Week 27 | July 7

“Biblical Wokeness”
“Woke” is the word of the day. If you spend
anytime watching, reading, or surfing the
news, you will have come across this word.
In decades past, one would speak of being
“woken up” from slumber. Today, that word
has shifted from a somnial meaning into an
Biblical Perspectives on ideological one. Merriam-Webster’s
Current Issues dictionary (itself fallen into wokeness)
defines that word as American slang
suggesting an awareness of and attention to key facts or issues.
suggesting an In most contexts, “woke” is
often used in reference to some social or political issue. The Bible speaks less about being
“woke” and more about being “washed.”

The woke ideology, when in the context of social issues, often speaks of oppression or the
oppressed. This ideology claims that a certain subset of culture – those who are in power,
have the wealth, and carry the influence – are awakened to their privilege by listening,
assenting, and submitting to the experience, opinions, and perspective of “the oppressed.”
Continued on page 3
This week at APC: W o r s h i p a n d S t u d i e s - P a g e 2
Worldview Wednesday - Page 3

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 Lord’s Day Worship
July 11| 10:00 AM

This Sunday, I continue in my summer

sermon series on the minor prophets by
looking at Micah 2:6-13. Micah's
prophecies are broad in scope but stem
from one common error.

Scripture of the Week

II Chronicles 7:12-18

Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer
and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens
so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence
among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray
and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will
forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the
prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that
my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. And as for
you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all that I
have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your
royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to
rule Israel.’

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I put that latter group in quotation marks
because it is the woke ideology who defines
who “the oppressed” are. I can tell you they are
not the millions of Christians who are
imprisoned, exiled, and executed in third-
world countries. The “oppressed” are the
privileged minorities of America. I add
“privileged” because there are thousands – if
not millions – of people who would give up
anything and everything just to set foot on this
soil. And indeed, many have, but immigration Continued from page 1
is a topic for another week.

Wokeness focuses in on the oppression of one group over another. Now, to be fair, there is
oppression. At times, both in history and today, some groups have used oppression to
silence, subjugate, and shame other groups. For the woke crowd, however, that oppression
is only one way. The Bible clearly views the sin of oppression as multilateral. Which is why
no Christian can be “woke.”

One reason for this is because woke ideology presupposes inequality. Yet, the Bible is
unambiguous, all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. Woke ideology would argue
only one group has sinned and that group is the hegemony. But the main reason wokeness
is unbiblical is because the Bible tells us how we are “awakened.” Or, biblically speaking,
regenerated.

The Christian doesn’t speak of woke but quick. In the Apostles’ Creed we confess Christ
“shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” That word “quick” is an old English one used
to describe something living. One of the many works of the Spirit is the quickening of
believers. Today, we mainly speak of this as regeneration or being born again. Paul
describes the type of worldviews, ideologies, and lifestyles that will not inherit the
kingdom of God: “neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor
homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers…”
(I Corinthians 6:9-10) He immediately turns on the Corinthian Christians by remind them
in verse eleven, “Such were some of you.” Paul’s list there isn’t comprehensive, so even
though you might not find yourself on that list, I am sure you can find yourself in any one
or several of the others (Rom. 1:26-32, Gal. 5:19-21, Col. 3:5-9, I Pet. 2:1, II Pet. 2:1-3, I Jn.
2:15-17).

In that same I Corinthians 6:11, the Apostle goes on to describe what the Christian is. I tell
you, he is not “woke.” Rather, true believers are “washed…sanctified…justified.” All three
of these are “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” Notice, it is
God the Son and the God Holy Spirit who bring about this three-fold state in God the
Father’s elect. Wokeness presupposes individuals have the power to change themselves.
The Bible presupposes that every individual is dead in trespasses and sins. (Ephesians 2:1) I
ask you, Reader, can dead things resurrect themselves? Absolutely not!

Only when a person is washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of Jesus and the Holy
Spirit will that person be able to see and affect positive change in his/her social condition.
Unless and until that happens, no amount of wokeness will change anything.

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