The title of my message today is Race Relations in the Church. Our text is Colossians 3.11. It says, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. Colossians 3.11 is the final verse in the put-off section. You recall that in Colossians 3, Paul is giving us God's inspired formula for spiritual development, in contrast with the erroneous concepts that were being offered by the false teachers as referred to in chapter 2. And so in chapter 3, the first four verses begin with some general principles. In order to develop spiritually as believers, we have to set our mind on things above, we have to think about those things which are eternal rather than temporal, and we have to recognize that we have died in Christ and were raised in Christ, and we need to know how to apply these truths to our lives day by day. And then some of the specific activities that we must do to apply these truths are given us, starting in verse 5, down through chapter 4 and verse 11. And first of all, there are some things that we need to put off. Because we have died in Christ, we must put off these. Sexual sins are mentioned first, and then sins of the tongue, sins of anger, sins of hatred and malice. And then finally, in verse 9, we are to put off lying. And the reason is clearly spelled out and actually reiterated as to why we must do that. And then the new section in verse 12 takes the opposite side and tells us a whole gamut of things we need to put on. So all of this is put off, put on. Put off the old man, put on the new. Put off the old man that has been put off, in one sense, in Christ, but now needs to be regularly and progressively and incrementally put off in our day-by-day activities, even as we put on Christ, who has already been put on when we were regenerated, but nevertheless must be put on gradually and progressively day by day as we live here upon the earth. And so today we are coming to the final statement in that put-off section. After Paul tells us to put off lying, in verse 9, do not lie one to another since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him, he makes this statement in verse 11, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. You do not lie because you put off the old man and put on the new, what he said from the very beginning. But now he reveals something a little bit different that perhaps we haven't thought about. When he tells us that not only the old sins must be put off, those that pertain to the old realm, but also old prejudices and old barriers. There are no place for these in the new body, the body of Christ, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Or another way of understanding it is this, in Christ there is a new individual man, defined by God. And that new man individually puts off sexual immorality, he puts off anger and malice and sins of the tongue, he puts off lying. These are the things that the new self must do individually. But there's not only a new self, there's also a new community. And there are some things to be put off in relationship to that new community, and some things to be put on in relationship to the new community. In Christ there is a new individual man, defined by God. And in Christ there is a new corporate man, a new body, a new community, called the church. And that too is defined by God. It's Christ's church. He gets to define who's in it and how we relate to one another in it. That's not up to us. So that brings us now to look at our text in Colossians 3.11, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. I want us to examine, first of all, the background of this verse, and secondly, the proclamation that is involved in this text, and then finally, some of the implications that grow out of the text. First of all, the background, and I think this will help us to understand what Paul, by the Spirit of God, is saying. He is saying, as we've already pointed out, that in Christ there is a new individual self. We are new creatures in Christ as individual believers. Old things are passed away, all things are become new. And there's a background for that new individual self to help us understand what it means to be new. It is in contrast with the self that we were when we were born into this world as sons of Adam. And that self is largely defined by the sins that were described in verses 5 and 8 and 9. The sexual impurity, the sins of the tongue and so forth. That's the background for the new self. That's the old self. That's the way we were. But now things are different and this is the new self, the way that we are now. By God's grace and by God's instructions, by God's commandments, we must conform to the new self as defined for us by God, or we are disobedient to our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. It is God who informs us what we should look like as Christians. We would not understand that very well apart from the Word of God. But it is not up to us to determine what we should be like. And sometimes people think that's their prerogative. Okay, I'm a new man and I think it ought to be like this and I think it ought to be like that. And that is entirely and completely beside the point. It doesn't matter what you think. It only matters what God says. God defines. what the new self in Christ is like. And we study His Word to find out what that is, and we then conform ourselves to that accordingly, relying upon the power of the Holy Spirit in order to be able to do that. This is the old man, new man theme. Let me read again verses 5 through 10 of Colossians 3. Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth. fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them, but now you yourselves are to put off all these. anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. Old man, new man, that's the individual man, the new self, as we have been born again by the Spirit of God. But, in Christ we not only have a new individual self, and there's a background of that self, the old self, the old Adam, that contrasts with the new and helps us to understand what that's like, but in Christ we also have a new community, a new corporate self, a new body, the church, And there's also a background for the new corporate self, and that will help us to contrast with the new body and to understand what that is supposed to be like. Now, when it comes to this new corporate self, it is obvious that this is not as readily recognized or emphasized, particularly, I think, within American individualism. We have a strain in America that has both its strengths and its weaknesses. And there has been some great strengths attached to this American individualism. Emphasis upon the individual, what he does, what he achieves. But there is also a strong emphasis in the Word of God upon the Christian community and how we blend together with one another in the body of Christ. And sometimes that gets swallowed up in American individualism. And here's one of those areas. We probably know a great deal about the new self. what we should be like as individual believers. We probably haven't paid quite as much attention to the new corporate body, the new corporate self, which is also given to us in the Word of God. Now this new body, this new corporate self, as I say, is in contrast with some things that these people would have been familiar with. It is in contrast, first of all, to Old Testament Israel. We can see that in the background, how that contrasts with the new body. It's true that Old Testament Israel, the people of God, were by God's design separated from all the other nations of the world. Segregated, if you want to use that term. That is very clear, very true. It is also true that in the Old Testament people of God there was quite a stratification of society. And Gentiles, even if they were incorporated into the religious community, still maintained, at least for several generations, something of an inferior status, as did women. And that's all reflected in Herod's temple in Jerusalem in the New Testament. We have a court of Gentiles. Gentiles could come there, but no further. We have a court of women. Women could come there, but no further. Only the men could come on closer. And this stratification of society, which was a reflection of Old Testament teaching, is seen in the nation of Israel as it was designed by God. Don't forget that. This was God's plan. We must understand that. However, that's now changed. Things are different now. Not only are things different now in the new self, Things are different now, something happened to me, but things are different now in the corporate body of God's people. Things don't operate like they did in that Old Testament setting that was operated a certain way by the design of God, but now has been changed in the New Covenant. arrangement, also by the design of God. That's God's prerogative. He can design it the way He wants to, He can change it when He wants to, and we have to pay attention to His instructions as to how things are to operate. Or we can also contrast this new community with the background of the first century Roman world. which the Colossian Gentile believers would have been even more familiar with than with the Old Testament Israel body. And we recognize that in the Old Testament, the old Roman world, up to half of the population were slaves. They had no legal or social standing in that society whatsoever. And even among free people, free men. Citizenship was reserved for an elite few. Not everybody who was free was a Roman citizen. That was a rare privilege which belonged to Paul by birth, but which some could only acquire through special means and many, most, could never acquire it at all. A stratification of society into various classes. In the Roman world, women were without citizenship rights. Those were only bestowed upon the men. And there were sharp cultural divisions based upon education and culture and economic divisions. The Roman world was deeply divided by race and economics and culture. But against this background, the New Testament Church is, by God's design and requirement, a brand new kind of community where racial, economic, and cultural distinctions are not important. They fade into the background. And with that background, we now look more closely at the proclamation, verse 11, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. Let's first of all look at this in overview and secondly in more careful analysis. In regard to overview, there's a specified realm indicated by the word where. You put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, verse 10. That refers to the individual man and to the change that God has made in our lives. But then Paul shifts to the community of believers. Now, all these individuals who have put on the new man by the work of God's grace now live in a community together and there are some things that are true of this. Where? A specified realm. Here, in this new realm, in this regenerate life as it relates in its relationships to one another, in other words, the church is what we're talking about here, and in this specified realm there is a prohibited situation. In this realm there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, Barbarians said the enslaved are free. Some things are prohibited in this new realm. We are not allowed to make distinctions based upon these kinds of categories. There is neither. That could be translated where there is no room for. Or J.B. Lightfoot put it, these distinctions do not and cannot exist. What distinctions? Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free. In this realm, we are prohibited from acting according to such distinctions. Now, the distinctions that are given to us are actually a representative list. In this passage, in Colossians chapter three, there are four pairs. And three of them are contrasting pairs, but one of them is a parallel pair. The contrasting pairs are, number one, Greeks nor Jews, number two, circumcised nor uncircumcised, and then we skip the next one, and number three, slave nor free. Three contrasting pairs. And then one parallel pair. Barbarian-Scythian. You see there's no nor inserted there by the translators to help us recognize this is a pair that is parallel rather than contrasting. Now I say it's a representative list because there are two similar lists, one in Galatians 3.28 and the other in 1 Corinthians 12.13, and they don't contain all the elements that are here, but the Galatians passage picks up one more pair, namely male and female. So this is not a comprehensive list, but it is a representative list. And there are to be no divisions in this new corporate man based upon these categories. And in case you are struggling with this, there is in the last part of the verse, it caps it off with a necessary reminder, but Christ is all and in all. And that is a loaded phrase. We could probably preach one or more sermons on just that phrase, but it's clearly highlighting the supremacy of Christ. in all things, and among other things, that means this is His design. Let every follower of Jesus Christ humbly submit to the sovereignty of Christ's rule in this area. This is His design for that church that is, in fact, His body. That's an overview. Now, by way of analysis, we look at this just a little more closely. these four contrasting, or these three contrasting and one parallel pairs. First of all, Greek nor Jew. There's no Greek nor Jew. And that, and let's categorize these, that would basically be categorized as racial barriers. Though the Jewish condition was not strictly and only racial, it became that because, of course, the Jewish nation was were all descendants of one man. And they were therefore formed out of one human family. And there was this racial component. They all were related together. There were, of course, those occasional exceptions where Gentiles were brought into that body and incorporated in that body. And so it was not a strictly racial matter, but it was predominantly a racial matter. And that's the way it was understood in the first century. You have got Jews and you have got Gentiles. That's the way the Jews looked at it. They looked at all of human society in two categories. There is the Jewish race, and then there's everybody else. Gentiles, another race of people subdivided into other races. I might insert at this point that the whole concept and definition of race is very elusive. And what it really boils down to is, folks, there is only one race. It's called the human race. And all these other divisions really turn out to be artificial. And the reason we have trouble defining them and knowing how many races there are and so forth and so on is because it's all a very artificial division. There's one race. It's the human race. We're all descended from Adam. But as it works itself out in practice in life, we know that there are many racial divisions which are recognized in society, it changes from society to society, from century to century, from place to place. And in the Roman world, there was this great racial demarcation between Jew and Gentile. But in the body of Christ, no more. And we recognize that. That's emphasized many times throughout the New Testament Scriptures. Though there has been this great demarcation down through the years between the people of God, who are the descendants of Abraham physically, and those who are not, in Christ, in the body of Christ, there is no more Jew or Gentile. These family, bloodline, racial distinctions matter not at all anymore in our relationships in the body of Christ. Secondly, there are circumcised and uncircumcised, and that would point more to religious divisions and obviously in the body of Christ to religious backgrounds. When you come to Christ, whatever your former religious condition was, is now behind you. But it still has some connotations and carryovers. And so there were these, even in the body of Christ, you remember, there were these divisions between the circumcised and the uncircumcised. That's largely what the Galatian controversy was all about, what the book of Galatians was written for. that there were Jewish believers, circumcised, who wanted to segregate themselves within the church from Gentile believers over the issue of circumcision. Because they would not adopt a religious right that had been given to us by our forefathers, back to Moses, back to Abraham. And unless they're willing to adopt this right, we must separate ourselves from them. We must not eat with them. This is a religious division. And the Bible says, no more. That was then, but this is now. There is a new corporate man, and here's how it's defined, and there will no longer be Jew and Greek, and there will no longer be circumcised and uncircumcised, and there will no longer be slave and free. That's the third parallel contrast, the third contrasting contrast. Slave nor free. And that refers to economic or social status, either one or both. Social status, economic status. As I've already said, up to 50% of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves. No rights whatsoever. And it's clear from reading the New Testament Scriptures that in the churches of the New Testament there were both slaves and free men. Most of the instructions that we read in the Bible that we interpret to have to do with employer-employee relationships are literally slave-master relationships. That's exactly the language that is used in the Greek. It's talking about slaves and their masters. And in many cases, as you can tell reading those sections, the slaves and masters were both members of the same church. So here you had Christians, members of one church, And some of them were masters who owned slaves. And these are instructions of how that's supposed to operate. But as far as the church is concerned, that distinction is not to be practiced. And then the fourth pair, the one that is parallel rather than contrasting, is barbarian and Scythian, and that's cultural. We've got religious, we've got racial, religious, social or economic, and cultural divisions. Just about every possible category that you could come up with in society. Barbarian and Scythian. Barbarian was a rather general term for any uncivilized person in the Roman world. Something akin to what we mean when we say heathen. Any uncivilized person was called a barbarian. It came from the idea that these are uneducated and inarticulate people. They can't talk very clearly. In fact, the very word barbarian comes from the idea of when they talk, it sounds to me like bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar. It's exactly what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14, where he's talking about the issue of tongues. He said in verse 11, Therefore, if I do not know the meaning of the language, I shall be a foreigner to him who speaks, and he will be a foreigner to me. But the old King James is closer to the exact meaning and what the Greek language says there. If I do not know the meaning of the language, I shall be a barbarian to him who speaks, and he who speaks will be a barbarian to me. That's the same Greek word that's found here. Barbaros, barbarian, a person whose language sounds like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it come to mean uncultured, inarticulate, uneducated people. Scythians spoke of a certain particular group of people in this larger category of barbarians. They were considered to be the most primitive barbarians of all and the most detested. They were nomadic people. Some say that they were Mongols. Mongolians. Others say that they were descendants from Persians from Iran, and I'll let you figure out which is right. I have no idea nor compelling interest to get to the bottom of that, if there's any way to find out at all. but they were nomadic, they were fierce, they lived north of the Black Sea, and it was said, whether this is true or not, I don't know, but this is what was said about them, that in battle, it was their custom to drink the blood of the first enemy that they killed, to use the skulls of their conquered enemies for bowls to eat their food out of, and their scalps as napkins. In other words, they were the most barbarous, most primitive, the most uncultured, the most detested and unwanted members of all society. You wouldn't want to be, you wouldn't want those folks for your next door neighbors. A Scythian moved in, there goes the neighborhood. Uh-huh. But in Christ, in the new corporate man, when people have been saved, it doesn't matter what their background is, they are a new person just like you are. And in Christ, we don't make these distinctions anymore. They may be recognized in the world, in society, but not in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. No more Greeks and Jews. No more circumcised and uncircumcised. No more slaves and free. No more barbarians, those people that we'd prefer not to be around. Sorry, If they are your brothers in Christ, you don't have any choice in this. You are commanded to love them, to embrace them, to welcome them, to treat them as your brothers and sisters in Christ. That's the only thing you can do to be obedient to the Lord. Anything else is grievous sin. All baptized believers are brothers without division. Then it caps it off with that statement that I've already pointed to, that declaration of supremacy, but Christ is all in all. He's all that matters. These other distinctions fade into insignificance in relationship with Christ. Christ is all and in all. He will subdue everything. He's totally in charge. He rules sovereignly in His universe, and He rules sovereignly in His church, and He defines the church, and He defines relationships within the church, and He defines how individual Christians will relate to one another within the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, every person is valued for their relationship to Him. He is all and in all, and it is the relationship with Him that matters, and every other consideration becomes subjected to this. It's not that every other consideration is totally gone. Women don't become men, skin color doesn't change, but The only thing that matters as far as the way we relate to one another is how we are related to Christ, what our relationship is to Him, and everything else just becomes very secondary in regard to what is primary. And what is primary is Christ. Christ is all and in all. And so in summary, this verse is saying, as individual believers put off old sinful habits, so the church must put off old prejudices and barriers. As individual believers, put off lying, put off anger, put off malice, put off fornication. And, as a corporate body, put off prejudice, put off divisions based upon race, background religion, culture, and money or social standing. Put all that off. Now there's no question that the early church struggled with this. You can find that struggle. I've already talked about it some. What was going on in the book of Galatians, and of course you can find it also in the book of Acts. As early Christians, like all Christians, still carried many of the old attitudes into their new life in Christ and had to be corrected. Even some of the apostles struggled with this. Peter struggled with this. He wouldn't have gone to Cornelius the Gentile until he had the sheet let down from heaven. And made it very clear to him, Peter, those old prejudices, those old divisions, that old way of segregating that you had before Christ came, that was God's Old Testament plan for His people, that's gone now. That's no longer. This is the new plan. Don't you call Peter unclean what God has cleansed." And when that sheet went back to heaven, there was a knock at the gate and people from Cornelius said, come and we need you here. And the Holy Spirit said, you go with those men and give them the gospel. And what he did, they believed and they were incorporated into the same body of believers as the believing Jews, and some of the Jews objected to that. That's what was going on in chapter 11. That was what is going on in chapter 15 of Acts, the great council of Jerusalem. Some of the Christians had trouble with this. They struggled mightily with this, but Truth must give way. Truth must predominate. Error must give way. We must change our former prejudices and ways of thinking that don't line up with the Word of God. We must yield to Christ who is all and in all. And these are the instructions of our captain. In other words, in Christ, there's no more any them and us, only we. In Christ, there's no more them, us and them. No, no, there aren't any such divisions in the body of Christ. There's only we. The only divisions that we can recognize legitimately now, and must recognize as believers, is the them that pertains to those who are outside of Christ, and the we who are in Christ. There's two divisions, to be sure, in Christ and out of Christ, saved and lost, in the church and in the world. We have our instructions for how we treat those who are in the world, and we don't treat them badly. But we do recognize that significant division. But that's the only division that is now given to us in the Scripture. The only them are those who are outside of Christ. There's no other thems. No other thems. Only we. We'll know that we have learned this lesson when Our own church membership reflects this more, reflects more of the diversity in Christ. And I look forward to that day. Now let me talk about some of the implications that flow out of this text. First of all, some implications that relate to human institutions. The question is, does this truth eliminate all distinctions? For example, on the basis of the statement of Galatians 3.28, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female. You are all one in Christ. Some have taught that the Bible, by that statement, permits women pastors, women elders. Because there it is, we're not allowed to recognize these distinctions any longer. So, does this truth eliminate all distinctions? No, it eliminates, and listen to me now, it eliminates all artificial distinctions, and the Bible will help us sort out which are fundamental and which are artificial. It does not eliminate divinely appointed distinctions. Men and women still have divinely assigned roles. The same Holy Spirit who told us that there is no Greek, nor Jew, nor male, nor female, that very same Holy Spirit told us that I do not allow a woman to teach nor have authority over a man in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Same Holy Spirit, same apostle. So it doesn't eliminate all divinely appointed distinctions, again, God gets to define. God gets to decide. We can't take one part of God's Word and use it to contradict another part of God's Word. But if we truly want to know what it says and be obedient, we may have to wrestle sometimes with how to get these things properly related to one another. And that does require some wrestling. But human institutions are not completely obliterated, but the kinds of distinctions that were in the old life, the old background. That's why I went through that about the old background. It's in contrast with what you found in Old Testament Judaism, where women had a completely inferior status even in how they could relate to God. You stay out here in the court of the women. Men can come closer, up where the sacrifices are made. and so forth. That's gone in Christ. There is no distinction between men and women and how they relate to God, how close they can come to God. We all have the same privileges in Christ. We all come right into the Holy of Holies in Jesus Christ. There are no artificial distinctions anymore, only divinely appointed ones, and the Bible will tell us which ones are divinely appointed. How about some implications in regard to Christians and race? Well, if we are honest, we will have to admit that Christians in the past have, Christians now, have wrongly defended segregation. We have to admit that Christians have wrongly encouraged segregated churches. Somebody has said that the most segregated time anywhere in America is Sunday morning at 11 o'clock. That's when people divide themselves racially into their various churches. That's been encouraged. We have to admit, if we are honest, that Christians have misused the Bible in order to defend segregation. And we must admit, if we are honest, that some Christians today continue to practice racism, racial attitudes, racial comments, racial ways of acting, which are shameful and totally contrary to what we learn in the Bible in texts like the one we are looking at this morning in Colossians 3.11. The age of the Internet has brought a lot of things to light. Without the Internet, if you had told me that there's still a serious problem in America with racism, I would have said, no, I don't think so, I think that's in the past. But I get too many things by way of email that remind me that this is still very much a problem. And many of them from people who call themselves Christians. A lot of these things are political in nature, and sometimes I start out with some very good political points. I'm saying, yeah, that's well said, and yeah, I agree with that, and that's good. And then at the end is the zinger and some kind of a scurrilous racial snide remark to conclude things. And you realize that probably the whole thing was fabricated just to have a chance to make that racial zinger. And if not, it sure seems that way. And it leaves me saying, well, if these people are so wrong in their racial attitudes, so contrary to what God tells us in His Word, why should I give any credence to the other things they say? Maybe they're all wrong too. Maybe so, maybe not, but you see what I'm saying? It not only is wrong, but it actually does their cause a lot of harm because they have to get in that little snide racial comment. For anyone who's a Christian, anyone who names the name of Jesus Christ, that is wrong, that is sinful, that is shameful, that is scurrilous, that must stop. Because Jesus Christ said so. And Christ is all and in all. I'm afraid as a church of the Lord Jesus Christ, we reap what we sow. When we mix truth and error like this, we reap what we sow in politics, and we reap what we sow in evangelism, and we reap what we sow in race relations, which could be a whole lot better, and ought to be a whole lot better than they are. But we are reaping what we've sowed in these areas. And one area that that's very obvious to me is in the present homosexual debate. We're reaping what we sowed. Oh, we are fearful for our country when we see how rapidly homosexuality is permeating society and is gaining acceptance and ascendancy. We say, how can that happen? I'll tell you part of how that can happen. Now, how it can happen is because our enemy is determined to make it happen, and he's the great deceiver. And number two, it's obvious that God has already started giving us up. Read Romans chapter 1. This is the judgment of God upon America, and this is what He gives societies up to when they turn their their hearts away from God. But I'll tell you another aspect of how this happens. Like this. In the past, Christians said the Bible taught segregation. And they were wrong. It's a mishandling of the Bible. Today, Christians say the Bible condemns homosexuality. And so, many say, why should we believe Christians now. They were misrepresenting the Bible then, why should we believe that they are accurately representing the Bible now? You see how this comes back to Bidus? Brothers and sisters in Christ, We are under obligation to handle the Word of God honestly. And when we don't, when we become pragmatic and twist and distort what the Bible says in order to get the result that we think is right, the one we want, We are disobeying God, we are dishonoring Jesus Christ, and we are sowing seeds of our own destruction, and destruction in our own land. That brings me, therefore, to the third implication from this text, and that has to do with the area of Bible interpretation. How do we wrestle with the Bible and come to terms with some of these texts that sometimes seem to be difficult to join together? Well, a couple of things we need to keep in mind. Number one, the Bible does not contradict itself. Ever. It is the word of the living God who cannot lie. The Bible does not contradict itself. So if there's something that in our mind seems to be a contradiction, and frankly, there will be a lot of them. What does that mean? Figure this out. Duh. Looks like a contradiction to me, so the Bible must contradict itself. Wrong conclusion. It looks like a contradiction to me, so I must not understand the Bible properly. Right conclusion. keep studying. The Bible does not contradict itself. And furthermore, we need to understand that the Bible contains progressive revelation. And to boil that down, it just means that God has progressively revealed truth over the course of the history of the writing of the Bible. And in simplest terms, that means that the New Testament interprets the Old, not vice versa. This one principle, understood, employed, and followed, would clear up so many of the divisions among God's people today theologically. It's very simple. The New Testament must always interpret the old, not the other way around. Therefore, to apply that to our subject this morning, the so-called curse of Ham or the curse of Canaan that some people have used to teach racial segregation. In first place, there is no curse of Ham. Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Some of you don't know what I'm talking about, but some of you do. And God cursed the son, one of the sons of Ham, Canaan. You can go back to Genesis and find that. And some have concluded that Ham is the father racially and biologically of the black races in Africa and God cursed Ham and therefore those races are cursed and that justifies our enslaving these people and mistreating these people and Well, now in the first place, as I say, there is no curse on Ham. It's a very strange passage, really. Ham committed the sin, but God didn't curse Ham. God cursed Canaan, his son. And Canaan was not the father of the Africans. Who is Canaan the father of? Canaan, Canaan, Canaan, Canaan. That sounds like Canaanites, land of Canaan. Bingo. has nothing to do with Africa, but even if it did, which it doesn't, even if it did so what? The New Testament tells us what is God's plan for today. What does that statement in the Old Testament have to do with anything about how Christians are to behave in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ today? It's a matter of interpreting the Bible correctly. or the one I've already mentioned, the Old Testament segregation of Israel from the other nations around them. Did God do that? Yes. So, that means God wants to separate all the races and we should continue doing that today. No! No! Well, how do you know? Because I've read the New Testament as well as the Old. And I hope you have too. And I hope you understand that the New Testament, if I could put it this way, trumps the Old Testament, wherever there's a difference, because there is progressive revelation, and God has changed some things, and He's free to do that. He's God. See, too many times what we do in our Bible interpretation is we have a position that we believe and we want to believe, and so somebody will pluck some statement out of the Bible that seems to support it, and we'll accept that as Bible teaching because, not because we're convinced necessarily that that's what the Bible says, Though maybe we are, because we're too lazy to study it and find out what it really says. But in many cases, not because we even care what the Bible really says, it's because we like having that statement to support our position, regardless of what the Bible really says. Shame, shame, shame. That doesn't honor the Lord. So, if God commanded the segregation of His nation, His people, Israel, and the Old Testament from the other nations around them, what does that have to do with how Christians are to relate to one another in the body of Christ today? Absolutely nothing. Because Here are our instructions, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. Jesus is Lord. He rules. Therefore, let us bow to His Lordship. Let us receive His Word and humbly study it and ask Him to help us to understand it properly. Let us engage in His work. We are His servants. Let us begin applying His Word to our own lives individually and let us continue applying His Word to our churches. And this is one final thing I must say in closing. It's clear to me that a lot of what Christians are doing in trying to change society, to stand for truth and righteousness and godliness in society and organize and boycott and pressure society to make changes in conformity with God's Word, is not the way God wants us to go about it. And I think a lot of times what it is, maybe not even consciously, but what it really boils down to is, it's easier to rail against the sins of the world than it is to deal with our own. It's easier to organize against the sins of the world than to clean up our lives and our churches. And what God wants us to do is to get our churches in order and let them be an example to the world of how things ought to be. a quiet, humble, sweet example. If the world can see the difference, if the world can see the love, if the world can see the purity, if the world can see the power of God in our churches, because churches are ordered the way Christ tells us to order them, and operating the way Christ tells us to operating them, and setting an example like Christ tells us to set an example, will have a whole lot more powerful impact on the world than if we go out there and boycott you fill in the blank, or march on Washington. Shall we pray? Father, hear our prayer, hear our confession, Hear our acknowledgement of wrong. Forgive us. Help us. Help us, O Lord, to be Christ-like and Christ-honoring in all that we think and say and do.