Live Like Jesus (Part 3) - James 2:1-13

Live like Jesus (Part 3)
Love Everyone
James 2:1-13
Jeff Garrett

Do you size people up by the way they look or the way they dress?
How do you react when you see a homeless man?
What is your attitude toward a woman dress in shabby clothes?
How do you behave toward them? Do you look down on them?
Do you know what it feels like to be ostracized?
What are your thoughts when people ask for help with food or money?

A deacon asked Landon Sanders “What do you think we ought to do about all these unworthy people begging the church for help? How can we keep from wasting our money feeding these unworthy people?” Landon Saunders said, “Brother, God feeds 8 billion unworthy people everyday.” Today I want us to make five commitments.

1. Jesus Christ is our Lord.

2.1 My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, …. James begins with a strong confession of faith. He calls his half-brother our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is glorious. He is Lord. He is Messiah. This is the truth that serves as the foundation of his letter. This truth is the whole point of these sermons from James. We want to live like Jesus because he is our Lord. We need to bring all of our relationships under his lordship.

2. We will not show favoritism.

2.1 My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism.
Favoritism means to discriminate against a social class or category of people. Discrimination is sinful and has no place in our lives. James gives an example in 2.2-3. He described two men who came to the assembly. One was rich and the other was poor. The rich man was given special treatment and seated in a place of honor. But the poor man was treated with contempt and told to sit on the floor or stand in the back.

If this happened today it would go something like this: A rich man and his wife pulled into the church parking lot in their shiny black 500 SL Mercedes. As he stepped out of his car you saw that he was impeccably dressed in his Georgio Armani suit and Prada shoes. He checked his Presidential Rolex to see that they were just on time. He opened the door for his wife who took off her Gucci sunglasses. As she stepped out of the car she adjusted her St. Johns suit, grabbed her Louis Vutton handbag and walked in. All heads turned. She was dripping in Tiffany's diamonds. They were greeted at the door warmly, given special treatment and escorted to the front pews.

At the same time a poor man walked in (dressed like Stan). Hardly anybody spoke to him. He was dressed in shabby clothes with a distinct body odor. Someone pointed to the far corner of the building as a place for him to stand or sit. He felt alone, insulted and unwanted. James 2.4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Notice that the problem was not how the rich man was dressed. It was not wrong for the rich man to be dressed in fine clothes. The problem was their thoughts were evil.
God wants our thoughts be free of social or financial prejudice. I heard about a business man who got on a crowded bus and sit by a young man who asked him what time it was. But the business man didn’t respond. He asked him again “Sir, can you tell me what time it is?” Again he didn’t respond. The young man became exasperated and said, “Sir, is it to much to ask to tell me what time it is?” And the business man said, “I’m not going to tell you what time it is because if I tell you what time it is you’ll ask me where I live and I’ll talk about my neighborhood. Then you’ll asked me what my hobbies are and I’ll talk about the ballgame. And I’ll ask about yours and you will talk about your hobbies. And you’ll asked me about my family and I’ll show you some pictures. And I’ll invite you home to dinner and you’ll meet my daughter and she’s beautiful. And pretty soon you’ll fall in love with her and you’ll want to marry her. And I don’t want my daughter marrying anyone whose so poor they can’t afford a watch.
Now even though we smile at that man’s paranoia we understand his value system. We often judge a persons worth because of their financial status and our thoughts are evil.

3. We will not insult the poor

2.5 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 those who love him? 6 But you have insulted the poor. James said, “You have insulted the very people that God has chosen.” God chose the poor to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom. Don’t misunderstand this to mean that God elects only the poor because they are poor. Or that God loves the rich less than he loves the poor. The whole point of the passage is that God does not show favoritism (also Romans 2:11) So from God’s perspective, the real issue is not poverty or wealth but our faith in Christ.

But in v.5, James was simply observing that God does choose many poor people to be rich in faith. The majority of believers were poor. There were exceptions but as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1.26 “not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. Since wealth can hinder some people's receptivity to the gospel, and since God does commonly choose poor people to inherit the kingdom, then perhaps we should invest more in evangelism toward the poorer levels of society.

In verses 6-7 James said “You are showing favoritism to the class of people that are persecuting you. They are withholding your wages, dragging you into court, blaspheming the name of Jesus and you treat them like they are something special just because their rich. You are exalting the class that are persecuting poor Christians. If we live like Jesus we will take the gospel to the poor (Matthew 11.5).

4. We will live by the law of love.

8 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. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 11 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.

Don't think you are keeping the law of Christ while you are practicing favoritism. It is as much a contradiction as if you claimed you were keeping the law just because you were not committing adultery even though you were guilty of murder. Can you imagine being tried for murder and your only defense was “I haven’t committed adultery.” That’s not the point! This illustration is emphatic and clear. Regardless of the fact that you keep other commands, 2.9 If you show favoritism, you sin. You may attend church and tithe and read the Bible and control your temper and resist the temptation to swear. But if you are prejudice then you are guilty of breaking God’s law. In fact, you are breaking the most important law, which is to love your neighbor as yourself.

James concludes this section with an appeal to mercy. 12 Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, 13 because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!

Jesus wants to set us free. Free from the sin of discrimination and prejudice. Free to accept, free to love, free from hate, free from selfishness and a condescending attitude. Have mercy on people and love everyone. Mercy is the essence of the royal law. Instead of favoring the rich, we should live like Jesus by showing mercy to the poor. Mercy must replace discrimination. But if you show no mercy in your judgment of others (e.g., “That person’s not like me so I am going to exclude them”), no mercy will be shown to you.

Jesus said Matthew 7:1-2 "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

5. We will repent of all forms of prejudice

There are many forms of discrimination: ageism – discrimination against the elderly or the young. Sexism – discrimination against women. But the one that I want to focus on at the end of this lesson is racism.

Acts 13.1 In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers[those where Gentiles]: Barnabas [who was a Jew], Simeon called Niger [he was from Africa], Lucius of Cyrene[who was a slave], Manaen [who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, a member of the royal family] and Saul [who was a converted persecutor of the church]. There was incredible diversity in the Antioch church. Black and white, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, slave and free all worshipping together. You see the Kingdom of God should be a place where racial and social barriers are broken down.

At one time their was a black congregation in Huntington and Norway Avenue had a good relationship with them. They had combined Vacation Bible Schools. Some of the men from Norway Avenue preached for them. In fact, there is a plaque in the library that expresses appreciation for the moral and financial support Norway Avenue gave the Black congregation. I am so happy that that has been our history.

But it was not that way in other parts of the country where blacks were not allowed in some White churches. If they did attend, some churches made them sit in the balcony and had separate water fountains and rest rooms. There was a time when Christian Universities would not allow Blacks to enroll in their schools. I know the woman, Betty Meadows, who was the first Black to enroll at Harding and she told me of her experience.

I was teaching a cross cultural counseling course at Cincinatti Bible Seminary and the first day I ask the students to introduce themselves and share any multicultural experiences they’ve had. All students were sharing pretty shallow stuff until we came to Richard. Richard, a black man in his 50’s said, “I grew up in the middle the civil rights movement. I have had a lot of negative cross cultural experiences. And it goes on even today. My wife and I are selling our home and the realitor recently told us to take all the pictures off the wall and make it look like white people live there.”

A white man, we’ll call him “Bill”, spoke up and said, “Why did you do that? Were you going to sell it to colored people?” Richard stumbled on with some explanation but I stopped him and said, “Bill, why did you use the word colored? What comes to your mind when you use that word.” And right then the tension in that room was explosive. Bill said, “I didn’t mean anything bad by it.” I said, “Well, one of the things we are going to learn in this Cross Cultural Counseling Course is that regardless of your intentions, you need to pay attention to your language – some words carry a lot of baggage with them and colored is one of them. For many people there is a negative connotation attached to that word.” Well, I got half the class mad at me on the first day. But I was glad that I did it, especially when I read Richards journal.

Richard writes, “de ja vu. I’ve been here before … colored was the word above a hot water fountain, the poorly equipped restroom and the ill maintained school I went to. Colored was the balcony, the back of the bus and the section of town I lived in. Colored was any person who had one Black ancestor out of ten in their genealogy. Colored. When you think you’re beyond the past, somebody jolts you with a strong dose of reality. Things haven’t changed, just the faces.”

Now, my point here is not simply – get the name right. My point is watch your attitude. – Bob Russell tells about a white woman who approached a black woman who was attending a church that was predominantly white and she ask her – what do you people prefer that we call you? Black? Or Negro? Or African American? Or what? And the woman very sweetly responded “I prefer that people call me Margaret.” Isn’t that great.

We’ve been singing about it since we were little. “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” The question is, do we?

I pray for more ethnic diversity in our church. We have White people and African Americans. We are blessed to have international students from Vietnam, China, Japan, and Africa visiting our church. We are very excited about all of this and we pray that God will continue to lead us to people as well as bring people to us. I pray that we can be as flexible as Paul in our ability to communicate Jesus cross-culturally. "If we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like thisThe village would have 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans, 8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific51 would be male, 49 would be female82 would be non-white; 18 white67 would be non-Christian; 33 would be Christian80 would live in substandard housing67 would be unable to read50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation33 would be without access to a safe water supply 39 would lack access to improved sanitation24 would not have any electricity (And of the 76 that do have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)7 people would have access to the Internet1 would have a college education5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens33 would be receiving --and attempting to live on-- only 3% of the income of the village”If it were possible to reduce the world’s population to a village of 100 people, I wonder if we would treat people like Jesus did?

Summary

The Five Challenges

1. Jesus Christ is our Lord.
2. We will not show favoritism.
3. We will not insult the poor
4. We will live by the law of love.
5. We will repent of all forms of prejudice

We will love everyone just like Jesus.