James 2026

So James chapter two.

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, here's a good seat for you, but say to the poor man, you stand there or sit on the floor by my feet. Have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my dear brothers and sisters.

Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised, those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?

If you really keep the royal law found in scripture, love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, you shall not commit adultery, also said, you shall not murder. If you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Our second reading is in Luke chapter 14, verses one to 14, which is ten forty seven. One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body.

Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way. Then he asked them, if one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out? And they had nothing to say.

When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable. When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, give this person your seat. Then humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, friend, move up to a better place.

Then you will be honored in the place of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Then Jesus said to his host, when you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives or your rich neighbors. If you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blinds, and you will be blessed.

Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. Thanks, Alex, and good evening, everybody. Am I on? Is that is that coming through? Good.

Good. Yeah. Good evening, everybody. My name's Chris. I'm one of the elders here at Cornerstone.

Real privilege to be opening God's word to you all tonight in this next bit of James. It never hurts to pray again, does it? So let's pray. Father, help us now as we come to this. You give us this book of James, and it's like punching the gut after punching the gut.

And there's challenge after challenge. And, you know, none of this stuff is particularly easy. But you don't ask us to do it alone. You ask us to do it hand in hand with the Lord Jesus Christ. And so help us to see that.

Help us to see him, and help us to, to see how we can do what we can with his with his with his, spirit filled help in our lives. We pray that in your name. Amen. I want to start with a bit of a story from my past. For many, many years, my mother worked at Ashford Hospital as a physiotherapist.

And, and during that time, as you do when you work in the NHS, as I know some of you do, maybe this is gonna hit quite close to the bone for some of you actually, you come into contact with all kinds of different people, don't you? And I remember her once telling me something that for some reason has just stuck in my mind ever since. And maybe it was just for the purpose of this sermon illustration. Who knows? But what she told me is that the staff had this phrase when certain kinds of patients came in.

I mean, this is awful. This is really bad. It's... They would call them an NPLU. It was coded so that no one else knew what they were talking about.

An NPLU. It's... When I tell you what it is, mean, is one of the snobbiest things I've ever... Abby's laughing, so I'm guessing there might be something similar going on where she works. But but it stands for it stands for not people like us, which is like the snobbiest, most middle class way of saying anything that that I've ever heard really.

And, you know, it's like, what are they like then? If they're not people like us, what are they? Are they animals? Well, I mean, they're probably behaving like animals some sometimes, but that's not the point, is it? Not people like us.

People who in some way are sort of less than us or different to us that don't don't share our views, our values, our our education, our economic situation. You know, like the the reason they came up with that code is because they couldn't call them what they actually wanted to call them, which is a term that I don't think we use that much anymore. But it it was around a lot in the nineties and the naughties, which was a chav. You know, they just wanted to call them chavs, but they couldn't do that. Actually get sacked.

So they came up with a code. And if you don't know what chav means, well, it's it's got a long history. But the the British media got hold of it in the naughties. And they figured out you could make it say say council housed and violent. And so that then really took...

It's like council housed and violent. And so so apologies to overseas listeners. It's a really specific piece of sub... British subculture there. And now the reason I'm telling you all of this reason I'm telling you all of this is because that next to Ashford Hospital was one of the most deprived, and still is one of the most deprived areas in Southeast England.

And that's a place called Stanwell. Has anyone here ever been to Stanwell? Yeah. Pete's been to Stanwell. Yeah.

Now, I spent a lot of time in Stanwell because a load of my mates from school were from Stanwell. So I I hung around in Stanwell quite a bit growing up. And, you know, like, it had some nicer areas. If you wanted to make it sound a bit more palatable, you call it St. Anwell.

And you could just change it change it to that. But it's the sort of place that, you know, it's not anywhere really. It's kinda like people end up there or they sort of go there to get forgotten about or a bit a bit lost. It's... I mean, it's a giant council estate, you know, and it's got...

Within that council estate, it's got specific sub estates with high rises and and all sorts of stuff going on. It's predominantly white British. And, you know, it's it's it's it's for the council housing violent people according to the staff at Ashford Hospital. And visits to Stan, well, they were always eventful. You know, it was always interesting.

It's the sort of place that... It's the sort of place you'd turn up in your car and you'd sort of worry not, is my car gonna be up on bricks? Is my car even gonna be here at all? And if it is here, is it just gonna be smashed to pieces? It's the sort of place where certain...

Like you get surrounded by groups of kids, and they'll be like, Oi, mate, can you go get me some cigarettes? Can you go buy me some alcohol from the shops? And if you didn't, they start lobbing eggs and stones at you. You're like, oh, get away, you little so and so's. You know, Stanwell was that that sort of a vibe.

It was a lot of fun. I used to quite enjoy going there, actually. You know, if you went down the shops... We once... Right.

We once saw the Turkish blokes from the from the kebab shop chasing a group of lads down the road with their meat cleavers. I don't know what the group of lads have done, but it was good to watch. There's a pub in the middle of Stanwell called the Happy Landing. And you would... There was a fight there every day, like every time.

And it was in this central square that was like a magnet for every kind of trouble on the on the whole whole estate. And you go down there. There'd be fights coming out the pub. I don't think it was a happy landing for most people. You'd often find yourself sort of picking your way around the bleeding bodies on the floor and going into the shop, and avoiding the lunatics jabbering at the sky.

That was Stanwell. Probably still is Stanwell. I doubt it's got any better given given the current situation. It's probably safe to say it's a den of MPLUs, not people like us. They're a bit different to us.

They're not very middle class. You know, they come in and we gotta treat them, but we gotta steel ourselves for how we're gonna have to deal with them. You know, it was full of every kind of thief, drug dealer, prostitute, everything you can you can imagine was in Stanwell. Now why why am I telling you all of this? Well, I'm telling you it because we come to this passage in James, and what we're confronted with is do not show favoritism.

You don't show favoritism. And if you notice, this is aimed at the church. It's aimed at the church. It's written to Brothers and sisters. And the example that James gives is in your meetings.

It's in your meetings. So it's right now. It's what we're doing here tonight. It's this. It's what we do in the morning.

It's whenever we meet together as a people, brothers and sisters, in your meetings. And it's a challenging command that we're given. James says we must not show favoritism. Favoritism. It's not we should not.

It's not if you feel like it, it's you must. You must not do it. That's a command. You must treat everybody the same, whether rich, whether poor, whether people like us, whether people not like us. There must not be any MPLUs among us, and there must not be any kind of language like that in this gathering, in the church, amongst brothers and sisters.

And I mean, here's some uncomfortable questions to consider just as we're going through. Just keep these sort of stored in the back of your head. Do you find yourself always sitting in the same seats next to the same people on Sundays? Are you sort of drawn to speak to the same people you normally speak to each week after a Sunday service? Or or do you ever go out of your way to invite people to your house that you wouldn't normally spend time with?

Do you give undue attention to people that are more like you, whilst largely ignoring people that are different to you? And do you... Are you more likely to spend your attention on people who could do something back for you? I don't know. Maybe it's just easier to be around people that that are a bit more like you.

Would you treat someone in a position of authority the same as someone without any? You know, these are these are good questions to have in our minds because when we come to application, it it starts to land a bit. But why is James urging us to treat with all people the same way, and to not have favorite types of people? Why is he urging us to do that? Well, it's the simplest answer in the world, because Jesus didn't.

It's so simple. Because Jesus didn't, brothers and sisters. And if you are his brothers and sisters, you will look like him, and you will be like him, and you will do the things that he did. So if you look with me at verse one, and this is my first point. Brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious lord Jesus Christ.

That's the first point, glorious Lord. He's a glorious Lord. You know that that particular phrase, the way that James has has has said that specifically, our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, that's not used anywhere else in scripture. I've never really seen it before, but it just really jumped out on me when I was reading it. I like, is that...

I don't think I've ever heard heard it said exactly like that before. It's used it's used elsewhere. Like, so Paul calls Jesus the Lord of Glory. So it's the same... It's basically saying the same thing.

But James says it specifically this way. And he's... It feels like he's drawing our attention. He's drawing our attention to our glorious Lord Jesus. My brothers and sisters, believe us in believe us in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.

So that prompts two questions. What is it that makes Jesus so glorious that James wants us to see? And how is that connected to not showing favoritism? Because it says, believers in our glorious lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Well, all you gotta do is look at what Jesus did.

The easiest way to see this is to look at what he did, look at who he spoke to, who he associate... Associates himself with, and listen to this list because it's quite a list. And this isn't even everyone. This is just types of people. If you go through everything...

I mean, I've got chat GPT to do a quick rundown on this for me. There's hundreds of people that Jesus speaks to. Thousands if you include, like, all the feeding of the people. And Jesus personally into contact with thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people in his ten years of ministry. But look at the variety.

Fishermen, working class blokes, they became his disciples. Not... He didn't go to the educated. Academics. He didn't go to the religious rulers.

He went to fishermen. Tax collectors. You know, like the scumbag con men of the the Jewish world. Like, he went to them and they became disciples. He he hung around with royal servants, people who had access to kings.

He spoke to kings. He spoke to Herod. He spoke to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. He spoke to the demon possessed multiple occasions. Prostitutes came to him.

He ate with religious leaders in their homes and some of them listened and some of them didn't listen to him. People suffering with all kinds of illnesses. Lepers even. People who are on the fringe of the fringe. He went to them.

You know, he touched them. He hugged them. He loved them. Roman officers, centurions, he went to them. He helped them.

Rich individuals he looked at and loved and they didn't necessarily listen to his teaching. Homeless beggars, blind beggars, criminals, women. Women who never had a voice in that society. Children who didn't have a voice in that society. You name it, Jesus spoke to them.

His glory is that he comes into a world of people who are not like him. I mean, if you think about it, to Jesus, we're all MPLUs. We're all not people like him. And I guess it's like coming into a giant council estate for Jesus. It's like the world's a giant Stanwell, if you wanna put it that way.

And yet his glory is he doesn't show any favoritism at all to anyone. Instead, he loves all kinds of different people regardless of their background. And yes, he might treat with them differently because they're different people. They've got different needs. But he doesn't show favoritism towards rich.

He doesn't show favoritism to the poor. He does have a heart for the poor and the needy though. And you see that over and over again in scripture. And the amazing thing about him is he's the rich one really, isn't he? I mean, we we...

We're gonna sing it in our last song. I mean, listen to these words. You were rich beyond compare. The heavens were your throne with angels singing glory to you. Yet you gave it all for us.

You took the lonely cross. You came to bring the poor back to you. Oh, this love has a grip on my soul. It's the beat of my heart. We give our lives away.

We give it all to you. For you have shown us mercy to bring you glory. Jesus' heart for the poor and his lack of trying to curry favor with the rich and the wealthy of this world is the part of his glory that James is trying to get us to look at and understand that we must be the same. We must be the same. We must not get sucked into showing favor to the wealth and power of this world.

And to rub that in, James gives us a hypothetical situation that could occur at any Sunday service, really. And this is the second point, the glorious poor. So we've had the glorious lord and the glorious poor. If you look with me at verse two of James, and in the illustration, a rich man in expensive clothes walks into our evening service, walks in here. And he's closely followed by a down and out.

So they're coming coming in the door together this evening. An MPLU walks in. He's not a person like us, really. And what we do is this is this is how it plays out in in James' illustration. We welcome the rich man.

We show him where everything is. We introduce him to various people, probably get him to Phil Cooper quite quickly. We get him into a good seat where we know he's gonna have a great view. The singing's gonna be good near the front. If you sat at the back, it's better near the front.

So have a think about that. And we sort of think, well, this is great. You know, we want we want this person to be part of the church, don't we? You know, they might have all kinds of gifts. They speak really well.

It turned out pretty well. Maybe they're able to preach in these services. We don't know. But there's a lot of potential here. I mean, maybe you'll be able to fund the future...

The rebuilding of this place before the roof caves in, which is imminent. And then the down and out comes in. And we welcome him, as we would. We welcome him. But maybe not with quite the same level of enthusiasm.

And we try not to maybe inhale through our noses at the same time, so there's prejudice creeping in. And we haven't probably really realized it, but we're not even really thinking about whether this person would be a good addition to the church. It's not probably where our minds are at or what gifts they may have. We're probably more concerned with, you know, are they gonna be disruptive? Are they gonna start, you know, disrupting the service?

And it's probably best to put them somewhere near the back, just in case, you know. That's discrimination. That's segregation, says James. That's a that's a that's that's a two tier privilege system that we're implementing. I mean, they used to treat black people in America like this in the nineteen sixties.

That's the ugly outcome of showing favoritism, and there is no place for it in the followers of glorious Lord Jesus Christ, says James. That does not bring him glory. That doesn't bring him glory at all. Now I know there's all sorts of ways that we can try and justify how we might handle that situation. You know, making sure they don't disrupt the service or become a distraction to the preacher and so on.

Know, might even be worried they might even be here to nick stuff or something like that. But James is unequivocal in this. No, you are not to do that. You are not to do that. If anyone becomes disruptive, just deal with it then.

Deal with it then. But don't prejudge someone on the basis of the way that they look. That's poor judgment, says James. There's a lack of mercy. Don't judge a book by its cover.

That person may have the humblest of hearts and just wanted to come in and hear God's word and enjoy some fellowship with brothers and sisters after falling on the hardest of times. And who are we to add to that person's woes with our prejudice? What an awful way that would be to treat someone. And then James goes on to expose the folly of favoring material wealth. And we fall for it because we're easily seduced by by by what the riches of this world can offer us.

Are we not? It can offer quick fixes to things. It can push things forward. It can make things happen. Get things you want.

But if you look at James, if you notice in verse six, it's a bit like riding a crocodile. It's not... Like he says, is it not typically the wealthy who are exploitative? Is it not typically the the wealthy who are using that wealth to oppress? I mean, all you've got to do is turn on the TV.

I mean, look, I love Clarkson's Farm. I think it's an incredible series. But my goodness, Jeremy Clarkson needs to stop talking about Jesus. Because it's just every single episode. He has to say something.

He's using his wealth, his platform, his influence to blaspheme the glorious Lord Jesus's name every chance he gets. And yet, we find ourselves more favorably disposed towards the wealthy people. I guess maybe because they seem more like us, they may be able to offer more more to us. Maybe we wanna be more like them. Now, I think it's important to say that that this isn't having a go at all wealthy people.

I think we have to be quite careful on on this. Because there are many wealthy followers of Jesus. There's many wealthy followers of Jesus in in the scriptures. There's many wealthy followers of, well there's a few wealthy followers of Jesus in this church. I wouldn't say many.

But it's also not saying that we should favor the poor over the wealthy. So don't have any favorites at all in either direction because that would cause issues in the opposite direction. I mean there's a lot of people walking around with a chip on their shoulder against those they perceive as wealthy, isn't there? So it can go wrong in the other direction as well. You know, you shouldn't be hating on people just for being wealthy.

And you equally shouldn't be discriminating against people because they're not wealthy. So it's bad in both directions. What James is clear to point out is that this comes down to a richness of faith. And he's also clear to point out that God does choose the poor to be rich in faith and so inherit his kingdom. But what does that mean?

You know, that that that sounds like a contradiction of what I just what I just said a minute ago. And does he hate the rich? Does he not choose the rich then? Does he only choose the poor? Does he only really like the poor?

Is this something that draws into the poor and not to the rich? There's there's all sorts going on there. Well, Luke 14, I think, helps us to understand a little bit of what's going on there. So please please flick over to that. And it should...

Yeah. It should come up on the screen as well. Basically, what's going on in Luke 14? So you Jesus and he's at one of the top dog religious leaders' houses for for for food. And we don't know if this guy is wealthy or not, but certainly he's got the privilege of a high social standing influence and opportunities that come along with that kind of a position in in society.

And whilst Jesus is there, he notices something about how the guests in the room have picked their places of honor around the table. And basically, he says to him, that's a stupid thing to do. That's a dumb thing to do, isn't it? Look, if a bigger dog than you walks in the room, you're gonna have to get shuffled around and you're gonna look rather stupid. Save yourselves the humiliation.

Whereas if you took the low positions, if you humbled yourselves and took the low positions, then you might be honored in front of everyone and asked to come up. And then he says this line in verse 11. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. And I think that really gets to the heart of the issue that James is tackling. How easy it is to be rich and exhort yourself.

Because if you're rich, you're successful. You've got material wealth that gives you access to all kinds of opportunities to better jobs, better education, better health care, better places to live, all of that sort of stuff. And so it's harder to be reliant on God, isn't it, when you are so comfortable in this life? Isn't that right? Isn't it hard to be reliant on God when you don't feel like you need anything?

When your belly's full, when there's a roof over your head, when you're not worried about money, you're not really worried about any material things at all. It's quite hard to see your need for anything. And you know what? I think that applies to all of us in this room. I think that's the problem.

I I really think that's the problem. I was I was doing this session for Soul this morning. That's our 11 to 14 youth group. And I was trying to get this across to them. It's like, right, okay.

You guys have running water in your taps and it's clean and you can drink it. Yeah? Most people in the world don't have access to that. You've got a car in your family, probably too. That's amazing.

You've somewhere to live that's a nice place to live. You've probably got central heating, which you're about to switch back on get charged a fortune for. You know, there's good jobs available where we live. You can get paid decent amounts of money if you if you want it. You've got mobile phones.

You know, mobile phones that little kids in Africa have had to mine minerals to supply that phone in your pocket. You know, we're wealthy. We're wealthy. We're so wealthy. And we don't see it, you know.

We're quite blind to it in world terms. And then we see something like Pastor Barnabas last week. Where was it? Was it at the prayer meeting? Was at the prayer meeting, wasn't it?

You know, a guy, a pastor in Nigeria who's been forced to flee his home, and he's rejoicing over the fact he's got plastic chairs and a table to sit around with his family and eat. You know, he's got no water. He's got a room for private time with his wife, which he would seem happy about. You know, somewhere for his kids to sleep. You know, suddenly the simple things in life, he's rejoicing over the simple things.

And we're here grumbling over the things we do have because it's, oh, it's a little bit too expensive. I'm not belittling anyone who's struggling with with that, by the way. Jesus literally says in another encounter, it is hard. It's not impossible, but it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. It's hard.

It's like a camel trying to fit through the eye of a needle, he says. It's a ridiculous illustration, but it just emphasizes the point. It's not impossible, you've got to do some stuff to get through it and and to to be able to see your need. So those who are rich, be very careful. We need to be very careful.

Humble ourselves before God. Don't think highly of ourselves even for a moment. Think highly of Jesus. Because he is the one who's gonna raise you to heights beyond your imagination that make the riches of this world look like scraps. I mean, look, one day, right, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, they've they've got everything in this world, haven't they?

They've got everything in this world. I'm gonna have more than I'm gonna end up with so much to be joyful about. And brothers and sisters, you will too. And we won't just enjoy it for the next twenty or thirty years, we can enjoy it for 10,000 times 10,000 times infinity years, and we'll enjoy it together. It will make what they've achieved in this life look pathetic, paltry, like playing with dirt.

You know, Why would you settle for that? The poor on the other hand, well, it's easier for the poor to be humble, isn't it? I think that that is just true. It's easier in many ways. You got genuine needs if you're poor.

And therefore, you need help. You are gonna reach out for help. You're gonna cry out for help. The amount of people that you hear when they reach the absolute bottom of their lives, and that's when they're rescued. That's when they cry out for help to to God.

That's when the Lord Jesus Christ comes into their lives. You hear that time and time again. I know many of your testimonies speak to the... Speak to that truth. And you know what?

God loves to help the needy. It's what makes him glorious, and we see him actively doing it in Jesus. And then Jesus really rubs it in in in this passage in Luke. So look with me at verses twelve and fourteen. He tells them, when you throw a party, when you invite people around for dinner, don't just invite your family and friends.

You can invite them if you want, but don't just invite your family and friends who can return the favor. Instead, invite the poor. Invite them along too. Invite the misfits. Invite the awkward people from your church.

Invite the people you don't normally talk to. Get them in as as well. Invite the lonely people among us. Invite the people that are not like you. I mean, look, this is Guess Who's Coming is on next week.

It's a great opportunity to do that. I mean, problem is you don't get to do the inviting. Emma just decides who goes where. And... But it's still great because you spend time with people you wouldn't normally have spent time with.

Look, I really encourage you to to get on board with that if you're if you're not. But if you do that, if you invite those people in, then you will be a blessing to them. You'll be a blessing to them, it says in Luke. And they may not be able to bless you back, but oh my goodness, how that favor is gonna be returned at the resurrection of God's people. The reward you get on that day is gonna be tenfold.

So do you see that? Just do... I really want you to get that. We are working for heavenly treasures cornerstone. We are not working for for wealth and stuff in this world.

It can be useful. We can use it for good things, but it's not the point. It's not the point of why we're here. It's not the point of what we're doing. Someone wanna get the door.

We're working for treasures that are gonna last an eternity and bring unimaginable joy. And you know what? I've always wondered if those treasure... Treasures are actually those people who on earth were nobodies really, who, you know, they were the misfits, the awkward ones, the ones that we didn't really normally talk to, but we forged relationships with them by showing them kindness and mercy. But in heaven, like if you could see them in their glorious risen form now, you'd be tempted to bow down and worship them because they're gonna be incredible and we can enjoy each other for a very long time in a much better place.

Treasure. That's treasure. And I think this absolutely applies on that much more personal level. Because all this talk of rich and poor, it can be a little bit abstract for us, can't it? Maybe popular and unpopular is maybe an easier way for us to to to look at it.

Maybe people we normally speak to and people we don't normally speak to is a better way of of looking at it. Going after the the MPLUs. They're not people like like us. They're at church every week, but we've never really spoken to them. Maybe we even avoid them.

Maybe we find them awkward or difficult or, you know, we're just too busy speaking to the people we always speak to. Our friends, and there's nothing wrong with having friends, but it must not exclude everyone else. And that brings us on to our final point, the glorious law. So we've had the glorious lord. We've had the, the glorious Paul.

Now we've got the glorious law. So if you look back in James, so flip back to that at verse eight, which says, if you really keep the royal law found in scripture, love your neighbor as yourself, you're doing right. It's a bit confusing. I mean, I I don't know. Maybe you guys don't find it confusing at all, but I found it a bit confusing as to why James is suddenly switching tack and and talking about law.

Because it seems a little bit of a jolt from where he was. And now he's going into a whole bunch of talk about law. And I don't think he really brings it up again. But I think what he's driving at, I think what he wants us to understand is what is powering all of this behavior. What is behind all of this?

What's behind this command to not show favoritism? What's behind this about reaching out to to to maybe the less wanted, less liked people of this of this world? The misfits and the awkward. Is it just is it just be nice to these people or else? Is that what we're being told?

Is it be nice to these people because I said so? Is is that is that the reason we're supposed to be doing this? The answer's no. There is a command here, but that's that's not what it is. What's driving this?

What drove Jesus and makes him so glorious? And so what should be driving us is something way more positive than that. Something way more positive than that. Did you notice that phrase? It's a royal law.

A royal law. Not just any old law. It's a glorious royal law. Love your neighbor as yourself. It's a royal law.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Do you know there's another royal law? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, body, soul. Can never remember exactly which it says there. But they're both tied together by one word really, which is love.

Love. If you flick to Romans 13, verses eight to 10, it'll come up on the screen as well, so don't worry too much. It makes... Paul just really goes for this. He makes it so explicit as to what this is all about.

And he says this, let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another. For whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, you shall commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and whatever other command there may be are summed up in this one command. Yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor.

Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. Loving your neighbor as yourself is the king of laws. It's the absolute king. Do you see that? Do you see that?

Jesus himself picked this out as the greatest commandment when he was asked by a legal expert. And when people try to wriggle out of it by saying, oh, well, who is my neighbor? Is that just person that lives at Number 23? Or... Because I've got nobody who lives on the other side, so I've only got one neighbor.

It's just 23. Or does it extend to the end of the street, and do I have to love both those people? Or is it the people opposite the street as well? Everyone is the answer. Everyone is your neighbor.

This law to love, it's the summary of all other laws. Like, do you understand what that means? Because it's good. It's really good. I like...

I really hope so. Because this is so incredibly simple and it cuts through any confusion you may have about laws in in the Bible. Because all you have to do is love people as yourself and you've kept God's law. All of it. The whole lot is all wrapped up under that one thing.

All wrapped up under that one thing because if you're loving people, then you're not gonna break the others. You're not gonna do any of those things that it that it says. You're not gonna be murdering, adultery, thieving, any of that stuff. It's just not gonna happen if you're loving like you should love. If you're loving properly, that doesn't that doesn't happen.

And in a sense, all the all the other laws, they kind of exist to show us what love is. They're like how to love or how to not love. Sounds simple, doesn't it? I mean, it sounds quite simple. Have a go at that.

But try and put it into practice properly. You find out how hard it it is. How hard it is. People don't react the way we think they're going to. We don't react the way that we think we're going to to other people.

Especially people who are not like us. Maybe we don't understand them. They're just a bit different. They think differently. The misfits who...

You know, it's just hard to reach anyway. And have you ever read the Sermon on the Mount? Have you have you have you ever tried to put that one into practice? Because you see there just how deep and far Jesus' application of the law is. You know, it says don't murder.

And you think, yeah, fine. Okay. I'm unlikely to murder any of you in this room. But Jesus says, don't be angry. Oh my goodness.

Because if you're angry with a brother or sister, it's good as murder. And you've broken the law. And you just think, well, I've probably murdered all of you then at some point. And if I haven't, then I'm gonna. It's just like how do we do it?

How do we do it? It's like how do you do it? This royal law of love may be simple enough to understand, but my goodness, it's hard to keep. Well, to meet the king of law's requirements, we need the king of love. That sounds horrible, doesn't it?

The king of love. But we need the greatest lover. We need, brothers and sisters, our glorious lord Jesus Christ. You see him? You see our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?

And we need him to love us like we have never been loved. Because in him is a person who absolutely keeps the royal law to love others. We saw earlier how much he loved all different kinds of people in all different kinds of ways. He loves those who are rich and he teaches and pleads with them to shun their pursuit of earthly wealth and become rich in faith instead. He loves the poor and meets their immediate needs and teaches that their heavenly inheritance outshines any of the riches of this world.

He loves the self righteous Pharisees by opposing them and challenging their thoughts. That's loving, to do that. To hate them would be to just say, I'm not gonna associate with them at all. These people are not like me. They don't think like me.

I'm not gonna reach out to them at all. No. He engages. He actively engages with them. You wanna keep the royal law of love.

You start by loving the king, the glorious lord Jesus Christ. That's where you begin. That's where you begin, and he will help you do it in his strength, not your own. And that, as we see in verse 12, brings freedom. Brings freedom.

Brings freedom from our sin, our inadequacy, our own shortcomings, our lack of love. But there is one final thing as we as we wrap up. There's a warning. And I don't really like ending this way, but it's where the passage ends, so it's hard to get around. And it's a warning.

You break a royal law. You commit treason. It's a royal law. Don't do it. It's it's an act of treason.

And treason means off of your head. If we continue in favoritism, James says, if we only associate with those we know and and like and we shun and ignore people not like us, we'll be very careful. Be very careful. Careful. Jesus was treated like that.

Your lack of love, your judgment on other people, your lack of mercy and kindness, that is what will be shown to you on the day of judgment, James says. This is serious. There's like... Most of the passage has been an encouragement to love, right? Most of the passage has been weighted in that way, but he puts this warning in for us as well.

And we as rich people in the world need to listen to this and hear this and think about how this applies. So how are you doing with all this? It's hard, isn't it? It's hard. But Christian, you're called to be different.

And it's a great thing to be called to be. You're called to be like Jesus. And that means that you are free to love like no one else. And you can reflect our glorious Lord, Jesus Christ. What a privilege.

Now let's put that into action with his help.