Results of Favoritism

Thank you for joining us today. We begin our lesson today in the epitial of James. It is lesson number 14, by the way. Chapter 2, verse 5 through 7. The title is Results of Favoritism. Last week we had number 13. It was titled Condemnation of Favoritism. taught by Andrew, and it reads like this. It covers verse 1 through 4 of chapter 2.

My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, And you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes and say, you sit here in a good place. And you say to the poor man, you stand over there, or sit down by my footstool. Have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil motives? Our lesson today covers verses 5 through 7.

Listen, my beloved brethren. Did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you? and personally drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called? A lot in this chapter. We'll cover two more lessons, Bob teaches that, in the next two weeks, and those are titled Favoritism, Royal Law, and law of liberty.

All right, let's begin our lesson today at verse 5. The first word is listen. It's a command. And in the previous text, God has, through James, explained that He's giving us ears that can hear Him clearly now. They're a new kind of ear, a spiritual ear.

He's made us His children, we are born from above, born by His will and love. Beloved Brethren are the next key words here. We, in family relationship with James, the author of this particular part of Scripture, are God's loved ones. Isn't that something? Beloved brethren of one family, God's family. As his loved children, we share his very nature, so we are sensitive to him, just like if we have a family now with a father, we're sensitive to our father.

We can only hear parables before he birthed us, but now, with these new ears that we have, he clearly speaks to us. Now we hear his voice because he is intimately speaking, believe it or not, from inside us, 24-7, every single moment. As our Father, He has made us with ears and eyes and minds that sense Him. As our Father, He has given us under shepherds to teach us about Him. And as we read what He has made, both physically and spiritually, we hear Him now with spiritual senses, because we're part of His family. He's made us that way.

As we read the words of the Bible, it's much more than any physical created thing message. He talks to us and we hear Him directly from the words because the Holy Spirit takes the things of Christ and shows them to us from these words. Notice verse 21 in chapter 1. The very words are the implanted word, God's word, spoken to us directly and believed by us.

They become fertile ground, don't they? They're given by God, the Holy Spirit, who now permanently is dwelling inside us. Here's some observations on verse 5 through 6a. Notice I've highlighted the words that in the original text by grammar have been emphasized, especially God and especially you. We'll get to that in a few minutes. In chapter 1 verse 21, the implanted word is God speaking to us.

And we in meekness believe and trust Him. Our love response is to believe Him. That is, we believe Him and trust Him. Not that they're just true. But we actually trust Him that these are not just true, but they apply to us. We are part of that truth now, because they are reality. And we can trust Him. Our loving trust is in all of who He is, and all of what He has done, and not in anything else.

The implanted word is in the previous verses of James 1, 1 through 2, 4. Let's look back in a survey fashion at those verses a moment. In verse 1 through 4 of chapter 1, we lovingly trust Him with unpolluted joy even when surrounded by trials. That unpolluted joy is a big, big subject. We could spend a whole lot of time on that. But isn't it wonderful that we've been given the privilege, the joy, to trust Him even in the face of trials. James puts it this way, count it all joy when you fall into diverse testings. Verses 5 through 8, we lovingly trust him by asking and getting wisdom from him in trials.

Many times we need wisdom, don't we? What a loving promise that is. Ask. You will get wisdom. In verses 9 through 11, that wisdom is that whether we are poor or rich in earthly terms, God's patient nature in us is matured, is growing, is maturing by the very earthly tests, either of poverty or of wealth. And I'm not sure which one is the greater test.

Verse 12, God's nature that is wise in us, includes patient endurance under stress. And you know what? God rewards us for sharing his sufferings in our earthly life. Did you know that each of us do that? We are in harmony with Him when we suffer in trials. It is with His nature of patient endurance that we are going through these things.

Look at what God says. Let these words be implanted in you by the Holy Spirit. Remember he told Saul that he, Saul, was persecuting him, God, when he, Saul, was persecuting his family, believers. Acts 9.4 says, Saul, why are you persecuting me? I tell you, Saul must have been really struck by that.

In Colossians 1.24, Paul takes liberties of describing his sufferings for the people that he was writing to, and he says, my sufferings for your sakes are part of Christ's sufferings or afflictions.

That's a parallel passage to Acts 9.4, isn't it? Paul was persecuting the believers, and now he is being persecuted by disbelievers. But in both cases, it is part of Christ's affliction or suffering. Here are some observations on these verses, okay? Continuing from where we left off in James 1, the next section was 13 through 15.

God never tries us to make us sin. He doesn't do that. We only sin out of our sin natures. In verse 16 through 18, We can be fooled to trust lies about the source of these trials, but God gives only good gifts, as a flat-out statement in the text. God gives only good gifts. His work is to make us the first of His kind of children, and we are of God's kind now.

That's reality. In verse 19 through 21, we can respond to these trials with open, believing truth ears, or, in contrast, with closed-to-truth ears. We can, with closed ears, speak our own words, and with closed ears, we can show our own anger. But it is only God's words, wisely believed, that can overcome and master our human souls. Remember that.

Verse 22 through 25 continues, God's command is to keep on being a cleansed person for God's use as he reveals himself to us and through us not just now, but for eternity. In 26-27, the end of chapter 1, it says that we can be fooled in our hearts to trust in our own spoken words rather than reveling or the revealing work of giving us joy but also revealing to us our new divine nature's qualities.

That new nature focuses on the cares of those around us, his entire body. It cares for the suffering orphans and widows. and it separates us from the filth of the world. Remember that. I'll say it again. The divine nature that we have, because of its purity being God's, actually cares about suffering orphans and widows, and separates us from the filth of the world.

This is a repeated message from God in this letter written to us through James. I think it's almost the central core of the letter. Don't be fooled. As we continue at verse 1 through 4 of chapter 2, God gives us one filth of the word in this section that our new divine nature will keep us away from if we are correctly listening to God.

And that worldly filth is man's judgment based on outward appearance instead of God's judgment from our new divine nature of value-seeing to exist, reality exists inside people. It can't be seen on the outside unless God reveals himself through us, and he does that. But sometimes the outside is not a pretty picture, is it? Sometimes a rich person looks great, and a poor person doesn't look so great.

Verse 5 begins with the fact that God himself chooses the poor, the low-valued man, from the world's perspective, to be given faith, the reality of God, and to be God's heirs of all of God's wealth. Wow! God's choice is based on the exclusive plural use of these two words, both poor men and heirs, is plural. His choice is to include all of those. However, it's limited only by the value God sees inside each poor man. and each heir. They're one and the same, by the way. Each one. What is that quality that he sees? He sees their love of him. Wow.

Man spiritually alive to God has a divine nature that sees the reality inside men. But man spiritually dead to God nature sees only part of what is inside men. God made us of His kind, having His nature. We can see the reality inside men, but we need the help of God, the Holy Spirit, who now dwells in us, to reveal to us what is reality, what is really real. God the Holy Spirit implants the things of Christ in us through our new eyes, ears, and minds, using the words of the Bible. And His under-shepherds help us. More truths here. Verse 5b. One of the things that happens here is that as well as rich in faith of all that is real, God adds here that his wealth includes the reality of his kingdom.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are absolute in sovereignty. That is, nothing exists superior to them. but they've chosen to give God the Son, as the perfect union of God and man, a perfectly created kingdom. This is a huge subject, and God talks about it, this kingdom, throughout His Word. God wants us to hear Him, And he's promised this kingdom to us who love him.

This promise is mentioned in addition to the promise of his life back in chapter 1 verse 12. And it would be wise to examine the limits of these promises. It is in both cases to those who love him. In your study, check out Matthew 5, verse 3 and verse 5. Mark 10, verse 17 through 22. 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 10. Galatians 5, 21. Ephesians 5, 5.

And regarding this love of Him, 1 John 3 verses 2 through 11, not very long ago we covered those verses. Our divine nature now is growing in love for Him. And this new nature cannot sin, cannot come short or step over perfection. as far as God is concerned. We all who are born from above as His new and kind members in His family do really love Him. God considers us already completed vessels of grace. However, our condition now is in growing to love Him. are fixed by God's position, is love completely valuing Him. A few more words regarding these verses. Focus now on the words that are in red, God and you. Do you see a contrast there? It's evident. God chooses upon what he sees on the inside of men to bless them abundantly.

However, we choose from what we see on the outside of men to dishonor men. What a contrast! The source of our sin is not our possessed divine nature of God. This is from our condemned and fired human nature that cannot see or hear or think like God. Yeah, I know, that's a different way of looking at it, isn't it?

Fired. But he is fired. He's condemned. He's judged. He's made, as an entity, offline now as being our slave master. Who is our slave master now? our new position in Christ, our new slave master, if you want to use those words, who operates out of love, not destruction. Boy, what a contrast.

We learned from Christ by the work of God the Holy Spirit, number one, that we have taken off the old man that we were, number two, that we are now being renewed in our minds through opened eyes and ears to the voice of God, because, number three, we have put on the new man as new kind of creations of God, with his nature, to now see and hear and think correctly in these frail bodies, with his nature.

If you want, I encourage you to study the list of verses I have here. 1 Corinthians 1 verses 26-31, Ephesians 4 verses 17-24, Colossians 3, 9-10. Romans 15, verse 7, sort of sums up that listing with, and honor men as God does. Pretty clear. God wants us to honor men as God does.

Look inside with the spiritual eyes you have to see God's work in them. totally different from looking on the outside to see God working in them. See what is the source of their works. We learn by listening to God's Word placed in us, planted in us by God's Spirit. How strong is this message? The message is that we died, we were buried, we were raised with Him, as new men like Him. When He died on the cross, we died on the cross. When He was buried, we were buried. When He was raised, we were raised.

New in kind. So, are we listening to God and believing that He has freed us from slavery to sin as sinners, and created us now as new of His kind of spiritually alive humanity? to now see and hear and think with His very kind of nature. This is reality now.

Notice again the contrasted product of these two sources, God and you, and that would include each of us. God produces out of trusting in Him men, new spiritually strong humans, who are fully informed of reality and eternally live under His perfect harmony with eternal pure joy, being married to Him and forever in the perfect harmony of His love. We out of our trusting in our fired nature, or the world's opinions, or Satan's lies, in other words, trusting as real anything other than him, God. And in our dishonor of men who do not show outwardly what we think is real would be the product or our willfully being ignorant of what is real, would be our product. Or our joy in causing others to dishonor, or the very ones that God honors and loves, we dishonor. And in addition to all of that, we dishonor our God. who is the creator of every member of his new family. Two different products from two different sources.

We must listen to this message from God. He has informed us of his reality. God did not leave us here, however, condemning us for listening to anything other than himself. He tells us more to make us aware of how he sees this evil in verses 6b through 7. It's not a pretty picture that he shares with us, but it is a real picture.

Verse 6b begins, It is not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called? Here God informs us with two questions to make us think correctly, to think when answering Him with what He knows and we have learned about the products of all men who are controlled by sinful, fallen natures.

If we have earthly wealth, we can never get enough to satisfy our greed. We have, in our fallen nature from Adam to the present, an insatiable selfish greed. No man's immune to this greed because it's common to all of us. This unsatisfied greed produces a resultant behavior that actually thinks it's okay to steal from others who have what we want.

And that's oppression. It is mentioned there in verse 6b. Is it not the rich who oppress you? The oppression is on anyone, including believers, who have something wanted out of the greed of our fallen natures. And this is known to be common to all who have fallen natures, starting from Adam and Eve to the present. We all think God is holding out from us.

What attractive thing are we missing and how can we get it? That's the thinking. That's the root of man's self-focused greed. We know this greed produces joy even in the oppression of stealing reputations. Even in stealing anything that's wanted. It leads us to using even legal ways to get others to do this theft for us.

If you want verses that give examples, look at Mark 13, 9, or Acts 4, verses 1 through 3, chapter 13, verse 50, chapter 16, verse 19, chapter 19, verse 23 through 41. This is all of man's fallen nature. It's all from that source, and it's not from God's divine nature. God questions us in verse 7 to remind us what we know is another product of our human fallen natures. and that is of dishonoring God's source of good, His nature, even calling God's perfect nature to be worth no honor, to be bad, even evil. The word blaspheme means to slander, to lie about, or to speak with contempt, even hate. And man's fallen nature reaches its goal of its kind. The hatred of God is so much, it even hates God's nature being shown in anyone, even ourselves.

That's the kind of a fallen nature that we were and have still alive in us, but He's been fired. He's not now our slave master. And this is Satan's nature and goal. And we have his fallen nature characteristics since Adam. God ends this question with the statement that you have been called or named as Christians, meaning that you are like Christ ones.

And this is echoed in Acts 11.26 where it says, And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. And notice, even though this is true, that Satan, along with the world's surface observations, and all of man's fallen natures, even our own, take this observation to be evil. This naming of people as like-Christ ones is not good, even offensive. Very offensive.

You can see this in Galatians 5.17. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit. Notice it's capitalized, Holy Spirit. And flesh is our sin nature. And the Spirit against the flesh. Both are in opposition. These are in opposition to one another.

If that wasn't enough, look what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2.15-16. For we are the aroma of Christ. We are the aroma of Christ to God. among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To one, a fragrance from death to death, and to the other, a fragrance from life to life. Wow, what a contrast. Now some closing thoughts and application of these things.

What is our perspective of men? Is it from the outside view or from the inside view? Are we listening to God, trusting His reality versus the lies from any other source? Are we eagerly listening to Him, being fully equipped with His reality and singing in harmony with His songs as He reveals His perfection both to us and through us? Are we recognizing and honoring all members of His family, wealthy or poor, as new of His kind of beings, chosen by Him to share, as we do, His family life and His kingdom forever.

May this be the thought that we may all share from these verses. Out of the power of God's Word implanted in us by His Holy Spirit, We are personally blessed to personally listen to God, to be filled with His pure good, to eternally live in the joy of God's harmony. I'd like you to listen to the implanted word that we have from God's text today. Let's let these words be implanted by the Holy Spirit in us. In red here I've given my particular literal translation of these verses. Listen, my brothers beloved, hasn't the God chosen for himself the dependent men of the world to be rich in faith, even to be heirs of the kingdom which was promised to those loving him?

But you've dishonored the dependent man. Aren't rich men oppressing you? And aren't they drawing you into court, even? Aren't they slandering the worthy name, the One named upon you? And to help us with another perspective of the literal words here, it's an expanded translation by Wiest. Listen, my brethren, Beloved ones, did not God select out for Himself those who are poor in the world's estimation, poor in the world's estimation, to be wealthy in the sphere of faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But as for you, you dishonored the poor man. Do not those who are wealthy exploit, oppress, and dominate you? And they themselves drag you into law courts. Is it not they themselves who revile and defame the honorable name Christian which was given you?

I've given you the text in the New American Standard, word by word, from the Greek of the Byzantine text, translated in a literal form, and I have not gone through this in detail, because I sought to let the Holy Spirit just use His words rather than look at the individual words with you together.

But what I've done is, and I'm slowly scanning through it, shared these slides with you, and they'll be on the web along with these words that you've heard today and seen in this particular presentation, so that you can look at the text yourself, word by word, and look up the references that I have repeatedly given you. and let the Holy Spirit work with the text in a personal way in your own heart.

The power of God's Word of dependent men, men who from the world's estimation are not of high value, whether they have good clothes on or poor clothes on. If they are dependent on God, men, God gives them everything because they're part of his family. We are dependent, men, dependent on God for everything.

I've given you not just a literal translation on the last part of the verses, an expanded and a more a bit expansive translation, emphasizing the positive aspect that this text ends on, the text that we have been named because we have inside the very character of Christ. So people observing us began calling us Christians. clear back in the New Testament era in the city of Antioch. Isn't that something? People can see Christ in us.

Those that do who are dependent on Him, it's beautiful. Those who do who are not dependent on Him, it is offensive. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for your word. thank you for the work of your spirit that you gave us to show us you to implant in us the reality that you want us to know about now and that reality that you tell us about will be part of in the future how precious your love is, and our love in response is so small by comparison, but we're learning with your help and the help of the pastor-teachers around us. Even in the trials that we face day by day, and the distractions day by day, your voice we hear because you've enabled us to, and thank you for that. Thank you for opening our eyes that you have blessed us with every spiritual treasure in heavenly places, even now. What a blessing you are. May we honor the work that you're doing and other believers, Lord, and keep in mind when we look at people that it's not the outward, but the inward value that we're looking for. Thank you for these words from your word. Please implant them in our hearts. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Thanks for joining us. See you next week, Lord willing.