Playing Favorites

On your calendars, July 16th, we'll be having a baptism bash at the beach right over at 43rd Street. There'll be a card like this to fill out at the Welcome Center. And please, if you don't mind, put your t-shirt size over on the corner, if you don't mind, so that we can order some t-shirts for our baptism. So if you've never been baptized, if you're newly saved, or if you've been a Christian for years but never really performed the act of baptism, the sacrament of baptism, we want you to be a part of that.

We're going to do that at the beach. What better place to do it at the beach, right? And we'll have food and just some time together and all that good stuff. So I just want you to mark the calendar for that. Some of you may have not been here last week, but we receive some discouraging news a couple weeks ago, Friday a week ago, that we weren't able to use this facility anymore.

The custodians are fatigued. They work seven days a week, just couldn't get anybody to commit to go through the summer and even into the fall. They're just tired. And one of the contract situations of the city of Virginia Beach is you have to have a custodian here, and they're not willing to be able to provide a custodian because they're tired, and therefore we have to look for another place to worship. So with that being said, we've talked to SeaTac, a Birdneck Elementary right across the road, and they are willing to take us in.

So we've got another place to meet. Hallelujah. Now, I just want y'all to keep in mind that everything we do is temporary, okay? We got a big vision for this church. We one day will have our own building.

We will have our own land. We will have something to call our home one day. So everything we do now, we have to be careful not to get too comfortable with where we are, right? Because God's carrying us to new things. And even here at Birdneck, it's going to look a little different.

There's going to be a little different feel to it, but we're the same people, right? We're the same people with the same mission doing the same thing. So as we move over there, this might be a great opportunity. Somebody sent me something this past week. Seth, actually, you sent me a text.

Let me see if I quote this exactly right. Sometimes our setbacks are setups, right? And it's setting us up for something even greater. So perhaps this is the best move we've ever made so far. And every time we've moved, we've moved three times.

Every time we move, we grow. So maybe this is an opportunity for us to grow again. But nothing is permanent. Even Birdneck may be permanent. We may get in there in two or three months, say, hey, let's find another location.

Let's shoot out a little further. Because our vision is bigger than just right now. This is great. This is awesome. We're having a great time together.

Things are happening. People are giving their lives to Christ every week. Isn't that awesome? I mean, God is doing some amazing things in this church. And I hear the stories over and over again from each of you, how God has just done something in your hearts and in your lives through this church.

And if this church didn't exist, you don't know where you would be. And I love to hear those stories because it lifts me up. I'm like, yes, we're doing the right thing, Lord. You know, sometimes we go through those seasons where, you know, you're just kind of pushing through because you're trying to get through to that next place. But when you hear stories like that, it's all worthwhile.

Even if you're that one person that's been changed by Jesus Christ through what we've did by us following and being obedient to God. It's all worth it. Amen. I'm so glad you're here this morning. And I believe we have a great, great message for you today.

We are in the book of James. Oh, by the way, as far as the move, I'll let you know more about that one. It's solidified. It probably will be as soon as the first week in July. We'll see how that works out.

If not, maybe we'll hang on here a little longer. But anyway, so if you come to church and you see that there's signs across the street rather than over here, make sure you go there. You know, we're still here. We're just right across the street. Okay.

Okay. We're having church. We're not stopping. Salt Church is here and it ain't going anywhere. Amen.

Okay. So we are in a sermon series about the book of James. Every year we put aside a little time to focus on a book in the Bible and kind of let the scripture speak for themselves rather than forming a topic and building scriptures around the topic. We actually go to the scripture itself and look at what God's telling us through the scripture. So we're in week three.

And just to kind of really quickly give you a little background information, James is a very practical book. It's, I like to call it the preacher book or the pastoral letter because it's very pastorally written. It's kind of corrects you and straightens you up and gives you exact things. Kind of, it's a little punchy. It's a little preachy, a little punchy pastoral letter.

It's meant to equip the saints to do and live a life worthy of Christ and worthy of the church. And actually if we listen to this stuff and some of this stuff is kind of hard and it breaks us down sometimes and, and we're like, Oh man, that, that kind of hit hard. But if we actually follow it, it might lead us somewhere that God wants to take us. He might want to be revealing something to us greater than, than where we currently are because we're connected to things that aren't, that God never really intended. So it was written by the book of James, not James, the apostle, but the brother of Jesus.

So the half brother of Jesus rather, because obviously Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, right? And then Joseph and Mary later on had kids and James was one of those kids. And he did not believe in Jesus when Jesus was walking to earth. It wasn't until after the resurrection that he said, Hey, wait a minute, something's happened here. And he was completely changed to the point where he was martyred because of what he believed.

Tradition tells us he was thrown off the temple by a mob of, of, of people because of what he believed. What a radical change that took place in his life. And here's James actually preaching and teaching the church. And today I want to hit on the topic, picking favorites. We're calling his picking favorites because James really hits on this favoritism and judgment thing.

Let me ask you this. Have you ever been judged before? How did it make you feel? Not good, right? Because we don't like to be judged, but judgment kind of comes natural to us.

Actually, we, we, we, we judge people easily, but we don't like to be judged. How many of you have been a favorite? How many of you've been a favorite? You've been a favorite of somebodies, right? Okay.

We got some favorites in here. I'm a favorite. Did you know that? I'm the favorite son in my family because I'm the only son in my family. Okay.

But I'm my mom and dad's favorite, right? Favorite son. My mom went around one time and went to each of us when we were little and kind of whispered in us, in our ears, you're my favorite. You know, she came up to me one time. I was in my room.

You know what, Leon, you're my favorite. And then when we were at lunch or eating around the table, my sister, She opens up and says, that's not true, is it? She says, what are you talking about? She says, I'm not your favorite, am I? You know, and wait a minute, you said you were my favorite, you know, and it just went on and on.

Oh, you said that. So I have three sisters and we were just like, hey, what happened here? So my parents were very intentional about not having favorites, but sometimes those things do happen. People have favorites and maybe you've been a favorite or you've resented someone that's a favorite. Like that teacher's pet in class.

Have you ever known that teacher's pet in class that you're like, oh, would they shut up? Will they stop bringing apples to the teacher every morning or candy or whatever? They're just trying to get on her good side or his good side. And you're kind of look, I remember in college, there was that one girl in the class, you know, we had the sales management class and she was such the professor's pet. Like she had all the answers and all the things going on, you know, and, and, and everybody was just like rolling their eyes when she started talking again, because she had, you know, she, she wanted to impress the teacher.

And sometimes we make judgment calls on people like that. Right. When they, we see them as favorites. And when I was growing up, you know, we moved around a whole lot. My father, my father's is a pastor currently today, even.

And we, we were in a lot of different areas and you would go to, you know, we were in city communities, country communities, all kinds of different communities. You know, when we would move around, when I was really young, we probably lived in five areas within my first 10 years. I mean, it was crazy. I was like a military kid almost, you know? And so I get it.

You military kids in here. I know how it is. You have to adjust to a different environment everywhere you go. Right. You got to meet new people and get used to different people.

And I remember being that odd ball out all the time. Like once you came in, like once you came in, people automatically saw you as the outsider or the judge, they begin to judge you or you're not picked for the kickball team. And that, that hurt. I still carry those hurts, you know, not picking, being picked for, for the, for the kickball team, the last kid to be picked or whatever. And I actually went to a high school and I played basketball at the previous high school.

And I went to a new high school and it was a really small high school. And I thought that this is a no brainer. I'll be on the basketball team. And I ended up being one of two people in the whole team to be cut. That hurt a little bit.

And then one of the guys had to bail from the team. And out of those two, the other guy got pulled back on. So actually I was the only one cut from the team. And I'm like, am I really that bad of a basketball player? Probably so.

Maybe so. Maybe they were a little more lenient at the other school. I don't know. But it didn't feel too good. But it was a small school.

And, and, uh, I learned later that the coach knew all these kids since they were kid kids. So, you know, kind of made me feel bad. Well, that didn't give me a fair chance. So a lot of times we get caught up in situations like that of favoritism. And, uh, so James kind of talks about this a bit here.

So this is a lengthy passage here of scripture. James 2, 1 and 10. And I'm reading this out of the NIV. It says this, my dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others? For example, suppose someone comes into your meeting dressing, dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewelry and come, and another comes in who is poor and dressed in dirty 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 and, or else sit on the floor, well, doesn't that discriminate or show discrimination that your judgments are guided by evil motives? Listen to me, brothers and sisters. Hasn't God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith? God honors the poor, the poor in spirit. We hear it in the book of Matthew.

Aren't they the ones who will inherit the kingdom he promised to those who love him? But you dishonored, you dishonored the poor. Isn't it the rich who oppress you and drag you into court? Aren't they the ones who slander Jesus Christ? Apparently there was some slandering going on among people.

Aren't they the ones who slander Jesus Christ whose noble name you bear? Yes, indeed. It is good when you obey the royal law. We're talking about the golden rule. A lot of y'all know it as a golden rule.

The royal law as found in scripture, love your neighbor as yourself or do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. Y'all know that one, right? Same, same deal. But if you favor some people over others, listen to this. You are committing sin.

Did you know when we have favorites, we're committing sin? That's kind of wild and radical because we find ourselves doing that often, don't we? Not even meaning to. Humanity, you know, who we are. We have favorites about certain people.

We have, we collect people together that are our favorites and then we push off the other ones. But if you favor some people over others, you commit sin. You are guilty of breaking the law. You are guilty of breaking the law. For the person who keeps all of the laws, except one, is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God's laws.

For the same God who said you must not commit adultery also said you must not murder. Wow. So if you murder someone but do not commit adultery, you have still broken the law. Now it's interesting that he uses that comparison because we're like committing adultery and murder. Those are two evil things, right?

But I'm sure in the context of this, some things were happening. People were getting away with stuff and they were claiming one law or one sin as better than another sin. And they were picking and choosing what was good and what was bad. And they weren't honoring all the law. So James is really hitting these people hard with this message of favoritism and judgment.

James says it's a sin and it's compared to murder and adultery even. He's connecting this idea of favoritism even to these major sins. And judgment and favoritism always inflicts some kind of pain. When we play favorites, when we judge people, we're always inflicting some type of pain and it can go deep and it can carry throughout our lives and it can affect our relationships in the future. It inflicts pain.

That's why we have to be very, very careful about how we handle people's emotions and who they are. And we're going to look at that in a minute. And our first thought is when we judge someone, it actually hurts that person, right? That's kind of the first thing we think when judgment is thrown on someone. But when you actually place judgment on someone, did you know that it actually hurts you?

Did you know that it can actually hinder you and your walk or you and your thoughts even about yourself? So let's twist that around a little bit. Say if when we first place judgment on someone, when we first look at someone and assume, the first thing we assume, we do is assume. We assume that that person has something on us, say. Well, they're ignoring me or they're not talking to me.

So we start making assumptions about that person. So we're judging that person, right? Without even talking to them or asking them, hey, is everything okay? We just automatically throw this judgment card. And what happens with that?

That births something. It births insecurity in us, right? So when we're thinking about that person not talking to us, why is that person not talking to us? And why is that, you know, what is it about me? And then we start thinking about ourselves and then we're inflicting pain on ourselves.

A pastor friend of mine shared a story of him. He was in youth ministry and he had, they had, you know, they started out with a really, really small youth ministry in a church plant and then the youth ministry kind of grew and they had small groups, you know, and they grew from one small group to two small groups to five small groups. And there was this one kid in the small group. You... You...

That was really involved. He was a part of the small group, and was really involved in church, and was always a part of everything they did, and then one day he disappeared, and then, you know, about six, seven months later, he's like, I haven't seen him in a while, let me give him a text, see what's happening in his life, why he hasn't been at church, and haven't seen him, I'm really legitimately worried about him, so he texts him, and the response was, we need to talk, and when you hear that phrase, we need to talk, you know, you're like, oh no, what did I do? I do, right? We need to talk. So he meets with the kid, and he's just like, you know, what's up, man?

I mean, we haven't seen you in a while, I miss you, I love you. He said, I'm not coming to church anymore, I'm not coming to church here anymore. He says, why? He says, it was you. He says, me?

He says, what did I do? And he said, well, one day I was coming into the church, and I walked up to you, and you were talking to some other people, and you completely ignored me, and then when you got through talking to that person, you walked right by me, kind of glanced over at me, and went to the next person, and it hurt me, so I felt like maybe you didn't care about me anymore, I wasn't good enough for you anymore, and I left the church, because I just, you know, people are like that in church, and what happened here? There was an unfair assumption about that pastor, because truly, he loved the kid. He absolutely adored the kid. He was with him from the beginning.

He was legitimately concerned by texting him and wanting to get up with him, have some coffee with him, because he hadn't seen him in a while. He could, what's going on, man? I haven't seen you forever, and when he found out about that, unintentionally, he had done that, but the kid had taken it upon himself to place judgment on the pastor, so see how that can kind of turn around, and then it eventually can affect you spiritually. It affected the kid spiritually, because now he's out of church, he's out of small groups, he's formed opinions about the pastor, all because of assumptions, so judgment is turned back on him, and he's inflicting pain on himself. Dr.

Jim Richards says this, judgment is when you assume you know why someone did what they did, and said what they said. You assume you know, and we often assume we know why based on a fact, actually. These are usually facts, because we are actually, when this pastor walked past this kid, it was a fact that he didn't see him, or he unintentionally ignored him. So, we take a fact, and then we form a judgment around that fact, that may be just an assumption, and then all types of inaccuracy take place, and we often do this. So, observation leads to assumptions, which leads to hurt, and we harm ourselves by assuming the worst about a situation.

Matthew 7, 1 says this, and most of you, this is NLT, and most of you probably know this if you were raised in church, or in church here and there, because even people who don't know about church, and Jesus, and all this, know this passage, because they use it, right? And here's how it goes, do not judge others, and you will not be judged, for you will be treated as you treat others. Jesus, the standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. Isn't that interesting? It doesn't say, don't judge, it says, the standard in which you judge will be used against you.

And why worry about the speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own eye? Jesus was using a bit of humor here. I mean, we're not all, like, laughing at this, but in that day, I'm sure all the disciples were around him, and he's talking about, you know, you're worried about the splinter in this guy's eye when there's a telephone pole in your own, and you're like, ah, that's funny, yeah, I can't believe he got that guy. But it was a truth, it was an exaggerated idea to kind of point out a truth. And how can you think of saying to your friend, let me help you get rid of the speck in your eye, when you can't see past a log in your own eye?

And then he gets serious, he says, hypocrite. First, get rid of the log in your own eye, then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your eye. How can you point at the sawdust in someone else's eye before you even observe and think about where you are and what you came from and what you've been through and what you've experienced? And maybe some of the stuff that you have in your heart needs to be thought about first before you approach someone about where they are. We have to be careful with our assumptions.

We assume, and we assume all the time. There's going to be trouble in this life. I mean, people are going to hurt you, there's judgments going to take place. But when we begin to make assumptions and judge others based on just assumptions, then we end up heaping more pain on us than is necessary. So when we judge, we need to be careful of our assumptions.

In fact, a lot of times we even judge God, right? When things happen in our lives, when things don't go the way we think they should go, we say, God, why? We ask why. A couple years ago, I had a really bad day, or month rather. I was an associate pastor in the church.

We had a lot of things going on in the church and in our youth ministry. And then I went home, and I was my home home in North Carolina where my parents were that week. And my father had a heart attack. Healthy man, always ran, ate pretty good. I mean, he's in the South, so, you know, that's kind of hard to do, you know, with bacon and all that stuff, you know.

Loved bacon, but he had a heart attack. He had a mild heart attack, had a few stints put in. He's doing well today, praise God. But within a month, my mother had a heart attack as well. So both my mother and father, who were fairly healthy people, as I thought, and doing well, just all of a sudden, bam, bam, right on top of that.

And all this stuff was going on around this situation, and I just couldn't focus, and I couldn't do anything because I was just worried about my parents and worried about the situation. And the first thing I did was, God, why are you doing this? I began to judge God. I mean, why are you doing this? Am I doing something wrong?

Are you assuming something? I mean, I started assuming things about God. I started trying to figure out the situation based on my thoughts about what it should be, because I think it should add up this way or work this way. But rather than me asking why, I should have been asking, what are you teaching me in this, Lord? How are you growing me in this?

But we often go to assumptions. But here's the deal. God's only motive, God's only desire is to love us. His only motive is love. He's not here to harm you.

He's not here to give you a bad day, week, or year to kill your joy or some other type of motive. His motive, his desire, his drive is to love you. And that should be the only assumption we have about God, is that he loves us. And with this being said, we should see people the way God sees people. With all their hiccups, all their flaws, with all the things that are going on, we should see people that way.

So I want to show you four things real quick that stick out, four ways to see people the way God sees people. And if we practice these things, it will kill judgment and comparison and favoritism. Amen. If we do these things. So, the first one, if you're following your notes, we need to learn to value people.

We got to value people at every level. Philippians 2-3 says, Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourself, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of the others. Judgment is the opposite of humility. When we assume something of someone, we make ourselves the expert on that subject.

Nothing but pride comes out of that. We know what's going on, and we see that this is the way it should be done, and why it is done this way. And it's interesting that when someone has something to offer us, it changes. And James hits on, why do you honor the rich people and not the poor people? Perhaps because they have something to offer you.

So we are willing to offer grace to the people that offer us something, but when it comes to someone who can't really offer us something, we start placing judgment, assumptions, all these types of things. And think about it. When your boss is signing your paycheck, you kind of give them a grace card, you know? You're a little more lenient, right, about those things. But when there's nothing to gain from that person, we tend to devalue that person.

We look at that person differently. But God values every person. We don't, but God does. Let me just give you a personal example of how I witnessed that myself in my own life. When I was younger and first married, before kids and all that kind of stuff, I used to go to restaurants and I would watch somebody come in that restaurant with their kids misbehaving.

And I'm just, I cannot believe they brought those kids in here today. And I started placing judgment, not even considering what was going on, right, in the back. I mean, I can't believe that they need to take that kid outside, straighten them up, get them in there. They should be sitting up quiet, eating at the table, you know, sitting in their little booth, in their high chair. They should not be doing that, right?

And how many of you have been there? You walked into a restaurant and you said, how? This kid behind me is slapping me in the back of the head. I mean, what's going on here? Until one day I had kids myself.

And what's interesting about my situation, it's not much different than anyone else's, but I do have a child with special needs. And when he was young, he had some social disorders and some sensory disorders. He still does, even today. He was diagnosed with, in the autism spectrum. And when we would take him into a public place, and we were told by our therapists and by our doctors, this is just what's going to happen.

You can't be hateful to him. You can't spank him for these things. He's really not connecting well socially, and all the noise around just kind of drives him crazy. So it gets him all worked up and things like that. So you have to be careful how you punish him.

You can't just pop him and say, sit down. You can't do those things. So we would deal with that often. And so we'd go into these restaurants, and Max would just not behave well. Not because he wanted to disbehave.

It's just the way his mind was working in that environment. And boy, did we get the looks. People turning. Oh, my goodness. You could just see them shaking their heads.

I can't believe this. These people, they don't know how to. And sometimes you just want to get up and say, he has autism, okay? Give me a break, you know? But you can't do that, right?

You can't just walk around and give, you know, you always want to try to fix things. So I experienced that myself, and then I started thinking about, wait a minute, you know? I used to do that. Or maybe they're just a single mother that has several kids and had a tough upbringing. Her father may have not loved her, and then she got married, and her husband left her, and she's working three jobs, and she's going through life, and it's really hard.

And she just wants one night without having to cook. So she brings them to a restaurant with her kids, and her kids have been beating each other up in the car the whole time. Some of you know what I'm talking about, right? It's like, I want to sit on this side. No, I want to sit on this side.

I'll leave, you know, and they're just, and she's just frustrated. She just wants to sit down and have a meal in the restaurant, and that's it. Maybe her situation we haven't considered. We've made assumptions, you know, she should straighten up her children. So we devalue people based on those accusations and those assumptions.

1 Samuel 16, 7 says, The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. If I were to take a, I wish I had some money, but I'm poor and broke. But if I were to take a $100 bill out right now, and I were to give that to you, would you take it? Say, here you go, John.

You'd grab it, wouldn't you? Okay. Well, wrong person. Connie would. Connie would.

I'd say, here, here's $100. You just take it. Do whatever you need to with it. Okay. You know, it's a gift from me or whatever.

But if, and if I were to tell you, well, you know where that money's been? It's been all over. It may have purchased drugs at one point. Maybe it was even a payoff to kill somebody. Hopefully not, you know.

Or it could have been used for all sorts of other evil. So it doesn't matter where that's been. You're still going to see the value in that dollar. And it doesn't matter how it looks. You know, it could be crinkled up and washed and messed up, you know.

And you're still going to value that dollar. We even tape them together when we tear them, right? I mean, it's still, the value hasn't left. It doesn't change the value of the dollar. The condition doesn't change the value of the dollar.

The history doesn't change the value of the $100. And the location doesn't change it either. Where it's been. It could be on that side of the United States or this side of the United States. It doesn't matter.

That value is the same. And we need to look at people that way. Where that person's been. The location doesn't change the value of someone. Their condition doesn't change the value.

Their history doesn't change their value. Your location doesn't change your value. Your condition doesn't change your value. Nor does your history change your value. And that's the way that God sees you.

And we need to see people in the same light. In the same way. We all are valuable to God. And when we judge people. God and ourselves.

We have to put in perspective that God places value on everybody. The first thing that should come to mind is. When I start placing shame or judgment or assumption on somebody. Wait a minute. Let me pull back for a minute.

How does God view this person? Because valuing people is not about their worth to you. But their worth to God. Secondly, we need to accept people. Accept people.

Romans 15.7 says. Accept one another then. Just as Christ accepted you. In order to bring praise to God.

You don't have to change the way you talk, act, or dress. To be accepted or to accept someone. If you do not accept someone. Will you still accept someone too? We will rob you for one another.

We often look at people's outward appearance, right? When we accept it. But look at Jesus, how he accepted someone, or people in general. He accepted the woman caught in adultery. Pretty bad thing, huh?

A lot of us would see that, oh you, get out of here, you know, get away from me and my family. But he saw the woman, he accepted the demonic, the possessed man, let me just say it like that. Sound like Porky Pig, right? He accepted the cripple, the diseased, the poor, and he even accepted this man called Matthew, a tax collector. In that day, people didn't think much of tax collectors because they were thieves.

They took your money. Some of you don't think too much about the government because they take your money. Would you receive them in? No, probably not. Would you have received Matthew?

Probably not. But Jesus saw something else in Matthew. He saw different things in people. He accepted people right where they were. He had this amazing gift to make the sinner comfortable.

And at the same time, he would confront their sin. With the woman that committed adultery, you know, he who cast the first stone, who has no sin, cast the first stone. And everybody dropped their rocks, right? Everybody dropped their stones. And then he turns to the woman and says, go and sin no more.

He didn't dismiss their sin, but he had a way of comforting the person, letting them know that they are accepted. And as Christians, we're afraid to accept people because when we think that it means we're approving of what they're doing. There's a difference between approval and acceptance. We can accept people, love the sinner, but it doesn't mean that we approve of their sin. We want to help them break free of those sins.

We don't want them to live that life no longer. And sometimes we have to be open and honest about sin and direct it towards people who are in sin. And a lot of times, you know, when I'm approaching people and they're sharing with or people are approaching me about where they are in life and what's going on. The first question I ask, well, tell me a little bit about yourself. And when they tell me they've made a lot of bad choices in their lives, I say, well, you know, you've been kind of living a life of sin and sin's not really good.

And God has a better place for you, you know. So I don't approve of where you've been, but nevertheless, I love you and I accept you. I accept you where you are. Come on in. Let's figure it out together.

God accepted everyone. I was thinking about Jesus and his inner circle of Peter, James, and John. And I always often thought how the other disciples reacted. John actually was called the beloved disciple, you know. He was like the closest to Jesus.

And then Peter, you know, he was always with Jesus. And I kind of asked myself, you know, did Jesus really have favorites? And I think the answer to that is time spent with someone doesn't equal favoritism, okay? Just because you spend more time with someone doesn't mean that you're favorite. Jesus accepted everyone, but obviously he couldn't spend all his time with everyone, right?

We can't always spend all of our time with everybody all the time, right? But we can spend focused time with people. And truth is, I'm going to spend more time with my kids and my wife than I am with you, okay? That's just the reality of it. Because they're priority.

But it doesn't mean I don't accept you in the same way I accept my family. So, you know, some of you may have workout partners that you spend a little more time with or coworkers you spend a little more time with, people you meet for breakfast or, you know, whatever it might be. Some of you have best friends. But we all can't just be best friends, right? I mean, it would be nice if that was the perfect world.

But, you know, you're just going to naturally have people that you gravitate to and that gravitate to you. You have like personalities and you're able to develop friendships that way. So, we're all going to have different, you know, people that we connect with at a little deeper level. Just because you spend more time with people, though, doesn't mean there's a favoritism going on there. So, we want to balance that out, you know.

On the other hand, if we avoid people because we don't accept them for who they are, that's a whole other thing together. And that's what I'm hitting on today. We have to accept people where they are. It's really, really important we do this because this is probably one of the key reasons why we don't see healthy, flourishing churches because we want them to look just like us and act just like us and live just like us and make the same income as us and contribute like us and this and that, you know, to society. But if we start looking at people the way God sees people, it changes the game altogether.

Accepting people, let me give you this statement. Accepting people is not about what you would do, but what would God do. Accepting people is not about what you would do, but what would God do. Thirdly, we've got to learn to forgive people. Whew.

It's tough. Forgiveness is tough. We all struggle with forgiveness. I struggle with forgiveness. Matthew 6.

14 says this, For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. That's a powerful statement. That the Father sees forgiveness as such an important commodity. That's a hard scripture for people to take in.

You mean God takes forgiveness that seriously? Yes. Because he knows the harm and unforgiveness. And he desires us to forgive each other and move on. We can't stay in that place where we're arguing and we're bickering and we're tossing hate and pain and spewing things on each other and we're growing in those things.

We need to move past those things. It's vitally important that we forgive people of their sins. If we do not forgive, it's hard for us even to receive forgiveness. When you can't forgive, you can't receive forgiveness because you have such a twisted idea of what forgiveness is. Now let me state this, forgiveness does not mean that the person is to be trusted.

If somebody embezzles money from your business, you're not going to hire them back on as your bookkeeper the next month just because you forgave them, right? Forgiveness is not earning that person's trust, at least not right away, if not ever, because sometimes trust is a hard thing. And forgiveness does not mean you approve of their actions, right? Because I forgive somebody, oh, it's okay, we can move on. If Max slaps Savannah, or Savannah actually came in the other day and pushed Max out the door.

And then she turned around and said, I'm sorry. You know, I'm going to, okay, that's fine, just go on, you can do it again, just as long as you ask for forgiveness, right? Yeah, no, I'm not going to do that. Forgiveness does not mean you approve of their actions. They still have to be punished and things have to take place.

But Jesus forgave the people that abused and tortured him, ultimately leading to his death. Can we not forgive people? And number four, develop relationships with people. And this is probably the... The...

Last and most important, you got to get close to people. You got to get to know people because if you don't know people, if you don't get close to people, then you can make assumptions all the time about those people, right? And that's what we do. And when you understand that the single mother that is having problems with their kids, there's greater issues they're dealing with underneath. If you really know her, instead of judging her and calling her out for what she's doing or how her kids are misbehaving, maybe you will be the one that will actually go over and help her.

Or maybe if she's working two jobs, I know some of you in here would actually probably cover their bill and maybe help them out with some groceries or do something else for them, right? So it changes when we begin to develop relationships with people, actually get to know people, get close to people. We step away from judgment, and we step into a world of relationships. Well, you know, people hurt us and let us down, and I know that that happens, and they do, but that's going to happen because people are people. If people leave the church or leave a body of believers or leave the faith because somebody hurt them, then we all wouldn't be here, right?

Because all of us have been hurt because we're people. We're human. We deal with sin. We deal with favoritism. We deal with judgment, right?

But when that happens, we tend to isolate ourselves even more and put walls around us, and that's a breeding ground for judgment. Did you know that? When we put walls up around ourselves and isolate ourselves, and we get alone with our thoughts, and it creates more pain in our hearts, and it kills it. But relationships are the antidote to judgment. Did you know that?

When we really understand where each other is coming from, that we have personality quirks, and there's things going on, and there may be a bigger issue in the background. If we get to know people a little bit, maybe we can break past judgment. And that's why we consider salt groups a huge part of our church because we want people to get together and get to know each other and do life together. Have burgers together and play with the kids at the beach together and go to the park together and go to the restaurant together and sometimes you might even want to go on vacations together. Who knows?

You know, we're going to develop relationships. It's relationships that kill this stuff that we deal with. And there's this scripture. I used to think that this was a good pre-giving scripture, and we're getting ready to go into giving, so don't receive it this way. But technically, it can be about anything because the principle of reaping and sowing is in it.

But in context, this scripture is about relationships. It says in Luke 6, starting with verse 37, The NLT says the amount you give will determine the amount you get back because you're invested. It's investing in those relationships, and it kills judgment. Share a short story with you, and then we'll be done. Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel Churches, if you've ever heard of this movement, there are over 1,000 churches.

They started as 25 people in a little building, not really going anywhere, a little non-denominational building in Cosa Mesa, California. And Chuck had a little bit of judgment in his heart because at the time, there was a hippie movement taking place all across America, you know, with the Vietnam War and everything going on. And there was these smelly, dirty hippies coming around, and he would place judgment on these people, make assumptions about them, call them out. And then one day, as he quoted, his daughter brought home a real, live, breathing hippie. And when he got to know this guy, he learned his heart.

He had just received Christ, and he was just enthusiastic. And he says, you know what? These people, they're not that bad. And then he saw them in a different perspective. Maybe they're hurting.

You know, a lot of them were just trying to find themselves in such a chaotic time, a scary time in the history of our country. So he began to open the doors of his church to these dirty, smelly, drug hippies, if that's, I'm quoting him, drugged-out hippies. Some of you may have been those people at one time, right? Maybe some of you still are there. Amen.

You're welcome here. This is your Holy Spirit. You're welcomed here, right? We accept you. And because he, I mean, he even had arguments with his church people.

You can't church people get in the way sometimes. They don't look like us. They don't act like us. They'll dirty up the carpet is what they said. They said, well, then I'll get a big bowl of water.

And he knelt down on his knees and started washing these people's feet as they came into church. And sat on the floor around. They filled up that church so much. People were coming in and people were getting saved and things were happening. And most of you that know anything about Christian history will know about a movement called the Jesus Movement that took place.

And he was one of the, that was one of the launch pads for that movement. For hundreds of churches, some of the biggest churches we have today. Greg Laurie, most, many of you may know Greg Laurie in California. He was one of those dirty, smelly hippies. Actually, he said he was one of the clean ones, but he was, nevertheless, he was a hippie.

And then God just used them, used him in a mighty way because he threw aside judgment, replaced it with value, with acceptance. All those things that we fail to see. God, let's pray, God, help us to be people who throw aside judgment and favoritism and try to put people in categories. Lord, let us not do that. God, let us be people who are open to everyone.

That we would see this church grow in ways we couldn't imagine because we valued people the same way God values people. Help us to value people, Lord. Although they don't look like us, act like us, sound like us, Lord Jesus, help us to value people. Open our doors, open our hearts, and love them the way you would love them, Lord. Lord, with all heads bowed, eyes closed, still here today.

Some of you have came in here today, and you've been dealing with something else in your heart. Maybe you felt devalued. Maybe you've been hurting. Maybe God's been calling you out lately and saying, hey, you know I'm here. But you haven't accepted or grabbed on to that call.

Maybe today's the day. Today's the day for a better life. Because there's life in Jesus. Waiting for you. He's been calling.

He's been beckoning you. The Bible says he beckons us. He calls out to us. And there's been this stirring in your heart for a long time. And maybe you're somebody who walked with God one time.

And you said, you know, you got... Hurt, or maybe you felt devalued and you walked away with God. Maybe today's the day and it's your turn. It's your time to give your life to Christ. If that's you today, I'm going to ask you just to quietly lift your hand.

I just want to see you and pray for you. I want you to pray this with me. Is there anyone today that wants to know the Lord? Did you want a new life with Jesus? And today's today, time's the time.

What better time, what better day in Salt Church here on a June Sunday morning to make that commitment to Christ today. To start your life. He will renew you from the inside out. Is that you today?