Sermon Tone Analysis

Mercy wins?

One fun thing that our family likes to do is to go to a restaurant in simple street clothes, with our children.

We like to order water to drink, perhaps an appetizer, two entrees, and then ask for extra plates.

We enjoy seeing or not seeing the change in the waiter/waitresses demeanor toward us and/or service level to us.

Why?

We are looking to see whether we will be judge by our apparent dress, and/or external behaviors.

After this, we enjoy tearing down stereotypes and showing that there is more to us (and others) then our external appearances and behaviors.

But these types of judgments are made against other people all the time.

From kids in kindergarten not associating or playing with the dirty child, to elementary kids who form in cliques based upon clothing or whether they have a cell phone, to middle-school kids judging others by the kind of clothes they wear and social connections, to high-school students judging others by the side of town they are from, to grad school students judging one another based upon their performance, to the workplace where the car you drive, or the area you bought your house from, to churches who build themselves upon a particular sub-cultural like class, race, type of job, or home location.

Churches that create a sub-culture which is naturally uninviting to any who are outside and makes them feel as if they are judged and not loved.

Do you show partiality?

Today we will see why favoritism is irrational and unintelligible for those who trust in Christ for salvation, the results of favoritism, and finally that though it does not seem like it much of the time, Mercy Wins when we are single-minded in our faith in Christ!

Irrationality of favoritism (1-7)

++Remember Christ Jesus (1) ++Remember God's reality (2-6)

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II.

Results of favoritism (9-11, 13)

++Convicted (9-11) ++Judged (13a)

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III.

Mercy wins (8, 13b)

God’s perspective

First thing today I want to do today is to ground us in the heart of God.

So let me read a few passages, beginning with :

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

[4] But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, [5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—[6] and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, [7] so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

[8] For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

(ESV)

What does it look like to be a real Christian?

I mean, if we really believed what we read.

If we believed the Good News of Jesus Christ, that we have been redeemed by him from our crimes against God and others, not because of anything in ourselves, but because of his kindness.

What would it look like for this belief to work its way into all of our lives, what would it look like for this to work its way into our homes, our places of work, our churches, and our denomination?

In , when the prophet Samuel went to find God’s anointed from Jesse’s sons, Samuel assumed that God’s chosen one looked a certain way, but God said to Samuel,

Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him.

For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.

In , later in the history of Israel, when king Jehoshaphat appointed judges and was charging them to fulfill their duty properly, he said,

Jehoshaphat's Reforms

[1] Jehoshaphat the king of Judah returned in safety to his house in Jerusalem.

(ESV)

[7] But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him.

For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

(ESV)”

Consider what you do, for you judge not for man but for the LORD.

He is with you in giving judgment.

Now then, let the fear of the LORD be upon you.

Be careful what you do, for there is no injustice with the LORD our God, or partiality or taking bribes.

This word, partiality, in the Greek version of the OT, is the same word that James uses here.

The word literally means, “to receive the face” of someone.

Which, as one writer noted, is to “accept his external appearance as the real thing and to make an evaluation on that basis.”[1]

accept his external appearance as the real thing and to make an evaluation on that basis

[6] and said to the judges, “Consider what you do, for you judge not for man but for the LORD.

He is with you in giving judgment.

[7] Now then, let the fear of the LORD be upon you.

Be careful what you do, for there is no injustice with the LORD our God, or partiality or taking bribes.”

(ESV)

This then is contrary

Partial

So, our English word, partial, has the meaning of one who is inclined to favor one party more than the other.

Thus, sometimes we will say that people who are partial are respecters of persons.

However, this word, partiality found in 2 Chronicles 16:7, in the Greek version of the OT, is the same word that James uses here.

The word literally means, “to receive the face” of someone.

Which, as one writer noted, is to “accept his external appearance as the real thing and to make an evaluation on that basis.”[1]

This then is why that ancient pastor, Polycarp, in his letter to the Philippians, written sometime before 156 AD, wrote in regard to the qualifications of elders (those who most clearly should represent and be an example to follow of what every Christians should be) in the church, saying:

The presbyters, for their part, must be compassionate, merciful to all, turning back those who have gone astray, visiting all the sick, not neglecting a widow, orphan, or poor person, but “always aiming at what is honorable in the sight of God and of men,” avoiding all anger, partiality, unjust judgment, staying far away from all love of money, not quick to believe things spoken against anyone, nor harsh in judgment, knowing that we are all in debt with respect to sin.

The presbyters, for their part, must be compassionate, merciful to all, turning back those who have gone astray, visiting all the sick, not neglecting a widow, orphan, or poor person, but “always aiming at what is honorable in the sight of God and of men,” avoiding all anger, partiality, unjust judgment, staying far away from all love of money, not quick to believe things spoken against anyone, nor harsh in judgment, knowing that we are all in debt with respect to sin.

The presbyters, for their part, must be compassionate, merciful to all, turning back those who have gone astray, visiting all the sick, not neglecting a widow, orphan, or poor person, but “always aiming at what is honorable in the sight of God and of men,” avoiding all anger, partiality, unjust judgment, staying far away from all love of money, not quick to believe things spoken against anyone, nor harsh in judgment, knowing that we are all in debt with respect to sin.

Michael William Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (Updated ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 213.

Michael William Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (Updated ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 213.

Michael William Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (Updated ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 213.

; ; ;

The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011).

; ;

William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 887.

Irrationality of favoritism (1-7)

Remember Christ Jesus (1)

The first thing that we see right off the bat is that James uses the phrase, “my brothers” to show the absolute hypocrisy of treating one person above another since we are all part of the same family under Christ.

Next he uses an imperative that when considered with the phrase “my brothers” ultimately shows us that we are not to: show partiality since we are united to Christ, our glorious Lord through faith.

Faith here is referring to our faith in Christ.

In other words, our faith in Christ, that though he was rich and we were poor he came down to save us, that it is a gift of God not of anything depending on us (as we saw earlier in ), is completely inconsistent with thinking that anything other than Christ, like wealth, will do us any good.

When we show partiality like this, instead of being an incarnational picture of the Gospel to a broken world, as our faith should direct us, we are simply reflecting the values of our world.

Instead of becoming a life giving agent who manifests Christ to the world by living in a counter-cultural way, we show the world that we are just like them.

The phrase glorious Lord, or the Lord of glory, is used to highlight the oxy-moronic character of what favoritism does.

Jesus himself is the most amazing, wonderful, powerful being in the universe, and instead of showing favoritism, he came and showed kindness to the broken, weak, wounded, and worthless.

So how can showing favoritism live inside this view of Christs’ work?

What is being communicated is that we are not to hold our Christian faith with favoritism, especially that which brings us advantage.

In other words, “Don’t try to combine favoritism and Christianity, it doesn’t make any sense!”

What is being communicated is that we are not to hold our Christian faith with favoritism, especially that which brings us advantage.

In other words, “Don’t try to combine favoritism and Christianity, it doesn’t make any sense!”

Doing something like favoring the rich and mistreating the poor, or perhaps more close to home, focusing entirely on the healthy when there are many sick, goes against the Gospel.

is so completely against the Gospel that it is almost laughable if it wasn’t so evil.

Evaluating a person based upon the way they look on the outside instead of who they really are on the inside is evil and completely contrary to what we see about the character and nature of God, and ultimately the character of .

This goes against several things: 1) The fact that all people are created in God’s image.

2) The fact that Jesus was himself from a poor upbringing.

3) The fact that none of us deserved Christ’s sacrifice, we were all poor, begging, dead people, who needed mercy, and Christ left his riches, to come and bless us and make us rich.

He did not save us because we were favored, but because he simply loved us.

4) The fact that we all came into the world with only our skin, and will leave the same way.

5) That God actually favors the marginalized and desires them to be saved.

6) That God owns all things and doesn’t need our money.