Race Matters

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, I'm Steve Cooley.

Mike is on vacation, well -deserved vacation, I'm the Tuesday Guide, No Compromise Radio.

And thank you for listening today. You know, I started last week talking about what it means to be an image bearer, and I thought

I would continue, and today I'm going to get a little more controversial here on No Compromise Radio. What does

Mike like to say? You know, always, oh, let me see, hmm,

I can't remember what he always says. Isn't that funny? Anyway, I'm going to be a little bit controversial, but I'm also going to be biblical today.

I want to talk about some matters of race and racism and slavery and, you know, how we should view those things.

It amazes me, you know, how often racism pops up.

I mean, I just don't get it. I mean, yes, I will confess,

I grew up in a mostly white neighborhood. I really didn't, I mean,

I had a few black friends, you know, very few, though, in elementary school, maybe a few more in high school, but I think there were maybe about seven or eight

I mean, I could go through my yearbook, but out of maybe 1 ,500 kids, there might have been eight black kids, you know, there was a larger population of Hispanics, but it was relatively small too, maybe,

I don't know, somewhere between 80 and 100. I mean, this was, it was about as white bread as you could get. You know, we had

Asians too, but very white, very middle class kind of area that I grew up in.

And, you know, when I joined the Army, was my first real introduction, although I will say this in my defense, you know,

I did have some introduction to other cultures. I mean, I was robbed by two guys who hardly spoke

English before I joined the Army. So there was that, but, you know, in the Army, I had the opportunity of really living with some

African Americans. I mean, you know, I mean, you're just all there in basic training, you know, and then beyond,

I mean, they're your roommates, and, you know, they're just guys that you deal with all the time. And, you know, what you find out in a big hurry is that while there are differences in, you know, maybe what you like to listen to in terms of music, other things, but there are a lot of commonalities.

I mean, who wanted to play me the most, you know, in basic training? Who wanted to play chess the most? It was usually the black guys who wanted to play chess, which

I, you know, I'm great, you know, so we'd hang around and, you know, play chess and stuff like that.

But my point is, you know, I'm no expert on race. I mean, I've known,

I had black guys work for me, I've had white guys work for me. I mean, when I was supervising on the

Sheriff's Department, I had all manner of different people working for me, but I have not seen the kind of racism that I might have seen if I grew up in a different part of the country.

I grew up in Southern California, and it was just not really a big issue. But that said,

I mean, it constantly crops up. I mean, there was a horrible shooting in Charleston, really it was heartbreaking.

A few weeks ago, this, you know, you all know the story by now, but this young man went to this predominantly historically black church, this young white man who obviously hated blacks, went to this

Bible study, and you know, the most, I mean, I wept when I read this part that he, when he said during his confession,

I mean, there were a few parts that made me weep. But this thing that he said, where he said, they were so nice to me,

I almost couldn't go through with it. He was there for an hour, and they were just so nice to him, he almost couldn't go through with it.

And I'm like, you had a chance. You had an opportunity not to do this, but he was so filled with hate, he did it anyway.

But race is an issue here, and it has been historically. You know, if you talk to any unbeliever, especially those who really despise

Christianity for any length of time, they're going to say, well, you know, the Bible justifies slavery.

It justifies racism. And you say, well, no, it doesn't. And they'll say, well, you know, God never said don't take slaves.

And you know, they'll say, well, it was used by the South to discriminate and it was used, the

Bible was used to justify slavery. And you know, it was amazing, even when I was doing this class, I found out that George Whitefield was of the mindset that slavery wasn't so bad because it brought the slaves out of Africa and into the

United States where they could hear the gospel. Now, a great many blacks, in fact, he was eulogized by blacks after he died, they genuinely, they loved him.

But the point is, I just find that, I find that whole thing shocking, but it's always hard and I would warn anyone,

I don't care if you're a believer or an unbeliever, well, I do care. But if you're listening and you're an unbeliever or you're a believer, and you think, well,

I would never think like that. But I think the one caution you have to take is don't presume that you can imagine what you would think like if you lived 200, 250, 300 years ago, because it's a whole different environment that you live in, a whole different environment that you grow up in.

And so, I mean, you wouldn't have all the media things that we have now. No Compromise Radio, we're talking about race today.

But it was interesting, you know, the Whitfield thing, but I wanted to say this about slavery and segregation, all this.

Yes, it was used. In fact, I found this sermon given by Bob Jones, Jr.,

or I'm sorry, Bob Jones, Sr. of Bob Jones University in 1960.

This was on Easter Sunday. Can you imagine such a sermon on an Easter Sunday where we ought to be talking about the gospel?

Right? He says, here was his title, Is Segregation Scriptural?

And he uses Acts 17 .26 where it talks about the God fixed the bounds of habitation.

Now keep in mind, this is Paul on Mars Hill giving the gospel to these, I almost said

Martians, to these Greeks, these Athenians, who are used to hearing all these different philosophies and he's vexed,

Paul's vexed by all the idolatry, all the different idols he's seen in the city and he wants to preach the gospel.

So, he's preaching the gospel and what Bob Jones, Sr. fixes on is this little phrase in Acts 17 .26

about God fixing the bounds of habitation. And so, he's saying, in fact, he says, it's no accident that most

Chinese people are in China because God fixed their boundaries there and they shouldn't, therefore, live in China. And he notes that the leader of China is married to a

Chinese woman. Brilliant, right? I mean, it's not like Chiang Kai -shek, that was his name, had a lot of choices, you know, as to who he was going to,

I mean, it's just, it's funny, but it's also sad because you just think, how can you call yourself a

Bible teacher and teach this kind of patent nonsense, this unbiblical, unscriptural worldview?

He says the racial disturbances of his day were not of God. Well, I agree with that because what are we to do?

You know, the Bible tells us in Romans 13, 1 Peter, what are we to do with even rulers like Nero, you know, and the

Caesars of the day who ruled as if they were God, put people to death, did horrible things to them. Nero lit

Christians on fire, used them as human torches. He was horrible. And what are they right?

They say, submit to the authorities that God has placed over you and they included in that Nero.

They understood that government is a force for good and it's a God -ordained force for good.

So, what would I say about, you know, riots and things like that? Well, they're not of God. I would agree with that.

But his point was he did not want anybody getting out of their place.

You know, the blacks needed to know their place and it wasn't with the whites. I mean, this is, it's shameful.

It is sinful. It is so wrong in terms of thinking and it's completely unbiblical.

As image bearers, which is what every person is, we are completely equal in the sight of God.

We're all equally, may I say, guilty before God. You know what, if you stand before God on Judgment Day and he says, why should

I let you into heaven, which you won't do, by the way, but he says, why should I let you into heaven? And you say, because I'm white, um, no.

Because I'm Jewish, um, no. Because I'm Japanese, no. Because I'm African, no.

None of those things matter. None of those things are of any value to God.

Here's the value. The value is that you're an image bearer, no matter what color you are. The value is that you have a soul and the value is that God breathed in the breath of life into you.

That's the value that you have. But it was interesting, because I also found this interview with John MacArthur, where he was being interviewed by Rick Holland, and he talked about how he was invited to go to the

South during the civil rights era. This is before he was the pastor of Gates Community Church, so, you know, in the late 60s, invited to go to the

South by this young man that he'd met who'd gone into ministry and was working in Mississippi, a young black man, and he'd seen the

Ku Klux Klan kill men before his very eyes on the street, MacArthur says. And he went down there and he wanted to minister to these folks.

And in fact, he goes on to just talk about the discrimination he, John MacArthur, faced in the

South because everybody word got around that he was ministering to these black people.

How could he do that? And so, he found himself unwelcome in a number of venues because he was the white guy that wasn't going along with segregation.

That made him, I suppose, almost as bad in the eyes of the white segregationists down there as the black folks.

And so, he winds up, he actually gets to, he meets Charles Evers, the brother of Medgar Evers, and he winds up getting down to the site where Martin Luther King was assassinated just mere hours afterwards.

And it wasn't like today where, you know, on CSI where they cordon off the crime scene and bring in the forensic specialist to gather all the evidence.

And he goes, so we could just go in there, we could just walk around, and they hadn't, you know, done anything to this crime scene.

I mean, they cleaned up some of the blood, but the bloodstains were still there, and he could still see all this stuff. And he winds up,

I forget why, and it doesn't really matter, he winds up at some point getting arrested. And I think it was basically because, and maybe it was because it was this crime scene, but anyway, they arrested him, they took him into the jail.

And you know, it comes time to tell him what his bail is, and the sheriff says, I'll try not to affect the

Southern accent here, but the sheriff basically says to him, you know, how much money you got, boy? And MacArthur answers him, and he says, well, funnily enough, that's exactly what the bail is.

So, I mean, this is, you know, this is the sad legacy of our country.

The racial segregation, the discrimination, and really,

I guess there's no other word for it other than the persecution, the evil that was visited upon African Americans in this country.

And it was very, very evil and wicked. But how should we view racism? How should we view race as a matter of fact?

You know what bothers me no end? I mean, I would hate to attend a church, well, you know, let's call it this, how about the white

First Baptist Church? I would hate that. I mean, unless the name of the town was white, and even then

I'd say, let's change our name. But the idea of there being ethnic churches, I guess

I understand that for a generation or something like that, but all those things should be done away with. Why? Why?

It's because of this. If we understand this passage of scripture, Galatians 3, rightly, it'll change everything.

Galatians 3 verses 26 to 29, "...for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith."

There's the issue, do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you believe in his perfect life accounted to you?

Do you believe in his substitutionary death to pay for your sins? Do you believe in his resurrection? If you do, if you do, then you're a

Christian, and hallelujah for that, but you're all equal, every single person.

Verse 27, "...for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 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.

And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise." Here's his point, here's

Paul's point, is that when we come into church, all that nonsense that the outside world does, where they want to segregate you, whether it's actively segregation or not, where they want to fit you into a slot, it doesn't matter.

If you're in Christ, I don't care if you're black, white, yellow, brown, red, if you've got polka dots all over your face because you've got bad acne like me,

I don't care what your story is. If you're qualified to be an elder, then you should be an elder.

If you're qualified to be a deacon, you should be a deacon. If you're qualified to be a member of the church, you should be a member.

If you're qualified to serve in the church, you should serve. And it doesn't matter what color you are.

Color is irrelevant. Color is something for people to fight over. God does not care about it.

And I get so upset about that.

And you know, even when he says there is neither Jew nor Greek, what does he mean?

He means that all these things that, I mean, the Jews hated the Greeks. The Jews hated the

Samaritans. They were very racially oriented, but that was, you know, in part because of the religion.

But it's also in part because they saw themselves, rightly so, as God's chosen people. But therefore, what does that say?

Everybody else is not God's chosen people. And so, you know, over time, especially if you have a sinful heart, you become more and more likely to see other people as less valuable than you.

And that's exactly what happened. So, they viewed the Greeks with disdain and other non, well, other

Gentiles as the same way, with just utter disdain. Hendrickson commentator writes, "...in

Paul's day, fratricidal class distinctions were the order of the day, just as they are in many quarters."

So, he's saying, look, it was much worse then. You know, the rich people didn't hang out with the poor people.

It didn't matter even if you were the same race or whatever, it was just, there were class structures, there were race structures, all these different considerations.

And he's saying, listen, in the church, none of that stuff matters. "...the

Jews drew a sharp line, he says, between themselves and the swarms or hordes, the goyim, of outsiders, the heathen nations, in contrast with Israel.

Often such heathen were simply called dogs. Even proselytes of the

Jewish religion were never fully accepted. They were just seen as genetically inferior."

Brothers and sisters, this is wrong! And if you're in a church and you look around and you're like, well, this church either, you know, let's say

I was the white pastor in an all -black area. And, you know, when white people came to our church, we rolled out the red carpet for them and we just gave them the best kind of, you know, serving positions of the church and whatnot, and we really kind of kept black people on the other end of the spectrum.

That'd be wrong! By the same token, if you're at a black church and a few white folks come in, you know, you shouldn't just kind of ostracize them.

Listen, and there's no reason to think that you would, but I just, I see there is kind of a, in our world, there's a little bit of tribalism still left, sadly, but in the church, those things should just be gone.

Those things should just be gone. And I couldn't help but think about this as I just,

I saw in the aftermath of the Charleston shooting, the outpouring of affection from the white

Christian community to the black Christian community, and I thought, this is good. The question is, why are y 'all still so segregating?

I mean, I want our church to reflect, it ought to reflect the area in which you live. Now, I think because we're a little bit of a suburban church,

I think we'll probably always be a little bit more white than other races, but I don't care.

I want, you know, the different people from different races to come in here and to just be as welcome as can be.

Why? Because there is no Jew nor Greek. There is no black nor white. There is no slave nor free.

There is no female or male. We're all in Christ. The ground at the foot of the cross, this is an old saying, but it is absolutely true, it's equal.

It's flat. Whatever else is going on in the world, whatever the world says, black lives matter, white lives matter, blue lives matter, again, as I said last time, every life matters.

And in Christ, every person who's in the body has a responsibility to that body.

And we can't look at people and think, oh, you know, well, for discipleship purposes, I just want to match the black guys up with the black guys and the white guys up with the white guys.

I would argue not only is that wrong biblically, it might just be stupid. Why? Because it might be helpful.

I think it probably is. I've learned so much about so many things while I was in the army, while I was on the sheriff's department from people who weren't in the same culture as me.

This is all good. It's good to have, I mean, the best thing, think about what heaven's going to be like.

What is heaven going to be like? The Bible tells us in Revelation, people from every nation, tribe, and kindred, and tongue, well, what does that mean?

It means when we get up to heaven, it's not going to be all white. It's not going to be all black. It's not going to be all brown.

It's going to be a mixture. It's going to be the full spectrum of humanity up there. We are going to see, you know, we're going to see equal rights, we're going to see a lot of things that we don't see here on earth and we're going to see it perfectly fleshed out.

Well, why wouldn't we want that in the church today? Why wouldn't we want to see that?

And we should. We definitely should and it's something we should be striving for. Now, so what about national origin?

All these things don't matter. I mean, this is just the idea that anyone would be discriminated against is just wrong.

It's just crazy. And I want to say one other thing. You know, you see these kind of memes on Facebook about black lives really matter and the number of children that are killed in abortion clinics, and it really is shocking to see disproportionately the number of black babies who are killed at abortion clinics.

Friends, I mean, I hope your heart breaks when you hear about anyone having an abortion, but the idea that the secular world promotes this, that the secular world who claim to, you know, love equal rights and everything else and they don't,

I mean, they just don't. They want these as political issues. But if we view human life rightly, if we view it as a gift from God, if we view it as a sacred gift, when

God gives that breath of life, when he breathes it into a child, a little baby at the moment of conception, that child is just as valuable as any other person on the face of the planet and needs to be looked at it, looked at in exactly that way.

And to take any human life unlawfully, to take it wrongly, to take it, well, by virtue of abortion is really murder.

I don't care what the law is, you know, I, sorry, if the law says abortion is illegal, does that make it, does that make it biblical?

And the answer is no. If God says that two men can get married, does that, or if,

I'm sorry, if the law says that two men can get married, does that make it biblical? No.

Does it make it, it might be legal, but it's not moral. And we always have to draw that line.

What's legal and what's moral? And the fact is, you know, getting back to race, segregation was once perfectly legal.

It was never perfectly moral. Slavery was perfectly legal.

It was never perfectly moral. It was never moral at all. To treat men and women and children like they're cattle, to treat them actually worse than cattle?

Horrific. Horrific. And that anyone would think that God's purpose is furthered by putting people on ships, treating them like garbage, and seeing which ones would survive over here and then auctioning them off?

Friends, what a dark period in our nation's history and really in our world's history that this kind of thing ever went on, and by the way, it still goes on today.

We need to be praying for an end to slavery. We need to be praying for an end. I sometimes talk about child labor in other countries, and it is so sad to think about what children go through in other countries and how we allow this in this day and age to go on,

I really don't understand. But anyway, getting back to this, all these things that were practiced in this country were wrong.

They were wrong. They were unbiblical. They were sinful. So what do we do about it now? Well, I'll tell you what

I want to do about it. I want to say that everybody should preach the gospel, because if everybody in this country were a

Christian, then we would all get together and we would all realize that whatever our ancestors did was wrong and sinful, but we're not responsible for it.

This is No Compromise Radio, and I pray that you will receive Christ and repent. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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