The Pendulum Of Partiality

[Music] shout out [Music] is [Music] you're crazy [Music] [Music] jesus is better [Music] oh [Music] is oh [Music] [Music] we have no other [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] overwhelmed by the waiter [Music] have you come to the end of yourself do you [Music] the altar the father's arms are open wide forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of jesus christ [Music] jesus [Music] jesus [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Music] oh [Music] he wonderful sing hallelujah christ is risen [Music] for he is the same hallelujah is [Music] [Music] hallelujah [Music] for me [Music] [Music] is [Music] forgiveness [Music] bury a cross as you wait for the

crown till the world of the treasure found [Music] yeah we're just so in awe the love that you've poured out for us right now we just want to take a pause and just give thanks to you thank you that you loved us and you continue to love us in jesus name finally this next song um nothing but the blood we're gonna take communion so during this song if you don't have the elements you can go in the back and grab them [Music] two sinners [Music] unless perfection [Music] it will take [Music] our redemption gained [Music] nothing but the [Music] make me [Music] there is nothing

strong enough and now salvation [Music] rise up to the feet [Music] what can make me [Music] me [Music] [Music] just one job there is [Music] [Music] my eyes [Music] [Music] my [Music] oh [Music] the [Music] blood of jesus oh the blood of jesus [Music] for i received from the lord would i also deliver to you that the lord jesus on the night when he was betrayed he took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and he said this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me and in the same way also he took the cup after supper

saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup you proclaim the lord's death until he comes whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the lord let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself that is why many of you are

weak and ill and some have died but if we judged ourselves truly we would not be judged but when we are judged by the lord we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world so then my brothers when you come together eat wait for one another if anyone is hungry let him eat at home so that when you come together it will not be for judgment this is an opportunity for us to examine our lives examine ourselves examine our hearts and our minds why we're here this morning why we get up in the morning why we live and what we're

doing in this moment of communion is we're coming before the lord and we're allowing our heart and our minds and our lives to be open to him for him to reveal the issues in our in our souls and our spirits the the sins that we still commit on a daily basis and we're bringing those things to his altar and we're judging ourselves rightly by bringing them to him and allowing those things to be placed at his feet nailed to his cross for the removal of our sins for his mercy to be extended to us on a daily basis and that's what he's talking about and

that's what we're celebrating and remembering when we partake of communion on a weekly basis is the fact that that we cannot remove our sins we cannot forgive ourselves but it's the grace and the mercy of jesus christ that has been extended to us from the foot of the cross and so when we partake of communion we are remembering that and rejoicing in that and celebrating that and worshiping jesus for his breaking of his body and his shedding of his blood that is cleaning our consciences that is forgiving us of our sins and that is restoring us to the identity that he has given us in

his son jesus christ so let's partake together as we examine ourselves and bring those sins to him as we repent of those things and we trust in jesus let's partake [Music] [Music] do i can wash away my sin nothing but the blood of jesus what can make me hold again nothing but the blood of jesus oh precious is the flow that makes me white as snow no mother found i know nothing but the blood of jesus god we praise you for the greatest gift that we could ever ask for you give us life and life abundantly through your son through the sacrifice of jesus on

the cross we stand here just alive in you and so thankful you continue to remind us in our hearts and our minds of just what the blood of jesus means in our life today and now that we are alive in you because you rose again we just stand here and all so thankful your great and loving god in jesus name amen i have a seat if you have your bibles go ahead and grab them we're going to be in james chapter 2 today we are in week 8 of our series uh in the book of james and we are just now getting to chapter 2

which is a good thing and as i'm thinking about this this week um and i can yeah go ahead and dismiss the three to five year olds so those kids can go and head on out to to their class as i was thinking about this uh week as i was writing my notes and just all this good stuff that i think is in here prepared for this sermon i was thinking about you guys as a church which is a good thing to do whenever you're writing a sermon um based on who you're writing it to but i was thinking about some of the qualities i

like about our church and one of the qualities i like about our church is the fact that i see or when i see most of you whether it's on a sunday or if i see you throughout the week you pretty much look the same uh and and kind of what i mean by that is uh we're at least from from my perspective we're not a church that tries to put together our sunday best or put together our best foot forward on sundays i've come from churches in the past that um that have absolutely been that you know kind of vein of life especially in the

south and um and it's not necessarily i'm not knocking you know if you wear a suit on sunday if you want to wear a suit in here that's fine you can wear a suit um i get the idea uh behind why you would want to kind of dress your best for for god as you're coming to worship you want to present yourself in a certain way but at the same time there's there's a facade to that um there's as we used to say pre-covet you know that's like kind of wearing a mask to church but but the thing that i have appreciated about us is

is we pretty much come as we are we pretty much come as we are and i think one of the things that we're going to see in this message today is i want to go a little bit deeper than just kind of that surface area or surface level even though i think from for the most part we we present ourselves as who we are i still think there's a deeper level of of how we interact with one another and who we interact with um that that is still kind of in that let's put our best foot forward or let's present ourselves with a sunday best

or even in the crowd that we hang out with let's let's only hang out with those who who look like us or let's only extend certain gifts or mercy and grace to those who are as we are and so i really want to challenge that uh this morning as we kind of dive into this passage um but but again i just want to put that out there it doesn't matter when we worship it doesn't matter what color you come from whether you're blue collar white collar no collar that that doesn't matter at the end of the day and i think there needs to be a

certain level of of being able to cross those nuances when it comes to what we are familiar with and and what we find comfortable when it comes to um to who we interact with on a daily basis and so that's where i want to dive into this uh in james chapter 2 this morning and it's really simply this it's that the church must not partiality by withholding mercy towards those god has called to be fellow heirs of his kingdom we cannot show partiality towards those god has called to be fellow heirs of his kingdom and so i'm going to read james 2 1-13 and then

we're going to break it up into three sections as we walk through this starting verse 1. 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 in 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 fulfilled 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 is god's word for us today and as we uh are diving into this we're just going to kind of go down

into this really simple point here james is making for us today which is how do we love our neighbors how do we love our neighbors i think all of it can be summed up in that kind of how how do we love our neighbors and the first point that i want to show you here is we need to love our neighbors without distinction or exclusion we need to love our neighbors without distinction or exclusion this uh the first thing we're going to look at is in these first four verses as you hold the faith in jesus james says simply show no partiality as you hold

the faith in jesus show no partiality james is dedicating here 13 verses 13 verses to warning these persecuted jews who have been scattered now all over the region that he's writing to to not withhold mercy to not withhold mercy to those entering their assemblies who are underprivileged or in disadvantaged places economically now the temptation these brothers and sisters faced was to then give preferential treatment to those who were outwardly prosperous while being dismissive of those who were of lower so socioeconomic or political status if you will and this is what james is saying when you make those distinctions when you make those distinctions he's saying

you've become judges with evil thoughts you've become judges with evil thoughts another way to say evil thoughts would be evil reasoning you're reasoning something inside of your mind that does not align with the mind of christ you're perceiving somebody that does not align with the way christ perceives them you're viewing them you're judging them in a way that christ does not judge them james is saying literally when you do this you have appointed yourself to be godlike in your judgment but ungodly in that you're judging people by showing partiality and so james is saying your mind is not reasoning from the godly wisdom that we've

been talking about throughout this book this entire book can really just be summed up as just godly wisdom to us it's a wisdom type book that is written wisdom literature here james is saying your mind is not reasoning from the godly wisdom that comes from an inner transformation from the heart through faith through faith but it's reasoning with worldly wisdom that feeds on the passions of the flesh that's where this kind of partiality is coming from is a world-like view and the first thing jesus leads with jesus when he's preaching his famous sermon on the mountain matthew chapter five and with with all the intros

with all the things that he could have led with with all the stories that he could have started out with all the jokes he could have told whenever he was leading out with his sermon the first thing that he leads out with is this blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of god jesus leads with a particular kind of spiritual quality that he's calling his people to cultivate and to exhibit and to extend in the church we're to extend this type of quality that comes from christ so it's impossible james is saying here to love our neighbor when we lead with

this distinction and exclusion of others it's impossible to love our neighbor and when that happens we're kind of like luke 10 25 we're kind of like this lawyer in luke 10 where we are told he stood up to put jesus to the test and this is what he says to jesus teacher what shall i do to inherit eternal life jesus said to him what is written in the law how do you read it and the man answered you shall love the lord your god with all your heart and with all your soul with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as

yourself and he said to him you have answered correctly do this and you will live but he the lawyer desiring to justify himself said to jesus and who is my neighbor jesus replied and he gave this very well-known story that is often used in in many illustrations a man was going down from jerusalem to jericho and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed leaving him half dead now by chance a priest was going down that road and when he saw him he passed by on the other side so likewise a levite when he came to the place and saw him

he passed by on the other side but a samaritan as he journeyed came to where he was and when he saw him he had compassion he went to him and bound up his wounds pouring on oil and wine then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an end and took care of him and the next day he took out to dinari and gave them to the innkeepers saying take care of him and whatever more you spend i will repay you when i come back and then jesus asked this question which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor

to the man who fell among the robbers the man replied the one who showed him mercy and jesus said to him you go and do likewise who was the neighbor it was the one who showed mercy jesus identified so much with the lowly because he identifies himself as being gentle and lowly given the books that are in your seats right now this is the quality that jesus is is implementing as his way of extending out the heart of the gospel extending out the heart of god when it comes to how he is going to interact and who he's going to interact with as he is

living his life and living out his ministry and as he is now modeling for his disciples and teaching his disciples how they ought to live their lives you are not to be like the priest or the levite who are coming down a road and see a man in need and don't tend to him you are to be like the samaritan you were to be like the one who has compassion for those who are less fortunate in that scene in that scenario in that situation and you are to extend your life extend mercy to them by showing them mercy by taking time out of your day

by taking energy and by taking resources by taking money and by setting them up in such a way that they will be restored refreshed healed and then found better off than when they first were discovered that's what jesus is preaching here that's what jesus is proclaiming because he so relates the way of jesus the heart of jesus the mind of jesus this is what he's eager to remind the churches of when it comes to hearing james we also see this in second corinthians 8 9 for you know the grace of our lord jesus christ that though he was rich yet for your sake he became

poor so that you might so that you by his poverty might become rich this is the idea of of what god has blessed you with you might empty yourself of that in order to extend out so that someone else who does not have it might be elevated with it and exalted so to love our neighbors the kind of neighbors the world would designate having lesser than or lowly status we must become poor in spirit in order to love them with without distinction or exclusion because the scripture doesn't give wait for it qualifiers on who your neighbors are the scripture nowhere gives qualifiers on who your

neighbors are like when it says to love your neighbor nowhere does jesus say guys just wait i'm going to send you an email tomorrow it's going to have some qualifiers for who you should look for how you should filter out people when they come into your assembly or when you see them on the side of the road or when you interact with them in your neighborhood or whether they're in your family or not there's no qualifiers the command is to love your neighbor love your neighbor so it is not positioned from a place of finding someone who i'm comfortable interacting with and then extending mercy

and grace to them by sharing the gospel but no it's do they have a heartbeat that was one of those the frustrating the most frustrating question i ever got when we were starting the church was from church planting networks what's your target audience i don't know how to answer that question what are you asking me what's your target audience like what's your demographic that you're going to go after and i get what they're saying because they're running all the statistics across the nation they're like if you if you reach millennials if you reach you know people in their early 20s who don't have kids yet

like this is going to be the most successful way in order for the church and again that's what our church has primarily become but that is not due to any type of strategy that we had no strategy we had we had no strategy i mean literally no strategy of who we are going to go out and reach because the only frustrating answer that i gave them was do they have a heartbeat if they have a heartbeat we're going after them we're going after them that that that allows everyone regardless of ethnicity background regardless of socioeconomic status regardless of age wherever they land on the spectrum

we're able to pursue them with the gospel of christ we're able to pursue them that's exactly what jesus did and so that's the first thing we need to love our neighbors without distinction or exclusion the second thing is this we need to love our neighbors by honoring them as fellow heirs picking it up in verse 5. 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 looking at james here james says something shocking here actually which is god has chosen the lowly and the lesser thans to be rich in faith

and heirs of the kingdom and that's kind of like what we talk about here sometimes which is the upside down nature of god's kingdom the upside down nature of god's kingdom the world the world just sees different the world just sees different different stuff than than should the church the world sees it differently it sees money it sees status it sees influence as the people who are most advantageous to be close to like you want to surround yourself with um or if you want to be successful in life surround yourself with successful people that's the way the world views it you want to be wealthy

eventually we'll surround yourself with wealthy people they will help you get there that's how the world views progress and success and i think the church should view it a little bit differently but unfortunately we kind of think people who have a little more status or a little more money as being the people who are a little more closer to god at the same time like i think we do that right like i think there's there's there's even within our own church we will look at one another and we will say well they've got a nicer house they have a nicer car they're you know they're

they don't seem to be struggling financially and so they must be a better disciple of jesus christ they must be closer to god they must have more favor from god than what i do and so maybe it's my sin in my life maybe it's the consequences due to that maybe it's you know i'm not as devoted to reading scripture or praying or evangelizing or doing those things and so therefore god is just keeping those things from me and that's kind of the trap that these jewish christians are finding themselves failing and falling into at the time but god says i've chosen those who have nothing

to have everything and when god chooses you to have everything he has it's because you've come to the conclusion that the everything you had is actually nothing like that's how this works is even if you have because again what this is not saying is this is not against those with money or those with status or those with influence it's not against them what it is saying though is is you need to come to the reality that even if you have those things those things mean nothing what ultimately means everything is the grace and mercy of the gospel the good news of jesus christ his life

his life for you means everything without that it doesn't matter what wealth you have or what influence you have or what status you have you've heard us talk about it like there is no u-haul following you to heaven bringing all of your stuff with you like the money that you make is not going the influence that you have is not going the status that you have is not going none of that is going the only thing that gets you into heaven is jesus christ blood and his righteousness that he is imparted to you that he has given to you that he has extended to you

in an act of mercy that's it and that's all that matters when it comes to this and what he's saying here is is not only those who are lowly in status will be inheriting this richness of faith but those with material possessions who have the posture of being poor in spirit will also receive this richness of faith will also but that's the hard part it's easier for someone in lowly status and lowly material possessions and lowly economic whatever you fill in the blank there it's easier for those people to be able to see their state and connect that to their spiritual state where the bible

constantly kind of rails at is the wealthy person or the person with material possessions or the allure of material possessions who some for some reason think that god has blessed them with a spiritual richness because of those things and that's where we need to do the work of repentance that's where we need to do the work of repentance because if we believe that if we believe that then when someone comes in to our assembly or we interact with someone out on the road or in our neighborhood or whatever it is that does not fit the bill of these things over here then we're going to

exclude and show distinction and show partiality we're going to say well god does not favor them because they are not like us they've not earned what we've earned they don't have what we have and so we're not going to interact with them we want we want people we want to gather successful people around to make sure we're successful and so let's gather all those successful disciples around so that we can be successful disciples and that's not what the bible is teaching us remember james told us in james 1 9 he said let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation

because like a flower of the grass he will pass away we need to have some of that humiliation we need to be humbled by seeing that everything that we do have actually means nothing means nothing proverbs 14 31 also says whoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker but he who is generous to the needy honors him one of the ways we show this love by extending it out is by honoring those who are different than us just simply different than us it's so upside down it's so different because we have a heart that pulses in step and in sync with the world we treasure

the things that the world treasures we we have a hard time wringing that out of our system and so that's some work that we need to do the apostle paul says in first corinthians 1 26 and this is just such a crazy verse i think we should read this verse every day for the rest of the year i know you're not going to do that but i'm just saying i'm just laying it out there listen to what he says in this verse for consider your calling brothers not many of you were wise according to worldly standards this is paul just kind of putting the corinthians

in their place none of you no you're not smart you're not wise no one's picking you first on the kickball team like it's just not happening not many were powerful not many were know of noble birth but god chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise god chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong god knows what is low and despised in the world even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of god he chose what is foolish he chose what is weak he chose what

is low and despised so that no human being might boast in the presence of god for anything that they own because they are not what they own that's it you're simply you're not what you own and we need to come to terms with that the third thing is we love our neighbors with mercy over judgment we love our neighbors with mercy over judgment this is verses 8-13 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 an aggressor of the entire 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 to summarize it here jesus james is saying that if you show partiality we are not loving our neighbors simply put now listen to this and not loving our

neighbors is the equivalent of breaking what we would consider to be god's most important laws right like if i look at you right now and say you've got you've got two options to send this week and you're gonna do one of these two you can either murder somebody or you can just not love your neighbor well which one are we going to choose not love your neighbor well hopefully all right if any of you are thinking anything else like we need to talk but what james is pulling in here is he's basically saying keeping the royal law to love your neighbor as yourself is so

serious he's pointing out that to not keep it puts you in the same category the same category as those who are on death row for first degree murder like what he's saying here is we have to stop categorizing sins because we do that right we do that well i'm just not as bad as so and so or i've not done as bad as this or that and what he's getting at here is when you start to do that when you start to categorize your sin you start to categorize people you start to categorize people because now you're starting to place well i'm really good at

these things and i'm not so good at these things so as long as i'm good at these things let me surround myself with those types of people and then that begins to exclude and show distinctions and show partiality and what this is also doing what i'm also saying here is not that we are excusing sin in any of the distinctions or partiality we want well all but at the same time in welcoming all we are at the same time in love in kindness and gentleness calling each other out just like james is here he's calling out these jewish christians he's calling them out paul never

holds back when he calls out sin in the churches that he writes his letters to but they do it in such a way that is that it is an extension of god's mercy and grace that he has shown them and that's huge that's huge for us but we need to make this comparison that's the same heart that commits murder as the same heart that decides who not to love it's the same heart if you were to physically harm somebody and murder them or at the same time know someone is lost and have the opportunity to share with them the good provides for them life forgiveness

in eternal glory with jesus christ to withhold that james is saying is the same thing it's the same thing you're just slowly killing them and sending them to hell in a different way in a different way it's serious and it's heavy i feel it right now it's heavy but i think it needs to be heavy one of my mentors once said like when when things are heavy it humbles you because it brings you down it lowers you it needs to it's necessary matthew 23 jesus is talking about the rabbis these religious leaders and in verse 6 he says this and they love the place of

honor at feast and they and the best seats in the synagogues and the greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others they love all the things we would love they love all the things we do love but here he's talking to his disciples and this is what he says to them but you are not to be called rabbi for you have one teacher and you are all brothers and call no man your father on earth for you have one father who is in heaven neither be called instructors for you have one instructor the christ the greatest among you shall be your servant whoever

exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted but jesus kept pressing his disciples it's back to understanding who they are and what god has called them to do who they are is recipients of mercy coming to this understanding that they did not elevate themselves nor exalt themselves but they are recipients of mercy and when you understand that that allows you to be humbled for jesus again warns us back in verse 13 when he says for judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy jesus actually spoke about that in matthew 7 1-5 he says this judge not that you

not be judged for with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured to you why do you seek the speck that is in your brother's eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye for how can you say to your brother let me take the speck out of your eye when there is a log in your own eye you hypocrite first take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye he's not he's not saying don't take the speck

out of your brother's eye but he's saying you need to first realize your condition and your state if you're not humbled that means you've got a log in your eye you've got sin in your life you've got things that you're not walking through nor dealing with or repenting of and it's causing an issue but in your self-righteousness kind of that category over here to justify yourself you're looking at everyone else's sins they're specs and you're just going around i'm just going to pluck those specks out of your eyes i'm going to i'm going to get each and every one of them but you do it

in a harsh way you don't do it in a tender way in a gentle way like what jesus has done for us paul helps us here in galatians 6 when he says brothers if anyone is caught in any transgression you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness gentleness keep watch on yourself lest you two be tempted be aware always be aware put a mirror in front of your face remember who you are and also become aware of the sins that you still commit on a daily basis know who you are in christ so that those sins don't condemn you and you

go into this certain type of of self-deprecation but but you need to know what they are so that you're able to remove that log and then you just see things clearly you see things clearly and as you see the brother or sister who's caught in a sin who's walking out a step of the spirit whatever that might look like you're able to clearly see the situation discern the situation and come to them in a spirit of gentleness why because you've received it yourself you know what it's like to receive mercy rather than judgment galatians 6 2-4 bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law

of christ for if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing he deceives himself but let each one test his own work and then his re reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor i don't have enough time to tease that one out another time for each will have to bear his own load it's impo like for us to truly extend mercy to others we need to do the work of seeing ourselves in the mercy that we're receiving we've got to see our sin we've got to get serious about our sin as serious as the fact of murder and

adultery and we've got to take that sin and bring it to the feet of jesus and repent of it on a daily basis that's why we do confession every sunday and that's why we are training you through that confession every sunday to do that on a daily basis because as we talked about a couple of weeks ago that confession that word is doing something in your life it's producing righteousness in you it's producing repentance in you it's producing restoration in you all of that is happening when we're submitting our lives to the word of god and letting it reveal in us the inconsistencies that we're

still holding on to in the world and in our flesh and in our passions of our flesh that's what his word is doing and and we're giving ourselves over to that keep watch on yourself test your own work as a way to extend mercy over judgment because we will always extend mercy to the degree that we know how much we need it and have received it ourselves so james finishes here at the end of verse 13 with this mercy triumphs over judgment he's saying it's a far greater thing to show mercy to not give people what you think they deserve based on their status or

their socioeconomic place in the community even their questionable deeds right like there's just things people do and when they do it we're like you know what i'm not going to interact with that person i'm going to like protect my children away from them i'm not going to interact with them whatever that might look like like we do that we do that i remember having a conversation um this was in like uh this was back in tennessee and i like to pick on tennessee just because it's tennessee um but i remember having a conversation with some church members it was a heated debate it was it

was the the debate of of whether to home school public school or private school and and there were multiple families from kind of each each point of view coming to the table and having they wanted our church to recommend one and i'm like okay um you can't you know just recommend one but let's hear your arguments and the and this is this is no knock on homeschool if you homeschool in here god's goodness and grace to you all right because uh it's just it's it's a it's a hard thing to do but in this situation the homeschool person said the reason why we homeschool is

because we don't want their sin to catch on to our kids and i just looked at this person and i said are are you serious are you serious one because i've watched your kids in nursery and you if you send them in public school they're going to make it worse and so like it's it's just we've got to get to this reality and this understanding that we are all sinners every single one of us and according to james it doesn't matter if you've murdered someone or you've just not shared a cup of sugar with your neighbor you're the same you are the same and so

this idea of of judging others and letting that triumph over mercy by judging them by saying like you know what i'm nervous that the way you talk is going to influence my kids or i'm nervous that the way you look is going to influence my family or or the way you look if someone were to see us together what are they going to think of us i mean how many times was jesus accused of being a drunkard and a glutton because he was with drunkards and gluttons all the time it's easy to bring that one up especially in the south because they like to hide

their whiskey but they're all overweight we compare and we judge we've got to stop doing that because god looks at us and makes no distinctions he extends his mercy and his grace and he's not looking at color he's not looking at socioeconomic status if anything where he's starting with is the bottom of the barrel let me go and get the lowly of the lowly i mean look at his 12 disciples not one of them was considered educated educated but what do we do in our current day and age especially and this is a conviction that we have i'm not saying this is how we brought

josh on full-time but when we look around and usually if there's a vacancy in a church for a position what do you do well let's let's accept resumes and let's start to wait out the process and let's get the cream of the crop like let's get the best of the best upside down kingdom that's not how he does things but yet that's how the church has moved in and is now operating whenever we're looking for new leadership positions on our leadership team let's who do we think is the best person to fit this position we don't ever ask the question who do we think would

destroy this ministry who do we think would just wreck it all together now i'm not saying let's go and be reckless in that regard but i'm just saying like there's something to weakness and uneducation or lack thereof anything in the list of of just resources to where god sees that as an opportunity for him to flex his strength and his resources and he does something that's just so upside down compared to what our community or our society does we got to stop judging mercy triumphs over judgment and so we've taken this truth and you've got to ask yourself how can we not give mercy how

can we make distinctions like that how can we show partiality the way that we do sometimes so the question i'm going to leave with you this morning is this as a way of application who can you show mercy to today who can you show mercy to today and what i want us to do in this time of closing is is to get in our in our minds and our hearts i mean you can you can talk about this with the person next to you with you i'm going to give you a little bit of space here but i want you to think about someone and

have them in mind if you want to if you want to say their word to the person next to you that's fine but but we're going to take a moment and we're going to begin praying just praying over a person that we know we can extend mercy to we can extend mercy to and one of the things that i want to just kind of let you in on of what we've been doing kind of behind the scenes as a church primarily with our downtown community group has been working with an organization called seed to oaks that is helping to train our church to do this

very thing to look at the needs of the community around them and to then be able to look at the resources within the church and how can the church begin to break down those barriers in between so that the mercy can be extended out and that can that can look on a grand scale of like putting it in budgets and whatnot but at the end of the day it's really got to get down to an individual level it's got to get down to an individual level where we're each looking at our resources and our time and our energy and whatever that looks like and then

we're walking down the road like the samaritan and we're just looking for our opportunity to extend mercy to those who are in need who can you show mercy to today because we all have somebody we all have somebody who could use our mercy to win out in their life today over judgment so let's take a moment i'm going to invite jordan to come on up here let's take a moment and um and just be quiet and as you reflect on the mercy that god has extended to you let that humble you let that categorize and all your sources and material possessions just put those things

aside as they mean nothing they mean nothing we're sinners and god through jesus christ who in his gentleness and lowliness humbled himself to the point of death on a cross to extend love grace and mercy to us as he came to us on our road of despair we now have someone that we can think about to extend mercy to them so let's pray for our state do the work there and then pray for that person that god will bring you to them as soon as possible let's take some time foreign [Music] you can continue to pray with me [Music] help [Music] love be still my

soul lift your voice [Music] i may never it was faith to bear that cross to bear my sins father [Music] still i would trust my good father to the one great king [Music] with all your saints i see [Music] thee [Music] is [Music] overcome [Music] loves me [Music] father it's our prayer this morning that your mercy would become so great in our eyes that we would see ourselves as you saw us and how you gave your life for us and as we go out into the world that we would get to see other people the way that you see them and the way that you

love them may our hearts just continue to grow and overflow for your people may you open our eyes as we walk out today and may we just jump at the opportunity to extend mercy and love to others because we have received abundantly more than we could ever give god we love you and we trust in you as we walk out today in jesus name amen