A Great People, No A Great God
2/22/2004 NLF Exodus 12:37-42 Galatians 3:23-29
What do you do if you want to build a great team in professional sports? The first thing you do is try to find the best coach that is available. Then you begin to scout other teams to see who you might can get in trade deal from other teams. Then you wait for the draft to come up. In the draft, you look for the players with the greatest athletic ability who can truly make a difference on your team. Most of the time you know ahead of time who you want because of their past performance on the court or on the field
.
Now when God set out to establish a great people, God did not look for the strongest, the biggest, the brightest or the best. In the Old Testament, God said, “I did not choose to love you because you were the largest group of people, but because you actually was the smallest group. The Jews or Israelites were nobodies until God came on the scene and chose them for Himself.
When you look at Jesus’ choice of the disciples, the only one among them that had much social standing was Matthew or Levi the tax collector and we know little about what Levi did when he was with Jesus. If you had of evaluated Jesus’ choice of the 12, you would have realized this too is a group of nobodies. One was a thief before Jesus called him, and remained a thief the whole time he was with Jesus.
In the New Testament, Paul lets the Christians know in Corinthians, that when God made a choice to save them to start the church, not many of them were super intelligent, not many of them were well known in the community, and not many of them had a lot of power. In other words, once again a group of nobodies.
Yet God used the Israelites, the disciples, and the early church to change the course of the world through His power at work in their lives. Although we may be tempted to say, “wow, what a great group of people”, the reality is , they were a part of Great God.
God cannot use people who think they are all that. Why? Because they think they are doing God a favor by serving him, by coming to church, by singing songs, and by giving money. God is not like Nike. Now Nike knows, there is nothing really special in a pair of Nike shoes. It’s basically rubber, plastic, and cloth. Nike needs a name like Labron James to give its shoes a value above other identical shoes. So Nike goes after the name of someone to accomplish what it wants to do.
God has value in and of Himself. God is great all by himself. God does not know go after big names in order to accomplish great works. He seems to prefer to use some nobodies and turn them into somebodies, who know they are still nobodies, without continuing to stand next to God.
The one person God calls in the New Testament that was a somebody before he came to Jesus was the apostle Paul. But Paul said, “all that stuff I had before I came to Christ, I don’t even consider it worth having, because it almost kept me from knowing Christ.” Paul recognized he had to become a nobody in order to know Christ. He was a nobody for 14 years after he had gotten saved as far as his being known throughout the church. Today we take someone with a big name in the world who gets saved and the next day we have him or her preaching to the church. We want to use people to endorse God as though again God needed an endorsement.
God has always reserved the right to choose whomever He wants to choose, at whatever time He wants to use them, for whatever purpose He has in mind. Now we all came from Adam and Eve. Our genetic makeup is basically the same no matter what race we are a part of in any part of the world. In the beginning, we all worshipped the one true God.
In chapter 11 of Genesis, the people had a common language and were attempting to build a city to make a name for themselves that would reach into heaven. God had told them to fill the earth. They decided they would not be scattered. Let’s read Genesis 11:8 & 9 Genesis 11:8-9 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9That is why it was called Babel--because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
God then confuses their language, and scatteres them from the middle east to all parts of the earth. Twice the passage makes it clear that God scatteres them. It is not simply a case of people moving a little further down the road. We can find in the New Testament, in Acts chapter 8, where God takes Philip the evangelist out of one place and instantly places him miles away. When the people are scattered over the earth, they all begin to come up with their own views of God and different religions.
So when God decides to choose a people to let them know, who He truly is and what is the proper way to worship Him, He has a choice from the whole world. Do you know who God chose? He chooses what today would be an Iraqi. Abraham, who was the father of the Jews and the nation of Israel was from the land of Ur which would be in present day Iraq.
For the most part, Abraham was a nobody. He was 75 years old when God called him. His wife was 65 and they did not have any kids. Is this the person you would have chosen to build a great people out of on the earth? It wasn’t that Abraham and Sarah were great. They just happened to have gotten connected to a great God.
As we celebrate Black History month, we will hear of a number of things that African Americans and other Blacks have done through the centuries. It’s great, but not surprising. You see the same God created Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans and everybody else. We were all in the loins of Adam and Eve. Our differences have more to do with the places God scattered us to than anything else. Those scattered in hot climates needed more pigment in their skin than those scattered to cold places. Yet we all possess intelligence and creativity. When it is all combined from all the races, we get the rapid increases in technology that we see today.
What has been a hindrance to us accepting one another as races, has been the presence of racism. Racism seeks to prove that one group of people is superior to another simply because of skin color. To do this, one group will seek to prove that it and it, alone has God’s supreme favor upon it because of its own intrinsic value. Racists will stop at nothing in rewriting history or even reinterpreting the Bible to justify its claims.
For hundreds of years, many people were taught, that God only dealt with white people in the Bible. This false teaching allowed the Black Muslims to claim that Christianity was a white man’s religion. Nothing could be further from the truth. When the wise men came from the east to the birth of Christ, how far east did they travel. Were they from India, or China? God has not been bound my any race in carrying out his purposes. The middle east was a cross road for many races of people to pass through.
How many of you know that Spain is in Europe. Now the tip of Spain is very close to northern Africa. If I told you I was going to leave Spain where it is, but from now on Spain will be considered part of Africa and not of Europe how many of you would think I’m somewhat crazy. Well the racist has helped us to believe you can do that.
On the other side of northern Africa is Egypt. You can’t get more solid into Africa than Egypt is. Yet the racist took Eygpt out of Africa and put it into the Middle East. Why? Because Africa was considered by racist to be a backward nation of unintelligent people. This was needed to justify enslaving people.
The problem with leaving Egypt in Africa is that it is loaded with Biblical history and of God using Egyptians. Let me ask you this. If your mother was from Nigeria and she moved to America and you were born in America, what would you call yourself? What would your children call themselves? What would your children’s children call themselves. After living in the country for 430 years, would it be safe to refer to you as Americans.
So if we say, that God led a group of Africans out of Egypt into the promise land, would we be accurate. After all God’s special people had been in Africa for 430 years. Racism has trained us to not say, they were Africans, but to say they were the children of Israel. Both statements are true, but even the man Israel lived his last 17 years in Africa. Some people will say, yes they were African but they could not have been black Africans. Egypt was a multiracial nation in biblical times. You can even see it in Egyptian art. Racism led us to accept all negative imagery when it came to the continent of Africa. But that was racism and not God. God had positive plans for Africa and its people.
I want you to know that when Abraham, and Jacob needed a place to survive the great famines that hit the land, God sent them both to Africa in Egypt. When Joseph was second to Pharoah , Africa fed other parts of the world. That means we as Black people were on the providing side of feeding others rather than being the ones needing a handout. If only we knew the potential God has placed within us, and would say yes to the will of God, we could transform our lives, our families, our church and our community. We are a great people not because of our color, but because of our God.
We know from ancient pictures and sculptures that many of the Pharaohs of Egypt were black. Their tombs indicate they were black. Statutes have large flat noses and large lips. Their paintings have people with black skin, brown skin, and light color skin. It is more likely than not that the Pharaoh whom God gave the dream of the oncoming famine in Joseph’s time was black if not at least dark skin.
Yet we are programmed to believe that the Pharaoh’s could not have been black. We dismiss this because we saw the 10 commandments and the Pharaoh in Moses’s time was completely white in Yule Brenner and Moses also was white in the form of Charlton Heston. Therefore we assume that white European looking people were the Pharaohs of Egypt in Africa. Historically we know that there were no Europeans going to Africa at this time.
You know if you go to France and see the Eiffel Tower , or to China and see the Great Wall, or to the United States and see the Empire State building, there is no question as to who built it. The French built the Eiffel Tower in France , the Chinese built the Great Wall in China, the Americans built the Empire State Building.
Why do people keep saying, I wonder who built the pyramids in Africa? Doesn’t it make sense that the Africans built them? But we are programmed to believe that Africans were too stupid to build things that required technology far beyond that in existence in Europe at the time, therefore we’ve come the conclusion that aliens from outer space must have built the pyramids. Well one good thing about the Mars rover is that it shows the aliens did not build pyramids on Mars, so maybe one day Africans will get credit for building the great pyramids.
Our own self hatred of ourselves allow us to believe this ridiculous idea of the aliens building pyramids. Even today when we find these huge designs in mountains and plains in parts of South and Central America, we want to claim that people from out of space must have built them rather than give credits to the Inca’s and Aztecs. Why, because they are people of color and surely God could not have given them such amazing intelligence. That’s nothing again but racism at work.
There were Black Africans among the people of God when they left Egypt. I know that there were Blacks Africans among the Africans when God delivered them out of Egypt because of what the bible says. Look at numbers 12:1 and you will see racism rear its ugly head. It says, Moses’s sister and brother, Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. Now we know that the Cushites were Black and they were from the southern Sudan.
Doesn’t it follow that since the children of Israel did not go to Cush on their way to the promised land, that for Moses to have married a Cushite woman en route, there had to have been a group of Cushites with them for him to marry one. Why do you think they left out the scene of Moses marrying a black woman in the 10 commandments? They did give the girl some color in the cartoon movie version of it. God doesn’t care about the color of the person you marry. God is more interested if you’re marrying somebody saved.
Do you remember that Moses was the most important figure in the Old Testament in leading God’s people? Do you remember that God spoke with Moses as he did no other man? Do you realize that this outstanding man of God could have had his choice of beautiful women to marry, and of all these women, it was a beautiful Black woman that caught his attention. It was a Black woman that Moses went home to help him carry the burdens of leading that rebellious group of people. Black women didn’t just become strong, they’ve been strong a long time.
Do you realize that even though King Solomon had many wives , the only one to whom a Book in the Bible is written involving him is to a Black Woman. Turn in Song of Songs chapter 1, verse 5 in which she says "Dark am I yet lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, dark like the tents of Kedar, like the tent curtains of Solomon. Do not stare at me because I am dark.
In verse 8 she is called the most beautiful of women. We have tried to make Black women feel as though unless they could resemble a white woman, they could not be beautiful. This is not what the Bible teaches about being black and beautiful. The Bible teaches there is a beauty present in each race of women whether they be red, yellow, brown, black or white. The call is not to exalt one form of beauty over another, but to appreciate the beauty God has placed in all women. But again Black Women are great, not simply because of being black, but because of being a part of a great God.
We find ourselves again being called by God in Isaiah 11:11 In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt and from Cush. My friends do you see that we as Black people have always been considered by God as part of his chosen people. We never adopted a white man’s God. God has always been our God, and God does not belong to black people, white people, brown people or any other people. It is we who belong to God, who has chosen to love a rainbow color of people.
When we go to the New Testament, we find that God is nowhere as limited to thinking of people in terms of race. If you put part of the Middle East in Africa then Jesus was an African. If you leave it where it belongs, then Jesus was an Asian who spent his first few years in Africa. The dominant society is uncomfortable talking about Jesus as an Asian or African. They will say very quickly, it does not matter if he was.
But my question is, then why did you turn him into a white European when he never went to Europe and neither did his parents, grandparents, or parents before that. You see if we define our greatness based on some intrinsic value in ourselves, then we have to force everything else into our way of seeing things. But if our greatness is based on being tied to a great God, then we can let the truth of God speak for itself.
Jesus never talked about his earthly background or his race as being significant to his cause. He constantly identified Himself the with the greatness of His Father. As followers of Christ, we may remember where we come from, but we know that our greatness is based on the vertical relationship we share with God.
On the horizontal level toward each other, we are always going to be one sinner who God came, touched, and invited to be a part of the family of God. There is never any reason for boasting or for putting anybody else down. We’re all just a bunch of nobodies who are here today and gone tomorrow. It’s in Christ that we can become somebody in the eyes of God.
The greatest book on the condemnation of racism is the Scripture. You see after God chose Abraham, the Jews began to think that they alone had a claim on God. They made everybody else second class citizens in their eyes. The only claim they had on God, was that the Savior of the world would come from among the Jews. God had to choose some group of people to send Jesus into the world and God chose them. They divided the world into Jews and Gentiles. If you were not a Jew, then you were a Gentile.
Jesus comes into the world and dies for all humanity. His blood was for people of all races, backgrounds, ethnic groups and any other division we make among ourselves. When you watch the movie the Passion this week, recognize that it was your own sin who caused the beating and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Don’t think if only you would have been there, you would have done something to save Jesus. No, we all added to the amount of pain and agony he suffered.
Anyone who is going to be a faithful disciple of Christ has to let go of racism and the ability to look down on somebody else for any reason. Originally, only the Jews were connected to Abraham to whom God gave a new promise. But then we read in Galatians Galatians 3:26-29 You are all sons and daughters of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed ourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
This verse again shows, it does not matter that God chose an Iraqi by the name of Abraham to give his promises too. Because anybody in the entire world who accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of his or her life stands in the promises of God in the same way that Abraham did.
God had good in store for Abraham when he called him out of Iraq. God has good in store for us as he calls us out of whatever condition we find ourselves in today. When God makes a promise, he keeps it. Because of God’s promise to Adam and Eve, Jesus had to come into the world somewhere through their descendants. God could have chosen a different place and a different group of people to make his plan for salvation known to all, but He didn’t. He choose Abraham and the Middle East.
The gospel is not about color, nor is it about the greatness of one group of people. The gospel is about being part of a Great God, who has done great things, and who is worthy of our praise regardless of who we are. Thank God, when our God set out to do something great, He was still willing to choose people of the likes of you and me.
Sermon Outline Pastor Rick 2/22/2004
A Great People, No A Great God
Exodus 12:37-42 Galatians 3:23-29
A. The Steps To Building A Great Team
1. Coach- Trade-Draft
2. God—Strongest, Best, Largest ??
3. God’s Choice Of Israel
4. Jesus Choice Of The Disciples
5. God’s Choice Of Corinthians
B. God Is Not Looking To Be Endorsed
1. Greatness Because Of Relationship
2. God Is Not Like Nike
3. Mr. L. James Vs No Name
4. Paul—I Count It As Rubbish
5. 14 Year Unknown Vs Instant Today
C. God Reserves The Right To Choose
1. Our Genetic Makeup Worldwide
2. All From Adam & Eve
3. Problems With Disobedience
Genesis 11:8-9
So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9That is why it was called Babel--because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
4. God Confuses & God Scatters
5. Phillip Moved By God Acts 8:39-40
D. God Wants To Make Himself Known
1. God’s Called On Abraham
2. Ur & The Iraqis
3. Abraham 75 & Sarah 65
4. God Created us All
5. Race More To Do With Where We
Landed Than Anything Else.
6. Hot Climates—More Pigment
E. Racism Attempts To Upset History
1. We’re Superior Because Of Us
2. Christianity Not The White Man’s
Faith
3. How Far East—India, China
4. The Middle East A Crossroad
F. The Moving Of A Nation To Another
Continent
1. Let’s Move Spain Out Of Europe
2. Who Moved Egypt Out Of Africa
3. Egypt—Too Much Biblical History
4. How Long For A Nigerian To
Become An American
5. Did God Lead Africans To The
Promised Land
6. Egypt, A Multicultural Land
G. God Created Africa With Enough &
Safe Haven
1. Feeding Of Abraham & Jacob
Joseph
2. We Were The Suppliers
3. If We Only Knew Our Potential
H. History Reveals We Were There
1. Pictures & Sculptures Of Pharaohs--Black
2. Large Flat Noses & Large Lips
3. Black & Brown Skin Paintings
4. Joseph’s Pharaoh Rameses Black
Features
5. Done In By The 10 Commandments
Movie
6. Yule Brenner & Charlton Heston
I. Why The Question Of Who Built It
1. France Eiffel Tower, China Great
Wall of China
United States
2. Pyramids In Africa, Aliens From
Outer Space
3. Mars Rover May Help Us
J. We Find Blacks Coming Out Of Egypt With Moses
1. Numbers 12:1 Racism Appears
Miriam Aaron
2. Moses Marries A Cushite From The
Sudan
3. Left Out Of The Movies
4. Moses Man Of God, Spoke With
God,
5. Chooses A Beautiful Black Woman
6. King Solomon’s Wife 1:5 Dark But
Lovely
7. God Put A Beauty Of His Own In All
8. No Need For Inferiority Of Any
9. God Belongs To No One
10. Isaiah 11:11 God Reclaims Africans
11. God Is Greater Than Us All
K. New Testament –God Not Limited By
Geography
1. Jesus Is Either Asian Or African
2. Can Jesus Be European
3. Jesus Greatness Connected To God
4. Our Greatness Is Vertical
5. Horizontal—One Sinner To Another
6. Never A Reason To Boast
L. The Bible’s Condemnation Of Racism
1. Jesus Died For Us All
2. Our Sin Caused The Blood To Flow
3. Only In Christ Are We Somebody
4. The Passion Movie
5. Followers Of Christ Surrender
6. God Brings Us All Into The Promises
Galatians 3:26-29
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
M. God Didn’t Mind Choosing An Iraqi
1. God Had Good In Store For Abraham
2. God Has Good For Us
3. God Keeps His Promises
4. Gospel—What It’s All About
