You can turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 2.
Brethren, I'm ready to leave Ephesians 2,
but not yet.
Before we bid farewell
and explore the wonders that lay ahead in chapter 3,
I want to say a personal word.
What I'm saying today is personal
to me and to our church here.
Look, I want to talk about race.
I want to talk about the color of our skin.
And you know,
I don't know the best words to use.
I've heard, well, if you're from Asia,
you're offended if you're called "oriental."
I've heard that blacks don't like
to be called African American sometimes.
Look, I hear what whites are called,
whether it's gringo or guero.
I don't know all the right terminology.
So, let's just have a bit of thick skin among ourselves.
I may not use all the exact right terms.
But here's the deal,
I don't want to leave Ephesians 2
without really bringing the rubber
down to meet the road.
This is practical in my estimation.
Really practical.
And sometimes, it's hoped
that when you deal with a chapter
like Ephesians 2 -
especially the last half
from about v. 11 all the way to the end,
it deals with racial issues
at a level that is practical
to racial issues among Christians
anywhere at any time.
And sometimes as I'm preaching these things,
I'm hoping that people
are making the application.
But you know what?
Sometimes the application needs to be made for us.
It can be helpful.
I want to tell you about the personal impact
that Ephesians 2 has had on my own life.
I didn't know why I had
this picture in my mind
of sitting at Community Baptist Church,
and I can just see where I'm sitting -
Pat Horner preaching up there,
and he's probably preaching on Ephesians 2.
Gospel.
But I just have this picture in my mind of sitting there,
as my mind is beginning to put together
the realities of what the church
should look like.
I'll just tell you right off,
some of you know this.
I went to a church in Michigan.
The pastor - he didn't believe
blacks could be saved.
He believed they bore the mark of Cain.
Now, I didn't know that.
I wouldn't have gone there.
Craig and I had little brothers
in the Big Brother Little Brother program
we were bringing from the inner city of Kalamazoo.
And he told Craig after I came down here,
"I don't know why you guys ever brought them.
You know they can't be saved."
Ruby and I got married.
That pastor from Michigan
specifically told Craig he would not
send us a card
because I had married a Hispanic girl.
I didn't know these things about him
when I was there.
I would not have gone there.
I came down and I sat at Community Baptist Church,
and I began to see some diversity.
And there was a pastor who seemed to like that;
encourage that.
I remember when Charles Wilson
came over from Japan.
He was transferring in the military.
So now we had Hispanics and whites and blacks.
I don't remember if there were any Asians.
Yeah, there were. The Tagawa's.
They're kind of Hawaiian I guess.
So, I saw this diversity.
And the thing is I'm hearing Scripture.
And really, I find nothing more impactful;
more prominent;
more of an extensive treatment
in all of the Bible than I find right here
in the second half of Ephesians 2.
If you train your eyes on v. 21,
notice the words: "being joined together"
V. 21 "In whom the whole structure
being joined together."
That's what the New King James and the ESV say.
The New American Standard:
"being fitted together."
The King James Version:
"fitly framed together."
That's the word that I especially want
us to lay hold on today.
It's one word in the Greek.
"Fitly framed together."
So, let's read v. 19-22,
and just notice how this
"fitly framed together."
And then, a close; a similar word in v. 22
being built together.
"So then, you..." now look.
If you're just visiting with us;
you're just joining in right here,
you need to recognize who the "you" is.
The "you" is specifically speaking to Gentiles.
You Ephesian Gentiles.
And that's exactly what the emphasis is.
You who are Gentiles
who have been saved.
You non-Jews who have been converted
"...are no longer strangers and aliens,
but fellow citizens with the saints
and members of the household of God,
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Christ Jesus Himself being the Cornerstone,
in whom the whole structure,
being joined together grows
into a holy temple in the Lord."
Now, notice this.
He basically comes along and says
almost exactly the same thing in v. 22.
It's a lot of synonymous verbiage.
You know what the big difference is?
"You also..." that's the big difference.
You see what he's doing here?
"In Christ, you Gentiles also..."
That's the remarkable thing to Paul.
You're included!
"You're also being built together
into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
You know what this last half
is all about?
It's a Jew-Gentile thing.
That's what's happening.
Look back up at v. 11.
"Therefore remember that at one time..."
Here it is.
"...you."
Now you see, I'm not making this up.
What's on his mind?
You Gentiles.
That's specifically what he's got in mind.
That's who he's speaking to whenever he says,
"you" throughout this latter half
of Ephesians 2.
"You Gentiles in the flesh..."
Now notice this:
"called the uncircumcision."
They don't call themselves that.
That's what the Jews call them.
It's derogatory.
You know different races typically
invent derogatory names
for people of other races.
Do you ever notice that?
Even in our own generation?
That's common.
They're called the uncircumcision
by what is called the circumcision,
which is made in the flesh by hands.
Brethren, we need to feel the difference here.
Some of you who have stayed aloof -
well, maybe that's not the best word to use,
but those of you that stayed most connected to -
even in the church -
racial issues,
you get an idea
about the differences -
the differences of opinion;
how polarized these things can be.
You don't feel that when it comes to
circumcised - uncircumcised.
Because we're not familiar with it.
We don't have to deal with it.
It's not familiar to us.
It's not part of our experience.
So we really don't get it.
But let's try to get it again.
I talked about it way back,
but let's talk about it again.
Jesus is dealing with a Syrophoenician woman
and even He says the Jews are children;
the Syrophoenician woman is a dog.
Jesus comes to a well in John 4.
The woman is surprised that a Jewish man
would even speak to her.
And she says so.
Jews don't have dealing with Samaritans.
Do you know that when Paul
has to rebuke Peter in Galatians,
in his dialogue with Peter,
he says we are not Gentile sinners.
That was basically the attitude.
Gentiles are lawless. They don't have the law of God.
They don't have the true God.
They're just sinners - Gentile sinners.
That's how Paul, an apostle
to the Gentiles themselves,
would categorize Gentiles to another Jew.
They're just Gentile sinners.
Not without hope,
but that's how he classified them.
You remember how, again,
derogatorily - here's the Pharisees.
You want to say something wicked about Jesus,
what did they say?
You're a Samaritan.
You have a devil. You have a demon.
Derogatory.
You know what?
There was hatred between Jews and Gentiles.
Both thinking themselves superior.
Both at odds with each other.
There was not unity. There was not harmony.
Do you know what the point
of the second half of Ephesians is all about?
It's that Christ's blood was shed
to tear down; to destroy the barriers.
You see that.
Look at v. 14.
"He Himself (this is Christ)
is our peace
who has made us both one."
Ok, my agenda today is not to deal
with Jew and Gentile other than
how Jew and Gentile are a great reflection
of black and white
and any other racial issues that we have today.
Listen, the same truth applies,
that by the blood of Christ,
black and white Christians are made one.
That's a reality folks.
Don't try to tear that down.
Don't try to back away;
don't try to wiggle your way out of it.
And I'll just say this right off.
Brethren, you know one of the truths
that we find about Scripture,
is that the devil comes and casts tares
among the wheat.
Have you ever read that?
Anybody read that?
What do you think that means
on a practical level?
You think it means we might have some tares in here?
Or in the church at large?
You think so?
Let me ask you this.
What color is their skin?
The tares.
What color do you think they are?
If you were to examine their skin,
what do you think?
All colors.
You know what?
Just because someone professes to be a Christian
doesn't really mean they are.
And if they in any way speak to you
in a way that would cause you
to back away from this reality,
turn it off.
I don't care if they're white;
they're black, they're green.
The reality is that if we are black and white
and we are in Christ, we are one.
We are not separate.
We are not two distinct peoples.
Yes, you may like Menudo.
You might like grits.
I may prefer steak.
Well, you probably like it too.
But, yes, we may have those flavors.
But you need to consider your identity
at the deepest level.
We are one.
That's what Scripture says.
One.
"And He's broken down..."
that means He's destroyed,
"...in His flesh, the dividing wall of hostility."
He tears it down. Now, I know,
when it comes to Jew and Gentile,
we may be speaking about
legal realities - even realities from the Old Testament,
but what I'm telling you
is that the reality is the same.
That among the Gentiles,
no matter where we come from, no matter what our background is,
no matter what country you were born in,
no matter what language you speak,
no matter what color your skin is,
if we are in Christ together,
we are one.
That is the greatest point of our identity
in all the world, the universe, eternity.
That is the greatest reality.
Our identity is in Christ.
Now listen,
"we are made one."
The reality is that Gentiles aren't made
into physical Jews.
There's a spiritual reality,
but they're not made into physical Jews.
Jews aren't made into Gentiles.
What happens is this,
and Paul clearly says this,
all former categories dissolve away
and are replaced by a new category.
That's what you see right there in v. 15.
"That He might create in Himself
one new man
in place of the two."
Did you catch that?
There's a replacement.
The Gentiles don't replace the Jews.
The Jews don't replace the Gentiles.
Both categories are replaced
by one new man.
And you know what happens?
All these new men; all these new women,
they are collectively together
in what's called here "one body."
Do you see that? v. 16?
"...and might reconcile us both to God
in one body through the cross."
Now as I said when we dealt with that text,
that's not Christ's body.
That one body idea shows up in Ephesians
and in Paul's writings over and over,
and he doesn't mean the body of Christ.
He means the church.
It's one body.
Christ is the Head.
One body.
Do you know what it's comprised of?
A bunch of people who were
formerly disunified Jews;
disunified Gentiles.
But now they're all together
in one body.
And what's happening?
They're being reconciled to God.
We've just come away from a season
where "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,"
is commonly sung:
"God and sinners reconciled."
But you see, Paul's point here -
it's not just any sinners;
it's sinners who formerly in their lostness
were so radically divided
and now in one body, they're brought together.
They have reconciliation together,
both by way of the cross
and be certain of this,
there is no reconciliation at all
apart from the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the church.
It's reconciled.
It's something absolutely new.
Both Jew and Gentile.
And you know what happens?
The door gets thrown wide open
to draw near to God
for everybody in the body,
and that's what you find in v. 18.
We have access.
And notice,
"for through Him, we both..."
Don't you like how he keeps coming back
and he says, "we both..."
One new man in place of the two.
We both have access.
And again, I'm not wanting to deal
primarily with Jew and Gentile today.
I want to deal with every color of skin
and ethnicity that we have in this room,
because the reality is,
there is a people here.
And it doesn't matter what shade of skin we have,
that by reconciliation through the cross
the door has been opened
so that we actually have
real communion with God,
and we can enter before Him.
Again, we're dealing with the greatest realities
about our identity.
Your greatest identity is not the color of your skin.
Your greatest identity is the fact
that you are one who has been paid for
by this blood
and the doors are thrown open for you
to come right into the presence of God.
And you know what happened?
I'm out there at Community Baptist Church.
I'm not a pastor yet.
I don't even know if I was preaching.
But things are beginning to formulate in my head.
Thinking about that pastor -
it's now been made clear to me
where I came from.
It's like what is all that?
And I'm watching the church at Community.
I'm hearing verses like come out
of Ephesians and there's a picture
that begins to develop in my mind
about what the church
should be looking like.
And the thing is here
Paul's not done.
He just keeps going on and on.
He wants to drive this point home
over and over again.
Your identity is no longer
in your circumcision
or your uncircumcision.
It's no longer in the color of your skin.
Your truest identity is not on that level.
Your identity is somewhere else now.
And look at v. 19.
"...fellow citizens with the saints,
members of the household of God."
But then he goes even further.
The reconciled ones are all being -
and here's that word -
jointed or joined together.
Fitly framed together.
"...Into a temple for God to dwell in."
And you know, the thing about it is
some might wonder at that.
I just said Paul goes even further.
Does that even sound right?
Some might wonder that I say
Paul goes even further.
Look, to go from family to building -
it is really an escalation of imagery
to go from the one to the other,
but it might not feel like that.
Why? Well, family seems warm.
It seems loving.
It's just not as nice a picture
to think about building pieces in a wall.
Is Paul's imagery really escalating here?
Oh yeah.
Don't think warmth.
Think cohesion.
What's that word?
That's like glue.
Cohesive. Super glue.
You glue something together.
Adhesion or cohesion.
It's the stickiness.
It's something being stuck together
or built together.
That's the imagery of cohesion.
Being furthered.
Is there cohesion in all being in the same country?
To some degree.
Is there cohesion in being in the same family?
Yeah, maybe even more so.
But when you're fitly framed together
as a piece of construction material
into the same wall,
you know what?
There's a truer merging of parts
than even in a family.
You say really?
Yeah, you know what?
One of the boards in that wall
does not say,
well, I think I'm going to get married and move to Missouri.
They're together.
You see, families - people can go
different places.
There is a closeness in family,
but there's a cohesion in building parts
that comes even closer.
The idea of Jew and Gentile
so closely fitly framed together
into the same structure
seems to be so exceptionally important to Paul
that you know what?
It's assumed that he actually
invents a word right here.
Now, I'm not the world's most renowned etymologist.
(studier of words)
But Lloyd-Jones says Paul invented it.
He said there's no indication
that the word ever shows up
anywhere else in history;
anywhere else outside of Ephesians.
And it can't be found in any secular writing.
It's thought that what Paul was doing
was he was grasping for imagery
or for a term and he was limited -
limited enough in his own vocabulary
that he needed to create a word
to try to communicate to these folks
exactly what he meant.
And what he did was he basically took
three separate words
and stuck them all together
in apparently what was an invention of his own.
The three words are this:
The first one is "sun,"
which means "together with."
The second one is "harmos."
Now Jeff's going to correct me
if my Greek pronunciation isn't right.
You know, it's funny.
As Americans we like to say
about Greek or Hebrew,
well, that isn't the way you say it.
We actually had a Hebrew Christian
sit at our table before.
Brethren, he said words from the Old Testament
in ways you would not even recognize them.
And you know, we're correcting one another.
Well, this is the way you say it.
But if you actually heard the way that it was said in the original language,
we'd probably all recognize
that we're just doing good enough
if we can communicate in our own
Anglican pronunciation.
But, you have "sun" - together with;
"harmos" which means "joint."
Joined together with.
And then "logeo"
which is the verb of "logos,"
which has the idea to arrange in order.
You know what happens?
The King James Version
actually comes the closest
to striving to bring
all three components out.
They actually use three words in the English
to parallel the three in the Greek.
Fitly framed together.
It's the idea of logeo is to arrange;
like even an arrangement of music
or an arrangement of a sentence.
But it's to put something in order,
and it's a picture -
it's what God is doing to us.
It's not something that we're doing to ourselves.
God is placing in the church
and joining together with
and fitly framing.
It's the idea of harmoniously
fitting together.
It is a tight cohesiveness.
And Paul just invents this word
and says to these Gentiles,
do you really recognize how one you are?
How closely fitted together?
And obviously there's something profound in this.
When Paul does this;
when he invents this,
brethren, this is the church.
That's what we have going here.
That's what we have a picture of here.
He wants to try to explain
to these Ephesian Gentiles
to feel their close cohesion
with these Jews and with everyone else
who's a Christian.
God takes each one of these living stones
and carefully arranges them by design,
and He puts them in here
and fitly frames -
you think about framing a window.
And they're fitted.
It's almost like there's one after another
and they're fitly framed together
and joined together in cohesion
and a tightness.
This is the church.
And do you know what the building blocks are?
They're living stones,
and they've got every different shade of skin
under the sun.
That's the reality.
Various nationalities,
skin colors -
they used to be separated,
disjointed,
unharmonious, conflicting, clashing...
It's like as a child,
I remember I got a battleship model.
Remember the old models?
You put them together.
I don't if young people even do that anymore.
And you pull the top off
and you basically have these frames of plastic
with all the individual parts across there.
And you've got, typically, several sheets of these things,
and you pull them out.
And you've got the big pieces
like the halves of the hull and whatever,
and you begin to put all these pieces together.
At first, they're all disjointed.
They're disconnected.
But then you take out that model glue
and you begin to put them together,.
And you know, some of the pieces are the same.
Many of them are not the same.
They're not like each other.
It's not like a cookie cutter thing.
If you just opened it up
and you had a hundred pieces
that all looked identical, what do you create out of that?
It's the same with the church.
Paul uses other illustrations in 1 Corinthians 12,
but where do you get a body
if everybody's an eye?
You don't.
Where do you get a battleship
if everything is a gun turret?
You don't.
You end up with some ugly horrendous thing.
It doesn't even go together.
You could glue it all together,
but it's going to be a monster.
But as a child, you put all those pieces together.
This is what God is doing in the church.
Fitly framing.
And brethren, I'll tell you this.
About 17 years ago,
when we started this church,
I was just naive enough to think
and to actually believe
that texts like this
had real life implications.
I believe that.
I actually believed that if such radically different people
as Jews and Gentiles
could actually lose their own native identities
and so identify with Christ,
that they could come together
in the same churches
and function together and live together
and love together
and spread the Gospel together.
I actually was naive enough to think
blacks and whites could do that in San Antonio.
Along with the majority population
of the Hispanics.
And thankfully, if God threw Asians
into that mix as well.
I thought it might be just reasonable enough
to think that if we located our church meetings
here on the east side of San Antonio,
we might actually witness
the same power
that brought Jew and Gentile together
bring all sorts of different people together here.
That was my thinking.
And you know what? Some might think
that I'm reading too much into the passage
in these last two verses of chapter 2.
But the image produced in my mind,
it wasn't just a theoretical image.
It was an image that I saw
came right down to local churches.
See, I didn't really imagine the temple
being built and all the stones over there
are black;
and all the stones right there are white;
and all the stones right there
may have a reddish hue
or a yellowish hue.
I didn't see it like that.
I saw them fitly framed together in my mind.
Maybe you think I'm reading too much into it,
but like I say, I was just naive enough
to think that a brother with dark skin
could be placed in there.
And then a Hispanic sister
could be placed next to that.
And then an Asian sister
could be placed next to that.
And I actually believed,
well, if God could do that back then,
God can do that now.
I mean, if God is capable.
And the thing is,
I didn't just think,
oh, that's for heaven.
See, we have to wait for heaven
because here everybody's going to be in their Korean church;
everybody's going to be in their Indian church;
everybody's going to be in their white church;
in their Hispanic church, in their black church.
And we wait for then.
Then, of course, it's all going to mix together.
You see, I just kind of thought
that the fact that we're being built
together this way actually has to do with
the here and now
and right in our generation.
And I kind of thought that
side by side we could work together
for the sake of the Gospel.
Brethren, I'll tell you this.
I did not know exactly how it would happen,
but in those first seven months
of the life of this church,
this was becoming more and more
of a burden.
Now, let me tell you,
we started by meeting on
the south side of the city.
I'm not going to say it's all Hispanic,
but heavily so.
That's where we had a Bible study
for a number of years.
But you know, as time went on,
I didn't want to stay there.
I had my eye on this part of the city.
And I know there were voices saying
well, that's not right.
If God called you to be on the south side,
who are you to be moving away from it?
Well, I'll tell you what God was doing inside me
was trying to think strategically -
if we're going to have a church
where blacks and whites and Hispanics
and other ethnicities are likely
going to come together,
what I felt like was
if we could be close to downtown
and maybe actually off into a more
black part of the city,
I thought that's the strategic location to be.
Now, you may take issue with that.
But that was my whole thinking.
My thinking was,
let's go to where the needs are;
let's go to where the prostitutes are;
let's go to where the drug problems are;
let's go to where they need the Gospel;
but let's also position this
where we're close to downtown.
You've got maybe what tends to be
the more white areas to the north.
You've got the more black areas to the east.
West side is little Mexico.
South side is going to be heavily Hispanic,
but it felt central.
That was my thinking: central.
Because that was the desire.
Now as I looked out at the church,
it was all Hispanic in those first days
except me.
But I began to pray.
I recognized, no matter
where you are in this city,
if God's working with us,
Hispanics are going to be there.
But it's going to take an extra effort
to try to bring whites and blacks
into the same church.
So, strategically, where should we be?
And I began to pray,
Lord, please...
And it wasn't just skin colors;
I often prayed -
those that were here in the early days,
it was often that the converted lawyer
would sit next to the converted prostitute,
whatever their colors.
But I wanted this different social strata as well.
God saving from the rich.
I know not many (1 Corinthians 1),
but some and many of those
in the poorer sections.
Look, could we have moved
up to the north side?
Could we have moved up to Stone Oak?
Yes, we could have.
I mean, there was freedom there to do that.
But that wasn't the agenda -
not in my heart.
Not based on texts like this.
I had an image in my mind
of this multi-colored
fitly framed together,
and I didn't want to wait to heaven for it.
I wanted to see that cohesiveness
worked out right now.
Because brethren, I really believe
that it's a testimony
about the grace and the power of God.
I believe that.
I believe it says something about
what the power of the cross
is able to accomplish in people.
And I knew what I saw up there in Michigan -
that was not a testimony
to any power of any cross.
Not that kind of - was it racism?
Or was it horrible ignorance?
Definitely not a man qualified
to be in the pulpit.
But did Jesus say this?
Did He say, well,
people will know that you're My disciples
by the fact that blacks need to stay
in their churches,
and whites need to stay in their churches,
and there's Hipanics in theirs.
Because we don't love one another
enough to work through the differences.
Is that what He said?
Is that how the world's going to know that we belong to Him?
That is not what He said.
What He specifically said is that
"by this all people will know
that you are My disciples,
if you have love for one another."
Brethren, the truth is
that this is the truth.
And you know it.
If we can't make it in the same church together,
it's a lack of love on somebody's part.
That's just a reality.
Plain and simple.
Do you remember the church there in Acts 6?
Let me tell you about it.
You don't feel this,
but it's likely a difference of ethnicity
stronger than blacks and whites
in the same church.
When you had Hebrews and Hellenist Jews
in the same church.
Did they have problems?
Of course, they had problems!
Brethren, some people walk around
almost with this foreboding:
"there are problems in this church."
Of course there are!
Were there racial problems in that church?
Of course there were!
Look, this issue isn't whether or not we have problems.
The issue is that love works through those problems.
You know what was happening?
The widows - not any widow.
Not widows indiscriminately.
But the widows of a certain race
in the church -
the widows of the Hellenist Greeks.
They were not being taken care of
like the Hebrew widows were.
That kind of a race thing. And it is.
Somehow they were being neglected.
Somehow they were being overlooked.
You know what?
Did the apostles say,
Hellenist Greeks, this isn't going to work.
The way to remedy this:
pack your bags, go down the street,
start a Hellenist Greek church.
That's what we need to do.
Because after all that's what
just about everybody does today.
That's not what they did.
What they did was they looked at it
and they said you know this is a reality.
And they sought to meet the need.
And what's interesting to me is
that it has often been observed
that the seven men that were chosen
were actually Greeks.
And I've thought about that.
You know, that bothered me.
That bothered me
for a long time that they did that.
Because I thought,
shouldn't the Hebrews
have been able to become deacons
just as ably as the Greeks
and minister to the Grecian widows?
Why all Greeks?
Well, it bothered me.
Maybe it still does bother me a little bit
that that happened that way,
but maybe there's something to it.
You don't have to pack up and move down the street
and start your own church,
but maybe there is something to
Grecian men.
Maybe they're more plugged in.
Maybe they're more sensitive.
Maybe they're more aware.
Maybe they would be able to relate better.
That's just a reality.
We come from different backgrounds.
Maybe it was better on a practical level.
Well, that's what happened.
Yeah, they had problems.
And you know what?
I know that if we try to have multiple
various ethnicities and different backgrounds -
brethren, I've heard it said before in this church.
I've heard it said.
I know it's true.
People have said
they are now friends with
and they hang out with people that in their lost state,
they would have never hung out with;
they would have never been friends with.
Well, of course that's true.
Of course it is.
We ought to expect that that's going to be true.
Because in our lost state,
we were divided; we were disunified;
we were unharmonious.
There was clashing.
There was no cohesion.
We were hated by each other
and we were hating one another.
And that's fairly biblically descriptive
of what lost people are like.
But something's happened.
And you know that church didn't remain
just apathetic and indifferent
to the needs - to the true needs
of one of the ethnic groups in the church.
Brethren, through the years,
I remember we had when we were over at Fatty's,
an Indian family came from Houston.
I asked them where do you go to church?
Oh, we go to an Indian church
in Houston.
I travel over to Romania
and they've got the Romanian church
and the Gypsy church.
Now look, again, I'm reading Adoniram Judson.
You know what, they saw converts
among the British troops.
He was an American missionary.
But they saw converts among the British troops.
They saw converts among the Burmese,
among the Taling people and among the Karens.
And they put them all in different churches,
but you know what?
They spoke different languages.
I understand that.
Look, we've got to be able to communicate
to one another in a language that we understand.
Otherwise, we're not going to be able to preach to one another.
We're not going to be able to communicate.
You know, the whole Christian life is involved in so much communication.
If you can't speak the same language,
there are real barriers.
And I understand that.
I understand that with the Spanish-speaking group
that meets here.
We're trying to have interpretation,
hopefully put the music in Spanish
up on the screen.
I understand that when there's linguistic differences.
But the reality is
why the Romanians and the Gypsies
have to be in different churches
when they know the same language
and they both speak Romanian very fluently.
Do you know what happened
when - the example I'm thinking of specifically,
a bunch of Italians got converted
in a revival situation in New York City.
And I'm trying to think of the pastor
who got so disgusted with the situation
that he left.
Was it Tozer?
A well-known preacher saw
where the white folks in New York City,
they're preaching the Gospel.
They were actually evangelistic,
and you know what God did?
Instead of saving a whole bunch of white people,
He saved a whole bunch of Italians.
Now, Italians might be considered Caucasian,
but they were different.
And you know what?
The people in that church just felt like
it just messed up their church too much.
And so they shipped them all off
and they started an Italian church.
And whoever the preacher was there at the time
said, uh uh, I don't like this.
Was it A.B. Simpson?
Anyway, I can't remember the name.
But I feel the same way.
When I see those kinds of things happen
it's like wait. Isn't something broken here?
What are we saying?
Are we saying that those people
are too poor for them to be among us?
I recognize this:
That if we had gone up to Stone Oak,
we would not be attracting people
off of Hackberry and Cherry
to come to that church there.
Somebody recently told me but
I don't know when they visited
Hagee's church, but they were talking about
all the rich people up there.
That's up in Stone Oak.
I recognize this,
some rich people might be willing
to come here, but most of the people
from the inner city are not
willing to go there.
Perhaps. Perhaps there are some.
But I just felt like this was the most strategic
if we're going to really seek
to make this happen;
see these parts come together.
Brethren, from time to time,
I was reminded of this -
Ruby and I met with Jonathan and Letty
on Friday,
and Ruby brought up how
many different times, people who have
visited our church from the outside
and they have commented
on the racial diversity here.
And I've heard that too.
I've heard those comments.
How that blesses people
because they say things like
I haven't seen that before.
Brethren, let me tell you something.
The racial diversity that we have at Grace is unique.
I'm not saying we're the only place that has it.
But it's unique and it's special.
And look, it's not found in many other places.
And if we're going to keep this diversity,
we need to fight for it.
But here's the thing, you'll never fight for it
unless you value it.
See, I value it.
Because I look at Scripture and I believe
it bears witness to these verses.
And I believe it bears witness
to the reconciling power of the cross
and of the blood to remove the barriers.
When I hear about barriers being removed,
again, maybe you think I'm
reading too much into the text.
I recognize that there were
Scriptural barriers between
Jews and Gentiles.
I recognize that.
But when I hear about the barriers being removed,
again, I'm naive enough to think
that means every barrier that keeps
any ethnicity apart.
They have been broken down.
And that our identities in the two old men
that we used to be -
us and whoever else you want to compare yourself to -
have been dissolved if we're in Christ.
And our new greatest identity
is the new man.
Brethren, just recently, somebody mentioned
Hudson Taylor.
And I love Hudson Taylor.
I love his example.
Just recently, there's been some dialogue
among some in the church about music,
and maybe even racial aspects
that affect the music.
And it was suggested that maybe
the example of Hudson Taylor
might be brought in and applied
to this situation.
And I would agree.
What's the example of Hudson Taylor?
I love it. I think there's something there
for us to all glean from it.
Hudson Taylor, unlike the others
who went to China before him -
Hudson Taylor and a man named Burns -
he was used in a revival in McCheyne's church -
they dressed like the Chinese.
They wore their shoes -
really uncomfortable horrible things.
They grew their hair
in that really weird 1800's way
where they had the ponytail,
but the front part was all shaved.
So they had the hair that came off the back
in a ponytail (incomplete thought).
And you know, for a European,
you're in that sun and that heat
and it burns his head.
He wore their clothes.
So we look at that.
And sometimes that can be brought up today.
And it was suggested that
if we want to reach east side blacks,
shouldn't we be like Hudson Taylor?
And I would say yes,
we should be like Hudson Taylor.
But here's the thing,
Hudson Taylor went into China
because he desired to see a Chinese church.
You see, brethren,
I don't want a black church.
I don't want a white church.
If you're going to use Hudson Taylor,
what you want to think about
is what would Hudson Taylor have done
if instead of just reaching the Chinese,
he wanted to reach blacks,
Hispanics, Asians, and whites
all at the same time?
You might say, well, he probably
would have dressed really funny.
How do you do that?
Well, you know what?
When we came here to the east side,
I didn't know.
I remember we moved to Hackberry.
And it was like,
ok, we bought the place,
and it had a glass front door.
And I have this image in my mind
of us kind of looking out that door.
Ok, we're here.
What do we do?
I don't know.
But I know this,
our mandate is to preach the Gospel.
I remember going down to that Salvation Army
over there on Nolan.
We're speaking to people about the Lord.
We're handing out tracts,
and this guy says,
I don't know why you all came to the east side.
He said you're never going to change the east side.
I said you're right, but God will.
That's my hope.
Brethren, do you know what you find
when you go to chapter 4 of Ephesians?
You find that the same word is used:
fitly framed together.
Paul doesn't just use it once.
He uses it twice.
And he talks about us being joined
and built together.
Again, fitly framed together.
And he specifically says this:
"when each part is working properly."
Don't you like that?
You know what needs to happen
if this thing is really going to work?
Each part needs to work properly.
You see what they did in Jerusalem?
We've got seven guys over here
who aren't yet exactly working just properly right.
We need to put them in this position
where they make sure that the widows
are being fed over here.
And once they were properly working
up to their gift
and the need in the church,
then the thing was good.
Let's be fair.
The church came to the east side.
It didn't go to the north side.
Let's be fair in the evaluation of our ministries.
Men of every ethnicity -
not every nation in the world,
but you think about the men
who have stood in this pulpit and preached.
It hasn't just been one color,
one ethnicity.
Think about our evangelism.
Have we tried to each UTSA?
Yes, we've tried to reach SAC.
We actually have tried to reach
every single college campus in the city.
But we didn't bypass St. Phillips.
When we've done nursing home ministries,
we haven't gone up to Stone Oak
or the Dominion.
The vast majority of nursing home ministry
that's been done out of this church
has been right on Nolan Street.
Anybody that's ever been there,
they can tell you the ethnic makeup of that place.
Do you know in our missions -
the missionaries we've supported;
the missionaries we've sent out -
you're pretty hard pressed
to find any kind of Caucasian people
that we have sought to reach out to.
There's been some perhaps.
You've heard me talking more recently
about Poland and Ireland.
But that's after 17 years.
Primarily our outreach has been what?
Indians of India,
The Nepalese of Nepal, or the Nepali,
Mexicans, Nicaraguans,
Indonesians;
again Papua, Indonesians.
To be fair, and I'm bringing that up
because there have been comments made
that have come to my ears
about the fact that our church
is not given sufficiently
to certain social justice issues.
Listen, you're not showing due justice
to any race or ethnicity,
unless you're willing to take the Gospel to them.
And that has been the primary agenda of this church
and will continue to be the primary agenda.
The reality is our Grace Houses
have housed Asians,
Hispanic, black, and white.
That's just a reality.
The reality is that when we have had schools,
children of different ethnicities
have been in those schools.
When we've had programs for helping
husbandless mothers,
that's primarily been blacks
that have been helped.
Brethren, here's the thing.
This body, made up of all these
different pieces and parts
and different colors and ethnicities.
It's not cookie cutter.
God loves diversity.
He loves to make us different.
And you know what we should expect?
Different people in the church
are going to have different burdens?
You know what my burden is for the new year?
My burden is that the Word of God
might have power in this church.
I preach.
I want that to happen.
I desire God would use me in that.
We start the APT.
I desire that reality.
I have a burden to see harmony
over in Poland.
I have a desire, yes, to see
a church started over in Ireland.
I desire to see Jinotega protected and grow.
I desire to see Monteray under Alberto
really prosper. I desire that.
I desire to see how God might use
Diego and myself in Cuba or in Ecuador.
I desire that. Those are my burdens.
And you know what?
You may have different burdens.
And that's ok.
And your burden does not have to be my burden.
You say what about bearing one another's burdens?
Well, yes, but you need to bear mine
just as much as I need to bear yours.
You see, the reality is
that if you have a burden for something
that you don't feel like our church is
(incomplete thought).
You know, I've noticed that
there's basically two kinds of people.
There are the people that come along
and they see a need and they go after it.
They say there's a need,
and I can answer that.
I love that.
I remember like Alex Dufre, she comes into the church
and she's got a burden for this,
and let's start this women's Grace House.
That's where James Jennings was.
He comes to talk to me
about a men's Grace House
and I've already been praying about that.
I saw the example of Keith Green,
and I thought, Lord, we need to do that.
And so I'm praying, Lord,
give us a house; give us a guy.
And here comes James.
You know, I've been burdened about this.
Lay hold on the need.
Then you have the second kind of people
that come in and say,
look what they're not doing
and they want to find fault with everybody.
Well, you know what,
if you see that there's a need,
don't expect that I need to be burdened about the very same thing
that you think there's such a dramatic need about.
That's the diversity of the church.
Brethren, we have a calling:
The Great Commission.
Let's take that Gospel out.
We're on the eve of a new year.
I'll tell you what turns the world upside down,
what changes this world:
it's preaching Christ.
What turn the world upside down;
what Satan fears:
praying people,
righteous people, holiness.
You know what he fears?
He fears holy, righteous, praying people
who love one another
and love the world enough
to take the Gospel out to them.
He fears that.
Because that does turn the world upside down.
People get saved when that happens.
His kingdom is damaged when that happens.
Brethren, I think, racial diversity
in this church is something to fight for.
I think it's a good thing.
I think it's a testimony to the world.
And you remember this:
Jesus said they'll know that
you're My disciples
when you have love for one another.
Do you know what that means?
That means that Jesus really did expect
the world to be watching us.
Believe me, they're watching.
Your lost family members,
your lost friends,
your lost co-workers,
they're watching.
The world is watching.
Is this worth fighting for?
To me, it is.
To me, this construction,
fitly framed together.
Our truest identity:
we are in the dwelling place of God.
We are reconciled in one body
through the cross.
One new man in place of the two.
I don't want a black church. I don't want a white church.
You know what I want?
I want a new man church.
That's what I desire.
(incomplete thought)
Have you ever noticed?
You'll never see the same sunset twice.
Ever.
Now, you people that aren't from the north,
you don't know this probably,
unless you just heard it through the grapevine somewhere,
there's never two snowflakes
just exactly alike.
They're always different.
You think how different could they be?
Oh, you just put your glove out
and let them fall on there,
and you begin to look at them.
It's kind of like going out at night
and looking up at the stars.
Even Paul says there in 1 Corinthians 15
no two stars have the same glory.
There's a glory of this and a glory of that.
It's the same way in the building together
of the church.
There's a glory about every one of us.
There's a specific glory.
There's a specific distinctness.
And in all that variety and distinction,
there's a unity.
There's a oneness.
One new man in place of the two.
One body.
One kingdom that we're citizens of.
One family.
One building.
Fitly framed together.
And I pull in that text from Philippians.
Side by side
for the sake of the Gospel.
Look, I'll just tell you.
I was here from day one.
I was the first officer in the church.
I think that God put a desire for this
and a vision for this.
It was a prayer that I have desired
from the very beginning,
that I think God to some degree
has answered.
I actually don't think it's naive
to think that this should work
here and now.
And I hope that you will seek
to fight for this
as we go forward.
Yeah, we're going to have problems.
But we need to be thinking,
how does love deal with this?
For the sake of the Gospel,
how do we move forward?
Listen to me carefully.
The world out there is full of racism.
It's full of disharmony.
It's full of hatred.
And if you rub shoulders with it,
and I was talking about this last week on the Internet -
a lot of what purports itself
to be Christian, is not Christian.
It's ungodly. It's wicked.
And it's divisive.
And look, it's not going to work.
If your greatest identity is being white;
if your greatest identity is being Mexican;
if your greatest identity is being black,
before it is finding your identity in Christ,
then you're going to have a problem.
You're going to have a big problem.
Brethren, this is an identity issue.
Where is our identity
at the deepest level?
Identity.
Brethren, I'm a Christian.
If you're a Christian, you're my brother,
you're my sister.
We're being fitly framed together.
If you lend an ear to the world,
they will tell you this can't work.
You ought to hate each other.
You ought to stand up for your rights.
That's not Jesus' message.
That is not His message.
So don't bring the world's trash in here
in your minds, in your brains.
Don't listen to it.
You know what?
Some people need to read their Bibles
more than they need to listen
to what's happening on Facebook.
May God help us.
Father, please, nothing starts ahead of You.
Lord, I believe that any burden
that was given to me
and to the rest of the brethren
back there 17 years ago -
Lord, that was Your doing.
The idea to try to be strategic
in making this happen;
to have a desire, to pray,
Lord, it was because You burdened us.
And Lord, when we prayed,
we've seen answers to those prayers.
Father, my prayer is that
as we move forward,
Lord, I pray that there would be
such an ethnic makeup of this church
as would indeed show
the power of God, the power of the cross,
the power of regeneration.
Lord, may we see the beauty
of this fitly framed together
work out right in our own midst.
And I pray, Lord,
I pray that You would raise up laborers
to lead this church
who are Hispanic
and black and white,
Lord, give us a variety
in the leadership level,
in elders, in deacons, in missionaries,
in evangelists.
Lord, I pray, bring us depth.
Lord, we see that the real agenda
is that we all attain to the full measure
of the stature of Christ
and we're all being united together
in the same faith
and the same doctrine
and the same knowledge
of the Son of God,
and I pray Lord, that that would happen,
and that it would be a reality in this church.
Every piece.
Every part
working as it should
when every piece and every part
is working properly.
It makes the body to grow
so that it builds itself up in love.
Lord, may that rule the day.
I pray in Christ's name,
Amen.