A Community of Justice and Mercy - Week 1 - Study Notes

English

A community of justice and mercy

James 2:8-13

During the two years between Pastor Kirk's leaving LAC and my coming, Pastor Denny Bellessi served in the role of Interim Weekend Teaching Pastor." Many people in our church have passed on to me that Denny often looked at us and said, "You are a piece of work."
Well, Denny was right. We are a piece of work, i.e., of God's work. I'm going to accept Denny's description of us as we meet for this first weekend of Lent. Lent is new to many of us – though Christians have been remembering it for centuries. During Lent, we do what we should always do as those whose lives are being re-made through faith in Jesus but in whom there is still much work for Jesus to do. The difference in doing this at Lent is that for these next six weeks, we will be looking specifically at our lives in the light of Jesus' crucifixion. We know he went there to pay for our sins. And, we know that, when we trust Jesus, he promises not only to forgive us of our sins but also to remake us into people whose lives someday will be free from sin altogether. Someday, we will be complete in Christ.
But, there is still a lot of renovating work for God to do. We are all pieces of God's work. God will finish what he has started in us. God promises that. But, during these weeks, we will focus week by week on parts of our lives and ask God to do a fresh work in us – setting us free from sin so that our lives will glorify him. And, this Lenten Season, 2014, we will let Pastor James of the 1st Church in Jerusalem be our teacher and guide. For the next six weeks, we will find James' message located in God's Word helping us examine our actions, our words, our hearts, and our relationships. As we have learned over the past two months, James will be quite direct in all he writes.
Today, we will start by letting him tell us that we grow to become complete in Christ by being deeply involved in a Christ-obeying, God-glorifying community called the local church. We will not find victory over temptation and trials in this world unless we are connected to the family God has planted in neighborhoods throughout our world, families like this one we call the Lake Avenue Church.
What I want us to see today is that the kind of church in which "pieces of work" (like we are) can become God's finished and beautiful work must be a certain kind of community. Put very simply, the kind of church in which God does his work in people's lives must be a community that blends justice and mercy. I'll tell you right now that it's not easy for a group of imperfect people to be committed both to justice and mercy. This can happen only through the teaching of God's Word and the power of God's Holy Spirit. Today, as I talk with us about this, I am intentionally standing behind the communion table. Why? Because it is on the cross that we see the place where God's justice and mercy meet.

#1: A Community of Justice -- People with a seriousness about pleasing God.
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 (2:12-13a).
The verses we are looking at this weekend are not very popular ones in our day because we don't like all this talk about God saying:
1) There are ways he has created us to live and therefore commands us to live,
2) That when we don't live the way God commands us to live, it is sin and
3) That sin will be judged.
When I put it that clearly, does it hit you that Southern Californians in general would not like what James is saying? Well, 1st C Jewish Christians didn't seem to like it much either.
Some people are confused about what James is saying here so let me walk you through it. James has just been saying that if we will glorify God, then we dare not show partiality to any human being. We dare not show favoritism simply because a person is wealthy or successful and we dare not discriminate against a person simply because he is poor and unsuccessful (in the world's eyes). James used very strong words about this even saying that we "become judges with evil thoughts" (2:4) when we discriminate.
With that in mind, Pastor James seems to anticipate getting notes or emails saying, "Why are you making such a big deal out of such a small thing, Pastor? It's not like we're committing adultery or murder." To this he replies, "You remember what our King over all kings, our Lord Jesus taught, don't you?" He said that all the Ten Commandments of God can be boiled down to two, i.e., love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself. The first half of the 10 Commands tells us how to love God and the second half tells us how to love neighbors. If you don't recognize the image of God in all people and discriminate against people, you break both halves – you transgress the heart of God's royal law! See vv.8-9: 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.
James' words are a very Jewish way of saying, "It is this so it cannot be that." Here's the formula:
It is this: If you love by showing no partiality, you do what is right.
Therefore: If you are partial to people, you are doing what is wrong.
James is saying powerfully the same thing I often try to preach here, i.e., when we trust Jesus, we follow him. We become committed to having our whole lives obeying God. As Paul put it, "We no longer live for ourselves but for him who died and rose again (2 Corinthians 5:15)" and "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal. 2:20)." When we believe that, then we don't say, "Well, I keep a part of what he asks for but not the rest." No, we know that everything he asks of us is to be obeyed. We are serious about obeying God. At the heart of what God calls for is to love people as Jesus loves people.
So, the kind of church that James is calling for is one that takes obedience to God seriously. We know that evil does great harm. If evil is not judged and punished, there is no real justice. And we know that God has promised that, when he has finished his work, his world will be a just world in which evil has been punished and no longer does harm. So, we will seek justice when things are wrong because God is just.
We fear only one thing, i.e., we fear disobeying God. That fear takes away all other fears.
Being a community of justice means that we are committed:
1) To confronting wrongs and evils when we recognize them and
2) To doing personally what is good and right – as determined by God.
God alone is fully just. But, when we see things in ourselves, in our church and in our world that are not right, we take them seriously. When we do, we become a church that prays for one another, encourages one another, corrects one another and holds one another accountable as we seek together to glorify God.
Any community in which Jesus is the Lord will be growing toward becoming a community of justice. According to James, one of the clearest indicators that God is doing his work in us will be that we will not discriminate against anyone made in God's image.

#2: A Community of Mercy – Mercy needing people who have found mercy offering mercy to other mercy needing people. Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment (2:13).
The term mercy has two general and closely related meanings both in James' language and in our own:
1. A kindness that flows into acts of compassion for those in distress.
2. A willingness to do almost anything to establish, maintain or restore a relationship.
I think that Pastor James had received news that some of his church people were failing to be merciful in both of those ways. They were ignoring people in their community who were in distress (see 1:27). And, they were refusing to enter into a relationship with some who wanted to be a part of the church family. Sadly, they excluded this group solely on the basis of external appearances (2:1-7).
So, James addresses this in the way that any good pastor must do it, i.e., by pointing out that in the eyes of God, what they were doing was wrong. "And," says Pastor James, "the sin is serious." He doesn't sugarcoat the sin. He doesn't say, "Well, others are worse. And, I know life is hard for you so you can be excused for what you're doing. After all, you're the victims because you're being mistreated yourself." No, James calls their prejudice a serious sin and he warns them in the most sobering terms imaginable: Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.
By saying this, James is simply re-phrasing what his brother Jesus had said in his Sermon on the Mount, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." Jesus had declared that one of the surest ways that we can know that we have fallen upon God's grace and received his forgiveness is that we forgive those who seek forgiveness. James is saying that, if we have fallen upon the mercy of God and found that he is merciful to us, then we will show the same mercy to those who seek it. The Bible's warning is clear and sobering: If there are people you refuse to reconcile with, to enter into relationship with or to forgive, you are in danger before God. Failure to show mercy is a sure sign that you have never received it.
I'm sure that when James' words were read in church, many people felt a deep conviction for their sin. They may have even felt a sense of hopelessness. If James' words are true, then it would seem that is no hope for any of us. All of us have broken God's laws. All of us have been unloving toward others. If God is just and must forgive evil – and I have engaged in evil – then where do I find hope?
Do not miss what James declares in his last sentence in this section (v.13). He simply and concisely says, "Mercy triumphs over judgment!"
Scholars have debated endlessly about what James means here. Is he simply demanding that his people stop making judgments about people based on external appearances? Is he saying "You must stop judging people and you must let mercy triumph over judgment"? Or, is he offering his people hope – reminding them that God's mercy toward us has found a way to triumph over the judgment we require for our sins?
Let me tell you how I read the verse. In v. 13a, James cites a maxim. By doing so, he says, "This is the way that God has established the world, i.e., that genuine mercy finds ways to triumph over judgment." And, with that in mind, this is exactly what God has done. We have all sinned – and we do it by not loving people. But, the nature of God is that his mercy triumphs over judgment. And, a church in which Jesus reigns will be committed to doing the same, i.e., to finding ways to have mercy triumph over judgment. That means that even when we feel people are messed up or that they have wronged us, we will seek find a way to show mercy in ways similar to the way God does it. In other words, we will not ignore injustice or evil. We will be a community of justice. But, we will find a way to forgive and restore.
I was talking with Matt Barnes about this last week, and he challenged me with this question: What will a community of justice and mercy look like when God is working in us?
• We will have times in our worship or smaller gathering when we come broken because we have become aware of sin that is not yet dealt with
• We will have people in our smaller groups holding us accountable to live holy lives – with seriousness but without pride.
• We will experience times in church when we must engage in discipline – but it always will have the goal of restoration. We will see people who have at one point acknowledged their sin later being restored to fellowship and service because – mercy triumphs over judgment.
• We will discover that people in the world, who know their lives need to change but don't know how to change, will come because they will hear stories of change in our lives
• We will love to receive communion together because we will know that the cross is where justice and mercy come together – and that brings us to communion today.
When we receive communion, we recognize how God has found a way to be just and merciful at the same time. There can be no justice if evil is not judged. And God has declared that he personally will see that sin does not go unpunished. God declared, Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord (Rom. 12:19). At the same time, God declares that "there is no condemnation – no judgment – for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1)." But, we all have sinned and the payment due for sin is death (Rom 3:23; 6:23). So today, at this communion table, we are grateful because we know that God has declared us to be right with him. But, we have a question: How is it possible that God can both be just and justify sinners?
That's what we remember at this table. God himself came into the world and bore the punishment for our sins. God is just so evil will be judged. God is merciful so he has found a way to bring us into a relationship with him. Hear the words of 1: Peter 2:22-24: Jesus committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
At communion today, we remember: Mercy triumphs over judgment!

To His glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor