The Culture of God

Thank you again, Mr. Hanson. You're all in fine voice today. Very beautiful special music. Well, many of you have had an opportunity to travel before. Some of you have actually traveled extensively. Whenever you have an opportunity to travel and to visit another country, you become immersed in the culture of that people. Chances are very good before you go anywhere, especially if it's an international trip, that you've taken a little bit of time before you've left to read up on that culture. Maybe you even have some cursory understanding of their language, of their history, maybe their art, their music, food, games, things like that, which can kind of help you to adjust to the differences between their culture and your own.

But no matter what you do, there's often a degree of culture shock that goes on when you visit places that are culturally significantly different from your home country. Culture shock goes through a series of relatively defined stages. At first, you're generally positive and curious. You're interested to try everything. You want to go out there and check it all out. You anticipate your new experiences very positively. You're excited. As time goes on, though, that positivity can begin to give way to a little bit of negativity as you start to ask the question of, why don't they just do things the way we do it in the States?

Why doesn't it do it just this way? I don't understand. It's just not right. It's not how it should be done, right? As you begin to adjust a little bit more to the culture, you start to look a little more objectively. You realize that it's not wrong. It's just different. You know, it's not wrong. It's just different. And over time, you begin to adjust, and you honestly, at times, begin to feel a sense of belonging and sensitivity to the host culture. You become comfortable. You begin to become comfortable in that particular culture. After a long enough period of time in that culture, you can actually reach a point where you get reentry shock when you come home, in that you have adjusted so much to the culture and the place where you were that when you come home, it feels foreign.

And that can happen quite a bit, usually on longer trips or perhaps subsequent trips. When you're only gone for a couple of weeks, you don't really have a chance to go through all those stages. You know you're not going to go from stage one through five in a couple of weeks. But as you start to make multiple trips to an area, as you start to become more and more comfortable, you begin to work your way through all of these things. Additionally, when you go to a location, especially for a couple of weeks, or a few weeks, even more than that, you really only have the opportunity to scratch the surface of the culture.

You really only have an opportunity to really scratch the surface of the culture. Whereas a longer trip or a subsequent trip, you know, more than one trip, can begin to show you deeper levels of that culture.

I finally have reached the point after four trips over to West Africa that I feel comfortable in West Africa. I feel like it's kind of a second home, in a way. It took a while. It wasn't initial, you know, the first couple of trips. It was certainly not that way. But sociologists have identified three levels to culture. They call them surface, shallow, and deep culture. And this is something we talked about quite a bit in education, because when we were dealing with students who were ESL students who had come from other locations, it was very important that they understood the various aspects of American culture, but not only that, that we understood the various aspects of their culture.

So the best analogy that I can give you on this, if you want to picture the thought process of surface and shallow and deep culture, is think of an iceberg. The upper portion of the iceberg that's out of the water that is visible, that you can see, that's surface culture. Just underneath the water, just under the water and down a little bit, is your shallow culture, and then the bottom of that iceberg is your deep culture.

So kind of keep that in your head as we talk a little bit about this. Surface culture are the things that you see most easily. Those are the things that are visible. Those are the things that you notice when you step into someplace new. For example, that's food. This is not what I eat at home. Right? It's food. It's music. It's art. It's language. It's clothing. It's the holidays that that culture keeps. It's the stories. It's the drama. It's the games. These are the visible things that you can see easily in a culture. For example, let's try to give you a little bit of an example here. If you've traveled to Mexico, or if you travel to Mexico, some of you have been there for Puerto Vallarta, for the feast, when you arrive in Mexico, you have an opportunity to experience Mexican cuisine.

You have a chance to taste authentic Mexican food. Now, we also have pretty authentic Mexican food here, which is very nice. You have an opportunity to listen to traditional Mexican music. You have a chance to see traditional clothing at times. You have a chance to experience traditional dance. This is all surface-level culture. This is all surface-level culture.

These are observable patterns that are consistent to the country as a whole. Now, you go a little bit below the surface of that surface culture. You start to get into that shallow culture a little bit. These are places where people will make social faux pas. These are the unspoken rules. These are the things that exist that you don't necessarily know about.

You may, depending on the circumstances, step right in the middle of something that you didn't realize you stepped right in the middle of. This might be related to eye contact. One of the things we talk about in education, especially, is certain students' Asiatic countries in particular. Vietnam is one of these. Where eye contact with a person who is older and more respected than you is avoided. You, as a teacher, are expecting that this person is being very disrespectful. They won't even look me in the eye when we talk. On the other hand, they're saying, Why is this person staring at me? I'm averting my eyes because I'm trying to show respect. So there's kind of some stuff that's lost in translation there in this shallow culture. In addition, there's things like personal space. If you've ever been to any of our national parks when there are large amounts of Asiatic tourists, you'll notice personal space is not really a thing.

There are certain cultures that don't have as much of a feeling on personal space as other cultures do. America, we like our bubble. We love our bubble in America. It might be acceptable food sources. One of the things that kind of surprised me about Nigeria when I first traveled over there was that the inquiry regarding a person's family at the beginning of a conversation has to be maintained.

And so if you try to just blow right past that and conduct business, so to speak, if you're trying to get to the point, you've got to stop and you've got to talk about family for a while. You've got to ask how their family is.

They're going to ask how yours is. You're going to talk about, oh, I understand that your mother's been sick and she's feeling better. Oh, that's so wonderful. I'm so glad to hear that. One of the other things that was a bit of a surprise when I went there the first time was, in the United States, we shake hands and we release. Over there, they shake hands and they hold. And so your conversation is happening while your hands are still being held, which is, for somebody who's not used to that, kind of a surprise.

It's kind of an adjustment. It might look like tempo of work. It might look like child-rearing principles, or even concepts of time. We jokingly refer to island time. Island time is a thing. It absolutely is a thing. All of these things are unspoken. All of these things are these little rules that exist under the surface of a culture. And you can't necessarily observe them immediately. Often you find them by breaking them.

That's usually how you figure it out, it seems like, unless there's ways of finding out up front what they are. But these are things that are not necessarily said out loud. They just kind of are. I tried to find you a few examples, some that are kind of fun, hopefully. You may not realize, for example, eating or drinking while on a train in Japan is offensive. So, you know, we do that all the time here.

Eat and drink on a train. Don't do it in Japan. It's offensive. Or that once you get off that train, you shouldn't open your own taxi door. Typically it'll be opened for you, or popped by a remote and opened for you. If you're to wear your shoes into a home in China, you send a very strong message of disrespect to the homeowner. Don't want to show off the bottom of your feet, either, in that culture. In France, the bread is not before the main course.

The bread is intended to be eaten with a meal. In addition, for shopkeepers and local individuals, you want to use the local language as often as possible. They don't appreciate it when you come in and say things in English. They want you to greet them in French. In Italy, unless you want to look like a tourist, don't order a cappuccino after 10.30 in the morning. Milk is filling. It's only supposed to be taken as breakfast. It's an early morning thing.

Be really careful with hand gestures in Brazil. Certain hand gestures that are perfectly normal here in the United States are offensive in Brazil. In Greece and other parts of Europe, you don't want to neglect the kiss with the hug when you greet somebody. That's something that happens in the United States, especially if it's not what we do. Again, we've got that bubble. The bubble is important. But in other parts of the country, you're greeting with a kiss and a hug.

Don't chew gum in Singapore and keep your hands off of people's heads and feet in Thailand. The head is sacred and the feet are unclean. So there are these little things you wouldn't know unless someone had broken that rule accidentally and then came to describe it to others so that they didn't ultimately break that rule. These are more or less unspoken cultural standards. Now, these start to tread slightly into belief. They start to tread into cultural understanding that are much more than just food and drink, much more than music, much more than clothing and art. It digs into what does it mean to be a person in this culture?

What does it mean to be a person in this culture? What do you hold to be true? What do you understand? And what do you believe as a whole? As you start to move deeper, you reach the final stage. The final stage is known as deep culture. Again, if the model's an iceberg, surface culture is what you see and observe. Shallow culture is just under the water's surface for a little ways down, and then deep culture is the bottom of that iceberg.

And that is really defined as the collective unconscious of the culture. It is their beliefs. It's their norms. It is the thing that makes them who they are. And often, these things are not readily apparent in a culture. Unless you have a strong enough relationship with someone who can help you to understand these things. This isn't something that people necessarily talk about, frankly. It isn't something that people can always even identify.

These are underlying core beliefs and values. For example, this might be definition of kinship or group identity, what makes a family, what makes a tribe. It may be spirituality, cosmology, a notion of fairness and justice, kind of how they approach these topics. Overall worldview, concepts of self, attitude towards elders, attitude towards children, approaches to marriage, roles relating to age, gender, class, modesty, leadership, beauty, and the list goes on. These are things, again, that are underlying to the culture. And, frankly, they are often things that are the root causes for why certain things are expressed at the surface.

They are the reason or the cause, so to speak, for the effect that is at the top. So, by way of example, because this is kind of hard to follow sometimes, maybe hard to understand, consider what you might define to be American surface culture. Think about what a person would visually see in America that would make American surface culture. So, if you were to visit America, if you were someone who was not born and raised here, what would you see culturally?

How would you identify the food, the clothing, the music? What are our unspoken rules? What are the things that people don't realize when they come here and accidentally break? To give you a perfect example, we get in lines here.

When I got into New York City, we went through customs and immigration, and people were coming from various places around the world and just picking up the little line barriers and going underneath them. To which, finally, some customs agent in New York lost her mind and started just screaming at the top of her lungs at a bunch of people who didn't speak English and are looking at her with eyes the size of a dinner plate, like, what did we do? I don't know what we did. We weren't in a line. Everybody else was in a line. That's kind of an American thing. We like lines.

What are things that a visitor might not know until they make a mistake and break one of those unspoken rules? What are our core beliefs? What do we as Americans hold as core values that define all of those other things? What makes us American? Now, I won't ask you to make a list, but it's interesting to consider.

There are aspects of American culture that are present in the United States, despite the fact that we're a melting pot. Obviously, we've got lots of different cultures here in this country, and there's bits and pieces from a lot of different cultures. But even with all of that melting pot, there are still certain concepts, certain attitudes and beliefs that are uniquely American. Americans value their independence. We are a fiercely independent lot. We are individualistic. We are independent, and we are individualistic.

And that can manifest itself in a general sense of, You can't tell me what to do. I will do what I want, when I want, and how I want it, because I'm an American. Is that not one of our core values? Is that not what we hold and what we cherish? Our individualism and our identity?

Our independence? Americans as a whole believe in equality, which does not necessarily allow for the same kind of hierarchies based on age or class that other cultures experience. We tend to think of everyone being equal in that way, and so we don't have this necessarily hierarchy at times. We're relatively informal when compared with the rest of the world. We are fairly informal when we compare with other cultures. You might say we as Americans are direct.

We say what's on our minds. We're not so worried about the repercussions. Other cultures are very polite, very respectful, do not want to offend, are very, very careful about what they say. We as Americans are very direct. We're competitive. Did you say we're competitive? Yeah, we're probably competitive. We're a little rebellious. I mean, if we're honest with ourselves, we're a little rebellious. Take that England.

And honestly, the list could go on, right? The list could go on. This year's trip to Ghana marked my fourth trip to West Africa, English-speaking West Africa, and it was my first trip as the assistant senior pastor to the region. And so, as we have gone over there to both Nigeria and Ghana, two very different countries, two very different cultures, yet both are still West African.

And so there are similarities between the two countries, despite the fact that there are different cultures on the ground. Since this year's trip to Ghana was a return trip, and it wasn't the first time in the country, I had a chance to see it with different eyes. I had a chance to see the country and the people this year with very different eyes. I also had a chance to rekindle relationships that we'd started a couple of years ago, and to kind of deepen those relationships a little bit through this week. So as those relationships deepened, so does our understanding of the individuals, so does our understanding, ultimately, of the culture of the country. Now, what made this year different, the last time we went to Ghana, we had mostly Americans and a couple of folks from Malawi. This year we had no Americans, aside from Paul, Moody, and I, and instead we had three Kenyans and a Zambian. And so not only were we now looking at our experience and seeing our experience, we were seeing the experience through their eyes as well. Again, African country, African experience, but a very different culture from East Africa to West Africa. Ghana is very similar to Nigeria, Kenya, and Zambia, in that they were all former British colonies that became independent in the 60s. So all of them achieved their independence in the 1960s. Nigeria's independence was a little bit of a challenge. Shortly after they gained independence, there was a massive civil war, the offering crisis. And ultimately, after that, that has gone on for years and is still a little bit of flame today. But what was similar amongst all of these countries was that when the British came, they drew kind of an arbitrary line around the country, based on boundaries, based on, you know, whatever else. And inside of that line, in the case of Ghana, were 40 different languages that were spoken and 70 different dialects in that small country of Ghana. Now, Nigeria is a different story. Nigeria has 520 different languages and dialects that are spoken in Nigeria.

Each of those languages, each of those dialects represent a separate culture, separate traditions, separate tribes of individuals. Yet, they may be slightly related, but the British came in and said, Congratulations, all of you, 520, you are now Nigerians. And they're saying, what? We've been fighting this tribe for centuries, and now we're all on the same team. And so, as it's created, some issues with regards to that. But all of these languages, all of these dialects, all represent tribes of people with their own culture, their own tradition, their own customs. Let's turn over to Genesis 11. God is ultimately the originator of these languages. Genesis 11. And after God confounded the languages that babble, throughout time, the culture and the traditions that developed came about as a result of the situation that occurred in Genesis 11. So, let's go ahead and read that, just briefly. Kind of establish our context here. Genesis 11, we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 1. Genesis 11, verse 1, says, Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. What was God's instructions to them when He talked to Noah and the families that came from Noah and his sons? Genesis 9, verse 1, we won't turn there, but God told Noah, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. In other words, go outward from these places to a new location and settle and grow and prosper. And as they made their way east, they said, you know what? This looks great. Shynar looks awesome. Let's build a big city. Let's all stay here. After all, we don't want to be scattered over the entirety of the world. Yet that was God's instruction. God's instruction was go out, go out and settle, go out and grow and prosper. So the individuals that gathered in the plains of Shynar were pushing back against God's instructions. Lest again, we'd be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. Instead, what they did was they swapped to Babel. That singular language enabled them to plot and to plan in order to go against God. Build a city, build a tower. Verse 5, we see God's response. Often God kind of looks down, I think, on the plans of man and goes, that's cute. Nice try. No, we're going to do something different. That's what he did here. Genesis 11, verse 5, said, But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, Indeed, the people are one, and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. In other words, they can do whatever they want. They're able to communicate with each other. They can plan, they can plot. He says, Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language that they may not understand one another's speech. I always wondered what it would have been like to be a fly on the wall, you know, in this process, just to be able to see. You know, at one moment you can totally converse with one another. The next moment the guy next to you is going, like, What?

He's kind of looking more and more frightened. You know, it'd be so fascinating to be a fly on the wall in that process. Anyway, verse 8, So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, exactly like He was going to do at the beginning, and they ceased building the city. Therefore the name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the languages of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. From that point forward, man was divided by language.

They were isolated and divided by their different language groups.

And as you might imagine, you're not going to necessarily spend a whole lot of time with people you can't communicate with.

And so the individuals that spoke the same languages clustered together. As time went on, their civilizations grew. Cultures, traditions were passed on. At some point in time, perhaps some of those groups developed positive cultural things, but as often happened, negative cultural things were developed as well. They developed their own pantheons of gods, they developed their own traditions and cultures that were contrary to God's wishes. And as time went on, these cultures merged, they divided, and traditions again were passed on, and some were lost to history.

Down through the nations, down through time, these tribes and these people that we see on the earth today came about.

In Ghana, there are six primary ethnic groups. There's the Akan, there's the Moldogban, there's the Ewe, the Gangdangme, the Gurma, and the Gwang. That's the six primary ethnic groups. Now there's, again, like 40 more. But these are the biggest percentages.

Of these groupings, almost 50% of the population is Akan or Ashanti. It's the largest ethnic group by far. And the current king of Ghana, who is King Otom-Fu-Tutu II, is Ashanti. So as king, he represents about half of the population culturally. The other half of the population is just kind of there, and more or less respect him. From what I can gather, more or less respect him. But he is of Ashanti ethnicity. The vast majority of the brethren in our seven congregations in Ghana are Ashanti or Akan in their overall culture.

And so they speak Fanti. And there are a few other ethnicities represented, but primarily it's Akan. And as such, Fanti is the primary language, especially outside of the bigger cities. So you go out into the villages, out into Agona, out into Konyakkou and Winoba. It's Fanti almost exclusively. And as you might imagine, yes, English is the primary language of the country. But if you don't use it semi-regularly, because everyone in your village doesn't use it, and you're just speaking the local dialect, you start to get a little bit rusty.

And so we actually have an experience in Ghana where, even though English is the primary language, a great number of our brethren are not strong in English. And many of them speak Fanti. So when we go, Paul and I gave split sermons in Agona for the first Sabbath that we were there, and they were run through Fanti interpretation. So I would say a line in English, he would say a line in Fanti.

I would say a line in English, he would say a line in Fanti. You might imagine a 30-minute split sermon gets to be about 15 minutes awfully quick from a standpoint of what you're able to prepare. But that's not a bad thing either. In Agona, we have a building in Abrema Gona, and it's the only local church building, really, for miles. And so what we've seen is we've seen kind of an interesting phenomenon.

A number of the people who live in the village come to Sabbath services. Now, are they completely converted? Are they called at this point in time? No, not necessarily.

But they're learning. God may be opening their minds. It's hard to know for sure. But this is the closest church that they go to. And so they come and they meet on the Sabbath, and they listen, and they learn. And so it's kind of an interesting situation in that regard. But these individuals are still learning. And so the basic spiritual principles are that which is important. The second Sabbath that we were there, the brethren from Accra came. Many of the brethren in Accra hold advanced college degrees. They are very fluent in English, and translation was not necessary. You're able to get a lot more in-depth and a lot more focused on the message that you're giving.

Those at the camp we had, youth-wise, were made up of the Akan tribe. They were made up of the Ewe and the Gewang. So we had three separate tribes of people who were present at our youth camp. And yet they were gathered together at camp because of something that they shared that was in common. Of the staff, we had people who were American. We had people who hailed from the Luya tribe and the Muru tribes of Kenya.

We had individuals who were Lo-Z from Zambia. Again, all different languages, all different traditions, all different cultures, all different experiences. The only shared thing that any of these individuals had was a calling from God. That is what brought them together. Let's turn over to Luke 24. Luke 24, again, as we build to our point here today. Luke 24, and we'll pick it up in verse 47. Luke 24, and verse 47. We see here the Word of God after His death. We see Christ here after His death and resurrection. We see that He's joined, He's taught His disciples, all again before His ascension. And we'll pick up...this is a parallel scripture or parallel passage to Matthew 28 and Mark 16.

So we see this great commission being given. Luke 24 and verse 47 said, well, we'll go up to 46.

And we know the story. We know that at the day of Pentecost that year that God poured out His Holy Spirit upon those who were repented and were baptized. We know that that message of repentance and remission of sin, that gospel message, went out. It was preached to the world beginning again at Jerusalem. It went out from there. And as time has gone on, that message has continued to go out. God's calling was spread through the apostles and through their travel. Now we know from John 6 and verse 44 that those who come to Christ do so through the call of the Father. We know that. It's what John 6 44 states. God the Father does the calling. He draws the individual to Him through Christ. Again, of God and through Christ. It's not an accident. It's not something you stumble on. It's not something you choose. God opens your mind to the truth and gives you an opportunity to understand His way. In fact, let's turn to 2 Thessalonians 2 and verse 13. 2 Thessalonians 2. We'll see God calls individuals through His Spirit working with them. 2 Thessalonians 2. And we'll pick it up in verse 13. Here again Paul writing here to the brethren in Thessalonika says, But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. Verse 14. To which He called you by our gospel for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or by our epistle. And so we can see that that gospel message went out, that those individuals, their brains, their hearts were pricked. They had opportunity to consider it. They had opportunity to think about it. Their minds had been opened to God's truth through that sanctification by the Spirit and through their exposure to the truth, either in the gospel of the kingdom of God or through the epistles that were written to them. Now they responded to that truth. They were convicted of the need to change, the need to repent. So we heard about in the first message in order to have their sins remitted, and they began to transform their lives as God's Spirit worked with them. This calling hasn't stopped. It didn't stop with the death of the apostles. It has gone on through time, and it continues even today.

And that calling, brethren, it's not just to those of us who are here in the United States. That calling has gone out to the Ashanti. It's gone out to the Yoruba and the Evo peoples of Nigeria. It's gone out to the Luya, to the Maru, and to the Kombu peoples of Kenya. The Lozi of Zambia. To those who speak French, who speak Portuguese, who speak Spanish.

Brethren, the list goes on. The Word of God and the Gospel of the Kingdom of God is going out into the world, and it's regardless of individual language and culture, it's regardless of location, it's going out. Ghana and Nigeria are not the only English-speaking West African countries. There's Sierra Leone, there's Liberia, there's the Gambia. And we have had contacts from every single one of those countries. We have had individuals who have reached out and have said, Where can I meet? Where is a church that is close to me? And unfortunately, there isn't right now in Liberia and Sierra Leone and the Gambia. There's not enough Paul to go around. There's not enough Paul Moody to go around. We've had individuals from Ghana, we've had individuals from Nigeria make contact with these people in these other countries, and they have remained in contact. But travel in some of those areas is difficult. It's hard to get the visas, it's hard to make the travel. It's difficult to do. But God is calling people out of their respective cultures. He's calling them from their tribes. And He's calling them to become a part of a new tribe. And that tribe is potentially a tribe that is made up from every country on the face of the earth. It's God's ecclesia. Let's turn over to Revelation 7. Revelation 7, which is such an encouraging passage. And as we turn there, and as we think about this, this tribe that God is calling us into is a tribe that is taught in the traditions of God. Not the traditions of man, but the traditions of God.

It is a tribe that's taught the Word of God, and it's a tribe that's taught the way of God. And that way and that word supersedes culture. It supersedes nationality, it supersedes tribal identity. In fact, we can see in the book of Galatians, it didn't matter if you were Jew or Greek, it does not matter if you were a frontier twee. It doesn't matter if you're American. He is asking every single one of us that he is calling to do the exact same thing. To align ourselves with his cultural core values. To align ourselves with him and the values that he has. And the values that he has when we align ourselves with them should affect our surface culture. And it should affect our shallow culture.

Revelation 7, we see a vision that was provided to John of the multitude that came through the Great Tribulation. Look at how these individuals are described. It's just such a cool passage. Revelation 7 and verse 9 says, With palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice, saying, Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from? And I said to him, Sir, you know. So he said to me, These are the ones who came out of the Great Tribulation, and washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple. And he who sits on the throne will dwell among them. They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore. The sun shall not strike them nor any heat. For the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters, and God will wipe away every tear from their eye. Note they are not wearing their traditional cultural dress. They are not speaking a variety of languages while they cried out together with a loud voice. Their robes are white. They are crying out that salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne and to the Lamb, and they are doing that together in one voice.

Brethren, God is calling you out of your culture to something greater. He is calling, just like he is calling people in Ghana and Nigeria and all over the world out of their cultures, to something greater. He is calling you out of your tribe, so to speak to. He is asking you to become a part of something different. And what that means is that it means leaving behind the trappings of your culture and taking on his culture.

Becoming a part of a new tribe, unlearning your own cultures and traditions, and walking away from them when they are in conflict with the culture of God. And the trick is that calling is now. That calling for us is now. That opportunity is now. That mandate for us to unlearn our culture is now.

In Africa, that is sometimes a relatively simple identification at times as to what is okay and what is not okay. From a standpoint of what is compatible with God's culture and what is not. In some cases in Africa, it is easily seen. It is visible. We have mentioned this before, but there is a degree of corruption and bribery that is built into the system. And it just fits normal. Anything that is going to be done is going to cost more because you have to factor the bribes in.

You have to factor the payoffs in. You have to factor all those things in in order to have the price of business. Kind of like permitting here in the States. There is tribal medicine. There is ancestral magic, which accompanies some of that medicine that occurs, which is clearly in opposition and is incompatible with God's culture. But it happens. There is a culture of polygamy in West Africa that is incompatible with God's culture. There is a culture of people going and taking wives. As we were talking with some of the individuals from Kenya, it happened in Kenya, too, and we got to talk.

And they said, you know, it is interesting. They never take an older wife. The second wife is never older. It is always younger. It gives you an idea as to the motivations. One thing that is kind of interesting in the last couple of trips, I have noticed, is America's rap and hip-hop culture, and all of its trappings, has begun to take root in West Africa as well. In fact, I witnessed a young man this trip that was taking a video for a friend and he is dancing around with his middle fingers out, because that is what you see on MTV, and that is what you see on VH1, and that is what you see on rap television.

That is something that has to be overcome. That is an aspect of culture that has to be overcome. In Africa, some of these things are a little more visible. Polygamy is kind of visible. Ultimately, the use of black magic and witchcraft is kind of visible. Some of these things are very visible. But what about us? What about us here in America? Are we immersed in God's culture now?

Are we experiencing His culture, His language, His traditions, as we go through our daily life? Do we imitate Christ? Do we follow in His steps? Or are we just another American? Kind of holding on to our personal, cultural core beliefs of justice and individuality, of rebelliousness, of a general distaste of being told what to do. It is a relatively unpopular opinion, but I am going to say it anyway. God is not an American. God is not calling people to become Americans. God is calling people to be His children, to live by His culture.

What does God's culture look like? What does it look like? Just like any culture, there's shallow and there's deep aspects to it. There's what you see, and then there's the core values underneath it. Maybe on the shallower side, and not shallow in a negative way. Please don't take that the wrong way, but shallower because it's up towards the surface, invisible.

On the shallower side, there's the holy days that we keep. That's visible. There's the Sabbath. There's the food laws. There's the worship that we, or the music that we worship God with. There's our clothing. There's our dress. How we act, what we say. Those are all things that are observable. Now, as you start to move deeper down that iceberg, so to speak, as you start to move deeper in the culture, you get to the reasons for some of those things.

Our belief in the importance of modesty and our respect for God drives how we dress. So what's up here on the shallow side, up here on the surface, comes from the core belief that's down here. Our focus on worshiping God is He desires to be worshipped, drives our keeping of the holy days and the Sabbath. We keep the holy days. We keep the Sabbath because God says, these are my feasts.

These are my feasts. As we desire to please God, that drives our obedience. But you know, at the deepest layer of culture, if you go down to the very, very bottom, you see the changes that occur at our core as we work to become more like Jesus Christ. The humility, the respect, the love for others that we put on at the expense of ourselves. Right? The forgiveness that we show others because of the forgiveness that we received. The obedience and the respect that we have for God's authority that we illustrate to Him by yielding our lives.

And again, that transformation that occurs at our core as we yield ourselves to God's Spirit. God desires that we transform ourselves to become more like His Son. I'd like to take just a brief three quick scriptures, just to provide three quick, cursory, basic examples of what becoming more Christ-like looks like. What yielding ourselves to God's culture looks like. Let's turn first to 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter 2.

1 Peter 2, and we'll pick it up in verse 19. 1 Peter 2, and verse 19 says, 1 Peter 2, and we'll pick it up in verse 19.

We appreciate, as Americans, you know, it's really not. Our cultural norms tend to be focused on fairness, on equity, on justice. And so when we have suffered wrong, we want to plead our case. We want to tell everyone that we meet why this injustice occurred. We want to right the wrong. And that's just who we are. That is who we are at our core. And yet God says at His core, this is what we should be, willing to suffer wrongfully. And so what that means, not reviling in return, not, you know, threatening, not acting out, it means that we might suffer significant wrongdoing in this life. We may. And we really don't know exactly what it's going to look like. But the question is, which culture will we respond from? Will we respond from the culture of our birth, the one that we're being called out of? Or will we respond to the one we're being called into? Responding from God's core values in the way that He would desire us to respond. Let's go to Matthew 5, another example. Matthew 5. We'll pick it up in verse 43. Oops. Matthew is not after Romans, in case anybody was wondering. It's much earlier. Matthew 5, verse 43 through 48. Matthew 5 and verse 43 says, You have heard, it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Verse 48, Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. Love your enemies. Love your enemies. Can we honestly say that we love our enemies? Can we honestly say that we bless those who curse us? Can we honestly say that we do good to those who hate us, and pray for those who spitefully use and persecute us? It flies absolutely in the face of American culture. America does not bulk in the face of her enemies. America defeats her enemies, both foreign and domestic. That is what we do as Americans. We don't forgive, we don't spare, we rain fire down on their heads. That has been our pattern for centuries. That's the American way. What is God's way?

What is God's way? Christ taught that we should love our enemies, which is a fundamental change in mindset. It's a fundamental change in mindset. Again, are we immersed in our culture of origin, or are we immersed in God's culture? Let's go to John 17. John 17, we'll take a look at our final example here. There are plenty more. In fact, I would encourage you, as you go through your own personal study this week, look for these surface bits of culture, look for these deep core-value-type bits of culture, and see if you can identify more and more of these as you start to read through, especially now that you're looking at and thinking about that particular topic.

See if you can find some others. John 17, verse 20, we see Jesus here praying near the end of his life here in the Garden of Gethsemane. He says, I do not pray, verse 20, for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word. Again, that's us. That they all may be one, as you, Father, are in Me, and I in you, that they may also be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent Me.

And the glory which you gave Me, I have given them, that they may be one, just as we are one. I in them, and you in Me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that you have sent Me, and have loved them as you have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you gave Me, may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory, which you have given Me.

For you loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these have known that you sent Me. And I have declared to them your name, and will declare it, that the love with which you loved Me may be in them, and I in them. You know, Christ's Prayer in John 17 illustrated His intentions for us after His death, illustrated His desire for us as we come together, and we work to fulfill our calling.

And brethren, the fulfillment of this Prayer is on us. It's on us. It's not something that's just going to happen. It's on us. Christ desired that we be one, that we be unified, as He and the Father are unified, together in such a strong, close-knit relationship. But He desired that we be able to be together in unity, that we maintain doctrine, we give respect to one another. American culture is focused on the individual.

It's a very individualistic culture. And as a result, if you look around society around us today, in American culture, as a result of that individualism, and frankly our tendency to not necessarily like to be told what to do, we have a number of individuals around us who have determined their own, as you might have heard it, personal truth. They've defined it for themselves. Is that what God desires in His culture? Everyone deciding for themselves. Or does God utilize ways to teach and to guide? Does God desire that group of people from every tribe and every tongue in Revelation 7 all be on the same page?

I think so. I think so. And that's just a couple of examples. If we are not careful when we experience life, when life happens, our response, our actions and our attitudes can come from our culture of origin as opposed to working to yield to God's culture in our lives. Brethren, God is calling many in the world today. He's calling people from the United States, from Canada, from Mexico, Central South America, West Africa, Central South, East Africa.

He's calling them from Europe, He's calling them from Asia, He's calling them from South Pacific and Australia. We had a feast night in Tonga last year. That is awesome. That is absolutely incredible. They are people of many tongues, they are people of many ethnicities and many cultures, and God is calling them out of their respective cultures, out of their tribes, and He's asking them to walk away from the culture and the traditions of this world, and instead put on the traditions and the cultures of God and of His family.

It's kind of interesting, if you think about it, that which He separated so many years ago, He's beginning to collect again. They were sent out, they were dispersed, they were moved to these areas, and now God is starting to call them back, to bring them into His family, so that they can live this way of life as ambassadors to the world around us, teaching the world that God's way works. But it's extremely important for us, I think, to consider that just as He is calling those in Ghana, those in Nigeria, out of their own cultures, while it still may not look the same or necessarily feel the same, He's calling us out of our culture, too.

He's calling us out of our culture, too. And it's really easy and it's very visible to look at these other cultures and say, well, yeah, that makes sense. But there are issues in our own culture, too, that need to be overcome to become a part of God's culture. So again, as you consider God's culture, as you go through your own personal study this week, I would encourage you to look for those deep aspects, look for those core values of who and what God is, look for how those core values will impact that surface level stuff of what we see and how we act and what we say.

Again, these things that drive our attitude and our speech. And really consider, as you go through this week, whether you're imitating Christ in the culture of God or whether you're still reacting and still interacting as an American. It's good to be home. I look forward to catching up with all of you here as the rest of this evening. Hope you all have a wonderful remainder of your Sabbath.