This past weekend I had the privilege to speak at Westside. We are in the 3rd week of our Life Apps Series and the passage I was given to talk on was James 2:1-13. It talks about showing favoritism and discriminating against people.
The big idea for the teaching was: To show favoritism is to sin. To show mercy is our response to Jesus’ love for us.
We all respond to people based on their appearance. We will create pre-judgements of a person from what they wear, the group they associate with, or even their accent. James teaches us that when we act on our pre-judgements of someone based on their appearance, we discriminate against them.
In verses 1-7, James has two threads going:
1) Favoritism is discrimination and it happens when we act on our pre-judgements.
2) Discrimination reveals our motives.
James then gives us a triple-threat approach to conquering favoritism in verses 8-13.
1) We must adopt the mind of Christ. (v8)
2) Call favoritism what it is… sin. (v9)
3) Show mercy to everyone. (v13)
You can watch the message in its entirety here.
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