LESSON FOR THE JUNIOR CLASSES
STUDY SCRIPTURE: JAMES 2
KEY VERSE
“Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?”. James 2:5
INTRODUCTION
Our Lesson today is really about faith. Faith is what you believe in and what you would depend on and which gives you confidence as you live your daily life. There are all different kinds of things that people believe in and trust but the Bible tells us that all of these things are false and cannot be trusted except for faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the kind of faith that can be trusted.
Everybody who is a child of Jesus therefore must make sure that they have true faith in Him. This is so because God wants us to have a special kind of supernatural Love called agape love. This means that we must love the Lord God with all our heart, our soul, our mind and love the people around us also. So we must also pay special regard for our friends at school, our family, those in our neighbourhood, and the people that we meet. We cannot treat them badly.
The Apostle James tells us that faith is what you believe and you should believe in God. But there are two things that go TOGETHER when you have true faith. We have to have belief and trust in God and do loving actions to help others. So for James faith and good works go together and cannot be separated.
You cannot have one without the other. When you have both of them together there will be a big difference in your life and in the lives of others.
The Apostle James gives us a warning that some people think they have the right kind of faith, the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ but in fact they do not have that kind of faith. They have created some other kind of faith which is not the true faith. The test is whether we love the poor. If we do not love the poor and treatment for properly we do not have the faith of Jesus Christ.
We read all kinds of verses in Scripture which tells us that God does not have prejudice, bias, or preferential attitudes and treatments and He treats all people equally. God wants to save the rich as well as the poor.
God does not have partiality preferring one over the other. Scripture puts it in a way that says that God does not respect persons. So we see some very strict instructions from God about how we must treat others.
A lot of prophets and the writers of Scripture agree with what James is saying. For example, Psalm 41:1 says
“Blessed is he that considers the poor, the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble”.
Psalm 68:10 says:
“O God, thou hast prepared of thy goodness for the poor”
And Proverbs 17:5 warns us
“Whoever mocks the poor reproaches his maker”.
Remember therefore that God has made everybody on earth and He does not want us to be partial, respecting those that are rich and wealthy, and treating badly those that are poor, and cannot afford to wear expensive clothes and expensive shoes and eat expensive food.
God does not like that kind of partiality. God wants us to be impartial and love everybody without any preference. God wants us to help those that have needs that they cannot meet. So we should help those that do not have much and we should not abuse them.
Unfortunately some people in the early church when James was writing this Book gave preference to the wealthy people that came in to the church and gave them the best seats and treated them well. Then when a poor person came into the church they put them in the back benches or told them to stand up in a corner at the back of the church and did not treat them very well. That James says was totally wrong and showed that they did not really have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This attitude showed that these people in the church were not really saved because they did not have impartial faith.
James tells us that if we show partiality and preference we do not have the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. That would be a terrible thing. We should never want to find ourselves in that bad position.
The Bible actually calls showing partiality a sin. None of us should want to commit sins. The Commandments of God has told us that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and we should love our neighbour as ourselves. The Parable of the Good Samaritan which we studied some time ago tells us who our neighbour is. So remember that though someone might be poor and do not have many things that they would like they might be rich in faith IN the Lord Jesus Christ and that is what God loves. God wants everybody to be rich in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ and when you are like that you will not show preference, bias, and partiality.