Church: Where Everybody is Somebody

Welcome to this edition of PowerPoint with Jack Graham. A verse 1 through the 10th verse. My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring in fine clothing comes into your assembly and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, you sit here in a good place, while you say to the poor man, you stand over there or sit down at my feet, have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges, watch this, with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He has promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which we are called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And you are doing well. But if you show partiality, favoritism, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has been accountable for all of it. The religion of our Lord Jesus Christ changes lives. Someone said, if your religion hasn't changed your life, you need to change your religion. We don't preach religion, we preach Jesus Christ. But Christ, the reality of Christ living in us changes the way we practice our faith.

This passage tells us what true religion as compared to false, futile, worthless religion does and does not do. When we walk with Jesus, we will walk in love and welcome people and treat people right, everyone. How do you treat people right? How do you treat people? Especially people who are different than you.

Especially people you don't know very well. James talks to us about the danger of discrimination. The peril of prejudice. The sin of snobbery. It is not a snooty, religious country club.

It is a place where everyone is welcome. There's no place for personal favoritism in the church or in the life of the Christian. Verse 1, he speaks of partiality. If you show partiality, now this can go under a lot of different names. partiality, favoritism, it literally means to lift up the face.

It's a word which means to lift up the face, to look at the face, to lift up the face so you can see the exterior. But partiality comes in various forms. It can be called racism.

It can be called classism or culturalism. In the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no place for discrimination or the discrimination of those who do not know Christ and those who love Christ or in the body of Christ welcomed and all of us need to be a part of the welcoming committee of inviting people and including people in the church. Because God plays no favorites. The Scripture says in 1 Samuel 16 verse 7 that God doesn't look on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart. Jesus never showed partiality. He welcomed everyone from the smallest about any of that. What people look like or their professions or their success or lack of success.

Their standing in life or the strata of life. God is no respecter of persons according to 2 Chronicles 19. God is not a sinner. There is no iniquity in Him. There is no respecting of persons with God. We put people in various categories and classes, don't we?

It comes natural to us. We categorize people in terms of affluence or lack of affluence. Age, appearance, accomplishment. All these categories. There are no categories with God.

Well, there's one category really. Saved or lost. Those who know Jesus and those who don't know Jesus. But God doesn't look on the exterior. God doesn't play favorites. God doesn't look at the skin.

He looks at the heart. Therefore faith and favoritism are not compatible in the Christian life. God is impartial and therefore those who know God follow Jesus are also to become impartial.

It is a lifelong struggle for all of us. But remember the goal in the book of James is becoming mature in Christ. Becoming more like Jesus.

I know this. Everyone is loved and leveled at the cross. He rose for all.

And He rose again on the third day. So the gospel is the great equalizer. So the gospel is for all. It's not the American gospel or the European gospel or the African gospel or the Asian gospel. It's the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it's for anyone and everyone. It's amazing grace for every race. We're told to go into all the world and preach the gospel of Christ. Real religion loves without limits.

It loves without libels and it loves without labels. We are called to go outside our own comfort zone and to welcome all into the family of God. Now with that principle in place, James gives us a story. And this evidently was a problem in the first century church as well as the 21st century church and everything in between. James tells us about two guys who go to church.

First guy goes to church, guy walks into a church. And it is obvious that this guy has got it going on in his life. He's dressed like he just walked out of GQ.

His clothing is fine. He's wearing gold rings. Literally he's gold fingered. And it's obvious that he's got money.

He's got self-worth and net worth. So when he walks in, the usher takes notice of Mr. Goldfinger and says, oh sir, come on in. I've got just the seat for you. He gets a good seat.

Right down front and center. Because the usher, of course, is thinking this person is important. He's a VIP. We're taking care of this guy because he just might do something for the church.

Then another guy walks into church. This guy is right off the streets. He's not dressed in fine clothing. He's dressed in rags.

In fact, he's shabby. He's maybe even homeless. Financially, this guy's got nothing working for him. He has no net worth.

And he's told, go stand over there. Now, no problem in welcoming the rich man. That's not the issue. Maybe the rich man was a lost man who needed Jesus for all we know. That's not the problem sitting the wealthy man on the front row, the best seat in the house.

That's not the problem. Everyone is welcomed, remember? Rich and poor. But the problem is on how the poor man was treated in comparison to the rich man. Because while the rich man was viewed as worthy of the best seat in the house, the poor man was seen as unworthy.

As worthy of any seat in the house. And therein lies the problem. And don't forget to visit jackgram.org for more information. Where you can shop our e-store, give a gift online, or sign up for Dr. Graham's free daily email devotional.

Our website, again, is jackgram.org. Now, let's get back to today's message, church, where everybody is somebody. The Bible calls this here favoritism, or it's a word that also means snobbishness. It's elitism. And the Bible says that snobbishness is sinfulness. This is not just a social problem.

This is a spiritual problem. Discrimination and prejudice. Prejudice is more than preference. We all have preferences. Things we like, things we don't like. That's normal.

That's life. But sometimes our preferences can turn into prejudices. And that's when it becomes sin in our lives. Partiality, playing favorites, looking on the outside of a person and judging them instead of seeing the person's heart as God would see them. And this is more than just a preference. It is, in the sight of God, vicious sin akin to murder and thievery.

Because the same passage compares partiality or prejudice in the same sentence as murder and stealing. So we can't say, well, it's just my little thing, my little sin. That's the way I was raised. You know, I came up in the 50s or 60s. That's just the way I am.

No. If you are in Christ, you are a new creation. You don't see things, you don't see people the way you used to see people. And verse 4 that we read earlier says, when you treat people like this, when you discriminate against people based on their external appearance, things they can't even change if they tried. Are you not, look at verse 4, are you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts, vicious thoughts.

It's bad. Among yourselves. Notice this is the sin of the church. You would expect this kind of behavior in the world, right? But not in the church. It's been said that prejudice in all its forms is ignorance.

True. Prejudice is arrogance. But it is more than ignorance and it is more than arrogance. It is vicious sin. Evil sin in the heart of an individual.

We should know better. James then asks us a question in verses 5 and 6. Look at it again, verse 5, he says, listen my beloved brothers, now lest you think James is about to hammer us for the sinfulness of this sin and this kind of behavior. He says, now listen beloved brothers, James is a pastor and he's counseling us. Brothers and sisters, listen to this, pay attention to this. Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom?

Think about this. God loves and receives all who come to him in faith and in particular God has an affection for people who are poor. We see it all through the Bible that God loves the poor and that we as believers should also love and minister to the poor. Jesus hung out with the despised, the disregarded, the diseased, the disrespected. And he often did his greatest work among the poor. The common people who hurt him gladly.

The outcasts. God uses the poverty of the poor to give them the richness of faith. Because when you recognize your desperation and your poverty, you're a candidate for God to do something great in your life, to minister his help and hope in your life.

The richness of his love towards you. But if you're flying high, if you're rolling, we tend to get self-dependent rather than God-dependent. And I dare say for a lot of us, there was a time in our lives when you had less, we had less, but God had more of us.

That's the point that James is making. That when you're poor, you're rich in faith. He goes on to say, isn't it the rich that are oppressing the poor?

He said, why would you honor the rich and dishonor the poor? It can happen to all of us. I've had to repent many times before I preached this message. Attitudes and actions. Because you see, we start valuing the wrong things in life. And we start thinking that our self-worth is all wrapped up in our net worth.

But it's not. Every man, every woman is of infinite worth and value to God. And should be welcomed among Christians and in the Christian church. So back to our story, rich man, poor man. The problem of prejudice is when we indulge the wealthy and are indifferent to the poor. That's the message. When we indulge the wealthy and ignore or are indifferent to the poor.

This is anti-Christian behavior. You know, we're okay loving our neighbors as long as we can pick our neighborhood. Nothing wrong with living in a nice neighborhood.

No problem with that. The problem is when you close yourself off to people either in your neighborhood or out of your neighborhood and no longer see needs all around you. Jesus gave a great story, the story of the good Samaritan as it's known. And it was an answer to the question of a lawyer, a religious lawyer wanted to know who is my neighbor? You see, he wanted to categorize who is his neighbor.

He wanted to find out who he should serve and who he shouldn't serve, who is on limits and off limits. And so Jesus told that story about the man who was beaten on the side of the road and along came a religious person and another one and they just passed by on the other side of the road. And then came this despised Samaritan who saw the man broken down and beaten and dying. And he ministered love and bound his wounds and paid for his stay overnight or however long it took at a hospice, a hotel there. And he ministered his love and Jesus said, that should answer your question. Who is your neighbor?

Say, how so? Jesus is showing us in this story that anyone in need is your neighbor. Anyone you find along your life's road who needs you is your neighbor. And therefore we as the church of Jesus Christ, those who love and follow Christ, we are to welcome all and to reach out beyond ourselves and our own friends and our own clique. Remember, the church is not a club where religious snobs get together and tell each other how wonderful we are. We are the church designed not just for us but those who are not yet with us. I wonder how many people, not like this poor man, at least he walked into church, at least he came into church that day. I wonder how many people would never walk into church because in their heart of hearts they think I would never be accepted there, I would never be welcomed there, I don't fit in there, nobody cares for me there.

How many? Love people, accept people, welcome people into your life, into your home, into your family, and you may have to get aggressive and intentional about moving out of your own circles in order to do this. This is one of the great values of serving in some way. It gets us out of our routine and our regular life and the busyness that results in such a barrenness in our lives. When we start showing and sharing the love of Jesus Christ, the Scripture tells us, He's told you old man what you to do but to love mercy and to do justly and to walk humbly with your God. And James closes this same passage by saying that mercy overcomes judgment. Mercy overcomes the judgmentalism that's so often in our lives.

It is mercy, accept one another, welcome one another. I just read an article this week regarding churches. It says most churches think they're friendly, but they're not.

Sometimes we think we're friendly if we have a time in the service where we shake a hand all around. No, if we're a friendly church, we walk across the aisle to meet someone new. We walk across the room to share Christ with somebody we don't know. We get out of our regular group to include someone and invite someone into our lives, take them to lunch that we've never met before until today. That's a friendly church and that's a Jesus church.

Accept people, love people, tell people about Jesus. Because when you do, you open up your heart and your life and your world to make a difference in somebody else's life. You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and today's message church where everybody is somebody. Chances are you've faced your share of crisis.

Maybe you're even in the fight of your life right now. Or maybe you're simply feeling exhausted by the busyness of life and sapped of spiritual strength. Whatever you're facing, we want to help fan the flame of faith in your life by sending you Dr. Graham's newest book, Reignite.

This personal account of how God led Dr. Graham through his own crisis will help you focus on God during difficult seasons so you can experience fresh passion and joy in Jesus. And we'll send you a copy as thanks for your gift today. So call now to request your copy of Reignite. Call 1-800-795-4627. That's 1-800-795-4627. You can also text the word PowerPoint to 313131. And don't forget to visit JackGraham.org where you can shop our e-store, give a gift online or sign up for Dr. Graham's free daily email devotional.

Our website again is JackGraham.org. Pastor, what is your PowerPoint for today? The Bible says in 1 Samuel 16, 7 that God doesn't look at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. You know, favoritism of any kind is contrary to how God sees people. The word James uses for the sin of favoritism literally means to lift up and look at the face.

In other words, it means to see what is on the outside of a person and measure a person's worth according to the standards of the world or your own standards. So if we want to fight the sin of favoritism, we need to have the heart of God and start seeing people as God sees people. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the great equalizer. We are all leveled and loved at the cross. Jesus died for all. Jesus loves everyone. God loves you without limits and without labels. So if you truly have a heart for God, then as the scripture says, the second great commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. You want label people.

You want libel people. You will love people. Welcome them into your life, into your home and even into your family.

No one is excluded from Christ and therefore no one is excluded from God's church because everybody is somebody in His body. And that is today's PowerPoint. Remember, when you give a gift to PowerPoint today, we'll send you Dr. Graham's brand new book, Re-ignite, as our thanks. Call 1-800-795-4627.

That's 1-800-795-4627. You can also text the word PowerPoint to 313131. Text PowerPoint to 313131. On the next PowerPoint, Dr. Graham brings a message about how your faith can make a real difference in your life. That's next time on PowerPoint with Jack Graham. PowerPoint with Jack Graham is sponsored by PowerPoint Ministries.