Do Not Show Favoritism

All right, well good morning, church. I'm excited to be here with you this morning as we are continuing in our sermon series, Faith in Action, as we're walking through the Book of James, and James is telling us, "Hey, your faith is not something just to hold inside of you. It's something to put into action. It's something that we actually live out." And so today we're gonna be in James chapter two. If you wanna go ahead and turn there in your Bibles with me, we're gonna be in James chapter two this morning, reading verses 1 through 13. Now, when my wife and I moved up here 10 years ago from Louisiana, we knew that there was going to be some cultural differences between the Deep South and up here in the Northeast, but looking back on it, I think we might've kind of seen ourselves as a little bit of sort of an outpost of the South up in the Deep North territory, right, up here in the frozen tundra, if you will. And so we saw ourselves as a little bit of an outpost. You know what an outpost is, right? It's kinda like a base. You know, our military has outposts in different countries around the world. It's an American base. It's in the middle of another country, in the midst of another culture. And I think we saw ourselves as a little bit of an outpost of the South up here in the North. We were living up here, but we were gonna keep our Southern ways, you know? We were gonna keep, you know, the Southern style here in our home, and we were still going to live like New Orleanians, right? Until the day came that I learned that maybe that isn't the case. Maybe that isn't actually going to happen in our household. And that day, we sat down for dinner, and one of our daughters looked at the food, and she said, "Mom, I don't like," and she said it just like this, "sea-alad. I don't like sea-alad," with that Buffalo accent, you know, in that Deep North Tonawanda, especially, accent. "I don't want sea-alad." Y'all are gonna hate me after this introduction, but I realized that the Buffalo accent had infiltrated my home. It had come into the outpost, and I wasn't really sure what to do about it. So I was just like, "What is sea-alad?" You know, it's salad, girl." And she, I was like, "We are from the South, we are gonna say it right." And she said, "But Dad," that's how she says it, "Dad, I'm not from the South. I've lived here my whole life." And I realized she's right. And now the North has infiltrated my Southern home. That's the way it happens. It's funny, I actually, sometimes I'll be walking around, and Pastor Deone Drake will be by me, and somebody will say, "Hey, Pastor Deone." And I told him, I was like, "I don't know if they're talking to me or you." They say Deone, either way, you know? It's just the way that it goes. The accent has infiltrated my Southern home, and the church, I say all this because the church is supposed to be an outpost of the kingdom. We are to be an outpost of the kingdom of God in this world that we live in, that even though we are in the world, we are supposed to be citizens of the kingdom, who are living by the way of the kingdom rather than by living in the way of the world. And yet, sometimes, the world, we let it infiltrate the church. We let the way of the world come into the church rather than living in the way of the kingdom. This passage that we're looking at today comes straight out of the last passage, straight out of the last verse that we looked at last week. In James 1:27, he wrote this: 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. He's addressing, today, one of the ways that he has seen, sometimes, the way of the world coming into the church, the way of the world, the church letting itself be polluted by it, and we can sum up what he is telling us today in this simple sentence. Do not, it's gonna come up, do not show favoritism. Do not show favoritism. That's what he's getting at all day today. It's pretty straightforward that James gets to the point. He's like a businessman, he just gets straight there. Look at what he says in verse one: My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, must not show favoritism. You know, I'm really not an exclamation point kind of guy. You can talk to anybody that like I send emails to or text messages to. I just, I don't use exclamation points very often. It's gotta be something really exciting for me to do it, right? And even as I'm talking to people on the team I work with here on staff, we have kind of like a little chat system and everything, and they drive me insane, they stress me out, because they use exclamation points for every single sentence. And it's just like, this is not exciting, that you are gonna put pens on the table for membership class is not an exciting thing. It is not worth an exclamation point. But this sentence here is worth an exclamation point. It's worth an exclamation point. James is making a strong point. He says you must not show favoritism. You must not do it, and actually, a better translation is just the imperative, do not show favoritism. Whatever you do, do not do it. And it's one of those things that, as believers, I think we can easily slip into it. It's one of those things that we can easily let ourselves do it. And even when we realize we're doing it, we can just kinda let it go by, think that it's not that big of a deal, or a lot of times, we don't even see ourselves doing it. We don't even realize that we are doing it ourselves. But James is saying this is important. Do not let this one go by. Do not let yourselves fall into it. This is something you have to pay attention to. It is something that you have to actively fight against as a citizen of the kingdom of God. But what exactly does he mean by favoritism? What does he mean by favoritism? The Greek word that he uses here is actually a combination of the word for face and receiving. It literally means receiving the face. You look at someone and you receive them or don't receive them based on what you see. It's judging a book by its cover and paying attention to the people that you like, the external factors that you see about them. You like the way that they dress. You can tell whether they are wealthy or not. You can tell whether they have status in society or whether they don't. You look at the external factors, and you decide whether you're going to pay them any attention or not. It's partiality, and that's actually, the ESV translates it partiality. I actually like that word better because it's not just showing favorites like, you know, oh, this is my favorite person in the world, they're my best friend. You know, it's not like, oh, this is my favorite dog 'cause he loves me the most. This is my favorite one of my four children. That's not really true. I don't have a favorite, but it's not just favoritism like that, it's partiality. It's partiality, based on just what you see on the outside, and James says, if you put your faith in action, you cannot show partiality like that. You cannot do it. Now, James could have just left it there. James is a very influential leader in the church. He's the leader in the church of Jerusalem at this time. He's Jesus' brother, okay? Like he knew Jesus from the time he was born. He was his brother, and he is well-respected and listened to by many believers, but James knows that when he's talking to people, when he's talking to people who are young in the faith, when we talk to children, right, we always, whenever we say, "Don't do that," we know we're gonna have to answer the question, "Why not? Why not? Why can't I do that?" In the rest of the 12 verses, that's what James does. He roots everything in the faith. He gives the command, he roots it in the faith. So for the rest of the time today, we're gonna be answering the question, "Why not?" Why must believers not show favoritism? And as I look through this passage, I found seven reasons that James gives. But by the end of the passage, James says to show mercy, so I knocked them down to three for you, okay? I just kind of combined them so we don't, it's not gonna be seven, it's just going to be three. They're all in there, they're just combined. Don't worry, it's gonna be great. First one is partiality stands against Jesus rather than with him. Partiality stands against Jesus rather than with him. It's no coincidence here that, in the very first verse, James identifies Jesus the way he does. Look at what it says: My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. All of this is rooted right here, in Jesus Christ. You remember Jesus, you remember that he was the glorious Son of God, the jewel of heaven, the one that everything was centered around, the one by whom and through whom and for whom all things were created, and he stepped out of heaven, and he humbled himself, not only to take on mankind, not only to become a man, but to become a man born to a lowly family, a lowly family, in backwoods Israel, in the little village of Nazareth that had no standing in all of Israel whatsoever. In fact, later on, the religious leaders would reject Jesus as the Messiah. They would reject him as the Savior, and they would say, "Nothing good comes out of Nazareth." It's just not a place where anybody who is anybody comes from. Jesus comes to the lowly. Jesus comes to those who have no status in society. And James knows this better than anyone because he was in the same family. He was Jesus' brother. He got the same kind of treatment. He knows exactly what he is talking about. And friends, I want you to know, when we show favoritism based on external factors like that, we're actually showing exactly how we would've reacted to Jesus Christ himself had we seen him in the flesh. That's what we're reacting to. We would've looked at the external factors and rejected him. You remember Isaiah's description of what the Messiah would be like, right? The suffering servant, Isaiah 53:2-3: He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. It's a description of Jesus as he walked the earth. We may sometimes look to the external factors, but that's not what God does. God doesn't look at the external, and it's not what he did in sending his Son, Jesus. Rather than turning from the lowly, he identifies with the lowly. Rather than averting his eyes from the lowly, he became one of the lowly that people averted their eyes from. Jesus identifies with the lowly, and he cared for people who had no power, who nobody else cared for, who had no wealth, who had no status, who had nothing to offer him. You might remember back in Mark chapter five, there was a religious leader who came and asked Jesus to come and heal his daughter. His daughter was dying. He said, "If you will just come and heal her, I believe that you can do it." Now this is a perfect opportunity for Jesus to raise his status a little bit, right? He could do that, and in fact, he does go and help the man, not so that he can raise his status. In fact, along the way, he stops. There's a crowd that is thronging around him, Mark tells us, and somebody comes and touches just the edge of the robe near his feet, and he stops, and he comes to realize it's this woman who is considered unclean in society. It's this woman who is an outcast. It's this woman who, if she touches someone, they become unclean, and he stops and he talks to her, and he cares for her. As he's on his way to help this religious leader, he stops and cares for somebody that nobody else cares about, and even, if anybody thought Jesus was just going to help the religious leader in order to get good standing with him, guess what? As soon as she touched him, they would've thought that he was unclean, and when he talked to her, he was lowering himself, he was lowering his status. And people were starting to say, "Who is this guy? Why would he talk to this woman?" Jesus identifies with the lowly. He came as one of the lowly, and he cares for them, and he has mercy and he has compassion on the lowly. And James says, "If our glorious Lord would come in humility, and if our glorious Lord would look on and serve the lowest of the low in society, if he would do that, then we have to do it too." We should do it too. I think if we look deep in our hearts, we will see that sometimes we do this. We show favoritism. We show partiality, right? And I think if we look, we'll see that the reason that we do it is because we desire something of that earthly glory, that people who are higher in our society, the glory that they have, the worldly glory that they have, and maybe in some way we're looking to take part in that glory. We're looking to benefit from that higher status. We're looking to at least not be pushed down to lower status, but to be raised up, but Jesus is the glorious one. Jesus is the Lord of glory. Jesus is the one who we belong to, and we receive our status from him, not status in this temporary world, but status in an eternal kingdom, that we can know God, and one day, when we are with him, we will share in his glory. We will share in his glory. There's no reason for us, as citizens of the kingdom, to be impressed with or to cater to people who are higher in society just because they have some sort of worldly status or worldly wealth or worldly whatever it is they may have because we have a savior who is the Lord of glory, we have a savior who has the name that is above all names. Whether in heaven or on earth or under the earth, he is above it all, and we belong to him, and we can live in that. We're called to live like him. Partiality stands against Jesus rather than with him. But James goes on in his reasons why we shouldn't show partiality. Second, he says, "Partiality comes out of evil thoughts rather than from the heart of God." Partiality comes out of evil thoughts rather than from the heart of God. James launches into an example here in verses two through four. He says: Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring 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? I think this is an example that we can all understand. And I think James is calling to mind something that he's actually seen happen in the church. As the church is becoming a lower and lower, they're having a lower and lower view in society, I think he's seeing people who are trying to raise up the status of the church by paying attention more to the people who have status in society. And I think we can all understand how this can happen. Now this isn't the only example of partiality. We might show it for tons of external reasons, but it's the one that James is getting at. And he says, "In a situation like this, we become judges with evil thoughts." It might be the case that we do it without even realizing it, without even thinking about it, but even so, our actions reveal what's on the inside. Our actions always reveal what's in our hearts, and here's the root of the problem. This kind of thinking and these kinds of actions show how the ways of the world might be slipping into the church, how we might not be on guard, how we might let things fly, because why would we do something like this? Why would we, who were lowly sinners and have been saved from our lowly position before God, why would we not show love and mercy to those who are lower in society? Why would we pay attention to the rich man instead of to the poor man and kind of shove the poor man aside? There might be one of several reasons. Maybe it's that we're too impressed by worldly status. We forget that we're citizens of the kingdom of God, and we get too impressed by who a person is in this world. Maybe it's thinking that having a person of influence stick around might be useful or beneficial even. Maybe we think, after all, if we're gonna reach every man, woman, and child, wouldn't it benefit us more to have somebody who is influential in the world? And yet God says that's backwards thinking. I can use anyone. The most influential person in this church should not be a person sitting in this room, it should be God himself. It is the Spirit of God that moves into the world. It is the Spirit of God who uses, through us, empowers us, to reach every man, woman, and child. We do not rely on anyone else, we rely on the Spirit of God. And yet we can slip into that kind of thinking. I've heard it before, not here, but I have heard it in previous ministries that I've been around. "You gotta reach the influential people because they are gonna help you reach the rest." God says, "I've come to the lowly. I've sent my son to be born in Nazareth to a carpenter. I come after the people who have no status in the world, and I can use them to reach the world." Maybe we think it's useful or beneficial. Maybe it's that we might even think, "Well, they'll help expand our resources. They'll help expand our budget." As a pastor, I've actually had this threatened against me. "You know, I'll withhold my giving if this doesn't go the way that I think it should go." We don't need it. We use it, and I'm glad to be part of a church that uses our resources well, in whatever we do have, but the reality is, it's the Spirit of God that is the resource of the church. It is the Spirit of God that moves us into the world and reaches people and saves people and brings them out of the path to hell and into the path of the kingdom of God. That is the resource that we use. And we need not cater to anyone else to try to hold on to those things. We need not show partiality, but we can live with the heart of God because the kingdom of God, it flips all of those things upside down. The kingdom of God is an upside-down kingdom, upside down from this world. It renders worldly status useless. It takes the first and makes him last, and it takes the last and it makes him first, and the only status that matters is the status that Jesus gives to his people, and it's this, child of God. That's the status that matters, that we belong to the king, that we are sons and daughters of the king over all, and the kingdom doesn't advance through people's influence or resources. It advances in the world through God's power and our reliance on him. So there's no reason to cater to or show partiality to any man. And Jesus' coming has brought the kingdom of God into this world, and it is breaking into the world through the church. And James is saying, "Don't let the world break into the church. Let's have the church break into the world." Let's be the one who influences the world to show the way of the kingdom, to show who God is and the way that he operates, and as people of the kingdom, we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, empowering us and molding our hearts to be like the heart of God. He molds our hearts to be like his heart, to love what he loves and to love who he loves, and his love isn't based on any worldly means or status. His love and mercy is based on his love and mercy, and on nothing else. It's not based on you, it's not based on me, it's based on who he is, and he gives his love and mercy freely. Now, you may be on the other side of the coin. You might not be the one who is necessarily treating others special because of their standing in society, because of their external whatever, but you may be one who has some standing in society, you may be one who is wealthy, you may be one who has one of these things, and you expect to be treated special. It happens. Maybe you expect people to pay more attention to you because of who you are in the world. Maybe you expect people to respect you more than others because of your status in society. Maybe you expect to be given some sort of special position or title or status in the church. Maybe you expect we're gonna put you on the board of overseers because, hey, after all, you know, I've got something going on in the world. That's not the way the kingdom of God works, my friends. That's not the way that the kingdom works. And if that's you, and I'm not saying that everybody who has status in the world is like this, but if that is you, I wanna say, if that is you, then there is something going on in the heart that is ruled by evil thoughts. There's something going on in the heart that is not letting the gospel take root. It's like you've put a fence around this part of your heart that won't let the gospel in, but in the gospel, God reaches to the lowly. It's, he reaches to the lowly, and all of us, every single one, were lowly before God, and that we were sinners that were separated from him. When we think like that, we think by evil thoughts, but it's the opposite of the heart of God. Look at what he says in verses five and seven. He says: 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 those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it 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? James shows how the kingdom is upside down, and he shows the heart of God there in verse five. Look at what he says again: Has God not 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? This might sound a little bit familiar to you. Back in Matthew 5, Jesus said this: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. This is how God works in his kingdom, and as he advances his kingdom into the world through the church, it's how he works in the world too. It's how he works in the world, and he tells them in verses six through seven that if you wanna operate in the ways of the world, then the ways of the world will catch up to you. Look at verse six and seven again: But you have dishonored the poor. Is it 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 want to try to live by the ways of the world, the ways of the world will catch up to you. But if we wanna hold up true glory, if we wanna hold up true status, if we wanna hold up true wealth, then we should look to our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, who has the noble name that is above every other name. When we show partiality, it's coming out of evil thoughts rather than out of the heart of God. But last of all, James tells us this. "Partiality breaks the royal law rather than showing the mercy that we have received." Partiality breaks the royal law rather than showing the mercy we have received. Verses 8 through 11: 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. If you remember back in Matthew 22, Jesus said that loving God and loving neighbor sums up the entirety of the law, and when you look all throughout the New Testament, you will find that these two govern all of the commands that are given to the church. And James is going to call this the law of freedom. It's a law of freedom. Rather than being weighed down by the burden of all 613 Old Testament laws, we live under this law of love, and in fact, Paul says the exact same thing. Look at Galatians 5: You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh, rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is filled or is fulfilled in keeping this one command, "Love your neighbor as yourself." But when we show partiality, you are breaking the royal law. You are breaking the law of the kingdom. And if you break one law, you're a lawbreaker. If you break one law, you are a sinner. It's not something to just let it go by. It's not something to ignore. It's not something to just say, "Well, you know, I didn't, I didn't murder anyone. It's not that big of a deal." James is saying, "Yes, it is a big deal, but you have been shown the mercy of God in the forgiveness of your sins." Though you are a lawbreaker, you are counted righteous by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ if you have put your trust in him. And when you come to truly see that you are a lowly sinner before God, who falls way short of the glory of God, the Book of Romans tells us, then you come to see how you have experienced God's love for the lowly through experiencing his mercy in Jesus Christ. God gives his love and mercy. You've not been shown mercy in order to continue as a lawbreaker. You have been shown mercy in order to live in the freedom of the way of the kingdom. And you've been shown love and mercy in order that you can show love and mercy to others. And friends, I wanna tell you, love and mercy is the ingredients that make the church. The church has been created out of the love and mercy of God, and it is the ingredients that must be present in the church to make it a church. We are brought into this kingdom, into the family of God by love and mercy, and we must show it as well. A couple of months ago, I had some friends, a bunch of friends, come over one night for dinner and just hang out and everything, and so we said, "You know what, we're gonna have to make something for dinner that makes a lot of food." And so we said, "We're gonna make chili." We're gonna make our famous Louisiana chili. We're the outpost, right? You remember that, right? We're gonna make our Louisiana chili, award-winning chili. I didn't win the award, somebody else did, and I got the recipe from them, but it's award-winning chili, and we decided we were gonna make it, and so we made it. You know, we spent all that time making it and everything. And I sit down, and at the very first bite, I realized that I forgot something. I forgot the chili powder, which is a problem when you're making chili because, if you don't know, it's chili that makes it chili. Like that's why it's called that, that's why it's called chili. If you don't have chili in the chili, it's not chili. And everybody said, "Oh, you know, it's delicious." Liars, you know what I mean? Just total liars, but even if they did think that it really was delicious, it still wasn't chili. All the other flavors might have made it taste good, but it still wasn't chili, and in the same way, a gathering of people on Sunday morning that has a lot of good stuff going on, that has a lot of great music, with great words, great teaching, all sorts of great things, if you've got all that, and yet the love and mercy of God is missing, then it's not being the church, because love and mercy are the ingredients that make us the church. It's the love and mercy of God. And if we're not practicing it, if we're not showing it, then we are missing the main ingredients. Love and mercy without partiality, that is what we are called to live in. That is what we are called to show. And so he says in verses 12 through 13, he says this: 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. Speak and act as those whose hearts are governed by that law, by the royal law, by the law of freedom, the law of love your neighbor as yourself. Speak and act as those who have experienced the mercy of God through faith in Jesus Christ because when you unrepentantly show partiality rather than mercy, you show evidence that maybe you've never actually experienced the mercy of God yourself. Now I know we all slip into this sometimes. I do, I know I do. I might not realize I'm doing it at the moment, but I fall into it. There might even be times where I do realize I'm doing it in the moment, and I do it anyway. We slip into this sometimes, but God's mercy still forgives us. But when we don't even care that we're doing it, that might be evidence that you've never actually experienced mercy, that you've never experienced the mercy of God through faith in Jesus, because you cannot receive mercy and not give mercy. It changes your heart, it changes who you are, it changes how you love people. And we grow in it, and it takes time for us to grow in it, but it does change us. And James ends with this beautiful reminder at the end of verse 13. He says: Mercy triumphs over judgment. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Judgment has been laid on the one man, Jesus Christ, in order that the many may receive mercy through him. And we who have experienced it are called to live it out as well. Mercy triumphs over judgment, so that when we are facing our sin of judgment, we remember the mercy of God in our lives, and we give it to others as well. Mercy triumphs over judgment, just as it is done at the cross, where Jesus took the judgment for our sin on himself, and mercy was given to all who trust in him, who believe in him, who will follow after him. Friends, the king has shown mercy over judgment to us if we have trusted in him, and as we look to his mercy, it should change our hearts, so that we show mercy and love to others as well, no matter who they are. I'm ask you to go ahead and bow your heads with me. In order to live this out, we have to look to the cross. We have to look to the mercy of God that has triumphed over the judgment we deserved, and then we have to choose to live it out. What I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna give you just a moment to go before the Lord on your own and ask him to reveal to you any places where you might be showing partiality in your own life, in your own heart. So go before the Lord and ask him to do that for you, and give it over to him. If you're here today and you've never trusted in Jesus, and you've never experienced the mercy of God, I wanna tell you two things. First of all, you need the mercy of God. You are a sinner separated from God, outside of Jesus, and you need his mercy, but the second thing I wanna tell you is that you can have his mercy, and you can be changed, and you can come into life with God for all of eternity by trusting in Jesus. We're gonna have some prayer partners up here as I close out, and if that's you today, I'm gonna invite you to come on down and talk to one of these prayer partners, and ask them, "What does it mean? What does it look like to trust in Jesus? How can I do that?" And they're gonna be glad to lead you through that. For the rest of us, I want you to remember, we have experienced the mercy of God, we have experienced the love of God, and we are sent out into the world as the church to show his mercy and his love as well. God help us to do that. Work on our hearts, Lord. We know that we are not yet made perfect, not until the day that we stand face to face with you, and we get this wrong, Lord, and we go against this law of the kingdom to love our neighbor. Lord, help us, help us to be looking to your mercy every day. Help us to look to your love every day and to let it flow through us to others as well. Help us, Lord, to choose daily, to fight against partiality in our hearts, to fight against those evil thoughts, but instead to have the heart of God, your heart, Lord, to love those who you love. We love you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name that I pray. Amen.