This morning's message comes to us from James chapter 2, verses 1 through 13. James chapter 2. 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'd 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 to the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? but you have dishonored the poor man. And 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. This morning, it's my pleasure to introduce a guest speaker, Chaplain James Covey, years of service to our country and to our Lord. So we're grateful for that. And if you would join me in prayer for him as he comes forward. Gracious Heavenly Father, we do pray to you once again. We look to you. You are the center of our worship here. You are our primary focus as we turn our thoughts to your word, Lord. We just ask that you would bless us once again, Lord, that you would convict us, that you would sharpen us, that you would open our eyes to your truth, Lord. Would you please use my Brother James to communicate your word to us here this morning Lord Would you open our ears and our hearts Lord? Would you prepare our minds that we would be? Ready to be changed by your truth Lord Would you give us the grace that we need to walk by your word? To walk in a manner that's worthy of the calling with which you've called us. It's in Christ's name. I pray amen Well, good morning, church, and thank you for this invitation to preach. Thank you for your wonderful hospitality that you've already shown me and my beautiful bride, Annette. We are so happy to be here. We've been serving, actually, we started at Fort Hood 21 years ago, and we're back at the end. The artist formerly known as Fort Hood, I guess it's Fort Cavazos now, but we all know it. as Fort Hood. This time around, Annette and I have really enjoyed filling pulpits in churches throughout Central Texas, and so it's always our privilege, and we really mean that, not just the way the folks at Chick-fil-A say it, but it really is our privilege to be with you today. I did something today I have never done before. I've been preaching for a while, and as I've gotten older, I've had to wear glasses for a while. I have three of them strategically placed. Throughout the house, I'm seeing some nodding heads from the senior, mature folks in the congregation. And we weren't rushed today. We were having a wonderful Sunday morning. Everything was great. We pulled in and I realized all three pairs of glasses were at home. And so I need to buy a fourth pair now and store it in the car. But my beautiful wife has this fetching pair of blue reading glasses. which look beautiful on her. I think they'll look kind of weird on me, but they do match my sport coat, and so I love my beautiful wife. And she is sacrificing by not being able to look intently. She's squinting at her copy of the Bible, so I won't have to squint at my sermon notes. I've already had the pleasure of getting to know a couple of you, have shared a meal with Lauren and another meal with Randy as they've introduced me to the church. And after a few minutes with each man, I really feel like I had been friends with them for years. So I want to thank them for that opportunity. We were, all of us, created for connection. And that's why it's so easy to become friends with like-minded believers. And it's especially easy when you share so much in common. I'm a native Texan. If you're not a native Texan, you know how Texans just talk constantly. But when you meet other folks that share your life experience, whether it's in our beautiful republic or any other state in the union, when you meet folks who share the same sort of a family journey, the same kind of a place in life, the same maybe even opinions and preferences, it's just natural and it's normal and it's easy to like people like you. You'd think that we could go anywhere on the planet and meet any believer in any country on the earth or any city in the state, and we'd all just get along beautifully, wouldn't you? Well, obviously, you know that's not true. Now if somebody out there has 2.4 billion friends on their Facebook page, I guess that's how we count that, there's allegedly 2.4 billion people in the world who claim the name of Christ. So if you've got 2.4 billion friends, then maybe you're the unicorn. But as you know, just as we all find out as we live and breathe and live together as the church, we don't always connect the way we should. Well then, what's the problem? The problem, it turns out, is that even among believers in the same church, frequently, we just don't do well when there are differences between us. In fact, it's a pretty big problem in the 21st century church, but it's been a big problem almost from the inception of the church in the first century. And that's what the Holy Spirit inspired James to challenge us with today from the second chapter of the New Testament book, which bears his name. And so today, as it says in the bulletin, we're going to deal with playing favorites. But a little more specifically, what we're going to specifically see in these 13 verses from James chapter 2 is that when we play favorites in church, we're actually revealing some part of our own lives, some parts of our own lives, I should say, that are broken. It's been rightly said that hurt people hurt people, but that's never more true than when we play favorites. So this morning, Let's look specifically at what playing favorites says about us. And as we do that, let's note that the first area of brokenness playing favorites exposes about ourselves in verses 1 through 4 is that it shows us our focus. is distracted. Our focus is distracted. Playing favorites, when you realize you're playing favorites in church, when you see those around you playing favorites, it shows something about the one playing favorites. It shows that our focus is distracted. Now we get that from the very first verse of James chapter 2. Most translations of James chapter 2 verse 1 render the emphasis of this verse as not showing favoritism, don't show favoritism. And that's there, and that's there in the language of the New Testament, and we're going to find that a little more clearly in just a little bit, but the big idea In James chapter 2 verse 1, the great big imperative verb that takes up all the space in verse 1 of James chapter 2, it's really not about favoritism, it's a command to hold your faith. That's the verb that takes all the air out of the room in verse 1. It's the thing that grabs your attention. James chapter 2 verse 1 tells us to hold our faith in a certain kind of way. So if you'll let me be a little free this morning, and if you'll let this James paraphrase this James, I want to put it into the sort of language that makes sense to me. James 2, verse 1 is really saying, and this is how we do it in the army, look, believers, you've got one job. One job. Hold on to your faith. in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. You can make it even simpler. Just hold on to Jesus, James said. Of course, we can only hold on to Jesus by faith because he has first reached to take hold of us. Don't we know that's true? That's the clear message of the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. It's articulated so beautifully in Ephesians 2 verse 8, that it is by grace you have been saved through faith. It's not of yourselves. It's a gift. of God. That's what grace is all about, isn't it? God taking the initiative in Jesus Christ to take hold of us. And He doesn't just do it at one point in time. The Bible says that He keeps hold of us through the presence of His Holy Spirit in our lives. And God's not only the initiator of this holding onto us, but He's the sustainer of this and He's the the finisher of this and so we are not only justified by grace through faith when we are saved we are not only will one day be glorified in the future by God's grace in heaven but in the present we are also sanctified we are held on to by God's grace and so it is it is this beautiful understanding that we have one job that we have one focus just to hold on to this faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, it is that very simple truth that so animated James that it caused him to be deeply frustrated when he looked around at church and realized that people were being distracted from that one focus. And what was distracting them? Well, here's the word now. It was the favoritism that he saw. It was the partiality that he saw as some translations render this. And that favoritism was obvious to James because as he'll show us in verse 4, the natural consequence of favoritism and partiality toward one and one group is that it automatically forms, here's a strong word, prejudice. against the other, against another group. They're two sides of the same coin. If you show favoritism toward one, you're automatically showing what he'll say in verse four. I think the word my translation uses is discrimination toward the other. By the way, that word for favoritism or partiality in verse one, in the language of the New Testament, it literally means to receive someone just by their face, not by their character, not by their heart, not by the things that really value, it's making a judgment based on their faith. And that's something we really need to reflect on this morning because the Bible is telling us that when we are holding on to our faith, when we are focused on the presence, when we are looking, if you will, into the face of Jesus, if we'll just remain there, if we'll just be content to abide there, to do this one thing, we won't get distracted. and show favoritism toward the faces of others. Here's the deal. Faith and favoritism can't coexist. Faith and favoritism are mutually exclusive. They repel each other. By the way, I know this is tough to hear. It's tough to preach too, okay? James is just hard. You can't simultaneously hold one faith and give attention to the other, favoritism. We've got one job. We've got one focus. And you can only hold onto one thing in focus at a time. That's why our cameras get weird if we move them around and that little square changes when you're using your iPhones. You can only focus on one thing at a time. In 2010, an author named Nicholas Carr wrote a book titled The Shallows. I quoted Nicholas Carr many times, and then a friend asked me, had you ever read the book, actually? And I said, no, I saw some TED Talks, and so I felt really... Felt really embarrassed. And so now I'm finally reading the book. And so I'm trying to be a better person. They did it to me in Sunday school. Isn't that unfair when they sneak up on you and ask you those questions? But in this book, Nicholas Carr meticulously describes what the internet is doing to our brain. And it's not pretty. So don't read it, because it's disturbing. But fortunately, if you do want to read it, you don't have to be a STEM student to understand it, because I am not a STEM student in any way, shape, or form. My first grade teacher told my mother that James was not James' forte. It was a prophetic thing, and I've had math anxiety ever since. But I'll try to explain it to you in caveman terms. Basically, what Carr describes from the research he's collected from countless, countless experts in a variety of fields is that our brain doesn't consciously multitask. Now, you know what multitasking is, because a lot of us claim that we do it. We think we're just good at doing a lot of things at once. Young people tend to be even better at it. But it turns out that what we call multitasking is toggling from one thing to another really quickly. OK, here's the real test of how long you've lived. How many of you ever had an Atari game station? Go ahead. Oh, thank you. I guess they have new ones now, because you're a young person. So when I was a little kid, we went to Radio Shack. Remember Radio Shack? Tandy Corporation? It sold leather and electronics. Very weird. They're all gone now, but you could buy... My mother had a great big leather purse, and I got an Atari PlayStation. And that Atari PlayStation only did a couple of things. It did pong, and it did combat. And they're the same game. Pong is a couple of rectangles, combat is a couple of tanks, and the things just bounce around. And you had a joystick, they called it, and a little red button that you'd fire. And it was supposed to be like a helicopter, but it wasn't. But you felt like it was, because it made cool noises. And you would toggle on that little thing from one task to the other. Nicholas Carr says that really what we call multitasking is toggling from one task to another. And what Carr shows is that when we live our lives on these things, these curses or blessings, when we live our lives on digital platforms, which most of us do all the time, we develop the part of our brain that learns to toggle really quickly. such that all of us in this generation of the world, whatever our age is, all of us living today are pretty good at shifting from one task to another, and that's cool, and that has value, but the problem is, if you only develop that part of your brain that toggles from one task to another, then the other parts of your brain kind of atrophy. What are those other parts for? Well, they're for things like meaning, and purpose, and relationship building. So Carr shows that you can spend a lot of your life doing multitasking, but if you do that, you lose strength in that other part of your mind that handles things that are deeper. And so Carr's hypothesis, really, that he comes to at the end, that he introduces at the beginning, is that most of us in this world are living a shallow kind of existence. That's why he calls his book The Shallows. He says we're all sort of driven by distraction. And so the question of the book is, what are you paying attention to? What are you paying attention to? Look at verse 2, church. Let's look at that again. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes on, and if you pay special attention To the man wearing fine clothes and say, here's a seat for you. But to the poor man, you stand over there or sit at my feet. Have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? What are we paying attention to, church? Not just on Sunday morning when we're gathered, but we're the church 24-7. What are we paying attention to? as we walk through this world. The Bible says that we are to single-mindedly focus our attention on the faith of Christ, on our faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. Scripture says that we are to hold on to this faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. That's our focus. That's our one job. Consequently, when we become distracted by shiny things, verse 3, When we pay attention to, and this is not just surfacy, to the way others dress, but more importantly, to the amount of money they have, to the things they have, to their power, to their place in life. When we get caught up on those things, the Bible will tell us that our loss of focus has not only gotten us distracted, but verse four is really honest. It's led us to evil. It's led us to sin. How could distraction? That sounds like nothing. How could distraction on this level actually be sinful? Well, it's sinful because God's not concerned about faces. God looks on the heart and He wants His people to go deeper than just a quick judgment of someone's face. In fact, if you start looking for this in the Bible, you will find some of God's strongest language about how His face is set. against favoritism. Leviticus 19.15 says, don't act unjustly when deciding a case. Don't be partial. And God says to the poor, or give preference to the rich. Judge your neighbors fairly, the Bible says. In Romans 2.11, Paul says there is no favoritism whatsoever with God. Paul then says to his trusted lieutenant Timothy in 1 Timothy 5, 21, I solemnly charge you, Timothy, before God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels to observe these things without prejudice, and then he says this, and to do nothing out of Favoritism, and that's just a sampling over and over and over again. The Bible presents us with this profound contradiction between faith and favoritism. And this is very, very practical because as faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ ultimately leads to justice, favoritism takes you down the path we're going to see in this passage to prejudice and ultimately to injustice. It's a big deal in God's economy. James, who was literally known in the early church as James the Just, he was referred to that even by those outside of the church because he was known in Jerusalem as a man of tremendous integrity. James, the half-brother of Jesus who led the church in Jerusalem, he was the bishop of the church in Jerusalem, James, who was there at the birth of the church to see that unique season. It wasn't normative in the rest of the New Testament, but it was powerful, that unique season right after Pentecost, when everything was shared in common among believers. James, who had seen the church, this profoundly diverse church, so full of joy, so quick to share, so eager to share, he sees them now in a position as he's writing this sermon, it's a sermon that became a letter, he sees them now and he's frustrated because they've degraded and that diversity, that commonality has now been replaced by distinctions and by divisions. He's seeing his church that he loves divided between the haves and the have-nots, and he knows exactly where this is going to lead because partiality, a favoritism in the church ultimately leads to division, and it's a direct path to defeat for the body of Christ. And as it was a problem in the first century church, it's still a problem we need to think about today. Because when we play favorites in church, it exposes some deeper issues. And the first problem it reveals is that favoritism shows us that our focus is distracted. But that's not all it shows us. That's not all it shows us. For in verses 5 through 7, we see that when we play favorites, it also shows us that our thinking is distorted. Not only is our focus distracted, but our thinking is distorted. In James chapter 2 verse 5, James begins with one big powerful command. He says, listen. He says, listen. Pay attention. I wonder if he had the voice of his half-brother in mind. He who has ears to hear, his half-brother liked to say. Listen, James says. And then what follows through verse 7, that command to listen, are just some questions to get his listeners to just think through and develop some common sense. about this very practical issue. Someone has said that common sense is uncommon in our day, and that may be true. Maybe it's always been true, but what's also true is that sometimes it's very, very hard to be in the right place in life and to have the right posture to hear a strong word of counsel. But I think that's what James is about to give us right here. I'm in a position in the Army chaplaincy where I have the wonderful, wonderful privilege here at the end of training other chaplains in pastoral counseling. Now, I'm in the Army, so we only use one-syllable words, right? If you want smart people, talk to the Air Force or the Space Force. But I didn't get this job because I'm special. I got it because I'm old, right? So I've been around long enough, but I have this wonderful job. I get to work with chaplains. who are getting a second degree beyond their seminary degree in counseling. And at our training center, we integrate the Bible, the disciplines of scripture, prayer, all of those. We use Richard Foster's book, and we integrate theology with counseling. And so we talk a lot about counseling, and we are a practicum site where our chaplains do a lot of counseling. And one of the things that we like to talk about, a phrase we use a lot as we reflect on the task of counseling, is that a big job in counseling... By the way, it's brilliant that you have a little watch right here. That's perfect. I'm sure it's accurate. That'll keep me straight. Usually there's a big one on the wall. But one of the things we like to reflect on is that really counseling can be described as making the covert overt. It's a good way to think about it. Because when we're dysregulated, when we're disjointed, sometimes it's hard to hear a good counsel. All that stuff's going on in a part of our brain that really can't bring words and logic and courses of action to it, so we have to calm down and we have to just think for a little bit and reflect deeply and then we can hear the counsel that we need to. Well, I mention all that because I think that's what the Spirit of God might have been doing here in James chapter 2. Because my experience in James chapter 2 was that after I'd struggled over the last couple of weeks with verses 1 through 4 and really thought about this issue of playing favorites, I think the Lord was kind of preparing me to think about these questions that begin in verse 5. That's at least how how I experienced this passage. So let's make the covert, let's make the hidden stuff obvious here about what we're dealing with here because this problem of playing favorites, of being distracted by shiny things is probably a bigger deal than we might think on the surface. And what might we find if we'll listen, if we'll have ears to hear? Well, what we're going to be reminded of in verses 5 through 7 is that the way the world values things is completely the opposite and a complete contradiction of how God values things. And that's not just a general theological principle. It's very personable. The world's values are completely set against God's values, so much so that we get this provocative question in James 2, verse 5. Now, I want you to think about this because the word chosen means a lot to a bunch of Reformed believers. Look at it again. Has not God chosen who? Those who are poor. Those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith. Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to literally inherit the kingdom God's promised to those who love Him? How about that, church? As I was working on this text this week, I thought, I don't know where this is going. They're going to think I'm an anarchist. Because this is heavy, heavy, personal stuff. Do we have ears to hear this? this morning. You see, it turns out that throughout Scripture, if we're listening, what we'll hear and see is that God consistently chooses those without means over those with means. He consistently chooses the poor to be rich. You see how God's values are completely different from the world's values and maybe our values? Sometimes, why does God do that? Look at verse 6 and 7, it gets even more disturbing. God does this because it is those who have means, it is those who are in charge of this broken world, who it turns out, verse 6, exploit the church, God's people. who it turns out, verse 6, foster injustice toward the church, who, verse 7, ultimately slander the name of Jesus. Can we just be transparent? Can we just be honest about this this morning? It was very obvious to the early church, but it's no less true today. It's not the poor. It's not the have-nots of the world who defame and insult and get in the way of the church. It's not the poor and the have-nots in the world who would defame the name of Christ. It's not the have-nots of the world who in many nations prosecute and to persecute the church, rather it's those who control the levers of power in this broken world. The Bible says we face three enemies in our faith, our own flesh, that's my biggest battle, Satan, but then the Bible also talks in the New Testament about the way of this world. Who controls the way of this world? It's not the poor. It's not the poor. The great challenge of this world of the church doesn't come through the poor. Those challenges come through those who have means. Am I a conspiracy theorist? Not on most days. But friends, this world is not running the way it's supposed to run. We say as a general theological truth that the world is broken, and it is, but it's not just broken, it is corrupt, it is unjust, and it is in a state of rebellion against its creator. So since the fall, more often than not, look at history, look at the newspaper this morning, those who hold power and privilege are not pursuing the creator's will. They're pursuing their own. So much so that Jesus said in Matthew 19.24 that it's actually easier, you know this verse, for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. I know this is uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to hear. It's uncomfortable to talk about. But remember how James started verse 5, listen, he's saying, please listen. Here's another James, this James, paraphrase. Can we just place our Holy Spirit illuminated thinking caps on today? That's what James is saying. Because if we have ears to hear, we need to ask some of these same questions James is asking. Because if God himself has chosen the poor to be rich in faith, if God himself has chosen those without means to inherit his kingdom, why do we then think we should place our trust and our focus and our investments in the powers and the authorities of this world? Just think about it, James would say. Just listen. Here's another way to think about it. The first century church had a minimum of resources. With some exceptions, and they're mentioned specifically by name in the New Testament, the first century church was primarily, there's the word, made up of the poor. In fact, as an institution, the church was illegal the first three centuries of its existence. You can't get a loan from Capital One to build a new church plant if you're illegal. You find a hole underground in the catacombs maybe or some other place or out in a field or in somebody's house to worship and to speak the name of Jesus. And so the Bible says that despite their impoverished condition, the Bible says that this materially impoverished first generation of the church, do you know what they did? They took the gospel around the whole Roman Empire and the Bible says that they turned the world upside down. And so the first century church had a minimum of resources, but they had a maximum of power. Now, by way of contrast, the 21st century church has a maximum of resources. We are perfectly legal in most countries, well, many countries on the planet, all sorts of money, all sorts of technology, all sorts of resources, but we have a minimum of power. I have trouble going across the street to talk with my neighbor about Jesus. Church, the things of this world, the powers that be, are set against the purposes of God and His church. And that's why the haves of the world, as opposed to the have-nots, have so much difficulty admitting they've got a problem and a need. They are by definition self-sufficient. The gospel, on the other hand, is supernatural. The gospel is not of this world, it's not of ourselves, and we enter into and receive this supernatural life of God right here in us through His Holy Spirit only when we admit our poverty, only when we admit our depravity. When this thing we're talking about, now very seriously, when this seemingly small thing, favoritism, when it sneaks into the church, when we get distracted by shiny things and divided, when we allow that to sneak into our behavior and to sneak into our preferences and to influence our decision-making, something's gone wrong and we need to stop and we need to listen and we need to hear God's Word. Because if we have ears to hear, we'll hear a warning that our thinking has become distorted. Again, I wrote it in my notes a lot, because I want to say it a lot. This is hard. This is tough. The Bible talks a lot about money. It's never comfortable when it does. Do you know who talked the most about money in the Bible? Jesus. That just makes it even harder, right? Our Lord, our glorious Lord and Savior. He loved to talk about our money. And sometimes in our discomfort, We run from it and we try to ignore it or sometimes we make the mistake of all or nothing thinking. So let's take a second and let's breathe a little bit and let's see what James is not saying about money. So is James saying we should desire to be poor? Is James saying that a poor person is better than a rich person? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. We need to have a good theology of work. Annette was at a Bible study. I won't mention who said it, sweetie, because...well, you told me, but I'm not going to mention their name. But she was at a Bible study, and they were talking about the fall, and someone said, well, yeah, work came after the fall. No, it didn't. God ordained work. As soon as He created Adam, He said, get in there and rule...the word is be a steward. He gave him work. That work got harder after the fall. Oh boy, did it. The ground is hard to break up the ground. That was part of the curse of the fall. But work was ordained before and not after the fall. It's a blessing of God. Our hard work, in fact, sustains the institutions God's created. God created the family, He created the church, He created the government. The family's supported by our hard work, the church is supported by our tithes and offerings, and the government's supported by the taxes that come out of our work. Work is a good thing. The Bible says in 2 Thessalonians 3.10, boy, my mother always quoted this when I was growing up. I think she wanted me to work hard. If a man will not work, he will not what? Yeah, we need to work. One of my favorite passages, 1 Thessalonians 4.11, Paul says to the church at Thessalonica, make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and he says to work with your hands. It's a good thing, a blessing from God. It's ordained by God to work. But when that hard work naturally leads to the accumulation of wealth, the Bible says, okay, listen, be careful. Because wealth comes with requisite responsibilities and wealth comes with challenges. And in our day, living in the blessings of our very wealthy nation, James chapter 2 calls us to be mindful of this. When I was a kid, well, when I was in college, I read a wonderful little book titled, When I Relax, I Feel Guilty. It was by an author named Tim Hansel. Some of you are saying, that's me, that's right. We can do the counseling on that later. But you can get it for like 25 cents on Amazon, When I Relax, I Feel Guilty by Tim Hansel. In that book, he quotes another author named Gordon Dahl, who said this, most Americans worship their work, work at their play, and play at their worship. Something you ought to write down. Most Americans worship their work, work at their play, and play at their worship. That sad progression, my friends, in a phrase is what James wants us to think about. For if we are not mindful and thoughtful, the distractions, what starts as a distraction of our focus will eventually distort our thinking. That same book, Tim Hansel, tells the story of a Native American, a Cherokee Indian, who visited New York City with a friend. And they were walking down the street in Manhattan. And all of a sudden, the Cherokee Indian said, stop, I've heard a cricket. By the way, what is going on with Central Texas and crickets? This is freaky, apocalyptic. That's a whole other thing. But we thought they were all done after the rain. They showed up in our kitchen again this morning. But so this Cherokee is walking, and he hears a cricket. And his friend says, you're nuts. There's taxis running over the curb. There's people mugging each other. There's subways underneath our feet. It's the hustle and bustle of New York. Our middle girl lived there the last year and a half. It's a wild town. You can't possibly hear a cricket. But the Cherokee said, no, no, I hear a cricket. I'm sure of it. And so then he began to listen intently, and he walked down the block, and he crossed the street. And he found something live, a bush in a giant cement planter, and he put his hands in the planter and pulled out the leaves, and there was a cricket right there. His friend was astounded. The Cherokee said, no, no, my ears aren't any different than yours. I can't hear better than you. It just simply depends on what you're listening. Here, let me show you. And then he set the cricket down, and he took a bunch of coins out of his pocket, and he threw them on the ground, and every head turned around for a block. He said, see, it all depends on what you're listening to, what you're paying attention to. Church, what are we paying attention to? What are we paying attention to? Colossians 3.2 tells us to set our minds on things above, not on earthly things. When we play favorites, it shows that our thoughts have become distorted. Okay, we're coming around third base, I should say. When we play favorites in church, we're almost done. It shows us our focus is distracted. When we play favorites in church, it challenges us to recognize our thinking is distorted. And when we play favorites in church, it also shows us that our hearts are divided. Our hearts are divided. And we see that in verses eight through 13. Now be careful, because if you jump into verse eight through 13 and start reading that again, you know what you're gonna find? A bunch of judgment. Nobody likes judgment. It's hard. You got to think about it. We have to put our thinking caps on. Judgment shows up a lot there. No one wants to be judged. And that's one of the reasons lots of Christians don't like reading the book of James. It's hard, but James was a pastor. And James wrote this sermon because he loved his flock. And it was his love for his flock that drove his passion. People like to pit the apostle Paul against James, just like they make the mistake of pitting God's law against God's love, but that's always a mistake. Listen, James and Paul were standing on the foundation of God's love, fighting different enemies. Paul was facing the legalists, the Pharisees, who wanted to add work to God's grace. And so Paul speaks a lot about liberty. James was fighting the no-law crowd, the antinomians, the libertines, those who thought the love of God would not produce any tangible differences in their life. And so James and John were standing on the foundation of God's love, fighting different enemies. But you've got to put God's love and God's law in context. In fact, it's the love of God which puts the law of God in perspective because it's the law of God, Paul said in Galatians 3.24, that's our tutor that shows us our need for Christ. Because as James says in these last few verses, if we break just one point of the law, we've broken all of it. And that's why he says in beautiful verse 8, if you really keep the royal law found in scripture, love your neighbor as yourself, you're doing right. If you don't, you sin. Again, it bears repeating that it is love that's at the heart of healthy Christian living. It's love that's at the heart of a healthy church. It is love, look at verse 12, that should be at the heart of our speech toward each other. It is love, again verse 12, that should be at the heart of our actions toward each other in the church. It's love that will keep us from the sin of favoritism. As Annette and I were looking at this passage the last couple of weeks, she said, boy, that reminds me of that Rich Mullins song, and it sure does. Some of you may know what it is. Rich Mullins wrote, let mercy lead. Let love be the strength in your legs, and in every footprint you leave, there'll be a drop of grace. favoritism, drawing conclusions about people from the externals of poverty or wealth, that involves a quick, harsh judgment. But mercy beats judgment every single time, every single time. Of my 21 years in the army, I only deployed one time. I spent a year in Iraq at the very beginning. That's why we left the church and felt called to the army. When we got back a few months later, we were back in the field at the back end of Fort Hood, Cavazos, whatever it is, and my commander looked at me in a meeting one day in a GP large tent, and he said, chaplain, the only thing I miss about Iraq are those worship services. And that was the biggest compliment I've ever gotten in my life. But it wasn't the first time I heard it because soldiers kept coming to me in those first few months before we all got new assignments and said, can we just keep meeting as a battalion again and have church? And I said, no, they won't let me do that. But here was the deal, in those precious moments of worship in the middle of a war, And sometimes it was just when we'd gather around in the middle of a convoy or a patrol, we'd just gather up quick. But later on, we'd gather when we could and have bigger services. But whenever God's people gathered to offer up their prayers and thanksgiving, we found an oasis in that broken world. And the soldiers literally would lay down their weapons. They'd forget about their rank. There's no seating charts in an army chapel. And all we do is focus on Jesus. And that's all we wanted to do. And I mentioned that and I'm closing with that church because church, it's a war out there. Spiritually, culturally, outside of these walls, it is a broken world full of favoritism, full of prejudice, full of division, full of injustice. And when we get distracted and play favorites in the church, we're basically allowing the world to get a toehold, a beach hold in the church. But that's not the final word because this morning, if the Word of God has exposed some of this in our hearts, let's close with this. What's the corrective lens for a believer whose focus is distracted? Prayer. Time spent looking upon the face of God, devoting yourself in prayer, corrects your focus. What's the fix for a believer's distorted thinking? Scripture. because the Bible renews our mind. What's the antidote for a believer's sick, divided heart? Worship, because nothing warms the heart and heals the heart like worship. Now, this morning, to apply this Word of God, you must be in relationship to the God of the Word. His name is Jesus. And if you don't know Him, I want to challenge you today to reach out to Him, to call out to Him in repentance and in faith, because the blessed promise of Scripture is that whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.