Books of James & Jude - Condemnation of favoritism - James 2:1-4

All right, well today we start a new chapter, chapter two, and we're going to cover the first four verses here. And this is called, I've labeled it Condemnation of Favoritism. So I'll just go ahead and read it here. It says, my brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus 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 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?

So a pretty interesting passage. So the first thing I'd like to do here is, actually our brother Hal Malloy, what he did, he kind of looked through the book of James. You know, we looked in verse, last week we talked about, when we did the review, we looked at what's called the temptation process. You know, Hal's little stair step down where you you're tempted, you're drawn away and you take the bait. Well he kind of went through the book of James and I have it in one of his notes. So I kind of looked at his and he tried to look at the book of James and say what James is covering could be looked at in terms of temptation.

So his first point is that In chapter one, 19 through 20, there was a temptation to be quick with negative responses. It says, we're to be quick to hear. So he kind of flipped it around. Quick with a negative response, or quick to be irritable or angry. Hair trigger, as he called it. And we see that in people and ourselves as well sometimes.

Then in verses 22 to 25 in chapter one, quick to be only hearers of the word, not doers of the word. And then the last couple of verses, 26 and 27 in chapter 1, temptation to criticize others. This is the one where it said, you know, we're criticized with a tongue, where it said, does not bridle his tongue. And then the one today, which I've underlined, is a temptation to show partiality and favoritism. I think we're going to see as we look at these verses, there's really a temptation.

I was kind of thinking, you know, this talks about, I believe it's a hypothetical case, it talks about the situation where people come into your body of believers. And you know, we're all this way. We see people and we may really connect with those people and we may be really hostile to them. But somebody else shows up and you go, I don't know, I just don't click with that person. And it's not to say we should be forced to be super talkative.

But this example shows that there's a temptation to maybe you know, show partiality. And then actually he has more, and we can use this as we go through, like as we go through 14 through 26, the temptation to boast about faith versus works, faith without works, and then temptation to misuse or not restrain our tongue, and temptation to walk in human versus divine wisdom. So basically, and then there's actually a page too, which I'm not going to show you at this time, but down the road. Brother Hal tried to look at the whole, based upon that temptation process. He said, why don't we just look at the whole book of James that way?

I think it's kind of an interesting way to look at it. So I'm going to try to make use of that as we go through a little bit. Roger. Yeah, go ahead. One interesting thing is on the point for today, temptation to show partiality and favoritism. We see in the world this political correctness kind of idea. Oh yeah. Where people falsely. Exactly. show that they're so eager to show that they're not. Exactly. Showing favoritism. They're being tolerant. Exactly.

And the world has turned upside down. It's all about a superficial thing. It's not an honest. And James asks us, let's be honest about this. Let's talk about temptation in concrete ways. Let's not just say, there's no temptation taking you. That's such as common sense. I mean, you can quote the verses and it sounds so good.

But then when you start getting down to, okay, what does that mean in my daily walk, in my daily life? Am I honestly not showing partiality and favoritism? Or am I just putting on a front because it's the right thing to do? So when I see a man of another ethnicity or another skin color, what is my reaction?

Honestly. And then do I need to talk to God about getting that straightened out? Absolutely. And we're going to see, is that consistent Have we been tempted by our sin nature to go down that path, whereas the Lord wants us to walk in the light as He is in the light, and to show the life of Christ, and honestly greet people, and honestly be ourselves in the Lord.

So we're going to kind of see that as we go through that, but that's a good point. And the world has all flipped around, and they show super... Actually in this passage, the greeting of the rich man is just so over the top. In fact, it's not obvious until you start looking at it. Hopefully I can show you that. So let's go on. We'll look at the first part here.

My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus with an attitude of personal favoritism. So, Doris, you still use the King James? I do. Well, I'm not picking on the King James. I'm not picking on the King James. The King James, if you read that King James, why don't you read your King James version? My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. Okay. Well, I... I'm not the only one. I find it very confusing. And especially the part right here where it says, have not your faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. It gives you the impression, what has he taught? Have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. What does that mean?

And actually, so I went through. I just went through. I tried to break it down. The subject of this little clause here is my brethren. The verb is, and should be, the verb is do not hold. The King James has it, have not faith. And it's just, I mean, it makes it very, very hard to understand. The New King James says, my brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. I would suggest, Doris, if you're in the thing of Mark, I put a little do not hold above the have not faith because it just, the have not faith is just very confusing.

We're not, he's not telling us not to have faith in our Lord Jesus. crazy but he is telling us do not hold and actually it's in the present tense so it means do not continue to hold or stop holding do not hold do not hold your faith and actually I changed the of to an in so if you're into marking up your Bible and I don't think it's I don't think the Lord is upset with our marking our Bibles up we're trying to understand it And so I just think it's helpful.

And you don't have to do it. It's up to you. Don't let me twist your arm. Some people said, no, I'm not going to. I can't think of what somebody told me. I'm not going to touch my Bible. I said, OK. If you don't feel comfortable with marking up your Bible, then don't do it. I mark up my Bible. Good. OK. Perfect. Wonderful. Wonderful. And this is a command. It's imperative.

James is telling us. He doesn't want us to do not hold your faith. Basically, and your faith is a direct object. And then he says with, and it could be it's basically in connection with, what he's saying is we have our faith in our Savior and we have our personal favoritism.

They're not on the same track. Personal favoritism is not on the same track with faith in our Lord Jesus. They don't connect up. It's inconsistent with who we are in Christ. It's kind of the message. Any thoughts on that before we move on? So that's just a note, and actually interesting that the New King James kind of, I think people have recognized that was not the best, or confusing at least.

Okay, so now, let's go on to the second part, which is with an attitude, or in connection with, well actually let's just go back for a second, we can stay right here. If you notice, and it's pointed out, James here says, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus. People have pointed out, boy, James, the brother of our Lord, he really recognized that the Lord was the Lord of Glory. And that phraseology is used in other pieces of scripture, like in Corinthians, it says, they crucified the Lord of Glory.

So that's a very insightful thing that James had. He recognized who the Savior was, even though it was his own brother. And that was his own half-brother. He was recognized in the exalted position. Exactly, exactly. So it wasn't like he just said, well, that's my brother. Commentators said, wow, that's really interesting how he uses a very eloquent honorific. Thank you. They honorific are the right word. Anyway, so is a lord of glory. Actually, King James has that. I like the King James here because it actually has the Lord of Glory, and I think it's easier to see that James is focusing on that the Savior is the Lord of Glory.

So the second part of the verse is coupled with, he says, don't hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus with an attitude of personal favoritism. And notice that An attitude of personal favoritism has actually been added for understanding. It's just with personal favoritism. So personal favoritism and faith in our Savior don't mix. Water, like in chemistry, right? Oil and water don't mix. You know, this is particularly important to think of. When James says he's, doesn't he say he's writing to the dispersed? He is, he's writing, exactly.

And they were noted for their favoritism. That's good. That's very good. The Samaritans were half brothers with them and yet they didn't worship in the same place that they were considered not to be worthy of association with. So this idea of personal favoritism would be something that would strike home to orthodox Jews who were following the law and thinking that other people weren't worth considering. That's excellent. Excellent insight. Excellent. Okay. So the word personal favoritism is kind of an interesting word, respecting a person's partiality favoritism.

And it's actually a compound word, prosopon, which means face, and lambano, which means to receive. So basically, it's the idea to receive one's face. And from what I've read and understand, This Greek word came about from when a judge would unfairly receive certain people.

He would say, oh, there's the mayor. He's coming into my court. Well, we're going to give him special treatment, because I recognize his face. So to receive one's face is literally the idea. So he would receive one's face, and that would determine his judgment if it was somebody that, you know, whose face he didn't recognize or maybe it was a well-known whatever, a notorious person, he would, he'd already prejudge that person before the facts were ever given in the case.

Yes, that's right back to this business of how the world goes by the surface appearance. Exactly. It's how I'm dressed for church and not what I'm coming to church for. Exactly. So there are a couple of verses that talk about favoritism and partiality.

And basically, Al, could you read Romans 2.11? For there is no partiality with God. Right, it's pretty straight forward. It just says it straight out.

So if you think about it... And he's talking about the Jew and the Greek there in the preceding verse. Exactly, and that's interesting. And the context, you're right, the context of that verse is he's talking about Jew and Gentile. So God, even though he dealt with them time-wise, Israel first and then the Church, And then Gentiles, there's no partiality with God. And then Ephesians, Doris, could you read Ephesians 6-9? And ye masters do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening, knowing that your master also is in heaven, neither is there respect of persons with him. Right. Respect of persons is that word, partiality. Right. So there's no respect of persons with him. So the idea of personal favoritism or Receiving one's face for the wrong motives is foreign to God. Chester McCauley had an interesting example. I put it at the bottom of page five here. McCauley points out, and I have a little picture here of the Statue of Justice, which on courthouses will have this lady up there.

And I never had actually realized she has a blindfold on. And the idea here is, and this is kind of cool, Statue of Justice is a woman blindfolded. She is not to consider the status or appearance of the one who stands before her. So our law system, purports, at least if you take about their word, they try to be blind. Now just like they're all human and they all have sin natures, but that's what's on top of the courthouses. You'll see a statue of a woman with the balance scale and she's blindfolded. So she's not looking at the face of the person that comes before her.

So I thought that was kind of an interesting little thing. Actually, I went on the internet and I started finding all these statues. Some are really wild. This is one of the more modest ones. This is ridiculous. That's kind of interesting, inserting a little side light there, that our justice system, hopefully, is blind to the appearance of the people that come before it.

OK, so that's verse one. So verse two. So here's verse two. Actually, in the Greek, there's four kinds of if statements, and this is what's called a third class conditional. And this particular one seems to be the subset of the third class condition where it's introducing a hypothetical case. So this isn't a real example. This is a hypothetical case to make his point. So James seems to be presenting a hypothetical case to make his point about favoritism.

OK, so a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring dressed in fine clothes. And the word for assembly is synagogue, which literally is a bringing together or a gathering. And the word is a compound word, S-Y-N, that means together and a go, to bring, to bring together. And we don't have to look up this verse, but basically throughout the New Testament and Old Testament to the word synagogue. Sometimes it will be translated assembly, like here. And other times it will be translated synagogue. And it seems like it depends upon the context.

In terms of some gathering of believers, like the Brethren for example, they call their gathering the assembly, the assemblies. And that's a good term. It's a bringing together, gathering. They'll call their gathering of people the assemblies. a fine term, and it really, you think more about, when you think of synagogue, you think, well that's Jewish. Well, the core word is actually just a gathering, or bringing together. So, that was kind of an interesting little thing I came across. Okay, so now we're going to see the attire of this person that comes into your assembly. He comes in with gold ring, and it's literally Gold is actually plural. Gold rings on his fingers. So this gentleman in this example has lots of gold. He has lots of gold rings.

And interestingly, let's look at this. This is the prodigal son example. Al, could you read? Let's read 21, Luke 15, 21 and 22. And this talks about when the father welcomes his Prago son home and how he dresses him. And it's kind of interesting. Yeah, when he puts the ring on his finger. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We know the story. Luke 15 and 22. Why don't you read 21 first? 21 and 22.

The son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servant, bring out the best robe, there's the clothes, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. Bring the fatted calf here and tell it, let us eat and be merry.

That's great, that's great. So, in this example here, this gentleman is dressed very well. He was well-to-do, if you will. And then it goes on. The fine clothes actually is interesting. It's another little interesting thing. It's splendid clothes are actually shining clothes.

And actually, this one, I think I'll read this one. This is in Luke. Let's turn to Luke 23. I want to read verse 10 too. This is about our Lord when He's going to the cross. And it's interesting that it talks about His attire. And they were mocking Him. This is Luke 23. Verse 11. Yeah, let me get that so I'm just slow in getting there. Okay, so let's do, let's do, okay. And the chief, I want to start in verse 10.

And the chief priests and the scribes were standing there and accusing him, the Lord Jesus, vehemently, and Herod with his soldiers after treating him with contempt and mocking him, dressed him in a gorgeous robe and sent him back to Pilate. Do you all have gorgeous robes? So that's the same word. So the robe in this example was really spectacular. This guy was gold rings and you could say splendid clothes are gorgeous. So he's dressed to the nines. He's dressed well. So that's the guy, the rich man here.

And there also came in a poor man in dirty clothes. And this is from the word, poor is actually from the word for a beggar, to cower like a beggar. And actually we have to turn there, it's used for You know when it says a poor widow, the widow's mite? It's the same word. So poor meant a person that had to beg, basically. So that word poor. So this gentleman that came in, the second gentleman in the example that came in to the assembly, was a poor man.

And it's interesting, it literally is dirty clothes are filthy or foul clothes. And one of the examples I found was the one where, this is in the Old Testament, and this Joshua had filthy garments, but actually after I looked at it, it's more his filthy garments in this verse here is more in connection with sin, whereas this one here, there's no implication that there's sin here, he's just talking about, he didn't He didn't have the ability, he had smelly clothes, maybe he worked all day, and that's the best he could afford. So in the Zechariah example, it talks about how the Lord changes Joshua's clothes from filthy to clean. Exactly, exactly. Actually, that probably wasn't the best reference. It does have the same idea. Filthy clothes. Something that you wouldn't want to keep on yourself if you had a choice.

Right. Okay, so we see the two men arrive in the assembly and these are visitors. I label this, this is the temptation when greeting visitors versus two and three. The temptation is, One's dressed this way, one's dressed that way. And so you make a judgment. Well, okay. And I do the same thing too. I sometimes am reluctant sometimes based upon their clothes, which is kind of sad. Okay.

So now here's the So you have two different greetings in verse three. First, for the first gentleman, the one with the splendid clothes, the gorgeous clothes and the rings on his fingers, you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes. And special attention is literally to look on with favor. I couldn't find a super example here, but let's look at Luke Doris, could you read Luke 9, 37 and 38? And it came to pass that on the next day, when they were come down from the hill, much people met him.

And behold, a man of the company cried out, saying, Master, I beseech thee, look upon my son Is that the right one? Yeah, that's right. You're right. It's a little bit hidden here, but when they ask the Lord Jesus here in verse 38, they say, Teacher, I beg you, look at my son. It's the same kind of idea. You're looking. It's more than just a glance. Look with the idea of favor. Have favor on my son. He wanted him to heal him. Actually, it wasn't heal him, to cast out the demons. And the Lord does that. He does cast out the demons.

So this idea of paying special attention is the idea that someone comes in and you spot him. It's sort of like, you know, you see him walk in the parking lot and he comes in and you spot this guy really decked out and you say, wow, boy. Offering time, we could really use that guy. In your mind, you're already going down that path. This guy looks like, wow, this could really help us out here, right? The building fund. Right, the building fund. We could have this and we could have that. That guy joins our assembly here. Obviously, not a good motive to have.

The second part is, You tell him, you tell this person that's all decked out in these gold rings and gorgeous clothes, you say, sit here in a good place. And it's literally, be sitting down here in this well-suited place. So this is a place, and actually I couldn't find it, but I was reading some different notes about this, and it's the idea that this is almost extra courteous. You're kind of just falling all over yourself. You're saying, oh, please sit here in this. This is our best seat.

And you're just over gracious. It's obvious that he's paying way more attention to this in this example than is warranted. And there's quite a contrast we're going to see when we go to the poor man. So the one that's all decked out with the rings and the fine clothes, you're just falling all over yourself. Here's sitting in the best place, whereas the poor man is quite a different story. So the second part here is, you say to the poor man, and basically you're just going to direct him to someplace he can be in that auditorium. There's no special courtesy.

And you say, this is interesting, stand over there or sit down by my footstool. So first of all, it's literally, as for you, stand in that place, already sitting down beside me, beside my footstool. So actually, I was trying to figure out, and I didn't actually come to a lot of conclusions. The footstool in biblical times was not exactly the same footstool we have today. We think like of an ottoman you might have, put your feet up on a lounge chair. I have some idea it was used for other purposes, maybe to stand up, so you can maybe stand up above them.

In the auditorium, you sit on a footstool. So basically, he's offering him no seat. He says, you can stand over there, or you can sit on the floor next to this footstool. If he likes sitting over here, I say, well, Doris, you can come in, Doris. You can sit you can you can stand over there or you can you can sit right here on the floor. I mean, it's pretty, pretty shabby treatment. So that's interesting. I didn't do all my homework on footstool. I looked on the internet, I couldn't find a picture of a footstool in biblical times. I couldn't find it. I got footstools of all kinds of things, but not what I wanted. I'll probably need Vern's search engine on his computer to find, because I'm sure he can find a good one for me.

So quite a contrast between how the rich man with the gold rings and the gorgeous clothes versus this man with the dirty clothes and how he's treated. Vastly different. Just an interesting note, while you said that, I just looked to see what footstool references my New King James. And in Psalms and in Matthew, it talks about making your enemies your footstool.

I know. That's good. So this gentleman was... It's kind of like putting you in a subjugated position. Exactly. That's good. I couldn't find an exact reference that fit this. I found a lot of things about sitting down by my footstool. That's really good.

It makes you think that, okay, he had the same position as the enemy might have. So a person comes into your assembly and you put him in a place where you put your enemies there. You don't put your people that you want to be part of your assembly. That's pretty sad. That's good, Al. And actually, the good place where it says, sit in this, actually, that's back in the other one. Yeah, so the good place versus the place where you put your enemies. Pretty, quite a difference.

OK. He's making a graphic distinction. I know. So now he's going to kind of sum it up here. Have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil motives? All right, so the first part here, made distinctions. And made distinctions is this word diacrino. And it's interesting here. So it says, have you not made distinctions?

So I was looking. It's aorist indicative passive. So remember last week we talked about the temptation process. So I was kind of thinking, so what do you think? Once the distinction has been made, once he's brought those people in, one he gives to a special seat, one he puts on the floor or stands someplace. So there was a temptation there. Has abate been taken at this point, do you think? Has he sinned at this point by treating those men differently? This is kind of not a hard question. You'd probably say yes, right? I think that.

Because actually, we looked at in the temptation process in James 14, it said all these words were in the passive voice, is tempted, is carried away, is enticed. They're all in the passive voice. So it's kind of indicative of our sin nature reacting here. Our sin nature to treat one person with high favoritism, and our sin nature to treat the other one very badly. So I think it fit well with the passive voice.

This is a good example of a temptation where you've taken the bait. It's an example but it kind of shows what James is trying to get across. You have an attitude that leads to an action. Exactly. It reminds me of the scripture that says, man looks on the outside, but God looks at the heart. Exactly. And that's, so interesting enough, in this example, that's exactly that verse.

This example, the example exactly points that out. Two men are treated totally differently. If you change the apparel of the poor man and put him in the gold rings, he'd be treated wonderfully. But because he had dirty clothes, he was assessed to be not worthy. And then I have an example of this word diacrino. This actually is an example of a positive example. So let's look at that just for a second.

Acts 15, verses 8 and 9. And whoever gets there first, I don't know. Race you. Race you. If you're their door, she can read it. And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Okay, and put no difference, okay. Now we're back to Jews and Gentiles. Yes, exactly. Right. This whole discussion about that. Yeah, back to verse 8.

And God who knows their heart bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did also to us. So this is a Jew and a Gentile. Now therefore, why do you put God to the test by placing upon your neck of disciples a yoke which neither you nor their fathers could bear? So basically, they put a distinction between, you know, in verse 9, made no distinction. Doris, how did your verse 9 read?

And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith, So this is using distinction in the proper way. Yeah, making no distinction. Right. All right. So Peter was justifying his experience with Cornelius. Exactly. God telling him, I've declared things clean. Don't you call them unclean. Exactly. Exactly. OK.

So the second part of verse four is this, and become judges with evil motives. Basically, it's literally you become judges. And what's interesting, this is this Greek word ginomai. You've come into a new state of being as a judge. So by your actions, by your greeting of the two gentlemen, the one with the rings and the the shining rose, versus how you treated the poor man, you become a judge. And that's actually something you should not be, because the question, who is the only true judge? So that question is answered in these two verses. Jeremy, can you do Hebrews 12 there?

Twelve twenty three. This is flipping pages are so so so non-technical right. Twelve twelve twenty three. That's OK. So the question is who is the only true judge. And these verses answer that. And we know the answer already, but I'm just dragging it out here. 1223. To the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect. So God is the Judge of all.

In fact, scripture warns us not to judge ourselves lest we be judged. So this person here, as James is talking about, has become a judge. He's come into a state of being as a judge, which he should not be there. That's contrary to who he is in Christ.

And the other reference that you gave, James 4.12, there's one lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge one another?

Exactly. So that's not our place to see two people, even though this is a hypothetical example he's giving, that's not who we are, and that's a temptation. And I think it fits in really well with the... I've heard one person say, though, that we aren't allowed to be fruit inspectors. Yeah, right. No, I've heard that too. And I kind of, you know... And I know what they're saying. I understand. And that's...

I mean, we do have the word to use as a standard and as a criteria to say, this is not a worthy thing. to be doing if you call yourself a Christian. Sure, sure. And we're to evaluate, you know, as believers, you know. It's not that we're supposed to close our eyes, but it's that we're not, it's supposed to help us recognize that all of us are sinners, and to put myself right in there with whoever it is I'm trying to put down. Right.

Well, you may get to, I don't know if you've covered already, the definition of judge. It's more than just Like you say, we have the Word of God. We can take a person's life and compare it to the Word of God and say, there's a clear contradiction here. But a judge is more than that. He's a judge. I think in this sense, it's a lawgiver. It's not like we think of judges that we're interpreting law. It's the judge is the lawgiver. He's the one that decides this is right and this is wrong.

That's what's being addressed here is, I mean, I think all of us have been in a church where, oh, you shouldn't be doing that. Well, the Bible does not address that at all, and yet you make this proclamation that, you know, I've heard Christians say stuff like, no Christian will do such and such. And it's something that has no direct relation at all to anything in scripture. And that's, I think, what is being addressed here, is when we make those proclamations, those legalistic proclamations and say, this is wrong.

In this case, the context is pointing back to this example between the rich man and the poor man. He's saying, because you ushered in this rich man, and you gave him the best spot, and you fawned over him, and then the poor man comes in and you said, You can stand over there, you can sit here on the floor next to me. That's, you know, you've made a distinction, and we're not to make that distinction. And so it's very specific, in this case it's very specific, I agree with you on the judge part, very specific.

You then become a judge based upon their appearance. Very interesting, since I've come here to Holly Hills, I have over and over again been presented with the scripture that talks about our identification in Christ. If we judge, we are in a sense going against who we are in Christ. Who we are in Christ is to build up the body to encourage faith. It is not for me to criticize the details of your life as you're pointing out. Especially in this example, when it's all on the exterior, you're totally, that word prosopon, you're always, it's his face, to receive his face, you're looking at that person's face, and his clothes, and you're judging him totally on that.

He hasn't said word one. I mean, in this example, he doesn't say, he just walks in, and you fawn over the guy that's all dressed up, and the other guy, you said, pfft. So, very superficial. Sounds like undercover boss. I mean, that too happens a lot. I mean, our churches have the dress code, right? Exactly. And, oh, this person comes in, they have whatever.

They don't fit. Yeah, you've got to clean up before you can be a... You've got to clean up before you can be a... And I think I need to talk to you about your shoes. Yes, exactly. But how often does somebody enter a body and feel unwelcome because of their dress, their appearance. They don't fit in. In some cases it may be an unbeliever that just walked into church looking for something. A lot of times it's a believer from a completely different cultural background and yet they can feel completely unwelcome in the body because of how they look.

I'm going to talk about a hot button here for me. I apologize if this gets, but being older, What I've noticed is almost like reverse psychology with dress in churches now. It's sort of like I have a right, and in the Lord I can dress however I want. It's sort of like, well that means I'm just going to dress down as much as I can just to show I have the freedom to do that. Regardless of what it might offend a brother or sister, I'm just going to look at the opposite. No ties in this church, no coats in this church. It just kind of bothers me.

So you've actually turned around and you've actually made the code to be no-code. And no-code is our standard here. And if you're no-code, you're alright. If you have a code, you're suspect. It flips it around, and I think you can make the same distinction, but you flipped it around. And that's kind of sad to see that happen too. You know, it's easy for me to look at this and say, okay, I don't make a distinction on the basis of clothes, so I'm okay on this.

But if you smoke or if you drink beer, Right. Go swimming in mixed company. In the Southern Baptist culture, you don't have mixed swimming, but you can all have a smoke. In the Northern American Baptist, if you smoked, you were out of fellowship, but the swing party was open for everybody. Like you say, we set up artificial distinctions that aren't really the basis for the fellowship and the body of Christ. And I think you hit exactly the key point. It's understanding identification.

And that's what it comes down to. Not only for yourself, but for others. And letting that be the focus, rather than all these other things. Like you said, you can go to a hundred different churches in a hundred different parts of the country, and they're all going to have their different standards, and their different, well this is how you dress at, you know. And that is not the point at all.

It's understanding your identification. I would imagine that's what this passage is ultimately getting to. It is. This passage is to show us that we're not to make ourselves judges. That's kind of the bottom line here. But we're going to see here in the summary from Wiesner has some really cool points. So let's go ahead here. And I'm almost finished here.

With evil motives, so it's basically motives is the idea with an inward reasoning, an opinion. And actually, the passage I have there Let's look at that. This is where the Lord Jesus kind of rebukes these people about reasoning. Luke 5. I'll read it. Luke 5. 22. So this is the kind of motives that are addressed here. But Jesus, aware of their reasoning, answered and said to them, Why are you reasoning in your hearts? Which is easier to say, Your sins have been forgiven, or to say, Rise and walk?

So basically he was pointing out that they're using man's reasoning. And so this is saying you become judges with evil motives. You're reasoning in your own mind, to your own standards you set up, ISEP standards or whatever. So you're reasoning with motives that are not consistent with who you are.

Not to get off too far, but that passage, that story is such a wonderful story. They bring this cripple in, and what does Jesus say? Your sins are forgiven. No, that's it. And he just totally lays them out. You think it's easier to forgive their sin, or to say rise up and walk? I can do either one equally well, but they're so focused on the appearance. that when he says, your sins are forgiven, which is the most important thing that could be true, they're just, well, why didn't he do anything about his crippleness? And it goes, I think you're right, it fits exactly with what this passage is saying.

We're so focused on the superficial and not as concerned about what is the really important thing here. OK, so let's look at Weiss here. This is really good. So what he's trying to do, we've gone through the words, we've tried to expand the words, but he brings it out beautifully.

He says, my brethren, remember, the first part, it's assumed it's already going on. Stop holding your faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, pointing out the glorious nature of who Christ is, in connection with, or side by side with, an act of showing partiality. He's saying those two don't mix. They can't be together. And then it goes into this hypothetical example.

For if there comes into your synagogue a man whose hand is conspicuously loaded with gold rings, and brightly shining clothes, and actually we found out that brightly shining is the same word when they mock Jesus, it was the gorgeous robe, it's the same word, it's really kind of neat. brightly shining clothes. That's person number one. Person number two, there comes also a poor man in dirty clothes who is dependent upon others. He's a beggar for support and you look upon the one wearing the clothes which is brightly shining with respectful consideration and you say, as for you, be sitting down here in this place of honor.

Or basically it's the best It's the best seat in the house. It's situated just perfect. And it also has the idea that Macaulay says it has kind of the idea that you're just tripping over your feet with this guy. It doesn't quite come out even in this translation.

And you say to the poor man, as for you, stand in this place or be sitting down by my footstool. And we kind of found that that literally means you sit on the floor next to his footstool. I couldn't find a good picture of the footstool. I tried, but I couldn't find one.

Are you divided in your mind, having become judges with pernicious or evil thoughts? Pretty cool verse. Any last thoughts or comments? And actually, the handout from last week, there's copies. Actually, what happened was it was back-to-back, and she didn't copy it back-to-back. So we missed a few pages in there. So if you want a complete handout from last week, it's back there. So actually, next week, we're going to continue along. The passage continues on with this idea of partiality. We're going to look at more of that next week.

It's just so interesting that, I mean, human nature, it's easy for us to decry prejudice, and certainly there's, I mean, even in the modern world, there's plenty of examples of just ridiculous prejudice amongst people. So much of that is natural, and yet the world has no answer for that.

It's some type of overcompensation. When you talk about the dress thing, it's almost like, look at me, I only hang out with poor people. St. Francis of Assisi type thing. I'm only going to go to the poor, rather than... It is interesting how he's bringing a certain flavor. I don't want to be in the... I'm going to stay in my little apartment over here, so I want to show how humble I am.

It's really interesting. But what is the solution to that? From the world there is none. For us believers, what is it? It's our identification in Christ. That levels everything. And that's the only thing humanly speaking, that can bring level. It's always some type of compensation or it's, you know, I call it Ophirism, this look at me, how wonderful and loving and caring I am. And you got it exactly right with the new Pope.

Well, I'm not going to, I'm going to ride the bus and not the pokemobile. Let's focus on the poor. To me, I mean, going along with that, it's The fact that he tries to show how humble he is by identifying himself with this Saint Francis of Assisi, well that to me is the opposite of humility. If you think that I'm as good as this person and I'm going to call myself by his name, well that kind of destroys the whole purpose.

That's what the world does, and it's so counter. There's a chart from Hal. He goes through and he tries to categorize. He shows this is a temptation. We have a temptation to do this. We all do. When someone comes in, we look at them and we make an evaluation based upon how they're dressed. We may either identify with them or not. We make decisions all the time. Some are not of consequence.

But there is a temptation to go down this path and to elevate one person and downgrade another one. And that's a temptation just like it was last week when we had the stair step where it could be driving your car and somebody cuts you off. It's a temptation to retaliate. It's a temptation to hundreds of temptations. And James has his list How can I view the rest of this book as examples of temptations that you have in the Christian life?

I've never seen anybody else do that. I thought it was kind of instructive to say, okay, this is a temptation. I can do exactly, not the same situation, but I can do exactly the same thing, different circumstances, I can do the same thing. And what's going to happen is, you're dividing, You're not walking in who you are. So anyway, I think it's really cool. All right. OK, well, let's pray. We thank you so much, Father. We thank you for this day, for the blessings we have, Father. We thank you that we can know you and that we can walk in who you are and what you've accomplished for us. In Christ's name, amen.