Open: OK, So today I want to start off today by asking a few rather personal questions. How many people would be willing to raise their hand in the presence of everyone here today -- in this very public setting admit to the fact that sometime during the course of their life they broke the law, were subsequently arrested, and had to appear before a judge to answer for their crime? How many people would admit to having been found guilty of breaking a law and subsequently had to either pay a fine or spend a little time in jail? How many people are feeling a little uneasy about the person you are presently sitting next to and would like to change seats right now? - OK -- let me take another cut at this: How many people would be willing to admit that sometime during the course of your life you are aware that you broke the law but never actually got caught and so you subsequently faced no consequences because of it? How many people would like to change seats at this point?
My guess is that in a gathering this size we might have some folks who fit into some of these categories, but don't feel real comfortable talking about it in a public setting. Very few people feel very comfortable giving full disclosure over all the dirty details of their lives -- particularly when the details involve mistakes we've made and times in our life when we weren't living an exemplary life. We don't like talking about the times in our lives when we made major mistakes and caused major disappointments. We tend to want to keep those kinds of things swept under the rug. If we have broken the law, we tend to want to keep that hidden from prying eyes. Who wants everyone else talking about the fact that we are lawbreakers?
Well today James wants to talk just that. He wants to highlight the reality t
hat in God's eyes we are all seen as lawbreakers in one way or another.
Context: You'll remember from a couple of weeks ago Pastor James is addressing the issue of showing favoritism in a Christian setting. This Pastor had an issue where a particular group of people were receiving more attention in the church than another. You remember the setting. Two guys showed up to church on the same Sunday morning. One of them is very rich -- he is gold-fingered -- meaning he is wearing several gold rings on his hand. Very ostentatious. He apparently liked to flash his wealth around because of the favorable response it brought from people he interacted with. He has on shiny clothes -- He's looks fine. And he gets this special treatment -- he's led up to a place of honor and given the best seat in the house. And it's all because of his perceived wealth. Then a poor guy comes in and he's dressed in shabby clothes, worn out shoes and probably doesn't smell all that great and he's treated with indifference. He doesn't get the same warm welcome the other visitor gets. He's basically told to sit on the floor and keep his mouth shut. Pastor James watches this going on his congregation and he's blown away by it. My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism. (James 2:1) Showing preferential treatment towards anyone is completely incompatible with our faith. There is no inherent, no intrinsic and no needful reason for partiality in a Christian setting. You're going to give someone special treatment because of their looks, because of their clothes, because of their profession, possessions, life style, education, money, position, fame, whatever it is?
That kind of thinking is totally foreign to the nature of God. In Deuteronomy 10:17 it says, "For the Lord your God is the God of Gods and Lord of Lords, the great, the mighty and the awesome God who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes." God in His nature is absolutely impartial. God treats everyone equally based on their need. He is not impressed with how they dress, He's not impressed with how much money they have, what positions they hold, what prestige they have, what fame they might have obtained. He is not impressed with anything to do with their profession or their economic status, the home or car or the bank account. He is not impressed with any of that. That is a non-issue with God. He treats all equally based on spiritual need. So the first part of this chapter James is saying that that quality of mutual acceptance is to be reflected in the way we relate to one another. There needs to be an absolute refusal to express special treatment towards anyone in the context of the Church. We are all blind lame destitute beggars who need forgiveness and salvation in Christ.
We are nothing but wretched lawbreaking sinners in a desperate situation who find grace and mercy through the cross of Jesus. The moment we loose sight of this is the moment we cease to be effective as the Body of Christ. That's the issue in the congregation with Pastor James, isn't it? There was this "us" and "them" mentality.
The moment we forget this, a Country Club mentality begins to form. Ill. of a wealthy man who owned almost all the town. He always dressed like he bought his clothes in the bargain box at Goodwill -- he liked wearing old clothes. And he usually looked awful, but he was an extremely wealthy man. One day he was walking on the golf course, which he owned, and he was picked up by the police for vagrancy and put in jail because he was turned in by some people who were in his employ who had no idea who he was. Not wrong to walk on a golf course, they just assumed that because he dressed so shabbily he must have been out of place. He didn't fit their quote/unquote "country-club mentality." As you can imagine, they wound up fired from the job. That's really the kind of thinking James is addressing in this passage. He wants to remind his people that all of us -- everyone of us are lawbreakers.
Every and every expression of partiality or favoritism is a violation of what Scripture calls here the "Royal Law"
What's the Royal law? It's what must define every congregation that claims the name of Jesus Christ. It is royal in the sense that it is binding. When a king makes a law, that settles the issue. There's not a court of appeal at that point. It is a sovereign law. It is, to put it in another term, a supreme law- it's a binding law. If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, "Love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. (James 2:8-9)
Jesus expects his royal law to govern how his family interacts with one another. If you love your neighbor as you love yourself, you'll wind up loving everybody the way you love yourself. How am I supposed to love my neighbor? What's this mean? It's as simple as: whose mouth do you put food in, whose face do you wash, whose hair do you comb, whose body do you dress, whose looks are you concerned about when you leave the house, whose career occupies your mind, who are you trying to make comfortable, who are you trying to make happy? It's you and when you learn to occupy yourself with everyone else in the same way you are occupied with yourself, you will have no problem with partiality because no matter whether a person is poor or rich, educated or uneducated, ignorant or intelligent, no matter whether a person looks good or doesn't look good, whether they're high on the social scale or low, if you treat them all the same way you treat yourself, you will treat them all equally.
You say, "By the way, who is my neighbor?" Go back and read Luke chapter 10 verses 30 to 37 and the same question was asked, "Who is my neighbor?" And Jesus told a story about a man on a road beaten by robbers, and you remember the good Samaritan passed by and took care of him and met his needs and bound up his wounds, and took him to an inn and fed him and left money for him to be cared with. A neighbor is anybody lying in my path with a need. And the point our Lord is making is when you come across a person with a need, take care of him the way you take care of yourself. Bind up his wounds the way you'd bind up your own. Pick him up and carry him to a comfortable place as you would do for yourself. Feed him. Pay for all of his needs just as you would care for yourself. That is the kind of love the Lord is talking about.
Every Sunday when we walk in here our goal should be two fold
-- to express our love and adoration and worship towards God because of His grace and mercy towards us
-- and to then find somebody to whom we can express the same kind of grace and mercy that has come our way.
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matt. 22:36-40) Real authentic worship is oriented outward not inward. - how different this is from the average church setting where the mindset is basically "Please entertain me. I want to hear music that I like. I want to hear a message I like. I want to be with people I like. I want to be comfortable. I want my ears tickled. I don't want to hear anything I don't agree with. I want everything to happen the way that I want it to be. In other words what happens in many Sunday gatherings is often very "me" centered. Church was never designed to be that way. It is focused towards God and others -- end of story.
So James is preaching his message and he looks out at his congregation and he calls them pitiful, desperate, wretched sinners -- guilty lawbreakers worthy of God's strictest punishment because of their unwillingness to embrace his ways. Such are the people to whom I'm talking today.
Now you might be sitting here and thinking to yourself, I don't like being called a lawbreaker. I don't like be told that I am a wretched sinner. Well let's explore the concept a little: Let me ask you a couple of questions. First one is, how many holes does it take to sink a ship? Usually just one. Even the Titanic. Did you know that the entire disaster of the Titanic, the loss of over 1,500 lives, the sinking of a ship 900 feet long, was really due to a hole in the hull about the size of the refrigerator in your home, 15 cubic feet? There were some long gashes, but when they were all measured, in terms of cubic-feet area, the size of your refrigerator. Not a very big hole to sink a ship the length of three football fields. How many strikeouts does it take to ruin a perfect batting average? Answer: just one. One strikeout or pop fly out or infield ground-out, you'll never bat a thousand again. How many bad apples does it take to spoil a barrel? Maybe we can check this one out with the Sandness family. This is an old adage. I've been called a bad apple a few times, but I think the answer to this one is supposed to be, one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel. How many speeding tickets does it take to ruin a perfect driving record? Just one. How many long sermons does it take before someone in the congregation starts complaining? Just one, right?
See -- this is what James is trying to get us to understand in verse ten: "How many of God's laws must you break in order to earn the label of lawbreaker?" For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. James says just one. You violate any of the teachings of the Bible, and you earn the distinction of being, as it says in this text, a transgressor of the law. Then he makes reference to two of the Ten Commandments, as if to ask, how many of the Ten Commandments must you break before you have to admit that you are a commandment breaker? Just one. It doesn't really matter which one. Whatever one you violate puts you squarely in the camp of those who could not manage to keep the Ten Commandments.
If you break number one, three, five or seven, or two, four, six or eight, or an assortment of the above, let's not quibble over that, James says. The very fact that you couldn't keep all ten, the very fact that you violated some of the teachings of God puts you in this undeniable place where you have to admit, along with the rest of us, that you're a transgressor of the laws of God.
Again, why is James asking these questions? What's he driving at? Quite simply, he's trying to get all his readers, all his listeners, including you and me, to pull our heads out of the sands of denial and admit freely that there's a streak of lawlessness in us. There's a streak of rebellion in us. There's a dark side in us that rears its ugly head from time to time. It happens, James' point is, in all of us. Granted, some of us are pint-sized lawbreakers. Others of us are prolific lawbreakers. It doesn't matter in the overall scheme of things. We are all lawbreakers. We all make moral mistakes.
You know the way it goes -- we know the right thing to do, the wrong thing to do, and we do the wrong thing. We know the right thing to say, but it doesn't come out. The wrong thing comes out. We have a sense of what God would have us do in a particular situation, and we do the opposite. What is that about? It's about this streak in us. It's about being depraved people. It's about the sinister work of darkness in all of us. James is pressing for us not only to admit that about ourselves but to go one-step further and accept full responsibility for what that behavior makes us in the eyes of a holy God. It makes us committers of cosmic treason, violators of the commandments of God. It makes us lawbreakers.
Truth be told, most of us don't want to own and wear those kinds of labels. I don't. I'll be very frank with you on that. When I was writing these things out, I thought, Can't I find a softer way to say it than this? Every once in a while I'll be trying to explain the heart of Christianity to someone who's just trying to figure it out, and sometimes they'll push back and say, "Tim, why all the dramatic talk about salvation and a horrible death on a cross and being rescued from sin, talk about redemption and all that? You make the average person feel like a lowlife." A person sometimes says, "You know, I'm not like that. I'm not perfect, but I don't think I need saving. It's just language that's overdramatic. I'm not that bad." If I'm feeling a little feisty and know the person quite well, sometimes I'll ask couple questions back. I'll say, "Did you ever make a personal phone call on a work phone against company policy? Did you ever eat a grape in the produce section of the supermarket? Did you ever tell a customer the check was in the mail or the computer was acting up, when you knew it really wasn't? Did you ever lose your patience and say some words in anger that you wish you could take back? Did you ever hear some information about someone and spread it all over the place without ever determining if it were really true? Ever given your word to somebody -- you know, "I'll be there" -- and then go back on your word?" Did you ever do any of those kinds of things, because if you have, let's take the shine off the words we use to think of ourselves and describe ourselves, and let's just tell ourselves what we really are. If we've done any of the stuff that I've just listed, we are liars, thieves, slanderers and general covenant-breakers. We are transgressors of the law. That's you and that's me. We all fit squarely in the camp of those who must call themselves sinners.
The problem we all face is that we normally tend to evaluate ourselves from a fairly positive perspective.
We look at our lives life a bowling alley. "Hey I threw the ball I knocked a few pins over, but there's still a few others left standing. So I'm not all that bad after all." God's law isn't like that at all.
Lawbreaking is like hitting a window with a hammer, you may only hit it in one spot but it will shatter the whole thing. And that's how it is when you violate God's law. When you hit it at one point, you shatter the whole thing. It's one piece. It's not ten pins lined up. And no one can justify himself by saying, "So hey, I only knocked down pins 2 & 5, but eight others are still standing. I'm doing OK." That's not the way we are seen by God. When we break one -- we smash the whole thing. Don't delude yourself into thinking that you're some kind of righteous person because your sins are minor.
James is saying some of you are spectacular sinners, some of you are kind of boring sinners, but that's not the point. The point is, what Paul says in Romans 3, verse 10, there is none righteous, not even one, not you and not me. We're lawbreakers. James says, whatever you do, don't deceive yourself about your moral batting average. When you exaggerate a story, admit to yourself that very moment, I'm a liar. Let's call it what it is.
Whenever you act in a self-centered way such that it causes hurt in a relationship, admit to yourself and to God in that moment that you have violated the law of love. You have trampled on the highest law in the kingdom of God, which is the law of love. Whenever you borrow company supplies, stretch a company expense report, abuse any company benefit, say what you're doing. Just say it, "I'm stealing. I am a thief." If you get drunk, just say, "I'm a person who does drunkenness -- I'm an alcoholic." Cheating of any kind is serious business. Sexual sin is serious business. Greed is serious business. Favoritism, discrimination, stuff like that is very serious business. Because we're all lawbreakers and we live in a lawbreaking society, sometimes we forget just how abhorrent our lawlessness is to a holy God.
Lawlessness drives a holy God crazy. It's a dissonance inside his ears that is like fingernails on a chalkboard. We read the papers, watch the news, and we say, "So what else is new?" Any manifestation of lawlessness in my life or yours creates a major disturbance in the mind and heart of God. So,James says, we've got to be honest about our lawbreaking. Why do we need to be honest? Because when we see ourselves for who we really are as lawbreakers and when we see God for who he really is, which is holy, then we're going to see that we need help, we need forgiveness, and, most of all, in the context of today's text, we need mercy. We need grace.
James gives an illustration, to drive his point home. Here's the illustration: For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker. These are commandments number six and seven from Exodus 20. The things these two sins have in common is that in the Old Testament the penalty they both required was death. What's his point here? It doesn't matter which law you break -- once you break any of them- you've broken the whole thing. You might not commit adultery but you do commit murder -- you are a lawbreaker. You might not murder someone but you do commit adultery -- you are a lawbreaker. Break one point in God's law, one point of His morality, one point in His love in a love relationship to Him and you have totally shattered the whole thing. So he's summing up his presentation and says -- it this is true -- and it is -- then it should dramatically affect the way you treat one another.
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!
In these very next verses, verses 12 and 13, James not only reminds lawbreakers that in Christ they can find forgiveness and mercy that they so desperately need, but because of that, forgiven lawbreakers should become incredible conveyors of mercy to other people.
The mercy we receive should change forever the manner in which we treat people.
This is at the very core of what James is really leading to in this text when he says, after you are judged by the law that gives freedom, if then you turn around and show no mercy to other people, man, it is going to be trouble. Let me walk you through this because now we're getting right in the center of the bull's-eye of what James is driving at in this text. Look at that phrase, "the law that gives freedom" This requires a little explanation for the richness of this to come out.
What makes biblical Christianity so remarkable is that guilty lawbreakers, who by right should pay dearly for their misdeeds, can all have their moral and ethical crimes paid for by a third party, namely, Jesus Christ. As a result of his death on the cross, the formal case against us lawbreakers can be dropped permanently in the heavenly courts. Case dismissed, we can be legally liberated.
How is this so? It's because God made an outrageous decision with regard to lawbreakers. Listen to this closely, God decided to inject mercy into the judicial equation by which we will be judged someday. This is an unheard of thing, friends. Our whole world, almost all the judicial systems in the world, operate on a system of justice and retribution. Break a law, and find that out. Break a law, and you'll pay, and then you'll be punished, to boot. Depending on the kind of law you break, you might pay big time and be punished big time. School systems, military systems, corporate systems operate on a similar basis -- break the rules, you'll pay, and you'll be punished, to boot. But in the cosmic judicial system, God does this astonishing thing. He takes the crimes that we have committed, and then he arranges for his son Jesus Christ to stand in our place, to pay our fine, to bear our consequence, to receive our punishment. Then in this amazing display of mercy, he lets guilty lawbreakers like me and like you go scot-free. In fact, he goes even a step beyond that and formally declares to the holy God, this man, this woman, on the basis of Jesus Christ, is not guilty, is blameless.
I have to tell you, friends, when I found this out, what I'm talking to you about right now, when I learned that God had injected mercy into the spiritual-judicial system and that it was available to me through repentance and faith, it almost knocked the wind out of me. It was almost not believable to me, because I had no experience with a mercy like that.
Being a normal, red-blooded little guy, I broke my share of the rules, at home, school, in the neighborhood. When I did, I paid. Sometimes I paid dearly, and I bore my share of punishments, deserved, I might add. But I paid and I bore the punishment. You see, the older I got, the more concerned I got about the stakes involved in my lawlessness before God. My screw-ups and my rebellion before God -- breaking a parental rule or a school rule, that's one thing. I'd put that sort of at one level. Breaking the God of the universe's rules, I started understanding, is dangerous business. You see, I didn't know what the implications of my lawlessness before God would mean. I didn't know how much I would pay. I didn't know how severe the justice was going to be. Then I would read in the Bible about hell, and I would say, now, is that the place that everyone who breaks God's laws winds up, because if it is, I'm going there on the express lanes, because, to the best of my ability, I've never been much deceived about my lawlessness. I see it pretty clearly. So I was thinking long and hard about these matters. What was complicating things as my life was developing is that, as the years rolled on, my moral batting average was not going up. I was not evolving slowly into a kinder, gentler, more righteous person. If anything, my numbers were going down. I couldn't stop saying certain things. I couldn't stop doing certain things. I only had human willpower to work with, and it was not strong enough to overcome that spirit of lawlessness or rebellion in me. I could feel it. I was being overpowered by the dark side and couldn't control it.
Whenever I would try to offset my mistakes by doing good deeds, trying to balance out the "moral scales" I never knew what the balance point was. I didn't know if I was doing enough. I didn't know what the expectations were. I didn't know how much stuff I had in the duffel bag, How big does the bag have to be? How full did it need to be? In the middle of all this spiritual confusion, I learned the information that you're learning in these moments, that God, by an outrageous act of kindness and love, injected mercy into spiritual-judicial system. My discovery and clarity about that came through a single verse in the Bible.
Let me show you a verse that might change your eternal destiny Titus 3:5 --
"Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to God's mercy, he saved us."
Just reflect on that verse for a second and allow the haze of confusion to begin to clear. I don't have to spend every day of the rest of my life in a frenzied attempt to make up for the spiritual laws I've broken. I don't have to lie awake any more nights wondering whether or not I've done enough good works to offset my bad ones. I don't have to waste one more moment worrying about winding up in hell forever. Why? Because I'm a good guy? No. God extends His mercy to you. The Bible says, if I will acknowledge my lawlessness, if I will gratefully accept the payment that Jesus made on my behalf, I can be set free from the penalty of my sin, and I can be declared not guilty before a holy God. My address in the afterlife can be formally changed from hell to heaven, and so can yours.
Friends, there's nothing like mercy. There's nothing like it in the world. It's the best. The day that I came to clarity on this, I threw my heart open to God. Why in the world wouldn't I? Man, when I did, I can remember the day. I can remember the pulse rate increase when the discovery was being made. I can remember the feeling of peace that swept over me when I realized that I didn't have to strive to try to earn and merit, offset bad deeds and try, in some vain way, to get God's nod of approval. When I realized that I needed to humble myself, admit my lawlessness and trust in what Christ had done for me, the peace that passes human understanding flooded me. I remember just going, there is nothing like this.
CLOSE: If I can be so bold, I think I've made it pretty clear to you today. Why wouldn’t you throw open the door of your heart right now? You know you’re a lawbreaker, don’t you? Like James says, don’t quibble about how many times. If you’ve broken any of the Ten Commandments, any of the teachings of Scripture, that puts you in the camp of the lawbreakers. You know intuitively that in a moral economy, on the day of reckoning, moral accounts are going to get settled. On the final day of reckoning, a holy God is going to settle every moral account. The Bible teaches very clearly, when it comes time for the price to be paid, there’s two options. You can make your own payment for your own lawlessness and crimes, or you can get on the mercy plan and you can have Jesus, God’s son, be the one who absorbs the penalty and the punishment for your lawlessness. I want to ask you to get on the mercy plan today, this day. Why not right now, even while I’m talking, just simply agree in your spirit and say, “O God, I’m getting it. Thanks for extending mercy to a lawbreaker like me. Thanks for the provision of Christ, who bore my punishment. Please apply what he did on the cross to the long list of mistakes in my life, because I need it.” Friends, if you do that, Christ will set you free, and the peace that passes human understanding will flood into your heart, as it has mine.
