Kept to Give

So uh we looked last week at kept to gather.

This week we're looking at kept to give.

Now, you would think Vision Series 2021, a title like Kept to Give, this is gonna be a message on how you should give and tithe and empty your bank accounts to me, right?

No, that's not what this is about by any stretch of imagination.

Sacred mission will never be about that.

What this is about is gospel generosity.

Believe it or not, you have been saved to give.

This is a fundamental reality of our faith.

This is a reality of our identity in Christ Jesus.

And so what I hope you walk away with this morning is, if anything, is this understanding.

You are a desperate person in need of extravagant generosity.

Now, many of us might not see ourselves that way, right?

We might see ourselves as one who has everything we need.

We've got money stored in bank uh bank accounts, we've got uh the home bigger than we actually need, we've got more cars than can fit in our garage, we've got everything that we need, right?

And so we don't often see ourselves as those who are in need of extravagant generosity.

But uh what I hope is that through the scriptures we understand ourselves in light of that reality, and we focus on the doctrine of impartiality about the character of God.

So when you think about God, um you have some certain characteristics about his personhood that might come up, right?

You might say, God is loving, gracious, merciful, all these different things.

Rarely, when you ask somebody, tell me some characteristics about God, he is impartial, comes up.

But but I would beg to make the argument that the impartiality of God is the heart of the gospel.

And we're gonna see this hopefully today as we unpack this text.

So, first off, we're in James.

James is one of those books of the Bible that's just frustrating, right?

I love Martin Luther.

Uh I've been to Wittenberg, seen his home, and there's a story about Martin Luther ripping out the book of James because he just can't reconcile this reality of what James puts forth as all this work, right?

These good things to do with the doctrine of I am justified by faith and faith alone.

That was a pivot point for Martin Luther, that I am justified not by what I do, but by faith.

And James, Jesus' brother, seems to come in and kind of wreck that.

But he doesn't.

He doesn't wreck that.

These two things are actually harmonious with one another, that we are saved by faith and faith alone, but the evidence of that faith is demonstrated and displayed by what we do.

And so James here comes first and foremost and he says this.

And we how many of you are familiar with this passage, right?

True religion, and this is how you get the nursing home ministry going, and week in and week out, you're and I'm not saying that's wrong, that's not like a wrong outcome of understanding this passage, but if we see it a little bit more deep or more in clarity with the rest of the scriptures, I think we're gonna see something unique here this morning.

But what does he start off with?

He says this pure religion, true religion.

Now, when some of us think about religion, we might buck back against that word, right?

We in fact it's a fad or a trend in Christianity to say you're not a religious person.

Or in our world, well, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious.

I think that that's a false notion.

See, when we think of religion, we often think about ceremonious traditions, observances, legalistic demands, maybe grown men wearing dresses in front of their congregation, speaking of certain high church models of Christianity.

Nonetheless, um, that one sank hard.

Uh but but these are the kind of things, when we think, we talk about religion, we talk about ceremonies, traditions, legalistic aspects of faith, right?

But here's what we have to understand.

When we look at verse 27, the opening line of this, this is how I would summarize this opening text.

Our expression of faith should be marked by compassion and holiness.

Compassion and holiness.

You see, religion, in some ways, are these things.

They are ceremonies, they are traditions, they are observances, but where we get our perspective wrong is in seeing it as only these things.

You see, religion isn't just only these things.

Religion really is an expression of our faith.

You see, we kind of get this wrong in the same way we get theology wrong.

A lot of us might say, oh, we're not theologians, or we don't really have a value of theology because we don't want to count ourselves a theologian.

We're misunderstanding a lot of stuff.

Because what the reality is, is that you are a theologian whether you like it or not.

A theologian is just our understanding about God.

And so the question is, are you a good theologian or are you a bad theologian?

In the same way with religion, the question isn't, are you religious?

The question James presents is, is your religion pure and undefiled?

You see, because we all have religion, because religion is simply this what I believe, what I hold as conviction, what I hold as belief in myself comes out of me and expresses itself in particular behavior, actions.

You see, that's religion.

We have to not think it about the ceremonies, traditions, observances, legalistic demands.

We have to think about what do we actually do with the faith we say that we have.

See, much like not identifying ourselves as a theologian is a shortcoming to our understanding of identity as an image-bearer, so is not identifying ourselves as religious.

Religion is simply the outward expression of an inward faith.

The way we conduct our lives is our religion.

And it is shaped and informed by the faith that we actually confess to hold.

So the reality is you are a religious person.

Your behavior is an expression of the faith, and that is your religion.

You see, James here is working to help his audience understand that our faith is less known or authenticated by what we confess and much more so by what we do.

You see, many of us would rather have a theology that is pure and undefiled, even at the expense of a life that wasn't.

And we see this a lot in the reformed world, right?

We're a reformed church at Sacred Mission.

If you don't know what that means, sign up for our membership class.

It's on Saturday, January 23rd.

I feel like, what's that?

Bam, sham wow.

I don't know.

I feel like a guy who inserted some kind of commercial in the middle of a message.

Uh that's not what it was, but you should.

That's a good thing.

So we're a reformed church, and there's a lot of reality where many of us would rather have a theology that's pure and undefiled.

We're gonna be really strong about what we say is right, right?

It's historically right, it's biblically right, it matches the systematic theology model that we hold to.

It's pure and undefiled.

And we'll do it at the expense of a life that isn't.

We're still riddled with sin, we still entertain sin on a daily basis.

We aren't generous, we aren't compassionate, we don't live out this faith that we confess.

But what we say is pure and undefiled.

But what James is saying is that you can't have your cake and eat it too.

We have to be awakened to the reality that these two things are not and cannot be separate from one another.

So, what James's whole point is, if you say that you hold this faith, then this is how it would look if it was really impacting your life.

You see, our theology must have a real and realized impact on the conduct of our lives, or else it is dead and useless.

And some of us need to hear that this morning.

You you can read all the dead old dudes that you want, right?

You can you can dive into Puritan paperbacks until you can't see straight anymore, right?

You you you you can say all the proper things of that you heard on this podcast or certain things.

You you can have all of that.

But if it's not changing your heart and being expressed rightly through your hands, that's all useless.

Your labor is in vain, and you're impressing no one.

Genuine theology not simply informs the head, but changes and transforms the heart, so that pure and undefiled religion is expressed through our hands.

Genuine theology not simply informs the head, but changes and transforms the heart, so that pure and undefiled religion is expressed through our hands.

Here we're helped to assess the faith we claim to hold through the lens of what we do in our lives.

Religion or the expression of our faith that is pure and undefiled looks like this.

This is what James is saying, right?

If you want to say that you have true religion or an authentic expression of the faith you confess, here is what it's going to look like.

It shows compassion toward the vulnerable and marginalized, and it keeps themselves unstained from the world.

So, what does true religion look like?

It shows compassion toward the vulnerable and marginalized.

That's a mouthful, marginalized, and it keeps themselves unstained from the world.

Let's look at unpacking these two things.

So, first off, showing compassion to the vulnerable and marginalized.

Right?

I'd like to submit here that what James is not saying is that if you simply look after these two people groups, widows and orphans, you will fulfill all the demands of your faith and thus living in perfect righteousness.

But many of us kind of think that, right?

Well, true religion is doing this.

This is why I have to be a foster parent or adopt.

And those things are wonderful, but it's not mandated on every Christian.

Or I have to visit the widows, right?

Uh wonderful thing, nursing home ministry, wonderful, whatever it is, right?

Wonderful thing.

But we'd be foolish to understand this as the total sum of what our religion should look like.

You see, he's not saying that to have pure and undefiled religion, we must visit these two people groups and thus fulfilling all righteousness.

I believe that from context and a proper hermeneutic, that James is using these two specific people groups to draw us into a larger reality of compassion.

Because when we look at, especially in a biblical context, who just really didn't have any help, who was very marginalized, who was people that were extremely vulnerable in a biblical context?

Widows and orphans.

They were the ones who really had nothing to offer.

They were almost solely takers, because that's all that they could do.

And so he says, if you want to see what true religion is, if you want to see what compassion looks like, then it's being generous and compassionate toward these types of people.

And if we look at a proper hermeneutic or an understanding of how we study the Bible, we have to use verses to interpret other verses.

We have to use other parts of the Bible to help us understand things more clearly.

So let's look at the words of Jesus in Matthew 25, verses 34 through 46.

Matthew 25:34–46

This is a long passage, but I think it's one that will help us understand more clearly what James is referring to here.

He says this, verse 34.

Then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry and you gave me food.

I was thirsty and you gave me drink.

I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me.

I was in prison and you came to me.

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?

And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?

And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?

And the king will answer them, Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.

Then he will say to those on his left, Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal file, prepared for the devil and his angels.

For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison, you did not visit me.

Then they also will answer, saying, Lord, when would did we see you hungry or thirsty or stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to you?

Then he will answer them, saying, Truly I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.

And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

Now, what I don't believe Jesus is communicating to us is that their righteousness or unrighteousness was based upon the actions of which they conducted in their life.

But it was seen and evidenced in their actions.

Whether they were truly righteous or whether they were unrighteous was evidenced in the actions of which they committed.

Them doing those things, feeding, clothing, visiting, did not make them or establish their righteousness, but it authenticated it or demonstrated evidence of it.

You see, the compassion that our faith calls us to is greater than just a specific people group, but not absent from real care for those who James calls our attention to.

Compassion is the sympathetic consciousness of others, distressed together with a desire to alleviate their suffering.

So there's two parts of this when we understand compassion.

Number one is the sympathetic consciousness.

A sympathetic is about just being aware of people in their suffering, of people in the trials that they're facing in this life.

It's about being conscious about what other people are going through in this world and then having sympathy toward it.

Not overlooking or dismissing someone.

And this is something that would often happen with the widows and orphans.

Actually, when we see in the book of Acts, chapter six, the birthplace of the office of deacon, it was done so because there was a group of Gentile widows who were being overlooked when it came around to receiving food from the church.

And someone said, This isn't right, this isn't okay.

And the elders of the church said, Okay, well then find men who are qualified and able to do this and make sure that they are taken care of.

We see the birth of the office of deacon in someone in the church who had a sympathetic consciousness to others' pain.

But it's not just that, it's not just sending good vibes your way or fresh thoughts.

I don't even know what people, what weird hippies say, but here's desire to alleviate it.

There's a desire to alleviate it.

Meditate on the one-for-one exchange of alleviation Jesus gives us as examples.

I was hungry and you fed me.

That's a one-for-one exchange.

I was naked and you clothed me.

I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

You see, this desire to alleviate has to be rooted in meeting real needs.

Pure and undefiled faith not simply shows compassion to the widow and orphan, but compassion to all who need it.

But then there's the second part of James's passage in 127 that most of us overlook, especially when we're quoting this scripture to start whatever ministry we're wanting to in our church, whatever it is, right?

It's this and to remain unstained from this world.

See, that's the second necessary part that James lays out for what does true religion actually look like.

Keeping ourselves unstained from the world.

This is speaking actually to our greed.

When James is using the word world here, it's talking about the greed of this world, how they just want to consume and take.

It's talking about this reality of adornment and possessions of which the world seeks to chase after and possess for their own.

To be unstained is to not fall into the pursuit of worldly possessions at the expense of others' suffering.

Hear that again.

When James says, keep yourself unstained from the world, what he's saying is that brothers and sisters, don't fall into the pursuit of worldly possessions at the expense of others' suffering.

Do you see how these two things are intertwined with one another?

A real faith would express itself at the benefit of others and the sacrifice of self.

True faith, a real faith would express itself at the benefit of others and the sacrifice of self.

Now let's go into the story that James tells, because this is really the contextual meat of what James is trying to communicate to us in this passage.

So when we look at verses one through four, how I would summarize those is that partiality turns us into wicked judges.

Partiality turns us into wicked judges.

So what he's going to start modeling for us is what partiality is and what it looks like.

And remember, what we're hoping to communicate is the doctrine of impartiality, of which God has in his character.

So here we engage with the contextual meat of what James is after in our hearts.

Remember, before faith affects our behavior, it has to transform our hearts.

So you have to realize this.

Before faith affects what we do, our behavior, it has to transform our hearts.

We have to build a convictional reality of our faith.

You see, what our hearts are tempted to do is to show partiality.

Partiality.

True faith in Jesus should be absent of partiality.

Partiality means this: to show favor to someone for what they can give you in return.

To show favor towards someone, a person or a people group for what they could give you in return.

It's rooted biblically in the understanding of justice.

So when we look at this characteristic of God and his being impartial, what you're going to see from the very beginning of the Old Testament throughout the scriptures is that it's actually rooted in justice.

God's impartiality is rooted in justice.

That means this: that there is no bribe of which he can take, there is nothing of which can sway his decision.

When God sets forth to execute justice, it is pure, holy, and undefiled.

It is impartial.

When God demonstrates his mercy, it is also impartial.

It is of his own free will that he extends mercy to those who deserve his justice.

It's not because he's swayed by partiality, it's not because he looked down and said, Oh, you know, this person here could really benefit me in what I'm trying to accomplish in this world.

So I'm gonna bless them, but not bless the others.

God does not show partiality.

To show partiality in matters of justice is condemned and stands in contrast with God and his justice, which is impartial, impartial.

God is unable to be swayed, bought, bribed, for he is perfectly just.

And so when we display partiality, it's through a heart that desires gain from what another can give us.

Now, this endeavor, this endeavor of partiality causes us to become judges with evil thoughts, James says.

We judge people, image bearers of God, through the lens of self-gain, leading us to displace those who appear to have nothing to offer us.

You see, we hang out with, spend time with, we show favor toward those who seem to appear to be able to give us something that we actually want.

Whether it be prominence, status, power, gain, whatever it might be, we show partiality toward this people.

And we have to realize that this stains us deeply.

Because while we're showing partiality toward those who can give us something in return, those who seemingly have nothing to offer us are pushed farther to the fringes.

We judge with evil thoughts because partiality turns us into wicked judges.

Who are we to say?

Who has value?

Who has worth?

Who has something to give or something to offer?

We are not able to be judges of such things.

God alone is the judge of those things, and what he has declared through his word is that if you bear my image, you are equally valuable and of worth.

Simply because you bear my image.

It's not because of your status in society, it's not because of what you've been able to accomplish in your life, it's not because of Any other merit of your own strivings?

It is simply because he has chosen in his own sovereignty to place his image upon your person.

That's where your worth, that's where your value comes from.

What kind of wicked judges do we become when we tack on and add to what makes a person valuable?

Verses 5 through 8, we see that loving our neighbor means that we love the unlovable.

Loving our neighbor means we love the unlovable.

If we're really going to seek to love our neighbors as ourselves, as an honest expression of our faith, because that's what James says, right?

If you shall seek to fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well.

So if we're going to seek to do this as an honest expression of our faith, then we must work to create space in our hearts for the unlovable, or at least those whom we deem so in our lives.

So what does this look like?

It looks like those who will not bring anything to the table with them, those who are suffering, those who can only take and not give in return, those who will do nothing for us, and even those whom all reason and emotion combined say we shouldn't.

Those are the people we're called to love.

Those are the people who we are called to show impartiality in our generosity toward.

You see, it's easy to be generous toward people that you like, right?

It's easy to show the love of God toward people that you might want to be in with or that you think might be able to give you something in return.

It's easier for me to take a lunch meeting with somebody who might have something to offer the ministry than somebody who I know I'm meeting with for the sixth time about the same thing, and they just keep taking and taking and taking.

It's easier for me to get something in return and pour myself out into ministry or being able to be generous toward them because of what they can give me.

You see, to show partiality is to consciously exercise sin.

We have to understand that.

When we show partiality, we are consciously exercising sin.

And James makes the argument of why would we do that anyway?

Why would we show partiality in the first place?

And he uses this uh imagery of the rich and this narrative of the rich.

He says, Isn't the rich those whom we would be tempted to show partiality toward?

But they're also the ones who oppress and domineer their prominence over you.

Right?

Have you ever met someone or have you ever done this in your life with a relationship where there was somebody that you just wanted to have a relationship with?

You thought, man, if I had a relationship with this person, I'd be in, I'd be cool, I'd have, I'd have the the promotion at work, whatever it is.

And then when you like got in close to them, they were just jerks, right?

And they were just mean, or they would they would just try to lord that prominence over you because they knew that they had you in the palm of their hand.

Has anybody ever experienced that before?

Just just mean, that's cool.

Um but we see this all the time, right?

Like this kind of like mean girls' mentality.

If you've ever seen the movie Mean, I've never seen that movie.

Um I've heard it's good, but never seen it.

Uh but uh but it's kind of this reality, right?

Where we try to pursue a relationship that we actually think is gonna benefit us, but they just lord and domineer their prominence over us.

We we might be able to even see this in our cultural context now.

Are not the wealthy working to control, oppress, and lord over us right now?

Haven't we freely given them such power in the pursuit of partiality?

Listen, social media itself is a giant display of partiality in the pursuit of being shown partiality.

When we look at our cultural context right now of what social media is doing to our culture and what we've allowed that we've given them power to do for the pursuit of partiality, we're simply reaping what we've sowed.

You see, the reality and the problem with us is that fundamentally, if left to ourselves to determine who our neighbor would be, you can guarantee it would be somebody who benefited you.

If left to ourselves to determine who our neighbor would be, you can guarantee it would be somebody who benefited you.

Jesus eradicates such a notion and shows us that not only are we to love the unlovable, but ultimately we are the unlovable one.

This is the beauty and splendor of God's impartiality because this is our main idea.

Impartiality is the heart of gospel generosity.

Impartiality is the heart of gospel generosity.

You see, it is the very nature of God's impartiality that has caused him to be so generous to us in his son Jesus.

A large part of the problem is that when we show partiality, we forget that we are the ones who we would judge as undeserving.

The only thing God owed us ever was to crush us under the weight of his wrath.

God never owed us anything because of our merit.

God never owed us anything because of who we are, nor was God swayed, bribed, or bought through our strivings or workings of self to be able to lavish his grace upon us.

The only thing that we deserve is being crushed under the full weight of his wrath.

But because he is impartial, he generously lavishes on us the riches of his grace.

You see, this is at the core of the doctrines of grace.

Reflect on why God has chosen you.

If we believe that God from before the foundations of the world elected and chose those of whom he would save, contemplate for a minute why you.

You're not that I know I'm not that awesome, right?

Right in elementary school when it came to kickball and picking a team, that kid wouldn't even pick me first.

I know God wasn't gonna pick me first, right?

When it comes before even the foundations of the world.

If you came up with any other reason than that he had absolutely no reason to, then you don't understand your sin, nor do you understand God's grace.

The doctrines of grace lay out for us the reality that we have been chosen by God, not because of any value or merit that we bring, but because in his lavish generosity, he has determined to love us.

Many of you have used this quote a hundred times before.

I love it so much from Jonathan Edward.

He says this you contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.

There's nothing that we bring to the table, there's nothing that has caused God to love us, that has caused him to choose us or elect us.

It is simply the reality of his impartiality.

You see, in case we're tempted to believe this is somehow a new or created idea, let's look back to the book of Deuteronomy and see the consistency of this thought of God saying, determining in his own person, I'm going to love you in spite of you.

Deuteronomy chapter 7, verses 6-8 says this for you are a people holy to the Lord, your God.

Deuteronomy 7:6–8

He's speaking of Israel.

The Lord your God here, listen to this, has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession.

Out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth, and here's the qualifier it was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.

But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

Do you see what God said there?

Here's what God said.

If I was gonna choose somebody, I would have chosen Egypt.

They're greater than you, they're wealthier than you, they're bigger than you.

They are uh they are the people who, if we were gonna say, based on merit, based on whatever they can bring to the table, that's who I was gonna choose.

But but I didn't.

I chose you.

Why?

Because I determined in myself to love you.

That that's the beauty of when God says when uh the Psalms keep talking about the steadfast love of the Lord.

What are they talking about?

They're talking about a love intrinsically within his being that dictated before the foundations of the earth that he was going to be determined to love you no matter what.

That's the steadfast love of God.

That means that his love cannot be swayed by our rebellion, it cannot be swayed by the way that we reject him or sin or worship idols, nor can it be swayed by our obedience, by our sacrifice, by the way of which we serve him.

His love is consistently holy toward those whom he's chosen to love.

Here we see the impartial generosity of God's heart.

If God was going to pick a people to set a steadfast loving kindness on based on what they were able to contribute to his cause, it would have been someone else.

But he chose instead to set his love on the oppressed, the marginalized people of Israel, and compassionately delivered them from their enemy.

This is the heart that we're called to reflect as his people.

Gospel generosity that is fueled by a heart determined to love no matter what.

What is religion?

Gospel generosity fueled by a heart determined to love no matter what.

But the reality for us is that we don't believe this.

And there's a couple of ways that I want to present that I think that we we don't live up to this or we don't believe this to be true.

Number one is that we show partiality that has an appearance of pure religion.

We show partiality that has an appearance of pure religion.

We have made an effort at appearing to be religious while having motives for self-gain.

One of the ways that we express this is that we post pictures, share stories, or even change our profile picture to appear as though we are compassionate to the marginalized.

Yet we do it for our own self-gain, for the likes, for the comments and the shares, cultivating a desire to be seen as one who truly cares, yet never providing the true alleviation of suffering the people we exploit.

Because you see, in reality, even when we do hand them bread, we make sure not to let go of it before we snap the selfie.

Some of us, though, have created a type of reverse partiality.

We are partial to the poor and them only.

Neglecting real suffering in the lives of others, we deem is not in need of our compassion.

Seems to be religious, but it's actually participating in the same sin, just focused toward different people.

We grow in contempt for those whom we deem as oppressors and refuse to be generous toward them.

From a distance, these people seem to possess pure and undefiled religion, but beneath their actions are evil motives.

They are judges with evil thoughts.

But then some of us we show partiality that builds up ourselves over others.

Some of us is just more blatant, right?

That we show partiality.

We further displace the marginalized by looking for relationships that will get us something in return.

Whether it's climbing the corporate ladder, establishing prominence in your circle, or pursuing your dreams, we look for relationships that will just benefit our end goal.

And really, this is the mantra of our culture.

If you're gonna hear anything shouted almost day in and day out, it's have relationships that help you get where you want to go.

And if a relationship doesn't do that, if a relationship doesn't benefit you, if it doesn't support the end goal or whatever your dreams are, you cut it out.

You get rid of it, you displace it.

Do away with any relationship that isn't helping you get where you want to go.

We run after people who believe we need uh who we believe we need while stepping over the people who actually need us.

We run after people who we believe we need while stepping over the people who actually need us.

And this is building such a horrific culture in the church.

What where we're just willing to cut people, brothers and sisters, out of our lives because they're frustrating, right?

Which they are, you are too.

You're super frustrating.

I don't like being around you a lot of the time.

Uh I'm I'm super frustrating to be around, you can ask my wife, right?

Because they're they're hard to deal with, because they take and don't give, because they uh whatever it is, right?

We are quick.

And when I have conversations about people wanting to cut brothers and sisters out of their lives, it's because it's an inconvenience to them.

That's why they want to do it.

And we forsake reconciliation, we forsake restoration, we forsake the gospel.

Why?

Because ultimately we just want relationships with people who are gonna benefit us.

Look, and I told Katie this, and this is this is our I was speaking with someone uh this week about uh this.

Me and my wife have had several conversations about mission groups, right?

Over the last 10 years, I'll just I'll just be frank, our mission group has consisted of people we would probably have never chosen to be friends with.

Ever.

But you know what we did?

In serving them and being hospitable to them and feeding them and welcoming in their home, so many of those people became dear, dear friends of ours that we loved and loved us and had our back.

This was something that really wrecked us and challenged us when I would have looked at this person with partiality, like I this dude, I don't want to, I don't want this dude in my group or my circle.

They're difficult, right?

And I I had this conviction too about when I lived in Norwood, um, Norwood's like a challenging place to live.

It's it's it's it's interesting, but there's a culture of people in Norwood, right?

And uh when I would drop my kids off at school, I would see some of the parents that were a very different culture than Katie and myself, and I would look at them with like disgust.

I would look at them like basically, how could God ever love them?

God, how are you how are you going to use me as a missionary to these people?

And the Lord had direct me, like, what are you doing?

What what what are you you saying that my gospel, my love, my grace can't reach them?

Who were you?

Who were you?

And I had to repent and say, Lord, use me to go after the messiest, most wrecked person in this neighborhood with the gospel of generosity.

Let me welcome my home, open my home and welcome people who I would prefer to remain a stranger.

You see, if we assess our relationship primarily through what we get out of others, we are falling prey to the sin of partiality.

But the beauty of the gospel for us is that Jesus generously blesses his people without partiality.

Jesus generously blesses his people without partiality.

This is how we have been recipients of grace.

Church, if God was partial, we would suffer eternally.

If God was partial, we would suffer eternally.

But because he is not, he is impartial, Jesus has suffered for us.

You see, we're not simply the poor man who comes into the assembly, as James writes of.

What was our problem?

We were under the curse of sin, and we were under the wrath of God because of our sin.

And what does Jesus do?

He sees, he's consciously compassionate.

He sees us in our state.

And what does he do?

He desires to alleviate mine and your suffering.

And so what does he do?

He goes to Calvary.

And he says, I will become sin for you.

I'll be crushed under the Father's wrath for you.

So you can be liberated, so you can be freed.

That's gospel generosity.

The sacrificial atonement of Jesus is the ultimate display of God's impartiality.

It shows us once and for all that He loves us simply because He determined to do so.

Isn't that good news?

Like you can't screw this up.

That's good news.

He loves you because He says, I'm gonna love you.

So what do we do?

How should we then live, right?

Gospel vision.

The first thing is this.

Understand myself as a receiver of impartial generosity.

I I think that there, I have this theory.

When we look at the parable The Prodigal Son, right, the story is really about the older brother.

It's about the Pharisees and scribes who are standing next to Jesus as he's telling these stories of his grace.

And he says, but he tells this long story about this younger brother who's reckless and wild and licentious, right?

And it's all about the younger brother coming home, and the father falls on his neck and puts a ring on his finger and a robe on him, kills the fatted calf.

But how the story ends is the older brother who obeyed, who did everything that the father ever asked him, who stayed faithful to his family, is found outside of the father's house.

And as the father comes to him and says, Your brother's home.

He simply looks at his father and he says, I've done everything you've ever asked me to, and you've never done this for me.

The story ends.

And Jesus is talking to the Pharisees in Christ because they're the elder brother.

They're mad that the younger brother is being welcomed home with such lavishness, with such generosity.

They've done everything that the Torah, they've done everything that the law, at least according to their own understanding, has ever asked of them, and then some.

How could you be welcoming these sinners in such a way?

Here's my theory.

Many of us in the church, we we start as younger brothers, but we become older brothers over time.

We become these people who just judge, we become these people who show partiality, we become these people who who uh brag about our self-righteousness.

When it was the righteousness of Christ, which is what justifies us.

We only have right standing with the Father because Christ Jesus Himself gave us his righteousness that we could have right standing with the Father.

There's nothing that we can do to earn that ever.

You were again the crippled and lame beggar who had to be carried to God's family.

So as if we're going to be generous, if we're going to be kept to give, we're only going to do so if we continually remember ourselves as receivers of impartial generosity.

There's nothing in you that forced God's hand, there's nothing in you that motivated him towards you.

There's nothing in you.

It's grace.

It's grace.

So the first thing is to understand myself as a receiver of impartial generosity.

Number two is to determine to be a giver of impartial generosity.

Determine to be a giver of impartial generosity.

This is challenging.

This is where community is gonna be so necessary for us.

Right?

Because the way we do mission groups is that we put you into clumps of people that you don't like.

And we do that on purpose, right?

We do we do like a profile test and we understand you guys.

Are gonna we don't do that.

That would be funny if we did, right?

Just use the Enneagram against you.

Um, but that's not what we do.

Uh, but but we do it by by where you live, first and foremost, because we don't want just like a herd of people who are homogenous and really like each other to be in group together.

We when we say life together in a messy pursuit of Jesus, this is what we're talking about.

Having to welcome in people that you would rather remain a stranger, having to feed people that you really didn't care if they were hungry or not, having to be with people.

We have to work to be givers of impartial generosity, not looking at our relationships, not looking at the things that we do by what we can get out of it, but by being obedient to the Lord and being faithful to reflect the expression of faith that we say we have.

This is gonna demand a lot of us, a lot from us.

Because we don't like to do this, right?

When you think about Christmas, you probably gave gifts to people you like, or unless they were family members and you had to, because you'd get talked about it so that's still kind of partial.

I don't want to be talked about, so I'm gonna give them a gift.

Um we we probably right Christmas time we prior this way, or maybe you showed some impartiality with uh your generosity, but a lot of times we like to give gifts to people who who we like or who we think are gonna give gifts back to us, right?

How many of your gifts over Christmas will determine why well they're probably gonna get me a gift, so I should get them a gift, right?

Nobody?

Yeah, some of you?

This is yes, this is no.

Um, but what this is gonna demand from us is that we look at people, not by what they can give us, not by what they can do for us, not by what status they hold or position they have.

We look at people as image-bearers of God, first and foremost.

And we're sympathetically conscious of their suffering, and we're willing to do what the Bible says, especially when it comes to the household of faith, when it talks about brothers and sisters in Christ, this one-anothering of the gospel that we should have, it's sharing one another's burdens.

Your loss is my loss, your suffering is my suffering.

Do I have something, right?

In the book of Acts, when they talked about the church that they shared all things in common, what that meant is that no one went without.

Do you need something I have?

Let me freely give it to you.

Do you have something that I need right now in this moment?

Then freely give it to me.

Let us be sharers of one another.

How dare we walk and try to live out being in the household of faith, being in God's family and showing partiality to a brother and sister in Christ who sits in the row right next to us in the church?

Don't you remember the statement of Jesus that the world will know you're my disciples?

How?

By your love for one another.

If we can't show impartiality in God's family, how are we ever going to show impartiality to the world around us?

Lastly, love your neighbor with impartial generosity.

Love your neighbor with impartial generosity.

This is a reality for us to be able to look at the context of where we live and really sacrifice our own desires and selfishness for the good of others around us.

And I understand that some of us live in contexts in neighborhoods where that's challenging, right?

Or some of you just have avoided neighbors altogether and moved out to some country land.

That's that's okay, we'll talk about that later.

But um but for some of us, we're surrounded by people we would never do life with, right?

That that are so different from us.

And this is a part of our understanding of sacred mission church.

God has planted us in the middle of a context where He is bringing the nations.

So Mason itself is about 10% Asian at this point in time, according to the latest demographic polls.

10% Asian.

You know what that's filled with?

That's filled with people who practice Islam, that's filled with people who practice Hinduism, that's full of people that are nothing like us, their cultures are nothing like us, their value structures are nothing like ours.

They are people that are completely different, and we're gonna be tempted to not love them because it's easier.

And we can't do that.

As God's people, we cannot be content or resolved to live our lives that way.

We have to be willing to go with them on their turf and on their terms to be able to share the love of Christ with them.

And equally, we have to be willing to open our homes to them and share meals with them.

You that's what that's when we understand reconciliation, when we understand diversity within this church, diversity is not gonna come in this church by who shows up on Sunday morning.

Diversity is gonna come into this church by who we share meals with Monday through Saturday.

God forbid we ever become a diverse church and we're segregated in our homes.

We need to be a diverse church who expresses that reconciliation over the dinner table.

Outside of that, it's just tokenism.

You see, loving our neighbor is going to demand that we are an impartial people.

And we express generosity toward our neighbors simply because we've determined in our heart to love them.

So this morning I pray that we ponder and reflect on the reality that we are receivers of impartial generosity and that the gospel calls us to be givers of it as well.

Think about the relationships in your life.

Think about the people God's brought into your sphere.

Think about coworkers or neighbors or uh parents on your kids' sports team, whatever it is, right?

Think about those people who you have determined in your heart you're not gonna love.

You're not gonna be kind to, you're not gonna be generous.

Or maybe you're like kind, but it's that kind of kind, kind where you're not really kind, you're just mean.

Um you've determined that for some reason.

Now, now ask God to break your heart for that person.

Ask God to break your heart to have a conscious compassion for their suffering.

Because here's the reality.

Does our faith have to reflect itself in true alleviation of people's suffering, of that one-for-one exchange of hunger for bread, of nakedness for clothing?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

But we would fail and fall short if we didn't understand that those who are not in Christ suffer for something such greater than physical needs.

They're lost, without hope, they've been blinded, and they will be in eternal punishment under God's wrath.

That's an alleviation of suffering we need to be caring about.

That's an alleviation of suffering we need to have passion and zeal about alleviating.

Let's pray.