Be Impartial (James 2:1-13) - Pastor Daniel Fusco

[Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so kids say the most awesome things so my youngest annabelle she's uh seven years old right now and uh annabelle every time when someone meets annabelle they say she's got like ceo potential so she's got that or i say she's got the potential to be a socialist dictator not that i want her to be you know what i mean but she's just got that kind of big personality so last night before she went to bed you know uh my bride lynn puts her down and she reads to her and they pray and then i get invited in to pray with to pray with annabelle and so before i put her there i end up i was like hey dad i'm like what's up annabelle she's like we've got church tomorrow huh i'm like yeah she's like you know dad i like church except you preach for too long and it's hard to sit still for that long no offense she's like i'm going to pray for you and then we start praying but like i just my animal's so funny because it's like she she speaks her piece and then she says and no offense you know which is something that we've taught her over time because she's the kind of person who she would have said it previously and not said no offense and just let it sit there like she was talking with one of her buddies and they were singing a song and annabelle goes you do not sing very well and we're like no no you can't say you have to say hey listen maybe we need to work on the pitch and i'm like you know it's not like you're pavarotti or something all right but it's like i just i love so so i was thinking about that all morning like dad church is great but you preach for too long and so with further ado let's just open up our bibles to james chapter 2 and we'll shorten the sermon a little bit amen so so open your bibles james chapter 2 verses 1 to 13. if you brought a bible with you book of james towards the end of uh of your bible they're uh at the end of the new testament if you didn't bring bible there's bibles on the seats in front of you if you don't like paper you don't like books but you like your phone pull out your phone go to your favorite browser window favorite bible app type in uh james chapter two if you're like hey i don't have a bible app on my phone fusco where do i get one go to a crossroads mobile app it's a free mobile app that we have you can read along with us uh this series and james i am absolutely loving because it talks about what does it look like to follow jesus in real life right like like how should we live if we believe in jesus and as we move farther and farther down the road of life what i am very aware of is that the people of god should look different than everybody else the way we act the motivations through which we act the way we move through the world should be different our faith makes us different and one of the greatest struggles the cause of christianity has today is that in a lot of ways the church as a whole the people of god don't look much different than everybody else so then it boils down to if like if christians and non-christians essentially look the same then why would i want to be in church on sunday why wouldn't i want to just you know go to brunch and read and and and watch football or you know i'm not against brunch or football you know that but the idea is like what would make people want to follow jesus and and really it boils down to where the rubber meets the road in real life our faith wants to play out and the book of james was written to help the people in in the first generation but also us today and all believers and subsequent generations what does it look like to follow jesus in real life in real time where we all live and so this book is super practical and so jumping in chapter 2 of the book of james verse 1 james is my my brethren do not hold the faith of our lord jesus christ the lord of glory with partiality for if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings in fine apparel and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him you sit here in a good place and say to the poor man you stand there or sit here at my footstool have you not shown partiality amongst yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts listen my beloved brethren has god not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to those who love him verse six but you have dishonored the poor man do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called so what we learn here is that you and i is a simple principle don't show favoritism don't show favoritism don't treat different people different ways based on some sort of perceived gain or lack that you can achieve from them now think about what's been going on because obviously james chapter two comes on the heels of james chapter one and when the holy spirit inspired the uh james to be writing this there was no chapter breaks so just one long letter right you know if you get a letter from someone it's in chapters it's not a letter it's a book right so so so this was just a letter that james wrote so at the end of james chapter 1 there's a simple exhortation to not just be hearers of the word but doers also right and then james immediately says so so don't just hear the word of god but you need to hear the word of god and apply it to real life where you're living right and then he goes on he says then listen pure and undefiled religion before god is that you would visit widows and orphans in their trouble and keep yourself unspotted from the world so one of the ways that we put feet on our faith and live out the word is now to go and visit people who are vulnerable in culture and try and help them and to keep yourself consecrated set apart from what's all that's going on and now james says not only should our faith in jesus our religion be outward to help people but also the way we interact inwardly as the people of god should be changed now you have to realize that in the culture that james is writing the culture of the roman empire at the time when jesus was alive there's a lot of discussion about honor right like it says take the lowest seat don't take the highest seat so you have to be moved back we've been my family been reading through proverbs every day and we just saw it like when you are in the presence of the king take the lowest seat so that they can move you up don't take the highest seat then you might have to get moved down because in that culture honoring people was a very high uh kind of style it was it was the ethics of that day it was an honor shame culture so what james is saying now is that when the people of god get together whereas in the world in which they lived people who had means people who were very successful people who had achieved status got special honor and people who were impoverished would get less honor and james is saying actually when you gather together it shouldn't be like that at all so you see what he says verse verse one he says my brethren do not hold the faith of our lord jesus christ the lord of glory with partiality and that would be with the idea of differentiation or with favoritism right now the reason this is so important is all of this is based on it's the faith of our lord jesus christ who is called the lord of glory so james grounds the ethics of the people of god the way we relate to one another not in the culture in which he lives but in the person of jesus lord jesus who is the lord of glory and i'm here to tell you if you want to know how to live out your faith where the rubber meets the road it is all built off of the person and work of jesus now you have to think how did jesus himself treat people did jesus give preference to the powerful to the well-off he didn't at all when jesus chose his apostles he didn't do like a what is your platform in your reach how much resources do you bring to the table he grabbed a bunch of fishermen and he said hey come on follow me i'm going to make you fishers of men the whole way through they were not the the ones who if you were to put their resumes together who should follow the messiah would never have been chosen but what's amazing is although we don't live in what they would commonly call second temple judaism or the time of the roman empire a lot of these favoritisms and partialities still exists today like if a president or a dignitary would come or if a celebrity would come how would you treat that person we have a tendency to show favoritism to people for different reasons you know i just i had an interesting experience i just got invited by um a couple in our in our fellowship to to do a wedding and uh it's at uh it's at the home of somebody who's pretty well known and they say like we really like you to come because we know you won't be a knucklehead when you're there and i was like praise god you know but like what's amazing is like if your favorite movie star your favorite athlete came in how weird would you be and it's one of the ways that we show favoritism because we assume that somebody can help us along or do something for us and we have a tendency to treat people differently and james is saying actually because of who jesus is because he died on the cross for everyone the same the the politician the movie star the athlete the uber wealthy the person who is houseless in a camp they all get saved the same way through the death of resurrection of jesus and so because of that treat everybody exactly the same such a simple principle but let me ask you a question for those of you who are who you go to work do you work differently when your boss is in the room [Music] partiality do you treat your boss differently did you treat your co-worker or somebody who works underneath you it's partiality right and within the the body of christ we should treat everybody exactly the same everybody is creating the image and likeness of god all they're flawed by sin they're redeemable by jesus and so we don't treat people different ways and james uses a simple example he uses the example of somebody who is well off as opposed to somebody who is impoverished verse two for if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings in fine apparel now like i just be honest almost all of you are in fine apparel today and i'm not knocking your fashion sense you know what i mean it's like it's like you have clothes in your closet many of you have rings on right so like it's a it's interesting how like in that culture like someone was in fine apparel had rings on they were considered like super wealthy and if you have to realize that even the most impoverished among us if you have a cell phone you're wealthier than than a huge percentage of the global population right so just to put things into perspective on where we are but if someone comes in in gold in a final apparel and there should come in a poor man and filthy clothes and you pay attention to the person so you give deference or or you treat differently the person who has the nice clothes you said hey listen let me give you this nice seat you sit up here in this good place and you say to the person who's poor say oh listen stand over there or listen you can come sit here at my footstool which is you could sit underneath me where my feet are have you not shown partiality amongst yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts now i think that's amazing saying if you were to treat different people different ways you've become judges with evil thoughts we don't think about ourselves that way but that's how james describes it now of course in the leviticus 19 15 it says you shall do no injustice and judgment you shall not be partial to the poor nor honor the person of the mighty in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor so this isn't like just a new testament concept it has always been in the life of the heart of god for his people that we treat everybody without favoritism without differentiation but we have to learn it afresh because even thousands of years after the law was given in the book of leviticus as james is writing to the 12 tribes that are scattered he's still reminding them of the same old thing don't show personal favoritism and i think it's something that each one of us need to look at in our own hearts lord do i treat different people different ways oftentimes what we do is we have a tendency to want to treat better than other people somebody who we think could advance us a certain to a certain place either through their friendship or through their connections right and really it's about seeing people as god sees them and not seeing people as our society stratifies them so as followers of jesus the way we choose to treat people has a different set of uh criteria primarily who jesus is and it's interesting because james goes on to say here verse 5. listen my beloved brethren has god not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to those who love him but you have dishonored the poor man do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts do they not blaspheme the noble name in which you were called now what's interesting here is james is not as concerned with material riches as he is with spiritual riches and of course you have to remember that for the early church and really for the first 300 years of the church the church was primarily filled with impoverished people it wasn't until christianity became the official religion of the roman empire in the early fourth century with first the edict of toleration the edict of constantine that christianity took on some political power now what's interesting that you have right now is if you look at the kind of the history of christianity in the west christianity in the west was in a place of power through uh the different marriages of empire and religion like the roman empire and the holy catholic church have all these different things and even in the founding of america christianity has had a privileged position up until right about now where we're starting to the church is starting to feel it's more it's more marginalized right now right and so when you tell someone you're a believer it means more now than maybe at other times but what's amazing is is that if you read church history the church is actually never more healthy than when it isn't in a place of privilege because it's in a place of privilege we have a tendency i i realize i use the word privilege in a day and age where when you use the word privilege it has political connotations but when when christianity is endeared within the power structure of a culture it actually doesn't have to rely on jesus it relies on the power structure and when christianity is no longer endeared to the power structure it actually has to rely on its real power which is the power of the holy spirit and the power of god and it can't be propped up by the empire and that's actually when the church could be the most fruitful i don't know that we want to clap for that though because i realize it's it's a very uncomfortable transition that's going on right now for all of us but i'll give you the simplest example of this and it actually comes from our current era which if you look at the church in china a hundred years ago in china there were western missionaries were flooding into china because china was exploding in population they didn't have a christian witness and then uh when chairman mao came on and he he expelled all of the western missionaries all of them so great missionaries like hudson taylor if you ever read hudson taylor spiritual secrets if you want a good missionary biography read that book love that book it's powerful the entire china inland mission got expelled from china and it began the biggest revival in the history of the church because there are more christians in china than there are citizens in america now completely while the government completely oppressed the church you look at the growth of christianity in the roman empire before the edict of toleration the edict of constantine and the church grew like gangbusters now i'm not saying that we should enjoy the transition that we're in but you have to realize we always have to ask ourselves where is our power coming from and for the people of god our power comes from jesus and his spirit nowhere else so we have to remember that like the church does not need the covering of empire or a political party for its strength and if it did then it's just worldly and that's part like is that the tension of our day and age right now because for many of us who especially those of you who've been in the faith for a long time there was a time when christianity had a very uh it was given a lot of deference from the government and the government did things to help the church and now it's kind of like well they used to help us they don't anymore now i've already grown up because i'm in my mid-40s i wasn't there in that beautiful time for for some of you like when the church so i've always been involved in the church on the margins but what i realized is that when you when your only power source is the spirit of god you have more than what you need and any time our we we seek to derive power from the governmental entities you realize that actually it's a false power and it actually undercuts the work of the spirit of god and so in the midst of all this the early church was primarily the impoverished people people who were on the margins who loved god love jesus and that's why he says aren't the rich people the ones who haul you into court really what it's saying is that the people who have been successful within the the environment that was going on they knew how to work the environment to their advantage and in the same way in what really what james is saying to all of us is listen don't prefer people because of their social status love everybody because of jesus that's what he's saying and if you don't believe me you see where james goes from here because look at what happens next in verse 8 of james chapter 2 he says if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scriptures you shall love your neighbor as yourself you do well but if you show partiality you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors so really what we learn here is that we want to live well by loving well we live well by now i get that idea of living well by loving well all from verse eight notice what says if you really fulfill the royal law according to scripture that you shall love your neighbor as yourself you do what you do well so we live well by loving well and what james is saying is that if you show partiality you are not loving well so the faith the personal favoritism the the differentiations that we make in giving love is and actually undercuts what he's calling the royal law or the regal law the law of the king of kings and the lord of lords which is simply to love your neighbor as yourself and of course you all know this you can read this in leviticus 19 18 which jesus also quoted in matthew chapter 22 verse 39 when they asked jesus what's the greatest commandment he said i'll give you two love the lord your god with all your heart soul strength in mind which he gets from uh deuteronomy 6 and he says in the second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself i call this one upward inward and outward right you get upward from deuteronomy 6 it's your relationship with god and then you love your neighbor which is outward as yourself which is inward so god's love and who god is defines us and how we see ourselves which defines how we treat people and now james calls this second of the great commandments he calls this and i think it's such a powerful idea he says if you fulfill the royal law and what is this is speaking about is it's speaking about living into the kingdom where jesus is lord now i i think sometimes we read this we don't think about it in the context that it's happening now when we say something like jesus is lord right like jesus is the messiah he is the king of kings and the lord of lords we don't realize that 2 000 years ago in the roman empire they would say caesar is lord so for a christian to say jesus's lord was completely considered to be an insurrection treason these type of things and so when jesus is talking about the royal law he's like this is about the law of god's kingdom where jesus is the king this is how we treat one another and in a lot of ways if all of us spent our entire lives simply saying how do i love my neighbor as myself you have every all that you need for good biblical ethics right there how do i treat people like let me give you an example and in our day and age it's like we look at what's going on in our world today and one of the biggest struggles we have is there's this battle between what are my rights and how do i love my neighbor right and so what i believe is that loving your neighbor means i am going to place myself at is at a disadvantage so that my neighbor could be advantaged i am going to serve my neighbor i'm going to love self-sacrificially and that is challenging for us today because it means that we don't stand on what we can do we say what does love require of me now listen in a partisan political world those words are fighting words aren't they and i really i say this stuff i get the emails actually i don't get the email my poor assistant gets the emails pray for her because i say this stuff and people get mad but i'm like this is just what the bible says you love your neighbor as you would want to be loved if you were in their situation so you're saying if i was there what would i want someone to do to me how would i want them to treat me so it's about us seeing ourselves not for where we are but we see people for where where they are we say if i was them how would i want to be treated and that drives our ethics that drives who we are now i've always said it this way because people say well daniel what about this and what about this i always say listen if i'm going to make an error i want to error on the side of love and grace than on the side of truth and justice now what i mean by that is love and truth are not opposites but sometimes we can be so truthful that we inflict wounds on people so i'd rather be more gracious than less gracious i'd rather be more loving than less loving why because i know that the fruit of the spirit is what it's love so i'd always want to error on the side of being more gracious and more loving as opposed to less gracious and less loving and i think you should want to as well because jesus came on arrest someone could say jesus's grace is reckless i mean he died for people who were horrible yes he did people like me and you so the gospel drives us to say what does love require of me and how i can esteem others higher than myself put others before myself because that's exactly what jesus did for me now i realize this is challenging but this is where the rubber meets the road on how you should treat people i was just talking to my son about this we were talking because he's at this my son is at this great age right now he's 16 almost 17 he's in high school and he's learning about who do i want to be in this world and we were talking about you know he's in high school he's in public high school and so he sees some of the stuff that goes on you know and and he had a situation in class where a couple of kids were kind of ganging up on another kid not physically but verbally and he called it out and said hey hold on a second he's a good guy like hear him out and then after he was like should i do that i'm like you should totally do that because that's the kind of men god wants us to be men who advocate for others men will just get caught up in the crowd but people who stand for what's right and i'm like as long as you're not yelling and cursing and you know like you're flying off the handle there is a godly way to advocate and took them to you know john chapter eight and showed him where jesus advocated for the woman caught in adultery even though the man wasn't there to get in trouble too right and he advocated for her he protected her even though she was wrong he protected her and i was like that's what love does and i'm like buddy if you're in that situation a bunch of people are ganging up on you for something that you said would you hope that people would come around you and rally even if you're wrong even if you said it wrong given that the totality of who you are is like yeah i would hope that people would i'm like that's how you want to treat everybody and does that change the game when you look at everything you say if i was in that situation how would i want to be treated but i was just talking to someone recently about like pastor daniel you know we shouldn't walk by in fear why do you wear a mask i'm like i'm not worried about me i'm not worried about me at all i'm 45 i don't have pre-existing conditions i'm like but there's a lot of people who if i get it and i pass along to them i'm worried about this be my fault i'm like so i'm not worried i do it out of love do i want to do it no but i do because i love my brothers and sisters and and i'm not saying everyone has to think that way but when i look at what does love require me that's what that's what it drives me to it drives me to do all sorts of things that i wouldn't do naturally but if i put myself in someone else's shoes i'm like that's what i want someone to do for me and you can do this in every area of life my friends what would it look like for me to love somebody well right where they are and then we move in that it's called the royal law and then what's amazing is james ties it back in because notice what he says verse 9 but if you show partiality you commit sin and you're convicted by the law as transgressors and it says for whoever shall keep the whole law yet stumble in one point he is guilty of all for he verse 11 who said do not commit adultery also said do not commit murder now if you do not commit adultery but you do murder you have become a transgressor of the law so speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty for judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy mercy triumphs over judgment now what this teaches us here is that you and i we need to find freedom in jesus because notice what he says he says the verse 12 so speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of what liberty the law of freedom and again liberty is not a political term it's a biblical term first and it means the freedom to follow jesus and to live as jesus lived real freedom is the freedom to be able to do certain things and to choose not to because of jesus and so really jesus wants to give us real biblical liberty and he does it because james reminds us that if you are trying to keep the law that even if you stumble at one point of the law you're actually guilty of all the law he's making this case that it's not like when i when i judge my life against law and speaking of the law of moses he's like when i judge my life against the law i may not murder or i may not commit adultery but if i do murder he's like you're still found guilty within the law so in some ways the idea is is that no matter where you make a mistake everybody in jail has broken the law if you've ever gotten a traffic ticket you've broken the law and it really doesn't matter maybe there's different severities on the earth of which law you broke but in the end of the day you are still a transgressor and of course the law is talking about the law of moses you find that in exodus 20 and deuteronomy 5 right you find these the all the the big ten but really what he's saying is that we have a tendency to say well no i didn't do i did this but i didn't do this and james was like actually if in the totality of the law all you need to do is be the transgressor of one of the laws and then you're guilty of all of them you stand condemned by the law and this is why jesus is so important my friends because i'm here to tell you you may not have done a lot of different things but we've all done something that made us a transgressor of the law right like you're like man i never did drugs in my life but i did look down on somebody well guess what you're a habitual law breaker right you may say listen man i never stole anything from anybody but i heard a lot of people with my words you transgress the law and james is making that point for whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumble in one point he's guilty of all of it and he says listen judgment is without mercy for the person who doesn't show any mercy he's saying listen and jesus talked about this that whatever measure you use you get measured back to you that's a scary thing i think god's law is an easier judge for us than our own laws of ourselves now i say that knowing that god's law is perfect but one thing i find is that all of us have standards that we hold people up to and like it's like the old thing when someone's like you talk too much and it's like the chattiest person in the room why do they why are they always occupying all the conversations and you're like oh chatty kathy doesn't want no competition you know and it's like we have this tendency like you we expect people to be completely honorable completely loyal but if you look at your history along the way you've been unloyal right we erect these criteria for people and really the bible says that whatever measure you use will be measured back to you and so not only do we have god's law but then we also have the the criteria by which we judge other people and really what he's saying here is that listen we all fail when it comes to god's perfect law and our own criteria that we set up for people we all fail and that is why we should so speak and so do as those who be judged by the law of liberty what he's saying is that you and i we need jesus and there is a very specific reason why i have put my faith and trust in jesus christ and that is because without jesus i am condemned under my own criteria and definitely under god's and so are you if you're the kind of person who's like man there's a right way to live i guarantee you have violated your own conscience in the way that you have chosen to live along the way maybe it was a one-off but it's enough and the apostle paul says it this way romans chapter 7 verse 24 and 25 he says o wretched man that i am who will deliver me from this body of death i thank god through jesus christ my lord so then with the mind i myself serve the law of god but with the flesh i serve the law of sin see paul realizes that as someone who knew the law he's like i have fallen short i have made mistakes and paul is echoing what all of us feel on a daily basis i'm not going to ask you to raise your hand i know if any all of us yesterday we did something we didn't do something we said something we should have said something that when we look back i wish i would have done that different because all of us are not the worst versions of ourselves but none of us are the best versions of ourselves all of us when we look at our lives man i wish i would have done that different i could have handled that different why did i say that why didn't i say something and because of that the bible says that all of sin had fallen short of the glory of god and that's why if you are here today and you are already a follower of jesus you and i we need to cling to jesus because we need jesus as much today as on the day that we got saved you have way more data now since the day you said yes to jesus that you need jesus because now because of the presence of the holy spirit in your life you realize more and more how unlike jesus we could be and if you're here today and you're a follower of jesus that's why you should be more excited about being a believer today than you ever have been [Music] because his salvation sets us free free from our failings free from our mistakes free from the habits and the addictions and the issues that we had free by his spirit to walk in the spirit to walk in newness of life to be different than we've been before and that is such good news and if you're here today and you are not yet a follower of jesus this is why you need to be listen your life is your own only you can choose who you're going to follow but i'm telling you you need to put your faith and trust in jesus because you have failed and you will fail and the only way for your failures to be atoned for is through the death of jesus that's why when jesus was in the garden of gethsemane before he was crucified and jesus said father if there's any other way if it is possible for you to redeem humanity if there's any other way let this cup pass me but god not my will but yours be done and jesus had to go to the cross because there was no other way there's no other way the prophet isaiah could foresee what was going to happen when he said though their sins are as scarlet they will be white as snow so if you're here today and you're not yet a follower of jesus i'm going to give you an opportunity to begin that journey to receive the grace of god but god will not apply his grace to you unless you say god i'm sick and i need healing god i'm a sinner i need saving just the way if you have a medical condition the doctor is not going to perform surgery on you unless you show up for it sign off on it wants to do a heart surgery a soul surgery on you he isn't simply saying will you come to me and let me transform you let me change you he's asking you to say okay the great physician the great heart surgeon the great healer of my soul do the work you want to do in me and if you say yes to jesus here today he will transform your life so let's bow our heads in our hearts as we pray father i want to thank you so much for your freedom for your forgiveness lord forgive us for the partiality that we show lord we do it lord you know us lord we we we live in this world lord and there are times when we give preference to different people for different reasons we treat different people different ways because we think it's going to help us in some way or they're going to aid us in some way and we we brown knows our bosses or our teachers and we don't treat our coworkers the same way lord this is who we are [Music] and lord we realize that when we do that we're not loving well we're not living into that greatest commandment of loving you and loving our neighbors lord and forgive us for the ways that we aren't living well and not loving well but lord we realize that when we show partiality we transgress the law we're condemned under the law and that we should be so speaking and so doing as those who are following that law of freedom that what it means to be with jesus and be like jesus where the rubber meets the road so lord we just say thank you for so great at salvation thank you for redeeming thank you for buying us back from slavery thank you for your spirit that checks our hearts and reminds us of who we are god will you amend our ways

Channel: Crossroads Community Church

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Length: 39min 59sec (2399 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021