[00:00:01] Welcome to the River Church podcast. We're all about bringing the life, hope and love of Jesus to everyone around us. For more information, check out our
[email protected] grab them open to 1 Corinthians 1.
[00:00:15] I'm going to read in a moment to the new international version, the niv.
[00:00:22] If you don't have a Bible handy with you, I will put the words up on the screen as well.
[00:00:27] But just before that.
[00:00:30] Yeah, just talking a little story. Three years ago was the time when Deb and I first went to Africa. That was our first journey to the whole continent of Africa. Three years ago we went to Ethiopia to do a conference with the Somalis. And when I came back, everyone asked, what was it like?
[00:00:52] What was Africa like? You could sum it up all.
[00:00:57] And those of you who have been and spent time, lived, spent time in Africa, you know that it's very different to Europe, isn't it?
[00:01:06] And I'm not just talking about food or clothing or buildings or plants or animal life, you know, all of that. What I'm talking about is the people and the way that they act.
[00:01:18] Example. So we arrive on the plane, we disembark, we go through with our passports ready to passport control. Now, if you're in Europe, what happens?
[00:01:30] Everyone gets in organized lines, everyone's told what to do, you know, what's coming, what happens when we arrive, you know, it's this mad, rash, mad rush towards passport control. There are far more many lines than there are, you know, places to go through.
[00:01:50] And then we get through and we get to pick up our bags at the turnstiles. In Europe, what do you do?
[00:01:58] You stand at respectable distance away from those people around you, don't you? And it's a polite. Your bag arrives in. It's a polite, excuse me, do you mind just reaching Africa?
[00:02:12] It's a little bit different.
[00:02:14] It's a sort of, you know, people are bumping and seeing nudging and squeezing and then there's shouts over the whole, you know, place. Oh, you got, you know, in different languages.
[00:02:25] And it's the thing of. I was thinking like, oh, am I supposed to be offended by this? This is strange.
[00:02:33] But it's not. No one's offended. This is just the way they do things. This is just culture. It's the way people think, it's the way people act, it's ingrained in them. This is just normal.
[00:02:48] And we are here today celebrating. We are a multi ethnic, multicultural church. Not just one nation, but well over 30 that are represented here and Our culture, how that we see the world, how that we react to the world interact, is not just via ethnicity because there's so much variation, isn't there?
[00:03:10] Do you know, just in this country that I know, go to Newcastle or Liverpool, come down to here, there's a different culture, but it's very influenced by where we've grown up, by our ethnicity. And so we have challenges as a church, as one community coming together. We have challenges because we think differently.
[00:03:33] So how do we understand one another, how we explain concepts, because we think we're communicating in a way that's relevant but is different to one another. And just challenges in living and serving together.
[00:03:48] It's not just our challenge as a community, it's the world's challenge, isn't it? It's the challenge because international migration has been growing exponentially over the past 50 years as more and more people migrate between countries.
[00:04:05] But the thing is, the world's challenge, I think, is handled differently to how we are supposed to handle it.
[00:04:13] The Bible gives us a vision of the future. It gives us a vision of how the Gospel breaks down boundaries in different ways to the world.
[00:04:24] And it helps us to come together as one community. So I want to look at 1 Corinthians 1.
[00:04:32] I'm going to read from verses 18 through to 25, and then we'll try and see what it might mean for us.
[00:04:41] Says for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate. Where is the wise person?
[00:04:58] Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom, did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached. To save those who believe, Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.
[00:05:37] For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
[00:05:46] You know, these verses, I think, are helpful to us thinking about multiculture. But first I, I want to unpick a couple of myths about the Bible.
[00:05:58] And by the Bible I mean, you know, the form of the Bible, the whole Bible as it is, because do you know, the Bible as it's given to us is not an accident.
[00:06:09] God didn't just think, oh, I've got to try and communicate a message. Who am I going to find?
[00:06:15] I'm looking around to someone that might be useful to me. Who's available at the moment?
[00:06:21] No. God ordained and directed his message transmitted through these people. It's intentional. And so as we look at the Bible as a whole couple of myths, I want to unpack that we can see how that's helpful to us as a people receiving God's word.
[00:06:40] And the first one, the myth is that the Bible exists outside of culture.
[00:06:46] The Bible is some sort of thing that exists outside of culture.
[00:06:52] But we know the Bible is not. The Bible was written over a period of around 1500 years.
[00:06:59] It's a collection of 66 individual books written through approximately 40 different authors. People from shepherds all the way through to rulers and kings, and written across three continents, Africa, Asia and Europe.
[00:07:16] And it narrates stories, real events that happens, happen through a wide range of cultures and different peoples. Stories that can't be abstracted away.
[00:07:30] Do you know? They're enculturated. They're in the cultural forms and norms of what goes through. And this is something that applies through the whole Bible.
[00:07:39] It's not like we just read the Old Testament and we think, oh, that's a different place. But as we get to the New Testament, it's the same. It's written through a time and a place. Jesus was a Jew of 2,000 years ago.
[00:07:53] We get the apostles, we get Paul who comes through and writes the letters. They are people of a time and place.
[00:08:03] Someone wrote. Leslie Newbiggin, who's someone who's written a lot about missions, says the idea that one can or could at any time separate by some process of distillation, a pure Gospel unadulterated by any cultural influence, is an illusion.
[00:08:24] We read the Bible through the culture of the time.
[00:08:28] But I think that helps us because we also should not avoid or pretend that we can be a people outside of culture.
[00:08:37] The way that we behave and interact is informed and directed by our culture. Just in that story that I said about the airports, the way that we express ourselves to one another is through our culture.
[00:08:50] Our preferences is all through culture.
[00:08:56] And so recognizing that is really important for us to come together as a community, as a community of. Of different people.
[00:09:06] Now, the second myth that I just want to unpack is the myth that the Bible promotes a single culture.
[00:09:15] Do you know, through time, as we look through the Bible that there's no sort of linguistic, there's no language culture, there's no historical culture, there's no geographic culture that is perfectly suited to, to the gospel coming through.
[00:09:34] There's no one people, group or one culture that is the ideal culture.
[00:09:41] And when we get through to the end of the Bible in Revelation, what do we see? We see God makes his home.
[00:09:49] He comes and prepares a place with people of every tribe and language, tongue, nation.
[00:09:57] He welcomes people from everywhere together.
[00:10:00] And that's great news for us because as we go through, the Bible celebrates great things, elements of culture. I think back to the story of Esther, if you know that story, something called the Kingsman Redeemer, the person that comes and redeems comes through as an element of the culture of the time and shadows. It tells us about Jesus.
[00:10:25] He's the one that's going to be the Redeemer. It's a great element of culture. But as we read through the Bible, there's things that sort of grate against us. We go, oh, that's weird, I don't like that because that's different.
[00:10:41] But do you know what? That should be a cause of celebration because it tells us that God's truth, the gospel can come through and to every culture across the globe.
[00:10:54] And so what does that tell us about us? We shouldn't aim to create one culture.
[00:11:01] There's not some middle grounds, do you know, in between all the cultures there's not something that exists in between some grayness, you know, when you get paint or you see kids as paint and they get all the colors and then you mix them all together and you just get this, I don't know, merge of color. It's a sort of brown thingy, isn't it? We're not trying to create that.
[00:11:26] We shouldn't try and create that because actually the different cultures is God speaks through the different cultures.
[00:11:35] We get to see the gospel come through and emphasize different aspects of God's truth through the different cultures.
[00:11:45] But we realise it can be a hindrance to us, can't it?
[00:11:50] Back in the 70s, 80s, well, maybe 60s, 70s, 80s in the UK, quite a lot of new churches were being formed. These were churches where people were breaking away from kind of the traditional structures of Church of England, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist movements.
[00:12:12] And it was a response to a move of the Holy Spirit in which the Holy Spirit there was a more reception and openness to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And what that came with services with when came together is a freedom, you know, it came with a relaxation of formal liturgies, of service, of responding to what the Holy Spirit is doing at that time.
[00:12:39] And so a cultural value came through of this is a church that is for everyone. Wherever you are, however you've come, do you know? And with that came a relaxed atmosphere. Come as you are.
[00:12:54] That means turning up in jeans and T shirts, right?
[00:12:59] That was a culture that was born out.
[00:13:01] Now I know and looking around here today, that an African culture, many African cultures come with bring your bests. Is that right?
[00:13:11] Bring your bests. So that means dressing up and presenting yourself because you want to honor God.
[00:13:19] You want to bring your best and honor him by showing your best before him.
[00:13:25] So there we have got a real clash of cultures, isn't it? Because one side may think, hey, you're not making an effort.
[00:13:33] The other side may think, hey, you're trying to impress people. But really what we need to do, don't we really, what we need to do is understand where does it come from.
[00:13:43] And then we can live in harmony and live the freedom.
[00:13:47] Express yourself how you want to. That is okay. We can show both the grace of the gospel in our come as you are, but also honor God in hey, sometimes we dress up and we do it.
[00:14:02] So those are two myths, two myths of the gospel, two myths of the Bible as a whole, that it exists somewhere outside culture, you know, that it's not revealed through culture, and that the fact that it promotes a single culture.
[00:14:17] So what does it instead say? Well, let me get back to that verse in 1 Corinthians, and 2nd half of it, it said, jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.
[00:14:36] You know, Paul, who's writing this is not outside of culture.
[00:14:42] He really understands culture. If you read through the stories of Acts, the second half of the book of Acts, Luke, who's writing, records many sermons, preaches of Paul.
[00:14:54] And he adapts how he talks to different people. He speaks into their cultures. He knows them and understands what they're about.
[00:15:04] And the letters as well, they're different.
[00:15:07] They're addressed to different people and they express the gospel in different ways.
[00:15:12] In fact, later in this letter, in 1 Corinthians, Paul says he become like a Jew to the Jews to reach the Jews and to a Gentile to reach the Gentiles. He says, I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.
[00:15:31] Paul enters into the culture, but nonetheless says that the gospel comes through culture.
[00:15:41] As it comes through culture, what does it do?
[00:15:44] It transforms culture.
[00:15:47] It transform us. Paul in other places affirms the philosophy of the Greeks. He says. He quotes their philosophers and he says there's really good things there.
[00:16:00] But he says here, actually, in philosophy, you're looking for your own salvation.
[00:16:06] You're looking for something apart from God.
[00:16:09] When we look back about the signs, Jesus, Paul, the apostles, they did so many signs and wonders, healings, raising the dead.
[00:16:18] They pointed to God in that. But Paul here says the Jews, you're looking for a particular sign, a sign of a messiah who would come back and reform the Israelite nation.
[00:16:32] They were both.
[00:16:33] There's elements of culture that are good, but these people were both looking at these elements apart from God, apart from what was going, what God was doing through them. Paul instead says that we can only really experience the good of culture through the cross of Christ, through the weakness of letting go of our attempts to save ourselves, justify ourselves before God, and really let God be our savior.
[00:17:07] So how do we do this?
[00:17:09] How do we let God transform our cultures?
[00:17:14] Now, as I've said, our culture is really difficult to identify, isn't it? As one metaphor, one writer says, it's the water that we swim in, or it's the air that we breathe. It's just there.
[00:17:29] We don't see it. But one way that we can identify is when we have those culture clashes.
[00:17:35] You know, the one about the dress, That's a culture clash. It's something that we can identify.
[00:17:40] Another one that I see or I hear quite a lot is how we pray.
[00:17:45] Have you ever noticed this?
[00:17:47] I'm an Englishman.
[00:17:49] And what do Englishmen are known for?
[00:17:52] I'm sorry, please excuse me. You know, our politeness. I'm sorry about the Englishman saying sorry all the time. Do you know? And so I think that affects the way that we come to God.
[00:18:03] We come to God and we say to God, oh, please, if you've not got anything else on, do you know, if you're not particularly busy at this moment, if maybe you've got a little bit of time to spare, could you just do this one thing for me?
[00:18:16] But I hear other cultures, especially our Africans, go, gods do this thing.
[00:18:24] You know, it's out of. Out of. And these are things of expressing the culture.
[00:18:32] But. And sometimes we can come to prayer meetings and think, are we praying to the same gods right now? We definitely are praying to the same gods. Let me just be clear on that.
[00:18:44] But they're a culture clash that we can try and Go, okay. Is there anything underneath this?
[00:18:49] Is it a problem?
[00:18:51] Probably not.
[00:18:52] But how do we go through and how do we unpick stuff?
[00:18:56] If we reflect on the way that we do things, quite often we can unpick what's called idols, Things that we worship or things that we're fearful of that address that sort of influence, the way that we think. One of these is family structures, right? Many different cultures have different family structures.
[00:19:17] And in many cultures, there's a strong responsibility towards family members. I was talking to Garrison Malou on Friday, and Malou said that in a Filipino society, there is a strong sense of parents having. Needing to look after. Sorry, parents. Children looking after parents as they grow older. It's a real necessity that they do that, and they do that, and it's a great thing. Do you know there's honor in it? The Bible says, honor our father and mother. But what Malou said is often it's founded on a place of guilt, that it's like, hey, they've looked after me, so I really have to look after them. It's founded on guilt.
[00:20:00] Family honor.
[00:20:02] Not bringing shame to a family has become an idol in which people have to.
[00:20:08] That's the thing that they're working out of. That's the place of, like, I'm fearful.
[00:20:13] And I think that can often lead to things like resentment and bitterness that influence the way people act, act towards another.
[00:20:20] The flip side of this is Western cultures where the individual has become king.
[00:20:26] The individual has become king. And so in Western societies that we can often talk about, hey, freedom for the individual, dignity for the individual, everyone is equal. And that's a great thing. It's come from a Christian background.
[00:20:41] But the thing is, it's led to a breakdown in family structures where the ties are really weak, where we disown members of our family. And so in our society, loneliness in older people has become or described as an epidemic in our society.
[00:21:00] So when this clash is actually thinking about our culture and identifying maybe the things that are driving us, our idols, we can come and see what. What's the problem?
[00:21:12] Maybe if the bands could come back up, be great.
[00:21:17] So the problem is, once we've identified them, what do we do with them?
[00:21:21] What do we do with these?
[00:21:23] Well, Paul says we look to the cross.
[00:21:26] We look to the cross of Christ, and he says that completely reverses the idols of the Jews and the Greeks. It completely reversed. Reverses the idols of power and philosophy.
[00:21:42] And where our cultures dictate how we act, hey, this is just the way that we do things. So we have to do things like this. We need to reflect on how they are founded, what's driving them.
[00:21:58] See things like, are they being driven by a desire for personal fulfillment?
[00:22:05] Or maybe are driven by an enslave into a fear of how other people might look at us.
[00:22:13] Now, I couldn't possibly talk about every aspect of culture. You know, there's libraries of books dedicated to this. And also I'm aware I'm blinded by my own culture, I've got my own blind spots.
[00:22:30] But I think each of us as a biblical community, as a gospel community coming together, we've got a responsibility to reflect on our own culture and think, hey, is what I'm doing biblically informed?
[00:22:45] Have I thought about it? Or is it just because that's the way things. That's the way I do things, that's the way our culture does things.
[00:22:54] And I'd love us to be a community where we can openly discuss about how our cultures inform our relationship to things like work, family relationships, parenting, all things like that, that we can be people discussing it openly to seek God's wisdom about how the cross comes and demolishes the idols of our cultures. But more than that, more than that, I'd love us to be a church that reflects on how we do things together.
[00:23:31] How do we do things? How does your culture, your background, influence the way that you connect with church and other people?
[00:23:39] How does it reflect on worship?
[00:23:42] How does it reflect on preaching? How does it reflect on attitudes to serving one another on teams? How does it reflect on to how we do community and we come into one another's homes? How does it reflect to attitudes on money and giving?
[00:24:00] What about our attitudes on what our leaders should be doing?
[00:24:05] And as we go through this discussion, we need to have our views allow what we think to be shaped by the cross. Because do you know what it is all about? Jesus isn't.
[00:24:18] Is all about him.
[00:24:21] Because we want to be that reflection of our gods, our king who came down in a culture, who walked amongst us, who taught to those people around him, who left us, commands and sent the Holy Spirit to empower us to be a light to the nations. Amen.
[00:24:44] We are to be a city on a hill. As Deb and others have said this morning. We are to be a demonstration of what it looks like to love one another, a demonstration of who God is through the way that we come together because we want to honour him with everything that we have. Amen.
[00:25:06] Amen. So let's dance.
[00:25:08] Let's turn back to worship and as, after worship, as we get into.
[00:25:14] As we get into foods.
[00:25:16] It's a great cultural expression. As we get into foods, maybe.
[00:25:21] Maybe you can have a couple of questions in your mind.
[00:25:24] Hey, what is it in your culture that helps you express joy in God?
[00:25:31] What is it in your culture that you think that is? I really hold on to that because that helps me express my. My joy in God.
[00:25:39] And maybe something else. Maybe what in our culture is hard? It's hard when we come together. What in your culture is hard?
[00:25:49] Difficult. As we come together and join with one another. Maybe that's a couple of questions that you can discuss over foods and as we go back and spend time with one another. But let's return to worship.
[00:26:04] Let's honor, let's display our love for our gods.
