The Law of Love

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Open your Bible to James chapter 2, and tonight we're going to be looking at verses 8 through 13.
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In James chapter 2 verse 8 piggybacks on the warning that James gives to us in verses 1 through 7.
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If you were not here last week, I want to read the first seven verses just as the introduction to tonight's lesson so that when we go into verse 8, we don't go into verse 8 without a context.
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Chapter 2 verse 1, James says, My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ the Lord of glory.
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Now just to make quick notes, that word partiality we mentioned last week, it could be translated prejudice.
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It means to show favoritism to someone on account of some external thing that you find appealing, whether it is that you find them socially appealing or economically appealing or even racially appealing or whatever.
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You show them deference, you show them partiality, you show them some type of prejudice, either good or bad, whether you see them and like them or see them and don't like them based on an external thing, and he's saying that this is not the way that we are to express our faith in Jesus Christ.
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He goes on to say, and he uses the example of economics, he says, for if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly and a poor man in shabby clothing 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 at my feet, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you've dishonored the poor man.
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Are not the rich the ones who oppress the poor? I'm sorry, 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? So here James makes a distinction.
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He says, look, you're showing preference to the rich person, and yet isn't it the rich person who is often the person who is giving you the most difficulty? And what he's talking about at that particular time in history, it wasn't the poor people who were bringing persecution against the church, it was the people of influence who were bringing persecution against the church.
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It was the people who had economic standing.
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They wanted to see the church squashed, many of them being Jewish leaders in the community, wanted the church put away, wanted this thing squashed and destroyed.
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He says, aren't these the people? Why would you show deference to a community of people who out of which are most of your detractors? Most of your problem is coming from this group of people, and yet you're giving them the preference.
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Doesn't make sense.
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It's not logical.
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So last week's lesson, we called it the sin of prejudice.
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Try again.
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That was last week.
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This week, following up on this, we're looking at tonight's lesson, which we're calling the law of love.
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Last week, we looked at the sin of prejudice.
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Tonight, we're looking at the law of love.
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The reason why we are so quick to judge, remember, that's what prejudice means.
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It means to make a judgment before we know all the facts.
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It's a pre-judgment.
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The reason why we are so quick to judge is because we are so slow to love.
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The law of Christ in regard to our conduct to one another is summed up in one four-letter word, and that word is love.
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If we loved someone as we love ourselves, then we would be slow to be unfair to them.
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We would be slow to judge them as unworthy, and when we refuse to show love to someone, we are refusing to love them as Christ has loved us because he loved us when we were unlovable, and we are unlovable.
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While this may seem like a small thing in the grand scheme of sins, it seems like, well, boy, as bad as sin can get with perversion and any other type of terrible, heinous sin, as bad as sins can get, this one seems like it might not be all that bad.
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All I'm doing is treating one person a little bit better than someone else or giving a little bit more of a hand up to someone that I might like a little bit better.
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How can that really be? On the level of sin, I mean, I'm no Hitler, right? I'm no Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy.
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So really, on the grand scheme of things, just because I just happen to like rich people more than I like poor people, what's the big deal? Well, that's what James deals with tonight because he's going to talk about the equity of sin.
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He's going to talk about the fact that, hey, look, just because someone says he doesn't murder but he commits adultery, he still breaks the law and he's still a sinner.
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And that's one of the things that we're going to see as we go through the text tonight.
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We're going to see that James defines the law of God essentially by how we treat other people.
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In essence, we fulfill or transgress the law in our speech, in our behavior toward other people.
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And I think that this is in keeping with what Christ taught.
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Of course, it is because it's all scripture.
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But if you think about what Jesus said when he was asked, what is the greatest commandment? Does anybody remember? What is the greatest commandment? Okay, love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.
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And he says what? On these two commandments, this is Matthew 22 verse 40, on these two commandments rest all the law and the prophets.
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And essentially, all of the moral law of God can be distilled down to two commandments.
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We love God with everything that we have.
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And we love other people the same way we love ourselves.
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And by the way, Paul reiterates that in Galatians chapter five, verse 14.
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He says this, I love this that Paul says this, because it really has helped me with some things lately.
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Paul says this in Galatians 5.14, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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And that just a powerful thought that the whole law, this is Paul speaking, the whole law is fulfilled in one word.
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And he said, Now, wait a minute, that's not one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself is eight words or whatever, seven or eight words.
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But what is he saying? It's fulfilled in one idea.
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All of the laws about how to treat one another, go back to the mosaic principles of how to share and live in community with one another.
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And all the civil litigation laws of Israel, what were they based on? Treating other people with equity and justice.
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If I hurt you, then I fix it.
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If I tear up something that's yours, then I fix it.
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If I, if I take from you something that's yours, I pay you back and I pay you back even more than what I took.
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Right? All of these are expressions of what? Love.
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It's a way of loving one another.
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And so this is what we would call in essence, the law of love.
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The golden rule.
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Exactly right.
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So this is where James begins in verse eight.
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He says, if we really fulfill the royal law, we're going to talk about what that term royal law means.
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But he says, if you really fulfill the royal law, according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well.
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That by itself, that could be the whole message.
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That could be the sermon.
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Even though I want to look at more than just that, we could stop right here and we could just dive in to what he is saying here.
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He says, if you really fulfill the royal law.
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Now that word really in some of your Bibles doesn't say really.
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In fact, I'm going to ask because I think I know the NASB says, however, in that right, Richard says, however, if you fulfill the royal law, is that how it reads something to that effect? What about the new King James? And that what you got, Mike? What it says? Really? Okay.
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Does anyone else have it say anything other than however, or really at that point? Huh? If you indeed was sort of like, really? So it's kind of the here's here's what's happening here.
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This is actually something that is is not very it's it's not perfectly easy to translate.
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And by the way, I don't know if you realize this, but not everything translates perfectly from one language to another.
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And sometimes there's questions as to how you're supposed to translate certain words.
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And this is why some translations will have words.
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Because by the way, does the word really and however different? Yeah, a little bit, right? One is an affirmative.
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One is a adversity.
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The affirmative, if you really do the law, and the adversity, however, if you do the law, and what it's doing is it's connecting to what came before.
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How is this connecting to what came before? If however, is adopted as it is in the New American Standard Bible, it's introducing a contrast to what was before.
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And in effect, it's a continuation of the arguments James is making, it seems better, rather, to look at indeed, which is what you said, or really, because that rather suggests that this is the fulfilling of this command, rather than that it's the opposite.
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It's the fulfillment of the command.
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What is the command? The command is do not show prejudice.
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If you really don't show prejudice, what are you doing? You're fulfilling this law.
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You're actually doing what God has caused you to do, or called you to do.
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So, in essence, verse 8 is beginning a new thought, but it's on the same subject.
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We've already seen that prejudicial behavior is evil.
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That's what it says.
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It uses the word poneros.
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The word poneros is the word evil, and the only reason why I remember that Greek word is because a Greek professor once told me he named his dog poneros because it was a bad dog, and I'll never forget that particular Greek word.
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He said that dog was just evil, so I called him poneros.
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So, I figured if I ever have another dog, and he's a bad dog, I've already got a name picked out.
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But he said that behavior, that thinking, prejudicial thinking, is evil thinking.
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It's bad thinking.
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Now, we have to consider what's the opposite of that.
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What are we to do? Well, we're not to do that.
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We're to do something else.
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What are we trying to do? Well, we want to do what's right instead of what's wrong.
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We want to do what's good rather than what's evil, what's virtuous rather than that which is sinful.
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So, James tells us, well, if you really fulfill the royal law, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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Now, what does that term royal law mean? Well, the royal law here, the word that's translated royal, is the word basilican.
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Anybody ever heard a word that sounds like that? Basilican? Basilica? You know what a basilica is? You've ever heard of St.
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Peter's Basilica? It's in Rome.
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You think of the tabernacle, right? That's what St.
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Peter's is a tabernacle.
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It actually means palace.
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So, really, it's not St.
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Peter's tabernacle.
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It's St.
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Peter's palace, the idea.
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Basilican means royalty or royal or palatial.
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Okay? So, what he says here, he talks about the royal law.
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Now, I have a question about that.
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Why does James call this law, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, why does he call this the royal law? Well, I have one of three different reasons why I think he calls it the royal law.
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Number one, it could be as simple as it was given by Christ.
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And if it's given by Christ, who is Christ? He's the king.
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So, if it's the king's law, what does that make the law? Makes it the royal law.
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So, that's simple enough, right? That would be a good enough answer.
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But another way to consider, it's the basilican, it's the royal law, in that it itself is a high or chief law.
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It itself has royalty in it.
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So, it's not just that it was given by royalty, but that the law itself transcends the other laws.
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As Jesus said, upon this rests all the other laws, right? So, is it that it was given by Christ? Or is it that the law itself has a royal quality? Well, could be both.
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It could also be a reference to the kingdom, which is mentioned back in verse 5.
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If you look back at chapter 2, verse 5, it says, 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? Are you a part of the kingdom of God? If you're a believer, right? It's not something you're going to be a part of, something you are a part of, right? Is that true? Now, we might say, well, we also are going to be a part of it, because at the end of the age, we will become different than we are now.
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The Bible says, when we see him as he is, we shall be as he is, meaning our bodies will be transformed and we will receive a new body and we will no longer be in this body of flesh, but we're going to live in a new heaven and a new earth and a new body.
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And guess what's going to happen? We're going to still have a law.
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And guess what the law is going to be? The law is going to be the law of love.
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But guess what? You're not going to have any desire to go against that law.
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You know, there's one of the things that I love to argue, not love to argue, let me back that up.
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I'll take that off the recording.
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People love to argue with me about free will.
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They want to argue free will.
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Man, you got to have free will.
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If you really want to love God, you have to have free will.
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You got to be able to do anything good, bad, evil, good.
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You got to have that if you really want to love God.
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And I say, are you going to love God in heaven? They'll say yes.
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I say, are you going to have the freedom to sin in heaven? Well, I don't know.
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I guess I would have to.
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Some of them have said, I guess I would have to because that's the only way to truly love someone is to have free will.
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No, no.
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The Bible says when we're made like him, we're going to, when we see him, we're going to be like him.
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Not that we're going to be God, be clear with that.
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We're not going to be like God in the sense that we'll be God.
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But we're going to be glorified.
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We're not going to have a desire to sin anymore.
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We're going to have a will and an ability to make choices in heaven.
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And I don't know what those choices are.
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And I don't know what heaven's going to be like.
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I look forward to it as the day draws ever closer for me.
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But I know this, I know that when I am there, I'm going to be able to love because God is already there and he is able to love.
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Christ loves me from heaven right now.
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And so the law of love will not stop just because I'm in heaven.
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I will still love the people that I'm with in heaven.
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That amazing thought love is going to go on forever.
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The relationship of the believers is going to go on forever.
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So could I say that this is royal law because it comes from Christ? Yeah.
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Could I say that it's royal law because it's a transcendent form of law that all other law is based on? Yeah.
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But could I say it's royal law because simply it's the law of the kingdom under which all God's people stand? Yes.
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So what does James mean? I don't know.
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I know there's three good options.
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I don't know for certain, but I know this.
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He calls it the royal law and he goes on to say it is the royal law according to the scripture.
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Now, remember, James is written at a time when there is only the Old Testament.
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What does that tell us about this particular text? But when he says, according to the scripture, the Greek there is Kata Tane Grafane, according to the scripture.
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Anytime you see that in the New Testament, it's not talking about the New Testament because the New Testament is written yet.
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James is one of the earliest epistles written.
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He has to be talking about something else.
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He's talking about the Old Testament.
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What does he say about the Old Testament? He says it's the royal law of love, that the law of love was in the Old Testament.
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People think God in the Old Testament was mean and ornery and really harsh.
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And don't get me wrong.
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There were times where God expressed his wrath and it was harsh, but they missed those passages like in the Psalms where it says God is our refuge and our strength and a very present help in times of trouble.
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Right? Isn't that a precious God who loves? Isn't that what we see there? Eternal moral law.
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Yeah, we're seeing here a moral law that is eternal.
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And I call it actually, that's in my notes.
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The eternal moral law of God is expressed from his love.
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And he calls us to love one another.
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It's his disposition.
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God, God's disposition is one of love.
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And he wants us to express that same disposition.
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That's what we see here.
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Because the content, the question first is, what is the royal law? Well, it's the law that comes from Christ.
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It's the law of the kingdom.
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It's a transcendent moral law.
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But what is the content of the royal law? Well, the content of the royal law is love your neighbor as yourself.
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What does that mean? Well, love is defined in Scripture in 1 Corinthians 13.
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Most of you probably remember that passage.
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Love is patient.
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Love is kind.
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Love does not envy.
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Love does not boast.
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We're familiar with that.
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It has the pros and the cons.
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It is patient.
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It is kind.
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It does not envy.
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It does not boast.
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So it talks about both sides, what it is and what it ain't.
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But here's what I see even more so than just calling someone to love.
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When God calls us to love, he calls us to love as we love ourselves.
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That's, that's a really hard thing to do.
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In our universe, each one of us, and I speak weird, follow me because I'm not getting metaphysical on you.
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Every, every one of us lives in our own little universe.
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You heard that, right? Well, we really kind of do.
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You know, you're, you're the only person you know who's never going to know exactly what you look like.
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Because all you've ever seen is a mirror image of yourself or a photograph.
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You're never going to see yourself as you are.
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You live in the mind of your own little you.
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You live in you.
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And the most important person in a sense to you is you.
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You're built and designed for self-preservation.
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You have a tendency to protect yourself and, and, and there's an importance to you that's you.
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Right? And God tells you to love other people like that.
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Here's, here's a way I'll use as an example.
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Dale and I are friends, right? Dale and I have really developed a very good friend relationship.
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I don't think Dale would hurt me and I certainly wouldn't want to hurt Dale, right? But let's say Dale does hurt me.
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And I'm just, you're just, you just happen to be sitting there.
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So I'm just, my first, my first thought might be, man, Dale is such an evil guy.
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I'm not saying it would be.
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But let's say Dale hurt me in some way.
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My first thought would be the worst, possibly.
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But let's say I hurt Dale.
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Let's say I do the exact same thing to Dale that he did to me.
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What would my first thought about my action be? Justification.
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I know why I did that.
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And I would give myself a pass.
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And I would expect Dale to, to know me well enough to know I didn't do that for an evil purpose.
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I didn't do that for that reason.
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I didn't do that because I hated him.
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But he might think that because his first and, you know, the first thought might be, well, he's an evil guy.
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Right? Kind of pull this back to the text.
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You walk into church and you see a guy who's dirty.
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And you see a guy who ain't got nothing.
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He ain't got two pennies to rub together.
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And you see another guy who came in in the Mercedes.
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He's wearing the Armani suit and the silk tie and the Johnson & Johnson shoes or whatever Rob talked about last week.
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I don't know.
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Some fancy shoes I've never heard of.
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And you think, man, I got to give time to one of these guys.
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I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to the guy who's not gonna make me have to wash my hands when I'm done.
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Think about if you were either one of those guys.
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You've stepped foot in a place you've never been before.
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You're in a place now that's relatively uncomfortable because you don't know anyone.
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Which one of those guys is going to be the least comfortable? Probably the guy who looks like he belongs there the least.
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And if you were that guy, what would you long for the most? Somebody who was willing to shake your dirty hand, right? Somebody who was willing to love you the way you would want to be loved, to reach to you the way you would want someone to reach to you.
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See, that's what James is saying.
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There is a content to this love.
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And the content is simply this, is that when we are given the opportunity to make the choice to love someone, we should love them the same way we would want them to love us if the role was reversed.
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We would want them to love us the same way that we would need to be loved if the situation were reversed.
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If I do you wrong, I'm gonna tell you, everybody here right now, there may come a day when I hurt your feelings.
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Some of you already have.
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And yet you keep coming.
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I would hope that you would, on that day, give me the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't because I hate you or because I am an evil man.
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Now, I know I am an evil man in a sense.
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I have a heart that is wicked and does want to do evil things.
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But what I'm saying is, I would hope that you'd give me the same benefit of the doubt that you'd give yourself in the same exact circumstance.
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But we don't always.
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We're very quick to judge.
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We're very slow to love.
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And that's what James is dealing with in this passage.
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Now, he goes on.
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We're going to go on from here.
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But like I said, I could have spent the whole time just on that.
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But he gives an example by showing the, or rather, he shows the adverse in verse 9.
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Because he says, if you really fulfill the law, you're going to love your neighbors yourself.
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And if you do that, you're going to do well.
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But, and there is that, the making the converse, conversely, but if you show partiality, if you are prejudiced, and for whatever reason, you're committing sin, and you're convicted by the law as transgressors, you're committing sin.
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Now, that's a, that's actually a bigger deal than people think.
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Because I'll say something to somebody about sin.
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And this is almost what I hear all the time when I, if I address sin.
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They'll say, man, I sin every day.
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They'll say, man, I sin every day.
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And they throw it off like it's no big deal.
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Man, I sin every day, like it's nothing.
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But James here, he uses the word committing sin.
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And then he follows it up.
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He says, and are convicted as transgressors.
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The word committing sin here is an interesting, interesting construct of the word.
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Ergazeste is the Greek.
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Ergazeste means to work something.
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And it's the same.
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It's a different construction, but the same word that Jesus used in Matthew seven, when he says, depart from me, you worker of lawlessness.
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Remember that when Jesus said, on that day, many will come unto me, and they will say, Lord, Lord, have we not cast out demons in your name and done mighty works in your name.
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And Jesus said, and I will say unto them, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.
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I never knew you.
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We all know that section, right? It's a pretty scary section of scripture because it talks about the false.
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Actually, in the context, it's talking about false teachers, but it's also could be false believers could certainly end up in that category.
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But Jesus calls them workers of lawlessness.
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James uses that same idea here.
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He says, when you show partiality, you are a worker of iniquity.
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You're a worker of sin.
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You're committing sin.
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You're doing that sinful work right then.
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And you're convicted, which means you're laid bare.
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You are exposed as a sinner.
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Now, I want to say something, and actually, the elders and I were talking about this before we started tonight.
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Actually, I think it was before Richard got here, but we just mentioned this to the guys earlier, to Jack then.
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I said, nobody can claim perfection on this, right? We have all showed prejudice.
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If you can't say amen, say oh me, because you know you have, all right? You know you've shown prejudice and it's our duty to understand our prejudice.
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It's our it's our duty to recognize our sin and repent of it.
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Amen.
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But there's more here than just that, because I believe what James is talking about is not just the act of showing partiality, which we all have done and have hopefully repented of, but it's the act of a pattern of partiality.
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This again, going back to the idea of working, this is a this is something that we are we're doing and it's it's our it's our life.
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It's it's the way that we behave.
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We behave as partial people.
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A person who is committing sin and convicted as a transgressor is not just a person who's made an error.
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This is a person whose life is marked by perpetual prejudice.
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And that to me is is is that is huge in the church today.
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I'm not going to say it's not in our church.
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I'm certain that it is.
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But I've seen places where it's the norm, where prejudice is just the way the church behaves.
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And yes, it's sometimes racial.
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But it's not always racial.
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It can be just as much economic.
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There was a guy and I and I gotta tell you, if you saw the video and didn't like it, you're fine.
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I'm not telling you to like something you didn't like.
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I didn't see the video.
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But I saw a piece of it.
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So just so you know, there was a pastor who dressed up like a homeless man and went into his church.
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It was a big church.
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And he wanted to see how he was treated.
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And he was treated very poorly.
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Now again, I didn't see the whole video, I just saw bits and pieces.
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If you if you saw it, and can come back later and say pastor that you shouldn't use that as an example.
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Well challenge me later.
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But did you see it? You know how many of you saw it? Okay, it was on it was on social media.
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I just clicked on and saw bits and pieces.
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But he dressed like a homeless man like a real for real homeless man.
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I couldn't fool anybody.
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Because I'm 300 pounds.
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If I come walking in looking like he did, you'd know who I was.
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I'd look like Santa Claus with a dirty beard.
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But but he was in a church of, you know, 1000 people, it was a good size church.
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So he could blend in and nobody knew who he was.
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And so he dressed up like a poor man.
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And he was treated very poorly.
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And that gave him certainly a lot to think about, about the spiritual condition of his flock.
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And like I said, in the church of 80 people, I don't think I get away with that kind of thing.
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But it's a good question to ask.
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And it's a good lesson to learn.
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Because that type of prejudice is, it's the type of thing we were so quick to dismiss.
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And yet James calls it sin.
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And he doesn't say it's a small sin, or a peccadillo or a little personality foible.
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He says it's a sin.
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It's a transgression of the law, the royal law.
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And then he talks about the law, because he uses this as an opportunity to explain a legal concept.
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Verse 10.
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He he uses this to as a and people often misuse chapter two, verse 10 and 11.
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We'll talk about why in a minute.
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But chapter two, verse 10, 11, he goes into a legal concept, but it's based on the context of this.
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Somebody would think about partiality is a small sin.
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It's a it's a peccadillo.
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It's a it's a foible.
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It's not really a sin.
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It's not going to send you to hell.
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Right? And he goes into verse 10.
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He says, for whoever keeps the whole law, but fails in one point has become accountable for it all.
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What's the one point he's talking about? Prejudice, it's it's partiality.
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That's the sin in view.
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That's the little sin.
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It's not a little sin.
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But that's the thing that they're thinking.
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This is a small thing.
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This ain't a big thing.
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And yet James says, but listen here, you could keep the whole law, you could do everything in the law and you know you have it.
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Right? We talked about this in evangelism.
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You ever told a lie? Well, you're a liar.
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You ever hated someone? Well, you're a murderer.
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You ever looked with lust? You committed adultery in your heart.
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We know absolutely none of us have kept the law.
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But let's imagine that you have.
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Let's say that you've kept every law from birth and you've never had an impure thought and you've never had an ill motivated act and you have kept God's law perfectly.
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And yet you showed partiality.
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You showed prejudice.
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You might say, well, hey, certainly that wouldn't send me to hell.
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Certainly that's not a real sin.
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And yet what is James says, it's a sin that violates the law, which is the culmination of all the law.
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Well, I'm going to talk about that in a minute, the equality and equity of the law.
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I'm going to mention, I'm going to get there in just a second because he says that in verse 11.
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So you're getting there.
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Yeah, you're ramping me up.
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You're getting me where I'm going.
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Because verse 11, he does say, he uses the example.
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He says, for he who said, do not commit adultery also said, do not commit murder.
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What's he saying there? He's saying the same God gave you all these commands.
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The same God who said, do not commit murder.
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The same God who said, do not commit adultery.
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By the way, he's using two of the 10 commandments.
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He said the same God that told you one thing, told you the other thing.
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If you do not commit adultery, but you do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.
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Now, this is the simple truth.
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All sin is a transgression of God's law.
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If you argue you're not a transgressor because you have not broken certain laws, then you're wrong.
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James is telling us he uses murder and adultery as two extreme cases because not many people try to justify those things.
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You know, even even lost people look at murderers with with disgust.
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And adultery too, even though it's starting to become less, it seems, but even lost people see somebody cheating on someone when they say it's bad.
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All right, a person who doesn't commit adultery is not an adulterer.
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But if he commits murder, he cannot say he's not a lawbreaker.
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Just because he's not broken all the law doesn't mean he isn't a lawbreaker.
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That's James's point.
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And I want to say this, James is not arguing that all sin is the same.
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This is why I said earlier, there's a there's an issue here.
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And some of you may challenge me later or you can challenge me.
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I don't care.
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We'll talk about it.
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But he's not saying all sin is the same.
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I've heard people say that all sin is exactly the same.
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It's not what he's saying.
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What he is saying is that all sin is a breaking of the law.
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If you commit murder, but don't commit adultery, you're not an adulterer, you're a murderer.
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But guess what? You're a lawbreaker.
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In Roman Catholicism, they put sin on scales.
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Roman Catholicism has two different scales for sin.
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They have what is called venial sin and mortal sin.
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In Roman Catholicism, if you commit a mortal sin, that means that you have destroyed the grace of justification, which means let's say you're justified this morning, you go out into the world and you commit murder.
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You were justified when you woke up, but you are damned to hell when you go to sleep because you have erased the grace of justification.
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That's called a mortal sin.
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You get the idea of mortal because it kills your soul.
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Venial sin is sin that does not destroy the grace of justification, but does put you in a position where your time in purgatory can be extended because Roman Catholics have developed a mid position between here and heaven called purgatory, coming from the word to purge, which means that's where you go because you still have venial sins that need to be purged.
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So you go to that place of purgatory where your venial sins are purging, you might spend 1000 years there, you might spend 10,000 years there.
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But when it's all said and done, you're clean and you can go on into heaven.
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You've got to pay for those sins.
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Those are venial sins.
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Mortal sins send you to hell.
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Venial sins extend your time in purgatory.
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So what does James tell us? He says there's no scale.
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All sins not the same, but all sins sin.
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Now you might be asking, why do I keep pushing the issue that all sins not the same? Well, all sins not the same in the sense that murder is not adultery and adultery is not stealing.
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And there are sins, which there are times where Jesus talks about people having a greater sin.
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Isn't that weird? Yeah, all law recognizes that sin is the law, the things are different.
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But breaking the law is breaking the law and breaking God's law.
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Here's the thing.
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Here's the thing that gets me about Roman Catholicism.
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By the way, if you ever have a conversation with Roman Catholic and you want to bring this up, you believe that mortal sin sends you to hell.
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Yes, I do.
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What is the greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength.
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Have you kept that law? No.
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How is the greatest command not a mortal sin? If it's the greatest commandment, how is it not a mortal sin? Anyway, that's just, yeah, we'll put that on the chasing rabbit category.
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But getting back to here, I want to connect this back to, again, the overall context, which is prejudice.
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Somebody asked, I may be prejudiced, but I'm not a murderer.
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Well, OK, you can say that.
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You can come to me and say, you know what, Keith, at least I didn't kill anybody.
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And I say, well, you're right.
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You didn't kill him.
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You might have expressed hatred, which Jesus said is the same as murder in the sense you've killed him in your heart.
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But let me just say this.
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Even if you didn't do that, even if you just expressed prejudice, what are you what have you done? You've broken the law.
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You've broken God's law.
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So as a result, verses 12 and 13, that's where we're going to end.
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I know I kind of ran through this tonight, but I really wanted to pull it together as a as a unit because it is a unit.
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Because he says in verse 12, he gives a call to action.
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He says, 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 and mercy triumphs over judgment.
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Now, this beginning at verse 12, so speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty by the word.
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By the way, if you look there and I put the Greek in for you where it says who toss and I know a lot of you probably don't can't read that with the first word there.
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Verse 12 is who toasts actually the late a guy who toasts poignant who toasts the late a so speak.
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And the word so who tossed her who toasts means in this way speak.
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Kai and who toasts poignant in this way act.
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So James is giving an imperative here and the word so in this way is is intensifying the imperative.
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You know that prejudice is wrong.
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You know that showing partiality is wrong as a result in this way you should speak and in this way you should act in what way as people who know that they are ultimately judged under the law of liberty.
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You might say now wait a minute.
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What are you talking about law of liberty? Well, James is defined the law of liberty in chapter one.
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He's already talked about the perfect law of the law of liberty as being the law of God.
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The law of and you say why is it called the law of liberty? Why is he called the law of freedom? Well, it can be a little bit confusing but ultimately the law in the sense that the law tells us how we ought to live shows us what our true freedom is.
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Our true freedom is that we are called to love one another.
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That is how we are to live.
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Does anyone have the freedom to sin? No, you have the freedom to sin to sin without impunity.
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No, right? But we have the freedom to love, right? We have the freedom to love one another.
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In fact, Jesus, you know, he told us that and that's one of the greatest things about what Jesus did when he was here on the earth when like he healed the person on the sabbath and the guys got mad at him for healing on the sabbath.
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They said, what are you doing? It's the sabbath.
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You can't heal on the sabbath.
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He said, wait a minute, any one of you guys, if you had an ox in a ditch on the sabbath, you'd go down in that ditch, you'd bring them out.
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The law will never cause you not to love because the love is the foundation of the law.
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So there's freedom in that and he says you're going to be judged.
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Ultimately, we need to act as those who will be judged according to that law.
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And then he says in verse 13, for judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy.
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Mercy triumphs over judgment.
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And the best example I can give to help understand what James is saying in verse 13 is Jesus's parable of the unmerciful servant.
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You remember that story where the guy comes? It's in Matthew 18, verse 23 to 35.
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Jesus said there was a man who was brought before a man that he owed a debt to.
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And he said, I can't pay you.
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And the man said, what? I'm going to let you go and your debt's forgiven.
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What did the guy go out and do? He went out and found somebody that owed him something.
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And he said, give me a much smaller amount.
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He said, you give me what you owe me.
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The guy couldn't do it, so he put him in a debtor's prison.
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So what happened when the king found out the ultimate guy, the leader, he pulled that guy back in and he punished him.
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Now, knowing that story, read verse 13 again.
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For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.
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That's ultimately the parable that Jesus told us.
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When a person refuses to show love and mercy, what is that the sign in their heart? That their heart is unconverted.
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When a person comes into our fellowship and is undesirable to us and we show them contempt, we are withholding God's mercy and love from that person.
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And in doing so, we are showing the wickedness of our own hearts.
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There's nothing that would make God love me and yet he loved me anyway.
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Why should I have to have something in a person to make me love them? Why should I have to look for something that would cause me to love them? Why can't I love them simply because they're an image bearer of God? Why do I have to look for something that would make me want to love them? I want to give you your application points and then we'll draw to a close.
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This is on the back.
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Number one, the eternal moral law of God is summed up in this principle, loving God and loving others.
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I know that sounds simple.
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It really isn't.
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It is hard to love God and love others the way we're supposed to.
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But that is the eternal moral law of God summed up according to Christ.
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Upon this rests all the law and the prophets.
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Number two, when we show partiality, we break God's moral law and become transgressors because we've broken the law.
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Now, number three is where I want to make sure you understand.
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I'm not saying that because you've ever shown prejudice that you're not necessarily saved.
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Number three will help you understand that continual unrepentant partiality is a sign of an unconverted heart.
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I'm not saying because you've made a mistake that you can't be forgiven or that you're not forgiven.
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What I am saying though is a continual unrepentant behavior is the sign of a heart that's not converted.
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This isn't what you do or have done.
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This is who you are and what you always do because it's who you are.
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The unconverted person will find no mercy at judgment.
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See, mercy triumphs over judgment, but the person who shows no mercy because his heart is unconverted will find himself without mercy as well.
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Well, I hope that was helpful to you.
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Next week we are going to get into the real meat and potatoes because next week we're going to begin to address a section of James which has caused division.
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Well, it's for 500 years it's been a contention between Protestants and Catholics, but it's also been a point of division even within Protestantism and that's the section on faith and works.
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Let's end with prayer though.
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Father, thank you for this time.
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I pray that this has been encouragement to your people that you'll use it to help us to understand that when given the opportunity, Lord, in new people coming into the assembly, when given the opportunity of meeting new people in the world, Lord, help us to not show prejudice and only reach out to those who look like us or act like us or live like us, but Lord, help us to reach beyond ourselves and to see every individual we come in contact as an image bearer of God and somebody who deserves to be loved as you've loved us.
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In Jesus' name, amen.