Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

In C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, he tells a really intriguing story that takes place in the afterlife.

Lewis isn’t trying to be strictly theological in this book and he’s not making any claims of what life after death will actually be like, but he takes us on a journey and introduces us to many characters that really help us to learn a lot about ourselves.

There are several characters who have stood out to me the couple of times I have read this book, but one of them popped into my head while I have been studying this passage in James.

In this book, there are two kinds of people.

There are these ghostly translucent and colorless characters who live in a dreadful gray town, everyone avoiding one another and sulking in their own little corners of the hopeless expanse.

Then, there are these “solid” characters who live in a beautiful land up above the gray town.

The book plays out telling the story of a group of these ghostly characters taking a field trip up to the beautiful land, and as one of these people comes into contact with one of the solid people, he begins an annoying conversation that escalates very quickly.

At first he is annoyed because he knows some of the solid people, and he knew for a fact that they did not earn a spot in this beautiful land.

His annoyance turned to anger as he demanded that he be given a spot in this land.

The crazy part is that he is actually offered exactly that- but he must first repent.

This only threw the man into a further rage, as he stormed off back towards the gray town yelling “I want my rights!

I want my rights!”

Ironically, he didn’t realize that the grow town was exactly what was owed to him.

This was a man that was so consumed by himself and his own delusion of self-righteousness that he was never able to see or appreciate the joy that was passing him by.

He was doomed to an eternity of misery and loneliness because he couldn’t let go of his own manufactured “goodness,” refusing the beautiful land if sinners like those solid people were allowed in.

We Are Convicted as Transgressors of the Royal Law

We often think ourselves innocent in the Royal Law

State: James 2:8

These believers who have been scattered in the Dispersion have experienced quite a change of scenery.

As has been covered over the last several weeks, we know that James is writing to a people who likely mostly have a religious background in Judaism.

These were all people who were well versed in what James calls the “Royal Law” that is found in the Old Testament, but that we find summarized in the Ten Commandments, and that we find summarized even further in simply the phrase “loving your neighbor as yourself.”

Boiling down the Royal Law to that phrase, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” is a beautiful thing because it really captures the heart of what the law is all about; love.

But when doing this, I think the enemy begins to whisper in our ears, and we must be careful to resist his lies.

There were doubtless some amongst the people James was writing to who truly believed they were fulfilling the Royal Law, and that by doing so they were earning for themselves the rank of “child of God” in the midst of a broken and sinful world.

They would look around at all the hateful sin the world was producing around them in their dispersion, and in comparison, they began to be tempted to think that they were truly good people deserving of the Kingdom of God.

They were disgusted with the pagans, the non-believers, the criminals, the drunks, and they began to elevate themselves by comparing themselves to those who were “truly” unworthy of God.

Compared to these sinners, they thought themselves the very definition of love.

Compared to these disgusting pagans, they thought themselves as really fulfilling the royal law, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

After all, they didn’t murder like the criminals.

They didn’t commit adultery like the pagans who worshiped the fertility goddesses with those promiscuous priestesses in those ungodly temples.

Illustrate: This is a thing that comes naturally to us as humans.

I’ll give you an example: it happens every year in college football.

You play the first three games of the season against teams that have no business being on the same field as you.

Universities like Michigan will literally pay millions just to get some no-name football team to come and play them, and get killed by 50 points.

The whole fanbase walks away thinking we’re gonna make a run for the national championship this year.

It happened last year to the University of Michigan, and we even won the conference championship, but all you Michigan fans will remember what happened when we met with the big boys, with Georgia.

Or maybe you’ve blocked those painful memories out of your mind.

I don’t blame you, I did too.

The point is, we love to compare ourselves to those that we already know are worse than us.

It makes us feel powerful, deserving of praise and honor.

We hate to compare ourselves to those who we know are better than us, because we hate to be put in our place.

Apply: We do this ourselves all the time.

We pick and choose what standards we will use to evaluate ourselves, and those standards always benefit us.

Our performance reviews are only concerned with our strengths, but conveniently forget about the areas where we are miserably failing.

Unfortunately, those of you who have received performance reviews from a boss at work know that this isn’t how performance reviews actually work.

The whole body of work must be evaluated, the good along with the bad.

When we do that, we will come to a scary realization about ourselves and the Royal Law, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” which is the same realization that James was helping those dispersed believers to come to.

By failing even one point of it, we are convicted of all of it

State: James 2:8-11

James exposes one of our favorite cop-outs to our culpability when it comes to the law.

It seems that at the time, there had snuck into the religious mindset of the Jews this idea that righteousness was something that was attainable by effort, and that in fact effort was the only way to attain it.

And it makes sense why they would think that; there was a large emphasis on righteousness and living according to the law in the Old Testament.

God clearly demanded obedience, and so the people went to great lengths to show the people around them that they were obedient and righteous according to the law.

But in the effort to appear righteous, they couldn’t judge themselves by the whole law.

It became standard practice to believe that as long as you kept most of the law, and especially those parts that the culture looked down upon, then you would be considered righteous according to the law of God.

Now James shows that this is absurd, and that while it may fool man that looks on outward appearance, it does not fool God who looks upon the heart.

The way the law works is very simple: if you obey it, you are seen as righteous under it.

If you break it, and I mean any of it, you are a criminal and will be convicted as such.

James shows clearly that if you commit murder but remain faithful to your wife, you’re still a criminal.

In the same way, just because the believers in the dispersion are guilty of breaking the law even by showing partiality, even if they don’t commit murder.

While we may rightfully view some sins as worse than others, every sin is a transgression of God’s law and will be punished as such.

Illustrate: For these people to claim to be righteous under the law is like this: its someone who is guilty of committing murder pleading that they shouldn’t go to jail because they’ve never stolen anything.

To bring it a little closer to home, its like when I tell my three year old to

Kids listening to one thing but disobeying all the others

Apply: We do exactly the same thing that James is accusing these dispersed believers of.

Everyone wants to think they’re a good person, and many of us would claim that title for ourselves either out loud or internally.

Nobody likes to think of themselves as bad, evil, guilty, or convicted.

But when we compare ourselves to this royal law, and recognize that to fail at even one point of it brings judgement, which one of us can stand?

How many of us could read through the ten commandments and find ourselves innocent of even one of them?

You may try to wriggle past the first couple by claiming you’ve never been a pagan, and we don’t even want to think about what it may look like to break the commandment about the Sabbath or coveting and you may start to look at some of the “big ones” like murder and think yourself innocent, but don’t sprint through these too quickly.

Do you remember what Jesus said concerning the interpretation of these laws?

IF you say you haven’t committed murder, but you’ve hated a brother in your heart, then you are in fact guilty of murder

If you haven’t committed adultery, but have lusted in your heart after another, then you are in fact guilty of adultery.

We live in a culture that has been ravaged by social media.

We have all turned on one another, and all it takes for us to hate each other anymore is a different political opinion or a rival fandom.

We hate one another in our free time now, and the social media algorithms are luring you into that.

There are people who are made in the image of God that we spew hateful venom at simply because we disagree with them about the president, a political ideology, or because they rubbed us the wrong way.

We live in a culture that has been ravaged by pornography and over-sexualization of people.

Its not even just on the dedicated sites anymore, but youtube and twitter and instagram are pushing it in front of our eyes.

We don’t even have to go looking for it anymore, but we do.

And this has led to us viewing people we should be looking at as our brothers and sisters as mere objects for our pleasure.

More than that, my generation and younger has been growing up in a world that tells them to be defined by their sexual preferences, and thinks that exploring that ought to be a normal part of growing up.

This is the world we live in, this is the culture we all contribute to, and would any one of us dare to stand under the judgement of the Royal Law of God? You’ve not gone out and committed physical murder; congratulations.

You won’t be receiving any accolades from the just Judge who sees all and knows all that is in your heart.

It is clear that not only the dispersed believers, but we ourselves and everyone on Earth is guilty concerning the Royal Law.

The punishment for all of it is death

State:

Illustrate:

Apply:

In Christ, We Will Be Judged By the Law of Liberty

Law of Liberty defined by Christ’s Atonement

State: James 2:12-13

This is a very quick transition that begs for some explanation.

Terms like “Royal Law” and “Law of Liberty” may seem to just be thrown around here quickly, but James is only able to be so concise here because these terms are loaded with theological and practical significance.

While a line like this discussing the Law of Liberty might be easy for us to pass up, we can’t miss what James is saying here.

To a modern audience, James might have said, “so speak and so act as someone who is to be judged under the gospel.”

In a book that has received so much criticism for being so light on grace, here James makes a direct connection from our sinful disobedience to God’s awesome mercy.

As we look closer at that phrase, “law of liberty,” we will recognize that liberty is connected to what Christ has done for his people.

The word we have translated as liberty carries with it connotations of redemption, freedom, and being set free from an oppressor.