Faith Loves
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Watch your Mouth!, Practical Religion, and Avoid Partiality
Watch your Mouth!, Practical Religion, and Avoid Partiality
Text:
If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. 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.
My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? 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 he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?
If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in 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 have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
Intro:
What an awesome week of VBS we just experienced! I want to start today off by thanking each one of you that served. It was so exciting to see so many of you up here working together to serve our community by loving on those precious kids each night. One of the things I love about VBS is that it pulls the church together as it truly took all of us to pull of the week. There were so many highlights but one of my favorite things was challenging the kids to be a part of local missions by bringing in Spaghettios and Ravioli for the Ministerial Alliance. Also I must say that’s the best VBS food I’ve ever tasted. One nacho night I think I saw a little girl eat her weight in nachos which was absolutely amazing!
Today we are jumping back into James and folks I have to tell you God really challenged me this week to live out my own sermon. Monday and Tuesday I spent part of my days getting our vehicles registered here in Texas which meant a trip to the Orange County Tax Office and then Lannie and I went ahead and got our Texas driver’s licence and learning permit so we can get her going on getting her hours in down here. Let me tell you after preaching on being slow to anger and then today we will touch on bridling the tongue I feel like God was like “put your money where your mouth is buddy.” Three trips to that tax office in one day was definitely testing my patience, but thankfully we got it all squared away and are well on our way.
As we mentioned on the front end of starting our James series, James will jump around quite a bit and today we will move from watching our tongue (recurring theme), giving examples of pure religion, to the danger of showing partiality, and finishing with how we can fulfill the law of Liberty that he first mentioned in our passage from last week. So let’s buckle up and jump right in!
1. Watch your Mouth!
v. 26- A mark of true religion is controlled speech that displays a changed heart. Again James is re-emphasizing what Jesus taught during his ministry. Here are a few examples:
You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.
The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
b. This is a recurring theme in scripture. Clearly our speech is a direct reflection of the inward faith we have. If we can’t control our words it’s an indictment of the state of our heart.
This is a hard one. I shudder to think of the many times I’ve not been a good example of the faith that I have inwardly. Brothers and sisters we must watch what we say.
In v. 26 we see James us a horse and bridle as an example. I feel like Texas is known for loving horses so there’s probably a lot of people here that know way more about this then me, but the general idea is the bridle controls the horse. In the same way if we can control our tongue we are able to control the entirety of our bodies as it so clearly reflects who we are.
A great reminder of this is when you hear a husband or wife talk about there spouse when they aren’t around. Sadly it’s often very obvious from what they say how they really feel about their spouse. We’ve all sadly probably witnessed when someone’s marriage falls apart and usually a early sign is how they talk about their spouse when they aren’t around each other.
What is in the well of your heart will show up in the bucket of your speech.
Anonymous
c. The way we speak, the words we use, should always point people to our relationship with Christ. In other words if someone didn’t know you were a believer would they be able to tell simply by the way you talk around them? This is a great litmus test and something that we should put thought to every day.
Action Step- Watch Your Mouth! Pay attention to the words you say. Allow others to hold you accountable. Sometimes we need people to tell us we messed up or were too harsh.
2. Practical Religion
In his commentary David Platt quotes Martin Luther who sums this up pretty well:
Martin Luther said, “A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.
David Platt
The call here is to care for those that the world often doesn’t care for and to do so by going to them. The idea here is to have practical compassion and to serve sacrificially (ministry is often messy and it takes time). When I was at my last church, Apex Baptist in Apex, NC, we started a ministry called Village127. The heart of the ministry was to care for those involved in foster & adoption care and we took the name directly from this passage. We wanted to address this issue of caring for orphans head on and spent resources and time to support those on the frontlines. The Village part was our desire for the church body to be the village of people that came along side those in the trenches. Here’s a quick video to show a glimpse of what it looked like.
Show Video of Joy from Village127- living testimony of this verse
Visiting widows was also one of my favorite things to do. We had a ministry called Treasured Friends that fell under my leadership as our Senior Adult Pastor who reported to me helped organize it. These are just two example James gives us. If you think about it during NT times these two groups stood out because they had no means to provide for themselves and no systems in place, like we do today, to care for them. The idea is find ways to serve those that no one else might be thinking about. Serve sacrificially and do so in a way that honors God.
Action Step- What are ways that you can serve sacrificially? How has God uniquely gifted you to serve others? Are you willing to go the extra mile or give of your time to help others, particularly those who can’t do anything in return for you?
3. Avoid Partiality
a. Chapter 2:1-13…in this section we see James shift focus and work through how partiality should be avoided in the church and how putting it all together, our speech pointing others to God and our actions serving others fulfills the law of liberty.
Whenever I read this passage I can’t help but think of the Casting Crown song from a few years back that talked about this and I can’t help but think about the church in Lawrence, KS that my dad pastored that had a Native American man that would regularly come and worship with us and during the week would walk the streets. It wasn’t uncommon for church members to leave a blanket or a pair of boots or some food in the spot he usually sat in to help him out. It really was a powerful thing to see as a kid and teenager. That’s how it should be, but unfortunately you hear stories and maybe have witnessed when it’s not like that. It’s the anthesis to how the kingdom of God functions.
b. We honor Christ because he is rich in glory, we don’t honor the wealthy because they are rich. It’s also important to remember that Jesus came down lowly. The big take away for this section is that God’s economy is different that the world’s. We have to be careful to not let the way the world views wealth impact the church. As believers we must fight against this worldly desire of playing favorites or treating people different because of the power or wealth they have.
c. It’s also true that when we show favoritism is disrespects man. By judging people by there outward appearance does not lign up with scripture such as love your neighbor as yourself, that calls us to a radical love that often makes us uncomfortable. In Acts 2 we see the early church do a great job of fighting against this as they literally shared whatever possessions they had amongst themselves so no one was lacking.
We also acknowledge that when we show favoritism it’s easy for us to start judging people about all things not just wealth or status and we must guard ourselves from letting partiality take root in our hearts where we start to discriminate against people based on ethnicity, culture, etc. It’s so easy to get to a “us” and “them” mentality and that simply does not lign up with Scripture.
Verse 2:10 reminds that if we fail in one way we have disobeyed all of the law so we must stay on guard in this area were we so easily mess up.
“Although all sins are not equally damaging or heinous, they all shatter that unity and render men transgressors, much like hitting a window with a hammer at only one point will shatter and destroy the whole window. accountable for all. Not in the sense of having violated every command, but in the sense of having violated the law’s unity. One transgression makes fulfilling the law’s most basic commands—to love God perfectly and to love one’s neighbor as oneself—impossible.”
-ESV Study Bible
So let’s be vigilant together to make sure that we as Liberty Baptist Church avoid partiality and truly love our neighbors as Christ demands us too. James reminds us that one day we will face a final judgement and the way we treat others, the mercy we show others, has a correlation on how we will be judged. This is heavy stuff. Make sure you are characterized as being full of mercy!
I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Verse 13 of chapter two sums up the point James is trying to drive home. Again we see a parralel from James to the Sermon on the Mount. There Jesus says:
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Remember we can’t earn mercy, God gives it freely…but if we are people who have been transformed by this great mercy God has shown us, we should be willing to give it freely to others. In essence, the way we treat others will be a direct reflection of the mercy we have received from God. You should be able to tell that God has been gracious to you simply by how you treat others, period. You know one thing about being a Christian is they don’t make a scanner that you can wave over someone to tell if they have a genuine relationship with Christ.
Only God knows that, but you sure can tell a lot by the words people speak and even more by their actions towards others to get a indication of where they are spiritually. What would people say about you based on your words and actions? According to James a person who has truly encountered the great mercy of Christ will be transformed and this manifests itself outwardly by the way we speak and act. What a great reminder to make sure those two things truly reflect the relationship we have with Christ.
Action Step- Think twice before we speak, text, post as we will be judged for our words…We should be known as a church that loves people well and let me tell you I was encouraged by VBS as I think our church did a great job of loving on everyone that came through our doors this past week! That is the goal. This is what James is trying to teach us is that we are a reflection of the mercy of Christ and when we give it freely and don’t show favorites on who we show it to it is a good reflection of Christ’s mercy.
Closing:
James just keeps coming at us reminding us about the importance of our speech and how we treat others. I love how this text also gives us a practical example of what true religion looks like. I’m afraid the term religion today doesn’t often bring about a positive connotation.
However, I do think when people see God’s people living out their faith by serving others it changes people’s perspective. You probably experienced this here as well, but after Hurricane Michael came through Jess’ hometown of Blountstown, FL it was interesting to see some folks who had a negative view of the church or religion respond to the way the church or para-church organizations were helping.
You know it’s not uncommon for some of the first folks to arrive after disasters to be various Disaster Relief groups from various states’ Baptist Conventions. They usually are wearing bright yellow shirts and I’ve never seen or heard about anyone wanting those religious people or church folks to go away.
No their actions of serving others sacrificially is welcomed, even to the point where government agencies not just appreciate them but depend on them as they help people. My good friend Craig Schomburg spearheaded our efforts with Disaster Relief in back at Apex Baptist Church and one thing you could always count on with him and those that served in his ministry was that they loved showing the mercy of Christ to those they came in contact with. For them it was something they were good at, but it also reflected their heart. The fact that God was so kind to them made them want to show that to others.
This is the heart of this text. Faith always expresses itself through love. The fact that our loving God has forgiven our sins and showed us mercy by going to the cross to take on our sins should lead us to be people filled with mercy. People should see that in our speech and our action.
So today lets leave here looking for ways to express our faith by putting it into action. How? I don’t know what that looks like for you, but I do know this…if you truly love Jesus and want to serve him he will show you how he’s gifted you and how you can express your faith in action by loving others.