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Sunday Night, August 9, 2020 PM Michael Dirrim Pastor
All right, as you find your way back to your seats, I encourage you to put your Bibles towards the front. We're going to be looking at a few passages from Genesis to begin our time together this evening.
Let me go ahead and pray for us. Father, I thank you so much for this evening. I pray that you would bless our time in your word, help us to be wise Bereans and consider whether the things are so that are being said in our time, even by Christian leaders, help us to be dependent upon Christ and help us as children to trust your word, to trust the things that you tell us and to obey and to have your mind on these matters.
We ask for these graces, looking only to Christ, the one with whom you are well pleased. Amen. Well, welcome back to our Sons of Issachar study. We're going to talk about Black Lives Matter tonight. We are reminded of our goal in First Chronicles 12, 32, which says that the Sons of Issachar are men who understood the times with knowledge of what Israel should do.
Their chiefs were 200 and all their kinsmen were at their command, understanding the times and knowledge of what we must do. And as the Sons of Issachar understood the time was to honor God's anointed and they had knowledge of what they ought to do in making sure that God's anointed and his authority was known over all of Israel.
We have that same focus in our regard towards Christ as the Lord's anointed and his authority needs to be expressed and applied to all areas of life. The nature of the battle that we are in, we are reminded of in 2 Corinthians 10 verse 5, that we are destroying speculations.
We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. We are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And 1 Peter 3 .15 makes this a very personal matter.
As it says, sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. And so, if we are going to proclaim the authority of Christ over all matters, this must be first and foremost true in our own lives.
That we are submitted to Christ as our sovereign, as our Lord and that we want to give an account for the hope that is in us with gentleness and reverence, but we're not to do anything that compromises on the reality of Christ's authority.
So, let's talk about Black Lives Matter tonight in one specific regard. One specific regard. There are a chorus of voices, including Ed Stetzer, who used to be with LifeWay, J .D. Greer, who's the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, John Piper and so on, who say that we, although we disagree, disagree with the official stance of Black Lives Matter and the things that they say that they believe.
Obviously, this is not Christian at all. We do not agree with the things stated by the founders of Black Lives Matter and the way that they express themselves. Do not agree with them at all. Nonetheless, we ought to affirm the language of Black Lives Matter, the slogan itself.
There's nothing wrong with the slogan, and of course, we should affirm that. In fact, the gospel requires that we do affirm that, and there's no real need to be all eager to qualify in what way Black Lives Matter.
We just need to affirm it in solidarity with those who are hurting. And so, I want us to be wise Marines and go to the scriptures and say, is that so? Is that the way that we're to approach that? Well, we need to begin with our convictions on the matter.
The slogan, Black Lives Matter, well, what do we think about that biblically? Well, we go to the scriptures, Genesis chapter 1, and verses 26 through 28. The scriptures tell us that God made man in his own image.
Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
So God makes man, and calls him man, and makes him male and female, and says, be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it. In what form shall male and female, man together, multiply, be fruitful, fill the earth, and subdue it?
Well, God made man, male and female, for marriage in Genesis 2, verses 21 through 25. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept. And then he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh at that place.
The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said, this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.
For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. Now, has anybody read the statements of belief, what we believe, so on and so forth, on the Black Lives official website?
Okay, so if you had read that, and read it recently, and all you did then after that was to read those two passages of scripture, you may imagine that if those who wrote their beliefs on that website read and heard what was just being read now, that they would be very, very offended.
We'll read some of it later on. But that's why I'm going through this. I just want to, I just want to try to assure us, what do we believe? And these are things that we believe right from the scripture.
And God, so God makes man in his own image, and he says this entails a cultural mandate. You are to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it, and you're going to do so through the promulgation of the family.
He's designed the family, one man for one woman, and they'll have children, and then they get married, and the same thing goes on and on. And what is God's value on life? I mean, he made human life in his own image, and so what is his value on life?
What kind of value does he place on life? After all, we're told black lives matter, and so how much does it matter to those saying it? Well, more importantly, how much does it matter to God? What is human life worth to God?
Genesis 9, 5 through 7. God says, surely I will require your lifeblood, from every beast I will require it, and from every man, from every man's brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man.
As for you, be fruitful and multiply, populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it. God repeats the cultural mandate and says, here's how I value life. If anything, any beast or anyone, any man, murders, kills a man, what is required?
The beast must be destroyed, the man must be executed. That's the value God places on life. If somebody, if person A, no matter their melanin or their DNA or their chromosome, whatever, murders person B, no matter their melanin, their DNA, their chromosome, whatever, person A murders person B.
Person A is to be executed. That's how high a value God places on human life. That's pretty high, isn't it? Now for those who are saying that certain types of lives matter and therefore ultimately all lives matter and so on and so forth, I wonder if that's what they mean.
I wonder if they value life the way that God values life. That's the way God values life. And God's justice applies to all men, Exodus 20 verses 13 through 17, this is just the last five of the Ten Commandments, which of course apply to everybody.
You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, you shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Let's talk about the last, that last commandment, let's talk about that for a moment. You shall not covet. You shall not lust after, desire that which rightfully belongs to someone else, as if saying that really shouldn't belong to you, it should belong to someone else like me.
That's coveting. Now anything that belongs to your neighbor, you shall not covet. What belongs to him? Well, his house belongs to him, his wife belongs to him, his male slaves belong to him, his female slaves belong to him, his ox belongs to him, and his donkey belongs to him.
It all belongs to him. Now what happens, now again, now this is an interesting commandment, is it not? Because when you read through the rest of Exodus or Deuteronomy, as the law is exposited and explained about how this actually works in the life of Israel, you never see anybody have to restore sevenfold or fourfold for coveting, right?
And you never have somebody who is stoned to death, said, you broke the 10th commandment, you coveted, you die. It's an interesting commandment. The other commandments tend to have practical, direct consequences, right?
If you steal, you have to restore so much. Whatever the nature is, is what you stole, whatever cost you caused to the person. But coveting doesn't have any direct consequences that we can see. However, coveting is the root of these other commandments.
Why would you murder someone? Why would you commit adultery? Why would you steal another person's spouse? Why would you steal another person's stuff? Why would you bear false witness against your neighbor and say lies about them in a court case?
Well, coveting is at the root of all of that. If you covet, then these other commandments are what comes next. That's what gets broken. So when life matters, what belongs to a person matters, and thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet.
So God has made everybody in his image. He values life highly. We see that. And he has just rules, just laws for how humanity should interact with one another. And his providence as creator has a purpose, has a point, and it's toward the good news of Jesus Christ.
It's toward the gospel, Acts 17, 24 -31. The God who made the world and all things in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself, listen, he gives to all people, listen, God who's Lord of heaven, the God who made the world and all things in it, listen, he gives to all people life and breath and all things.
Life and breath and all things come from God. We have to begin there. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth. We all come from Adam. Now, again, this is very important.
God has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation. Why do we live in the time in which we live? Why do we live in the places where we live? Why do we have the stuff that we have and the places we live and the times in which we live?
God has put each one of us there. Is God righteous? Is God just? Is God good? Is God gracious? Is God holy? Is God love? Why would God do this? Why would he put all these different people in all these different places with all this different disparity that they would seek God, verse 27, that they would seek God?
No matter who you are, where you live, what you have, God in his sovereign providence as the giver of all things has put you in that particular historical social context for one primary reason, hey, you're made in his image, to seek him.
You're made in God's image, so what's your job but to seek him, to honor him, to glorify him. Now it says that they would seek God if perhaps they may grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each of us, for in him we live and move and exist as even some of your own poets have said, for we also are his children.
Being then the children of God, being his specially made creatures, we ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by the art and thought of man. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent.
So God has given life and breath in all things to all people and has put them where he has put them, that they may seek him, and God is now declaring to all men, everyone everywhere should repent. Why?
Because God has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness. Same Greek word, judge the world in justice. How will he do this? He will judge the world in justice through a man, through a man whom he has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead, Jesus Christ.
So these are the convictions that we are operating with out of the scriptures, and there's a ton more. This is just a very small snippet of passages that we could read. So in conclusion, what should we say then?
I think that saying something like, if it's just on the merits of the slogan by itself, folks, saying black lives matter is at best truncated and misleading. The fact of the matter is God matters. God matters.
Why? Because he's our creator and he is our judge. Christ matters. He's our gracious savior. He's our righteous sovereign. God's gift of life matters. Folks, that's the truth of it. God's gift of life matters.
It matters so much that if somebody takes somebody else's life, they ought to die. That's how much it matters. We're all accountable to God for the lives that we live. So these are the facts of scripture.
These are the convictions, I think, that we have from the word of God. So now what's wrong with the slogan? Well, the slogan, black lives matter, I think at some level just assumes that all those who disagree with that sentiment or seek to qualify that sentiment participate somehow in the devaluing or endangering, marginalization or destruction of black lives.
Of course, nobody should devalue, endanger, marginalize, or destroy someone because of how much melanin they possess in their skin, though that has been the case in history and not recent history, like all throughout history.
Mankind always finds some reason to unjustly hate someone else. That's called sin. It's called depravity. Now, but when you say the slogan, it's not merely that you're agreeing to some basic sentiment.
You are signing an ideological contract because it is attached to a very clear philosophy that has been described and in concrete for the last seven years. So you need to look at the fine print of the ideological contract when you use the language.
Read the fine print. Now sometimes the contract isn't just ideological as businesses in Seattle and Louisville are finding out. They're actually being forced to sign financial contracts with black lives matter.
So we need to clarify our terms. We need to clarify our terms. So I want to read a little bit from an article that is probably a little bit more related to our immediate situation as Sunnyside Baptist Church.
We received a letter, a newsletter from Oklahoma Jail and Prison Ministries, whom we financially support. It was an article about racism. It was written by a board member of OJPM. His name is Kenneth Sherrill Sr.
He's a local pastor. And he writes this, kind of in regard to all the things that have been happening lately. He says, because all these tragic acts, because all these tragic acts of racism were caught on camera, you know, list all the major ones people have been talking about.
Because they were all caught on camera, it caused a movement all over this nation and the world that black lives matter. Well, it's been going on for seven years, but it certainly brought the slogan to the fore, hasn't it?
He says, I am encouraged by the movement, but more so from the diversity of people, black people, white people, Hispanic people, and Asian people. Black, Hispanic, and Asian are all capitalized. White isn't.
I don't know why. People are not being silent, but protesting about equality and justice. So the reality is, we are all better together. If you are around racism, and if you see it or hear it, please do not be silent.
Speak up for justice and equality. And in this sense, I don't think he would ever agree with the statements made on the website, which we're going to look at. I don't think he would be in favor of a lot of those things.
He would easily and sincerely just distance himself from that with no problem at all. But, and many evangelicals have agreed, and pastors who have kept their churches closed to obey government COVID lockdowns have also encouraged marching with Black Lives Matter protesters at the same time.
Most of the notable names in Christian evangelicalism today are more ready to support a Black Lives Matter event than to reopen for church service. And that's why we're bringing it up in our Sons of Isigarh study.
I'm not saying that they support the things that Black Lives Matter necessarily believes, and yet the same, it comes back again and again. We want to just affirm the basic gospel truth of this, okay? There's another, it's an article, I think this is from Christianity Today.
It says this past December, many were surprised when worship director and Black Lives Matter activist Michelle Higgins took the stage at Urbana. She's a worship pastor and outreach pastor at a PCA church, Sproul's denomination, or used to be Sproul's denomination.
He's Baptist now, he's in heaven. But she was at Urbana, it's a big youth conference, been around for a long time. And so she says, Black Lives Matter is not on a mission of hate. It is not a mission to bring about incredible anti-Christian values and reforms to the world, she says.
She says, Black Lives Matter is a movement on mission and the truth of God. I'm so relieved, so glad. But I want to examine that, I want to try to clarify the terms. What terms are being used? What do they mean, what is meant when they say Black Lives Matter, what is meant by those terms?
Can I actually affirm the meaning of that? The history of Black Lives Matter is in concrete and it's public. It was begun in 2013, there were three particular organizers, Alicia Garza, Patrice Cullors, and Opal Tometi.
They created a movement called Black Lives Matter, and they said it was in response to the death of Trayvon Martin. And it's all there in Twitter history, which is the only history, of course, that now matters.
And it's all right there. And they have over 40 chapters of the Black Lives Matter movement that's not just confined to the United States, it's all over the place, international. And they have a very clear history, but they call it her story, all one word, her story, because they believe that history is a misogynist word because it has the letters H-I-S at the beginning.
And that's obviously privileging men, so they have to say her story. So they say that part of the reason why they started this was because black liberation movements in this country, they say, have created room, space, and leadership mostly for black heterosexual cisgender men.
Leaving women, queer, and transgender people and others out of the movement or in the background to move the work forward with little to no recognition. And so they say one of the main reasons why they started Black Lives Matter was because they believe that black women and black queer and black transgender people need to have a bigger platform because they are very, very oppressed.
So that's the reason why they got started. They have a very clear history. They understand exactly what they're for. They have several chapters all over the place. And the chapter leaders in various cities are as radical as they are.
The chapter leader in, it may have been Chicago, it was one of them. But it was basically talking about that the more melanin you have in your skin, the more power you have. And that's why white people fear black people and so on and so forth.
But they're all a little loopy. But what does Black Lives Matter believe? Well, I'm not gonna read all 16 points to you, but I will read a few of them to you. It said, we are guided by the fact that all black lives matter regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status, or location, as long as you're black.
We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead. We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender, do you know what cisgender means? That it means that you're male and you're attracted to women, or that you're female and you're attracted to men, like the way God made you.
Okay, so they're against that. And uplift black trans folks, especially black trans women, who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans antagonistic violence. We build a space that affirms black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered.
So nothing can be centered around a man. We make our spaces family friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice, again, fathers, that require mothers to work double shifts so that they can mother in private, even as they participate in public justice work.
They see that it's oppressive. For mothers, they have to work double shifts to make their income. And then, because they're oppressed, they're required to do justice work at the same time. And Black Lives Matter is all about ending just that man-centered male.
Males who hate women, obviously, have created this system. God created marriage. God created marriage for a good reason. I think that it's hateful to promote a system in which you tell a woman to go have however many children she wants from however many men she wants, and then she is required to go then provide for her children.
And then also to abide by this holiness code of doing this justice work as well. I think that's hateful towards women. But they reject marriage. They reject marriage as a good thing, as the next statement says.
We disrupt the Western-prescribed, unless they don't say it's from the Bible, the Western-prescribed nuclear family. No, they're not glowing, just that's father and mother with children, right? The biblical model for family.
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
Notice fathers are not mentioned, because you know, they're bad. We foster a queer-affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather belief that all in the world are heterosexual unless s slash he or they disclose otherwise.
It's poetry. It's just poetry. Okay, so that's what they believe. They're very clear about what they believe. So I have a question for you tonight. What would you think? I mean, just honestly, what would you think if I suggested to you that we all ought to be Jehovah's Witnesses?
I mean, would you be all right if I asked you to partner with all Latter-day Saints in the work of Christ? Now, I know you're protesting about my promotion of cult, and I might respond to you by accusing you of unwarranted and unthinking prejudice in this matter.
I'm not advocating for everything represented by the Watchtower and Bible Track Society. I'm just saying that Jehovah wants us to be his witnesses. What's wrong with saying that? At the very least, the dedication of the Jehovah's Witnesses should inspire us, and we should imitate them.
Let's all be Jehovah's Witnesses and tell others to be the same. But, but, but, you say, what about all the things they believe that are wrong? Well, that's just your privileged fragility talking. Just because the things they believe are wrong.
Listen, they are newcomers to Christendom, and they believe things differently in some areas. But that doesn't mean that you can just dump on their name. These people are a minority religion, and they are often systematically oppressed by majority religion Christians.
We leave them out of our membership, we leave them out of our conferences, we leave them out of our mission funding. And we do the same thing to these Latter-day Saints. I mean, aren't we saints? Don't we live in the Latter-days?
I mean, come on, rather than pick on the things we disagree, we need to be open to learning from these groups and not hate on their names. After all, their names convey meaningful truth. Their names challenge us to be better.
And rather than resent that, we need to receive that and own that. That's just stupid, isn't it? That's just stupid. But the very same arguments that are obviously stupid in regards to using the slogans of the cults, those very same stupid arguments are used in pressuring evangelicals to adopt the Black Lives Matter slogan.
You can't adopt the slogan and leave the movement behind, though we are told time and time again that it's the case. But that's the lie, it's impossible, it's impossible. I'll mention just a couple of more things, and then we will leave the rest for next week.
As we're clarifying our convictions, the whole goal is that we can run the reductio and take the convictions, the clarifying of terms, and walk through the scriptures, and see what does the Bible say to us about using slogans, or using names, or using things from those who disagree with God, and then holding on to those things.
Well, we're gonna look at that. But just to clarify what's at stake and the problem that we have. John Piper originally had concerns about Black Lives Matter as well. He went to the website and read exactly what we read, and more, straight from the website.
And he came out against Black Lives Matter, as you do in these days, with a tweet. But later on, he was rebuked by the BDN of Walei. His real name is Ron Burns. You'll have to try this, look up Ron Burns on the Internet.
His bio pops up like this. A popular contributor to social justice institutions like the Gospel Coalition and Nine Marks. Ron Burns, who goes now by the name of BDN of Walei, wrote articles defending Marxism and radical anti-American and anti-Semitic terrorists.
And Walei, now named, is a leading figure in the New Evangelical Left. That's a really actually great bio. I mean, it's like dead on. But anyway, so Piper had some concerns like, hey, these guys are radical feminists.
This is crazy. They're advocating queer theory. This is bad. But his views shifted. After he spoke with Pastor Thabiti Nwele, pastors at Anacostia River Church, this is all from Christianity Today, who told Piper that the website is distinct from the movement.
Well, he said it himself, so we ought to believe it. And that Piper's inferences and his tweet were unhelpful. No, not that, not unhelpful. Unhelpful how and to whom? How and to, who's the truth unhelpful to?
Yeah, thank you, Brother Ray. Yeah, that's, who's the truth unhelpful to? How is the truth unhelpful? So Piper relented and encouraged white evangelicals. Don't you just love that? Encouraged white evangelicals to pause before saying anything like, all lives matter, which might be a case of wisdom that might get you shot in the back.
They don't necessarily have to yell that, unless you're looking for a quick ticket to heaven. Depending on the context. He says not to quickly say anything like, all lives matter. And I think that would go for the slogans that we've talked about here tonight from Genesis and Acts.
Don't say, he's saying, don't quickly say anything like, God matters, or Christ matters, or don't you think that God's gift of life matters? Isn't that a better way to express it? He says, don't say anything like that quickly, because it sounds like a rebuke.
It sounds like a minimizing of what was just said. It sounds like the point that was trying to be made isn't worth being made, he said. He said, of course it's true, all lives matter. And he says, but how timing matters and how context matters.
I agree. Timing does matter, and context does matter. So I think that John Piper is a great gift to the church, but I think in this manner he's wrong, I think he's wrong. I do not celebrate the way that he goes at this.
I think timing does matter. I think in the timing, in the times in which we live, when Black Lives Matter protesters waving their signs, or also burning Bibles in the street, and setting fire to churches, that it's just fine and dandy for you to say something like, well actually I think it's better if we say, God's gift of life matters.
Affirm something that is biblical. I think in the context of Black Lives Matter's own statements of what they actually believe, I think that it would be inappropriate to simply say, I totally affirm what you're getting at, and leave it alone.
I don't think that that would be Christian or wise, or wise at all. I think that the context and the timing is perfect to say something about how Black Lives Matter is fundamentally by definition unhelpful itself, for anyone and for anything.
Now, next time we come together, we're going to look at some scripture passages that walk the people of God through similar circumstances. Where there are slogans flying around, where people are saying things that sound great, but there's a whole context beneath them that shows it's not worth saying.
And then we're going to talk about how to respond accordingly, I think with wisdom, about why we shouldn't use the slogans. Even if we have our own meaning for it. And then we'll finish out our process talking about offering Christ to those who desire justice, sticking with the scriptures of our stories and stats, and talk about our hope, our hope about how life matters.
We'll do that next time, Lord willing. Okay, well let's close by singing the doxology together.
