[Music]
I want to invite you to take God's word and turn to the
Second Chapter of James.
We're going to begin reading in Verse 1 through the
10th Verse. James is talking about real religion. Real
religion. That is life in Christ. A genuine faith in
Christ. When you hear the word religion what do you think? You
might think of words like ritual, ritualistic,
religiosity. You may think of words like rules and
restrictions, but when James talks about real religion at the
close of Chapter 1, and remember there were no chapters or verse
numbers when this passage was written, The Letter of James,
but it just all flows together. As he talks about real
religion, true religion as compared to false religion,
religion, in a good sense is the outward expression of the inward
experience because religion works as life works. Real
religion, someone said the Book of James is religion in shoe
leather. It's about beliefs that affect our behaviors. D.L.
Moody, the famed evangelist of the 19th century, once said that
the Bible should be bound in shoe leather. That's descriptive
because it's about walking the walk as well as talking the
talk. Real religion includes, as we saw at the end of Chapter 1
last week, a controlled tongue. We manage our mouths. A
compassionate heart. We care for the widows and orphans, those
most vulnerable in our society, and we live a consecrated life,
so a controlled tongue, a compassionate heart, a
consecrated life un-spotted from the world. With that we take up
our reading in Chapter 2 Verse 1. "My brothers, show no
partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine
clothing comes into your assembly and a poor man in
shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the
one who wears the fine clothing and say, 'You sit here in a good
place,' while you say to the poor man, 'You stand over there
or sit down at my feet,' have you not made distinctions among
yourselves and become judges," watch this, "with evil thoughts?
Listen my beloved brothers. Has not God chosen those who are
poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom
which he has promised to those who love Him, but you have
dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress
you and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the
ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which we are called? If
you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you
shall love your neighbor as yourself and you are doing well,
but if you show partiality, favoritism, you are committing
sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors, for whoever
keeps the whole law, but fails in one point has been
accountable for all of it." The religion of our Lord Jesus
Christ changes lives. Someone said, "If you religion hasn't
changed your life, you need to change your religion." We don't
preach religion; we preach Jesus Christ. Christ, the reality of
Christ living us changes the way we practice our faith. This
passage tells us what true religion is compared to false,
futile, worthless religion does and does not do. When we walk
with Jesus we will walk in love and welcome people, and treat
people right. Every one. I'm calling this message church.
Where everybody is somebody and Jesus is Lord. Where everybody
is somebody and Jesus Christ is Lord. How do you treat people?
Especially people who are different than you? Especially
people you don't know very well? James talks to us about the
danger of discrimination, the peril of prejudice, the sin of
snobbery. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is not a snooty
religious country club. It is a place where everyone is welcome.
The scripture says, in 1 Samuel 16:7, that God doesn't look on
the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. Jesus never
showed partiality. He welcomed everyone from the smallest child
to the outcast to the up and outs, the down and outs. He was
not impressed with social or cultural or racial or even
religious standing. God cares absolutely nothing about any of
that. What people look like, or their professions, or their
success, or lack of success, their standing in life or the
strata of life. God is no respecter of persons according
to 2 Chronicles 19. God is not a sinner. There is no iniquity in
Him. There is no respecting of persons with God. We put people
in various categories and classes don't we? It comes
natural to us. We categorize people in terms of affluence or
lack of affluence, age, appearance, accomplishment, all
these categories. There are no categories with God, well, there
is one category really, saved or lost. Those who know Jesus and
those who don't know Jesus, but God doesn't look on the
exterior. God doesn't play favorites. God doesn't look at
the skin. He looks at the heart.
Therefore, faith and favoritism are not
compatible in the Christian life. God is impartial and
therefore, those who know God and follow Jesus are also to
become impartial. It is a lifelong struggle for all of us,
but remember the goal in the Book of James is becoming mature
in Christ. Becoming more like Jesus. I know this, everyone is
loved and leveled at the cross. Everyone is loved and leveled at
the cross. The gospel of Jesus Christ which is the gospel that
God so loved the world, everyone in it, that he gave his only
son. Jesus bled and died for all and he rose again on the third
day. The gospel is the great equalizer. We're all leveled and
loved at the cross. We're all sinners who need a savior and
when we come to Jesus our lives are changed. The gospel is for
all. It's not the American gospel, or the European gospel,
or the African gospel, or the Asian gospel. It's the gospel of
the Lord Jesus Christ. It's for anyone and everyone. It's
amazing grace for every race. We're told to go into all the
world and preach the gospel of Christ. Real religion loves
without limits. It loves without liables and it loves without
labels. We are called to go outside our own comfort zone and
to welcome all into the family of God. We're to welcome the
stranger, to receive the sinner as Jesus did, those who are
outsiders, those who are outcasts, we're to love all,
rich or poor, educated or illiterate, cultured or crude.
No one is to be excluded from Christ and therefore, no one is
to be excluded from the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Everybody is somebody in His body. Now, with that principle
in place, James gives us a story. This evidently was a
problem in the first century church as well as the
twenty-first century church and everything in between. James
tells us about two guys who go to church. First guy goes to
church, guy walks into a church, not into a bar, into a church.
Guy walks into a church and it is obvious that this guy's got
it going on in his life. He's dressed like he just walked out
of GQ. His clothing is fine. Literally is shining. It's
shimmering. He lights the place up. Beautiful and brilliant and
he's wearing gold rings. Literally, he's gold fingered.
This is Mr. Goldfinger. He's got rings on his finger, bling on
his neck, and it's obvious that he's got money. He's got
self-worth and net worth. He's a billionaire. When he walks in
the usher takes notice of Mr. Goldfinger and says, "Oh, sir.
Come on in. I've got just the seat for you." He takes
Goldfinger and brings him down to the best sear in the house.
Now, I like good seats, don't you? I mean, if somebody is
going to give me tickets to something, I get to the event
and it's a really good seat, I like that a lot. We all like
good seats. Not a problem with the good seats. He gets the good
seat right down front and center because the usher, of course, is
thinking, "This person is important. He's a VIP. We're
taking care of this guy because he just might do something for
the church. Then another guy walks in the church. This guy is
right off the streets. He's not dressed in fine clothing. He's
dressed in rags; in fact, he's shabby. He's maybe even
homeless. Financially this guy's got nothing working for him. He
has no net worth. He's told, "Go stand over there. Go sit over
there on the floor." Now, no problem in welcoming the rich
man. That's not the issue. Maybe the rich man was a lost man who
needed Jesus for all we know. No problem sitting the wealthy man
on the front row, the best seat in the house. That's not the
problem. Everyone is welcome, remember? Rich and poor. The
problem is on how the poor man was treated in comparison to the
rich man because while the rich man was viewed as worthy of the
best seat in the house, the poor man was seen as unworthy of any
seat in the house. He had no clout so he was out. "Sit over
there. Stand over there." The rich man was a somebody. The
poor man was a nobody in the eyes of the world. Therein lies
the problem. The Bible calls this here favoritism. There's a
word that also means snobbishness. It's a elitism.
The Bible says that snobbishness is sinfulness. This is not just
a social problem. This is a spiritual problem.
Discrimination and prejudice is more than preference. We all
have preferences, things we like, things we don't like.
That's normal. That's life. Sometimes our preferences can
turn into prejudices. That's when it becomes sin in our
lives. Partiality, playing favorites, looking on the
outside of a person and judging them instead of seeing the
person's heart as God would see them. This is more than just a
preference. It is, in the site of God, vicious sin, akin to
murder and thievery because the same passage compares partiality
or prejudice in the same sentence as murder and stealing,
so we can't say, "Well, it's just my little thing. My little
sin. That's the way I was raised. You know I came up in
the 50s or 60s. That's just the way I am." No, if you are in
Christ you are a new creation. You don't see things, you don't
see people the way you used to see people. Verse 4, that we
read earlier, says, "When you treat people like this, when you
discriminate against people based on their external
appearance, things they can't even change if they tried, are
you not," look at Verse 4, "are you not made distinctions among
yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts, vicious
thoughts? That among yourselves," notice this is the
sin of the church. You would expect this kind of behavior in
the world, right? But not in the church. It's been said that
prejudice in all its forms is ignorance. True. Prejudice is
arrogance, but it is more than ignorance, and it is more than
arrogance, it is vicious sin, evil sin in the heart of an
individual. We should know better. James, then, asks us a
question in Verses 5 and 6. Look at it again. Verse 5 he says,
"Listen my beloved brothers." Now, lest you think James is
about to hammer us for the sinfulness of this sin and this
kind of behavior, he says, "Now, listen beloved brothers." James
is a pastor and he's counseling us. Brothers and sisters, listen
to this. Pay attention to this. "Has not God chosen those who
are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the
kingdom?" Think about this, God loves and receives all who come
to Him in faith and in particular, God has an affection
for people who are poor. We see it all thought the Bible that
God loves the poor and that we as believers shall also love and
minister to the poor. Jesus hung out with the despised, the
disregarded, the diseased, the disrespected. He often did His
greatest work among the poor, the common people who heard Him
gladly, the outcast. God uses the poverty of the poor to give
them the richness of faith because when you recognize your
desperation and your poverty, you're a candidate for God to do
something great in your life, to minister his health and hope in
your life. The richness of His love towards you, but if you're
flying high, if you're rolling, we tend to get self-dependent
rather than God dependent. We see this in our own lives. Maybe
you started out like Deb and I did as college students getting
married. We didn't have hardly anything. We had a nice little
place to live in student housing and had a little money that we
made each month, but we were getting along just fine and
maybe you're like that. You started out slow and you were
poor, but you were rich in faith. You were rich in faith.
You're showing up and worshiping every Lord's day. You're serving
the Lord some way. You don't have much, but God's got all of
you. You've given your life to Him. You're tithing your income.
It's not much. A dime out of a dollar doesn't seem like much
until it becomes a thousand out of a ten thousand and ten
thousand out of a hundred thousand, right? Somehow that
all seems different. When we're just getting started there
weren't a lot of distractions, and then, along came our jobs
and our careers and with it the money, maybe the success comes
in, but with that, with the success comes stress, and then
the need to make more money. Before you know it you're
drifting spiritually. You started out poor in wealth and
rich in faith, but now you're poor in faith and rich in money.
You're price tags change. You have money to make, things to
do. Your priorities have changed. I dare say for a lot of
us, there was a time in our lives when we had less, but God
had more of us. That's the point that James is making, that when
you're poor, you're rich in faith. He goes on to say that
isn't it the rich that are oppressing the poor. Then, why
would you honor the rich and dishonor the poor? It can happen
to all of us. I've had to repent many times before I preached
this message. Attitudes and actions, because you see we
start valuing the wrong things in life and we start thinking
that our self-worth is all wrapped up in our net worth, but
it's not. Every man, every woman, is of infinite worth and
value to God and should be welcomed among Christians and in
the Christian church. Back to our story, rich man, poor man,
the problem of prejudice is when we indulge the wealthy and are
indifferent to the poor. That's the message. When we indulge the
wealthy and ignore or are indifferent to the poor, this is
anti-Christian behavior. It is. We're okay loving our neighbors
as long as we can pick our neighborhood. Nothing wrong with
living in a nice neighborhood; no problem with that. Just as we
said, it wasn't the man's wealth that was the problem. It was the
way he was treated as compared to the poor man. It's no problem
living in a nice neighborhood if God blesses you in the burbs.
The problem is when you close yourself off to people, either
in your neighborhood or out of your neighborhood, and no longer
see needs all around you. Anyone you find along your life's road,
who need you, is your neighbor. Therefore, we as the church of
Jesus Christ, those who love and follow Christ, we are to welcome
all and to reach out beyond ourselves and our own friends
and our own click. Remember, the church is not a club where
religious snobs get together and tell each other how wonderful we
are. We are the church designed not just for us, but those who
are not yet with us. I wonder how many people, not like this
poor man, at least he walked into church, at least he came
into church that day, I wonder how many people would never walk
into church because in their heart of hearts they think, "I
would never be accepted there. I would never be welcomed there. I
don't fit in there. Nobody cares for me there." How many? What
is the solution to the sin of discrimination? It's the
struggle for all of us at some level. The answer is the love of
Jesus Christ. Verse 8 James speaks of the royal law of God.
The royal law. The chief law. The king of all laws. What is
it? To love your neighbor as yourself. The full statement of
this great commandment given by our Lord, in summation of all
the law of God, is to love the Lord, your God, with all your
heart, your mind, your soul, your strength, and your neighbor
as yourself. Love
people. Tell people about Jesus because when you do you open up
your heart and your life and your world to make a difference
in somebody else's life.
[Music]
The book of James was written a
long time ago, 2000 years ago, to Christians who were dealing
with serious, significant problems just as we face today.
And the strong, direct words of James teach all believers how to
truly live our faith in times of testing, in tough times. The
Christian life isn't just about words but works as well. It's
about our conversations, our conduct, not simply our creeds
but our deeds. VISIBLE FAITH is about the faith that saves and
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us broadcast the transforming message of the gospel 'till the
whole world hears.
There's a well-known scripture that tells
us that man looks on the outward appearance but the Lord looks at
the heart, God sees the heart. You know, in all my years of
ministry I've observed few sins in the church as destructive as
favoritism and prejudice. But the gospel of Jesus Christ is
the great equalizer because it's more than trite to say that the
ground is level at the foot of the cross, we are all the same
when we come to Jesus Christ. When people come to our churches
who don't seem to fit in we need to make sure that we welcome
them, that we show them the exact kind of love and care that
you would expect from a family member or from your best friend.
The answer to favoritism and discrimination is of course
love, love, the love of God, the love of Jesus Christ and you as
a follower of Jesus can be a force for good when you show
unconditional love for others. Thank you for viewing each week.
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