2024-09-29 - San Jose CRC - sermon only - John Bowen

James 2:1-13

Transcript

 Good morning. Our scripture reading this morning is from James chapter two, verses one to 13. You can follow along with me on the screen or listen to the words.

Favoritism is forbidden. My brothers and sisters, believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, must not show favoritism. 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, you will 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 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? 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.

This is the word of the Lord

This is an installment in a series of sermons in which we're working through the letter of James. As with several of the books that we've studied together over the last few months, I wanted to encourage you to sit down and read this letter from start to finish. They've all been short letters. James is a very short but powerful letter. It will probably only take you about 17 minutes to read it from start to finish.

But you'll get a much better sense of the letter as a letter if you'll read through it in one sitting. James is a fascinating book. It's had controversy since it was written, it seems, both in the church and outside. The more I read it and the more I learn about it, though, the more I am intrigued.

James is probably the earliest letter of Christianity. It's the earliest letter in Christianity that we have in the Bible, which makes it one of the oldest writings of the New Testament, if not the oldest. Most scholars believe it would be dated in the mid-40s and was likely written right around the year 44 or 45.

It's difficult when you're looking at documents. We think, why don't you know when the thing was written? But when you're looking at documents that are 2, 000 years old, and you only have fragments and pieces from all these different places you don't necessarily have all the information.

And so they're always piecing together. Okay, who wrote it? And where was it written? And why was it written? And when was it written? And one of the big things about this book is that I think that we're fairly certain now, but people for a long time said which James wrote it they're like James is mentioned over 40 times in the New Testament.

It takes some sorting out and evaluation just to determine which one of these James wrote the book. But most scholars agree that the letter was probably written by James, Jesus's brother. And so that adds a whole new level to it. I learned through this process that I should have known this years ago.

Don't tell any of the people that ordained me at one point that I didn't know that James and his brothers weren't believers in jesus as the messiah until after Jesus's death and resurrection. I've always thought, you know, Hey, if you're hanging out there in the first century with Jesus and you're watching the miracles and you're hearing the teaching, you'd believe, wouldn't you? And yet we have all these Jewish people that struggled with it and didn't make sense of it, And we have even the brothers of Jesus themselves that until the death and resurrection, they didn't realize that he was the Messiah. So that's fascinating to me.

None of that's in the sermon, but you're probably already familiar with much of James. It's full of famous quotes about the Christian life, many of which I'm sure you're aware of, even if you may not know that they come from James. The testing of faith produces steadfastness; that's James 1.

And 1. 8, a double minded man is unstable in all his ways. And 1. 17, every good and perfect gift is from above. And 1. 20, man's anger does not produce God's righteousness. And 1. 27 this is also a very challenging one, I think. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Then, the famous one in chapter 2: 17, which I think we all get to preach about, faith without works is dead. That's usually the one we think of when we think of the book of James. So all of us have some familiarity with James, but I still want to encourage you to sit down and read it start to finish so you get that sense of it as a letter.

When I first looked at today's passage getting ready to preach, it appeared to me that it was about favoritism shown to rich people and discrimination against the poor. And I thought to myself, Oh, we don't do that. We're okay. This might be a short and sweet sermon. But the more I worked through the passage, the more I became concerned because I realized that James isn't just talking about money or the struggle between the rich and the poor.

As we will come to see, he is talking about that royal law. That is, 25, when pushed to summarize the most important law, said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The translation I was reading from is a little bit different from what Fred read from. And I like this. This is the RSV. Because there's a sassy tone. He starts off this passage with a sarcastic question. And as one that's sarcastic, I appreciate seeing it in scripture once in a while. But James says, My brothers and sisters, do you, with your acts of favoritism, really believe in our gracious Lord Jesus Christ?

Do you, who are doing these things, really believe in Jesus Christ?

And then later in verse 9 he says, If you show partiality, you commit sin. And are convicted by the law as a transgressor. No partiality. That's how this word is translated. It means literally, without respect to the face, or don't judge one by the surface level, and show favoritism with respect to surface level and external characteristics.

And this word that's used, see if I can say it, prosopolypsia. No partiality, without favoritism, it's a really rare Greek word. And you don't find it in non Christian writings. In fact, a lot of scholars think that it may have been forged in Christian circles explicitly in the early church. In verse 2, James, like a good Bible teacher, tells us a story to illustrate his point.

For a man with gold rings and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing, and you say, have a seat here, please, while you say to the poor man, stand over there, or sit at my feet. Have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? So here you've got a situation of a rich man who comes into the church and gets ushered right to the best seats down the front.

And right after him, a poor man comes in. He's told to sit in the back. The church was granting status and privilege based on worldly wealth. If you do this, James says, have you not then made ungodly distinctions among yourselves? And become judges with evil thoughts. That's a heavy burden. The sin of partiality categorizes people based on things that don't matter to God.

Or, to quote Tony Evans, it's when you make a value judgment based on unbiblical criteria. It's when you judge a book, as they say, by the cover. Years ago, there was an article about this guy who grew up in a poor community, but he'd done really well in school and somehow gotten a scholarship to go to Harvard. In the first semester there, he apparently picked up some of the Harvard errors about himself. He started speaking with a Boston accent, and he donned expensive Italian leather shoes. He'd correct his family's grammar when they'd talk on the phone. And he even started smoking a pipe. When he came home for Christmas, his father invited him out onto the back porch and opened a box of cigars.

The boy was impressed because he saw the label, Padron on them, which meant they were about 30 bucks a cigar. And he took one out and he sniffed it and then he cut the top off. And he said in a very condescending tone, See, Dad, you can tell this is an expensive cigar because of the way the top just pops off. It's been properly rolled. Then he lit it and said, "See, Dad, you can tell this is a good cigar by the way it lights. The tobacco is still properly moist, so it takes a moment to catch flame. That's because it's been properly cured." He proceeded to make several more expert-sounding observations about the aroma and about the way the smoke wafted through the air.

And he was really lecturing his dad about differentiating good cigars from bad cigars. Finally, his dad said, That's great, son, especially since these are really cheap cigars. Boy looked at his dad and said, No dad, the Padrone is a 30 cigar. He said, Yes son, but that's a 30 Padrone paper on a 0. 75 cigar. I know because I changed them. These are Swisher Sweets in Padrone wrappers. At this point, the guy is writing, “No, Dad.” My dad explained to me how simply putting a fancy cover on something doesn't make the inside fancy. He said, I'll never forget that lesson. You can't judge a book, or a cigar, or a person by its cover. A similar thing was happening in the early church.

The church was differentiating people, making assumptions about them based on distinctions that carry no weight with God. Now, before you say we're not like that anymore, there was no usher here at church seating the rich people up front and the poor people in the back. But think about it for a minute.

Think about all the ways that we show prejudice towards one another in the church. Maybe it's by the car they drive, or the clothes they wear. Maybe it's by the neighborhood they live in. Some of us may be prejudiced against the rich. Look at them with their posh lifestyles. I bet they've never worked a day in their life.

They don't know what real life is. So entitled, and I bet that they'll raise their kids the same way. Others of us may have a tendency to look down on people of meager means. You assume that in this country the only way you can end up being poor is being lazy. So obviously this person doesn't have what it takes.

Some of us may look down on people who are overweight and out of shape. Clearly, they lack self-control and self-respect. Some of us don't like people who are skinny. Clearly, they're image-obsessed and superficial people. Some of us assume that smart people are stuck up. Others assume working-class people are unsophisticated and boring.

Some of us may not like strong, outspoken women, probably radical feminists. Others may assume that soft-spoken, quiet women are pushovers with no self-respect. Some of us may not like passionate worshipers who raise their hands in worship because we assume they're attention-seeking showoffs. Others don't like subdued worshipers because we assume they're disinterested or unspiritual.

Some of us may assume people of color come into our church with a chip on their shoulder, ready to turn everything into a race issue, and others of us assume. White people are blind to their privilege and don't care about anything other than keeping their privileged position. Some of us assume anyone who leans left politically doesn't care about godliness, has no backbone, no understanding of how economics works, and others of us assume that those who lean right don't care about justice and don't care about preserving, all they care about is preserving the status quo that benefits them. Each one of these examples demonstrates the sin of partiality, how it can be worked, and how it works in the church. And none of these things has any rightful place in our Christian community.

In verse five, James says, 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 is promised those who loved him, but you've dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich ones, are not the rich ones, the ones who oppress you, the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you've been called? External appearances rarely reflect internal realities. And God has chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom. If anything, James said, those who are worldly rich tend to miss spiritual blessings.

James says to them, look around. It's not the rich who are flooding your churches. It's the poor. Rich are resisting you and persecuting you. It was the Jewish leaders in the Pharisees who had missed the truth about Jesus. And yet it was the prostitutes and the tax collectors who flocked to be around him.

Paul says that God chose what is foolish in the world. God chose what is good to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. So that no human being might boast in his presence.

That's not to say that no rich or powerful or educated people will recognize Jesus. However, it's critical to remember. It's not our riches that attracts his attention. It's not our intelligence that figures him out. It's not our goodness that earns his favor. The core of the good news is that Jesus Christ loved us and had mercy on us.

So because of that, showing partiality in the church is wrong. Because with it, we're not treating others as we would like to be treated. We're not judging by God's standards. We're not displaying that unwarranted mercy and unending love with which we've been treated by our Heavenly Father.

In verse 8, James gives another reason to pay attention to this, and he says, If you really fulfill the royal law, according to the scriptures, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you're doing well. But if you show partiality, you're committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. See, showing no partiality, no judgment, is the essence of the great commandment.

It's how we want to be treated without prejudice, and it's how we're supposed to treat everyone else. James seems to have known Jesus pretty well. Maybe it was as a brother, and maybe it came secondhand. But Matthew 22 talks about when the Pharisees and the Sadducees confront Jesus.

It says that they came together when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which of the great commandments is the great commandment in the law? And he said to them, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, and mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second, like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said that these two commandments depend on all the law and the prophets.

James tells us that when we treat somebody differently because of how they look or how much money they have or based on some other surface-level judgment and misconstrued conception in our own minds, we're breaking Jesus's summary of the most important commandment.

And then, in verse 10, James drives home this point by means of another gut punch, I'd say. Whoever keeps the whole law but fails at one point has become guilty of all of it.

For he who said do not commit adultery also said, do not murder. If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you've become transgressors of the law. James says the same thing to those showing partiality. You kept the smaller laws. Great. But you broke the big one that Jesus says was at the heart of all of it. You didn't love others like you wanted to be loved.

There's a pastor who painted the doors of the sanctuary red, symbolizing the blood of Jesus, because he wanted to be clear that when we come in here, we don't bring our appearances, accomplishments, affluence, achievements, ancestry, or good or bad works.

Regardless of our status or the color of our skin, or our religious past, we are all sinners in need of a savior made clean before God only by the blood of the Son. As the old saying goes, the ground is level at the foot of the cross. What matters when you come in here is not status or money or success.

What matters is that you are made in God's image and purchased by Christ's blood. Nothing else matters. And that's where our dignity comes from.

So speak and act, as James says in verse 12. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. Disdain for the poor and prejudice against people for some other surface-level observation demonstrates a big disconnect with the basic gospel. James says, judge how you expect to be judged. Show no mercy and you'll be shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

If you're a Christian, you've put all your hope for eternal life in God's mercy. Embracing the gospel means embracing that nothing about your worthiness earns God's favor. He gives it to you, the unworthy, as a free gift. Amen. The gospel is about God's rescue of the poor, not his reward for the rich.

The gospel is that before God, we are all poor and all blind, wretched because of our sin, children of wrath, sons and daughters of disobedience, enemies of God, outcasts, and strangers of the covenant. But now, in grace. God has brought us near and now our hope is in his promise that he will not judge us according to our sins but according to his mercy given us in Christ.

A Christian who understands that should treat others in the same way. God set you free from your sin. The law of freedom and liberty judges you. You should receive others In the same way. What James is saying is not that we earn God's mercy by showing mercy. He's saying the flip side of that. James says that the evidence that we have experienced God's mercy is that we show God's mercy to everyone we encounter.

Look at the last line of the verse. 13. Last line of our passage. Mercy triumphs over judgment. In this context, the phrase means that on that final day, our acts of mercy will triumph over judgment. In this context, that phrase does not mean that the final day God's mercy will triumph over judgment in his heart, but that our mercy will triumph over judgment.

Because our acts of mercy will demonstrate that you understand the gospel and receive it. The gospel is good news. Sometimes I think we've forgotten how bad our sin was. Gospel is good news. And it ought to feel that way for every person that we encounter. As those who've experienced the great mercy of God, we ought to treat each person with the same mercy and unconditional love.

One day we'll be gathered in eternity with a great multitude from every nation, tribe, and tongue. We'll have different accents and ancestries. There'll be people who were rich and those who were poor. Former world rulers alongside former slaves. There'll be movie stars and maintenance men. There'll be former pastors and former pimps and former prostitutes.

And we will all be there for one reason. Because the man on the cross said we could be there. Because the man on the cross will have shown unwarranted love and undeserved mercy to each one of us. Mercy triumphs over judgment. As we try to follow in the way of that man on the cross, may our lives more and more reflect his love and mercy.

Amen.

Heavenly Father, thank you for these harsh and strong words from the book of James. May we more and more experience your mercy, and may we more and more, Father, learn what that means to incorporate that in how we treat others.

Father, fill us with your Spirit, guide us in your ways, give us strength to follow you. And be glorified in all of it. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.