We get to continue our family meeting series like Katie shared and you can consider this week part two of last week which was on racism and I'm excited to jump in I really feel like we as the church must look under the hood at the topic of racial injustice Because I believe as I look at society as I look at what's happening right now in culture I see that the enemy is trying to divide the people of God and our nation With the surface and I believe that the Holy Spirit is highlighting that there's a root system Underneath racial injustice that Holy Spirit is wanting to put his finger on and say I want us as a church to be unified in our Changing of the way that we're thinking and unified in our repentance around the root systems that actually feed racial injustice And I believe that there's actually joyful repentance for us as the body I believe that there's we mourn with those who mourn and then we joyfully change our direction We joyfully change which where we were going we joyfully take a 180 in a different direction As things are exposed on the inside amen and so what we want to do is is talk about what's the root system? Oh no flies they followed me from my house and now they're in front of me You can turn in your bibles to mark 11. This is gonna be good. I'm gonna have to like I don't know what's gonna happen if this fly keeps on bothering I'm just gonna ignore it.
Okay. That's hilarious. That's real life So Katie and I and the staff we are committed to authentically connecting and authentically being people that aren't putting on a show So you might be like oh no he's talking about a fly that's bothering him up front So I just I know in professional churches that you don't talk about the fly and you just ignore it But as it like flies around my face But I'm just gonna acknowledge it because we want to actually be authentic and honest and real okay. Are we okay with that?
The pastor talked about the fly Turn into your bibles to mark 11 if you haven't already did you guys already turn to mark 11? All right, there you go The context of mark 11 is this festival this Jewish festival called Passover many of us know what Passover is But if you don't it's a review what Passover is is the nation of Israel was in slavery for 400 years They were oppressed as a people group for 400 years Then God did all these signs and wonders these miracles and he delivered the nation of Israel out of slavery How many hundreds of years were it was the black community in slavery in America just under 300 years? And so the Israelites were enslaved for 400 years They get set free and they get brought into the promised land and and the father has given them this this gift of remembrance Every single year and it's a pilgrimage called Passover so there's people that are coming into the city from all over the place and Jerusalem is usually around 30,000 to 50,000 people that lived in Jerusalem in the first century But when Passover came most often it looked like it was north of 500,000 So we're taking we're taking a small city 30 to 50,000 people and you're literally times in that by 10 And that's how many people are teaming through the streets Now I want to introduce you to a couple of friends that we're gonna journey with are you guys ready to journey with some friends? Would you like to meet them?
All right our first friend that we're meeting his name is Naaman everybody say Naaman Now Naaman is a name of Assyrian in the Old Testament But so I ripped it out of the Old Testament and we're just saying he's like a character right in first century Okay, so Naaman he is a character that we're gonna journey with and he has he's married He's married to Victoria now is Victoria a Syrian name I have no idea, but I just made it up, okay So we've got Naaman and Victoria there a couple they got married they have three kids and it's Passover time and they're Gentiles So they're Syrian, but they're proselytes in other words. They've actually converted to Judaism in the first century So they're Gentiles and what that means is Naaman had to do something in order to convert to Judaism Do you know what he had to do? He had to get circumcised now? I can't imagine Being circumcised and having a memory of it, okay But Naaman has been through a lot and every single year Naaman and Victoria They prepare for the trip to go to Jerusalem for Passover to celebrate Passover And before they leave there they're being oppressed just like the Jews in Jerusalem and Judea are being oppressed by the Roman government by the Roman Kingdom and So before he actually has to go pay taxes and there's people that are taking cuts of taxes and the taxes are just wild from the Roman Empire So he has to go pay taxes and now they're getting right now.
They're on the road to Jerusalem for 60 hours Now for adults, you know if it was just Naaman and Victoria probably be you know three or four days It's probably like 15 days with kids, okay? If you have kids, you know what I'm talking about, right? So 60 hour trip from Damascus to Jerusalem and they walk they walk into the city They find a place to stay they wake up in the morning and they know exactly what to do They go to the temple and when I'm talking about the temple this is not just like a couple hundred people right? We're talking about the temple is full of people and there's this place called the court of Gentiles and this court of Gentiles Had enough room to hold 75,000 people in it It was the outer courts of the temple 75,000 people could fit into the court of the Gentiles and then how the temple was structured is There's the court of the Gentiles then the court of women Which was only reserved for Jewish women Jewish men and women but women could go that far in their worship and enter into that Interplace then it was the court of the Jews which only Jewish men could enter to worship and then beyond there was Jewish leadership Like the Levites and those that were actually doing sacrifices the priests, okay?
so Naemen and Victoria they can't go into any other place in the temple or there's actually a law that they could be stoned or killed If they went to any other part of the temple so they are They have to stay in the court of the Gentiles if they want to worship So they walk through the court of the Gentiles and it is full of people there's a think Minnesota state fair like on a really hot day wall-to-wall people Smells like animals, okay on any given year there would be at least 15,000 lambs That would be sacrifice on the week of Passover and beyond the lambs there would be many more doves because it would if you were low income You could not afford a lamb a spotless lamb So you would bring the sacrifice of doves instead and so Naemen and Victoria They brought their doves that they bought in Damascus. They're perfect doves They made sure that these doves were spotless before their trip and they're 11 year old boy carried that cage of doves the whole way there What a stud and so they're bringing the doves and they bring it to the table to be examined by the official sacrificial Examitor that would make sure that the doves or the sacrificial animal was spotless and pure and perfect they double check this This is these doves were perfect But the examiner found a little spot on the foot of one of the doves and said okay You have to go and buy the temple sacrifice over at that booth now Naemen paid $40 in Damascus for the doves But he came over to the table to buy the doves in the temple that were pure and spotless and they were $750 this was a problem because Naemen and Victoria made $10 a day Then they had to go over to the money changing table where they had to take their Syrian finances to pay the temple tax And they paid the temple tax But then there's a convergence conversion expense and so it was double triple What their money was worth so Naemen and Victoria have the decision to make are they going to be pure before God and have their sins washed away? by buying the doves in the court of Gentiles or Do they live with not being pure before a holy God and then Jesus walked into the temple? Mark 11 Read with me mark 11 verse 15 on reaching Jerusalem Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise Through the temple courts and as he taught them he said it is written My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations But you have made it a den or a cloak of robbers I can't remember anywhere else in scripture where Jesus is throwing tables Can you remember any other place in scripture where Jesus is so full of the zeal of the Lord?
That he actually is found in his first month of ministry Three years before this moment. He was at Passover the first time in his ministry and he was found in the corner of the court of the Gentiles Sewing a whip together to start whipping animals throughout the court of Gentiles throwing over tables I don't picture I don't see him doing that in any other time in his ministry The time that he's doing that in his ministry is when he is addressing racial injustice, I Think he might be passionate about this topic. I think he has a burning on the inside for this topic We have to ask the question. What was Jesus trying to get at?
What was he trying to address when he started throwing tables and then he taught what he taught? Dehumanization plus the love of money injustice Listen again dehumanization Plus the love of money or greed equals injustice dehumanization when you look at the Gentiles in the eyes of the Jews like we talked about last week in their perspective Gentiles were born to add fuel to the fires of hell That was the Gentile perspective of Jews and so Jewish doctors like we said last week would be counseled not to aid Gentile women to give birth to children because it's just adding one more Gentile to the world, right? And so what had happened in the Jewish mind is there had been a dehumanization of the pagan peoples the carnal peoples the savage peoples of The Gentiles the unclean people all of those language pieces unclean pagan Impure those was that was the language that they had grown up believing about Naaman and Victoria Naaman and Victoria give their lives to not Jesus to the god of Israel But there's they've still been dehumanized as Gentiles right because what happens is when you dehumanize a people group And you see a bottom line It's much easier to actually Pursue the bottom line and lay your head on the pillow at night thinking that you've done nothing wrong Because they're a little bit less than human they're a little bit less than you and the pride in the arrogance of dehumanizing them and them being less than or even a threat gives you the right To mistreat them in passive ways dehumanization begins with language right and it It justifies you from being exempt to love that person To fulfill the second commandment for that person Greed you see in the storyline how the Jewish leaders had monopolized the sacrificial system You see how they in essence pimped the people they leveraged their power For the sake of greed and it was very easy to take advantage of the whole situation because they do dehumanize the people in their brains in their minds I believe that the temple is a picture The temple is a picture of human history that's happened over and over and over and over again Listen century after century there's been slavery and there's still a slavery What is fueling the slavery generation after generation? What's fueling it man mistreats those they have dehumanized for the sake of personal gain?
Let's dehumanize them. I'm gonna pursue Love I love money. I'm gonna pursue riches. I'm gonna pursue comfort.
I'm gonna pursue convenience I want a bigger car a nicer house More bottom line. I want to be more in the black and less in the red and it starts equaling injustice Century after century after century. This is not just a hey that happened in the history of you know a long time ago Nazi Germany this is what it looked like They were putting out children's films of Jews and the children's films were depicting Jews as rodents spreading disease in Germany That's what it looks like to dehumanize Hitler called them rodents or rats the Jews It looks like dehumanizing a whole people group and then when there's mass killings The injustice of it all to gain power and money and control It's it's kind of justified It kind of just makes sense. Well, they're gonna spread disease in our people.
They're a threat Therefore the injustice actually just makes sense in the eyes of a whole people group. How about in America? Slavery we have the mindsets shifted by philosophers and scientists that call black people from Africa savages Subhuman animals so for generations at the start of our foundations in America There was at the start of our foundations. There's these lies dehumanizing a whole people group that's actually justifying the love of money that's resulting in injustice Do you see how it the capitalism of America is amazing economically?
But when it's paired with the love of money that is the root of all types of evil Injustice can happen and I'm saying that the con the economics of America is amazing and yet the reality is that when man operates in sin and lives in sin and wants power and the pursuit of happiness The American dream the Declaration of Independence I I haven't memorized but I'm right drawing a blank right now All men are created equal with the right to life liberty in the pursuit of happiness. Those are all very very good things until we read define what happiness is until happiness is Actually achieved by getting more things Right. I mean we're just we are swimming in a current since we were children We see thousands of ads every single day and all of the ads are saying this one thing you have the right to be happy You deserve to be happy and I'm gonna tell you how to be happy I'm gonna tell you what you need to be happy the thing that you need to buy to make you happy It's the house. It's the car.
It's the girl. It's the sex act. It's the it's the new promotion. It's the job.
It's the deal It's the savings All of it is to make you happy I'm not saying that the pursuit of happiness is bad. What I am saying is how our culture has defined happiness This is how our culture oftentimes defines happiness. I love you so much Because you make me feel happy. I've never been happier than when I was with you I love the way that you make me feel See when we say happiness, we're talking about a feeling Right And what happens What happens with this whole happiness?
Pursuit that we go after Is that at the same time of all of these marketing images of what happiness is? There's language from leadership and there's language from culture That has conditioned us to think about certain people as a direct threat to our pursuit of being happy This is the language we um, remember how Hitler used it called them rodents Remember how America called them savages This is the language that we use in 2020 For people groups in our nation right now that are americans drug dealers criminals rapists threats terrorists Lazy irresponsible reckless angry out of control scary gang members And we wonder why there's problems Because we've taken whole people groups And said they're drug dealing criminals And we automatically subconsciously we do the equation They are this I Want my pursuit of happiness, which is purchased with money And then when injustice happens to the people that are the criminals the whole people group that's criminals And drug dealers and threats when they're laying on the streets It's a little bit easier to be passive When the injustice is going down, it's a little bit easier because they were a threat to begin with This is the root system This is the root system of slavery. This is the root system of injustice And God's putting his finger on it And Jesus steps into the temple Is that right? Jesus steps into the temple and I just want to Listen the religious leaders of that day They're laying their heads on their pillows And they can sleep at night Until Jesus walked into the temple They're justified In what they're doing Because of their worldview God's calling us to have a kingdom worldview Not a worldview of this age See it's the spirit of the age The spirit of the age that would take whole people groups and put them in a box The spirit of the age that wouldn't name a whole portion of society Jesus steps into the scene And he says I just want to acknowledge this before I read these passages I am not talking to my Americans I'm not talking to my patriots in the room I'm talking to my brothers and sisters in the kingdom of heaven I'm talking to the citizens of heaven that are actually aliens to this world I'm not talking to the patriots tonight I'm talking to the people of God tonight I'm talking to the family of God tonight I'm talking to sons and daughters tonight We've got to take our identities away From wrapping ourselves in American flags Even though that's amazing We've got to put on the cloak of the white flag of surrender To the king Jesus over a kingdom that is not of this world God is calling us into our rightful identity I'm not saying there's anything wrong with patriotism But that's not who I'm talking tonight That's not who I'm talking to I'm talking to To brothers and sisters that have the same father Jesus steps in and he says Love your neighbor as you love yourself Oh no This is my commandment that you love one another is I have loved you Do nothing from self-image You just hear this is anti-self-protection Do nothing from selfish ambition or vain conceit But in humility count others More significant than yourselves John 12 love your life and you will lose it Matthew 6 where your treasure is there your heart will be else also Therefore lay up treasures in heaven Matthew 19, it's hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom Matthew 16, then Jesus said his disciples If any of you wants to be my follower Then you must turn from yourself as you take up your cross and follow me Matthew 6, you cannot serve both God and money Matthew 24, because of me you will be hated by people of all nations They will deliver you to suffering And they will kill you and he will be hated by all The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil The problem is not money though The problem is the love of money There's nothing wrong with money There's nothing wrong with money Money is powerful and it can be leveraged to change lives And it's amazing It's beautiful It can create so many moments for the kingdom It's amazing But it's the love of money That starts controlling the way that we think So then when we see the news There's indifference Mark 10, Jesus says to the rich young ruler Leave all that you have and follow me But in America we've heard the message of Follow me and you'll get a better life And you'll be able to pursue happiness and you will be blessed We've got the message of Your life is going to be so much better when you follow Jesus And Jesus is literally saying you're going to get killed You're going to die, you're going to be persecuted Now your life isn't even your own Deny yourself, deny your flesh Deny the pursuit of happiness as defined by the world That thing needs to get crucified that you can come up and you can start becoming love You need to deny that I come 50, you come 50 You make me so happy and I have all the feels because you make me feel good And you're meeting all of my needs The altar was always meant to be I'm laying my life down for you in love Not I get my needs met and that's why marriage is broken in America See we signed up because we wanted the blessing And the Lord is saying you got to sign up and follow me so you can be a blessing You get to sign up to be loved by me and then become love and represent me But we think of we can think of following Jesus and we go man I said the prayer first I get to go to heaven so that's great And we've made the gospel all about getting somewhere And then we get to be Americans and do what we want in the meantime And we get to pursue happiness and riches and do all these things for the sake of ourselves and our kingdoms And then we start voting and we vote for ourselves And the Lord is going oh my goodness you signed up In all of your life to be surrendered You signed up to wrap yourself in the white flag of surrender to me And it makes you clean and it makes you pure and it makes you righteous We can still pursue happiness, but we pursue it God's way right Pursuit of happiness is amazing true happiness is falling in love with him Having the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of him that enlightens our heart So we just are totally undone with how amazing he is And then we know how much he loves us He loves us the same way that he loves Jesus and it's transforming us and then all of a sudden we start looking out We start loving people we start loving people that are different than us We can even look in the mirror and love ourselves Without closing we can actually love ourselves Because we're so loved by him And we're getting a vision for how he sees me And then from that place we get to love our neighbors and loving their skin tone Loving that I just love this about you and this uniqueness that you carry that I don't carry and it's beautiful See when Jesus stepped into the temple and he said my house Shall be called the house of prayer in other words connection For all nations We have to ask the question about the word house Who lives in the house?
family Family lives in the house And so Jesus is saying My house is filled with a family connected to the father in this family is from every nation and every tribe and every tongue And so he's actually introducing a new equation here this new equation of They're all brothers and sisters The ones that you've dehumanized They're your family And you start thinking my brother is a threat My sister Is a criminal and you start getting to know your brothers and sisters And it starts changing the way that you think About your family Because as you dehumanize those people groups What we're not realizing is that we're dehumanizing our brother and sister that in the new age we're gonna be worshiping next to and I hope you worship next to them Right now God is calling us to walk away from dehumanization of entire people groups labeling with them with names And naming them as lies and agreeing with his heart that they're family Not even just neighbor anymore. They're family And then they go it's family plus I don't live for myself I'm becoming love I their family and I exist to carry God and reveal him and become love Do you know what that is? Family plus me becoming love and looking like Jesus equals kingdom justice Remember the equation dehumanization plus the love of money greed The love of money that can purchase the pursuit of happiness is defined by the world dehumanization plus greed or love of money equals injustice Jesus way so that's the enemy's way that's how he's planted in Jesus is going walking through and he's going oh my goodness I didn't throw the tables of the Romans I wasn't throwing tables of the tax collectors of the Romans I came to my people and I said my people I want you to be a family I want you to be a family that actually becomes love so that you can bring forth kingdom justice in the world But it starts with my people and the father's going it starts with my family And they all get to be connected to my heart and then they get to be connected to each other Jesus is saying don't operate in the spirit of the age that leverages people to an end We see it right now Leading up to the elections we see We see people in power Leveraging pain For gain It's the same spirit of the age Leveraging fear For gain Leveraging the dehumanization of a people group For gain Do we see that in the world As the Romans do the Romans are pimping the people The Romans are looking they're pimping the pain of a generation And God is saying oh not how that's not how my family does it My family gets close My family meets people that they don't they don't look like And then they become love And when injustice happens They're in the corner making a whip They're they're willing to be full of zeal for the injustice that they're seeing to their brothers and sisters Now Love that ringtone Now what i'm not saying Is that we need to start throwing tables? I don't know I don't know what to do with that When I look at Jesus and he's throwing tables in the church But we have to remember that he's throwing tables in the church He's addressing hypocrisy in the church We can't expect the world at listen listen the world Of course They are dehumanizing people For the bottom line Of course they're dehumanizing whole people groups And there's greed and love of money Would you expect anything else from somebody that's not born again?
Let's pause and take that in Of course this is a problem Everyone is born as a sinner Of course this is a problem But as the people of God There's a different story There's a different honor that we walk in When we see a family member When we see a brother and a sister And maybe we look on the screen and go that's I don't know if they're christian or not We call them as though they're not I want to look at my my black brother and sister And I want to go well, maybe I don't know if you're a believer or not But you're going to be a believer because I'm believing for your salvation So you're my future family. That's what I want to believe I want to treat everyone like oh, this is my future brother and sister We carry the family Culture everywhere we go Let's all stand I believe God wants to Wake us up from the american dream Wake us up from the american dream as defined by our culture Life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness Are God's ideas first And I believe God Is wanting to give us the dream of the father's heart For america For our city And it starts with us personally It starts with us noticing When my thoughts match up with dehumanizing whole people group and being able to name it And just saying hey That's not true We have to be able to notice when we're doing this Because it's part of the root system of all of the injustice that we're seeing And we get to repent from all of this stuff We get to repent from the love of money that is a root of all kinds of evils and money isn't bad If you have a lot of money, that's not bad That can be used in amazing ways If you have nice things, that's not bad You can use all of those things to actually advance the kingdom of heaven But it's the heart that we're going after It's the I exist my finances exist because they're part of me becoming love and being a steward that's already surrendered to him Let's pray lord Wake us up from the american dream Lord we want your dream We want the father's dream for our city We want the father's dream for this family this this local family this corporate family in our city The church of the twin cities lord the church of america give us your vision Wake us up from business as usual Wake us up from the the current Of dehumanizing people groups so that their threats to us so that we step into passivity lord We want to step into your heart of love as family members and we want to step right in to kingdom justice Lord start with me. I I just even want to acknowledge this is a process. Okay.
This is a journey This isn't something that gets microwaved even this week. I was uh, I was I was sitting under this message and reflecting on how I Am in process with a specific people group where I was mistreated in a certain way And then now I assume I've dehumanized a whole people group because I've assumed I can't trust them If they're if they're that ethnicity, I just would never do business with them Those are the things that I've said I've made agreements with the enemy around the dehumanization of a whole people group And god is saying I want us to step into my heart step into what I see Lord here. We are we just humble ourselves in repent We want to change the way that we think about our brothers and our sisters and our family Lord we want to actually adopt the heart of the father We want to adopt the heart of heaven the vision of heaven on earth god Lord give us your heart your burning passion lord. You are filled with zeal in the court of the gentiles You are full of zeal for namen and victoria Lord they have a name they have a face God give us your vision the jesus vision of justice Lord have it transform us from the inside out Lord renew our minds so that our lives would be transformed and we would reflect you and become love This is my story.
This is my song that I'd become love and reflect the father I want to reflect dad. I want to spread his image. I want to spread dad's image everywhere. Lord.
This is our call We love you. We love you. We just sit under your leadership expose the lies. We don't want them anymore We want to agree with your truth In jesus name.
This is what we want lord Amen As you as you leave and tonight even as you're as you're watching the news this week or you're on instagram I just want us to notice let's start practicing noticing what's happening noticing the images noticing the messages, okay? And I believe that there's actually radical generosity I believe that even this week there's gonna be thousands of dollars given away From our community to actually go after this thing that has controlled us I believe there's there's radical generosity coming on this people So so go out you are the people of god