2024-09-22 - Covenant CRC - sermon only - Joel Kok

James 2:1-13

Transcript 

Let's listen to our Lord this morning through the epistle of James. Please turn there. This morning, we'll read from James chapter two, the first 13 verses.

In one way, we've been praying a prayer of illumination as we listen to the choir, but to help us listen even more to what God is saying about forgiveness and all kinds of good news this morning, let's join in one more brief prayer of illumination. Let's pray together. Gracious God, we're grateful for your loving commandment to listen.

Because as we listen and hear and live by what you say, we receive new life. And so, to have all this happen, we pray for the illumination of your Holy Spirit. We pray that in the written word and the spoken word, we can meet the living word, Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray. Amen.

The Epistle of James, chapter 2, verses 1 through 13.

As we listen to this word, I'll ask you all to apply further truths as we read. For example, when our translation speaks of brothers, please know God's talking to brothers and sisters, of course. And as we talk about the law in this passage, please know it's the Torah, which are the teachings, the whole story of God.

You can have those things in mind as we listen to God. through James 2 verses 1 to 13. Hear God's word.

My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, here's a good seat for you. I 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, 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 insulted the poor. Is it not in the rich, 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 slandering 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, yet stumbles at just one point, is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, do not commit adultery, also said, do 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. For mercy triumphs over judgment.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Friends, today, our Lord speaks to us with such mercy that he gives us a mercy that not only triumphs over judgment, but he also gives us a mercy that helps us receive it through words like judgment, through words like the law, Because I think for many of us, certainly for me, when I hear about judgment and the law, I can feel a little bit anxious.

And yet, as this merciful God speaks to us through those words, our Lord gives us a law, a tour of teachings that liberate us and bring us into freedom. The Lord brings us a judgment that opens us up more and more to his mercy. It's a mercy that triumphs over judgment by freeing us to follow Jesus into a glorious life.

So, as we wrestle with how these words go together, as we wrestle with how mercy and judgment go together, how do they go together? We can begin to recognize that our Lord is speaking to us mercifully through all those words, even if rightly, they make us think about judgment with some realism and what we would get if we got everything we deserved.

For example, we can begin hearing our Lord speak to us in that merciful way as we hear our Lord talking about his word regarding the poor and our tendencies to discriminate against the poor. The Lord is warning us about that out of mercy. He's also warning us that thinking about riches and wealth can become idolatry for us, leading us into a worldly form of riches and glory.

And again, all of this is such a merciful message from our Lord through the Epistle of James, that what's happening now is our Lord is speaking to us here, Jesus is helping us live out His law, His Torah, His commandments, which you may remember in Luke's version of what we call in Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount.

In Luke it's called the Sermon on the Flame. Jesus says, be merciful as your Father in Heaven is merciful. And all of us realize I'm not quite as merciful as our Father in Heaven. And so Jesus is speaking through those words to bring us a judgment that opens us. further and further to that mercy.

And here I can share that as I was preparing for this message about our father's mercy, I found a story in my own life that I hope speaks to your lives as well because it's a story about a worship service which involved a poor person coming. And here I will confess I was not exactly merciful as our father in heaven is merciful.

What happens is that this is back when I was a seminary student yet, so if it's part of the explanation here, I was quite young and inexperienced. And yet, as I was the seminary student, I was preaching as a guest preacher in a church. And a couple minutes into the sermon, a man, I would guess a poor man, walked into the sanctuary from the back And he started going from pew to pew, from person to person, asking them for some money, asking them for some help.

At first, I didn't see him, and then I didn't know what to do. So what did I do? I tried to ignore him. That was my response to this poor person. I tried to ignore him so that I could preach what I hoped would be the best sermon I could preach. And so this man just kept, for a little while, going from pew to pew, from person to person.

And then, at first, people were just waving away, but then one person did say, “Let's step outside,” I didn't hear, but I could tell. And as he met with him outside the sanctuary, he was able, on behalf of the church, to offer some really healthy help to this member of the community in need, this poor person, and as I looked back on that event, I wondered. I wondered already back then, and I continue to wonder, even though I was a seminary student quite young and inexperienced, couldn't I have had a little more compassion? For this poor person, obviously in help of need?

Couldn't I have had a little bit more common sense, enough to at least pause in the sermon and say, Let's respond to this fellow who needs help here?” Couldn't I, in terms of our reading for this morning, have heard God's law, God's Torah, God's teaching, where God emphasizes in Exodus and the other passages, “Have compassion on the poor, the orphans, the widows, the needy, have compassion on them.”

Our Lord really emphasizes that, and I was ignoring that word from God as well as trying to ignore that poor man in the worship service. And what I could do about that is I could have a judgment on myself that we could call judgmentalism. Amen. In other words, I could have a judgmentalism in which I view myself as not only lacking in mercy, but I could view myself as just deserving of complete contempt for having failed that badly.

But what our Lord is saying to me and to all of us this morning is, when we look at ourselves, and when we look at one another, and when we have the Torah, the law, leading us into judgment. What again is the Lord doing there? He's having mercy on us. He is saying to us, in effect, you can keep listening and learning, because as you listen and learn from that law, that Torah, that teaching, that's going to liberate you.

That's going to set you free. This law sets us free, James says. So in my case, it would have set me free from anxiety. It would have set me free from this desire to be just the best person they'd ever seen or things like that. It could give me freedom to say, what is Jesus doing here? What does Jesus want here?

And so mercifully, our Father has been sending that message to me in decade after decade as I live with that memory, which came back strongly to me as I got ready for our worship this morning. Amen. And again, I think that is a message to all of us in all kinds of ways. Because again, in a sense I could look at myself with self contempt, but often we are more tempted to look at other people and either ignore them or look down on them because they're poor.

Discrimination, as happens in all kinds of ways. It can happen on the basis of skin color. It can happen on the basis of backgrounds. It can happen just in all kinds of ways. And our father is so aware of that, that with mercy, he speaks his word, his law, his Torah, to bring us into a judgment in which we realize we so need mercy from our father, because as we experience that mercy, that's how we can express that mercy to a world that is needs that mercy.

So, to the word mercy, which we've connected to judgment and the law, the Torah, we can add another word that our Lord has for us this morning. And that is the word glory, as in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. So friends, when we were dealing with judgment and mercy triumphing over judgment, we're looking at the last couple of passages, verses in our passage, our reading.

But when it comes to glory, we hear that word in the very first word of our reading because what the Lord, through James, says to us there is, brothers and sisters, when you believe, that is when you have faith, which is what God is building up in, when you believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, then it's going to follow.

You don't show favoritism because you know that you're worshiping with faith a God who shows no partiality, who has compassion on all creatures. That's James again, emphasizing our need for mercy and then implicitly adding that as people who have faith in this glorious Lord Jesus, you know what happens?

Our glorious God shows not only his mercy but also His glory because he wants his mercy to lead us into the glory he wants us to share the glory that it reveals to us in Jesus Christ and to gain a little more understanding of that glory that we can seek as we experience and express mercy.

We can look at a couple of gospel scenes that I think can help us not only see, but also connect to through faith. Our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, so that we can follow him towards the glory he wants to share with us. And what, one passage here that can help us from the Gospels comes from the Gospel of John, chapter 12.

In John 12, we're getting to the point where Jesus is just about to have his last supper with the disciples and is just about to get arrested and go to the cross. But in John 12, Jesus is still speaking in public. And so people are seeing this glorious Lord Jesus Christ, and you know what the response of many people is to that glorious Lord Jesus Christ?

They reject him. They don't believe in him. John explains that the issue is that they love the glory of men more than they love the glory of God. So this glorious Lord who was showing mercy to all these people in need, many people were saying, in effect, I want a different kind of glory. I want a glory where people think I'm terrific. I want glory where I have everything I want. And in terms of our reading, that's a glory sort of wealth or richness, which is a temptation to become idolaters of things we can get through not just financial wealth, but through the wealth of fame or all kinds of ways in which we can be tempted to want and seek the glory of people around us saying, “Oh, wow, you're fantastic,” rather than the glory of God as revealed in this suffering servant, Jesus Christ, who was so glorious that he had so much mercy that he loves sinners enough to die for us.

So, we can see a connection about glory already as we connect James 2 to John 12. And then, if we pause and say, "Okay, the Lord is alerting me to how we can be blind to his glory. So, how can I open myself to the kind of mercy that's going to help me follow Jesus into the kind of glory that he has?”

Now, we can go a little bit further in terms of some gospel readings. As we turn to these other gospel scenes, our idea here is that through these words, which again are the law, the Torah's stories and words, our Lord can help us receive the mercy that's going to lead us into glory.

One thing that is going to happen here is we're going to be able to get a little more thoughts about how we don't want to merely pray some words, as came out in our prayer of confession. We want to pray words. Praying is very important. But we also want to pray in a way that really opens us to the mercy and glory of God.

For that to happen, we can turn to a gospel scene that begins in the gospel of Luke. 18 because Jesus, the ultimate law teacher, gives us the Sermon on the Mount, all kinds of experiences, and the presence of God's words and laws. Jesus here gives us a parable, a story in which he talks about two people coming to a worship service, and they come with slightly different, significantly different attitudes.

As you may remember from this parable in Luke 18, it's often called the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. But let's not just put somebody away from us and call them a Pharisee. Let's just think about someone who, in public, looked to be a very devout and dedicated person who actually did many good practices.

And yet, Jesus alerts us to the fact that when this man comes to a worship service, he stands up to pray, but when he prays, instead of talking to God, he's mostly talking to himself, glorifying himself and alerting other people around him to what a glorious person he is. So that's the glory of men rather than the glory of God.

So you may remember when this man prays, he says, “I thank you, God, that I'm not like other people, including that guy over there. I do all these good things.” And so he is glorifying himself. He sees himself as superior, especially to that tax collector. And then, in Jesus' parable, as he alerts us to ways in which we can go wrong, even in prayer and in worship, then Jesus goes on to lead us toward his mercy because then he has this second person at the worship service, this tax collector.

And maybe you remember the tax collector's prayer. It's just a few words, but they are words to God that come deeply from his heart. He beats his heart. He said, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And what Jesus says is, as he prayed that prayer, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” when they left, he was right with God. Amen.

Because he was giving that mercy. He was being justified. He was being made more and more right with God. And I think that can be good news for us. Again, even as we know, we can be tempted to go wrong. We can want the glory of men. Still, Jesus is giving us enough words that we can open ourselves to his words.

That leads us to pray, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” because as we pray that prayer from our hearts, our Father has inspired it in us from His Spirit. He's eager to answer. And then if we ask, “Okay, I want that mercy, but how will it come to me? What difference is it going to make in how I live?”

Here again, we can turn to another gospel scene because as we think of that tax collector walking out and he's right with God because he has received that mercy, we can ask, then, what does he do? Does he just keep going around as many tax collectors did, collecting as much money as he could from the people who needed to pay taxes, that he would then pass on and part to the Roman Empire? On and on, the story could go on. Let's recognize that Jesus does give us a sense of how mercy works. Because in Luke 19, he tells he doesn't tell, he reveals another story about another tax collector. And maybe you remember the name of this tax collector, Zacchaeus. And a lot of us sang this way back. Zacchaeus is this wee little man, so he's not glorious in every way in the world.

But as a tax collector, he is a well-to-do man. But he wants to see Jesus. And so he climbs up that sycamore tree, and he's hiding. And when Jesus sees Zacchaeus, Jesus sees a man who is poor in spirit, a man who knows how much he needs mercy from the Lord. And so Jesus speaks pretty sternly to Zacchaeus, “Come down, I'm going to come to your house.”

As they gather in the house, they come together at a table, and Zacchaeus receives a mercy that transforms him to follow Jesus toward the glory of the kingdom of God. Because Zacchaeus receives mercy, he expresses it in the kind of glory that we see in Jesus and in the Word of God. He starts to help the poor with the money he has given.

He starts to repent of ways in which he's gone wrong. He starts to recognize he needs wisdom and truth in how to deal with the world. with his money. And so instead of the worldly glory of just getting richer and richer, he has the glory of God to say, “Whatever the Lord has given me, I can use it for his purposes. I can do his will.” And as Jesus sees that kind of thing happening, Jesus then says to that man who said, “Have mercy on me, a sinner,” he also says it to us all. Jesus says, “Salvation has come to this member of the covenantal family. Salvation has come to this descendant of Abraham and the covenantal family going back centuries. Salvation has come and that is happening,” Jesus says, “because I have come, I'm the son of man who came with this human love in which I come to seek and save the lost people who know they need help.” People know they need mercy. Jesus comes to seek and save the lost to lead us to find our way into the glorious new life, the glorious new world that our God wants for us.

So, friends in Christ, we can conclude this way: If that biblical word judgment rightly does bring some humility to you, if God's law and God's teaching include some directions that you're not fully living up to, that is part of the wisdom. That's part of what our merciful God wants us to know.

Because our merciful Father, through that revelation of our need, of our being lost, shows mercy to us. And it's a true mercy that transforms. It transforms us into an openness that, through faith, connects us more and more to our glorious Lord, Jesus Christ, who helps us share that true glory by not only experiencing but expressing the mercy of our Father.

That's what our Lord is doing through His Word right now. That's the kind of thing our Lord will do through the table. That's the kind of thing our Lord will continue to do. Rather than getting lost, you can follow Jesus into a path of mercy that leads to a whole life of true glory and participate in that.

We're not going to just merely pray, but we are going to pray right now for God's word to come true in our hearts. Let's join in prayer.

Father in heaven, we praise you. We praise you that in Christ. You come to us where we are and where we are people who need your mercy in countless ways. We could ignore other people. We can look at people with contempt. We can discriminate. Oh, Father, we need your mercy. And we thank you that in Christ you come to us where we are.

And yet, you don't leave us there; you lead us to where you want us to be, as followers of Jesus, who rejoice and seek that glory, the true glory of God that we see in Jesus Christ, and that you share to us, with us through your Holy Spirit. And we pray for all these words to come true, for mercy and glory and all your words to come true.

And we pray all this through Jesus Christ. In his name we pray, Amen.