Turn with me to James chapter two. We'll be reading the first 13 verses today of James chapter two. Without anything by way of introduction, we just want to begin with the reading of the word today, James writing and continuing his encouragement and exhortation to these. Fellow Jews in the dispersion. who were followers of Christ as he was. He writes to them, and in the second chapter we read, 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 accountable for 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 will 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. As is always helpful, or at least almost always helpful, it's good to understand the terms that we've been reading about. Certainly, it seems like the topic that jumps out at us from this passage, that seems to be and is at the center of it, is this idea of showing partiality. And if I had a title today, it would be worldly partiality. I think that's what we're dealing with. And this idea of partiality, in the Greek, the word means, literally, it means to accept a face. To accept a face. means to show favoritism, to make unjust distinctions between people by treating one person better than another. Now, there's some very practical instruction here in James. James is telling us very specifically that we ought not to treat people differently, that we ought not to be partial. And in that, of course, we understand that we're to be like God, like Christ, who also shows no partiality. Peter tells us that about God, as does Paul and others, that God is no respecter of persons. The Old Testament, we read the reality that God is not partial to one or to another. And we are told that we ought to treat people the same. There's a lot being said today about racism. I, probably to a fault, often try to steer away from much of present-day discussions, and maybe that's a fault of mine. It could very well be. But there's a lot that's being said today about racism, which is, in a sense, its own type of partiality. We're not to be partial as followers of Christ. And we remember again, that's who James is talking to. He's not talking to the world, as we might say. He's not talking to unbelievers. He's talking to people who claim to be followers of Christ, to be followers of Jehovah, God, the God. There's a lot being said today about this idea, though, of racism. And to listen to some of what's being said, it sounds as though prejudice and racism is something new to our day, like something that's recent, even in the last couple of hundred years. That's not true. In truth, since sin came into the world, partiality has been an issue. Prejudice has been a thing. It is part of the fallen human makeup. Whether we like to admit that or not, it is. And the only remedy, the only sure remedy is the gospel of Jesus Christ that makes us all certainly equal in need of Christ, no matter what race, creed, religion even. It's Christ that makes us equal. But to listen to Psalm, it's as though we have some unique problem today. And really we don't. It's the same problem that we've faced since sin entered into the world. And I want to say at the outset here that I think what often happens when we read this second chapter of James is we get a lot of good advice and we miss the point. We get some good instruction. We ought to treat people fairly and equally. And that's good advice. It's important that we do that. But we miss, I think, the underlying point of what James is trying to say. And I want to bring that out, if the Lord will help me to do that, as he brought it out from his word as I was studying and preparing to come to share with you today. In some ways, I'm not surprised that we today men everywhere, men and women, society at large, our nation. I'm not surprised that we seem to be struggling with this age old sin of partiality since we have for some time now also been distancing ourselves from the very thing that would solve the problem, which is God and his word. We've been distancing ourselves from him. And so we have been, as we distance ourselves from God, as we've said before, we automatically grow closer to things that are contrary and not godly. And one of those things is the sin of partiality. of racism or preferring one or one set over another. I'm not surprised in some ways that we're struggling with that. As we distance ourselves from God, we draw closer to these things that have always, since the fall, been an ailment on human beings and on human relationships. And having done so, having distanced ourselves from God, What that leaves us doing, in many cases, is trying to treat symptoms rather than the underlying problem. And I would suggest to you today that the issue that we have in our world and in the world in general is deeper and is one step beneath, or at least, if not multiple steps beneath, where remedies are attempting to be applied. As we've removed ourselves from God and his word, we're left attempting to solve symptoms. The irony of this is that we face today, many believe, and we treat the sin of racism, and we try to kind of just reverse it. and turn it around. We've treated this group badly, so we should treat this group well, so we should flip that around is seemingly, in some sense, the idea to make it right, but all that is, it's the same thing in reverse. It's still partiality. It's still preferring based on a worldly criteria, and that is where I think the meat of the matter is to be found. But having removed the idea of right and wrong and objective truth, that's what's been happening before our very eyes in our own lifetimes. I mean, how many of us would have ever imagined that there'd be any kind of a decision to make about a bathroom that one should go in? How would any of us that are over 40 years old, perhaps, when we were 10, 15, and 20 have thought that we'd be where we are? We've removed the idea of right and wrong, this postmodern thought that came in over the past couple of decades or more. And it's taught us that there is no such thing, or it's attempted to anyway, that there is no such thing as objective truth. And I know this is an easy soapbox for a preacher to get on. But I'll do my best here today to simply put one foot on it, because it is important in this larger discussion of what James is trying to tell us, I think. We've removed the idea of objective truth, truth that is universal to all men and women, and by so doing, we've removed the very foundation upon which racism and partiality themselves are destroyed, because we don't any longer have objective truth to call one thing right and another thing wrong. On one side, and if we could personify popular opinion, if we could turn popular opinion into a person and make him a person in our imagination, on one side of popular opinion's mouth, he states there is no objective truth, there is only your truth. How many times have you heard that? He says that, popular opinion does, in his well-dressed, easy manner. And he tells everyone, oh, it's OK, don't worry, there is no such thing as objective truth. There is your truth. And so on one side of his mouth, that's what popular opinion says to you. It's what many say to you today on every television station and every movie or popular media as it comes. That is just said over and over again. And that's what popular opinion says on one side of his mouth. While on the other side, though, he does say, and he's right in saying it, that racism is wrong. And it is. Of course, though, don't we immediately see the dilemma for Mr. Popular Opinion? He said, on one hand, there's no such thing as objective truth. It's just yours. But then he tries to come in and say, oh, by the way, there is this that's wrong, and this is applicable to everybody. You see the self-defeating logic of that. One can't be true if the other is. There is either objective truth or there isn't. This is where the enemy has been working very hard, very diligently. You see, truth, you often say leadership is a vacuum. You've heard that phrase. If leadership seems to disappear, it won't be long, it's a vacuum. Somebody's gonna fill that position of leadership. It's just, it's nature abhors a vacuum. Leadership is the same, but so too is truth. And I think it's important that we set up some of this basic understanding at the beginning. Because I think what matters most is that we understand what James is actually telling us. And it's easy to get lost on the surface. But truth is like a vacuum. Eventually, where there's a lack of defined, objective truth, something is going to fill that void. It's not possible for there to be an absence of truth. You may be wrong about what is true, but you're going to be guided by what you believe is true. What you think is true. Truth is a vacuum, and I fear that Satan has been playing chess. Well, many of us have been playing checkers. I think so. He first drove a wedge in our minds, and I want you to imagine and replay, however old you might be, and if you're very young, this might be a difficult task for you to do. But if you're older, I want you to replay your life. And I want you to see what has happened over these last decades of our own lives. First, there was a wedge that was driven into our minds, and that wedge separated church and God and our spiritual life, our following of God, our Christianity. This wedge divided us. On one side was that, and then on the other side of this wedge was life, Monday through Saturday, our jobs, our homes, our leisure time, our activities, our hobbies. Satan took that hammer, that sledgehammer and that wedge and he hammered on that wedge until it split. And we began to think that our lives somehow were divided. There's my church life and then there's the rest of my life. And we thought that's what he was after. That Satan was, that's what he was trying to do. And we're playing checkers and he's playing chess because he's not done. He's thought several moves ahead. When he got that wedge in place, while we were getting along with the business of our lives, ideas and lies were presented one after the other that slowly but steadily began to erode the biblical worldview our nation once held. Just lies, because now that there's a split in our thinking, between our life and then our following of God. And, you know, there's what you got to do at school. I mean, come on, preacher, you got to fit in. You can't live the way God wants us to live at school. You know, I've got to cuss a little bit. I've got to cheat on a test here and there. And those of us that are older, we got to be a little dishonest at work. I mean, you can't take the blame when you do something wrong. And Satan drove a wedge there in our thinking. And inside that wedge, he started throwing in lie after lie after lie. From education to our government, he introduced the idea to children, beginning in the 1800s even. You just evolved. Charles Darwin on his ship next to the Galapagos Islands has this crazy, insane idea. People love it because it separates us from God and Satan's been hammering that wedge for a time now and we begin to believe it. And now today, if you want to be taken seriously in most scientific circles or in academia at all, you're an absolute lunatic if you believe that God created the earth and the world and you and me. And that lie was thrown in there in the mix. And the only reason it had room was because Satan was driving that wedge in the first place. And we're, by the way, just busy getting along with the business of our lives. Making money, having families, having relationships, enjoying sports, and doing all these things. Because we've split in our minds the idea that we can't divide ourselves. But Satan has tried. And once that wedge between our regular everyday lives, we might say, and church. Once that wedge was firmly in place, Satan's next move was to begin to introduce the postmodern thought that truth was relative and not absolute. I mean, that's where you're going to end up. If you had this wedge and, well, this is okay for you to act like this at work. I mean, you'd say things at work you'd never say at church. That's okay, that's normal. That wedge was driven so deeply. And as that began to get normalized, we began to think, Satan then continued his movement And he began to instill just almost in the DNA of our institutions and our education system, and the very thought of modern man, this idea that truth is relative. Your truth is your truth, and mine is mine, and there is no such thing. And blow after blow rained down upon our nation that has led us to this place that we are today, where there seems to be no understanding of an absolute truth. And as we said, and I know it's simple to say, led us to this place where any particular bathroom is fine. And you know what? We continue to play chess or checkers and Satan is still playing chess. What's he actually trying to do? Is he done? No. This is not where this story ends, and this is important to set up, and then I'll get back to our passage. It's underneath it. We need to understand this to see, I think, some of the things James is trying to tell us. Satan continues to work, evil itself, fallen human man works to this degree. There's a third move. Not just interested in leaving things in the post-modern thought of relativism. where there's no such thing as absolute truth. That's not where I think this story's going to end. I think we're seeing it turn now in this direction. The enemy is not just interested in leaving things in this idea of a postmodern relativism, there's no such thing as objective truth, and he knows that, and he knows that this isn't the final move, because he knows it can only be a transitionary phase. Because ultimately, again, it's self-defeating as we have seen. So there's a third move. What is this third move? Well, it's to replace God with him. It's to replace God's truth with whatever human institution or group of people get to define what objective truth is. That's where he's going. That's where this has been moving toward. Just listen now to those who claim to be champions, again, of tolerance. We've made this point a number of times of late. Again, they no longer ask for tolerance. They demand agreement. That sounds to me like redefined objective truth. Man is telling others, we'll tell you what objective truth is. will tell you what is right and what is wrong. Because again, this post-modern idea where there's no such thing as solid, objective reality and truth, it's transitionary. It can't exist on its own energy and its own ideas and thoughts. It's self-defeating. So, you come to that place in the middle ground where you either revert back to the objective truth of God, Or you replace that objective truth of God with the redefined, established, and whoever has the most guns, or the most influence, objective truth of man. What does all this have to do with what James is saying? I want to tell you that it's involved in it and it's at the very heart of it. He's broken through, this is the place in the battle we're at, I think spiritually, in our nation, in our land. You can take or leave it, it's just how I feel about it. He's broken through a number of defenses in our nation and the hordes of his lies are running rampant over the land, causing pain and heartbreak and pain and loss and discouragement and fear. Satan promises, as he always has, that sin is going to lead you to freedom and pleasure. He always promises that. He promises to make you the king of your life. He promises you and says, just do this because you're in charge. You're the one that matters the most. He promises that you will be the one making the calls. He promises that you can make everything by the way you want it to be. You can make your truth your truth. He promises that. He tells you again that your truth is the only one that matters, and this sounds wonderful in our fallen ears, and it settles comfortably in our fallen hearts and minds, and it makes us feel good for the moment, and we think, yes, I think I want to go that way. I want to make the call. My truth is my truth. Who's anybody else to tell me what's true for me? I'm the one that makes that call. And that's what Satan does. And he just claps you on the back. And he encourages you. And he's a cheerleader all the while, saying, absolutely, you do what you want to do. And we are going to bring this right back to this passage. I trust and I pray that you'd give me a little bit more time to show it to you. But what Satan doesn't tell you, when he promises you all those wonderful things, he doesn't tell you that what he's promising is actually never going to happen. He didn't tell you that. He doesn't tell you, you will be enslaved to your sin. You will ultimately join Him in His eternal separation from God. He doesn't tell you that. But he pulls you along and he's driven that wedge and he's made us think that there's following God on Sunday and then living our lives the rest of the week. And then we have these lies that filter in to our hearts and minds and just bombarded with them. And then we begin to think, well, you know what? I know as much as anybody else and I'm going to define my own truth. And Satan says, yeah, live your life the way you want to live it. Never tells you that all you're doing is putting the shackles on yourself. If we can think of our nation, our society, as a building, it seems to me that our building is crumbling. And I know this is negative. It certainly sounds that way. I don't want it to be. I think it's just acknowledging. As we look at the building of our society, it's crumbling as one support beam after another has been removed. Some might argue, and I might be tempted to be along with this group, say, building's not crumbling, it's fallen. Whether or not that's true is beyond my ability to say, but it seems to me that we are at least standing in the midst of some significant rubble of a once great building. We were never perfect. As a nation, we've always had the marks of sin, but there was a day when we acknowledge that we were a nation who believed in God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God, the one and true God. As one time-tested and sturdy load-bearing wall of truth after another has been replaced with one particle board of man's opinion after another, this building of ours is crumbled. And in my view, bringing it back to James, racism, the sin of partiality, is one of the ways that this can be seen most clearly. How? Well, let's look at it. As followers of Christ, we are clearly told that we are to be examples of people who do not show partiality on any, and here's the key, on any external basis. We are to be partial in some sense, partial to God and his word. Partially even, as we read in, I believe it's in Galatians, when Paul says to show hospitality to all, but especially those who are of the household of faith. There's a degree of partiality that we are to hold. But the degree, the partiality we are never to hold as followers of Christ is partiality based on any external, worldly measurement. Skin color, wealth, citizenship, job position, whether you can help me or whether you can't, whether I like you or whether I don't. I'm not supposed to show, as a follower of Christ, partiality based on these external things. It couldn't be any clearer. James couldn't have said it any more clearly. anyone who follows Christ. So let's put to bed the idea that within the Christian biblical defined reality of Christianity, let's put to bed any sense of the idea that racism is ingrained in Christianity. It is not. never has been, never will be when followed correctly. James could not be any more clear. A follower of Christ is a believer in the equality of man, regardless of skin color or any of these other things, family connections, political position, rank, beauty, intelligence, opinions, clothes. And this is an important point to make. As we look at this passage, James is talking about showing partiality based on external worldly things. And I want to take just a few minutes and look at some specific reasons why this is such a negative thing. And James, so rightly, the inspiration of the spirit of God tells us to avoid it. And so I want to ask you before we do that, to check your own heart. as I need to check mine. Do we show partiality in our life based on some external worldly metric or not? We're not supposed to. James tells us not to. And as we think about our Lord who didn't show partiality, as we think about Him and long to be like Him, may we look at others the way He looked at us without partiality. She looked down some 38 years ago on a young boy in southwest Missouri, bowed, asking for salvation and repenting. Nothing about that little boy that was worth anything more than anyone else, and he, without partiality, saved me. We think of him, as we look at this and think about it, may this admonition and this this prohibition against partiality take root in our heart and in our minds, but may what takes root be at the root of the issue, which is to not show partiality on any external worldly thing. Listen, when we show a negative partiality toward the poor, you know this, But think about it. When we show a negative partiality to the poor, are we not in essence looking down upon the one God has said He is going to lift up? In Luke 6, 20 and 21, Jesus' words, He lifted up His eyes on His disciples and said, Blessed are you who are poor For yours is the kingdom of God. And again, poor in what? Poor toward this world, this life. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. In James 1.9, we've already read this. Let the lowly brother boast in his exultation, the rich in his humiliation. And so when we show partiality negatively toward the poor, we are looking down upon the one that God said, I'm going to lift up and the one that he says he will be with. When we show a positive partiality toward the rich in the world, we are looking up to the one God says he will ultimately bring low. Now, I want you to think about that because I think it's rampant in our technology driven age. where the latest, greatest star, starlet, and influencer is so prevalent. Look, as a follower of Christ, and this particularly, again, perhaps for the young people, but also those of us that are older, we should not show partiality and prefer someone because of the great worldly success that they seem to have. That is not only detrimental for you, it's terribly detrimental for them. We want to see that in a minute. You see, God said later in Luke chapter six, or Jesus did specifically, he'd said, blessed are you who are poor in the 24th verse later, he says, but woe to you who are rich. And of course, the understanding here, rich in what? Worldly things. You who are rich in the world. Woe to you, Christ says, Jesus says, for you have received your consolation. This is the best you're gonna get, he says. Woe to you, he goes on to say in verse 25, who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. You know, when you put this all together, we are on the opposite side of God when we show partiality for the rich in the world. And we show a negative partiality toward the poor in the world. He goes on and talked about, isn't it the rich who are frequently your greatest persecutors? Is it not the rich in the world who are frequently the most antagonistic and blasphemous against your Lord? James says, the one by whom you've been called out of this world to look toward the next world. We have to ask ourselves some pressing questions in the society that we live in today and think about things like how can we lightly rub elbows and seek to please and gain the favor of those who reject outright and blaspheme our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. How can we do that, James might ask. By showing partiality between people according to worldly standards. Again, money, clothes, fame. This is what's happening. We are acknowledging to them. We are encouraging them. We are inciting them to think that there is or are things in this world valuable enough to go after above all other things. And that's the danger and the damage that we end up causing by showing partiality to the rich. This man that walked in, that James gives this analogy of, he's in wonderful clothes. He's got a gold ring on his finger. And there's a lot in that, by the way. Back in Roman society, a free man got a gold ring and one of influence or affluence would wear them. It was a signal. I have made it in the world. And James says, don't prefer them. You know, most of the time when we read this, and we should take this, of course, you shouldn't look down on the poor. That's true. I think we all know that. But I think what we sometimes fail to think about is neither are we to be impressed by the rich, by the influential in the world. That's not to be something that we are to glory in or to encourage them in. Oh my, I'm so impressed by your billions. I'm so impressed by the position that you've reached in the world. You just really have it all figured out. We shouldn't do that. We shouldn't be impressed and show partiality because of it because ultimately By showering partiality upon people who have gotten everything they want in the world, we tell them that they've got something worth value, and they don't. We give them encouragement by our admiration, and we become an accessory to their crime, in a way. We shouldn't do that, according to James. We shouldn't think that way. We become one of the countless faces who applaud them as we sometimes contribute to driving the nails in their coffin eternally. We shouldn't do that. And James says we dishonor, we insult the follower of Christ who is poor in the world by the world's standards. We fail to witness to the lost one who is rich in the world. We kind of got it just all the way upside down. Everything about our thinking is wrong here. If we're not following the advice and the counsel and the encouragement and the instruction of God and his word, and here specifically in James. It isn't that we're simply to reverse our thinking and think, because this is what sometimes we'll do. Oh, well, we should treat the poor person better than the rich. No. No, that's not what James is saying at all. He's sure not to show partiality either way. He's telling us, look, don't show partiality based on anything that is passing, that is tied only to this life and this world. Don't do it. Set your eyes on a different place. set your hopes on a different place, and set theirs as well. And don't encourage anyone to the poor and say, well, you should just educate yourself. You should go get a, you should do everything you can to become more rich in the world. That's not what we should be telling them. Shouldn't show partiality one way or the other. And we shouldn't be telling the rich, of course, as I've said, you've got it. You've got to figure it out. I want you. to be my friend, it shouldn't be an issue one way or the other. And again, in essence, we can end up having everything wrong about the way we're thinking about this. We aren't to think of anyone at all based on their standing or lack thereof in the world, or based on the measures that the world measures by. Again, money, fame, skin color, whatever it is. And this is the heart of the matter, this is the heart of the matter that comes down to you and me and to your heart and mine, how we're looking at things. When we show partiality It's not just that we're sinning against that person and that we're committing that sin of partiality. That's not all that's involved and it's not all that's going on. What it reveals is that we are more concerned about this world than the next. That's what it shows. That's the problem, ultimately. That's what is at issue. We should see a human being when we look at others created in the image of God, whether they are clothed in splendor or whether they are in racks. And we shouldn't show partiality one way or the other based upon the presence or the absence of worldly wealth. It's almost beside the point. We should see them, again, as Human beings created in the image of God, who will inhabit eternity? Listen, as you look at someone, and as we look at someone, and we look at maybe their vast wealth, and boy, they've just got it all. They're so comfortable. Everything they touch turns to gold. They've got a wonderful, beautiful family. They don't seem to have any real troubles and any real trials, and when we go to them and we say, boy, you've got it figured out, and yet we know. based on their lifestyle, that they're not followers of God. And there's no evidence at all that their soul is ready for eternity. When we look at them, we need to see a human being created in the image of God who's going to inhabit eternity as either a child of God or one who will be eternally separated from him. Then all of a sudden the accoutrements, the fancy life, the cars, the six-car garage home, the multiple homes across the country, the private jets, the applause of millions, all of a sudden that just becomes noise. Noise, unimportant noise. As a child of God, as a follower of Christ, I'm to look at them and say, God's blessed you. Do you know him? Do you know him? And I'm to, on the flip side of the coin, I'm to look at the poor and say, God's given you affliction. This is just, we're on this side. We're on the temporary side. And for whatever reason, God has given you some struggles to face. Do you know God? It's not about the things of the world. It's not about worldly partiality. Looking at life from a worldly view. Again, we should see a human being who, if they're poor in the world, but rich toward God. We need to not see an old man in tattered clothes and skin that is worn by the sun and years of labor and brokenness and is struggling to make the bills and is is struggling with this sickness and that and not sure where the money's gonna come from and not sure how he's gonna take care of himself and those he loves. We shouldn't just merely look at him and show partiality for them because of that. We should look at somebody like that who's a child of God and say, my brother or my sister, one day you are gonna be a creature so magnificent I cannot begin to imagine it right now. When God gives you a new body to match the perfect and holy soul he has placed inside of you when you became a father of Christ. Yes, there's this temporary life we're living in. And for whatever reason, it's been God's pleasure to grant and to afflict many with poverty in this world, but riches toward him. And I'll tell you the benefits far outweigh the sacrifices of that. And so We don't look and see things the way the world does. And so much of the time we come to a passage like this and we say, yeah, I should be nicer to the poor and I should just not prefer them. I should treat them as well. And sometimes we even go overboard and say, I should treat them better than the rich. And we miss the point. He's talking about worldly things. Rich in the world, poor in the world. No partiality toward it one way or the other. And by the way, that should apply to ourselves as well. I'll finish. He goes on, and we're just going to have a few moments here to talk about the rest of this, and we won't read it at length. But I do want to say this before I close. He says whoever keeps the whole law, or excuse me, as you go up to verse 8, if you really fulfill the royal law, and the royal law that he refers to, he quotes, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. That's the royal law. This law, this one solitary law, would change the world overnight if it were followed. The law that here, this royal law that would change the world like no other law of man ever could. And you know, we do not lack the necessary laws to ensure our peace, our liberty, our happiness. We don't lack for laws to assure those things. They're all over. We make new ones all the time. There is but one law necessary to ensure that society would prosper to love each other as we love ourselves. That's it. It's no more complicated than that. We don't need any other laws, but we think somehow that we do. We keep trying to create new laws or to change existing ones when what we need is a new heart to follow the royal law that we've already been given. We keep looking to government, our legislators, our judicial system, our judges, to give us new laws. And as we've seen even this week, sometimes that is good and it's helpful. We keep looking, though, for that. If we'd stop looking for new laws and start bowing our knees before God and asking to teach us how to obey the royal law, how to love one another, as James is talking about, all those other new laws we think we need, we'd say, wait, We don't need any new laws. We need to love one another. And I know that sounds trite to you and to me sometimes, cliche, but it's not. It's not. James reminds us again that we aren't dealing with the things that so many seem to want to deal with in this passage. We're not dealing with preferences, but with right and wrong and with sin. And he says that. He comes out and says that if you show partiality, you are committing sin. So it's not just a small sin of no consequence. It's a sin that, like all other sins, makes you a transgressor of the law of a righteous and holy God and places you outside of his will. He asks, and he says to us, that we ought to obey this law of liberty. And that's what he calls it in verse 12. Speak and act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. I close with this. We are going to be judged. Every one of us will be. We will. Bible's clear. We are going to be judged one day, but listen, judgment is not a day where we will be judged simply by a list of do's and don'ts. That is far more simple than it's actually going to be. It's far less nuanced than it's actually going to be. We are going to be judged by the law of liberty, the law that we were freely given, and the law that we are free to follow or reject. And what is that law? It isn't treat people nice. It isn't to have laws on the books that prevent institutional racism. That's below the law of liberty. It's far below it. It's good or necessary in its place. That's not what you're going to be judged next to. And I'm going to be judged next to. And of course we know ultimately that all of these are things that we can't do, which drives us to Christ. That's where I want to leave you today, is with Him, to know that in order for me to obey this passage of Scripture that we've been given, to rightly obey it, to even understand it rightly and deeply enough, to think about it correctly, we need Christ, the Holy Spirit in our lives, to help us to love one another as we love ourselves. to prefer others before ourselves. Don't get in your mind this idea of judgment in such a way that it drives you towards a type of legalism in your life. Remind yourself and have God, ask God to remind you daily of the law that God has given to us, of the law of liberty, of freedom, of joy, and of love, and have him show us at any point in our lives when we tend to show favoritism to someone because of any earthly measure. Now, we accuse God, and I will end with this, and I apologize. It's terrible to say over and over again. This came late in the game, you might say, but it's something I definitely want to share with you. There are times in our lives, if we're honest, we accuse God of favoritism, Himself. Don't we? We accuse God of favoritism because we think He is concerned, like we too often are, about earthly measures. We look around and we see others who seemingly have far more than we do. We point our finger at God and accuse him of being more fair to others than he has been to us. But this is just wrong thinking on the other side of the coin, accusing God of being partial with us when he has not been. He's just not partial with eternal things. Jesus' blood on the cross of Calvary was shed for the sins of the whole world, all men of all races, wealth, and earthly station. And it was shed there to secure all who had come to Christ an eternal home in heaven. If they would bow in repentance and faith, repentance for their sin, it must be confronted, must be dealt with, God cannot forgive you if you do not ask him to. He will not. But once you do, and he forgives you, and you're given that freedom and that liberty, even in that moment as it occurred, and from there, as you say, I'm just gonna continue to follow Christ, and I'm not gonna measure God by the earthly measures of the world. I am not gonna measure and be partial to others by those measurements, and I'm not gonna expect God to be toward me either. It is Jesus that we are to model, as in all things, it's him we must model here as well. He did not look at people and measure them by their earthly standing, but he did not. I mean, you just read the gospels, and he gathers himself a ragtag group of uneducated fishermen. One tax collector, one doctor, sprinkled them in. These were simple people. Jesus didn't go to the Pharisees. He didn't show up at the Sanhedrin and say, I want your best students to follow me. I'm the son of God. I want to impress the world with my followers. Listen, Jesus has never been interested in impressing the world with his followers. God the Father is not interested in impressing the world with his son's followers. He's interested in impressing the world with his son. And as we look at the world, May we not show partiality based on worldly things. May we see rightly and clearly the eternal things. So how are you looking at others? How are we? How you look at others will be a reflection, by the way, of how you look at yourself. Are you showing partiality based on worldly things in others and in yourself? James tells us not to do that. When you look at another person, Don't be impressed by the wealthy or repulsed by the poor. Their standing in the world is of little consequence next to their eternal standing before God. So treat them as such. Love them. Don't be partial because of earthly things. Remember that your reaction to them, the poor and the rich, Your reaction to them and the earthly things that attend their life, your reaction to those things are either going to point them in the right direction or it will point them in the wrong direction. It will encourage them in their worldly pursuits or it will encourage them to heavenly ones. My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. The only one who ought to be looked upon with partiality. And I think that's why James threw it in there, the Lord of glory. He's the one that we should prefer above all others. I pray that something's been said here today to be of help to you and that our walk here in the world would be edified with Christ. And that's who I point you to and ask you to seek today is Christ, more and more of him. Let's have some.