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Northview Church in Kodak, TN exists to point people to the love of Jesus Christ and help people fall in love with Jesus and love others.
So, who walks through that door on a Sunday morning that makes you feel uncomfortable not not scared not threatened, just uncomfortable
Pastor Greg:Maybe it's the way they're dressed
Pastor Greg:Maybe it's the way they smell. Maybe it's all the tattoos or maybe it's the lack of tattoos. Maybe it's you see someone that has a life that's clearly a mess and you just don't want to be around it. Or maybe
Pastor Greg:it's that person who walks through the door and you just know they've got
Pastor Greg:it all together and you resent it. Before they ever say a word. Or maybe and this one's probably even harder
Pastor Greg:Who do you not even notice? Who who is it that sits two rows over from you every single week and you have no idea what their name is? Who who is it that you'll be at lunch this afternoon and and they'll pass you as you're walking to your table and you won't even realize they were at church with you this morning. You never registered who they were but we've all done it. Most of us have one.
Pastor Greg:You've probably thought of somebody in your head right now. We all do it.
Pastor Greg:But for most of my teenage years, when
Pastor Greg:I was like 12 years old, 13, up through probably 15 or 16, I wasn't the kid who really made anybody uncomfortable. I was the kid who wasn't even on the radar. I I was the kid who sat in the back of the room and nobody noticed I was there. Not because anything was wrong just because nobody was paying attention and I kind of liked it that way. I didn't like the spotlight.
Pastor Greg:I didn't really want to be singled out for anything but the reality is you wouldn't remember my name. That's going be important. We'll get back to that in just a minute because James two is going to take us into this question today that addresses situations like that. A question that on the surface, it feels really simple but as we start to dig, it feels like a Mac truck that's is coming through and running us over and James has already done that for three straight weeks, right? Only nine more to go.
Pastor Greg:Here's the question. The kind of underlies everything we're going to talk about today. Who belongs in your church? The answer that James give, it's not it it's not the answer most of us are living. So, let's see what he has to say.
Pastor Greg:We're going to start in chapter two today in verse one and James says this, he says, your iPad, there it goes. They thought he was going tell me my iPad wasn't working today. He says this, my dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim to have faith in our glorious lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others? That whole text right there, it's pretty much the sermon. Before we even get into it, that's pretty much where James is going to lead us but before we get into the the part about favoritism, we need to sit on the name that James is giving to Jesus in this.
Pastor Greg:He calls him the lord of glory or the glorious lord Jesus Christ and you know what? James never calls him that anywhere else. As a matter of fact, nobody in the New Testament does. The referral here is the Shekinah glory that we read about in the Old Testament. It's this visible radiance of god's presence.
Pastor Greg:That presence that filled the tabernacle, that filled the temple, that presence that Moses couldn't even look upon. That Isaiah would say, woe is me, I am undone, that that John, when he was exiled to the island of Patmos, would see the glory of Jesus and he fell down like a dead man.
Pastor Greg:And James, his half brother looks at his brother and says, that glory is him. That is Christology
Pastor Greg:right there and it's important. It's the whole argument because if all true glory belongs to Jesus, every time we redistribute that glory to a man because of what they wear or what status that they have or what they can offer. It's a theological catastrophe. It's not just rude. It's not just unkind.
Pastor Greg:It's a statement about where you think glory actually lives. James says, What is that? I gotta figure out where this song's coming from. I think it's in the back. Okay.
Pastor Greg:That kind of creep me out a little bit. Okay. Anyways, James as he addresses this, he uses some words here that in the NLT, it translates as favor some people over others and your translation, maybe it says, don't show favoritism or partiality but in the New Living Translation, it gives four words that in the Greek, it's one. And the one word that I've been trying to learn to say for a few days here, a week is prosopalimpsia. I think I actually got it out that time.
Pastor Greg:I did not get that
Pastor Greg:out in the first service. That word, James just made it up.
Pastor Greg:Scholars say it's nowhere else in any other Greek text. It doesn't appear anywhere else in Greek literature, nowhere. The Roman world, it it ran on favoritism. It ran on honor the powerful, dismiss the poor, move towards the shine, and away from
Pastor Greg:the shabby. It wasn't a vice.
Pastor Greg:That's just life. That was every day for them in that world. Nobody had a word for stop showing favoritism. Because nobody thought you should stop showing favoritism. And then the gospel shows up.
Pastor Greg:And James has to invent a word because the world that they came from didn't even recognize this was a problem. You see, when he lays this out, he's not giving us a nicer version of the world system. He has to come up with a whole new vocabulary to communicate how a Christian should walk. Who you are determines what you do A Christian who is truly seen the lord of glory can't keep ranking the people that Jesus died for.
Pastor Greg:Not because they're trying harder but because that vision of the lord of glory has changed everything
Pastor Greg:The glory isn't in the status. It's in the image of the god who created that person. It stamped on them and that's where the glory is found. In the image of a one, true, holy god and that's the person most of us so often walk past. Most of us are still running the old calculations.
Pastor Greg:Sorting the room based on appearance or sorting the room based on income or how useful is this person to me or am I comfortable around this person? But James says, we have new eyes. You have a new you in you through Jesus Christ and those new eyes, we need to use them as followers of Jesus.
Pastor Greg:Because the truth is, when you didn't deserve it, Jesus made room for you. So, make room for them. All of them Whether they make you feel comfortable or not.
Pastor Greg:Whether they have anything to offer you or not. In verse two, James says, for example, suppose someone comes into your meeting, dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewelry and another comes in who is poor and dressed in dirty clothes. If you give special attention and a good seat to the rich person but you say to the poor one, you can stand over there or else sit on
Pastor Greg:the floor. Well, doesn't this discrimination show that your judgments are guided by evil motives?
Pastor Greg:James, he's not describing some policy that's been set out there by the church. He's not describing something that that's in the church handbook or that anybody voted on. He's describing a normal human reflex of how we respond to people. Someone
Pastor Greg:shabby walks in and the room moves away. Someone shiny walks in, the room gravitates towards him.
Pastor Greg:It's a instinctive reaction. Kinda like the way a plant will shift and and start growing towards the light. Every year or almost every year, we do an event called Sacred Assembly where we gather together for for usually four nights and on those four nights, we we look at what god has done and we dig into the word and we worship together and we pray together and most of those nights, we have a pretty decent crowd in the room. Never packed out by any means but a pretty decent crowd that shows up. The last year, we had five University of Tennessee football players come to share what god's doing in their lives.
Pastor Greg:There wasn't a single empty seat in the house. We had to pull the seats from the back to make sure everybody had one and if I remember correctly, there were still people who had to stand in the back of the room. That night, I kind of stood up here and two things kind of enter your mind
Pastor Greg:Grateful. Those guys were bold. They shared what god was doing in their life and and I was thankful for the stories they were sharing. It was real
Pastor Greg:and it impacted a lot of you all who were here that night. That's a year and a half ago and I still occasionally hear some of
Pastor Greg:you all bring it up. But it also makes a question pop up.
Pastor Greg:A question that's hard to shake Why were there empty seats on the worship night?
Pastor Greg:It's not about pointing fingers but it's a question that kind of sticks with me
Pastor Greg:because it it tells us, I think it tells all of us that we are inclined to move towards the shine. Even in the church. Even at sacred assembly.
Pastor Greg:We will fill the seats for the people. The world already told us they were worth showing up for.
Pastor Greg:But we leave empty seats on the nights when the only draw is Jesus. Why do we move towards the shine? Not in a villain kind of way, not consciously calculating. I can get something from them but honestly, why does the room shift when someone impressive walks in? And if we're honest with ourselves, it's because deep down we want something from them.
Pastor Greg:Maybe it's a need for status. So, yeah, align yourself with the person who has status Maybe it's a need for security. So, you align yourself with that person that makes you feel secure. Maybe it's a need for validation. So, you chase words of approval from from someone who you think it means something from.
Pastor Greg:The way that you sort a room tells you what you think your life needs that Jesus hasn't provided.
Pastor Greg:We look to other areas to get those needs filled. We look to other people
Pastor Greg:would gravitate to the shine but James says in verse five, he says, listen to me dear brothers and sisters, hasn't god chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith? Aren't they the ones who will inherit the kingdom he promised to those who love him? You you see, god moves towards the ones we move away from.
Pastor Greg:He moved towards you
Pastor Greg:Verse six and seven, he actually talks about how the rich oppressors, they're the ones who are blaspheming Christ's name and he says, the church has been giving the good seat to the people who are actually working against the gospel and gives the floor to the people who've god has chosen to be rich in the faith
Pastor Greg:James doesn't soften it. He hasn't softened anything as we've walked through this book. He says, you have dishonored the poor man.
Pastor Greg:He doesn't say you've just missed him. You've just overlooked him. He said, you dishonored that man.
Pastor Greg:So, when is the last time you crossed the room towards someone who had absolutely nothing to offer you? Not just to be kind.
Pastor Greg:Not just to check that box because pastor said,
Pastor Greg:you gotta do it but because you knew that the lord of glory his image was stamped on that person and you knew it that that person in front
Pastor Greg:of you wearing dirty clothes carried the image of the one true
Pastor Greg:god
Pastor Greg:The direction we move in a room, it's a statement of our faith. Most of us, we're making a statement about it and we don't even know we're making the statement. My favorite pastor currently that I listen to and I listen to him quite often. If you're part of our men's ministry, you know well because I talk about it. We just did the book by him.
Pastor Greg:This guy by the name of Joby Martin. Joby is the pastor of the church of eleven twenty two in Jacksonville, Florida and he tells this story. I've heard him tell it a few times. I mean, his sermons, he tells it quite often about early in his ministry. Now, early on in his ministry, he's working part time for a church and at the same time because he's part time at a church, he's working part time at a gym.
Pastor Greg:So, Joby does what pastors do when they're working part time somewhere and he starts a Bible study at the gym and people start showing up to it. One of the people who started coming was a woman and her profession was that of an exotic dancer. So, what's Joby do? He said, I want you to come to church with me Sunday He didn't just invite her to come. He invited her to come with him and she came Not dressed like anybody else in the room.
Pastor Greg:Didn't look like anybody else in the room. When she walked in, they let her know it. They didn't say anything to her. They didn't do this with words. It's all those small ways, those glances, that a room tells someone that they really don't belong.
Pastor Greg:Joby says, she left feeling more judged, more ashamed, more condemned than she'd ever felt anywhere else. Not at the club, not on the street in a church
Pastor Greg:in the house of the lord of glory
Pastor Greg:Few years later, Joby would plant the church of eleven twenty two and he says, what happened that Sunday morning drives the whole mission of the church he planted.
Pastor Greg:He says, one woman, one Sunday, a room full of believers
Pastor Greg:and they forgot who gave them their seat. The church handed her judgment instead of mercy and you know what? She never walked through the door again. Verse eight,
Pastor Greg:Yes indeed, it is good when you obey the royal law as found in the scriptures. Love your neighbor as yourself. James calls it the royal law. It's the law given by a king. Our king is a person named Jesus.
Pastor Greg:God
Pastor Greg:in the flesh. And Jesus says that this to love your neighbor as yourself and to love god in that all the commands, all the law are summarized in that, that it's the heart of everything. To love god and to love people and what the king said matters the most.
Pastor Greg:So, was the room that that woman walked into
Pastor Greg:Were they living this out? Do us when we pack seats out for football players but we have empty ones on worship night. Is that the royal law in action? For honest, when we do that, we're not partially disobedient. James says, we are breaking the whole heart of the law.
Pastor Greg:Follow along what he says in verse nine, but if you favor some people over others, you are committing a sin. You are guilty of breaking the law. For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of god's laws. For the same god who said you must not commit adultery also said, you must not murder. So, if you murder someone but don't commit adultery, you've still broken.
Pastor Greg:The law. He's not saying that every sin has equal consequences. I think we could all agree that murder carries a pretty heavy consequence in our society as it should. He's saying something more fundamental for us. He's saying, when you look at what god has commanded us to do, when we see the law that he's laid out before us and we're not talking about the ceremonial laws.
Pastor Greg:We're talking about the laws of how we should live our life as a Christian. We look at that and the law isn't a buffet where you can pick and choose what you like. The law comes from a person
Pastor Greg:one law giver and he's behind every command and selective obedience isn't partial faithfulness.
Pastor Greg:What happens when we choose which laws we're going to to live under, you're telling him that your judgment about which commands matter have more authority than he does. That's not faithfulness. That's putting yourself in his position The truth is, you can't be pro life and pro marriage and walk past the person who's broken and just ignore that they're there.
Pastor Greg:It's one god, the same god, the same voice, and he's saying, you can't pick and choose. You follow me or you don't. They didn't just fail to be friendly. They broke the royal law. They silenced the voice of the king in the very house that was built to honor him.
Pastor Greg:He made room for you. Make room for them.
Pastor Greg:That's the diagnosis and it's pretty bad but a good doctor, he doesn't just name the disease. He comes back in and he gives a cure. So, he tells us something that really changes the way we should look at all of this. He says in verse 12, so whatever you say or whatever you do, remember that you will be judged by the law that sets you free. There will be no mercy for those who have not shown mercy to others but if you have been merciful, god will be merciful when he judges you.
Pastor Greg:He's saying mercy triumphs over judgement
Pastor Greg:God will be merciful if you show mercy. Here's what James is saying. If we get this wrong, we kind of miss the whole point of all this. He's not saying that if you show enough mercy, you will earn god's favor. He's not saying that that you have to do this in order to earn that from god that contradicts everything in the Bible.
Pastor Greg:Everything that we know about grace from the whole of the Bible, it was that would contradict it. Nobody stands before god and says, I'm here because I was merciful enough. That's not the gospel.
Pastor Greg:But what it is is that when we extend mercy That is the evidence that god's mercy has actually reached you You see,
Pastor Greg:we we don't follow that law in order to earn god's favor. We follow it because we have god's favor. That because he's changed us, that he's made us new, and it changes everything for us. They're two very different things. One says, mercy earns something and the other says that mercy reveals something about you.
Pastor Greg:If the gospel has actually landed and taken root, it has to show up mercy
Pastor Greg:received should become mercy extended always God showed us mercy. We should show that to the world. It's not a suggestion but
Pastor Greg:it is diagnostic because the unmerciful person has one of two problems. They've either never received mercy
Pastor Greg:or they forgot they received mercy but they both have the same cure.
Pastor Greg:You look back at the beginning and verse one of
Pastor Greg:this, James always, he brings us back to Jesus
Pastor Greg:Not to a principle, not to some sort of moral framework. He brings us to Jesus because he's the only hope, the lord of glory and here's what the lord lord of glory did. He looked at you when you weren't shining, you were shabby. He looked at a humanity who had nothing to offer him. He looked at a humanity that deserved place on the floor, not a seat at the table, not to be a part of the family but he took a cross so that we could have that chair at the table
Pastor Greg:He absorbed judgement so that we could have mercy.
Pastor Greg:He wore the shabby clothes
Pastor Greg:that crown of thorns
Pastor Greg:that borrowed
Pastor Greg:tomb shame on the cross so that we could be clothed in his righteousness. So that we could be seated at the father's table.
Pastor Greg:Mercy triumphed over judgement.
Pastor Greg:First in his body on our behalf on a hill outside Jerusalem. The cross. It takes every ladder that we use to climb and it flattens it out. The glory has been relocated and the only question left is the mercy that found you still moving. Through you or did it stop
Pastor Greg:James, when he says this, he's really quoting Jesus. In Matthew 22, the royal law. It's the two greatest commands. Jesus says, it's all summed up. Love god, love people.
Pastor Greg:Northview Church, does that sound familiar to you? It should because that's our mission statement. Love god, love people, make disciples. Disciple making doesn't happen if you don't love god and love people first. We say it all the time.
Pastor Greg:You can't make disciples if you don't make room for the people James two, it's really our mission. It's the same thing. He made room for you. So, we make room for them. We have to and that phrase as we said it a few minutes ago, it's kind of a map but now we see there's a cost to it.
Pastor Greg:And the cost was a cross He made room for you when you had nothing to offer him. Make room for them when they have nothing to offer you. He made room for you when the only thing you brought was your sin So, let's make room for them, for other people when all they're bringing is their mess. He made room at the cost of his own life. So, let's make room for others at the cost of our own comfort.
Pastor Greg:He made room for you, make room for them. That idea of mercy triumphs over judgement. It's not a sentiment.
Pastor Greg:It's a command
Pastor Greg:It's the way we are to live our lives as followers of Jesus Christ. In reality, it's the outflow of a heart that has actually been reached by the gospel. And I know what it looks
Pastor Greg:like because somebody did it for me When I was a teenager, as I said a few minutes ago, I was the invisible kid The back of every room Not even on the radar, in school, in social situations, and in church. I was there but I was invisible just how I wanted it but somewhere during that time, I begin to feel this draw towards ministry and it scared me to death The last thing I wanted to do was preach. The last thing I want to do was stand up and open god's word in front of other people and
Pastor Greg:if you knew me then, you would probably say that's a good idea. This is not where you need to be going. But fast forward a few years, I'm in my early twenties, 22, 23 years old and I began to come out of my shell
Pastor Greg:but I'm still very much a behind the scenes kind of guy I love serving in the church as long as I didn't have
Pastor Greg:to get on a stage. Keep me in the back. Let me help. Then my pastor at the time named Scott Thomas and some of
Pastor Greg:you know Scott. He looked at me and he saw something that I really didn't see in myself and he pressed on me. He pushed me. He got me out of my comfort zone and he said, hey, you're preaching this week.
Pastor Greg:Before I was ever ready to stand up and do anything like that, he pushed me to do it. Because for some reason, he believed I could pull it off even when I didn't believe it myself. He made room for me at a table. I didn't even sure, wasn't even sure I wanted a seat at that table. I was not the obvious choice.
Pastor Greg:I wasn't even asking for an opportunity. He looked past what I was saying about
Pastor Greg:myself and he saw what god saw, a calling That was almost twenty six years ago or so.
Pastor Greg:Since that time, I've been in ministry pretty much the whole time as a volunteer, ten years as a youth pastor, seven years pastoring and planting this church,
Pastor Greg:standing up here with you all every Sunday, and all of it is because he noticed something in me. Because
Pastor Greg:he saw what god was calling me to and pushed me to go follow the calling. Scott, he doesn't preach much anymore. Occasionally, and we're not in real close contact. I'm friends with him on Facebook but we don't talk a lot and if I'm honest, Scott probably has no idea how he pushed me. He has no idea the full weight of what he did because he really, he probably did that for dozens of other guys
Pastor Greg:quietly No fanfare, no scorekeeping He was just a pastor who looked at someone hiding in the background
Pastor Greg:and decided to say, hey, you got a
Pastor Greg:seat at this table Go do what god's called you to do.
Pastor Greg:That's how mercy works That's what we're called to as believers. It doesn't stop. It doesn't stay where it lands in us. It keeps moving through us and that's what Scott did. He made room for me.
Pastor Greg:That's my goal is to make room for you to push you, to help you take that next step. Some of you, you're going to do that for somebody else. In twenty years from now, somebody's going to
Pastor Greg:be standing up somewhere telling some version of this story that god did in them and it will trace back to a Sunday morning at Northview Church when you push them out of their comfort zone. Because you showed a mercy and you walked up to the person nobody thought needed a seat at that table. That's the mission. Love god, love people, make disciples. That's how it works.
Pastor Greg:Scott, he has no idea. That's how mercy works. It keeps moving. The person who walks through that door next Sunday that makes something and you just kind of tighten up or the person you don't even notice What if somebody crossed the room for them? What if somebody learned their name?
Pastor Greg:What if we said you're welcome at the table? God's got something for you. What if we let the mercy he showed us go through us?
Pastor Greg:And what if that person becomes the next small group leader
Pastor Greg:What if that person becomes one of our deacons? What if that person plants a church one day?
Pastor Greg:Or becomes a pastor
Pastor Greg:What if the mercy that we show on just an
Pastor Greg:ordinary Sunday just because that's who we are?
Pastor Greg:What if it sets something in motion that we will never see this side of eternity? Something that you'll never know. Something that Scott doesn't know. Mercy you've been given is not meant to stop with you.
Pastor Greg:It's meant to carry through you. To that next person. Who god is calling into a to a relationship with himself. Who god is calling to something greater than they could ever imagine. It's meant to carry to the next person and then the next person and then the next person As we love god, and we love people and we make disciples.
Pastor Greg:Because he made room for us So, we make room for them.
Pastor Greg:That's the mission. That's the whole Christian life. So, how do we respond to it?
Pastor Greg:I want to first say something to a group in this room because it's Mother's Day. It needs to be acknowledged because
Pastor Greg:for a lot of you in this room, Mother's
Pastor Greg:Day is a beautiful thing
Pastor Greg:but for some it's not. Some of you have longed to be a mother and it's never happened. Some have lost a child. Maybe through a miscarriage, maybe in another way.
Pastor Greg:Some of you, you're here this morning and the relationship you have with your mom is broken. It's painful. Or or maybe it's your first Mother's Day without mom.
Pastor Greg:Some of you, you are a mother and your child has walked away from the faith
Pastor Greg:or walked away from you.
Pastor Greg:You need to know this. You belong here. Not in spite of what you're carrying, but because God is using it in you. He made room for you.
Pastor Greg:Many of you, maybe you've never surrendered your life to Jesus
Pastor Greg:You've been coming to church, you know all the language but you never crossed the line into a relationship with Christ.
Pastor Greg:You've never taken a seat, never accepted the mercy. Maybe it's because you don't think you're worthy.
Pastor Greg:Jesus is lord whether you acknowledge it or not.
Pastor Greg:He made room for you and you have nothing to offer and that's just how it's supposed to be. He took the cross so that he could give you a chair at the table.
Pastor Greg:Some of you, you know Jesus, but mercy stopped running through you a long time ago. Is there a face that came to mind this morning as we went through this text? Maybe it's that face that you don't even know their name or maybe it's that name that you avoid. Someone you've been sorting out, moving away from instead of moving toward. But the Lord of glory died for them.
Pastor Greg:Mercy that stops with you, it was never really yours to
Pastor Greg:keep. It was always meant to move through you towards others. For whatever reason, god chose us to be the avenue that the the gospel goes out into the world. He chose to use you to love him, love people, and make disciples.
Pastor Greg:I'm going to ask the band to come back up and as they come, I want you to spend some time with the lord So, go ahead where you're at Maybe you're here this morning and you just have this weight of grief because of what this day is. I want you to know there is a seat at the table for you. Maybe you're here this morning and you've never surrendered to the lord. I want you to know you are welcome in the lord's family. Maybe you're here this morning and you know that grace, that mercy has stopped moving through you.
Pastor Greg:I want you to repent of that.
Pastor Greg:And have the lord put you back in motion and on mission. So, spend a couple of moments. However, the lord's leading you today to respond to him. Maybe you need to come to the altar or maybe you need to come up here and talk with me or grab somebody else. Maybe you just need somebody to pray with.
Pastor Greg:Maybe you need to get on your knees at your seat and just pray to the lord however he leads this morning. Spend a couple of moments. How's he leading you today? Merciful god, lord of glory, the creator of all things, and the one we call friend. Thank you for your mercy.
Pastor Greg:Thank you for your grace. Lord, I pray for all in this room, those who are sitting under that weight of grief today, that you would give them rest. They would find hope and comfort in you today, and that you would surround them with believers who can love on them and extend that hand of mercy to them. Lord, I pray for those in this room who don't know you. Some that don't even want to know you and lord, you're drawing them right now.
Pastor Greg:You're showing them that there is mercy available, that they have a seed in god's family, in your family and I pray lord that they would come to you. You tell us in your word that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is lord, we believe in our heart that god that you raised him from the dead that we will be saved and lord, I pray that those in this room or those joining us online who've never done that, that you would draw them right now. Lord, I pray for those us in this room who who we've experienced mercy. We know you. Somewhere along the way, that mercy stopped moving through us I pray lord that we would repent of that, that you would change our hearts towards others so that we can love them more and make disciples not because we're trying to earn anything from you lord.
Pastor Greg:We already have salvation. But because you've changed us and because we want others to experience what we've experienced So father, I ask you to move this morning. However you lead, God, that you would give us the courage to say yes to you. And that you would get all the glory through every bit of it. In Jesus' name we pray.
Pastor Greg:Amen.