How to Live what you Say - Pastor Kristin Mockler Young

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, guys, this is Naim, and you've reached the Mosaic Church Podcast. So excited that you're part of our listening community, and love for you to be even more connected. [00:00:10] Speaker B: So check out our website. [00:00:11] Speaker A: There's more content there, and there's more opportunities for you get connected in our ministries and events as well. Also, love for you to share this content if this is blessed to you. I know that God wants to use you to bless other people with it, so share this podcast if you will. Lastly, would you consider supporting this ministry? This is made possible by other people's generosity, and I'd love for you to pay it forward. Join us to reclaim the message and the movement of Jesus together. So would you consider giving to this ministry? I know that God is able to do immeasurably more through us when we come together. Thank you so much. God bless you and enjoy. [00:00:55] Speaker B: Good morning, Mosaic. How are y' all doing this morning? Good. It's always a good Sunday when we're here and we're together, right? It's always a good Sunday to be at Mosaic. Yesterday, my family actually got to have a good Saturday. You know, one of those Saturdays, they seem rare, but a Saturday that feels like a Saturday because nobody had anywhere that they needed to be, and we all just got to kind of do whatever we wanted. So we were having that kind of Saturday, and we started with a family breakfast, because my husband is amazing, and I cook nothing, and he cooks all kinds of things. And so we were sitting and we were having our pumpkin cinnamon rolls and having just, you know, family discussions and conversations. And as we finished, I reminded my two daughters, I said, hey, make sure you take your dishes and you put them in the dishwasher, because how many of you know, we need to remind our children of these things, right? Anybody else? Like, it's a little bit difficult, tricky raising other human people, whether you're a grandparent, teacher, whatever. Like, there's a lot of intentionality that goes into that. So as I'm reminding them, and my oldest, Marlee, who will be 12 years old this week, was like, hey, I don't actually appreciate it when you remind me of the things that I need to do because you're not giving me the chance to be responsible. And I said, okay, baby girl, do your thing. Go have at it. And so she did. She went to the sink and she rinsed her dishes, and I got up slowly and went over to refill my coffee. And then I looked in the sink, and I said, hey, Mar. Pookie. Hey, baby girl. I know you don't like it when I tell you or remind you what it is that you need to do, because you know what you need to do. So what am I supposed to say when you don't actually do the things that you're gonna do and put your dishes in the dishwasher? She was like, oop, my bad. Sorry, bro. I think it's actually what I got. And so she came back and she did, because she is responsible. She took her dish all the way through to the dishwasher because she is a responsible kid, even if she needs reminders every now and then. And honestly, I think that Marley is no different than some of the rest of us. How many of you have said things that you didn't necessarily follow through on? I'm gonna start eating better on Monday. I can't wait to come to your party. I'm gonna finish that project, that thing around the house. Probably this weekend, maybe next weekend. I am going to read that article that you sent me and watch those reels and listen to all of those podcasts that you sent me. I am, I'm sure. See, the problem isn't what we say. It's that sometimes we don't feel like doing what it is we said we would do. And there's one that I'm guilty of that I probably honestly should not tell you, but I'm going to anyway. It is when people ask for a prayer request, and I tell them that I'm going to pray for them. I know I'm like, why is this the one that I gave you? But this is true. I'm being honest. Okay. Because I'm gonna challenge you a little bit today. And so I'm gonna go first in this. But sometimes I get a lot of texts. I get a lot of messages. I have lots of people reaching out to me and asking me, hey, can you pray for me? And I never take it lightly. Hear me. I love to pastor people, and it is an honor that they trust me and that I can carry their burdens and help carry their burdens for them. But sometimes life happens and I am in the middle of doing something else, and then I just kind of forget. Or sometimes, if I'm being very honest, I'm doing something different in the moment, and I really just don't feel like stopping to pray for them right then. So you can all pray for me about that. Okay? But I'm also guessing that you can relate to this and maybe even think of your own example of something you said that you didn't actually do. So last week we started the Book of James in chapter one, and we talked about persevering and doing all of these hard things that we need to do, because it's how we grow in spiritual maturity. And just like we have to remind our kids sometimes to do what's right, we. We also need reminders to do what we say even when we don't feel like it. And so James, chapter two is gonna help us to do that today. And we're gonna jump right in. At verse one, it says, 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 already? James is like, if you claim faith in Jesus, then you're saying that you're about what he's about. But some of you are not out here looking like Jesus. Cause you're playing favorites. Now, there is a difference between having a favorite and playing favorites. There's nothing wrong with favorites. I have all kinds of favorites, and they change all the time. Okay. I actually was in a meeting recently and told somebody that they were my favorite person because they solved a problem for me that I was having. And somebody else in the meeting was like, everybody's your favorite. That doesn't even mean anything anymore when everybody's your favorite. I said, calm down, don't be salty, because it's not you today. Don't worry about it. Okay? I think Jesus even had favorites. Peter, James, John were in his inner circle. I'm just gonna go ahead and say Mary Maggs was also probably one of Jesus faves. So choosing a favorite is picking a preference. That is not a problem. The problem is when we show favoritism because that creates a hierarchy that leads to unequal treatment of certain people. And. And Jesus was never actually about that. What Jesus actually said that the first will be last and the last will be first. And we saw him live this out repeatedly in his life when he ate with sinners and he healed the lepers, and he centered the marginalized groups that were often found at the bottom of that social hierarchy. So James is saying, hey, take a look at yourselves. How can you claim to be followers of Jesus if you're not actually doing the things that he taught you to do? And then he gives an example. He says, suppose someone comes into your meeting dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewelry, 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 either stand over there or else sit on the floor. Well, doesn't this discrimination show that your judgments are guided by what kind of motives? Evil motives? James is like, if the backwards love of Jesus puts the first last in the last first, then it's not your faith that is guiding you to treat people like. Like this, where you treat people so differently, as if certain lives have more value than others. He's like, no, no, no, no, no. These motives actually come from evil, from the enemy of your faith. And so when we think evil, enemy, satan, devil, right? If we take that word devil and we trace it all the way back to its root word in Greek, the word is diablo. Say diablo, diabolo, diabolo, diablo, which literally means to throw across or send over. It is the enemy who is coming in and taking what was meant to be unified and splitting it up, creating sides and division where there was never meant to be division. And James, in this example, is writing about a particular group of people. He was talking about what he saw, where there were rich people oppressing the poor. And this might not be our issue. It's likely not. And he would write something different to us if he was talking to us today. But I think we have to ask ourselves, who is it that we are tempted to send over there with our judgment? Maybe it's the people who aren't sitting next to you today because they're at brunch or they decided to sign their kids up for travel, sports, even though they knew it would be on a Sunday. Maybe it's the people who live different lifestyles than you. And so you have justified just going ahead and separating yourselves from them and from their lives because you don't agree with the way they live. Maybe it's other Christians who live out their faith differently than you. And so now you have to add qualifiers anytime you talk about their faith. They can no longer just be Christians, but they're progressive Christians or liberal Christians or conservative Christians instead of just brothers and sisters in Christ who are also made in the image of God. See, Jesus was fully God and fully human. And we are not. We are not. We have the Holy Spirit available to us. We have the Holy Spirit available to guide us and to help us so that we can see people the way that God sees them. But our humanity gets tempted by evil. It is our humanity being tempted by that diablo that tells us to divide and discriminate and to show favoritism. So James is bringing all of this up, right? He's bringing all of this up, not so that we can get defensive and be like, I don't do that. I would never. This is not me. But he's doing it so we can check ourselves and correct it. When we do see that it's happening, James continues on. He says, yes, indeed, it is good when you obey the royal law as found in the Scriptures. Help me read it. What does it say? Love your neighbor as yourself, but if you favor some people over others you are committing, you are guilty of breaking the law by default. Favoring one group of people always means that we are neglecting another. And so in a sense, it doesn't matter how much you really love some of your neighbors. You like, cheer them on and you pray for them, and you are so for them, and you love them so well. If there are other neighbors that do not get that same treatment, you are breaking your own rule and you are guilty of sin. He actually reminds them of what he says in chapter one when he talked about the law. In the next verse, it says, so whatever you say or whatever you do, remember that you will be judged by the law that sets you free, the law that sets you free. But there will be no mercy for those who have not shown mercy to others. But if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you. I know a lot of times when we talk about law and judgment, it can sound like a warning. But this doesn't just have to be a warning. It's actually hopeful. This can actually be encouragement for us. Because being judged by the law, the law that brings freedom, means that if we persevere in doing these hard things, if we persevere in doing what God says, we can live in freedom outside and not under all of the things that used to try to control us. Whether that's shame, guilt, expectation, fear, anger, performance, religious rule, whatever it is, we can live in freedom from these things. And we get the benefit of all of the mercy and the grace and the forgiveness and the love of Jesus. When we show those things to other people, we get the benefit. We will receive them just the same. And since we've decided we're no longer showing favoritism. Right. We figured that one out. This is a good time to be reminded of who it was exactly that Jesus said is our neighbor when he was asked. And when he was asked, hey, Jesus, got it. Cool. Don't show favorites. Got it, got it. But who exactly is my neighbor? Who exactly is it that all of this applies to? He answered by telling a parable of the good Samaritan where he made the Samaritan the hero because he was talking to a group of Jewish people who hated the Samaritans, and he used that example intentionally. Jesus wanted to be incredibly clear that loving your neighbor also includes loving your enemies, and that we are to be merciful to them, just as God is merciful to us. Here's what that means in 2025. That means that whatever we want for the people that we love, we must also want for the people who are hard to love. It means that whatever we want for the people we like, we must also want for the people that we don't like. Loving our enemies as our neighbors means when we want free speech for everyone, it includes the people that we actually wish would stay silent and stop talking. It means that when we want safety for our kids in their schools, it means that we also want safety for people who have very strong, differing opinions of what that protection could actually look like. What it means is that when we say we want liberty and justice for all people, it means we want liberty and justice for all people, no matter how they got here or where they came from. Loving our enemies as our neighbors means that we grieve when pain is inflicted on other people. We never rejoice or celebrate in human suffering, whether that happens here or wide scale in a country on the other side of the world. Loving our neighbors, including our enemies, means that we show empathy to people who don't believe in empathy because it is our choice to stay rooted in the only thing that can break that wall, which is the love of Jesus. We choose to show empathy to to all people because that is what allows us to enter into someone else's pain, even when we cannot understand their lived experience. Empathy, mercy, the love of Jesus, all require us to see the humanity of another person. And it is the enemy. It is that diablo that tells us to cut people off from those things and to dehumanize them. It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus. Other people carrying God's imago DEI are not our enemy. It is the evil that is successfully convincing us that they are. It is evil. Favoritism blocks God's mercy for certain people in our lives. But mercy, the mercy of God, can actually flourish and grow and break the chains of of partiality through love. Again, James reiterates, he says, what good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but you don't? What, show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing and you say, bye, bye. Have a good day, stay warm, and eat well. But you don't give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? He says, so you see, faith by itself isn't enough unless it produces good deeds. It is dead and useless. Dead and useless. Now, one of the things that makes Mosaic unique is that y' all come from a variety of backgrounds. Some of you grew up Evangelical. Some of you grew up Catholic. Some of you grew up, and you've never even been to a church before until you came to Mosaic. And you're not even sure why you're here, to be honest. You're like, I just keep coming. And so depending on your background, this whole concept of faith and works might have been something that you ignored for a little while, because it seems to be a contradiction, and it's left you confused. So it might be something that you've just not touched. James is saying that faith by itself is not enough, right? This is what James is saying. But in Ephesians 2, Paul says, it is by grace that you have been saved. Do we have that? It's by grace that you have been saved through faith. There it is. It is by grace. You have been saved through faith, and it's not on you. You can't brag about it, but it's not by works. So Paul is saying, it's through faith, not by works. And when conflict presents itself, as it's doing here with James and Paul, seemingly, it's easy to pick sides, right? And honestly, I think that's what we tend to do. So some of you are Team Paul, and you're like, yeah, that's right. Saved by grace, baby. Grace and faith. That's all I need. So it's cool. And if I don't always do the right thing because I am saved and covered by the blood of Jesus. And you guys, like, live over here in this camp. Others of you over here are Team James, and you are Team James because you like knowing that you have earned something, okay? So you're like, yes, God did give us salvation, but it is kind of, like, imperative. It's kind of conditional on us doing what it is that he wants us to do. Now, if we lean too hard over here with Paul on faith, we can become complacent, and we really lean hard on. God's gonna forgive me as justification to do and not do all kinds of stuff. If we lean too hard on faith, we can become the type of person that says a lot of things and then not actually live them out. And if we lean too heavily on this side over here with James and work, we can become legalistic. If we lean too hard over here, we get caught up in performance and proving ourselves because we want the credit for putting in the work so that we know that we've earned it and we can feel good about ourselves when we tell people that we are good Christians. So who's right? Which team is it, James or Paul? Actually, it's both of them. See, these are not competing statements. These ideas actually complement each other. When Paul says we are saved by grace, it's true. It is only through faith in Jesus that we are saved from the consequences of our sin and a life that is disconnected and separated from God. But Paul is talking about causation. He is talking about how we find our faith, and James is talking about transformation and what we do with that faith and how we let it then change us. A better way to look at it is maybe that we are saved by grace, through faith, for good works, by grace, through faith, for the good works. And so James kind of wraps up this idea with a doozy of an example to make sure that people get it. He says, all right, you have faith for you. Believe that there is one God, good for you. Even the demons believe this and they tremble in terror. How foolish. I always do voices, you know, in the Bible, like when I read to my kids and do I have to do the same? How foolish. Can't you see that faith without good deeds is useless? Now, not only is this true, not only do the demons believe that Jesus was the son of God, they were actually the first ones to acknowledge it and call it out. When Jesus was starting his ministry and he had to be like, shh, shh, don't tell people. I'm not ready for them to know yet. But actually confessing and claiming and saying that we believe Jesus is the son of God isn't enough. And this is actually the disease that is infecting much of American Christianity right now is we have a lot of people saying and claiming and even arguing all kinds of things, even doing all kinds of things in the name of Jesus. But their actions are very removed from his teachings. So that must tell us that something, be it self righteousness or pride or power, is getting in the way of their own transformation. When they're out here just trying to make sure that they change everybody else, we have to put our eyes on us so we don't stop wondering why the outside world thinks the church is full of hypocrites. Now. Maybe this doesn't apply to you. And you're like, pastor Kristen, you're stepping on my toes and I don't like it. And this does not apply to me. That's fine. That is okay. If you want to not be changed. You're like, I don't wanna love my neighbor and I want to retaliate, and I wanna treat people the way that they treat other people because that's what they deserve. That is fine. And you can do that. Stop telling people you're a Christian. Stop telling people you're a Christian. If you are going to go to lunch after service and you're in a mood and you're gonna take it out on your waitstaff, can you please just take off your Mosaic merch before you go? Like, just don't represent us with that. Do you know what I'm saying? If you are going to get really combative on social media and say things to strangers that you would never say to their face, maybe go ahead and take Christian out of your bio. And while you're at it, see if that Bible verse that you put in there actually lines up and is shown in the words that you're putting with your thumbs. How foolish. James says it's better to say nothing than to claim that we have faith in Jesus and then not live it out. I think about this fact all the time. All the time. In theory. Shouldn't we know who all the Christians are before they ever tell us? Like, shouldn't we know? Shouldn't we be able to look at the way that people live and look and speak and let that be the evidence of, like, oh, that person's a Christian and that person's not. Regardless of what they say, Jesus actually told us exactly what it will look like so that people will know that we are his followers. In John, he says this. Buy this. Everyone will know that you are my disciples if you. What? If you love one another again, we're going back to the root of the word love, which is agapao. It is a verb. It is a word of initiation, of action that is not just passive thought that we are going to throw in somebody's general direction? Of course I love them. Of course I love them. Have you ever experienced that where maybe you're in a conversation with someone and in the middle of them saying something that is maybe harsh or cruel, they're like, you know, I love you when, like, your actions and words are very much communicating something else? Did you feel loved in that moment? Like, did you really just, like, feel it when they were like, you know, you know I do love you. We grow in spiritual maturity when what we say and we do are the same. And faith, like love, comes to life when it isn't just stated, but it's demonstrated. We have to see it lived out. James ends this chapter in verse 26, and he says, just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works. Faith without works is like the body without breath. It is just empty. It's just empty. We don't breathe to prove that we're alive. We breathe because we are alive. And it's the same with our faith. We don't do good works to prove our faith is real. We do good works because our faith is. Is real. And a living faith moves us to do the right thing even when we don't feel like it. Now, I don't know what your next right thing is, but I'm guessing that you probably do. It could be that there's someone at work that you've been avoiding because you're secretly judging them for one thing or another. Maybe you're being convicted to change the way that you view a certain group of people so that you're not sending them over to the other side. Maybe you have been aware that you need to bite back some of your words, even though they secretly give you, like, the sense of satisfaction when they land. Because if you are honest, you can't actually hear Jesus talking to someone that he loves. That way. We all have to think about our own actions and determine if our actions point to a faith that is alive and thriving or dead and useless. Many of you know that after Pastor Naim came to the States, he has an incredible story. If you haven't heard it or read the book, we've got both of those available for you, actually. But after he came to the States, he had a supernatural encounter with Jesus and he became a Christian. And that was a major no, no for where he was from. And if Pastor Naim had gone back to Pakistan and been like, I love Jesus, I'm a Christian, he would have been punished severely and, like, would have been allowed for that to happen justifiably, just because he's a Christian. That's what persecution is. So Pastor Naim had to apply for religious asylum, and he had to go in and convince people that he should be able to stay here in the States and seek safety. And part of this process of seeking religious asylum was that he had to go into a court and prove that he was a Christian. He had to have enough evidence to convince a stranger that his faith was real and that he really was in a relationship with Jesus. And it just made me wonder, what if that happened today? What if we as a church were on trial? Would we be convicted of being Christians? Is there enough evidence to prove that we really are followers of Jesus? Or would our case be dismissed because we had a lot of good words and a lot of good claims, but no fruit, no action, nothing that really showed that we meant what we said? If your faith was on trial, if my faith was on trial, is there enough evidence to convict you of being the Jesus follower that you claim to be? Now, lucky for you and me, I'm not a judge, so I'm not handing out verdicts today. But what we are all being handed instead is grace. We are all being handed grace. Grace for ourselves, for the places that we have not done, the things that we said that we would do, and grace that we can extend to other people when maybe we have not. We've worried more about their faith and their life than taking care of our own relationship with Jesus. And maybe one day it will all just happen and we won't have to have reminders and this good fruit will just grow out of us without even thinking. And we will be gracious and we will be patient and we'll be loving and we won't even have to work hard, and it'll just be the kinds of people that we are. But I'm not that kind of person yet. And if you're not either, then what we get to do now is let our faith challenge us. We get to let our faith challenge us to look past all of the doing the right things and to move past saying the right things so that we can actually do the right things that God is calling us to do. If you would stand with me, I would love to pray that over all of us this morning. God, we thank you for your grace. God, we thank you for your mercy. Lord, I thank you for the words of James, God, and how I myself have been challenged and convicted by them this week. God, I thank you for your mercy, Lord, that you extend to us no matter how many times we feel like we make a mistake, God, or we deserve punishment. Lord, would you help us to remember how you see us, Lord, so that we can live that out? And then, God, would you help us to then extend the same grace and mercy and love to other people, all people, no matter who they are. Because there is not a single person we have met that is not created in your image. God, I pray that no matter what voices we hear this week, God, no matter what other people try to shame or manipulate or even encourage us to do or say other things, God, that we would stop and ask first if they look and sound like you, help us to keep our eyes on you and let the way of Jesus be the filter for everything that we choose to do. God today, this week, in the coming year and forever, God, would you help us to continue to grow? Not because we have to do it perfectly now, but because following the way of Jesus means we continue in humility to transform and be more like Him. In Jesus name, Amen. We are going to sing one more song and this is what we call our response time here at Mosaic. And so you have a variety of things available to you. There's a cross over here on this side of the room as well as private prayer rooms online. If you're watching online, you can leave a prayer request. You can leave just something maybe that that you want to just leave behind and not take out here with you today. There's post its over there for that. There's also candles on either side of the room just to represent someone that you're praying for as well as communion. That is an open table. Let's respond. Thanks for listening to this message from Mosaic church in Charlotte, North Carolina. For more audio and video content, visit us at MosaicChurch TV.