Yeah, so this is the week that you can definitely judge me more than any other week,
so you can decide how happy or sad you'll be when I'm leaving next week,
based on how this week goes.
If you would like to open up your Bibles,
and I encourage you always, whenever we're looking at the Bible together,
to open up your Bibles, whether that be the Church Bibles or otherwise,
to James chapter 2.
It is on page 1213 of the Church Bibles.
So that's James chapter 2, page 1213 of the Church Bibles here.
So it reads,
My brothers and sisters,
believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ
must not show favoritism.
Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine robes,
and fine clothes,
and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in.
If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes,
and say,
Here's a good seat for you,
but say to the poor man,
You stand there,
or sit on the floor by my feet.
Have you not discriminated among yourselves,
and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my dear brothers and sisters,
has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world
to be rich in faith,
and to inherit the kingdom he promised to those who love him?
But you have dishonored the poor.
It's not the rich who are exploiting you.
Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court?
Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?
If you really keep the royal law found in scripture,
love your neighbor as yourself,
you are doing right.
But if you show favoritism,
you sin,
and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.
For whoever keeps the whole law,
and yet stumbles at just one point,
is guilty of breaking all of it.
For he who said,
You shall not commit adultery,
also said,
You shall not murder.
If you do not commit adultery,
but do commit murder,
you have become a lawbreaker.
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom,
because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.
Mercy triumphs over judgment.
As we come to God's word this morning,
let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank you for the fact that it speaks into so many different aspects of our lives.
We pray now that you will help us all to hear your word,
to receive it in our hearts,
and to let it change and transform us.
We pray all this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
So, favoritism.
I wonder what pictures the word favoritism conjures up for you.
It's not the most popular thing in the world, is it?
So, at home, it might be a son or daughter being treated better than another son or daughter.
And that might be something really trivial,
like it might be an extra scoop of ice cream,
or maybe the bigger half of a cookie that's been split in half.
Or maybe it may be something more serious than that.
It may be attention.
It may be love.
It may be care.
At school, it might be the bad behavior of a teacher's favorite being overlooked.
Or in work, a favorite member of staff being given more time,
more resources, more sympathy than others.
Or in government, or so many other areas of lives.
Jobs for the boys, lucrative contracts for friends.
So, I think it's fair to say that favoritism or partiality is not the most popular thing in the world.
But it's also, obviously, not a recent invention.
We see it here in a letter from nearly 2,000 years ago.
So, how does God respond to favoritism in his word?
Well, verse 1, no surprises.
My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ,
must not show favoritism.
It's also what we want him to write, isn't it?
It's plain and simple.
If you are a follower of Christ, you must not show favoritism.
And it is really tempting for me to say,
Grant, Alex, if you want to come back up now, I'm ready to wrap up.
Because if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ,
then don't show favoritism is the core message of this passage.
It doesn't get any more complex than that in some way.
Do not show favoritism.
However, if we leave it at that,
then we miss out on answers to so many other questions,
which are also answered in this passage.
For example, why would James write this?
How could favoritism become a problem in the church in the first place?
Why is favoritism wrong or how is it bad?
How big an issue is all of this, really?
What does our showing favoritism show about our hearts?
And if we're not to show favoritism, then what should we show instead?
But before we think a bit about those questions,
there's one other question that's not specifically answered in this passage,
which is, what is the context here?
So if we go back to the first verse in the letter,
you'll find that James is writing this with specific groups of people in mind.
He's writing to people specifically from Jewish backgrounds
who have become Christians, who are following Jesus.
I'm not going to summarize the whole book here,
but one key theme throughout the book
is that we shouldn't be double-minded as we follow Christ.
And bringing out that theme,
James frequently puts two things alongside each other,
and he says these two don't match up.
They don't belong together.
So, for example, in James 1, verses 5 to 8,
you can read about a person who asks God for wisdom,
but who doesn't believe that he'll actually ultimately provide it.
If you go just to James 1, verse 26,
just before this passage,
we see a person who considers himself or herself religious,
but doesn't keep a tight rein on their tongue.
James 2, verses 15 to 18,
just after this passage,
you have a person who claims to have faith in Christ,
but who does nothing to help other people.
And in James chapter 3,
we have a barrage of them in verses 9 to 12.
We have praising God and cursing human beings.
We have fresh water and salt water flowing together.
We have fig trees bearing olives.
We have grapefines bearing figs.
One of the key comparisons James makes
is in James chapter 1, verses 22 to 24.
And it says,
Do not merely listen to the word,
and so deceive yourselves.
Do what it says.
Anyone who listens to the word,
but does not do what it says,
is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror,
and after looking at himself,
goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
Why would someone look in a mirror?
Well, if you're as vain as me,
it's because you're looking to see if there's anything wrong.
Is my hair out of place?
100%.
It always is.
Am I caked in dirt or sweat, though?
Do I look okay?
Am I passable?
But the looking isn't really the most important part there, is it?
Because it would be really strange,
sheer madness,
if I looked in the mirror,
saw that I was absolutely caked and covered in dirt,
and then sort of shrugged my shoulders,
walked away,
and didn't do anything about it.
I've identified the problem,
but I haven't actually fixed it in any way.
And it's kind of the same as we're looking at God's word.
What we're doing here this morning
is looking at and listening to the word.
But we need to look at ourselves in the mirror
at the same time, so to speak.
And then, once we've looked at ourselves in the mirror
and identified where the gaps are between us and God's word,
we need to actually do something to fill those gaps,
to clean off the dirt, as it were.
So if we're looking at our passage this morning,
James chapter 2, verses 1 to 13,
verse 1 is the core.
Don't show favoritism.
And we're going to look at the passage
to see some of the answers to the other questions
we looked at earlier.
But let's keep in mind, as we do,
the imperative, the command of this passage
is that we do not show favoritism.
And so if we walk out of here
having a great academic knowledge
of what favoritism is,
how to define it,
what it looks like,
what the steps should be
in order to get rid of it in our lives
or anything like that,
and we don't actually put any of that into practice,
then we've completely missed the point of the passage.
To take James' words,
we'd be just deceiving ourselves.
So with all that context in mind,
let's look at verse 1.
My brothers and sisters,
believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ
must not show favoritism.
And James goes on, verses 2 to 4,
to give a specific example, doesn't he?
He mentions a man who comes into,
well, two men who come into a meeting of the church.
One is very rich,
one is fine clothes, a gold ring,
another is poor, he's dressed in dirty rags.
And he says that these men are treated differently
in this hypothetical example.
One is told, oh, here's a fine seat for you.
But the other one is told, oh, go over there.
I'm still at the floor by my feet.
And he says in verse 4
that this is a sign of evil thoughts and judgment.
So you can possibly imagine that kind of scene.
It's very visual.
But let's take a step back for a second
and ask us, well, why would that arise?
Why could that arise in a church setting?
Also, incidentally,
is this just for the people who welcome people
as they come in the door and say,
yeah, the seats are down here?
Or is this for everyone?
Spoiler alert, it's for everyone.
Maybe, maybe the reason
why they treated these people differently
is because they hoped to gain something
from the rich man.
They might easily think,
well, here's a man who could help us.
Here's a man who could be useful to us.
See, favoritism gets very unpopular
unless we stand to gain from it ourselves.
I have a friend who keeps an out-of-context quote book.
And for people who don't know
what that concept is or what it means,
it means he takes down things
that his friends say jokingly or sarcastically.
Or ironically, completely out of context.
And then he'll bring them up in six months' time.
And without the context around them,
the quotes sound outrageous.
There's one example I have on him.
I was chatting with him about someone in his church.
And he responded,
well, you know, there's only so much I can do.
I'm already being nice to her,
so she helps out.
Now, I do need to stress
that he was joking when he said that.
But at the same time,
is that very different from how we act ourselves?
Not necessarily just in church,
though, altogether,
if there are people here
who are involved in choosing church rotas
and all that sort of stuff,
are we liable to that ourselves?
But are there people who we generally talk with,
do favors for,
that we don't do for others?
At least partially because we might be able
to gain something from them.
We might want something from them someday.
Perhaps relatedly,
are there people in our lives
who we only talk with
when we want something from them,
when we think they might be useful to us?
So maybe the people in verses 2 to 4
show favoritism to the rich man
because they think he might be useful to them.
But either way,
in our own lives,
we need to be wary of that
because,
verse 1 again,
believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ
must not show favoritism.
And in this case,
James actually has some specific reasons
in verses 6 and 7
for why they shouldn't be showing favoritism
to the rich of his day in particular.
So in verses 6 and 7,
he talks about their exploitation,
their abuse,
their abuse of the legal system,
their blasphemy.
He shows essentially,
these are people who,
if you're choosing to play favorites,
these are the worst people
to play favorites for.
But interestingly,
he doesn't lead with that argument.
Look at verse 5.
Listen, my dear brothers and sisters,
has not God chosen those
who are poor in the eyes of the world
to be rich in faith
and to inherit the kingdom
he promised to those who love him?
So before pointing out
the earthly problems with favoritism,
before pointing out
the particular situation,
he points us heavenward.
In effect, he asks,
well, what does God think about this?
And what's the answer?
Well, God has chosen those
who are poor in the eyes of the world
to be rich in faith
and to inherit the kingdom.
In a sense,
James is saying here,
okay, I see the rich and poor man
and how you treat them.
There is a wealth that matters,
but it's not physical wealth
because it's better to be rich
in faith than in gold.
And the apostle Peter
actually makes this point
quite explicitly
in 1 Peter chapter 1.
He says that his readers' faith
is of more worth than gold,
which even though
it is refined by fire,
still ultimately perishes.
Meanwhile,
the inheritance of God's children,
he says,
will never perish,
spoil, or fade.
So the primary reason
not to show favoritism
is not earthly
or self-interested.
It points towards God's choice,
towards his children,
those whom he loves
and those who love him.
But as we hear the word love,
we might need to be a bit careful
around that as well.
So when we think of favoritism,
we might be tempted to think,
oh, you know,
I don't show favoritism
to this person.
When I'm doing favors
for that person
or helping them out
or becoming friends with them,
that's not favoritism.
That's just me showing them
God's love.
And James preempts us in that.
Look at verse 8.
If you really keep the royal law
found in scripture,
love your neighbor as yourself,
you are doing right.
Well, so far so good.
But, verses 9 and 10,
if you show favoritism,
you sin
and are convicted by the law
as lawbreakers.
For whoever keeps the whole law
and yet stumbles
at just one point
is guilty of breaking
all of it.
So it's like James is saying here
that favoritism
and showing God's love
towards someone
can look very similar.
In a sense,
James isn't saying here,
oh, the way you said
to that man
here's a fine seat for you,
that's absolutely wrong.
Now what he's pointed to
is the contrast
between the two.
He's saying the way
that you treated the man
saying, oh, you know,
sit here, this is great,
like, I want to treat you
really well.
That's fine.
But it's the contrast
then with what they treat,
how they treat the poor man
in terms of the,
no, you stand over there,
you sit at the floor
by my feet.
That's the distinction
between what love is
and what favoritism
looks like.
And we need to examine
our motives properly.
So if there are some people
to whom we find it much easier
to show God's love
than others,
we need to understand
why is that?
In the context of God's love
for the poor,
the weak,
the outcast,
in the context of the church
specifically,
if he invites people
into his family,
how can we insult
or dishonor them?
As verse 6 puts it,
you have dishonored
the poor.
If we do treat people
differently in that way,
then it might show
something important
about our hearts.
So verse 1 starts out
by talking about believers
in our glorious
Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, hopefully,
no big surprises here.
James expects his readers
to love Jesus.
He expects us to love him.
He expects us to really
love his glory
and who he is
as a person
and what he has done.
We're supposed to love
his glory.
But there are different
kinds of love
and different kinds
of glory,
aren't there?
There's sort of
loving a good burger
or a good meal
of any sort.
There's loving your parents,
loving your children,
loving a significant other.
They're all very different.
And then there's a difference
between glory of God
and the glory of man.
And this is something
that I think Alex
was mentioning earlier.
himself.
He says,
it's so easy
for our eyes
to get distracted,
but we want to fix
our eyes on Jesus.
It's oh so easy
as well
for our hearts
to get turned
and twisted
so that we focus
on the glory of man.
And that could be,
in this case,
like the glory of wealth
as it is in this passage.
Man's gold ring,
fine clothes.
Maybe for us today
it would be
a car,
a house,
a salary.
It could be
the glory of celebrity
being thought of
as really important.
It could be
the glory of charisma,
so being instantly
liked by everyone,
the glory of intelligence.
Oh, that person
seems to know everything.
And as we start
looking towards
those people,
as we start
turning our hearts
towards that type
of glory,
we find ourselves
turning away
from the glory
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Look at the end
of chapter 1 with me,
right before the start
of this passage.
So James chapter 1,
verse 27.
Religion
that God our Father
accepts as pure
and faultless
is this,
to look after
orphans and widows
in their distress
and to keep oneself
from being polluted
by the world.
What God considers
as pure and faultless,
looking after orphans
and widows
in their distress.
Orphans and widows,
shorthand
for the very types
of people
who can give us
nothing.
Who have nothing
to give us.
Who have no glory
to show,
as it were.
And in our passage,
that's the poor man.
What about in our lives?
I need to ask myself,
when was the last time
someone received
my love,
my care,
who seemed utterly
unrewarding
in every way?
And as I ask myself that,
I'll pass on the question
to you as well.
When was the last time
someone received
your love
who seemed utterly
unrewarding
in every way?
This chat about
favoritism
is no small thing.
You can kind of tell
that from how we're
covering the passage
in general.
But also look at
verses 11 and 12.
He who said
you shall not
commit adultery
also said
you shall not
murder.
If you do
not commit adultery
but do commit murder,
you have become
a lawbreaker.
Sorry,
I meant to say
verse 11.
Verse 12
we'll come on to
a little bit later.
But adultery
and murder,
okay,
well,
those are things
we see as pretty
serious crimes,
right?
Possibly two of the
most serious
offenses possible.
If you even go back
to the Ten Commandments
in the Old Testament,
you have commandment
number six
and commandment
number seven there,
do not kill,
do not commit adultery.
They're on that list.
So why does James
bring those up here?
Well,
in part it might be
to emphasize the
seriousness of
favoritism,
right?
When two things
he brings up
for comparison
with it
are two of the
most serious
offenses possible,
then we can get
the idea that
favoritism is actually
a serious matter too.
Believers in our
glorious Lord Jesus Christ
must not murder,
grand we know that,
must not commit adultery,
we know that,
and verse one,
must not show
favoritism.
It's that serious
a crime against God.
But it's also a crime
against the unfavored.
So if we take
two people here,
and I'll try not
to start them
with the same letter
so they won't get
mixed up,
let's take Adam
and let's take Joe.
Apologies if your name
is Adam or Joe,
by the way.
So suppose Adam
murdered Joe,
but he didn't decide
to try to get
with Joe's wife.
Would we say
that Adam is guiltless?
Obviously not.
If Adam decided instead,
you know,
I'm not going to murder Joe,
but I'm going to commit
adultery with Joe's wife,
we wouldn't call him
guiltless again
just because he's
avoided murder
this time,
would we?
In the same way,
if we avoid both
of those,
but we still show
favoritism,
then the end of verse 11
applies to us too.
You have become
a lawbreaker.
And as verse 10 says,
whoever keeps
the whole law
and yet stumbles
at just one point
is guilty
of breaking
all of it.
Now,
this is a verse,
we're just coming out
of our summer camp season.
This is one of the verses
that I tend to use
when talking about
the gospel with children,
sort of eight to twelve
year olds
or thereabouts,
as part of explaining
what the gospel is.
Because in order to get
the good news of the gospel,
you need to understand
where we start off.
We start off
in a bad relationship
with God
because of the sin
in our lives.
So I will say to them,
for example,
Romans chapter 6,
verse 23,
the wages of sin
is death.
James chapter 2,
verse 10,
as we have in this passage here,
if you keep the whole law
and yet stumble
at just one point,
you are guilty
of breaking all of it.
Or Romans chapter 3,
verse 23,
all have sinned
and fall short
of the glory of God.
But one question
I got at a camp recently
was,
what is the glory of God?
What's glory,
what's the glory like?
What does it look like?
As verse 1 tells us,
we see it
in our glorious
Lord Jesus Christ.
If we think about
what Jesus did,
what did he do?
Did he show favoritism?
Did he effectively say,
oh, you know,
these people are useful to me,
I'll pick these people out,
those people are not,
we'll send those people away.
Well, if he had,
we'd all be doomed,
wouldn't we?
There would be no gospel,
there would be no good news
because all have sinned
and fall short
of his glory.
Jesus could not benefit
from showing us mercy.
In fact,
that mercy came
at a great cost
to him on the cross.
So if he were solely
interested in this
dispassionate kind of justice,
then he could have judged us
without mercy.
He could have judged us
under the law
that brings death.
The law which says,
you know,
here's your life's work,
here's your sin,
and the salary
that you deserve for this.
The salary you receive
at the end of the month,
in this case,
at the end of your life,
is death.
He could have discarded us,
he could have thrown us away.
Or,
he could have said,
you know what,
clean yourselves up.
Make yourselves rich in faith.
Make yourself useful to me.
Then I'll do something for you.
Then I might show favor to you.
Instead,
the very hands
that could discard us
are pierced with nails,
driven into the crossbeam
for his crucifixion.
And what impact does that have
on how our passage ends?
Well,
from verse 12 onwards,
we're to speak and act
as those who are going to be judged
by the law
that gives freedom.
Not justice,
not punishment,
but freedom.
But reading on,
judgment without mercy
will be shown to anyone
who has not been merciful.
Well,
what is mercy?
Not showing compassion
or forgiveness
to someone
whom it's within your power
to harm.
To harm through favoritism
or in any other number of ways.
And that idea
of judgment without mercy
will be shown to anyone
who has not been merciful.
That can annoy us sometimes.
That can make us go,
oh,
that seems off somehow.
But if we even think about
the Lord's Prayer
and what's said in that,
forgive us our sins
as we forgive those
who sin against us.
So if we're praying that prayer
and we are not forgiving others,
if we are not showing mercy
to others,
we are asking God
not to show mercy to us.
That's the literal way
what we're saying.
Similarly,
there's a parable
Jesus gives
of a man
who owes a massive debt
to a ruler
and he begs the ruler
for that debt
to be cancelled
and it is cancelled.
And then that same man
goes out into the street
and says,
oh,
you owe me
a small amount of money.
I'm going to put you
in prison over that.
And what happens?
Well,
ultimately,
word of that reaches
the ruler
and he says,
no,
you cannot do that.
You are not going to benefit.
You will be judged
without mercy.
You have not shown
the same mercy
that has been shown to you.
And yet,
at the end here,
we have that mercy
triumphs over judgment.
And we can see that
most clearly on the cross
where we,
the undeserving,
can find compassion,
forgiveness,
and freedom
from the sin
that enslaved us.
Now,
when we go to meet
our glorious Lord Jesus Christ,
either when we die
or when this world
comes to an end,
we will not be
shouting at him,
clamoring towards him
and saying,
give us justice,
give us judgment.
We'll be crying out to him
for love
and for mercy.
His mercy
triumphs over judgment
and we are to show
that same love
and mercy to others.
As I close,
I want to read to you
two verses of the song
that we're going to sing
in a couple of minutes together,
which I think sums up
quite a lot of this,
quite poetically.
Starting by talking
about our own situation,
individually,
before the cross.
It says,
Beneath the cross of Jesus,
I find a place to stand
and wonder at such mercy
that calls me as I am.
For hands that should discard me
hold wounds which tell me,
come beneath the cross of Jesus,
my unworthy soul is one.
And then following on
from that in response,
we have,
well, beneath the cross of Jesus,
his family is my own.
Once strangers chasing
selfish dreams,
now one through grace alone.
How could I now dishonor
the ones that you have loved?
Beneath the cross of Jesus,
see the children called by God.
Let's pray together
and then we'll sing.
Heavenly Father,
we thank you for your word.
We thank you for how it speaks
into our lives.
We thank you that Jesus,
even though we could not give him
anything of value,
came to die for us.
We thank you for that sacrifice.
We thank you that through that
we can receive mercy
instead of judgment.
I pray that you will help us
through our lives today
and throughout the coming weeks,
months and years.
We pray that you will help us
to live in such a way
that reflects the mercy
we've been shown,
to show compassion to others,
not to show favoritism.
In Jesus' precious name we pray.
Amen.
Thank you.
As I said,
we're going to sing together now
a song that you've heard
two verses of.
There's another verse out.