Viewing entries in
Series:IsGodRacist
In a world full of violence, injustice, sickness, and death, it can be easy to fall into feelings of hopelessness. Recognizing this, the Apostle John in Revelation 7 described a vision of hope that comforted the persecuted early church and should still comfort us today.
As people in the early church came to faith, they brought attitudes of discrimination and superiority that only the gospel could dismantle. This message looks at the core of the teaching that undid their prejudice and can deal with ours.
As people in the early church came to faith, they brought attitudes of discrimination and superiority that only the gospel could dismantle. This message looks at the core of the teaching that undid their prejudice and can deal with ours.
There’s so much in this world that can discourage us. We long to make a difference but struggle to understand how. This message looks at Philip’s encounter with an Ethiopian eunuch and shows us how God can use you as a force for good in our world today.
The Good Samaritan is one of Jesus’ most famous stories. Despite our familiarity with it, most people hear the moral but miss the point. While confronting our indifference, prejudice and tendency to justify ourselves, Jesus helps us to see what’s needed for us to inherit eternal life.
We imagine ourselves to be rational people who take precautions in responding to warnings, but the Bible makes it clear that there are many things that keep us from the truth. This message looks at the last days before the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem and the reasons people ignored the warnings and the courage one man showed in responding to them.
The injustice in our world stirs us to act. And there is much in the church that we long to see changed. God’s message to Israel in the midst of their history’s greatest reform movement changes how we see reform, however. The prophet, Zephaniah, helps us to see the limits of human reform and the solutions that God provides.
We can read the Old Testament as if it’s only about Jewish people and their concerns, but at the heart of the Old Testament Scriptures is a message of hope for all nations. It wasn’t always fully embraced by God’s people then and neither is it today. We need the message of this psalm now more than ever.
We see the injustice in our world today and wonder what it will take for God to show His mercy. Today’s passage looks at a man named Phinehas who was as jealous for God’s honour as God is. He secured mercy for God’s people and was promised a priestly dynasty as a result. It is significant that this hero of the early priesthood was the son of a Jewish father and African mother and distinguished by his African features.
Miriam challenges Moses because of his marriage to a Cushite woman. She seems to be motivated at least in part by prejudice because he has married a woman of a different skin colour. God responds by giving her a skin disease. God strongly affirms the marriage between one of the Old Testament’s most famous Jews and his African wife.
People misunderstand the distinction between the commands to foreigners and sojourners in the Old Testament and wrongly assume that God was against non-Jewish ethnicities. This message shows God’s heart to reach the nations in the Old Testament.
Church-going slave owners used the curse of Ham to justify their enslavement of Africans, reading their prejudices into the text and ignoring humanity’s creation in the image of God. The church missed its opportunity then. What will it take to get it right this time?
