Good morning, everybody.
Everybody awake yet?
Good morning.
Nope, that was worse.
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All right, come on.
This is interactive.
I expect to hear feedback during the sermon.
Well, today we continue in our series in the book of James.
We're to chapter two.
And we've talked a little bit over the last few weeks about how James can be a difficult book, especially if we've embraced the gospel of grace that St.
Paul so eloquently teaches throughout his letters.
But I think a helpful way to look at the book of James is as the New Testament book of wisdom.
As the book of Proverbs is in the Old Testament, so James is in the New.
It's kind of a collection of pithy statements that don't always fit together too easily.
But if you step back and look, James is concerned with how we, as God's people, live in the world according to the patterns that God has created.
Right?
Proverbs says the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.
And that's exactly James' perspective.
He wants us to live, to see the world as God has created it, and seek to live as God would have us to live, also fueled by the grace of God.
And I think our passage this morning is a wonderful example.
So let's jump right in.
Let's look again at verse one.
He says, My brothers and sisters, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
So point one, partiality and Christianity do not mix.
And I think this we just see it here with how James says this first verse.
He says, Show no partiality as you hold to the faith.
He says, as you have embraced the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, put your faith in him.
Partiality cannot go together with it.
Well, what is partiality anyway?
Well he he tells us in verses two and three, with this very down-to-earth, very relatable, this is a 2,000-year-old letter, and yet I can imagine this happening this very day.
He says, This if a man wearing a gold ring in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothes and says, You sit here in this 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 with evil thoughts?
Partiality is judging others, and specifically judging between other people based on outer appearance.
And this it comes in a variety of forms, a variety of forms that we are all very familiar with, right?
Don't we judge one another every day?
Haven't you judged someone as you came in this morning?
Amen.
I mean, you know, put me at the front of the list.
Right?
We judge according to dress.
We judge according to job.
We judge according to attractiveness.
Uh education, right?
Are you a Bulldogs fan?
Boo.
Are you a Georgia Tech fan?
Yay! We gotta get more Georgia Tech up here.
That's all I'm saying.
Um what's there you go, I told you.
Feedback.
That's what we need.
Um and we learn it from a very early age, don't we?
Like kids know the sin of partiality well.
I remember we I grew up in Florida and we moved up to Georgia when I was in the middle of fifth grade, terrible time to move, middle of the school year.
Um, but I was excited to, you know, find my place and make some new friends.
I really wanted to be, you know, in the cool crowd.
You have this opportunity.
Well, I chose my uh outfit uh intentionally that day, moving from the home of Disney World and Mickey Mouse.
I wore my best Mickey Mouse shirt, and that was uh a terrible, terrible mistake.
Because I was ridiculed for my my clothing choice, and I was immediately relegated to the lower levels of the not cool kids group, and very quickly I learned that it's not fun to be excluded uh because of the sin of partiality.
But I sin just as well as anyone else.
Last year my family moved up from ITP.
Do you know what ITP means?
You live OTP.
Well, now I live OTP.
ITP is inside the perimeter.
OTP is outside the perimeter.
Do you know where the cool people live?
Inside the perimeter.
Do you know who lives OTP?
Not the cool people.
That was the chip I brought on my shoulder into this church, and I apologize and repent.
And the Lord quickly showed me.
You know, we're often blind to our sin.
That's kind of my excuse.
It was a blind spot.
But um the Lord has remedied me of that.
Um but we all we all do it.
It comes naturally to us.
That's why James has to hit this so hard.
But of course, partiality comes in much more sinister and evil forms, right?
Judging people by their exterior, by the color of their skin, by their age, by their gender.
As I read our passage this week, I couldn't help but think of Martin Luther King's famous I Have a Dream speech from 1963, The March on Washington.
What he says here resonates beautifully with James' message to us.
He said, I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Amen.
We live in a world, we live in a nation where that is often not the way we treat one another, both inside and outside the church.
But this is God's heart, not just in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament, from the very beginning.
I love uh the story in 1 Samuel where God sends the prophet Samuel to anoint one of the sons of Jesse as the new king over Israel.
And Jesse had many sons, and they were brought out paraded in front of him.
And when the first son comes before Samuel, he thinks to himself, Ah, this must be the one.
I mean, he's tall, he's strong, he's handsome, he's got everything a good king needs, right?
Well, it's in that moment that the Lord speaks to Samuel and he says, This do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him.
For the Lord sees not as man sees.
Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.
So this is the sin of partiality.
But why is it so bad?
That brings us to our second point.
Partiality is a sin because it denies the grace that we ourselves as Christians have received in Christ through the gospel.
During my time uh pastoring in this city down in East Atlanta where the cool people live, uh, for a few weeks, a few, I don't know how many years ago, handful of years ago, Ricky Schroeder worshiped in our church.
Ricky Schroeder, come on, guys.
Childhood star of the 80s, silver spoons.
Anyone?
Anyone else 47 years old?
There you go.
That's right.
I mean, an icon of celebrity.
Uh, and it was so exciting.
Right?
I couldn't help but tell some of my friends when when we went out to lunch, like, oh, guess, guess who is at our church on Sunday?
Ricky Schroeder.
And they were like, who, who is that?
Um, but you know, for me, for my age, for my generation, it was um it was an exciting thing.
And I don't get to name drop often, so I take the opportunity when it comes.
But it made me think, uh, what is it with celebrity, right?
I mean, if I'm gonna try to jump on the coattails of Ricky Schroeder, you know, uh we all we all feel that pull to celebrity.
Paul Miller, in his book, The J Curve, points out that apart from Christ, all of us, no matter what generation we live in, what part of the world, we all live on something called the failure boasting chart.
And I have a visual here.
There you go.
Uh we all live in our culture, we have things that move us up.
You could replace boasting with success.
What makes you a success in your culture, in your neighborhood, in your family?
Uh, right?
Is it your education, the level of income, those types of things?
And we have things that move us down uh the chart, down towards failure.
Now, celebrities have cultural cachet.
And when we can link ourselves with that person and we can name drop, it moves us up the failure boasting chart.
And we have something to show off with.
Now, you know, my example might move me up very little, but that was my attempt.
And what James and Paul knows, and what what the gospel teaches us, is that anything we use to move up that chart is where we are finding and seeking our identity.
This is who I am.
This is what makes me good, this is what gives me power and influence and security.
But the gospel tells us that uh this is a false choice.
This is a dead end.
You see, as I as I name-dropped Ricky Schroeder, I was I was wanting to be in Ricky Schroeder.
Just like the church that James is writing to, they wanted to be in wealth and connected to rich people rather than being in Christ where we are.
The problem is that as most of us have experienced, when you live according to the failure boasting chart, or another word for that is the law, right?
It's exhausting.
Right?
You have to work so hard to gain the success, to work your way up the ladder of the boasting chart.
Uh once you get there, you've got to maintain it.
You've ever had a friend, or maybe you've experienced this yourself, you experience this great win, and someone's like, oh, congratulations, you've really made it.
And you're like, yeah, I know, but I've got to maintain this.
I've got to hit the ball out of the park again and again and again.
And the failure boasting chart, the law is fickle, right?
You're only as good as your last success.
You've got a failure coming up, you're just gonna fall right down to the bottom.
Am I wearing the right things?
Do I know the right people?
Do my kids go to the right schools?
Am I wearing the right air Jordans?
I'm trying to connect with the youth.
My uh, one of my daughters, at least, like, you gotta have the right air Jordans, man.
They're not even sneakers or tennis shoes anymore, they're just Jordans.
That's what they are, apparently.
Um, right?
And it's this rat race that promises much, but really delivers the opposite.
And James even sees this himself, and he points out the folly in verses six and seven.
He says to this church, he says, Are not the rich, these people you're falling all over yourself to honor and give the seat of prominence?
He says, Are they not those who oppress you and drag you into court?
Aren't they the ones who blaspheme the honorable name of the one by whom you are called, the name of Jesus?
You think it just doesn't make sense to try to get up the failure boasting chart?
Because these ones that you're trying to win their approval and get in their good graces, they're the ones that oppress and crush you just like the law.
When we try to keep the law, when we try to succeed and make a name for ourselves, the law ends up oppressing and crushing us.
So, what are we to do?
Well, that leads us to the third point.
The antidote to the sin of partiality is embracing our own belovedness in Christ.
And this is James' message to us.
Look at verse 5.
Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters, he says, 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?
See, James is saying that in the gospel, God has destroyed the failure boasting chart.
He has destroyed the law.
Rather than being in riches or in Ricky Schroeder or in whatever it is that you use to work your way up, we are in Christ by faith, and we get all of his benefits.
When we seek righteousness in the law, as we said, we are constantly striving for that place of security, to have enough, to be enough.
And then we have to continue to strive to stay at the top.
But when we embrace the righteousness that we've already been given in Christ, we can rest.
We understand what Jesus means when he tells us to build our house on the rock that does not shift, that does not fall, we are secure.
Now why?
Because when I am in Christ, I've been become an adopted, beloved, well-pleasing son.
And if you have put your faith in Christ, then you are a beloved, well-pleasing daughter or son.
There's nowhere higher to go, and there's nowhere to fall.
You are secure in your identity in Christ, and that is a gift that has been fully given to you.
You are heirs with Christ of the kingdom of God.
Your father, if you are a Christian, is the God of the universe, the high king over all things, the king of kings, and the lord of lords.
That is a bomb to our soul.
It destroys the rat race, it destroys the hamster wheel, it destroys the failure boasting chart, it destroys the law.
We can rest and enjoy who we are.
Never to be lost, nothing to be gained.
We are free.
Hallelujah.
And you see, when we embrace that gift, that identity that we've been given, and the good good news is that it's ours even when we forget.
It's ours when we fail.
It's ours when we show partiality to others.
That's the amazing grace of the gospel.
But our life improves and the people around us' lives improve as we understand this truth, as we come to know and embrace how high and how wide and how long and how deep is the love of Jesus for us.
And James's point here in this passage is that now, because I don't have to siphon my worth out of a celebrity or out of what I do or who I associate with or how much money I have, now I am free to love.
I'm free to pull up close to a poor person.
I'm free to pull up close to a wealthy person.
I'm free to welcome them into my life, into my community, because that's what God has done.
Isn't that what James said?
The poor, those who are poor according to the world's standards have become rich in faith.
They are heirs according to the promise.
Whatever we look like in this life, in the life to come, in the kingdom of God to come, those who are poor, those who are kicked around, those who are mistreated and oppressed, will be sitting at Jesus' right and left hand.
And if we treat them, we can't treat them any differently, James says.
We are denying the very gospel we profess.
And so again, how do we fight partiality in ourselves?
Remember that we are beloved.
Remember that God does not judge you.
God loves you and has adopted you as his beloved son or daughter.
And so he has done with others.
And because of that lack of partiality in God, we are free to love freely and to have radical acceptance and equality.
Let's pray.
Our Father in heaven, hallelujah.
Thank you for the way you have loved us.
Lord, we long to be a community.
We long to be individuals who don't show partiality.
And Lord, I confess for myself that I fall short all the time.
Would you help me?
Would you help us to continue to embrace and pull down even further into ourselves how much you love us?
We don't have to earn your love or anything else in this life ever again.
Because we've been freely given to all of it in Christ.
And may we become a welcoming community, to continue to grow and being a welcoming community.
We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.