Fellowship in the Word

Guest (Male): Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bil Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functional follower of Jesus Christ.

Bil Gebhardt: Prejudice is incompatible with Christianity. We can't be prejudiced. You see, that’s no way for us to look at anybody. It doesn’t matter whether we're dealing with color or we’re dealing with economic status. It doesn’t even matter. It’s incompatible. Jesus Christ is never prejudiced, not ever.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bil Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church, located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let’s join Pastor Bil Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God’s word meets our world.

Bil Gebhardt: Some time ago, a survey was done of a group of white middle-class New York City residents. The nature of the survey was that people were shown a picture, and then another picture, and then another picture, and then they told them at the end of it they would ask them what they saw in the pictures. Most of the pictures from a point of view of the survey were bogus; that wasn’t exactly what they had in mind. They had one picture in mind.

The picture they had in mind was a picture of two men standing on a platform at the subway. One was white and one was black. One was dressed in a business suit and the other was dressed in very shabby clothing, overalls and the like. It turned out that the one who was in the shabby clothing had his knife out and he was about to rob the other man.

I didn't say one thing: the man in the suit was black and the man in the shabby clothing with the knife out was white. When they asked these people what they had seen, the majority of people, over 50 percent of white-class middle New Yorkers, said this: they saw a black man in overalls assaulting a white man in a business suit. It reveals to us that our prejudice is so deep-rooted that we're capable of reinterpreting reality in light of our prejudice.

E.B. White said this: "Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form your opinions without having to worry about the facts." Are you prejudiced? I'm not talking just black and white. Are you prejudiced? Here's my guess: you are. In one way or another, you are.

Rick Warren says there are five ways in which we as believers can be tempted to be prejudiced: on the basis of appearance, on the basis of ancestry, on the basis of age, on the basis of achievement, or on the basis of affluence. Lewis Smedes, in his book *Pretty Good Person*, says we love to put labels on people. He writes, "We put labels on people the way designers sew labels on their clothes, and then we let the labels tell us what people are and what they're worth."

If we value intelligence in children, we label them as fast learners or slow learners, and the first question we ask about any child is how well they're doing in school. If we value money, we label people as well-to-do or poor, and the first thing we wonder about people is how much money they make. If we value physical appearance, we label people as attractive or unattractive, and the first thing we ask about a person is what do they look like.

Here's a church group, he writes, that puts a premium on stable families and lasting marriages. When a woman in that church gets a divorce, the church labels her as the divorced one and blinds itself to her reality, her pains, her gifts, and her needs. When people come along who are physically disabled, we label them disabled and we thereby blind ourselves to the infinite treasure that they offer us.

If you're prejudiced, tell me where. Where are you prejudiced at? It's insidious, all of us. This is a very important issue. The fact is, the word "prejudice" is an old English word that comes from the Latin, and it means the emphasis is on prejudgment based on something external. That's what prejudice is. The thing is, we know that as believers in Jesus Christ, that can't be right.

I mean, think of all the way back to when they were looking at David, whether he'd be the king in 1 Samuel 16, and the scripture says there that man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. We know that, and yet it's still a struggle for us. James warns us that the prejudice that we have is something we have to get rid of in our lives if we're going to be a person of real faith.

Open your Bibles to James chapter 2. As I said before, James is not a popular epistle, and I think the reason that James is so unpopular is that there are so few mature Christians out there that most of the rest of us don't like it. James is a book about what does mature Christianity look like. What does real faith look like? What does your life look like?

From the inside out, what does this really look like? In chapter 1, James said when trials come from the outside, what does your life look like? James told us that the first thing you do if you have a mature faith is that you celebrate the reason behind the trials, that God is going to use those reasons to grow you, that we know what God has in mind, that we go to God and ask Him for His resources to help us, and that we know there's a future reward when we endure.

Then he moved to the inside and said what happens when you have temptations on the inside. He asked us to realize certain kinds of questions. The first one is you've got to realize everybody gets tempted. Secondly, temptation is my responsibility. Thirdly, there is a consistent process in temptation. The solution to temptation is that victory comes from refocusing my attention away from my circumstances and back to the Lord.

Then last week, he cut to the quick of it all and said that we have to stop being delusional about our spirituality. One of the things that I've noticed over all the years is that Christians who are not mature think they are. They're just convinced they are. James says don't be delusional about your spirituality, and he uses the Word of God as the test.

The first thing he says to them is how do you receive the Word of God? He didn't say how do you understand it or how many verses have you memorized, but how do you really receive it? Do you receive it with humility? He says, do you submit to the Word of God? Then he gets really personal and he says, and do you practice it?

What do you mean by that? He says, does it affect the way you talk? Does it affect the way you serve? Remember, he said you want to know what pure religion is—and he didn't mean that in a religious sense—you want to know what pure spirituality is? How do you handle the orphans and widows in your culture? What do you do for people?

How do you stay unstained from the world? James keeps doing this, and now he's moving to another area. In chapter 2, he decides he's going to move to prejudice. His command is pretty clear here, and what he's going to say in these first four verses is prejudice is incompatible with your Christian faith. Prejudice is incompatible.

So he starts out, "My brethren." By the way, he's talking to us then. James is clearly a book talking to us. 15 times in this little short epistle he uses the word "brethren." He says, "My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism." Let me make a couple of comments here. "Do not hold" is in the emphatic position in the Greek; it's the very first thing in the sentence.

That means there's an exclamation point. James is trying to make something very important to him. "Do not hold, do not be prejudiced," is what he is saying. Now, the New American Standard says "personal favoritism." The word is *prosopolempsia*, a big Greek word. It's a strange word. It means "to receive a face." That's what it means. In other words, you make a decision about something based on how it looks. That's personal favoritism, focusing on the surface issues.

He said don't do that. Don't be prejudiced, whatever you do. He said you shouldn't be able to do that. He says, in the New American Standard, "in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ." Well, the important thing about that is he's not really saying that. Literally, it says this: "Our Lord Jesus Christ of the glory." That's what it literally says. "Our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ of the glory, of the *doxa*." Why would he say that? Well, I can tell you why.

I say this in a different way often. How many celebrities are there in the universe? One. Just one. Only one has glory, our Lord Jesus Christ. That's it. Whenever you're prejudiced, though, you always take a superior position. He says don't hold your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There's only one celebrity; that's all there is.

You see, there's only Him. The difference between Him and us—and by the way, He's the only celebrity in the universe and He's not prejudiced, not in any sense of it. God has never been prejudiced. Leviticus 19: "You shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you shall judge your neighbor fairly." Deuteronomy 10: "The great and mighty and awesome God does not have any partiality." Matthew 22: they were talking to Jesus and they said to Him, "You aren't partial in any way." In Acts chapter 10, Peter says this: "I most certainly understand that God is not one to ever show partiality."

That's his point. Prejudice is incompatible with Christianity. We can't be prejudiced. You see, that's no way for us to look at anybody. It doesn't matter whether we're dealing with color or we're dealing with economic status; it doesn't even matter. It's incompatible. Jesus Christ is never prejudiced, not ever.

Did you ever think about the genealogy of Jesus Christ? You know, it's in the beginning of Matthew. It's that part you skip. You know, "someone begat someone," and you're moving on. Don't do that. It's an amazing lineage. But I want you to think about this: God became a man, incarnate. In His genealogy, we love this, but it says that He comes through a line, and there are names in there like Abraham. Wow, the father of the Jewish people, the father of all people of faith.

David, the great king. Wow, the great Jewish king. Yeah. How about Rahab? She's a harlot. What about Ruth? She's a Moabitess. You see, why would they be in there? God's not partial. God's not partial at all. Not even in the lineage of Christ is God partial. There's no partiality with God at all. That's what he is saying.

From your point of view and my point of view, do you know how many different kinds of people there are in the world? This is what we should believe: just two. There are two kinds of people in the world: there are saved people and there are lost people. The scripture's pretty clear that we're to love both groups, but that's all there is. Prejudice denies that and always adds another party in one way or another.

So James says, look, prejudice is incompatible with your Christian faith. Then he says, look, let me give you an example of that. He says, "For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and you say, 'You sit here in a good place today,' and you say to the poor man, 'You stand over there' or 'Sit down by my footstool.'"

There's his example. It's hypothetical. He says when he comes into the assembly. It's interesting; James is writing to the diaspora, Jewish believers who are dispersed around the world. That word "assembly" is not church. It applies to the church, but it's not church. It's the word "synagogue." He said when he comes into the synagogue, and he's a rich man.

How do you know he's rich? In that culture, by the way, it's his bling. You see, if you've got the bling, you've got money. That's the way it worked in that day. They didn't have Beamers and stuff like that. They couldn't show that type of thing, so they wore the bling, and that's what they did. It literally doesn't say "gold ring"; it says "gold-fingered." In other words, a person with a lot of wealth would have gold rings on all their fingers, and they might wear purple.

So whenever they come in, you say, "Wow." Now, please understand something else about these people. This example is used in a case of reverse discrimination. The people that James is writing to, by and large, overwhelmingly are poor. These are Jews who have been disenfranchised from their families. They have been set apart by their friends. They are not liked by the Greeks or Romans. They are suffering enormous economic hardship.

But somebody rich comes in and they want to react. "You sit right here. You just sit down right here. This is a perfect place for you." And then somebody poor comes in, and they say, "You go stand over there." You see, that's the example that he's using. He gets right to the heart of it here. Notice what he says then in verse 4: "Have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil motives?"

That's the reality of prejudice. Do you know what prejudice is? It's evil. And by the way, it's the worst kind of evil. There are three words James uses for evil: *kakia*, which he used last time, meaning wickedness; and then he uses the word *phaulos*; and then he uses the word *poneros*. *Poneros* is the worst kind of evil.

He said that's your motive. Prejudice is an evil. It permeates all of us, but it's an evil. It's not the way the church should ever be. This should be the one place on earth that you never find prejudice. How sad is that, by the way?

I can remember many years ago reading a Tony Evans book. Tony's a DTS grad from Dallas and pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship. Tony wrote something in the book I'll never forget. He said the most segregated time of the week in America is the worship hour. The most segregated we are in America is during the worship hour. What does that tell you?

We're prejudiced. You see, we're prejudiced. That's what he is saying. It's not the way God ever intended it to be. Hold your place here and go with me to Romans chapter 15 and verse 5. Paul's writing to the church at Rome, and he says, "Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus." That's the first thing he says in verse 5 of chapter 15. You need to be of the same mind.

Then he says so that with one accord—same mind, one accord—you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. Prejudice is incompatible with Christianity. We have to see people the same way Christ sees people, and that means in every possible way that we can.

Now, back to James. James wants to move on from this. I think when we read this, what we would say is, but that's not us, right? We wouldn't do that, would we? You wouldn't find that in our church, would you? Well, let me just—this is an older story, but it makes the point. It's written by Tom Eisenman, and it's a little anecdote about Bel Air Presbyterian Church in California.

Here's what he writes: "When in attendance, Governor Ronald Reagan and Nancy usually sat in the same seats just off the center aisle about two-thirds of the way into the sanctuary. On this particular morning, the governor and his wife were late, and by the time they got there, two college students were occupying those seats. An usher came down the aisle and asked the students if they would take a different seat off to one of the sides."

"They moved, and Governor Ronald and Nancy Reagan were brought in and seated. To his credit, the pastor got up from his place in the chancel, walked down and over to the college students, and he said to them, 'As long as I am pastor of this church, this will never happen to you again.' But it happened. You see, it happened. You see the prejudice? This is church. There are only saved and lost people here. You see how that works?"

How do you react, by the way, if somebody comes into this church—and we have this all the time—but somebody who is working their way through New Orleans Mission? They're homeless and they've now working their way through the mission; they've come to Christ and they want to get on with their life. And they're relatively new. How do you react to them? Basically, probably like you react to a lot of people: indifferently, right?

Okay, let me just throw something else out. What if somebody came up and sat right here in the front row and it was a Kardashian? Really? What would you do? What would you say? What would you talk about in the car on the way home? What would happen in your life? You see your prejudice? You see how this works? This can happen to anybody, and that's what he says.

He says, look, I'm going to give you the reasoning against the prejudice here in verses 5 through 11. I'm going to give you three different ways of approaching this. Here's the first way: theologically, in verse 5. He says, "Listen, my beloved brethren, did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?"

Theologically, understand something here: when it comes to salvation in scripture, there are two equal responsibilities. Let me just say it again: one is God does the choosing. You call it any way you want; you call it election, you see, you can say that He's predetermined, whatever word you want to use. That's God's part. Our part: whosoever believeth. Through the ages, people have fought about that. Which one is the most important? The answer, from my point of view, is neither.

Guest (Male): You’ve been listening to Pastor Bil Gebhardt on the radio ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you’d just like to listen to the message one more time, you can always go to a website, fellowshipbiblechurch.org. On our website, you’ll find archives of all our past broadcasts, and they are available to you free of charge.

The website again is fellowshipbiblechurch.org. We’re so glad you joined us today, and we hope you can join us next time for another edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bil Gebhardt.