WHAT IS YOUR MOTIVATION?

Biblical Deliverance Ministries

JAMES ch2 V1-13.

    'My dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim that you have faith in

    Our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favour some people more than others?

    For instance, Suppose someone comes into your meetings dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewellery and another comes in who is poor and dressed in shabby clothes. If you give special attention and a good seat to the rich person, but you say to the poor one, "you can stand over there, or else sit on the floor' - well, doesn't this discrimination show that you are guided by wrong motivation?

    Listen to me dear brothers and sisters. Hasn't God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith? Aren't they the ones who will inherit the kingdom of God promised to those who love him? And yet you insult the poor man! Isn't it the rich who oppress you and drag you into court? Aren't they the ones who slander Jesus Christ, whose noble name you bear?

     Yes indeed it is good when you truly obey our Lord's royal command found in the Scriptures: "Love your neighbour as yourself." But if you pay special attention to the rich, you are committing a sin, for you are guilty of breaking the law.

    And the person who keeps all of the law except one is as guilty as the person who has broken all of Gods laws. For the same God who said, " Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." So if you murder someone, you have broken all the law, even if you do not commit adultery.

    So whenever you speak, or whatever you do, remember that the law of love will judge you, the law that set you free. For there will be no mercy for you if you have not been merciful to others. But if you have been merciful, the God's mercy toward you will win over his judgement against you.'

    This passage quite clearly states that as followers of Christ we should not discriminate between people on the basis of their financial status. I don't think a 25-minute spiel from me on the subject would be able to add anything to that argument already presented in the passage we just read. However, the point James is trying to make in this passage goes a lot deeper than just the issue of classism, and I think an insight into the true intention of this passage can be found in verse 4.

    'Doesn't this discrimination show that you are guided by wrong motives?' or as the NIV and several other versions put it: '...become judges with evil thoughts'

    See the discrimination is merely a symptom of an underlying problem, actions which are the outworking of evil thoughts and wrong motivations.

    And it is these motivations and desires that are the true problem for the early church, and remain so for the church today.

    And that is why my challenge for you this morning is

    WHAT IS YOUR MOTIVATION?

    What is the main drive behind your actions?

    What do you base your life decisions on?

    Who will you marry?

    What you will do for a job?

    Where will you live?

    What is it that determines the outcomes of choices that you make every day?

    Who will you talk to?

    What you will talk about.

    What will you do when you get home?

    Now James 2 starts by giving the example of a group of people who discriminates between visitors on the basis of their material wealth and states that they were guided by wrong motives.

    So the question that immediately springs to my mind is what might some of these motives be.

    Why would people discriminate between rich and poor?

    I have grouped these into three different categories,

    The first of these is Misconceptions.

    There was an experiment done in the 1970s in which people were shown a group of photos and asked to rate the people in them as to how beautiful they were. They were then shown the same group of photos and asked to rate the people in them on a range of other traits such as honesty, intelligence etc. The results showed that the people perceived as more beautiful were also perceived as more intelligent, kinder, more polite and less inclined towards criminal behaviour. All this decided solely on the basis of a single photo.

    Now deep down all of us know that these stereotypes and generalisations are not justified, but we still all do it.

    And it certainly doesn't stop with beauty. We stereotype people based on their ethnicity, gender, and occupation, based on where people come from, what their family background is, what they do with their leisure time, the way they dress, even the type of music they listen to.

    And to get back to the example put forward by James, that there are definitely stereotypes based on wealth.

    People, who are seen as rich, are often thought of as more intelligent, more motivated, more talented that those who aren't. But even more dangerous, within the context of the church, they are often perceived as more righteous.

    There is a philosophy being promoted in some churches today, called the prosperity doctrine, which in a nutshell states that God will reward the righteous with material prosperity. The flip side of this being that if you are not being rewarded with this physical wealth’ it is because of a lack of righteousness.

    Now I want to point out that this is nothing new, it was an argument quite clearly put forward and rebutted in the old testament book of Job, reputed as being the oldest book in the bible.

    But James wanted to deal with these misguided stereotypes head on.

    That's why he states in v5-7

    "Listen to me, dear brothers and sisters. Hasn't God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith? Aren't they the ones who will inherit the kingdom of God promised to those who love him? And yet you insult the poor man! Isn't it the rich who oppress you and drag you into court?

    Aren't they the ones who slander Jesus Christ, whose noble name you bear?"

    It's almost like James is pre-empting the argument that the members of the church might put forward to justify their discrimination.

    You think that the rich man is more righteous than the poor are? That certainly wasn't what Jesus thought; and well, to be honest, when you look at what the rich have been doing to the church recently, it's certainly not reflected in their actions. And wasn't it Jesus who said

    "By their fruits you will know them."

    And while we are at it, you can forget about saying that you are only treating the rich the way you do out of obedience to Gods command to love your neighbour as you love yourself. Because if that were your true motivation, you would be treating the poor man the same way. Remember the story of the Good Samaritan? Your neighbour is not just the guy across the fence at the end of the garden. Your neighbour is anyone and everyone who is in need.

    So now that we have got rid of those misconceived stereotypes and the lame excuses I want you to start taking an honest look at yourself and your motives.

    Now that's where James left it, but I want to take it a bit further; because as I said earlier I actually see the motives for discrimination as falling into three categories and I thing the distinction between the other two is very important.

    The first of these is SELFISHNESS.

    Basically, I'm going to treat that person well, because of what I might get out of it in the future. If I scratch his back now, he might scratch mine some stage in the future. Now days we call this "Networking"

    The favouritism that I am showing to that person is not out of a genuine interest for them, but it is motivated by my own self interest; and what I think I could potentially get out of it.

    Now, the third Type of motivation, which could lead, to this sort of discrimination is what I have called COLLECTIVE SELFISHNESS.

    This is where I'm not necessarily thinking about what I personally can get out of buttering up this person, but rather what the church as a whole may gain from having them as a member.

    There's the obvious: Rich families will tend to put more in the collection plate.

    Then there are the more subtle ones, many of which relate back to the stereotypes already mentioned. Rich people may have more talent, energy, motivation and even time to give to the church, and long term, that could mean more, bigger and better ministries that the church can provide.

    Or maybe even the idea that the type of people we have as members may make us more (or less) attractive to the wider community. If rich people tend to be more popular, then having a few more in the church might make our church more popular. Well, it would certainly do more for our image that having a whole lot of riff raff and street bums taking up the back seats.

    Now these motives may seem a lot more altruistic, after all we are thinking about the greater good aren't we? Well we are to an extent, but we are still only taking into consideration the interests of ourselves.

    It's not what can I get out of this,

    But it is what can we get out of it.

    And in the end that's just as wrong.

    So what should our motivation be?

    Let’s go back to James 2 v10-11.

    And the person who keeps all of the law except one is as guilty as the person who has broken all of Gods laws. For the same God who said "

    Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." So if you murder someone, you have broken all the law, even if you do not commit adultery

    I believe that James alludes to three key motivators in this passage, and this is the first:

    That we are all sinners, and as such we are all equal.

    When reading this, I was reminded on the time when the Pharisees brought an adulterous to Jesus in John chapter 8.

    Jesus made no attempt to try and justify the adulterous woman's behaviour. He simply said:

    "All right, stone her. But let those who have never sinned cast the first stone."

    See He knew that she was guilty and as such deserved to die, but he also knew that everyone else there was also guilty of sin and for that reason they were just as deserving of death as the adulterous woman.

    No more, no less.

    James chose to compare Murder and Adultery but James 2 v11 could just as accurately read:

    For the same God who said, " Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not steal." So if you steal from someone, you have broken all the law, even if you do not commit adultery.

    Or

    For the same God who said, " Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not lie." So if you lie to someone, you have broken all the law, even if you do not commit adultery.

    The point is that it doesn't matter whether you are rich or poor; Old or young; Black or white; a lawyer or a priest. We are all sinners, and as such we are all in exactly the same situation.

    We are all equal.

    The good news is that God loves us all, so much that Jesus came to die for us all, and through him all of us can find salvation if we choose it.

    And this, I believe is the only point of legitimate distinction. Those who are sinners and those who are sinners saved by grace.

    Those who have already discovered salvation, and those who haven't....yet.

    When we consider just how much God has done for us,

    Then combine that with the fact that there are still so many people out there who do not have that relationship with God...

    Now THAT'S a motivation.

    In this passage, James also refers to two general principles or rules upon which we should be basing our lives.

    The first of these is alluded to in verse 8.

    What James refers to as the Lords royal command:

    That your should Love your neighbour as yourself and he goes on to state that "it is good when we TRULY obey this."

    So what does it take to truly obey this royal command?

    Might I suggest that part of truly loving our neighbours as much as we love ourselves involves taking them into consideration whenever we are making any decisions.

    We live in a world that is dominated by individualism and driven by the urge for instant gratification. In such an environment it is sometimes easy to forget that everything which we decide to do (or not to do), has consequences. Consequences which impact, not only on ourselves, but also on those around us, as well.

    So surely if we love our neighbours, we should be considering the impact which our actions are going to have on them when we make any decision.

    An if we are supposed to love them as much as we love ourselves, doesn't that mean giving their concerns equal status to our own.

    This doesn't mean we have to go into a consultation process with the whole neighbourhood every time we want to make a decision. In fact given

    Jesus' definition of neighbour this would be impossible.

    What it does mean is that whenever we make a decision we should be asking ourselves

    What impact will this decision have on?

    - My family and friends,

    - My work mates and colleagues,

    - My next door neighbours,

    - My community, and

    - The wider society within which I live.

    (And I guess you can put your church in there somewhere too).

    It is only when we are giving the needs and concerns of others equal weight in all our decision making that we can truly claim to be loving the as we love ourselves.

     Now if you think the royal command sounded like hard work, the second general principal, which James refers to, is even heavier.

    Lets have another look at v12-13

    So whenever you speak, or whatever you do, remember that you will be judged by the law of love, the law that set you free.

    At this point, I need to say that in the original Greek the word love was not used at all. A more accurate interpretation would be the "Law of Liberty", (as is found in the King James and the Good News Versions), or the "Law of Freedom" as is found in the NIV.

    So if we cut and paste a bit we get:

    Whenever you speak, or whatever you do, remember that you will be judged by the law of Freedom.

    For there will be no mercy for you if you have not been merciful to others. But if you have been merciful, then God's mercy toward you will win over his judgement against you.'

    I guess everyone here has heard of the Golden Rule, You known

    "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

    Well my understanding of the Law of Freedom, is quite similar; only it goes more like:

    "Do unto others as you would have God do unto you."

    In this passage, James tells us that if we want God to be merciful to us, we need to be merciful to others.

    In the parable of the unforgiving debtor, Jesus tells us that if we fail to forgive our brothers God will not forgive us. (A message re-emphasised in Matthew 6 and in Colossians 3).

    Proverbs 21 v13 states that if we refuse to help others in need than help will not be give to us when we are in need.

    And 1 John 4 states that although God's love is unconditionally given, if we are not showing love to others then we have to truly received this love from God.

    See when Jesus died for us, he set us free from the law, but we are still responsible to God for our actions. Our actions are no longer dictated by law and decree, we are now free to do whatever we want. That's why this is called the Law of Liberty.

    God has thrown away the old yardstick of the Law

    But we will still be held accountable to God, its just now the guidelines have changed a little.

    The old system was action bases and tended to focus on negatives.

    Thou shalt not Steal,

    Thou shalt not Murder.

    Thou shalt not Covert.

    While the new system is more attitude based and much more positive.

    To be a follower of Jesus, he expects you:

    to be merciful,

    to be forgiving,

    to be compassionate and caring,

    to show genuine love to others.

    Not because you have to, but because that what Jesus is, and as we strive to become like Him, that's what we will be too.

    So I'm going to finish by asking one more time

    What is Your Motivation?

    Because at the end of the day

    It’s the thought that counts.