The Bible Study Podcast, episode 70. This is the second in a series of podcasts on the book of James.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. As we started to see from last week's episode, James is a book about practical faith. And James continues on in that theme here, in James 2. My brothers as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ don't show favoritism.

Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring in fine clothes, and a poor man

in shabby clothes also comes in.

If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, here's a good seat for you,

but say to the poor man, you stand there, or sit on the floor by my feet, have you not discriminated among yourselves

and become judges with evil thoughts?

Listen, my dear brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world

to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?

But you have insulted the poor.

Is it not the rich who are exploiting you?

Are they not the ones dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are slandering the

noble name of him to whom you belong? James is dealing with a very real issue in the church of his day,

but I think also a very real issue in the church of today.

And that is, we show partiality.

We pick and choose those to whom we will welcome.

We are more welcoming, perhaps, to someone who is rich because they're like us, or perhaps we're more welcoming because there's that deficit in the church budget,

and this looks like somebody who could help,

or they look like somebody who is smart,

and we think we'd like to get to know them, or a hundred different reasons.

And then the poor person who comes in may be poor,

they may look homeless, they may have tattoos, or they may look like they don't belong because they don't know how to dress for church

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