Today we continue our study on the book of James. Our goal is to discuss how we live out our faith and God’s call when everyone is watching us, and we will be looking at James Chapter 2 today.

Last week's message from James 1 hit on two main points. The first point was The Testing Of Your Faith. We talked about how when we go through trials of many kinds, our faith is tested, and we come out on the other side lacking nothing. During those trials, we know that we can turn to God and get wisdom from God. But more on that wisdom next week.

The second point from last week's message was Hearing and Doing The Word. It is so easy to hear information but not allow it to be transformational. We need to take in God’s Word and then do something with it.

Today we will start by looking at James 2:1-13 and discussing the Sin of Partiality.

The Sin of Partiality | Partiality Towards Others

Partiality means that we show an unfair bias towards one thing or person compared with another.

How many of you have ever been partial to something before? It’s okay to be partial. You prefer a type of vacation, or type of house, or personality type. Being partial towards something is not a sin, but the sin of partiality comes in when you assign someone more value because of what they have. The money or power that they have. What they can do for you.

Let’s tweak this concept of partiality and look at it this way. Have you ever talked down about someone based on the way someone looks, talks, dresses, etc? Think about how that made you feel. Realistically, no better than before you did it. How did you make the other person feel? You might have destroyed them.

What is the quickest way to get people to treat you nicer? Start treating them better! It seems so simple, but it is hard. Who is our model of this? Jesus Christ. While we were still sinners, Jesus died for us. Let that sink in for a moment. We could do literally nothing for Jesus, but he was impartial and loved us anyway.

Now, if we are to look more like Jesus, we need to do likewise for others.

The Sin of Partiality | Partiality Towards Myself

Before we go any further, I would like for you to watch this video.

You see, this scripture about partiality applies both ways. You have to love yourself as well. How easy is it to look down on yourself and lift others because they are “better” than you? You were created in the image of the Almighty God of the universe. Stop calling yourself trash. That is a complete lie from Hell.

We have all been created in the image of God. If you call yourself junk, you are saying that my God makes junk and my God makes mistakes. If you feel that way, then you are mistaken because my God doesn’t make rejects. My God doesn’t have a misfit toy pile. My God is the almighty creator of the universe, and he has a purpose and a plan for you.

You may feel like people you love don’t care about you. God and this church care about you.
You may feel like people don’t think you're good enough. Jesus Christ has something to say about that.
You may not feel like you’re worthy of living; through Jesus, we can be born again and live a new life.

We need to love other people, but we also need to love ourselves. Because if you cannot love yourself, other people won’t believe you love them. We need to not show partiality towards people. We need to Love God, Love Others, and Love Ourselves. If you are there today and are struggling, you need to talk to someone about it today. Stop waiting.

Faith Without Works Is Dead

Our second point this morning comes from James 2:14-26 and is that your faith without works is dead!

What do you think is more critical having faith in Jesus or doing things to earn your way into heaven? Have ever tried to please God by doing more things? Have ever been afraid that you won’t make it into heaven?

I’ve got one more video that I would like for you to watch this morning…

Here is how I like to define faith and works. Pretend for a moment that you are stuck in a cage because, at one point in your life, you were. You could do tricks, sing, dance, whatever, but that isn’t going to get you out of the cage. The only way to get out of the cage is to go out the open door.

It’s that simple, but when you focus on getting the attention of the Master instead of focusing on what He has already done for you, you are missing out. Now once you are free from the cage, you experience life in a way that you could never imagine. Look at everywhere you can now go. This is where works come into play.

Your job after experiencing salvation is to go back up to the cage and help point the way to the open door. You don’t go back into the cage, but you get as close as you can and pull out as many other people as you can.

So what is our lesson we take from today? We do not have to do anything except believe in Jesus to be saved. However, if we believe that Jesus died for us, then we are obligated to tell others. Telling and doing is never about us. It doesn’t make us any better or more significant, remember we are not trying to show partiality towards ourselves or others. It just means there are more people on our team reaching out to a lost world. And we want to make Jesus famous.