I grew up in the generation that didn't know about sunscreen. I remember my dad and me playing golf, 18 holes without shirts on. (No, we didn't play at the country club, obviously.) We would literally “cook,” and as a result of that, I've had various things removed. I won't show you my leg, but I still have a scar from this past January 10 where I had a cancer removed. So use sunscreen. Because of that, I go to the dermatologist every six months, like you do regularly with a dentist for screening. Screening is very important.

There is another kind of cancer, it's a cancer of the spirit that we need to do continuous screenings on and that is the cancer of a judgmental spirit that has eternal consequences. That's why I can't wait until we get through this election year. I can't stand election years because those little judgmental, demonic cells of divisiveness seem to increase their attack. Why judgmentalism is such a cancer is that judgment always demeans the character of a person rather than respectfully debate ideas. Do you see the difference? There's a difference between respectfully debating ideas and attacking the character of a person especially in the election year. You sit around family tables with extended families and hear people attacking character, not debating ideas. You've all been part of that. I used to hate being around my uncle's table on Sunday afternoon and the discussion of politics.

What we're going to see in James is that judgment has no place among God's people. Two years ago, I was preaching in a church in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and barbed wire surrounds this church because Catholics will attack Protestants. On the top of the buildings was razor wire. I asked the pastor why the razor wire was there. He said, "So that snipers can't shoot our people when they are coming in to the church." There is a gate that divides the Protestant section of Belfast from the Catholic section. Some Protestants spray painted on it "Kill all tags." Tags is a derogatory term for Catholics. This is happening in the church. Can you believe this stuff today in the world? Judgment has no place among the people of God as we're going to see in the book of James. Will you open your Bibles with me to James 2:8. Before we go there, I want to pray. Here's why I want to pray. So often we say we're using spiritual discernment and it's not spiritual discernment, it's judgment. There's a difference between judgment and spiritual discernment and we're going to discover that. So bow your head in prayer with me. It's a time for a spiritual screening. "Lord Jesus, expose any cancerous spirit of judgment within each of us, that we might present to You a pure and clean heart. And we pray this is Your name. Amen."

What we will see with God thoroughly and throughout all of the scripture is that God's priority is people. It's the primacy of relationships. Look at verse 8. "If you really keep the royal law found in scripture, 'love your neighbor as yourself,' you are doing right." Right and righteousness are the same word in scripture. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you're really doing right. A religious leader came to Jesus - isn't it interesting that Jesus always had the toughest time with religious people - and asked the question that we see raised by many people, "What should I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus equated eternal life with our actions toward our neighbor. He told the story that we've come to know in an illustration of a Good Samaritan. The guy came back and said, "Well, who's my neighbor?" We want to be limiting sometimes for whom we are responsible. Sometimes we say, "I've got to take care of my own family first." Or, "Let's take care of the people in Dayton before we worry about the people in the Katrina area." Or, "Let's take care of people in America before we go to the Sudan." We are always trying to limit who our neighbor is.

I don't know if any of you saw this in the news, this is one of the most disgusting things that I have seen in my adult life. Last month in Hartford, Connecticut, a man was crossing the street and was hit by a car. I don't want to show you the graphic part of when he was hit by a car, but I want you to notice everyone that kept driving past or walking past. Watch this news clip. Look at the people, they looked, they walked away. Look at the cars that continually drove by. Look at that lady - she walked over, then she walked away. This was last month in Hartford, Connecticut. The man, fortunately is still alive, he's paralyzed, but do you see people just continue on. That guy stopped his car, then he started up again. We are human beings! Isn't this like the Good Samaritan story when two religiously right people walked by a guy who was in great distress who had been beaten and robbed by thieves. Often religious people keep blinders on and they rationalize having blinders on because they say they're too busy. If I get involved I'll have to wait around, I'll have to do a police statement, or I might get called into court - and on, and on, and on. In Jesus' story, people even used religious reasons for not getting involved. I'd like to stop and help, but I'm on my way to a wedding. I'll be late.

What is so amazing about this story is that Jesus used a Samaritan as the person who did right. Now here's the part most of us will overlook. A Samaritan was not religiously correct nor did a Samaritan have right biblical doctrine. Samaritans disagreed with Jews on one of the most important topics, and that's what in seminary is called soteriology, it's the theology of salvation, of atonement. The Bible, the Old Testament was clear that atonement came through animal sacrifice that could only happen in the temple, nowhere else. It's why they didn't do sacrifices in the synagogues in rural areas. In synagogues, they did teaching, but in the temple in Jerusalem they did sacrifices for the atonement of people's sin. And it was in Jerusalem where the ultimate sacrifice for all humanity took place, on Golgotha, on the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Samaritans built their own temple on a mountain called Gerizim. They disagreed with the Jews, however, it was this Samaritan who stopped and acted rightly toward this man who was in a distress situation. I want to read Luke 10:36, "Jesus said, 'Which of these do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers.' The expert in the law replied, 'The one who had mercy on him.'" The one who had mercy was the one who was biblically incorrect. "Jesus told him, 'Go and do likewise.'" I want you to get this, it's really important: Jesus places priority on right action, right love, and not right doctrine. Many Christians are devoted to doctrine, but disciples of Jesus Christ are devoted to Jesus.

God is going to give you the opportunity to demonstrate his love by placing people in your path that you struggle with most. I hate that! But that's the way God works. James 2:8, "If you keep the royal law . . ." The royal law is the law belonging to the king and the King of the Kingdom is Jesus. This royal law is the law of Jesus to which James is referring. There is one central law of Jesus that defines all of the commandments. It is in John 13:34, "A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." It doesn't say try, it says you must love one another. Jesus defines the kind of love he's talking about, "the way I love you." What is Jesus' love and how is that different from most folk's definition of love? Jesus' love is a volitional love; it has nothing to do with emotions or feelings. It is a love of will. It is a love of choice.

I was at a wedding this morning. One of the things I want you to notice the next time you're at a wedding is that the priest or pastor never says, "Do you love?" The priest or pastor always asks, "Will you love?" Do you love is why a lot of people get married! In that moment, they do love! It took me only two weeks not to feel like do you love; when you get in the reality of the relationship. If you're married, I want you to remember your wedding vows, they didn't ask do you love, that changes. Remember the 'for better or for worse' part. God's love is volitional; it is a love of will, it is not a love of emotion.

We're getting ready to go to the Sudan again in the next few months, and if any of you have been paying attention, there have been 45 compounds of humanitarian organizations that have been attacked so far this year. When we are there, we stay in one of those compounds. Why do we keep going back to the Sudan? Why do we keep going back to the Gulf? Tomorrow, by the way, the number one newspaper in New Orleans is going to do a feature article in the Sunday newspaper about Ginghamsburg Church. The reporter was here two weeks ago. We just sent our forty-first or forty-second team; we've had two there this month and another one leaving in a couple of weeks. It makes no sense in this economic time. Why have we just committed to create our third campus at Fort McKinley. The reason we do this stuff is not because it makes us feel good or makes us happy, or even because it makes our families feel secure. Every time I go to Sudan, Carolyn is nauseous for two weeks before. Why do we do it? We do it because it's the will of God! Love is volitional, it has nothing to do with emotion, how you feel danger or anything. Will you love! Not do you love. The first commitment of Jesus, the first obedience of Jesus was to do the will of his Father. Discipleship is based on our devotion to Jesus Christ - not our feelings.

Judgment is so deadly because it infects us with this sense of smug religious self-righteousness. We need to do constant screening, just like I have to do now with my skin and the sun. That smugness is what turns off most people to Christianity today. Let's look at James 2: 9-11. "But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking it all. For he who said, 'You shall not commit adultery,' also said, 'You shall not murder.' If you do not commit adultery but you do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker." That's what judgment does, it puts people into categories, some are more right than others, some are more just than others, some are more righteous than others. We're all infected by sin in our lives. The blood of Jesus cleanses us and is transforming us, but we still have the effects of this in our life. Sin creates this spiritual blindness that makes us oblivious to our own brokenness and it magnifies other people's stuff. So we condemn in others what we fail to see in ourselves. Or we even condemn in other folks that in which we think we're pretty accomplished. One of the examples in the church is it's easy to slam homosexuals because a small percentage of the population are homosexual. We tend to rank sins. Nowhere in the Bible do you see the Bible ranking sin. We minimize gossip, which is in the same line as homosexuality, which I can't believe. We minimize slander. Here's one that I've never heard a message on in the church, and I've been in the church for all my life, gluttony. I see people on TV who are 150 pounds overweight slamming homosexuals. We're blind to our own brokenness and we magnify the brokenness in other people. Here's my danger, because now that I'm working out and eating healthy, it would be really easy for me to slam gluttony and preach against gluttony and not see my own brokenness. Do you see the problem with judgment? The word says, "If you stumble in any area, you stumble in them all." That means that all of us are guilty of breaking all of God's laws. This is what Jesus said, "If you have unresolved anger with a brother or sister, you've murdered in your heart." Jesus said what do you mean you don't commit adultery? Every time you look at a sister or brother with lust you've committed adultery! We have to understand what this whole thing is about, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," the word says. Please hear this: righteousness is not an earned status, it is the result of the work of Jesus on the cross. So when we judge other people, we demean the redemptive work of Jesus and we make it our own. It's why Jesus said do not judge.

We're going to do something we've never done. I want all of you to stand up right now. We're going to read out loud these words of Jesus from Matthew 7:1-5. "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from the other person's eye."

You may be seated. Wow! We forget that. That's why we need constant spiritual screening for this cancer of the spirit of judgment. Here's what I want you to get: there's a danger that we absorb the values of our culture. So the Bible tells us do not judge, but be spiritually discerning. The problem is that what we call spiritual discernment is really judgment. Here's the difference: judgment produces anger, criticism, slander and smug satisfaction. We slander people and we do it like this, "Hey, I'm just asking you to pray for them." It's called slander, demeaning people's character. And this smug sense of satisfaction and the thing about judgment, it even sometimes gloats at other people's failure. Have you seen that? "I told them . . . serves them right." Discernment, there's a difference; it creates pain, compassion, and intercession. Remember how Jesus wept over Jerusalem, the prodigal son; it's really the story of the prodigal father. The father let the son experience the consequences of his sin, but every day that father was looking for that son, praying for that son, preparing a party for his son. We read when this son was trying to find his way back, you know when you try to find your way back, you don't know how to get there - I love this part - while the son was still a long way off, the father ran to meet him. So what does this mean for the church, for followers of Jesus? We're to be mercy! Look at James 2:12-13, "Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, . . ." I'm glad I'm going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, how about you? And that the work of grace in my life is not something I earned, but based on the work of Jesus on the cross. ". . . because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment." Have you discovered that God gives all of us grace in our failure? I always think the Bible is a book about screw-up's - everything from Moses, who, in his anger, murdered an Egyptian; to Peter, who denied Jesus three times. Talk about God who gives us grace in our failure, Jesus made Peter in charge of the church! To the woman caught in the act of adultery, the Bible said someone caught in adultery should be stoned. God showed the woman grace in the midst of her failure. Jesus said, "I don't condemn you" now get out there and live above your failure in the power of God. Mercy triumphs over judgment. It's one of the most important biblical truths I know.

A week ago Tuesday, our senior management team was at Lake Erie at our West Ohio Conference and we were sitting in a coffee shop, meeting with our new campus pastor who will be at Fort McKinley starting the first week in August. Out of the side of my eye, I saw another pastor who's around my age, Jim Caldwell, whose mom was my elementary school principal. You know how God gives you these little glimpses of grace, so I said, "Jim, come over here" and I introduced him to our senior management team. I said, "His mom was the first lady that paddled my behind in school." He said, "You deserved it from everything she told me." I said, "But there was something else that Pat Caldwell did for me, fourth grade, end of the school year." One of the problems was that I was too young when I started school. I had just turned five, so I was always behind, physically, mentally, socially, the whole thing. Until I was about 42, I caught up at age 42. So Mrs. Caldwell took me to the office and said, "Ms. Kappleman just sent the grade cards and you have failed fourth grade." It was the last day of school, when you would go for a half day to get your report card. I was sitting there thinking, "Oh, man." My mom was in National Honor Society and I never heard the end of it. She was president of the PTA. And I was going to get a butt whipping when I went home. So I was feeling all of this. By the way, I just spoke in this elementary school in November about the Sudan and they took me into that same office that Pat Caldwell took me to and it still has the same furniture. They took me into the fourth grade class and had me tell about the time that I got the swats. I told that story and why it was wrong and how God had a better idea.

So Mrs. Caldwell let me sit there and feel the pain, and then it was amazing, I couldn't believe it, I had never heard anything like this, she said, "I'm going to override your teacher. No reason to, you've failed everything, but, I'm going to override your teacher and pass you to the fifth grade." What mercy. Justice is what you deserve, what you've earned; mercy is the gift that you beg for. This act of mercy that this human being decided to give to a fourth grader, and I'm not saying to every teacher do that, we've done too much of that. I don't know what she saw,.but if she had not have been merciful in that moment, I would have been a year behind in everything I've done. I never would have met my wife; I never would have had my children. I never would have been appointed to Ginghamsburg Church, I wouldn't have been out of seminary yet. We never would have gone to Sudan; we never would have gone to the Fort. Mrs. Caldwell is dead now, I don't know if she ever realized, maybe in heaven she realizes that that one act of mercy not only impacted one life, but the globe, and generations. My daughter, who works in nutrition at Children's Hospital in Boston with preemies and figures out formulas and so forth; my son who's going to be a doctor. What lives have been touched because one person, one act of mercy that I believe was prompted by the Holy Spirit, demonstrated mercy over judgment.

I want you to bow your head in prayer with me, will you? Many of us need to receive mercy; that we have been self-judging and self-condemning. I want you to hear the words of Jesus. Just as he said to the woman caught in the act of adultery, "I do not condemn you. But I call you and I choose you to live above defeat. I will never leave you or forsake you." All of us need to be merciful. I want you to think of a person, you might not even know that person, it might be a political person or whatever, but you have judgment in your heart against that person. Give them what they don't deserve, so they can be who God desires. We pray this in the name of the Father, and the Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.