James 2
Our scripture reading is from
James chapter two, the entire chapter, although our focus will
just be on chapter two, verse 17. We’ll read James chapter
two in its entirety. Today, we are in the fourth part
of our little sermon series on why our church must, and the
blank is always one of the five areas of ministry, why our church
must worship, why our church must make disciples, why our
church must fellowship today, why our church must show mercy,
and then next week, why our church must be good stewards. And so
today we want to consider the subject of mercy. And so our beginning place is chapter 2
of James. James chapter 2, beginning at
verse 1, says, 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 and 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 then
made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my beloved brothers. Has God not 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 you were
called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the
scriptures, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. you are
doing well. But if you show partiality, you
are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become
accountable for all of it. For he who said, do not commit
adultery also said, do not murder. If you do not commit adultery,
but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So
speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law
of liberty. For judgment is without mercy
to one who has shown no mercy, but mercy triumphs over judgment. What good is it, my brothers,
if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can
that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly
clothed and lacking daily food, and one of you says to them,
go in peace, be warm and be filled, without giving them the things
needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself,
if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you
have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith apart from
your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe
that God is one, you do well. But even the demons believe and
they shudder. Do you want to be shown, you
foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not
Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his
son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active
along with his works and faith was completed by his works. And
the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and
it was counted to him as righteousness. and he was called a friend of
God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by
faith alone. And in the same way was not also
Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the
messengers and sent them out by another way. For as the body
apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works
is dead. Pray with me. Our God be gracious
to show us in your scriptures today what we are to believe
and how we are to live as Christians in this world. And we thank you
for the mercy of God that is ours in Christ Jesus, that has
brought us from darkness to light, that has opened our eyes to see.
And so we ask now, help us to see and hear and believe all
that you have to say to us. May it be for our good and for
your glory. And we pray it in his name, amen. There are several stories in
the Bible that give us examples of mercy. One that you may know
well is the story of blind Bartimaeus. Jesus was entering Jericho, and
there was a blind man, the son of Timaeus, who sat outside the
walls or the gates entering the city. And as Jesus approached,
blind Bartimaeus, who was a nuisance to all, kept calling out to Jesus,
Jesus, son of David, have mercy upon me. And the people around
told him to hush up that Jesus had no time for him. But Jesus
simply said, bring him to me. And when Bartimaeus was brought
to Jesus, Jesus says, what is it that you want from me? And
he said, I want to see. And Jesus said, go, your faith
has made you well. And we read that Bartimaeus followed
Jesus. There are other places in the
Bible that teach us about mercy. You know, well, the story of
the Good Samaritan, that a man was walking from Jerusalem to
Jericho. It’s a dusty, dirty, dangerous
route. He was by himself and he fell
into the hands of thieves. Those thieves beat him up. They
took everything from him and left him for dead. And it just
happened that a priest making his way from Jerusalem to Jericho
passed him by on the other side of the road. Wasn’t going to
involve himself in that situation. And then a Levite, the same thing,
making his way from his religious duties in Jerusalem for a little
time off at home until his next rotation of duties in the temple,
he passes by this what was probably a grotesque scene on the other
side of the road. But a Samaritan, an outsider,
an outcast, a person of another race, a person of whom the Jewish
people would not associate, stops and he binds up the wounds of
this man. He takes care of him. He puts him on his own beast.
He takes him to an end where he cares for him. When he leaves,
he asked that he be cared for and that the bill wait for him
upon his return. And when the story is being told
by Jesus to a Pharisee who wants to know what is the definition
of neighbor, Jesus simply says to him, who was the neighbor in the story? And he says, it
was the man in need. And Jesus says, go and do likewise. There’s another story in the
Gospels that speaks of mercy. It’s the story of the unmerciful
servant. He owed a king a year’s worth
of wages, and he goes before the king and says, please, oh,
king, don’t throw me in jail. Have mercy upon me. I’ll pay
you back somehow, some way. The king has mercy upon him,
forgives his debts and sends him on his way. Well, on his
way, he finds a man who owes him just a day’s wages. The man
won’t pay up, and so he has him thrown into debtor’s prison.
Well, the king hears about it, and he says to the man, I showed
you mercy, but you show others no mercy. And so the moral of
the story, so to speak, the purpose of these parables is that as
Christians, we should be merciful. And you see in each situation,
the call for mercy is different. There’s one who’s fell among
thieves, been left for dead. There’s one who’s been blind
for quite a while. There are those who are in debt
and falling on hard times. There are all sorts of situations
where we might have opportunity to show mercy. But the Bible
teaches us that mercy is good. Mercy is something that God displays,
and therefore, we as Christians, bearing his image, ought to display
mercy. The apostle Paul says so well
to Timothy in the first chapter of 1 Timothy, His letter to the
young pastor, he says, God has shown mercy to me. I was formerly
a blasphemer. I was formerly a persecutor of
Christians, but God has shown me mercy. Well, these are examples
from the scripture where mercy was needed and mercy was received. I’m sure you could recount stories
to us all today of opportunities and times where you needed mercy
and it was shown. Maybe your car was broken down
on the side of the road or A mother with young children needed an
extra set of hands, or you fell on hard times and others came
to your financial rescue. And on and on, the stories of
mercy needed and mercy received could be given. We could explore
many other places in scripture where we see wonderful examples
of mercy being shown. But I want us to understand very
simply today, whatever story or biblical place that we find
it, that as a church, as a congregation, we need to think with eyes and
hearts of mercy and compassion. And we need to do that in two
places. One is inside the church, and the other is outside the
church. Now, before we explain all of
that, let us consider what James, the apostle, the half-brother
of Jesus, says to us in James chapter 2, verse 17. He says
to us that faith without works is dead. Faith without works
is dead. That faith, if it does not display
itself, if it does not come to fruition in good works, it is
dead. It is useless. It is unfruitful. Now, we all understand God willing,
that we are justified by faith alone. We sang of that in our
hymn after the confession of sin. No righteousness of mine
can stand before the throne. The only righteousness that can
stand before the throne of God is the righteousness of Jesus.
And thanks be to God that that righteousness of Christ is ours
by faith in him. We understand that we are justified
by faith alone, that our standing before God is in Jesus. It is not in our own works, our
own efforts, or our accumulation of good deeds over bad deeds.
No, our justification is simply rooted in the perfect obedience
and righteousness of Jesus. But the point James is making
is this. If a person is truly justified,
That justified person will prove their justification by their
good works. In a sense, he’s saying, you
want to prove that you’re a Christian. Well, give me a list of your
good works. Now, we understand this list
of good works is not to say this is what justifies me before God.
No, that’s only Jesus that can do that. But our good works show
that Jesus has put new birth in us. Jesus has made us new
creations. We are no longer old man, sinful
man, dead man. We are new creations in Christ
Jesus. And as Paul says to the Ephesians
in chapter two, it is by grace we have been saved through faith.
It’s a gift of God so that no one may boast. But it also says
we are God’s workmanship. And we have been created, we’ve
been recreated in Christ Jesus for good works that were prepared
for us before the world began. God has made us and redeemed
us so that we might do good works. These good works never save us.
Yes, they will be judged by God and heaven will be rewarded according
to our good works, but they don’t save us. They just show that
we are saved. So as a church, as a congregation,
As a congregation in this community, would people say about us that
we are a merciful church? Would they say that those folks
at First Associate Reform Presbyterian Church, they show their faith
by their good works, and in their good works, they are indeed a
merciful people? That’s a good question for us.
You see, a church full of faith, a church full of people who have
faith in Jesus will overflow with the fruit of good works.
Now, those good works could be all kinds of things, not just
mercy. It could be good works through teaching, good works
through other forms of service. But for today’s purposes, we
want to consider the subject of mercy. But a good test of
your personal faith, a good test of our corporate or our church
faith, is do we do good works? Do we desire to serve others
for the glory of God’s name and for the good of our neighbor?
If indeed we love God and love neighbor, it will be manifest
in our lives and in our service. Well, what does that look like?
What does showing mercy inside the church and outside the church
look like? Well, just a couple of things
for us to think about. Galatians chapter six, verse
10, says that we should do good to others, especially to those
outside the faith. Now, I remember this has, gosh,
been 12 years ago. You know, preachers go to the
back door after service and you hear this, that, and the other.
After preaching a sermon on Galatians 610, I think I caught the most
grief ever. That’s where my fear went. The
fiery breath that came out of the person. They said, how dare
you say that we should take care of the church first before we
take care of others? You see, this person’s natural
bent, their natural inclination was that the church is to serve
the world first. And for me to suggest, as the
Bible suggested in Galatians 6.10, that we should take care
of our own people first was blasphemy, it was heresy. God said, you
know, it’s right there in the Bible. How can we neglect our
own, but take care of the world? It’s a good way to have them
think. But that’s how we first ought
to think about mercy. It’s inside the church. And you
think about all the needs that we have. We have people who are
sick, people who are facing surgery. We have people who are having
ups and downs emotionally. People have gone through hardships
with their children or their grandchildren. They’ve struggled
with all sorts of things because of life in this fallen world.
And we are a family. We are a church. We are a body.
And when one of us suffers, we all suffer. When one of us hurts,
we all hurt. When one of us loses, we all
lose. When one of us mourns, we all mourn. We want to serve
and be merciful and kind and gracious to one another. Think
about the opportunities we’ve had in recent weeks to serve
our sister Lynn Lamone. This week we have opportunity
to serve Dick and Cindy Wright as Cindy faces hip surgery. Our
brother Gene is moving to an apartment this week. We have
all sorts of needs and we can collectively take care of one
another. Yes, we show mercy. and we do it inside the church. We meet one another’s needs physically. Do you know that if one of us
was without? that somehow some way we would
meet that need. We would figure it out. We would
pull our minds together. We would put our resources together
and we would figure out a way to make life work for one in
our midst who was suffering. We would do that physically,
but we do that spiritually as well. Our greatest need is Jesus.
Our greatest need is to be rescued from sin. Our greatest need is
to know that in Jesus, he can make all things new. And so we
show mercy inside the church, but we also show mercy outside. And we do that locally. And then
we also do that on the foreign mission field. Now, what does
it look like for us to show mercy outside the church? Well, it
means that sometimes people come to us and our congregation, our
deacons, we are asked to meet a need. We had one just recently
where someone had a need and we were able to meet it. We were
able to show mercy. And sometimes we don’t know if
the story is true. Sometimes we don’t know what
has brought this person into this need of mercy. But we can
show the love of Christ. We need to exercise wisdom and
discretion and have a plan in place and all those things. But
we can show mercy to those who are down and out and in need.
We partner with many local ministries to show mercy. I made a list
of them. Through the Gideons, we help
place Bibles. Through Piedmont Rescue Mission,
we help those who are in need. Through the Pregnancy Care Center,
we provide emergency assistance for those who are distressed
about an unplanned pregnancy. We house missionaries through
the Salom Missionary Homes. The Mitchell family is reaching
the Muslim community in the southern United States. The Osbournes
are helping us with short-term missions both stateside and abroad. And you go on through the list
of the Caring Kitchen or the West Links with international
students or David Springer at Elon and Campus Outreach, the
Allied Churches, the list goes on and on but we partner with
others who can help serve our community and then we can make
the same list. to reach or extend our reach
out into the world. We work with World Witness, our
denomination’s missions agency. We’ve sent the Goodmans to Wales,
the Olsens to Scotland, the Kings to Spain. We send some of you
on short term mission trips. And so we want to show mercy
outside. And yes, it does mean meeting physical needs. But most
especially, it means proclaiming the gospel, giving a cup of cold
water in Jesus name so that there is opportunity to speak of the
hope of Jesus. It is one thing in this life
to be hungry and be given bread. But as we all know, it is another
thing to be given the bread of life so that he who thirsts and
drinks from the living water, or he who eats from Jesus, the
bread of heaven, will never ever be hungry or thirst again in
a spiritual way, in a real and eternal way. And so we want to
serve as a church in acts of mercy inside and outside. Now, I want you to think in this
way. We want to have eyes that see
look for opportunities to be merciful. And we want to have
hearts that are compassionate towards others in hardship. You
know, we’ve become a self-centered, cold-hearted society. We see
somebody in need and we say, oh, somebody else will take care
of it. We see somebody in need and say, I wonder how they got
in that sort of fix. We get a little high and mighty
or self-sufficient and say, I made it, why can’t they? And the gospel
is a great reminder It levels the playing field. And it says
to us, young or old, rich or poor, whatever race or socioeconomic
background, that before the eyes of God, we were all sinners.
We were all in a wretched condition. We were all in need of mercy.
And God in Christ has stooped down and reached into our lives
and been merciful to us. And he’s given us what we never
would have looked for. He’s given us what we never could
have earned and never could have provided for ourselves. We have
the divine mercy of God that is ours in Christ Jesus. And so, dear brothers and sisters
of the Lord Jesus Christ, next time you see a need, remember
that you’ve been there and that someone helped you. Let us pray
together. Our gracious God, we thank you
for the gospel. And we thank you for the richness of the mercy
of God in Christ Jesus. And we do ask and pray that you
would help us to have eyes to see needs and to meet them appropriately,
individually, but especially together as a church. Make us
merciful. Help us to look for needs and
to meet them and to to give relief to those who are under hardship.
We think of Jesus, his life and his ministry. and how so often
the gospels say he looked, he had pity, and he felt compassion,
and he acted in a way that helped people physically. But most importantly,
it helped them spiritually, even to the saving of their soul unto
salvation. Give us those sorts of eyes and
that sort of heart and that sort of faith to do things that are
right. May it show our good works, for
we have been saved in Jesus. And it’s in his name we pray,
amen. Let us stand and sing of God’s goodness as we use hymn
number 531, Satisfied.