VBS, let's deal with this.

All right. So let's talk about slavery first. OK, let's talk about slavery. And let's first acknowledge that why are slavery and racism so closely linked in these soundbites?

Why? Yes, Mark? Right, because of the

American experience. It's because, tragically, our country fueled this huge commercial enterprise in slave trade and slave labor for more than 100 years, right?

And a huge portion of the economy of early America was dependent on slaves.

And I just want to state very clearly right up front here that this American chattel slavery system and, to a lesser extent, the

European slavery system that was going on at the same time, based entirely almost on skin color, that, well, let me quote

Gavin Ortlund, who I think puts it perfectly, this kind of slavery is manifestly among the most despicable institutions ever to disgrace human civilization.

Most despicable institution to ever disgrace human civilization. And furthermore, we have to acknowledge the fact that certain people did try to use the

Bible to justify this racist system. We can't just ignore that.

We can't be an ostrich and bury our head in the sand and pretend that that didn't happen. It did happen. Most popularly, these false teachers, they used

Genesis 9. So let's turn there. Genesis 9. They taught a doctrine that they called the

Curse of Ham. The Curse of Ham. Who's heard of that before?

Okay, most of you. A lot of you, anyway. All right. The Curse of Ham. So let's look at this. Genesis 9, 18 to 27.

The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan.

These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed. Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard.

He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.

Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backwards and covered the nakedness of their father.

Their faces were turned backwards, and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said,

Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers. He also said,

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge

Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. So if you've never heard about this curse of Ham, and you know how to read your

Bible rightly, you're probably scratching your head here right now, going like, well, what does this have to do with anything with slavery?

Because all we see here is that this one grandson of Noah, Canaan, is being prophesied as becoming a servant to his two uncles, period, and stop.

But what wicked people did to justify the incredible wickedness of the American and European chattel slavery system was they twisted this scripture, and they claimed that since Ham was the father of the

African peoples, that these people were cursed and deserve to be slaves.

Now, this is ridiculous for more reasons than I have time to get into. But let's truly bury it here, under the weight of good biblical interpretation.

So let's see what we can do. So number one, notice very first off, we are not told why

Noah cursed Canaan specifically. It's Ham who is the one who looks at his nakedness, it's

Ham who goes off and tells his brothers, but when Noah wakes up, he curses Canaan, not

Ham. Nor, as I've already pointed out, does the Bible even explicitly extend this prophecy to future generations.

Number two, race, by its modern definition, is a completely non -biblical idea.

Answers in Genesis, who developed our VBS curriculum, they like to put it this way. Actually, everyone has the same skin color, they say.

They are not black or white people, we are all basically a shade of brown. And if you think of it in terms of the fact of our common ancestry, of all from Noah, that clearly, genetically speaking, that in Noah, and ultimately all the way back into Adam, there was the genetic makeup, the genetic coding, to diversify and make up all of these so -called races that we see today.

Just the various shades of skin color. Number three,

Noah's prophecy had nothing to do with the shade of anyone's skin. There is no basis, biblical or otherwise, for claiming that all dark -skinned people descended from Ham.

Let me say that again, there is no basis, biblical or otherwise, to say that all dark -skinned people descended from Ham.

Many, for starters, we're not even 100 % sure of which different people groups of the entire world descended from which one of Noah's three sons.

But if we go by what's sort of the traditional interpretation, even, we can still blow it away.

Because Ham, supposedly, some of the descendants of Ham included the Egyptians and the

Chinese, neither of which are dark -skinned people. Canaan's descendants were not dark -skinned, right?

And he was the son of Ham. And many dark -skinned people in India, for example, are descendants of Shem, by the traditional biblical interpretation, as are the

Hebrews from Shem. And so, I mean, again, this proves that the genes that affect the shade of our skin were well and truly still mixed.

The scientific word would be heterogeneized, that they were still well and truly mixed in the

DNA of Noah and Noah's near descendants. And four, these wicked curse of Ham teachers also conveniently left out mentioning the numerous teachings about unity in the

New Testament. For example, Genesis, I'm sorry, not Genesis, Galatians, I just said

New Testament. Galatians 328. 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.

And all people are described as one blood in Acts 1726, and so on, and so on, and so on.

In fact, and this is an amazing fact that I learned while I was researching this, there is a special Bible version that was printed just for slaves in the

Americas and the Caribbean in the late 1700s, early 1800s time period. And this so -called slave

Bible, the reason it was special, it was a special version just for them, the reason it was special is because most of the Bible was missing.

Most of the Bible was missing. In order to prevent slaves from realizing that the

Bible actually taught humane treatment for slaves in the ancient world, and more than that, that it actually taught liberty and human equality and spiritual unity, and it might lead them to protest their conditions or rebel, that the printers of the slave

Bible took out 90 % of the Old Testament and 50 % of the

New Testament. So to put it in another way, instead of 1 ,189 chapters, the slave

Bible had 232. The classic tactic of false teachers to simply remove from the

Bible that which they want to ignore or suppress. The biblical truth is that we are all bearers of God's image, right?

We are all bearers of God's image. All of us. Most tragically, though, evolutionary theory, which arrived actually on the scene when

American slavery was starting to go into its death throes, but that theory actually did a lot to propagate racist attitudes and behaviors and laws even in the present day, because under evolution, we're not all image bearers anymore, right?

We're simply the lucky winners of the evolutionary lottery. And if that's true, then, well, it could also be true that some of us might be fitter than others and thus get more, right?

And this was the attitudes of particularly the late 1800s turn of the century time frame when the radical

Republicans here in America, I'm just focusing on American history right now, but that they lost power.

And the folks who did come into power then started to institute things like the Jim Crow laws and other things to suppress and to basically create a slave system, just not in name as best they could, right?

But if you spend time reflecting on the truth, this beautiful truth that we are image bearers of God, that we alone among all of creation are able to have a personal relationship with him, right?

We should very quickly come to realize how precious the life of each and every one of us is.

Any thoughts on that? Has anyone ever considered about being an image bearer?

Like what that means to you? Have you looked at others around you and thought to yourself just what it means that they too like you bear the image of God?

It's a beautiful and sobering thought. It destroys any prejudicial or just, you know,

I look at people and my sinfulness might want to look down on someone because of how they're dressed or because of how they're acting or their speech or whatever.

The car they drive. This is the sinful heart that loves to do this. We love to create classes.

We love to put a strata on human society. But if I really think, if I'm, when

I'm really thinking with the spiritual heart and looking with spiritual eyes, that's how

I always tell my kids about it, is to use your spiritual eyes to look. If you're looking with spiritual eyes, when you see those people, what you're seeing is a living soul, an image bearer of God, someone with an eternal future, guarantee it's just a matter of where is that eternity going to take place?

And that ought to really, really sober us and convict us about how we think about other people.

I mean that, that speaking of the universality of man, right? The other thing is that universally we are all, there is none who are righteous, no not one, right?

And that includes us. And any righteousness we have as believers isn't from us in any way, shape, or form.

It's entirely imputed upon us. It's Christ's righteousness imputed upon us, right?

So as Bev said, you know, the pithy saying is what, like, there by, there but by the grace of God go

I, right? That every sin that humankind has committed, we are all capable of.

It's not like there's something special about us except for the fact that the Spirit of God dwells within us when we come to know

Christ as our Savior and restrains us. Now there's a little bit more that we need to address about slavery though, okay?

Because the Bible does talk a lot about slavery. And another one of the famous new atheists is

Sam Harris. He wrote once, he wrote, consult the Bible and you will discover that the creator of the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves.

Consult the Bible and you will discover that the creator of the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves, right?

Now, like all good soundbite attacks, what he says has a bring of truth to it.

There are many passages in the Bible that regulate slavery in ancient Israel. Exodus, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, there are several passages in the minor prophets that talk about how

Israel is treating their slaves. And in the

New Testament, there's discussion about how earthly masters are to treat their slaves and how slaves are to treat their masters, right?

So, but does the presence of all these verses, does that mean that slavery is encouraged by the

Bible or even condoned? Let's just go with that. Maybe not encouraged, but condoned by the

Bible. That's the accusation, right? So, I want to go over four things here that we should know about slavery and the

Bible. Okay. Number one, Christianity did not invent slavery.

Okay, despite what some people will ignorantly try to claim. Christianity did not invent slavery and neither did the

Bible. Okay. In fact, from what we can tell from Genesis accounts, slavery seems to have been around for as long as there have been nation states.

Certainly, no one in the ancient world, I mean, so in terms of like, we're just talking about the

Middle East, the near Middle East, with the world of the

Old Testament, the world of the patriarchal Genesis historical account. All these cultures,

Mesopotamia, Canaan, the Hittites, the Perzites, all the Yites, right? The Egyptians, of course, we know very well, kept slaves.

All of these cultures had slaves, right? This was a very standard thing. And so, no one in the ancient world was looking to Israel, for example, after Israel became a nation.

No one around them was looking to them as an example like, oh, see, Israel keeps slaves, we can keep slaves too.

Like, that justifies the fact that we have slaves. Trust me, no one was first checking out to see if Israel did it and that meant it was okay for us to do it too.

Okay. So, slavery, not original or invented in any way, shape, or form like that.

Um, the historical context for slavery in this ancient world was almost always of two varieties, okay?

One is that they were either financial or military, okay?

Either financial or military. And by that, I mean that people were enslaved, like in Israel, people were enslaved either in the rest of the

Middle Eastern European world because they could not pay their debts, okay? That was the financial one, that they could not pay their debts.

Something happened where they owed money or owed property or something else and they simply were incapable of paying it.

And the system in that time to pay it off was you became a slave of the person you owed the debt to until your labor was, had paid off the debt, okay?

That was one. Two was that they were captured as prisoners of war.

That's the military one, captured as prisoners of war. And this is very frequent. This happened all the time in the ancient world.

One country would come in, capture another country, and they'd carry off, you know, the able -bodied among them back to their own country or what have you and make them slaves.

Certainly it was never that they were doing an entire culture. In fact, the Egyptian enslavement of the

Hebrew people was one of the most widespread, like a categorical kind of slavery where it was just like all

Hebrew people, you're all slaves, right? Like that was not even that typical in the ancient world to do that that way.

Most importantly, it had nothing to do with skin color in the ancient world. If anything, it only had to do with, because we're talking about military, it might have had to do with your country of origin, your nation state.

But remember back then when we talk about nation states, we're talking about like individual cities even, where independent little kingdoms, right?

So it's hardly like the nations like we know today. And this continued onward all the way through the

Roman Empire, into the Roman Empire time period, the Roman Empire themselves, same deal. Um, by the time of the

Roman Empire, in fact, um, probably this is the, uh, by the time of Augustus, Jesus's time, um, slave labor almost certainly exceeded an output free labor.

Right? So that there was, there was more economic output by slaves than there was by free people.

So Rome absolutely was built, um, by slavery, fueled by slavery.

And they were, they were after Spartacus and the slave rebellions of the late

Rome Republic, they were absolutely terrified of slave revolts in Rome, terrified of it.

Uh, to the point where, um, they, they, they did make several sort of, um, um, they acquiesced in some ways and, and, and tried to give their slaves some levels of human rights.

They allowed them to petition in court. They, uh, if a slave was killed or injured, um, um, they, you know, actual crimes, uh, would be prosecuted.

Um, slaves could go to court, uh, to sue for something if, if they needed to.

Um, and so they, they were absolutely terrified. The Romans were of slave revolts.

Now, number two, the Bible does talk about how masters should treat their slaves and what it taught was in fact, totally counter -cultural and destabilizing to the very notion of slavery.

Okay. So I'll say that again. The Bible does talk about how masters should treat their slaves, particularly in the new Testament, but also the old, and what it taught was totally counter -cultural and destabilizing to the very notion of slavery.

Okay. In fact, it did it right from the very first book written. What was the first book written in the

Bible? Chronologically speaking, it's not Genesis. Anybody know? Job. Very good. Turn to Job.

Job chapter 31. Who can find

Job the fastest? Job chapter 31.

Okay. Before we read, um, those of you who have headings in your

Bible, what does chapter 31, what's the heading for chapter 31? Job's final appeal.

So just to ground us here in the context, we're pretty late in the book of Job. Job's friends have been peppering him, trying to figure out what sin he must have committed to earn all of the terrible things that have been happening to him.

Right? Not knowing what's actually going on in the divine plan for Job's life.

That they just, they just assume they equate, um, what they see as bad circumstances to, um, uh, as a punish only, only possibly as a punishment.

And so Job, there's this really long list chapter 31 of all these possible sins or possible things that he could have done wrong and saying,

I haven't done this. I haven't done this. I haven't done this. Okay. Over and over. Let's look at verses 13 through 15.

Remember very first book of the Bible. If I have rejected the cause of my manservant or my maidservant,

AKA my slaves. Okay. When they brought a complaint against me, what then shall

I do when God rises up? When he makes inquiry, what shall

I answer him? Did not he who made me in the womb make him?

And did not one fashion us in the womb. He's clearly stating right here in this rhetorical questions that it would be sinful for him to mistreat his slaves because he's recognizing we are all one human race.

We are all image bearers, all made in the womb by God. Now the regulations for Israel that I mentioned earlier that are outlined in Exodus and Deuteronomy.

We're not going to turn there. I go over it quite a bit. They provide social recognition and legal protection for slaves.

Okay. Protections that were denied by many other cultures in the ancient world. And also

I need to point out by American slave owners. Right. They deleted them from their

Bible that they gave to the slaves. And then of course, there's the book of Philemon.

And I'm really surprised that people don't talk about Philemon more when they're talking about this subject, but let's turn to Philemon.

Flipping all the way to the end of the Bible, almost to the end of the Bible now, right before Hebrews tucked in one page, the book, the letter to Philemon.

Now I know most of you are familiar, pretty familiar with Philemon, but just to review what's going on in this epistle.

Onesimus was Philemon's slave and he ran away.

And Onesimus, while he was on the run encounters, Paul converts to Christianity.

Right. And now Paul is sending Onesimus back to Philemon with this letter.

Okay. Now Philemon is also a believer. His whole household are believers and he, and Paul is sending

Onesimus back to him. Now, I just want to, again, emphasize here. What did I say a minute ago?

What was Rome most terrified of? Slave revolts, right?

Rebellions. So they were, when it came to runaway slaves, they brought the hammer down on runaway slaves.

Most times executed, like just don't even bother.

If they decided to spare them, they branded them F -U -G, because the

Latin word for fugitive and our modern words are pretty close. F -U -G, branded them in a very visible place so that everyone would always know that this was a runaway slave and be on the lookout for them to do it again.

Right. They would often, very often take a metal collar and weld it to them so that it could never come off again.

Again, with maybe some branding or some marking or something like that. Okay. And here's

Paul telling Onesimus, Onesimus, I want you, runaway slave,

I want you to go back and turn yourself in. Now, in Roman culture, if Philemon was going to do the

Roman culture thing to do, that's almost a death sentence. Right.

And Paul is sending Onesimus back. And look what Paul thinks Philemon should do.

In verses 17 through 21, if you actually, let me start back in verse eight, because he's sort of alluding to it here.

Accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love's sake,

I prefer to appeal to you. So he could command him, but he really believes in Philemon, in Philemon's Christian character.

And so he thinks he's going to do the right thing. So what is the right thing? Let's look in verse 17. So if you consider me your partner, brother, receive him,

Onesimus, as you would receive me, your runaway slave, receive him as you would receive me, the apostle

Paul. If he has wronged you at all or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

I, Paul, write this with my own hand. I will repay it to say nothing of your owing me, even of your own self.

Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ, confident of your obedience.

I write to you knowing that you will do even more than I say, even more than I say.

Now, commentators and preachers, they're, they're divided on exactly just how much

Paul was requesting here. Like, what does he mean by even more in verse 21?

But I'll just lay it out here. So Sproul, his theory, as well as Hendrickson and plenty others were that Paul was requesting here without saying it, because if this letter was intercepted and captured by Roman authorities, they could accuse

Paul of inciting slave revolt. That Paul was requesting obliquely that Philemon free

Onesimus and treat him as a full brother. Right. And they're resting particularly on this phrase, no longer as a slave, but as a dear brother.

That's here in the, in the thing, you know, treat him as no longer as a slave, but as a dear brother.

MacArthur and FF Bruce and some others, they aren't as conclusive, but they do agree that Paul certainly was asking

Philemon to forgive Onesimus, to reconcile, to allow him to serve the

Lord freely, to minister. Right. To minister in the local church body. And that alone, even if he hadn't freed him, but that alone would have probably cost

Philemon substantially his standing in Roman society. Because everyone would have known that he treated his runaway slave now as a brother.

Right. And all of the Roman society around him would have thought Philemon is, and these

Christians, they're in on this slave revolt thing. Right. MacArthur writes

Christianity undermined the evils of slavery by changing the hearts of slaves and masters by stressing the spiritual equality of master and slave.

The Bible does away, did away with slavery's abuses. They, it broke slavery from the inside.

And while yes, there were people who called themselves Christians, false teachers who tried to use the

Bible to justify slavery. It is also a hundred percent true that the abolitionist movement of the modern era was fueled by Christians, by believers who saw the abuses, who saw and understood what was going on here and understood the equality of these people and works to free them.

And struggled for a long time to free them. It was a Christian worldview based movement abolition.

Number three, just because the Bible talks about the existence of slavery and deals with it does not mean that God condones it.

The Bible also regulates divorce in the old Testament. Okay.

But Jesus clearly teaches that this was done only out of the hardness of their hearts, right? We all remember that.

Not because God wanted people to get divorced. Israel was not

God's ideal society. It was a nation called to be different, called to be set apart, but it was still corrupt and sinful, just like the rest of humanity and in need of a savior.

Jesus began his public ministry with this, with a mission statement, right? With a mission statement, what we would call today a mission statement.

He said, he stood up in a synagogue and he read Isaiah 61, one through two. What he read was the spirit of the

Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim

Liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind to set Liberty that set at Liberty.

Those who are oppressed. This is the good news of the kingdom coming. There is no slavery in the kingdom, except this, that we are all slaves of Christ.

Equally a number four. Finally, we're almost out of time.

The Christian worldview best accounts for human rights and dignity. Okay. The Christian worldview best accounts for human rights and dignity.

And again, to hammer this home, the foundational truth to the idea of universal equality is the

Judeo Christian ethic that we are all one family descended from one man and woman, one human race, all made in the image of God.

Okay. All right. So just to wrap up here, I wanted to make sure I left myself enough time to say,

I want to thank you for your attention. I know this is a delicate topic and it's one that I, and a heavy topic.

And it's one that I can't possibly really adequately cover in 45 minutes. Okay. We could have had an entire days more, maybe multi -day conference on just this.

So if you have any questions at all, okay, please, please come talk to me. Let's talk more because it's important that we get this right.

I came to VBS and I preached, um, on, uh, as part of that curriculum about the amazing race,

I preached on the good name, uh, the good Samaritan, the parable of the good

Samaritan. And I reminded the kids at the very end, it was good enough for the kids.

It's good enough for you. I reminded the kids at the very end, our

Lord told us that all of the law and the prophets can be summed up like, so love

God and love your neighbor. And what the good

Samaritan and other parables teach us is, and what the Bible teaches us is that all of mankind, every nation, every skin color, every language, every man, woman, child, all descended from Adam.

We all came from Babel. We are all family, American, Cuban, Korean, Arab, Jew, Greek, Spanish, Nigerian, Chinese, Peruvian, one family and family is even closer than neighbors.

There is no one, not the worst enemy or the poorest beggar or the handicapped or the introverted stranger or the immigrant or the refugee.

Jesus tells us there is no one who is not your neighbor. Love God and love your neighbor.

Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for this time that we could look again at these challenges to your word and to answer your critics,

Lord. Lord, I know that we didn't have enough time to really do this as well as we could, but I pray

Lord that this time we have had has given us plenty to reflect on and think about.

Lord, I pray that you would grant everyone in our congregation those spiritual eyes to see people for who they are, that they have eternal souls, that they have an eternal destiny.

Everyone around us that we encounter in our life, that we are called to proclaim the good news of the gospel of Christ to everyone.

Would you give us boldness, Lord, to do so? Would you help us to do it in love and out of concern and compassion for them and not out of some hard -hearted obligation or duty, but because when we look upon them, we see them and with genuine love for them, we want to see them saved.

Lord, I pray that our church would be a church of outreach, a church that does not prejudice

Lord against others, but that freely proclaims the beautiful truth of your

Son, Jesus Christ, his work on the cross and his resurrection from the dead.