Why?

One reason according to James is because when you show favoritism, ‘you become judges with evil motives.’

In other words, when you show favoritism you are setting yourself up in God’s place as a judge.

The Bible says there is only one Lawgiver and judge, but when you make decisions about people based on external factors alone, you are saying, I am judge. I get to make the call here, who deserves kindness and who does not.

And you are not just a judge, James says you are a judge with evil motives. 

That word for evil is the strongest word James could have chosen.  Your motives are not just wrong, or even evil, your motives are actively wicked.  You are being motivated by the same things that motivate the world. 

Now stop here.

I know some of you may be thinking I don’t have a problem with favoritism to the rich.  

But really, think about this, what is at the root of this kind of favoritism?  Why show favoritism to the rich?  What’s at the root of that?  You are looking to that person for what you can get out of them.  I will be kind to the rich person because he can give me something.  But I will treat the poor person with disdain because he’s got nothing for me.  

That’s why this verse is so convicting. 

You look at it at first and you think what’s this got to do with me, I don’t really care about a person’s money but really the problem is deeper than that, and it’s a problem we all struggle with:

When you respond to people on the basis of what they can do for you, you are being motivated by worldly values.  

This is not about respect, this is not about friendship, this is about what’s in it for me? 

That’s how the world makes evaluations about people. 

And that’s evil.  

To live as the world lives is not just unwise or a poor decision, it’s wicked. We’re so in to minimizing our sins and our actions.  C’mon it’s not that big of deal.  James you are going overboard.  What’s so wrong with looking out for yourself?  It’s not that bad.  

Don’t fool yourself about sin.  Don’t fool yourself about worldliness.  Don’t rationalize your sin, don’t try to put a spin on why you are preferring the rich over the poor, your motivation is absolutely evil.  God says when you think about life from a selfish perspective, when you make an idol out of this world and what it has to offer, and when you become proud and think you have the right to make these judgments, that’s not just a mistake, that’s not just a minor little problem, that’s not just a faux paus, that is not just inconsiderate, that is evil.  That’s evil. 

Faith and favoritism do not mix.

We are involved in a battle.  And one of the enemies we fight is the world.  We must resist its influence.  Just because we are a church, just because we have gathered together, just because we say our faith is in the Lord Jesus doesn’t mean  we automatically are not going to be affected by the world’s values.  

Here James is writing to a group of professing Christians and he says you are doing this and this is wrong, you have evil motives.  You are coming to church, you are listening to sermons, but your heart is wrong, and your motives are evil.  That means as individuals and a church we have to do some serious self-evaluation.  We can’t just assume that because we wear our suits and dresses and look nice on Sunday that we are thinking about things the way God does.  

We need to ask ourselves some questions. 

As a church what really is determining our decisions and setting our vision?  Is it God and His Word or is it the world and it’s agenda? 

It’s easy to say that our faith is in the glorious Lord Jesus Christ and that we are living for the world to come, but the proof is in the pudding.  If you asked the people receiving this letter if they went to church to worship God, I’m confident they would have said yes.  If you asked them where their faith and confidence was, I’m confident they would have said it was in Jesus Christ.  But James says here that their actions were saying otherwise.  They were saying with their lips that their faith was in Christ, but they were favoring the rich, which proved that they were just blowing smoke.  It’s possible for us as a church to be going through the motions saying all the right things when in reality the world is setting our agenda.  We don’t want to be a church that is wavering, making distinctions among ourselves, facing both ways.  This church is about Christ and His glory.  That means we’ve got to set the world’s wisdom aside.  

To get more specific, the church is made up of individuals, and we as a church aren’t going to set the world’s wisdom aside, unless we as individuals war against it. 

We need to each ask ourselves, what really is most important to us: Jesus Christ or our own selfish desires?  

Why do we do what we do?  One test is how we treat people.  That’s the test James gives us here. 

Faith in the glorious Lord Jesus Christ is incompatible with personal favoritism.  In other words the faith is incompatible with evaluating people on the basis of externals alone, and it is incompatible with selfish motivations. 

Do we love people primarily because of what they can give us?  Do we only make friends with the people who are easy?  

The fact that God forbids favoritism tells us something about God.  God is concerned about your attitude.  There are certain attitudes that are absolutely incompatible with true authentic Christianity.  Your faith in Christ is to affect everything about you.  Sometimes people relegate their faith in Christ to one little compartment of their lives, one that they bring out on Sunday mornings when they sing their songs and listen to sermons, but James makes it clear here you can’t do that, your faith in Christ has to do with every part of your life, even down to how you treat other people who are different than you are.  Your faith in Christ has to do with how you respond to a poor person.  Your faith in Christ has to do with how you treat someone whose personality you don’t prefer.  Your faith in Christ has to do with how you react to people at work.  The unbeliever has a perspective on life and it affects everything about them.  We as believers have put our faith in Christ and it should affect everything about us.  

We as a church should stand out.  When people walk in our doors, and when we go out those doors and interact with unbelievers, they should notice a radical difference in the way that we treat people.  We’re to love others the way God loved us. “Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love…”(Ephesians 5:1) How did God love us?  Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  We were reconciled to God while were His enemies.  God did not love us on the basis of anything good in us.  If He chose to love only those people who deserved it, guess what, none of us would be loved.  Think about the sacrifice that Christ made to save us.  If I could somehow take one of you to heaven, you would never want to leave, you would want to stay there forever.  What could possibly tempt you to leave?  Yet Christ came down.  Why?  Why would He come to earth?  Love.  What a sacrifice.  “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”  We’re to go out and imitate that love in the way we serve one another.   

Our lives shouldn’t make sense to the world. 

You are sacrificing for that person who hates you?  You are showing kindness to the person who can’t give anything back?  You are laying down your life for that hurting, needy person?  Why?  Why would you do something like that?  You are loving your enemy?  What are you thinking?  What do you get out of it?  

It’s not about me.  That’s the point.  It’s about my Savior.  I live by a completely different standard.  I’m not bound by the world’s wisdom anymore.  

The problem with the church today is that it is too normal. 

The world looks at us and sees that we are professing Christ, we’re good at that, and we’re good at sticking to our little list of do’s and don’ts but besides that the basic pattern of our lives is not all that different.  The world’s agenda is still guiding us.  

Real practically, we’ve got to stop looking at people in terms of what can I get from them; and start asking how does Christ want me to view them, and how can I show the love of Christ to them?  

“My brethren don’t hold your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism…”

But what does favoritism look like?

He illustrates.

Picture this scene in your minds.   

The church has gathered together. They’ve come to worship.  In enters a man who is obviously very wealthy.  You know he’s wealthy because he is wearing gold rings.   Literally James calls him a gold-fingered man.  So don’t think wedding ring, think Mr. T.  A man whose hands are just loaded with rings.  And the reason he is wearing so many rings is to let you know that he is rich.

The gold ring was a status symbol in James’ day.

Kind of like driving to church in a Mercedes Benz.  Somebody has a Mercedes Benz you know they are pretty wealthy. And, somebody walks in with gold rings all over his fingers you know he’s got some cash.  It’s funny, sometimes people lease expensive cars to look like they are wealthier than they really are; and that even happened in James’ day, you could rent these gold rings to look like you were wealthier than you really were.  Things haven’t changed all that much.

But he’s not only wearing gold rings, he’s also got fine clothes. 

If you look at this phrase in your Bibles you’ll probably see a little 2 right by it, and you check down in the footnote and you see that this word fine literally means bright.  He’s wearing literally a shiny garment.  This guy is just emanating wealth.  Brightly dyed clothes were very expensive so you can imagine that he’s wearing the Armani suit, the brightly polished shoes, one look at him and you know, boy’s got bank!  He looks like he just walked off the cover of GQ.  

Immediately after he makes his entrance, a poor man shuffles in.

 He’s wearing dirty clothes.  You smell him before you see him.  Picture the typical homeless person, his clothes are all mismatched, he’s got holes in his outfits, he’s got dirt under his fingernails, he hasn’t shaved in weeks, he doesn’t look like he’s taking a shower in a few days. 

O.k., maybe years.  

So how do they respond?

James says ‘you pay special attention to the one who is wearing fine clothes…’  You know who catches your eye.  You are sitting there getting ready for worship and immediately your face is lifted.  I mean here you are a refugee living in a foreign land, you’ve got no real connections, you are suffering, and in walks your ticket out.  You’ve got to make sure that man feels comfortable, that he has a good time, you need him to come back.  He’s got so much to offer the church.  Imagine if he just started to tithe!

In the synagogues of that day, there were only a few benches to sit on.  There were a couple up front and then probably some that were scattered around the outside walls.  Most people were standing.  But you know what to do.  This guy needs the good seat, he needs to be able to hear what’s going on.  So you say to him, “You sit here in a good place…” 

Now there’s nothing wrong with giving a good seat to someone. 

The problem is why they did it.  You find out their motives real quickly, look how they treated the poor man.  “and you say to the poor man, ‘you stand over there, or sit down by my footstool…”  You can just hear the brusqueness in their voice.  “You, yeah, you over there, or you know what even better, here’s my footstool, yeah, what I put my feet on, why don’t you sit under that.”  The NASB reads by, but the preposition literally means under.  Could you hide yourself?  Could you try to stay out of the way as much as possible?  I mean it’s kind of distracting, it’s embarrassing, the smell and all.  

That’s favoritism. 

That’s what it looks like.  

Making decisions about people on the basis of external factors alone.  

Now try to put yourself in the place of the people who originally received this letter.  Can’t you hear the excuses the people in the church might give? 

“This seems like such a minor issue.” 

“We’re just looking out for the good of the church.” 

“Nobody is going to be attracted to the gospel because of that poor man, but if we can just get that rich person to attend, then think of all the people we can help.”  

And perhaps you are looking at these verses and you are thinking, what’s the big deal here, why you getting all worked up James?  

But what James is pointing out is that although you think this is a minor issue in reality it is a major issue, because that action, showing favoritism, flows out of a much deeper and more significant problem, a problem in your heart.  

It’s not just a what you do problem.

It’s a why you do it.  

Favoritism reveals something about you.    

This is what you have done, James explains, when you show favoritism you have made distinctions among yourselves and you have become judges with evil motives.  

Let’s think about the first.

You have made distinctions among yourselves.  Remember that word distinctions?  It’s the same term used back in chapter 1 to mean ‘facing both ways.’  When you show favoritism as a believer you are facing both ways, you are professing your commitment to to Christ, but in reality you are actually committed to the world’s values.  You are thinking like the world thinks, and valuing what the world values.  As Joseph Mayor explains, when you show favoritism, “you are divided…?  You have made distinctions among yourselves.  You have not a single eye, but you are influenced by worldly considerations.  You look to the world and not Christ only.”  

You ask a non-Christian about this passage, and they say this makes sense.  It only makes sense to show some special consideration to the rich person, because the rich person is going to be able to do something for you that the poor person cannot.  But the point here is that we are not non-Christians.  We live our life by a totally different set of principles.  We’re believers, and that changes everything.  

God is impartial and He wants His people to be.  

The way Christians and the world evaluate people ought to be drastically different. Moses told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 10:17, “For the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty and the awesome God, who does not show partiality or take a bribe.”  Jehoshaphat explained to the judges of Israel, “Now then let the fear of the Lord be upon you, be very careful what you do, for the Lord your God will have no part in unrighteousness or partiality or the taking of a bribe.” (2 Chronicles 19:7)   Since God is impartial we ought to be.  Leviticus 19:15 lays it down, “…you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly.”  God’s people are to be radically different than the world around them in the way they treat others.  We as a church should stand out as completely different than the world, we should be a unique place, a haven, where there is no partiality.   

God’s perspective on the rich and poor is completely different than the world’s.  Because what does God’s wisdom say about the poor man and about the rich man?  2:8, “Love your neighbor as yourself…” Love them both sacrificially regardless of what they can do for you.  When you show your contempt for the poor, you are showing contempt for God.  Because God tells us back in 1:27 that pure and undefiled religion is this to visit orphans and widows in their distress.  God is concerned about the poor. 

True faith and favoritism do not mix.  

Favoritism reveals that you’re trying to live for both worlds, this one and the one to come.  And what’s Jesus say about that?  No man can serve two masters.  Either he’ll love the one and hate the other, or hate the one and love the other.   When you make judgments about people based solely on external factors, you are proving you are not concerned about what God is concerned about, and the world’s wisdom is really what is dominating your behavior.   

You are serving the wrong master. 

I have nine children, so I have had plenty.

Honestly, probably more of them, have been cute awakenings, actually. Like the time, I awoke to my two year old daughter singing, I may never march in the infantry, ride in the Calvary, shoot the artillery, but I am in the Lord’s army.

A rude, cute, awakenening.

And, you know, even though I wasn’t incredibly excited to hear it around five on Friday morning, that song does remind us of an important truth.  We as believers are involved in a war. And the Bible tells us our conflict is against three great enemies; the flesh, the devil and the world.

We began to look at what the Scripture teaches us about the world last week.

And we saw that God has not called us to withdraw from the world, but to resist its influence.  Jesus Himself prays, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one.”   

This means God has called us to be holy in an unholy world.  That’s not always easy because the world we live in is not neutral towards biblical truth.  It’s hostile towards it.  And so it’s not content to allow believers to think and live biblically.  It wants to influence us. It wants us to think the way it thinks.  We have a responsibility to resist its influence.  That’s why Paul says, ‘be not conformed to the world…’  

So we as believers are involved in a great struggle.  We struggle to keep ourselves unstained by worldliness. We don’t want to think the way the world thinks, and we don’t want to live the way the world lives.  It’s not always easy, but we struggle. Now if there’s no struggle, we know we’re not believers.  Because true believers war against worldliness.  

That’s exactly what we see in James 1:27. 

Remember that in verses 26 and 27 James is giving us three tests to help us evaluate whether or not our religion is real.  And this is one of them, look at verse 27, “This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father, to visit orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” Worship that is pure comes from people striving to keep themselves pure, and worship that is false from people who are false.  

Now, there’s something interesting about this particular test. 

It’s a bit different than the first two.  When James says that your religion is worthless if you don’t bridle your tongue, and that true religion visits orphans and widows in their distress, it is difficult to wiggle your way out of the conviction.  Either you are bridling your tongue or you are visiting orphans and widows in their distress or you are not.  These are very specific, black and white tests.  But this third test is not nearly as specific, it’s much more general and so there are some who when they read ‘keep yourself unstained by the world,’ may think they pass this test when they don’t because they are unaware of specific ways that they have been stained.   

But have no fear.

Because, James is ever practical. 

He doesn’t allow you to wiggle your way out of the conviction.  Instead he keeps pressing his point home.  One of the ways he does that is by providing practical illustrations of the truth he is teaching.  1:2-4, ‘Consider it all joy my brothers when you encounter various trials…’ what’s that look like? 1:9-11, ‘let the poor man glory in his high position and the rich man glory in his low position…’ 1:22, ‘prove yourselves doers of the word and not hearers only…’ what’s it look like to be a hearer only? 1:23,24 ‘a hearer only is like a man who looks in a mirror, goes away and forgets what he looks like…’  Here is the truth, here is what it looks like.  

And that’s what he does again for us here in 2.

Remember when James wrote this letter he didn’t divide it into chapters.  That came later.  What he writes in 2:1-13 flows out of what he has just written in 1:26,27. He doesn’t stop by simply calling us to keep ourselves pure from worldliness, he continues by giving us a very down to earth example of how worldly thinking so often infects the church. 

This is one illustration of what worldliness looks like.  

We often evaluate people using the world’s standards.  We show favoritism. The world is partial, which means that they make decisions about people on the basis of external factors alone.  And when the church shows favoritism you know it’s being stained by the world.  

Honestly this issue might not seem all that important to us, but it’s obviously very important to James.  So important that he spends thirteen verses arguing against it.  And although this particular topic might not be high on our list of issues to discuss, God shows His wisdom by including it here in the book of James, because we find that it is a major problem throughout history.  

In fact you could argue that this problem of favoritism is one of the major problems throughout history.  Think slavery, think civil rights, think caste system, think Oliver Twist, think the parable of the Good Samaritan, think World War 2, think Hitler, think Aryan nation. All just extreme forms of this very common problem: the sin of partiality, or favoritism, making decisions about people on the basis of external factors alone. 

And anytime you see the same problem occurring repeatedly throughout history it should cause you to put your guard up, because you realize, that biblically speaking, the same sin nature that resided in those individuals resides in you.  

Man because of his sinful nature is instinctively prejudiced.  I remember how this was driven home to me when I went to Latvia for a missions trip.  I found as I traveled throughout Latvia that many Latvians were incredibly prejudiced against Russians.  Now I couldn’t tell the difference between a Latvian and a Russian, but they could.  And it finally struck that racism is not about color.  If we were all the same color we’d still have problems with racism.  Because the problem is deeper than color, it’s in our hearts.      

It’s this sin of partiality or favoritism.  Making evaluations of people on the basis of the world’s standards, not God’s.  

This was a particular problem in the early church.  God commanded His people to be impartial, but it was difficult, because the church was the one place in all of society where it wasn’t about social status.  Slave, master, rich, poor, male, female, one in Christ.  Besides that most everyone in the early church was poor, so if a rich person was converted it would be very easy to get real excited not about his conversion but about what he had to offer the church.  

That’s the issue James is addressing here.  He’s writing to believers who are suffering.  And they are struggling in how they are responding to that suffering.  And he’s aware that one of the sins they are going to struggle with in particular is this sin of partiality.  Evaluating people the way the world does. And so he presents an air tight argument against favoritism.  

He begins with his thesis statement in verse 1:

Favoritism and True Faith don’t mix. 

“My brethren do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.”  He addresses these believers with a term of affection, my brothers. Perhaps he does so to soften the blow they are about to receive.  I love you and that’s why I am about to rebuke you. 

Notice exactly how James puts it. 

He doesn’t merely say “Don’t show favoritism.”  He says, “Don’t hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.”  This verse is not a suggestion.  So it must not be read that way.  It’s a command.  James is laying down the law.  To put it another way – he’s saying – true authentic faith in Jesus Christ is absolutely incompatible with an attitude of favoritism. 

Favoritism is not merely being discourteous. It’s not just bad manners. It is anti-gospel.  

In most of our Bibles the term favoritism comes at the end of the verse.  In the Greek, it’s right up front for emphasis.  Imagine it in bold print, almost like a title for the essay that follows.  The word for favoritism is a ‘distinctively Christian word.’  In fact, many scholars suggest that the writers of the New Testament actually coined it.  John MacArthur explains that “perhaps the reason they had to come up with this new word is because favoritism was such an accepted part of most ancient societies that it was assumed and not even identified as it still is in many cultures today.”  It literally means ‘receiving of face’ or ‘lifting of face.’  And it came to be a well-known term denoting the partiality of a judge who made biased judgments based on external circumstances, and more generically of preferring a person because of something you are enamored by.

Here favoritism is in the plural, which means that James is not just talking about an isolated act of favoritism, but instead about a pattern of life and a problem with wide-ranging applications.  That means he’s forbidding favoritism of any kind.  He’s about to show us one example of favoritism in verses 2-4, preferring the rich, but that is not the only kind of favoritism that’s sinful. 

Christians must not make a practice out of favoritism and they must not show favoritism in any way.  

The grammar of this passage strongly suggests that he’s calling on the church to stop a habit or action that is already in progress.  In other words, he’s not merely telling them to not do something in the future. He’s commanding them to stop something they are doing now.  

Just because we are believers doesn’t mean we are perfect, and we constantly need to humbly evaluate our lives and our church in the light of God’s Word, to determine whether or not we have slipped into worldly patterns unaware.   Wordliness is especially dangerous when it is subtle.  It often sneaks into our lives through the back door and instead of showing up in what we wear or what we do, shows up in how we think and what we desire.  And that’s what seems to have happened here to these believers.  They were going about their religious activities, while thinking the way the world thinks.  

James is going to tell us exactly why favoritism is such a serious sin down in verses 5-11; but for now I want you to notice the hint he gives us here in verse 1. 

He says our faith is in whom? The glorious Lord Jesus Christ. 

When you say you put your faith in Christ what are you saying?  One of the things you are saying is that He is glorious.  That He is worthy of exaltation.  That He is famous.  That He is worthy of our honor. 

When you show favoritism you are glorying in the wrong person.

These two terms Christ and glory go together.  They are inextricably linked.  We serve a glorious Savior.  Our Savior is exalted far above all.  There is no one and nothing here on earth that even compares to Him.  When you think awesome, when you think worthy of respect, when you think glory, you need to think Jesus Christ.  1 Corinthians 2:8 calls Him the Lord of glory.  Colossians 3:4 says that Christ is now in glory.  2 Thessalonians 2:14 explains that glory belongs to Him.   1 Timothy 3:16 says that he was taken up to glory, and Titus 2:13 tells us that when he returns that day will be full of glory.  Glory belongs to Jesus Christ.  He is the very definition of glory.  

True believers shouldn’t be overawed or bedazzled by passing temporary worldly glory because our faith is in someone whose glory far outshines anyone or anything here on this earth, the Lord Jesus Christ.   Your faith in the glorious Jesus Christ is incompatible with favoritism because when you show favoritism what are you doing?  You are giving glory to man that belongs only to Christ.  When you show favoritism you are giving the glory Jesus Christ deserves to some man who doesn’t.  

I like how one pastor puts it, “We know the glory of God when we look by faith into the face of Jesus Christ. In any Christian congregation there is only one glory and that belongs to Jehovah Jesus, and we have to make sure that that is so. We have nothing else to offer men and women except Jesus Christ. Isaiah saw him in the temple and we see this same one by faith. All the wealth and fame and power of sinners is less than nothing compared to him. The name of Jesus does not borrow a thing from us – all the glory of men is like the flower of the field, withering and perishing….If a congregation were full of millionaires, and beauty queens, and the Philadelphia Eagles, and had the leadership of Mensa men with their IQ’s going through the roof – all that would give no additional glory to Jesus Christ. It would, of course, detract from it. In the presence of his glory all earthly achievements are less than dust. If you reject my Jesus Christ I cannot say to you, “Well, what do you think of these moral guidelines, family counsels, our choir, ideas about government and social action ?” My one task is to persuade you of the Lord’s glory, and if you see that than everything is new. If you don’t see that then our church being full of beautiful people will not help you at all. I cannot discriminate and highlight the wealthy, and tell you where the talent is in the congregation. If you become a Christian all this congregation will be your family. For your brothers and sisters there will be very different kinds of men and women. I have to point you to Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.”

That’s why Favoritism and Faith Don’t Mix.  

The church is not about the glory of man.  It’s about the glory of Christ. 

Now you know James.  He’s not going to stop with just giving you the principle, or stating his thesis.  He’s got to move on and give us an illustration of just exactly what favoritism looks like, which we will look at next time.  

In James 1:26 and 27, we are given three tests.

1.) The way we speak.

2.) The way we relate to the vulnerable.

And,

3.) The way we relate to the world.

Are we worldly?

Over the past couple of posts we have been defining worldliness and thinking a little about why it is dangerous. Now, let’s try to get specific.

What are some specific ways we can evaluate whether or not we are worldly?

First.

What’s your attitude towards money?  

Matthew 6:19ff, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal…”

The world’s attitude towards money, treasure it.  God’s,treasure me. 

No one can serve two masters.

You can’t serve God and money. 

So you need to ask yourself some tough questions.  Why do I work?  Why do I save my money?  Why do I have the house I have?  Why do I have the car I have?  Listen, you’ve got to ask yourself the hard questions.  Get together with someone who knows more than you and ask for help.  Work through your attitude towards money.  Have you been stained by the world?  

Second.

What’s your attitude toward entertainment?

Too often our attitude towards entertainment is just like the worlds. 

Wayne Wilson writes, “Every Christian seems to agree that we live in a time of cultural decline.  Obscenity, vulgarity, and perversion are the norms.  Decency, honor and purity are the exceptions.  Christians talk about a culture war as though it were an us versus them contest.  I will argue that we are the enemy – that it is us versus us.  The decadence prevails because it is largely funded by Christian dollars, viewed in Christian homes, and welcomed by Christian hearts.  Somehow we have grown fond of this world.  Christians have always been tempted by the world, but this is I believe the first generation of Bible believing Christians to ever have embraced the world’s temptations so completely.  We delight in that which is offensive to God.  Because we love what the world loves the world is tearing us down.”

How does your view of entertainment match up to Ephesians 5:3-7?  “But do not let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you, as is proper among saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.  For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.  Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.  Therefore do not be partakers with them…”  

When was the last time you exposed yourself or your family to entertainment that matches the description given here in Ephesians 5?  What’s the world say about that?  Oh it’s just funny joking.  Or that kind of stuff doesn’t bother me.  But that’s not the point.  It should bother you.  Wayne Wilson explains, “To rely on what bothers me is trusting my own heart, the very thing the Bible warns I should not trust.  If someone steals or watches pornography enough times, it may not bother that person anymore, but is that a true standard?  People do become callous.  The heart is deceitful.  A cold heart is not a reliable standard to live by.”  Have you been stained by the world?  

Third.

What’s the purpose of your life? 

Are you living primarily for the now?  Are you living primarily for your own personal pleasure?  

The world makes its decisions on the basis of one thing. How will it affect me?  Will it bring me pleasure?   The apostle John defines worldliness as “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the boastful pride of life…” In other words, living for the now.  

Sometimes professing Christians make decisions that way.  How many times have you heard someone say, or you have said yourself, I would obey God in this particular area, but it’s too hard.  What do they mean by that?  God’s commands don’t fit my desires.  I would serve in the local church, I would submit to my husband, I would sacrificially love my wife, I would witness, but I don’t want to, so I’m not going to.  

God has given us our purpose.

You have been bought with a price therefore honor God with your body. 

But is that how we are living?   How do you make decisions?  What’s the bottom line?  Are you being stained by the world?  

Four.

What’s your attitude towards sin?

This is a bit more general, but it’s an important issue.  

The world minimizes sin.  Too many believers fall for that trap. Instead of seeing our sin the way God sees it, we minimize it and make excuses for it.  

“It is but a little sin!  God is merciful!  God is not extreme…We mean well.  One cannot be so particular!  Where is the mighty harm?  We only do as others!”  

Do you make excuses for your sin?  Even as we talk about some of these examples of worldliness are you coming up with rationalizations in your heart?  

We must not accept the world’s standards and the world’s definition of sin.  We must remember as J.C. Ryle writes, ‘Sin comes to us, like Judas, with a kiss, and like Joab, with an outstretched hand and flattering words.  The forbidden fruit seemed good and desirable to Eve, yet it cast her out of Eden.  The walking idly on his palace seemed harmless enough to David, yet in ended in adultery and murder.  Sin rarely seems sin at its first beginnings.  Let us then watch and pray that we fall into temptation.”

Do you see sin as no big deal?  Have you been stained by the world?

Those are just a few examples that come to mind.

Now, I didn’t give you those examples so that we might establish our own legalistic list of do’s and don’ts but instead to help you see that we all are in danger of being infected with worldliness.  Worldliness is not an issue out there that we don’t have to be concerned about because we are in here.

No, we are involved in a battle.  We need to war against worldliness.  If we are not, we are losing.    

Obviously, as believers, we are not perfect. 

That’s not James’ point here in verse 27.  The apostle John says “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”  Paul writes of believers, “the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and they are contrary to one another.”  But the point is, true believers fight.  They work at keeping themselves from being stained by the world because they realize the stakes are high. 

James is very black and white about this isn’t he? 

If you are not keeping yourself from being stained by the world, in other words, if you are living your life according to the world’s standards and values, that’s proof your worship isn’t acceptable to God.  It’s worthless.  

Why?  Is this works salvation?  No.  Of course not.  It’s salvation works. 

As Christians, we have been set free.  Colossians 1:13 says that we have been “transferred out of the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.”  We’re not who we used to be.  God by His grace has taken us out of one kingdom and transferred us to another.  And, so Paul says in Colossians 3, “since we have been raised up with Christ…” since we have this new life, “we are to keep seeking the things above where Christ is…”  “Set your mind on things above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” 

We don’t keep ourselves unstained from the world because that’s what saves us, we keep ourselves unstained from the world because we are saved.  We are new creatures.  We’ve left that old life behind.  We’ve turned from the world to Christ, so why would we ever go back.  That’s why this is a great test of whether our worship is real.  It’s not something that can really be forced upon you. 

It’s something that should flow from you.  

Many years ago Martyn Lloyd Jones was struggling with his call to the ministry.  He had been trained as a doctor, and actually was the assistant physician for the Queen’s personal physician.  So he was on his way up.  But he sensed a call to the ministry.  As he was struggling through his call, which direction to take with his life, he was asked by one of his friends to go out to the theater.  

Years later, Lloyd Jones recalls that visit, as a turning point in his life.  He couldn’t remember the play, but what he does remember is coming out of the theater with the great crowds behind him, and all the glamour that is part of a night out at a play, and sees a rag-tag group of Salvation Army members playing a hymn on their instruments.  At that point, he said, he realized “These are my people.  These are the people to whom I belong.  And I want to belong to them.”  

We’ve come out of the world.  We don’t belong there anymore.  We have a new life and a new purpose and a new direction.  The world used to be everything to us, now God is.

This is not legalistic – keep yourself from worldliness.  This is grace – keep yourself from worldliness.  Christ has redeemed us – he has saved us – and so we long to be with Him and do what He desires.  

Edward Payson illustrates, “When a man stands with his back to the sun, his own shadow and the shadows of surrounding objects are before him.  But when he turns towards the sun, all these shadows are behind him.  It is the same in spiritual things.  God is the great Sun of the Universe.  Compared with him creatures are but shadows.  But while men stand with their backs to God, all these shadows are before them, and engross their affections, desires and exertions.  On the contrary, when they are converted and turn to God, all these shadows are thrown behind them, and God becomes all in all, so they can say from the heart, ‘Whom have we in heaven but thee? And there is none on earth that we desire besides thee.”  (Psalm 73:25)”

Think of it like this:  “The Scriptures teach us that angels are continually present in this world, and they are doing all sorts of things in the purpose of God.  Since they are spirits, we can’t see them with our eyes.  So we go about our day and we are basically unaware of all that is going on around us.  Now imagine, that God should somehow give you the ability to see these angels throughout your day.  That would certainly change the way you went about doing things, wouldn’t it?  You would see angels where everybody else just saw nothing.  You would be interested by the sight, you would want to talk with these angels, you would want to become friends with these angels.  You wouldn’t be like other men any more, would you?  You would be something of a new person, angels would seem much more interesting to you than anything else.  People would either think you were crazy or a visionary or just distracted.  Now God did not make angels visible to us.  But the light of God’s Word does make the Lord of angels in some sense visible to us, at least now he is a reality in our minds, and the Scriptures help us to feel and act as if we saw Him who is invisible.  The Scriptures bring God into the circle of objects by which we perceive ourselves surrounded, and in whatever circle he is seen, he will be seen to be the most important object in it.  Now if the sight of angels would affect a change in a man’s character, how much more will seeing the infinite God.  His favor will appear all important, his anger dreadful; all other objects will, in a measure, lose their interest, and the man will be thought deluded, or visionary or distracted.”  

True believers are different than the world. 

That’s James 1:27. 

True religion is this – to keep oneself unstained by the world. 

Worldliness is a problem.  We’re not living in heaven.  We’re living in hostile territory.  The world’s against God and it wants us to be.  This means we have to keep ourselves from being stained by the world.  

Is your religion real? 

That’s the test James gives us. 

If you are not a believer you are just going to live your life according to the world’s system.  You may go to church on Sunday, but you live for the world throughout the week.  But if you are a true believer, you’ve been transformed and so although you still fall and still struggle, you will war against worldliness for the glory of your God and Father.     

Do you?

James says true religion is to ‘keep oneself unstained by the world.’

In other words, if you are not actively keeping yourself, you are going to be stained by the world.

The reason you have to actively keep yourself unstained by the world is because the world is constantly seeking to press us into its mold.  You hear a lot these days about tolerance. But the truth is the world is not tolerant towards God and towards true believers.  The world wants you to think like they think.  That’s why the apostle Paul explains in Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”  

If we are not on our guard, we are in danger. 

You’ve all heard the story of how you boil a frog.  You don’t just set him down in boiling water.  No you put him in a pot of water that is a nice temperature, and then you slowly turn up the heat.  That’s the way worldliness tends to stain us and to infect our lives.   We let down our guard.   

You see this happening in the Old Testament. 

One author explains, “As Israel became apostate, it’s practices were progressively less distinguishable from those of the Canaanites.”  Slowly but surely they began to think and act just like the world around them because they were not on their guard.  They weren’t keeping themselves unstained from the world.  

And “Just as Israel was told repeatedly to separate itself from the immoralities of the pagan peoples it was displacing in Canaan the early church was to separate itself from the beliefs and practices of the … civilization within which it existed.  Christians were not to feel at home in the world but rather were to conduct themselves as strangers and exiles, without becoming conformed to the surrounding society.”  

If we are not careful, what happens is that we being to integrate worldly ideas and principles with our Christian practice, without even really realizing it.  We become more and more worldly but are unaware of our worldliness because we are still participating in religious activities.  

Herbert Schlossberg in his book Idols for Destruction explains, “Rarely when Israel fell into idolatry did they openly renounce the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in order to bow before the pagan shrines.  Instead…the nation combined the old rituals with what it knew of Canaanite religion.  We can see this in the description of the religious revival under King Josiah.  The king commanded the priests to remove from the temple the vessels that had been introduced for the service of Baal and of the heavenly bodies, he deposed the priests who burned incense to the pagan deities, he scattered the cult prostitutes…In turning away from God, the nation had not fallen into irreligion, but had combined the temple religion with the pagan beliefs and practices of the surrounding peoples.”  Their lives were stained by the world, and thus their worship was unacceptable to God.  

When I was a young man I went to the border of Rwanda.  And if you remember Rwanda a number of years ago was the scene of a terrible tribal war.  Hundreds if not thousands died.  And it was so sad as I talked to one of the missionaries about Rwanda he told me that before that event occurred Rwanda had been considered a Christian nation.  Many missionaries had gone to Rwanda and many had been supposedly converted.  But what had happened in reality was that many of the Rwandas just added Christianity to their old tribal religions.  It was a surface Christianity.  They went to church, they went through the motions of worship, but down deep, they hadn’t changed.  And so when the war broke out, they went back to their old ways because they had never really turned to new ones.

It’s easy to point our fingers at the Rwandans, but I’m afraid many professing Christians are like that.  We’ve just added going to church and praying as kind of a surface covering over a heart and life that is completely devoted to the world and our previous way of life. 

 If we take a step back we can see this happening in the church at large. Too often the ideas and principles that control the church are just the same principles and ideas that control those in the world, only perhaps they are clothed in more religious language.

For example I was reading in a newsletter, that in a past issue of Newsweek their religion editor asserted that ‘mere tolerance of other religions is not enough..’ and the ‘acceptance of other religions as valid paths to God is insufficient.’  According to the editor, ‘the most important theological agenda in the millennium is for committed Christians, Jews and Muslims to find within their own traditions sound theological reasons for valuing other faiths without compromising their own.”  

Now you think, that’s the world, I can understand that.  Apart from God, that makes sense.  But you don’t expect that kind of thing from the church.  But turn to Christianity Today, in a recent article by a college professor from a well known Christian college, we read that Christians ‘should seek Muslim prayer partners and gather together to pray to the true, one and only God to have mercy on us.’

“When evangelicals capitulate and attempt to soften the offense of the gospel this way, they blur the lines between the god of Islam and the God of the Bible.”  That’s just thinking like the world.  We can love Muslims and reach out to them without compromising the truth.  To do otherwise is to be stained by the world.  

Another example is that of psychology.  A University of Illinois psychologist “studied over a long period of time the relationship between academic psychology and the American churches.”  And you know what he found?  He discovered that “psychology and psychiatry were beginning to discover the damage done by their naturalistic assumptions…” But on the other hand, many in the churches had become so enamored with the naturalistic assumptions that were contradictory to their own beliefs that they were more committed to psychology and psychiatry than the psychologist and psychiatrists were.  

There are certainly other examples. 

James Montgomery Boice gives four.  “Like those liberals of past years, evangelicals today…1.) Pursue the world’s wisdom…If they are asked whether the Bible is the authoritative and inerrant Word of God, most will answer affirmatively.  But many have abandoned the Bible all the same because they don’t think it is adequate for the challenges we face as they enter a new millennium.  They don’t think it is sufficient for winning people to Christ so they turn to felt-need sermons, to entertainment, or to signs and wonders.  They do not think the Scriptures are sufficient for achieving genuine Christian growth, so they turn to therapy groups…2.) Embrace the world’s theology.  Like liberals before us evangelicals use the Bible’s words but give them new meanings.  Sin becomes dysfunctional behavior.  Salvation becomes self-esteem or wholeness…3.) Follow the World’s agenda.  The world’s major agenda is not hunger, racism…The world’s major agenda is being happy and happiness is achieving the maximum amount of personal peace and sufficient prosperity to enjoy it.  But is that not the bottom line of much evangelical preaching today?  Being happy?  Being content?  Being satisfied…4.)  Employ the world’s methods.  Evangelicals have become like liberals in this area, too.  How else are we to explain the stress so many place on numerical growth and money?  How else are we to explain that so many pastors tone down the hard edges of Bible truth in order to attract greater numbers to their services…”  

But we must be careful here.  It’s easy to talk generally about worldliness.  It’s even easy to talk about ways in which the church at large is becoming more and more worldly.  But we must remember that the church at large is made up of who?  Individuals.  And the church as a whole compromises with the world because individuals do.  So if we are concerned about the worldliness in the church, we need to start by being concerned about the worldliness in our hearts. Take your time this week and evaluate your life in light of Scriptures. 

Am I being stained by the world?  

Sometimes it is hard for us to identify the ways in which we are worldly because we have become so accustomed to it.  I’m sure many of the Rwandans didn’t think much about killing members of the other tribes because that’s the way they had always lived.  And many times we don’t think much about our worldliness because that’s our culture and we haven’t examined ourselves in light of Scripture. 

Donald Grey Barnhouse tells of how “Some years ago, musicians noted that errand boys in a certain part of London all whistled out of tune as they went about their work. It was talked about and someone suggested that it was because the bells of Westminster were slightly out of tune. Something had gone wrong with the chimes and they were discordant. The boys did not know there was anything wrong with the peals, and quite unconsciously they had copied their pitch. 

So we tend to copy the people with whom we associate; we borrow thoughts from the books we read and the programs to which we listen, almost without knowing it. God has given us His Word which is the absolute pitch of life and living. If we learn to sing by it, we shall easily detect the false in all of the music of the world.”  

Again, Herbert Schlossberg explains, “Idols are hard to identify after they have been part of the society for a time.  It became ‘normal’ for the people of Jerusalem to worship Molech in the temple, and it seemed odd that people calling themselves prophets should denounce the practice.  Molech was part of the establishment religious scene, one that directed the national worship throughout living memory.  The idol was supported by all the best elements of society, the political, economic, and religious power structure.  The prophets therefore denounced the powerful, wealth, and respectable, not because there is anything inherently wrong with those attributes, but because in that society people so described organized and validated a system of idol worship and injustice.”  

That’s why we must be on our guard.  That’s why we need to be called to ever-renewed vigilance and watchfulness in the war against worldliness.

If we are not warring against worldliness we are giving in to it.

That’s an important question.

After all, listen to James 1:27.

“This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father…to keep oneself unstained by the world.”  

Worldliness is a problem because the world wants to stain you and it’s a problem you should be concerned about because as James explains worship that God accepts comes from people who keep themselves unstained by the world.  

So the stakes our high.

Our relationship with the world is a test of our relationship with God.  Therefore regardless of how often you go to church, and how religious you appear, you need to ask yourself, am I keeping myself pure?

It is possible to engage in religious activities while being stained by the world.

Isaiah 1, perfect example. 

As one man writes,

“The nation of Judah was sunk in corruption and oppression, bribery was rampant, and the legal system a tool of despoliation.  Economic crime and murder abounded and government officials committed criminal acts.  Yet with all this the official religion of the nation, the temple worship of the Creator of the universe flourished.  People took part in the cultic observances of the God whose laws they had come to despise.” 

They claimed to worship God while living for themselves.

And you know what? 

God hates that kind of worship. 

He says, “Bring your worthless offerings no longer, incense is an abomination to Me.  New moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies – I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.’ (Is.1:13)”   

They were worldly worshipers, and so God rejected their worldly worship.  

But worldliness is not just an Old Testament problem.

It’s a New Testament problem as well. 

Paul says in Philippians 4:18,19 “Many walk of whom I often told you and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, who set their minds on earthly things.” 

Many people are worldly.  Not just those who are outside the church.  Many professing believers lives are stained by worldliness. 

That’s why the apostle John has to give this urgent admonition, “Do not love the world, nor the things of the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”  

And if worldliness was a problem in the Old Testament, and a problem in the New Testament you can be sure that it is a problem today. 

In fact, I am afraid, many professing believers have failed at just this point.  

They don’t abandon worship. They come to church.  They go through all the motions.  But what they do on Sunday morning has nothing to do with the rest of their lives.  As one writer explains, they fail to understand that their worship service on Sunday mornings completely repudiates the way of life they uphold throughout the week. 

In the other words, they are  just as worldly as the world.

The truth is, many are outworlding the world. 

As James Montgomery Boice writes,

“Over a decade ago, Professor Martin Marty, always a shrewd observer of the American church said in a magazine interview that in his judgment, evangelicals would be ‘the most worldly people in America’ by the end of the century.  Marty’s observations are not always right in my opinion, but in this case he was on target.  Evangelicals have embraced worldliness in the same ways that it was embraced by liberal churches.” 

Iain Murray explains,

“Instead of the churches revolutionizing the culture, the reverse has happened.  Churches have been converted to the world…the stream of historic orthodoxy that once watered the evangelical soul is now dammed by a worldliness that many fail to recognize as worldliness because of the cultural innocence with which it presents itself.”  

Worldliness is a problem.

Are you worldly?

To answer that question, obviously you need to know what worldliness is.

The Greek word James uses for world is ‘kosmos.’

Sometimes it is used in Scripture to describe the physical universe itself, things like stars and planets, and the earth.  Obviously that’s not how James is using the term here.  He’s not talking about grass stains. This term kosmos is also used throughout Scripture to describe a way of thinking about life, and a way of living one’s life.  As one Greek dictionary defines it, the world is “the system of practices and standards associated with secular society (that is without reference to the demands and requirements of God.)”  The world represents apart from God thinking and living.

Worldliness, as Iain Murray explains,

“Is departing from God.  It is a man-centered way of thinking.” 

Or as David Wells writes, “Worldliness is that system of values and beliefs, behaviors, and expectations, in any given culture that have at their center the fallen human being and that relegate to their periphery any thought about God.  Worldliness is what makes sin look normal in any age and righteousness seem odd.”  

You see, there are two ways of viewing life. 

One is from God’s perspective, which is revealed in the Word, and the other is man’s perspective, which is revealed in the world.  God has a worldview, and He presents that worldview in the Scripture.  Unregenerate man also has a worldview.  He lives his life according to Galatians 4:3 in bondage to the basic principles of the world.   And these two perspectives, God’s and unregenerate man’s, are not neutral towards one another as some seem to think.  They are opposites.  What is of the world is not of the Father, and what is of the Father is not of the world.  The apostle John explains, “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1 John 2:15)  The two cannot co-exist.

The Bible tells us God looks at the world’s ideas and principles and says they are foolish.  In fact, Paul says He has made them foolish.  1 Corinthians 1:20, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe?  Where is the debater of this age?  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”  And the world looks at God’s wisdom and thinks it is foolish.  1 Corinthians 2:14, “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to Him…”  

Sometimes when people hear the word worldliness, they think of a list of do’s and don’ts.  But when James talks about true believers keeping themselves unstained by the world and we talk about warring against worldliness, we’re talking about much more than just sticking to a list of do’s and don’ts that some person has made up. 

In fact, I think this is one of Satan’s great strategies. 

Many people hear James say ‘keep yourself unstained by the world…’ and they automatically think, ‘Great I am doing that.  I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t go to bad movies. Therefore, I’m not worldly.’  But worldliness, being stained by the world, is something much bigger than not drinking and not smoking and not going to bad movies.  You can avoid movies, wear plain dresses and live in a monastery in the wilderness and be as worldly as a person who does all these things, because as John MacArthur puts it, “Worldliness is the sin of allowing one’s appetites, ambitions, or conduct to be fashioned by worldly values.”

I am saying, worldliness is a way of thinking, a way of looking at life

It is about more than what you do or don’t do. It’s about what’s going on in your heart.

To be stained by the world is to think like the world thinks and live like the world lives. 

You know, James uses different language but makes the same point over in 4:4, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?  Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

An enemy of God!

Are you worldly?

It’s dangerous, and in our next post, we’ll see just how dangerous being worldly can be.  

So it was a tremendous privilege at the Legacy Conference to have him visit with us and share some of the lessons he has learned over the years about leadership. Here are a few of things I scribbled down as I was listening.

1. Leadership involves being able to accomplish things through others.
2. Leadership is about influence. It is not something you can demand. It is granted to you.
3. There are several different ways a person might attempt to get others to follow him. One is by causing them to fear, another is by manipulating them. Don’t! The best way is inspiration.
4. To have a sustained influence in other people’s lives there needs to be a consistency.
5. Virtually all leadership is verbal. If you want to inspire others you must be able to articulate the vision and articulate it with clarity.
6. Emphasizing the importance of verbal communication is not minimizing the significance of personal integrity. If there is a disconnect between what you say and what you are, people will believe what you are.
7. Selflessness needs to dominate. Your whole life as a leader needs to be a battle to advance your people. Don’t worry about your ministry. But always think about glorifying God and protecting His people.
8. Leaders need to see what others don’t. What makes a leader is trust. They trust that you are able to see what they can’t in a critical situation.
9. Authenticity is being true to biblical convictions. It’s being willing to deny yourself and do what is right for the glory of God. Leaders must define morality biblically and confront fake authenticity.
10. Attitude is more important than skill in looking for future leaders. Hire good attitude and train skill.
11. Leaders must work hard. They must be the first to serve. The currency of success is energy.
12. Kindness and joy are invaluable. Self-interest and consistent negativity are destructive. You want to give the people following a sense of sanctified fun.
13. You want to create an environment where good ideas are recognized and where they thrive by being willing to listen and promote what works best even if it comes from people other than you.

Christians must speak truth, at all costs.

Why is the truth so important?

1. God loves truth. He is actually the God of truth. He is abundant in truth. His truth reaches to the skies. Jesus is full of grace and truth. He is the truth. The truth is in Jesus. The Spirit is the Spirit of truth. God’s Word is the word of truth. Christianity is called the way of truth.
2. The devil is the source of lies. He’s called the father of lies. Part of what makes lying so awful is not simply that it is bad form or not good manners, but that lying is ultimately of the devil. In fact if you think about how sin came into the world, you remember that it was a consequence of listening to a lie from the devil himself.
3. Speaking the truth in love is how Christians grow.
4. Lying has devastating consequences. If we want to know how important it is we speak the truth we only need look at all the misery and unhappiness that lying has produced. Just take a step back and think about how lying complicates life. This habit of lying is one of the main reasons for how complicated life gets. We can’t trust anybody so we have to have all these crazy rules and administrative procedures to keep us from stealing each other blind. In our own lives, we do something wrong, we lie about it, and then the moment we do that, we have to tell another lie to cover up that lie and then all of life becomes more and more complex and complicated until we are caught up in this whole web of lies and deceit.  
5. God hates deception and he will judge it. Psalm 5:6 says that God abhors the liar. In Proverbs 12:22 we read, “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord but those who deal faithfully are His delight.” Revelation 21 and 22 sum it all up. Listen to this frightening warning in Revelation 21:8, “But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake of fire and brimstone. “ Or quoting Revelation 22:14 and 15 which speaks of heaven, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters and” get this “everyone who loves and practices lying.” Unrepentant lying has eternal consequences.

When you begin to think about all the emphasis the Scripture places on the truth, it is really no surprise that speaking truth is one characteristic of the radical transformation being saved should make in the way you live your life. Truth is an essential difference between the new way we look at the world as believers and the old way we used to look at the world as unbelievers, and should be an essential difference between the way believers communicate to others on a daily basis. 

Get in your car. Gather with a big group. Sing some songs. Listen to someone talk. Spend time with other people.

Week after week after week.

Why is gathering as a church so important?

The reason it is important is because we all are sinners who deserve God’s punishment but in His grace this God sent His own Son into the world to die in our place that we might be forgiven of our sins and this God who has done all this will one day be revealed as Judge over the entire world and everyone of us will stand before Him and be evaluated by Him. 

If this were just about, a nice place to meet people, or if this were just about, a weekly time to sing, or if this were just about, hanging out with your friends, or, if this were just about, a time to sit and here someone talk for a while then, there are a lot better things you can do with your time.  But you are going to die and stand before God and you need to make it. You need to persevere in your faith, because if you don’t, then you are damned. 

In Hebrews 10:26, writer warns, “If you go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversary.”

And how are you going to keep that from happening? What do you need to do?

You can’t just depend on yourself and say, hey, I can do this.

No God in His grace has designed a means to keep you safe and to help you make it so you can stand before Him in Christ and that is the Christian community, this gathering together on a weekly basis, as a church. 

One of the reasons God sent Jesus into the world was to make you part of a new community, and one of the reason He commands you to be part of this new community is to help you cling to Christ.

When we talk about responsibilities of the church, like gathering together, I hope you understand it’s an expression of God’s undeserved kindness to each of us.  This is not meant to be a burden on your back.  There’s heaven.  There’s Jesus.  There’s the privilege of access.  There’s relationships that are deep and full of joy.  And there’s hell.  And there’s judgment And God in His grace has given you means, tools, helps to keep you safe, and to enable you to enjoy His goodness and kindness forever and to protect you from falling away and experiencing His wrath, and one of those means, tools, is regular, gatherings of the church. 

It certainly wouldn’t be fair, for example, if you were hired for a certain job with specific responsibilities and yet your employer never told you what those responsibilities were.  Can you imagine if they gave you a hard time for not doing what you were supposed to be doing, when they never told you what that was?  

Or take a sport that you have never played before.  You show up at a practice for the first time and no one talks with you about how to play. You are just supposed to figure it out on your own. No, that’s not going to be effective. That’s actually part of what coaches are there for.  It obviously helps to have someone show you what the expectations are and how you can fulfill them. 

Church isn’t all that different.  It is great to know that church is important and we are supposed to be a part, but a part of what, what are we supposed to do, besides show up? 

What I want to try to do is to show you the basic expectations of every member of a local church. And I am beginning with what is probably the most basic and fundamental, and that is to gather together with other believers at church week after week on Sundays.  

One of my big passions as a pastor has always been to say that the church is not a meeting.  I get tired of people saying, I am going to church.  We are the church.  But, the thing is, while the church is not a meeting, you don’t have a church if you don’t have regular meetings.   Churches meet.  They gather together on a weekly basis. 

And so when we say the church gathers, that’s one of our basic responsibilities as church members, we are talking about what we are doing today and every Sunday, and especially why it is so important you make a priority out of being a part.  

When we first began church planting here at Living Hope, one of the funny things I noticed, was that we would meet people who would come to the church maybe one time, and we would meet them later, months later, and they would say hello pastor and that was nice, but I would hear them talk to others and say, that they were part of our church, part of Living Hope, even though they only came maybe once or twice every few months or something like that. 

And honestly what I wanted to say to them, was no you are not.  You might be a Christian and part of the church, but you are not part of our church, if you don’t make a priority out of attending our church gatherings on a weekly basis.  

I have been pretty passionate about this since I was young, and I remember in university and throughout life really, meeting with many Christians who aren’t very serious about church attendance. 

They kind of have a wishy-washy attitude towards it, so it’s kind of like if I am feeling well and everything is going great then I will attend on Sunday and if I am not feeling well or I have a hard week, then I won’t attend. 

And so for some people, the list of reasons not to attend church on Sunday can get pretty long.  If they have homework, if they didn’t get a great sleep, if they are hungry, if they have the sniffles, basically they will attend church if it is convenient, but if there is the smallest little inconvenience, then they are just aren’t going to think about making a priority out of gathering together with other believers. 

And really, I want to see you with a very different attitude.  And I am not talking about a legalistic attitude.  I am not talking about this attitude where you go around waving your finger at everybody else, or where you feel like it’s just attending church that magically makes you right with God or anything like that, but I am talking about a committed attitude, where not going to church is not a normal option for you, it’s not like, are we going to gather with other believers today, as if it were a question, no, I want it to be you gather with other believers as a statement, in fact maybe a picture would be, to think of it like eating, I don’t usually wake up and say, am I going to eat today, it’s not a question, unless there’s something so serious going on, and that’s the attitude towards gathering together with the church I want you to have here at Living Hope.  It’s a statement, not a question.   

And to help you understand why I am making such a big deal out of gathering like this, I want us to look together at Hebrews 10:19-25 and we are going to think about our gathering together from a couple of different angles. 

First, let me just point our need to gather.  Before we go much further, I want to show you why it is I say, we need to gather. 

There are two reasons we need to gather in this passage, the first is an implication of the gospel, if you just look down at the text, I think you will notice when you begin to read it were all the plurals.  

Now plural words as opposed to singular words, means we or us as opposed to you and I.  

Verse 19, 

“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence…”

Verse 21, 

“And since we have a great priest…”

And then verse 22, 23 and 24 all begin with the phrase, “Let us…”

So often when we read the Bible we read it in terms of I, but so much of the Bible, like here in Hebrews talks in terms of we and that’s because of course what God’s doing in this great salvation plan is more than just saving you as an individual, He’s intending to rescue a people for Himself. 

The Bible assumes we, it assumes if you are a Christian you are part of an us, because that is a big part of what God is doing in salvation, creating a new community. 

Someone once said when we talk about salvation we shouldn’t only talk about justification, we should also talk about familification.  Because just as you are justified when you are saved, you are also familified, made part of God’s family and just as you need to apply the truth that you are justified to your everyday life, you need to apply the truth that you have been familified to the way you live your life as well.    

Unfortunately, you know, you will meet people who say they are Christians but have no regular, intimate, accountable, relationships with other Christians outside of themselves and their family. 

They say I am saved but they are not gathering together with a church on a regular basis and what’s sad is they don’t think it matters, because they think I can be fine, just me and God, or me and God and my family, I don’t need the church, and if you talk to them they might even tell you, I can be just as obedient to God by myself with my family as I can be in a church, and you know I think the writers of the Bible might say to them, really, is that true, you can be just as obedient to God by being disobedient to what He says, because when you read the Bible and passages like this one in Hebrews, you will find it is always talking about the Christian life in terms of an intimate community with other believers in a local church, in terms of us, and not just I. 

As someone has explained,  

“The gospel has a purpose– and that purpose is bigger than just saving you by yourself – it has the the purpose of calling out a people for God’s own possession. This is the whole point of the good news – God forming a people for His glory and the good of the world.”

If you try to think about the gospel without this forming of a gospel community, you are missing that goal.  It would be a little like going to adopt a child and rejoicing when the adoption papers are signed, but forgetting to bring the child home and make him part of your family.  I mean it’s good the papers are signed, but there is a point bigger than the signing of the papers, and that’s making him part of your family.  

When we look at the gospel, the implications of the gospel, means we have to think in terms of us, that’s one reason we need to gather.

The second way we see our need to gather in this passage is a lot more direct.  It is a command.  

Hebrews 10:24 and 25, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching.”

The word for meet together is related to the term synagogue, because that’s where the Jewish people in Jesus’ day met on a regular basis to talk about God’s Word and here, when the writer uses this term, he’s simply talking about an assembly of believers like we are having today.   There certainly can be more to what he’s saying than that, but definitely not less.  At the very least, he is commanding us not to neglect meeting together like this. 

Now, it’s important to understand that back in the day when the writer was giving this exhortation, people generally lived with a whole bunch of other people in their homes, they had these big households, and so when they talk about not meeting together, you can’t picture just one person on his own week after week, but this is a person staying back with this big family, and the writer is saying that is not enough, you need to be meeting with the people of God. 

They would have plenty of excuses and probably better ones than ours, this was a time of great persecution and more persecution was coming, and so there were people who didn’t want to gather together with the church, because it seemed physically dangerous to them and yet, the writer says, not meeting together is not an option. 

When we look at what God was doing in our salvation, the assumptions the Bible makes about Christians and community and this command to gather even in the face of persecution, it’s obvious, that this meeting, is to be a priority in our lives as believers, we need to gather.