Father in heaven, we bless you and thank you that you have redeemed a people for your namesake in Christ. That we get to be not only individual recipients of redemption, as glorious and beautiful as that is, but that we who were not a people get to be made a people, the people of God. We get to be made a body, baptized into one people in Christ. And as we share in Christ together by faith, we share with one another as a people. And we thank you that that's your design and that we get to live in the blessing of that even this morning and this evening later as we gather and give expression to our oneness in Christ. We pray that you'd help us to think faithfully according to what you've said in your word and what you continue to say in your word about what we are as a church and especially to give thought wisely to what that means with regard to ethnicity. May we both think and walk faithfully and do justice as just our course title suggests. We want to do what's right and what pleases you with regard to this difficult issue, an issue that is fraught with challenges both in understanding and pain. And there's a lot of history and there's a lot of pitfalls, but we want to walk faithfully. And so we pray for your spirit to help us, to help me to speak what's true and biblical, and to give us all ears to hear and active minds to think carefully together, not only about what we're hearing, but also about the innumerable kinds of implications and applications that you'd be calling us to. We pray all this for the sake of your glory among your church. In Jesus' name, amen. So, yeah, so we're back in our series. And just a reminder, this is on ethnic justice and the kingdom of God, which is basically just another way of saying how the people of God ought to think and behave. That's what justice is, what ought to be regarding this issue of ethnicity. Now, if you've been with us in the course, you know that we've covered up to this point some of the difficulties and divisions that we're seeing in our society and in our churches over this issue. We spent a few weeks dealing with that, both kind of getting our arms around what's the problem, what's not the problem, what are some bad diagnoses that are being offered for what the problem is. And then we did that kind of demolition, and then now we're building now, we're going, okay, well, we looked at what isn't the problem, and then we said, what is the problem? Then we looked at what isn't the solution, and now we're looking at what are the solutions? What are the things God has called us to? And how would he have his people to walk regarding this matter of ethnicity? You can see in your handout that today's lesson is on specifically the matter of understanding the purpose of the church. Now, of course, the purpose of the church, we could teach on that for weeks, just kind of in a general way. It could occupy a lot of discussion. But the scope of today's lesson isn't just to talk about the purpose of the church in kind of a generic sense, but specifically to explore how the purpose of the church impacts our practice with regard to ethnicity among us as citizens of God's kingdom. What is it about the way God has set up the church and designed the church that ought to play into how we think about and practice justice in this matter of ethnicity? Last week, if you were here, you heard that Greg taught on what we might call, and I'm borrowing this from the title of a book that he cited, Redemptive Kingdom Diversity, the book that he talked about by Jarvis Williams. And Greg took us there on a quick overview through the Bible, looking at this theme of ethnic diversity, and there are other kinds of diversity as well, very much the case. We'll talk about that in a bit. But showing that ethnic diversity is not incidental, it's not accidental to the kingdom of God, the people of God. It's actually a part of the design. It's actually an intentional part of what God is meaning to do in gathering a people around his son Christ. And so, You hear that all the way back from when it's promised to Abram in Genesis chapter 12. This all nations scope is very important way back from the beginning. And then you get to the end of the Bible and we saw that the heavenly visions that we get in the book of Revelation show that ethnicity isn't a problem that gets done away with when Christ's redemption and reign is consummated in the end. It's not a matter of It's not a fruit of our fall into sin. It's actually something that we bring with us, our ethnic identity, something we bring with us into the new heavens and the new earth. So there's this ongoing praise of God for redeeming some from every tribe, tongue, and people and nation. It's not something that the Bible apologizes for or says we'll finally be rid of this problem. So if redemptive diversity is part of the Bible's vision for the kingdom of God, The next step, kind of a natural intuitive step, is to consider, well, what does that look like on the ground in the local church? What does that look like in our midst as the people of God today? Now to make this move, we have to give some thought to how does the kingdom of God relate to the church, the local church. They're not identical, but they're very overlapping. They're distinct realities, but there's a lot of overlap between them. So the first thing we're going to do today is look at the relationship between the kingdom of God and the church. and how does the local church express what God is doing in his kingdom. And then we're going to look at kind of the purpose of the church in general, and then we're going to specifically hone in on how the values of unity and love fulfill God's purpose for the church. And then finally, we're going to sort of turn the corner into looking specifically at ethnicity and how that unity and love is to take shape in regard to our ethnic diversity. And then we'll look a little bit at the end about some goals that we should have and practices we might start pursuing. Now, this lesson isn't going to be as practical in terms of what to do, but we're starting to move in that direction. Lord willing, over the next few weeks, we're going to get more and more practical about how we as the church walk in these things. So before we get going on the kingdom and the church, any questions or thoughts about just how we've laid things out, anything I've said, or even past lessons? Okay, well, I haven't given you much to ask questions about, so we'll get into our content here. The kingdom and the church. So what is the relationship between the kingdom of God and the church? If you're reading the gospels, especially the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus talks a lot about the kingdom of God. And you get to the epistles and there's a lot of talk about the church. And what is the relationship between the two? Well, first of all, to understand the kingdom of God is God's redemptive reign in Christ. Now, on the one hand, God is sovereign over all his creation. He always has been. His sovereignty has never been disrupted over every square inch of both heaven and earth. So there's a sense in which he's always the king. But his kingdom, usually when the Bible speaks of his kingdom, it's speaking of something a little bit more specific. It's his redeeming and restoring his rule over his people and over his world through Christ. Christ is the human, the God-man. He's the human king that God has chosen and designated to be the king over his kingdom. So we could say it's God's redemptive reign in Christ. Now, when he comes in the gospels, he's proclaiming the kingdom of God is here. If you're with us when we're preaching through Mark, you hear that a lot. I keep referring to that at the beginning of Mark chapter one, verses 14 and 15. It says, the kingdom is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel. Now when we come to the church, I think, and you've, we've used this image before here that probably the, I, I really like the image. It's not original to me, but the church's role as an embassy of the kingdom of God. The church is the embassy of the kingdom of God because the kingdom of God is coming into the world. Um, let's think about how an embassy works. You have, an embassy of another country, say, in our capital, Washington, D.C., right? What is an embassy? Well, it's this little outpost that represents the values and priorities and interests of another realm. It's across a spatial divide, a geographic divide. It represents that realm in our realm, okay? And I think the church is like that. It does the same thing but not spatially, but more in time. So the church is the embassy of the future in today's world, in the world that is yet in rebellion against God. The kingdom of God hasn't yet. encompass the whole world, but the very beginning kind of outposts of the kingdom, so to speak, is the church. We're the representatives of the future era in which Christ will reign over the whole earth. So there's a sense in which there's a not yet of the kingdom of God. Christ hasn't yet returned. to judge and to rule and to extend his reign over the whole earth as we know he will. And yet there is an already element. And often we talk about biblical eschatology or kind of end time stuff. There's an already, there's a lot that's already begun and yet there's a not yet. There's things we still anticipate. The already is that Christ is reigning among his people. in a very real way spiritually. So sometimes New Testament authors speak of the kingdom of God as something that's present among his people now. So it's very interesting in Romans 14, 17. Paul is talking in this context in Romans 14 about telling believers that they should give up their liberties for the sake of not disrupting unity, not hurting the faith of others. And he's talking about matters like eating and drinking. So in that context, he says this, and he's arguing, hey, if you have to give up eating and drinking, not like any, like water, like Austin, you can keep drinking water. but he just means certain liberties, certain things that people might be bothered or it might disrupt their faith. He says this, for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. So he's telling the church, look, you can give up eating and drinking certain things because the matters of the kingdom of God, which he's implying is your business today, church. The values of the kingdom, what are the values of the kingdom that in Romans 14, 17 you just heard me say? I know that was kind of quick. Did you catch it? Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. He's saying these are the values of the kingdom that we belong to. And so the church ought to be a place where those values are being upheld and being promoted in the world. And so there will once come a day when Jesus returns, when righteousness and peace and joy will flood the earth. That will be the values of the reign of Christ. So the church is a preview of that day. So the reason we wanna, again, kind of the reason we wanna establish this relationship is because we're talking about, we're gonna talk about how the local church expresses God's purpose for redemptive kingdom diversity, that his global plan in Christ is sort of an all nations scope of who's the objects of his redemption, and that diversity is, again, not an accident, but a key feature of that kingdom, And so we need to understand already it's being suggested to us that this should matter at the level of the local church as well. That ethnic diversity is not just an accident either at the level of the local church, but that it should matter more than that. So we're gonna get into that a little bit more explicitly as we go. Any questions or things that could be clarified or thoughts about just this, what the church and the kingdom of God, obviously, oceanic topic, right? The kingdom of God and all, but was, any thoughts about, this is what we've seen so far, things that could be clarified. Okay, cool. Well, let's go on and talk then just about the purpose of the church. I already kind of got into that as we talked about the kingdom, but what is the purpose of the church? Did you know that our church, River City Grace, has a purpose statement? We've already solved this issue. We've already taught this class. What is the purpose statement? Does anyone have this? You don't have to have this memorized to be a member, but does anyone know it? We exist. to see. Yeah, God exalted as we'll crowdsource it. His grace and truth in Jesus Christ. extent great abounds in and overflows to more and more people so we exist to see I hope this is wait I should to see God exalted as his grace and truth in Jesus Christ abound in and overflow to more and more people. Now a lot of churches come up with statements like this. A lot of faithful churches have statements that they're all going to vary in their wording, but at their heart there's a lot of commonality you'll see among churches that believe the gospel and Essentially, what I want to point out there is that you might have caught, there's both a vertical element, which refers to just kind of us and God, this dimension, and then there's a horizontal element, which refers to us and one another, or us and other people, we'll just say. The vertical is, we could say, well, where do we see vertical? To see God exalted, okay? Exalting God. So there's a sense of, we exist to be a worshiping community. The purpose that we exist for is to bring glory to God, okay? That's very fundamental. But then the horizontal is what? Seeing God's grace and truth in Christ abound to people, which I think what's implied in there is among us to one another, and then spreading out to others who don't know him yet. And we could go into a bit more detail here. And we have this, we also have a document called the Vision of Grace that kind of lays out priorities of what we do as a church and how it flows from this purpose. But we identify three core priorities. Again, these three you'll find all over as churches articulate what they do. But exaltation, equipping, and evangelism. It's all like sermon ready, it's all alliterated. The three E's, right? Exaltation, that's vertical. We exalt God, we're here to glorify and worship God. Edification or equipping, I would say, I think synonymous, we could say edification or equipping. That's the internal horizontal, right? Among us as people, we're seeking to minister to one another, build each other up in Christ, and then equipping is to help each other grow in obeying Christ, and then equipping each other to continue ministering. And then evangelization is the other E, right? That there's also this outward thrust, that part of what we should be here to do is to see more who don't know Christ come to know him. So those three E's. That upward, inward, outward thing, you'll find all over the place if you start looking at church, like visions and priorities that they lay out. And I think for good reason, it's biblical. We believe that's just a good distillation of a lot of biblical, Teaching. So we worship God, we equip one another to obey God, which further exalts him, and then we evangelize the lost and we train them to obey so that their lives too will exalt Christ who saved them. Okay, so that's why the church, that's what the church exists for, that's what the church is supposed to do. In his book, The Church, Mark Dever, who wrote after, by the way, we didn't just like get this from his book. Again, you'll find this all over, but in his book, Mark Dever names the purpose of the church as worshiping God, edifying one another, and evangelizing the world to the glory of God. So again, the same structure. So that's kind of a skeleton outline of what the church is for. But I want to look at some biblical texts together to kind of put more meat on the bones, we could say, and better understand how we carry out this purpose. So how do we glorify God? How do we edify one another? And how do we then display and proclaim the gospel to the world? So can I get a few volunteers to read texts, please? And by the way, are the crowd mics on, by the way? Okay, cool, cool. Jason, would you get ready for 1 Peter 2.9? Someone else for, okay, Matt Boyd, John 13, 34 to 35. Rodney, would you get Philippians, this is a little complex, 1.27 and two versus one to four. Okay, Philippians 1.27 and two, one to four. And then one more person for Ephesians, Joshua, Ephesians 4.1-6. So 1 Peter 2, 9, this is a great text for kind of this vision of what the church is for. So was that you, Jason? Yeah. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Thank you. Did you hear that exaltation? that we exist to proclaim his excellencies, to exalt the God who saved us in Christ. Now, if we were to ask How do we proclaim His excellencies? How do we proclaim the excellencies of the one who has saved us, brought us from darkness to light? I think a very profoundly biblical answer to that question would be, by your love for one another. And I get that from, Matt, was it you that had John, this is a key commandment of Christ in John at his upper room, 13 verses 34 to 35. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. All people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Good. So, kind of sort of looking at the church as a whole, we say this is a body that exists to proclaim the excellencies of the God who saved us in Christ. And then Jesus is telling us in the upper room, the way that they'll know you belong to me is by the nature of your love for one another. That looks like the way I love you. So I think it's almost like if you crack into that nut, say, well, how do they proclaim His excellencies? And you look inside, what's going on in there in the church? And what you see is love. You see this otherworldly Christ-like love that reflects the way that God loves us in Christ, especially through the cross. He's about to go to the cross there. And then that is the most distinct way that the church proclaims the excellencies of the one who saved us. So all three of our core priorities are here. We have exaltation because we exist as the people of God to proclaim his excellencies. That's the E, exaltation. Then there's edification. We proclaim his excellencies most fundamentally by loving one another. Of course, this is tied to our verbal, our confession of the gospel. We're not just people who love one another, but we also, that's tied to the gospel, our confession of Christ and what he's done for us. And then E, the third E is evangelism. The effect of this Christ exalting love is that to say we proclaim his excellencies implies what in terms of that last E? That somebody's seeing it, right? Somebody out there who's not inside is seeing the excellencies of the God who saved us and is being drawn to know him as well and receive that salvation. There are other New Testament texts that show us more about how, kind of even more I think specifically, we can hone in even more, that this love should produce a kind of unity that's very otherworldly and transcends the world's categories. Our shared belief in the gospel and our shared love for one another should be very distinct. So that's what brings us to Philippians 1, 27 and 2, 1 to 4. Paul is writing in prison to the Philippian church. He's rejoicing, even though he's in prison, he's rejoicing that these people are gospel partners with him. So that early on in the letter, he's giving expression to that joy he has in this church because they're sharing with him in the work of the gospel. So Rodney, thank you. Verse 27, only let your manner of life be worthy of the Gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the Gospel. Skip to chapter 2, so if there is any encouragement in Christ, by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Thank you. So, any markers of unity that you detect in those verses? Anything at all you see, you want to call it out? putting others before yourself. Yeah. So putting others interests before yourself. Um, that's a, we could say that's a good mechanism for unity, isn't it? Because one of the things that dis unifies us is that where we start emerging with these competing interests and we start pulling apart from each other. So if we're going to reverse that and we're going to start promoting each other's interests, there's a unifying element there that's going to happen. Very good. What else? Yeah, having the same mind. He says that both in 127 and 22, which seems like he's referring both to our belief in the gospel, the doctrine of the gospel, but even just a gospel shaped mindset, right? Instead of how we think about our goals and one another, kind of be pulling together in your mindset. I think is the sensing. Yeah, Wilson. Going off of what you just said, the way that we live our lives has to be worthy of that home on our lives, this gospel of believing and embracing people. So, Jesus' love and His life is the standard and the example that we need to follow and not what we think is loving or right. Yeah, and He's exactly, Christ and His love is the standard of that unity and love we're called to. And Paul's, and you know this, Paul's about to hold up Christ as the preeminent example of this, like what Dede talked about, this putting others' interests above our own. He's about to talk about Christ's incarnation and death and exaltation as the preeminent model for the kind of others' interest in love that he's calling the church to. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Matt. Maybe as he is a model of it, we also have commonality and sharing in that love that we've received from him. So I don't know if that's a finer distinction, but we're all participating in the same love and we all point our heads and eyes up together and look at this wonderful love we've experienced and received. Absolutely, we're all drawing from the same Christ. We're all receiving our salvation from his work and his love is what's feeding all of us. So we all have this common kind of feeding source, so to speak, in Christ. And that gives us a unity for sure. Both a doctrinal unity and an experiential unity, right? That we believe the same Christ. And then the fact that we're sharing in him together gives us a very profound otherworldly oneness. that should be expressed in these things like putting others' preferences above our own. Yeah, so good. I appreciate those answers. We're striving together for the gospel. I think that term of striving for the gospel seems to imply evangelism, that we're advocates for the gospel in the world. And in the verses we excise that there just for the sake of time. He does talk about interacting with opponents and all this. So there is this sense of we're in this embattled place of representing the gospel in a contrary world together. And then, yeah, there's just this radical humility, love, affection, and sympathy that we share because we share Christ together. Very similar in Ephesians 4, 1 to 6. Josh, would you read that one, please? Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love. being diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace there is one body in one spirit just as also there is you were called in one hope of your calling one lord one faith one baptism one god and father of all who is over all and through all and in all thank you if you look at the very beginning of that verse one is paul in um you know we could think in terms of making statements or making commands or kind of the fancy grammar words would be, um, indicatives would be statements just saying what's, what is so, versus commands would be imperatives, telling someone to do something. Which is he doing at the beginning there? Verse one. Imperative. Yeah, because he's saying, I mean, he's essentially saying, walk in a manner worthy of the calling. And then he loads it up with all these descriptors of what that entails. Where does he switch to? Somebody switches to indicative and starts telling statements. Where is that that he switches? Verse four, right? Do you see that? The first three verses are about what to do. And then the next three verses, I believe, are the basis for what to do, the statements that ground what to do. Now, of course, this is in the context of all the Ephesians where you're probably familiar with the big scale thing of Ephesians. The first three chapters are about indicatives, what God has done in Christ and where we stand in Christ. And then the last three chapters, four to six, are about imperatives, what we do. But in kind of a micro sense, this is where he's turning the corner into But what to do? And he starts with these commands and then he grounds them in these truths about there is one body and one spirit. There's all these ones, right? One hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one father, et cetera. So if we could sum it up, the point of this paragraph would be this. There is one body belonging to the triune God formed by the gospel. So that's, there is, right? Therefore, fight hard to preserve unity together among you. So it's, we are, there is one body, there is one people called together in Christ to belong to the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit. So work hard to preserve unity among you. And how do we wage this fight? By the weapons of what we could call Christ-like virtue, things like humility, patience, and gentleness, et cetera. These are the weapons by which we wage the war of preserving unity. Why do we have to, I mean, that's interesting. Why do we have to put in effort to preserve unity? Why would that be? We're naturally selfish. So we could say there's just this element of indwelling sin that, and we already kind of raised this, that selfishness will be a divisive, if you multiply it over the whole church, right? It'll be this divisive force where we're all pulling away from each other toward our own interests, which is why Paul said in Philippians 2, to look out for each other's interests. Yeah, so there's just this reality of indwelling sin that threatens relationships, things like selfishness. What else? And thinking kind of more toward the scope of this course, what might be some other threats to unity or reasons why unity needs to be actually preserved? Yeah, Blake. We have spiritual enemies. Just like you said, we have sin inside us, but we have spiritual enemies all around the world that and our flesh working against us and trying to counter it. Yeah, so very true. So it's not just sin in our flesh, our own tendencies, but we're very actively on the battlefield of a spiritual battle and Satan and his demons are actively trying to sow discord and division, appealing to the flesh. You know, this all works together, right? Satan loves to appeal to those selfish tendencies in the flesh to pull us apart. Yeah, very good. Yeah, Jason. we're not all one homogenous group, right? Different ages, different places where we live, different likes and preferences, like, you know, if God had called one exact type of person, unity would look easier, but they're so intrinsically different from one another, it means that separation is sort of natural. Yeah, so there's, we could say like sociology, meaning we're very different kinds of people. If you look at the ways that humans differ from each other, And those are the lines on which our kind of natural inclinations will be to divide. And it's not just ethnicity, right? That's the topic of the course in particular, but there's so many other ways like gender, economic status, cultural power, like how elite or how well placed are we culturally, our ability or disability status, our education level, occupation. There's so many ways that we just think about What are the sort of grains along which we human beings tend to associate with each other or not associate with each other? And there's so many different categories. And these things are, they're not sinful differences, but what we could maybe say is these are the differences along which sin will pull us. So if sin is gonna work to pull us apart, it will pull us apart along. Like you said, Jason, there's very natural affinities that we'll have to certain kinds of people. And so fleshliness won't necessarily, for most of us, fleshliness won't look like complete isolation from everybody else. But what it will look like is just being more and more with people that are like us and that make us feel good. And there's no need to be uncomfortable. The world is very good at that. So that's why there are texts of scripture we'll look at in just a moment. in the next section that apply this broad call to unity and love as Christ's people. Again, the big picture is this is how we exalt the God who saved us. This is how we display his excellencies to the world. There are gonna be texts that apply that call specifically to matters that divide us or that would tend to divide us as human beings. Because those are kind of the pressure points where unity is most likely stressed. So we're going to look at that in a moment as we look at our next point. But before we do that, any questions or thoughts or reflections on what we've covered so far? Okay, let's talk, now we're gonna turn the corner and talk about how this relates to ethnicity. So we've seen that the church is called to be an embassy of the future kingdom of God, and we exist to exalt God in Christ, to edify one another, and to evangelize the world. And the primary way that we do all three of these things is by confessing our shared faith in Christ, and by radically loving one another with his otherworldly love. And we've seen some of the New Testament passages that that look more into detail, what is that love supposed to look like? And especially the Philippians and Ephesians texts. But now regarding, we're gonna look at Colossians 3, 11 to 15. And this regards, again, that issue of what are sort of the division points that we as human beings are likely to run into? Colossians 3, leading, of course, every text comes in a context. So leading into verse 11, Paul is talking about how we are the new humanity in Christ. Okay, we've put off the old Adam, we're the new man in Christ. We're beginning, I think he's using kind of new creation type imagery that in the redemption of Christ, we're the beginnings of the new creation. And then he says, regarding that kind of new reality that we are, starting verse 11, here, there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. This is a kind of a longer text, but I wanted to read it all because it's so helpful. It pulls together two important themes for us. One of them is that, is what we've just been talking about, the unity in Christ that, that pulls us together across all these sorts of dividing points. And you caught, you caught, if you're listening or you're reading along, you see several different dividing points that he lists, or different kinds of people from a sort of fleshly perspective. We heard about Greek and Jews, circumcised, uncircumcised, etc. There's an author, Rebecca McLaughlin, who writes a book called Secular Creeds. It's pretty helpful for just thinking through some of, kind of discerning some of the issues going on with with culture, I'll just say in a broad sense from a Christian point of view. But she's dealing with verse 11. She says that it's like saying today, quote, here there is no black American or white American, Asian American or Latino American. There is no rich or poor, no immigrant or native born, but Christ is all and in all. End quote. And then she continues and says, quote, love across racial differences isn't just a modern progressive ideal. It started as a biblical ideal. Interracial love is part of our inheritance in Christ. End quote. I think it's a really good expression of Paul's touching on some really hot, hot button issues. And you know, the Greeks viewed everyone who wasn't Greek as a barbarian. So he's like, whether you're a Greek or Jew, like from that standpoint of basically Jew or Gentile, And then from a Greek standpoint, are you a Greek or are you one of those other people, the barbarians, like whatever, or slave or free kind of social status, he's saying we're one in Christ. The second important theme in our text though, is that it gives the ingredients that lead to unity across these dividing points. As we talked about earlier, there are some who like to point to texts like this, and rightly so. I mean, we're pointing to this text in Galatians 3.29. But they almost point to it and say, see, it's a done deal. We're one in Christ, conversation over kind of thing. But what Paul and what God, writing through Paul, points us to is the ingredients that lead to the living of this unity. And what are they in verses 12 to 15? What are some of them? Compassion. Compassionate hearts. There's a lot. It's a long list, right? Kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and love is kind of the one that binds it all together. In some ways, I think a lot of these are just expressions of love or manifestations of love. which binds everything together in perfect harmony as a beautiful picture of love among the people of God. It's very similar to Ephesians 4. It's the Christ-like virtues that the Spirit is producing in us that bind us together. Yeah, we saw a couple weeks ago, as I said, just preach the gospel. The gospel is the foundation of our unity in Christ as a church, but just preach the gospel is not an adequate solution. Because, like I said, Colossians 311, you don't just quote these texts, Colossians 311, we're all one, Christ is all and in all, mic drop, boom, that's the end of the story. But in a sense, Paul is saying, God has made you this in Christ, now here's how to walk to preserve that and make it a reality in your midst. Okay, it's just like, in a sense, all of our Christian life, there's a sense in we've been made a new creature in Christ, but now walk as a new creature. Okay, that's what sanctification is. You're now holy by status in Christ. Now start learning to walk holy, like be who you are. Okay, that's so much of what the New Testament teaches about the Christian life and church life. Be who you are. He's saying you're now one in Christ. Now work really, really hard to be one as you are. Remember in Ephesians, to work diligently to preserve the unity of the spirit. in the bond of peace. So that the Spirit pulls us together into one body in Christ. And then it's on us, of course, by his power working in us. It's not just ours in the flesh. But it's on us cooperating with the Spirit to maintain that unity. And we maintain it by blood, sweat, and tears, because it is hard to love one another. It's hard to have a compassionate heart and patience. These things all sound really good to us, but in the moment we have to actually exercise them, it can be really painful. It can be really costly, especially across an extreme array of human differences. So the transition from last week, again, last week we looked at it's this redemptive diversity as a positive value in the kingdom, and the scope of that goes all the way back to the beginning. So it's kind of, it makes sense, it's kind of intuitive, right, that we're saying now that if the church is the kingdom embassy that shows the values of the coming kingdom that will envelop the earth in the future when Christ returns, shouldn't we be a people who display even otherworldly ethnic unity? And again, we could say that that would apply to unity across all these other differences as well. All the other things that tend to divide us. And I think McLaughlin's point she made is really good that we heard. I'll return to it. She says, love across racial differences isn't just a modern progressive ideal. It started as a biblical ideal. Now, we all know there's a lot of conversation going on in our culture about ethnicity and race and unity and all these things. Sometimes it can be so easy to just go into political mode or kind of this polarized mode and we start hearing this topic and we start wanting to pin things down on which side of the aisle is this. You know, who do you sound, which side of the aisle do you sound like or whatever. So much of what we wanna do in this series is to Think biblically in a way that really transcends the categories of how our culture is talking about these things. It's not a worldly, political, it's certainly not a progressive kind of one side of the aisle on that thing to care about, explicitly care about diversity among the people of God. It should be something that we get right from the pages of scripture. And because the church is the embassy of the future kingdom of God, our standard for unity should be much higher than what we're gonna find in the world. This should be something that makes a church stand out from the world and stand out from other institutions and organizations that you can find anywhere in the world. So we don't want unity just because the world is clamoring for it. And we don't want unity that matches the world's standards. We want unity and diversity that is truly from another world, the world that is to come. It's a preview of the new creation that's coming in Christ. And just consider, it's just worth all of us thinking about what it would look like for the church more and more to stand out from the world, both by means of our righteousness in general, in every sense, right? This is what we're called to, Paul says in Philippians later, in Philippians 2, that by the way the church walks, we're to stand out like bright stars against the night sky in the wicked world that we live in. But with regard to this issue of ethnic unity, as our cultural temperature heats up and as tensions mount, and as people on both sides of the issue, we could say, become more and more alienated from each other, less able to have constructive dialogue, isn't it a beautiful thing that church could shine like stars in the night sky when we can display profound unity amid ethnic diversity? And it's going to be costly. it will be costly. And we'll talk about that a little bit in the next section. But any thoughts or pushback or questions about just how I think unity relates to our purpose as a church? Yeah, Garrett, and then I'll go to you, John. Yeah. Yeah, the world has hijacked the concept of love as basically unconditional acceptance. How do we clarify that that's not how we define love? Is that essentially? Yeah. Well, yeah, that's a really important and good issue. I would say, you know, it could look any number of ways in a given conversation. One of the things, honestly, I would say is a lot of those modifiers of what love looks like are not, they're not, they're increasingly not being held up as values in our culture, especially with regard to some of these justice issues is, I, you know, compassion is falling on hard times, you know, and, and forbearance and patience and like believing the best of other people, like these things are. I think even the common grace acknowledgement that this is human flourishing, this is a good way to be a human being, because it's an image of God, I think that's slipping from our society. And more and more, you're getting a lot of just real strident kind of anger. I mean, anger is really characterizing our culture, even in anger in the name of what's right. You see that again on both sides of our polarized culture. So I'd say some of the modifiers of what love looks like can be very counter-cultural, if you just really think about it and compare with what the world holds up. And then seeing it modeled in the church. Obviously, the broader issue of love, not just being unconditional acceptance, is looking at how, in the Bible, God is so clear. Looking at Christ coming, he's so clear to condemn sin. And then there's, but there's this, this overabundant overflow of love in the cross. And so you have to put together, Jesus loves sinners, but he's so, so clear about the evil of sin. So yeah, that's part of it. We'll go into it. I'll go to John, because I was handing then you, Jason. Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts. And maybe you're a little young to remember this, but there was a movement back when I was a substitute teacher in my mid-20s. Oh, wow. there was a bumper sticker that was real popular it said celebrate diversity mm-hmm and one thing I really noticed with the kids at the time when I was teaching is they were really concerned like oh I'm Asian I'm Mexican yeah I am I'm African and I'm Hmong and yeah I really it it it seemed like that worldly message of celebrating diversity was creating division. It was creating everyone really clinging to their particular ethnic identity. And those kids now are, bravo about age myself, but they're like 25 or 30. It's kind of interesting. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean the world, this is just the case in so many ways, right? The world has its The world has its own way of pursuing this, and it's not God's way, right? It doesn't lead to the fruit that the gospel leads to. And even if there's some common grace acknowledgement that diversity and mutual acceptance is a good value we should strive toward, and this is somewhat we dealt with early in the course, is some of the world's tools for getting there really just deepen division, and they don't have a way of getting us from A to B. there you know if anyway yeah that's maybe a lot we say about that but yeah and but part of what's what's tricky is we need to hear the Bible's call almost like learn to hear the Bible's teaching on this with fresh ears and I'm not saying you're doing this John but we all have maybe have experiences like that and we can hear diversity I think diversity is a good thing we can think of things like that and be like oh that's That's a progressive talking point that leads to nowhere, right? We need to realize there have been bad versions of this that the world has offered to us. And then we need to be able to separate that from what the Bible is calling us to. It's hard. I mean, just in every way to separate what's the Bible saying versus how do we tend to hear that because of our situatedness sort of in our culture and things like that. But yeah, so there's some overlap, but very distinct ways of pursuing. Yeah, while we shouldn't be ashamed of our ethnicity, our ethnicity is a good part of how God made us, taking more and more pride in our ethnic differences is not the way to, that's kind of the world's solution in some ways. That's not the way to unity, right? Taking pride in how we're different than others. Again, every category you think of, that's a human fleshly temptation to just take pride in what makes us different than everyone else. That's not what the Bible is calling us to. Yeah, Jason. I might be beating a dead horse a little bit, but I think what's interesting about the whole topic is the world's goal doesn't seem to actually be unity. It's more diversity, representation, equality. It's seeing a wide rainbow of people together, but it doesn't really care about what happens when they get together. Right, right. Whereas the unity itself that we're talking about is itself entirely counter-cultural. Right, right. So very good. so we could distinguish between diversity as a good in itself and the kingdom kind of what I'm using the phrase unity and diversity with like hyphens right unity and diversity as a fruit of the gospel We're going to talk about that a little bit more in just a moment. That's a really good point. Those are not the same goal. There's overlap. It's not the same goal. Yeah, real quick. Oh, you have the one. Oh, wait. Blake, can I stand up earlier? I'll go to Blake, then Josh, and then I'll keep going. I think, I think in our, the depravity in the, in our culture and in our world, the depravity of sin and the whole, the whole nature of man's flesh and sin, I think, all of these issues highlight the importance of the infallibility of Scripture. to more and more sinful and more and more depraved. All of this highlights the truth of the infallibility of scripture because we need a standard. We need a standard for holiness which shows God's character. And so if the Bible is not inerrant, if it's somehow faulty, then we don't have any standard at all. So I think all this highlights that scripture is the only infallible book and we need to cling to it and obey it because it's our guide. Yeah. Yeah. So we talked earlier, the righteousness and justice to the foundation of God's throne. The Bible is God's book. It's without error. It's trustworthy. And you're right because our flesh being what it is, if we're not pinning our sense of the justice and the, uh, really the truth that we're trying to pursue. It's not pinned to this standard of God's immutable character as is expressed in the pages of scripture. We're just drifting, right? We're just drifting and trying to seek justice, but we're trying to pin justice to like something that's floating and moving and isn't stable and true. So absolutely true. And then Josh, last word here. Yeah, I was thinking kind of to John's point about how exactly we should celebrate diversity and how we kind of relate that with a biblical unity. It seems like the world's sort of idea of diversity is really more of a post-modern sort of There's no absolute truth. Mm-hmm. Like we can celebrate everyone everyone's truth because there's no absolute truth. Yeah And like the biblical perspective is like there is an absolute truth and so like relating that to culture Yeah, it seems like the primary drivers of culture are the theology Geography and the genetic sort of driving to the degree that culture is derived from like geography. Mm-hmm or genetic Background like yes, we celebrate that that your skin is darker than mine, that's great, that because of your geographical location, how you live your life is a little bit different, to the extent that culture is derived from theology, and I think that is the primary driver of culture. That is what we hold in common, so that's why we can go around the world and find believers, and our values are the same. and just the genetics and the geographical sort of drivers of culture are a little bit different, and that's totally okay, so we can celebrate that, but to the extent that the values and the theology drive how we live our life, that's what unifies us, that's what pulls us together. The other stuff is kind of extremist. I think, yeah, I think I think get what you're saying, but yeah, totally that we need to be careful that our culture because of long arcs of thought in modern and postmodern thought is fragmentation and diversity in its own sake in every way is being upheld as a value. And I think you're making a really good point that there is actually some very important divergence from that here where Truth, we actually, it's, again, kind of Jason's point, it's unity and diversity that we're unified around the fixed truths of God and Christ and the scriptures. And there's gonna be diversity in more, in ways that aren't as fundamental as the ways that unify us. So that's a good point. There may be more that you're saying there, but at least, is that a fair summary to a degree? Yeah, sorry. Let's go on and keep going. Our goal and how to pursue it. A lot of you have anticipated what we're gonna cover here, but the explicit importance of ethnic unity means that having ethnically, hear me out this whole time before, having ethnically segregated churches is not a sign of health and maturity, okay? It's a sign of immaturity. It's a sign that we're letting fleshly desires, specifically desires for ease and familiarity rule us rather than God's intended purpose for the church. Now, we've talked about some of the personal reasons and kind of social reasons why this happens. And we can appreciate that and see the difficulty of breaking out of those ruts, but it's still, we need to, it should grieve us. Just reality to the degree to which churches are ethnically segregated should grieve us. But the reason I said, hear me out is don't hear that and point to ethnic churches and say, see you guys, you're doing it wrong. because again, what I might call very awkwardly, an ethnic majority majority church, okay, like us, a church with the majority as part of the cultural ethnic majority. We, again, we can do the same thing, but implicitly by omission, if that makes sense. We can be segregating ourselves by omission if we're being exclusionary, and increasing the difficulty of ethnic minorities being among us, okay? So it's very, just by the nature of the case, if you have a group of situation where there's a majority and there's minorities, it can be much subtler and less intentional a choice to be exclusionary for the majority than for the minority to decide, you know, we're gonna do our own thing over here, because it feels a lot more comfortable. What I mean is sometimes the majority does the same thing and doesn't even realize it. We talked about that already, right? There's just natural barriers, reasons why it's particularly difficult to be a minority in a group. And... If you're a part of the ethnic majority here in this church, I would invite you as an exercise, not to put anyone on the spot, but maybe to be uncomfortable, think of someone who is an ethnic minority in this church that you trust and that you think might trust you and feel comfortable being honest with you, and ask them if they wouldn't mind sharing some of the ways that it's especially challenging to be an ethnic minority at River City Grace. there may be some things that you learn that you would never, I would trust there are some things you'll learn that you'd never consider on your own. Again, the point isn't white guilt, we rejected that, the point isn't white guilt, the point isn't guilt by association, by being a part of a certain group. But the point is, it's very easy to unintentionally be exclusionary if you're the majority. So we need a part of that compassionate hearts that we read about in Colossians three, is to think through, am I by omission helping create a culture that makes it harder than it should be for us to have ethnic diversity? I praise God there is, you know, we're not this homogenous church. There is a measure of ethnic diversity here that's praise God for, but it's a matter of needing to think through, are there ways that we are standing in the way of that or ways that we could help lower those barriers. And as I said, I kind of alluded to before, this is going to mean everybody puts up with discomfort. If we're doing this right, everybody is being uncomfortable. To be patient. to have compassionate hearts, to have kindness, to diligently preserve unity of the spirit is it takes work and sweat and it takes self-denial for everybody. If we ever frame this so that it's on one group to do all the all the sweating and not the other, then we're seeing it wrong, right? So, It's difficult, but good to have ethnic diversity in the church. It will never happen naturally. It will never happen without effort. I'm not talking about seeking diversity as a good in itself, but what I mean is the kind of, again, there's just those values of compassion, love, kindness, patience, humility, those take work. But it's important, it's worth the challenge, because it's an important part of fulfilling our calling as an embassy of the kingdom of God. Now, we didn't make a good qualification here, and that is, geography is a limiting factor here, and that's okay. Again, Jarvis Williams, the book, Redemptive Kingdom Diversity, he makes a really good point that, as a church, it would be inappropriate to have a goal to be more diverse than our community is, right? So the idea isn't that we try to gin up diversity that is not a representation of where we live, He says, a good goal is that the diversity of our church matches the diversity of our community. Because, and this is, I forgot who all made these points. Good point, I think Jason and others. The goal is not diversity for its own sake. Okay, the world has an understanding of diversity for its own sake. The goal is diversity that displays the kingdom of God. In other words, the point is to walk in the unifying power of the gospel, not racial quotas. I'll say that again. The point is to walk in the unifying power of the gospel, which is hard and takes sweat for everyone, not racial quotas. Okay, so we're not just looking externally going, do we have enough of this group or that group? The question to ask ourselves is, am I doing my part to make this an inclusive place for all the all nations type scope of people for which Christ died in our community, right? If the gospel is doing its work, then we will have diversity among the church that to some degree matches who lives around here. And a lack of diversity means we just have, we have more work to do, okay? To let the gospel do its unifying work. So I have a goal written in your notes to kind of summarize this section. We should desire to be a church where the unifying power of the gospel works to create ethnic unity among us that matches the all-nation scope of the kingdom of God as appropriate to our community. I will point out as an aside, we live in a pretty diverse community. So, you know, if we were in a town where like basically the whole town was one ethnic group, this might be a more like, okay, don't sweat if, you know, if that's all who's in this church, that's who lives here. We do live in a pretty diverse area. So that I'll say it again, we should desire to be in a church, to be a church where the unifying power of the gospel works to create an ethnic unity among us that matches the all nations scope of the kingdom of God as appropriate to our community. Now we're gonna get more into the how-to in weeks to come, but just three to start with here. How can we move forward? First thing is pray. These matters are very complex. Every week I'm just, we're like, this is hard, this is complex. But God is powerful, right? So first thing is pray. Pray that that unity in the gospel would be expressed more and more in our church. and that we would be a church that sees more of that unity and diversity that represents his work in our region of Sacramento. And then pray for the Lord to work in your heart to increase your desire for this and to help you see how you might be a part of that, how you might be a part of promoting that in our church, in our relationships and how we deal with others. And then again, and I just put it on ethnic majority people, but now I'm gonna put it on everyone. Ask someone of a different ethnic group than you, what do you think, again, someone you trust, someone who trusts you who's gonna probably feel comfortable being honest, what do you think are some of the barriers that might keep us as a local church from reflecting the redemptive diversity of God's kingdom? Just asking, what do you think are some of the barriers that might be in play here? and having a conversation about it. It could be mutually illuminating. You might each have perspectives that could be helpful to the other. Any other thoughts about how this might look practically? I think just spending time together. I think there is a value in having conversations about those things, but I think also just spending time together. I think there's lots of ways that you can promote that unity that aren't just specifically like, let's talk about how your ethnicity affects things or how you perceive things. I think those conversations are valuable, but I think there's a lot of just, relationship building sure absolutely so just loving each other and spending time together you know we can almost use the illustration of a marriage where you know is it sometimes talk time to have carved conversations about your marriage yes but if that's all your marriage is it's not a very good marriage right like so that's that's maintenance that's oil change kind of stuff but driving just living together in unity as a husband and wife. That's the point, right? So we could say loving one another and doing, walking in Christ together and just enjoying life together, play basketball together, things like that. That's a real substance of it. But there could be value in helping to make those relationships healthier with some of these conversations here and there. Yeah. Very good. Like what you said at the end there, I think building relationships that way helps build that trust to be able to have those conversations. If I just come up to someone and ask that question, I think that's gonna come off as pretty, I don't know if the right word is, awkward. Yeah, we can all imagine that that wouldn't go, if it's someone there's not a matrix of trust and mutual love already in place. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I think I saw Chrissy's hand and then Gary, yeah. Okay, cool, spend time together, yeah. I had to step out for a little bit, so if I could, So the last part of your statement there, as appropriate to our community, how far does our community go? Is that my neighborhood? I know around the corner and down the street there's a lot of people that we have no ethnicity within our church. Should I be reaching out there? I know there's areas in my neighborhood that maybe aren't appropriately represented. What is our community? I used a strategically vague word there. No, I didn't define that. Basically, now it's kind of tricky because some people will drive really, some of us drive really far to get to church. But essentially the idea is the area from which people might legitimately, geographically be a part of our church, right? So what I mean is if there's some ethnic group that's not represented within a reasonable distance of where someone might live and come to our church, The point isn't to go out and reach for different groups there. But the more the idea is, we want to see the gospel working. I mean, God has put RCG in a certain place. We want to see the gospel working in that place. And we want, if the gospel's doing the work that ultimately it's supposed to do, we want to see that the profile of that place being reflected in our midst. Of course, salvation is of God, right? We don't dial up how many converts of which ethnic group we wanna see, but the more the matter of, are there barriers? Like some, and are you talking about like an immigrant group? the group of which we have. Yeah, yeah. One of the tricks there is language too. And that's a whole other dimension that I think there's some very legitimate basis for there being different church fellowships on that. That's another thing that's a whole layer I haven't discussed. But yeah, language is sort of another thing, but to the degree to which people could function in English, then yeah. I'd love to see. I think it would be very consistent with the Bible. Yeah. Yeah. And you may be getting into this in later lessons, but I mean, that statement on how much does it apply on an individual level as far as I'm reaching out for a corporate level yeah yeah I yeah very good I mean individual versus corporate it's gonna be very it could look all kinds of ways the point of making the statement isn't so much so everyone go out and evangelize this super representative you know like group of slice of our community as much as more what the point I'm trying to make is as God puts us in contact with people. I mean, well, yeah, there's complexity because we might need to work to get into contact with people that naturally we might not. But it's gonna look different for different individuals. I'm more talking at the church level. Yeah, yeah. There may be like, for instance, there may be some among us that God individually has called to to make special effort to cross, it's almost like missions, but in a more local, like to cross into one of these like immigrant groups and form relationships that could be evangelistic or could be, so there could be individuals that have certain roles, but even if that, if somebody starts coming out to our church and we as a whole body are kind of geared toward desiring the gospel, the unifying power of the gospel to be expressed here, that's gonna make for a very different reception of that individual here than if the whole body weren't striving in that direction. So I guess that's some, something of an answer. Yeah. Let me, good. Oh yeah, Willie. To your point about encouraging us to talk to one another, I just wanted to emphasize two things. extending grace to one another, the person asking and the person answering, because some of us may not be able to articulate a lot of things, or we're not working through it. We're not figuring something out. For example, if someone were to ask me something, when I first came to River City about a decade ago, my answers would probably be very different from what they are now. That's a good point. Over time, too. Yeah, yeah, so that was a good point of when you have that conversation, we always have to be careful. This is something that I've heard can be a challenge being in an ethnic minority somewhere is the expectation that you're like the representative of all the interests and burdens of your group. And so just to be aware, not to load somebody up with that, but literally just this is a person, this is a data point, this is their experience. They might have different perspectives. Even among any group, you're gonna find a pretty wide variety of perspectives and experiences. So not to load it up with too much. expectation might be helpful, yeah. Yeah, and Jason, this is the last word. Yeah, I mean, Gary's question of kind of corporate versus individual, and then there's a whole different dynamic. Obviously, it's a multifaceted question you're asking, but one of the things that I think is also helpful to think of it is we certainly want this body to be reflective and open and quiet. but this isn't the body of Christ there are. And that's, you know, the whole situation is compounded with the fact that if you are inclined to separate, you know, if you believe you're going to go to a church that's more like you, there are plenty of options. So, you know, there's probably an aspect of this where we have to proactively, corporately reach out to some of those other bodies to create more of a inclusive regional field? Yeah, that's a very good point. There's even an inter-church, not just intra, meaning inside the walls of a church, but there's an between churches aspect to consider too, of how do we relate to churches that may naturally fall off our radar, because we're ethnically different? And that happens very much, right? And there's all kinds of reasons why churches do or don't have other churches on their scope. But it could be something to think through is, are there ways to be more thoughtful about this in regard to the other relationships with churches that we have? Yeah, absolutely. Good word. I'm going to draw us to a conclusion. Oh, for the sake of time, we're pretty much out of time. So let's pray. I have this great conclusion to wrap it up, but it's all right. You all heard it. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for Christ. We thank you for the power of his cross that has atoned for our sins and made us. made us yours, made us forgiven, made us adopted sons and daughters. And we find in Christ that we're a one body now. And it is so hard because of sin and because of all these human differences to, for that one body identity to be expressed in our life together. But we pray that you by your spirit would help us to keep fighting to lower those barriers, both the natural difficulties and also the, the ones that relate to our own individual sin. We pray that you give us all insight, not load us up with guilt and hopelessness. We know that's not of your spirit. That's what the world is promoting, but that is of the flesh. That's Satan's strategy as well. But we pray that there would be a hope-filled gospel enriched, yet a hunger to consider how we might individually and corporately strive to let the gospel do its unifying work. And if there's conviction needed in our lives, if there's maybe sins of omission that you want us to realize that we've committed, or sins of commission, things we've done that have been sinful in this area, we pray for your spirit's conviction so that we could repent and find mercy and abundance of grace that's available to all who come to Christ in faith. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.