Sunday Night Bible Study - James 2: 1-13

Hello everybody and welcome to Sunday Night Bible Study with Pastor Josiah Shipley of Wynton Baptist Church. Today we start on James chapter 2. As some of you noticed from last week, we're starting screen sharing so that you can see what I see.

I have the English ESV on the left and I have the Greek Nestle All in 28th edition on the right. We'll slowly start working into a little bit of Greek, but for the most part, I know that's new to you guys.

Don't freak out about it. Just try to learn a little bit and we'll be reading mostly from the English for the next few weeks. Okay, so James chapter 2. We're going to try to get through verse 13 today.

Partiality in the Assembly and the Royal Law

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, 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 sit here to the poor man, you stand over there or sit down at my feet.

Have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers. Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him?

But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you are called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

You're doing well. It's a pretty amazing verse. We'll come back to verse 8 in a minute. Verse 9. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law of transgressions 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. And if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you 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 the one who has shown no mercy, but mercy triumphs over judgment. So what we have here is James writing to Christians, telling them to show no partiality, no respecter of persons based on any type of social or physical status that most of the world does, or to show no partiality based on what's on the outside.

If a rich man comes into the assembly, to the synagogue, or a poor guy, you don't give one the good seat over the other just because he's wealthy. If so, you're an evil judge with evil thoughts. God has chosen continually those who are considered poor in the world to be rich in the faith.

He's chosen what was weak and despised in the world to shame the strong, the Bible tells us over and over again. James makes a little side point here, he goes, isn't it the rich who are oppressing you right now?

Why do you give them preference when they come into your synagogue to worship? You're coming into worship, and you're giving them preference based on their social status. They blaspheme the honorable name of which you're called, and you're giving them preference because of their social status.

Scripture, Leviticus 19:18, and Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself

Verse 8 is a really key verse. If you really fulfill the royal law, according to the scripture, now we will pause, this was my Greek of the week for the in-person last week. And that's the word graphe.

We'll hear graphe, but graphe, as in graphe, g-r-a-p-h-e, graphe, like autograph, auto means self, graphe means writing or scripture. Autograph is self-writing, you wrote it, it's an autograph. Here we are here, graphe is the scripture.

If you really fulfill the royal law according to the graphe, according to the scripture, what's he quote? He quotes Leviticus, and he calls it scripture. Remember, the New Testament writers, the apostles, very much viewed the 39 books of our Old Testament, they combined them differently, so the number was 22, but it's the exact same material we have of the Hebrew Bible, as God's word, according to the scripture, thus says the Lord, according to God.

They would preface a lot of their quotations that way. For God has said, here he's quoting Leviticus 19, 18, the second most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament. Only one to exceed it would be Psalm 110, verse 1.

And Yahweh said to my Lord, sit at my right hand while I make your enemies my footstool. But here, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. If you fulfill that law, you're doing well. Pastor Jeff preached a sermon years ago on this point.

And he was talking about how in high school, he didn't always make the good grades. He was just trying to make a 70, he was just trying to pass. God tells us here, hey, if you are at least doing this, loving your neighbor as yourself, you're doing well.

You're passing. If you can't do nothing else right, but you love your neighbor as yourself, you're doing well. We've gotten this verse backwards, I think, in our modern day. I don't think the emphasis is on loving yourself.

That you need to love yourself more, give a self love, that way you will be able to love other people more. I think it's the opposite implication of the verse. The implication of the verse is that you should love others as you want to love yourself.

That's the whole idea of it. As much as you seek your own well-being, and folks, even those who may be seeking to harm themselves, or doing it because they think it will make them feel better, or because they think they have no other option that will help stop the pain, or whatever it may be.

But here, so even there, it is to fulfill something inside of themselves. You should love your neighbor as yourself. That's a radical idea. How do you do that? Well, you do that by putting their needs above your own.

The Bible says, outdo one another in showing honor. Everyone must look out for not only their own interests, but also the interests of others. Consider others as more important than yourself. That's the idea of loving your neighbor.

Now, we are absolutely supposed to have a love for the entire world. We're supposed to be hospitable, and merciful, and compassionate, and as Romans says, try to live on our part, to live at peace with everybody.

But there's a special love that's supposed to be given to our fellow believer, to those who belong to the household of faith. In Leviticus 19, of course the nation of Israel was supposed to treat sojourners who were residing with them for a time with hospitality.

But to those who decided to live in the community and adapt to its standards and rules and worship God, those sojourners were no longer sojourners, but native Israelites. If they adapted and conformed, they were supposed to be treated as native Israelites.

The neighbor here being talked about is not the Canaanites, not the ones that the Israelites were at war with, conquering their land. The neighbor is the two million, I'm guessing on that number, inhabitants of the nation of Israel traveling along with them.

You're to love them as yourself. Your neighbor, your fellow journeyman, your place on. Guys, yeah, there it is, right? Placeon. Placeion, I guess it would be. We're supposed to have a love for everybody, but there's supposed to be a special love for a fellow believer.

Remember, the world will know you are my disciples by the way you love each other. And if we do that, we're doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.

Oh, and further proof that this is talking about your fellow believers, the fact that we were talking about people coming in the synagogue earlier, people coming in the assembly, coming to worship the same God.

Now, of course, we're not the final judge. We can't determine whether everyone in your church body is a Christian. I would argue that it's almost assuredly not. But we're at least talking about people that claim to be fellow believers.

Mercy, Justice, and the Law of Liberty

Verse 10, for whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. Yeah, so if you say, well, I obeyed this part of the law, but not this part, you're still a lawbreaker.

There are 613 laws, commandments in the law of Moses. If you obey 612 and break one, you're still a lawbreaker. And you are guilty of a sin as if you're guilty of all of it. So, speak and act as those who are going to be judged under the law of liberty.

Don't act like you're going to be judged by the law of Moses, because you're going to be found guilty. Judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy.

Guys, remember, mercy and justice. We have become so used to God's mercy that whenever He shows justice, we think it's unfair. God demonstrates His mercy far more often than He demonstrates His justice or His wrath.

His justice is what's deserved. It's what's fair. Mercy is not fair. Mercy is the guilty person not getting the punishment they deserve. That is speaking of you and me, Christian. Before you call for God's justice in all areas, please recognize that you and your life don't want justice.

You want mercy. On that day, the final day, everyone will either receive justice or mercy. They'll receive exactly what they have deserved, fairness, or they'll receive mercy because the punishment has been paid for by Jesus.

No one will receive something unfair except those who receive mercy. No one will receive punishment greater than they deserve. They will either get justice or they'll get mercy. But remember, guys, no sin goes unpunished in Christianity.

No sin goes unpunished. It will either be paid for by the individual who committed it or by Jesus. But no sin goes unpunished, not one at all. Okay, next week we're talking about faith without works. This is a passage that's often misunderstood because people will often simply read verse 22.

Oh, I'm sorry. Verse 24 without reading any of the other verses. You see that person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And if you decide to read that by itself without reading any of the rest of this passage, you can come away with thinking salvation is really by works and not by grace or faith, and that James teaches something different than Paul.

But if you just let James speak with what he was saying, no one would ever come away with that conclusion. So, next week, we're doing the infamous James 2 14 -26. And we may spend more than a couple weeks on that passage there.

So come ready, notebooks and pencils in hand. All right, guys, I love you very much. I hope this was beneficial to you. Like, share, subscribe, do all that kind of stuff. Get the word out. Thank you for watching, and I hope you guys have a great rest of your day.

And put in the comment section if you want to see something different if this new format doesn't work. Talk to you guys later.