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Dalton SDA Church

Chester Clark

God vs Discrimination

Well, today we are going to be taking another look at a well-known story, a story found in 1 Samuel chapter 17.

I don't need to tell you that we're living in an increasingly polarized world.

I don't need to tell you that men and women, boys and girls, young people and old people are feeling disenchanted, disenfranchised, overlooked, discriminated against.

Today we're going to be talking about God versus discrimination.

Discrimination is a big issue today, isn't it?

People are worried about it, people are thinking about it, people are talking about it, people are seeing it, and people are experiencing it.

Why is there such a problem as discrimination?

Well, I thought I'd just give an example.

Somebody's gonna say, look in the mirror Chester, why should you be talking about discrimination, right?

I probably don't know much about discrimination, except that it's everywhere.

And what I'm really here to talk with you more about is God.

The God part, because I believe that God holds the answer to the problem of discrimination.

Now it's interesting, I've known for a long time this fact.

The fact is that taller men earn more money.

Now there's been various theories about that.

I had students that were much more, you know, vertically gifted than I was Remind me of that at times as they look down at me and say, you know, taller people get more promotions and taller people make more money.

And by the way, that is very true in the pastoral ministry as well on average.

Almost any career, almost any vocation you look at is the reality.

But I read recently an article in the Telegraph which is a British paper And so some of the statistics are here in British pounds, not all in dollars, but we can do little quick conversions.

Basically this recent study, it eliminated the factors of environment.

In other words, some people are shorter because they were more malnourished.

They're less likely to be successful in life, right?

Some people are obese because of their poor environment, perhaps, their poor diet as they were being raised.

They would of course, you would assume, maybe be more or less successful in life.

But what they did is they tried to eliminate those factors and just look at genetics.

If you're taller or shorter because of your genes, if you're more slender or you're heavier because of your genes, that's what they wanted to look at, and this is what it said.

In the genetic lottery, slender women and tall men really do seem to have hit the jackpot, after a huge study that found height and weight are critical to future earnings.

For every 3 inches taller a man is, he will earn on average $2, 000 more a year.

Likewise, every extra stone a woman weighs, for you British mathematicians, What's a stone?

For every extra stone, it costs a woman about $2, 000 a year.

That means that a six-foot man is likely to earn an extra $100, 000 over a working lifetime compared to a colleague who is 5'9 like I am.

An overweight woman, in contrast, could see her lifetime earnings cut by more than 125, 000 in comparison with a trim female.

Now what I'm saying is that we have a problem.

Too often we think of discrimination just as sort of a binary problem, you know.

It's not there's all kinds of discrimination going on in this world and It's not fair It's not right.

The reality is that people look at Certain things when people look at us What do they see When people make decisions about our capabilities or our higher ability or about our promotability or whatever it may be, what do they see?

They see our size, whether we're tall or short, Whether we're slender or more healthy, whether we're attractive, what kind of dress we wear, whether they think we look intelligent or not, they see our race, our ethnicity, they see the car we drive, maybe the house we live in, the job we hold, and they make decisions based upon those things about our value and ability as a person.

Now it's no wonder that people feel disenfranchised, right?

It's no wonder that people begin to complain and say, well, it's not fair, because it's not fair.

I would dare venture that almost every single person has some handicap, some thing that's a negative that sort of counts against them, that in whatever culture, society, town, family, home they live in, they have something to overcome because it's an obstacle to success, however we were to define success.

But I have good news for you this morning.

We thank you that we can open your Word and find answers to our problems today.

Lord, we're living in a broken world, and we long for that country to be a part of that city whose builder and maker is God.

You have said that there will be new heavens and a new earth.

Old things will be passed away and all things will become new.

There will be a land in which righteousness dwells.

So Lord, as we look forward to that day, I pray that You'll prepare our hearts to live more like you now as we study today.

In our passage in 1 Samuel 17, verse 4, the Bible records the story, and a champion went out from the camp of the Philistines named Goliath from Gath, whose height was 6 cubits and a span." Now, 1 thing that we know about Goliath is that he was big.

No matter what we debate about these measurements and what they would actually can tally up to, he was big.

That was the point of giving his measurements here was to impress us the fact that he was big.

When we talk about his spear and how much it weighed, and his shield and how much it weighed, and his armor and his helmet and all the rest.

The purpose of all this data is to show us that Goliath was big.

And I would propose to you this morning that at the outset of 1 Samuel chapter 17, the very beginning here of this story of David and Goliath, which we are so familiar with, in this very first preamble, we find illustrated the power of human discrimination.

When people looked at Goliath, they were scared because he was big.

When people looked at Goliath, if they were a Philistine, they wanted to make him their champion because he was big.

What mattered with Goliath was how tall he was, how big he was, how strong he was, and he was the hero of his nation based on these external somewhat superficial qualities that Goliath possessed.

The problem with reading the story of Goliath if you were a little Philistine boy, was you probably weren't anywhere near his size.

The hero of the Philistines was someone who was a genetic or maybe even some sort of a hormonal abnormality, right?

It's hard to inspire someone, a little boy growing up and reading the story of Goliath, it's hard to inspire them to just have motivation to be very tall 1 day.

The problem with seeing as man sees and valuing what man values is that you place, in too often, in too many cases, you place high value on things that we can't change.

I can't change whether I'm good looking or homely.

Unless, I mean, it'd help if I did my hair, I'm probably better, but.

There are certain things I cannot change, right?

And the way man sees, man values those things that we have no power over.

The Bible says, can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard his spots?

Neither can you change your hearts, you who are accustomed to doing evil.

So humanity values and makes heroes out of people for certain qualities that some of us will never possess.

And it feels as a person who is somewhat inferior or viewed as inferior, we view ourselves as inferior in some way, discriminated against, no matter what that area in our life is that we feel we're being discriminated against, it feels as though we have no power.

I understand why they feel it isn't fair, because it isn't fair.

I'm thankful the story of David and Goliath, in the story of David and Goliath, I'm thankful that Goliath is the Philistine and David is God's instrument.

Because as we read the Bible, we discover, we discover that God is not limited by the things that man judges us by.

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God vs Discrimination

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