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[ Silence ] [MUSIC PLAYING] [ Music ] Oh, I am redeemed.

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Long live the Christ. Long live the Christ. Jesus has changed. Jesus has changed my whole world.

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And if anybody asks you-- And if anybody asks you-- Just who I am. ♪ Tell Him, "Thy every need" ♪

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♪ Thy every need ♪ ♪ Thy every need ♪ ♪ The faith, the Christ, Jesus ♪ ♪ Has taken over ♪

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♪ If anybody asked you ♪ ♪ Just who I am ♪ ♪ Tell them ♪ ♪ Tell them who I am within you ♪

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♪ Where there was hate ♪ ♪ Love now abides ♪ ♪ Where there was confusion ♪ ♪ Peace now reigns ♪

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♪ I'm walking with Jesus ♪ ♪ I'm a child of the King ♪ ♪ All because I've been redeemed ♪ ♪ Oh, I am, I am redeemed ♪

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♪ Forgiven for the precious price ♪ ♪ Jesus, Jesus ♪ ♪ Oh, if anybody, anybody ♪ ♪ Should ask you just who, just who ♪

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♪ I am, tell them, tell them ♪ ♪ I am redeemed ♪ ♪ I'll tell of his favor ♪ ♪ I've got to tell of his love ♪

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♪ Can't help but tell of his goodness to me ♪ He's done everything for you. He purchased my redemption with his own precious blood.

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And from sin I've been set free. So, oh, I am redeemed. All with a price. Jesus has changed.

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Jesus has changed. My whole life. Anybody should ask you. Just who I am.

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Tell them for me. Tell them. Tell them I am. I am.

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I am redeemed. ♪ I am redeemed ♪ ♪ I am ♪ ♪ I am ♪

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♪ Redeemed ♪ ♪ I've been born ♪ ♪ Born to you ♪ ♪ Born to you, Christ ♪

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♪ Born to you, Christ ♪ ♪ Jesus has changed ♪ ♪ Jesus ♪ ♪ Has changed ♪

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♪ Changed my whole life ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Anybody can see me ♪ ♪ Just who I am ♪

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♪ Tell me who is that man ♪ ♪ Just who I am ♪ ♪ You can tell them ♪ ♪ Tell them ♪

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♪ You can tell them ♪ ♪ I am redeemed ♪ ♪ Oh, I am ♪ ♪ I am redeemed ♪

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♪ I've been brought ♪ ♪ Brought with ♪ ♪ Precious Christ ♪ ♪ Christ ♪

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♪ Jesus has changed ♪ ♪ Jesus has changed ♪ ♪ My whole life ♪ ♪ If anybody ♪

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♪ Ask him ♪ ♪ Just who I am ♪ ♪ This is what you can tell them ♪ ♪ Tell them ♪

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♪ Tell them ♪ ♪ Tell them ♪ ♪ Tell them ♪ ♪ Tell them ♪

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♪ Tell them ♪ ♪ Tell me ♪ ♪ I am ♪ ♪ I am, I am the King ♪

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- Hello, everyone, Bibles. We are continuing the sermon series on marks of maturity, based on the epistle of James.

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I shall read again the scripture. "My brethren have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, "the Lord of glory with respect of persons. "For if there come unto you or unto your assembly

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"a man with a gold ring in goodly apparel, "and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment, "And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, "and say unto him, sit thou here in a good place,

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"and say to the poor, stand thou there, "or sit here under my footstool. "Are ye not then partial in yourselves, "and are become judges of evil thoughts?

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"Hearken, my brethren, has not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to them that love him? But ye have despised the poor.

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Do not rich men oppress you and draw you before the judgment seats? Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by which ye are called? If ye fulfill the royal law according to the scripture,

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thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well. But if ye have respect to persons, we commit sin and are convinced of the law as transgressors. For whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point is guilty of all. For he that said do not commit adultery said

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also do not kill. Now if you commit no adultery yet if thou kill thou art become a transgressor of the law. So speak ye and so do as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty for he shall have judgment without mercy that that hath shown no mercy,

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and mercy rejoices against judgment." The title of this particular sermon in relation to the sermon series marks maturity, the subject today, "Knowing How to Treat People Right."

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treat people right. In my high school class, we had, when I entered a new school, and we had to learn a new school song. And that song was written by J. Mason Brewer, who was on the faculty of my high school. And he wrote the class song, not

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the class song, the school song, that we were all to learn. And it had words in it that said, "We shall fight, fight, fight, for the right, right, right. And dear old Lincoln High,

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no matter where we are, you will be our guiding star. And we will fight, fight, fight for the right, right, right.

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Well, now to fight for the right is noble and honorable. It's a wonderful thing to do. But we must know what is right

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in order to know how to treat people right. You know, we often told something to do and we asked the question, who says so? And the person said, well, I say so.

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but sometimes we don't regard that I who says so. But the one who tells us, who sets the standard for us, the one who commands us is the Lord God himself. - Amen.

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- He tells us what we ought to do. And I often wonder when I think about the words of the school song, whether we knew what we were saying, deep in our hearts, we will fight, fight, fight.

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Or were we just repeating those words because of the rhyme and the rhythm? Knowing how to treat people right is a mark of maturity. It's a sign that we are moving toward the goal

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that God has for our lives. It's a sign that we are fulfilling the divine design. Let me remind you that James is writing to members of the Christian family.

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And he says to them, brethren, In other words, you don't have the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the reason he says that, he goes on to point out,

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it is evident that you don't have the faith, your life is not really committed to Jesus Christ by the way you treat people. And that's a mark, where people can really know

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whether we are mature is how we treat people. Not how much we know, not how many degrees we possess, the schools we've been fortunate enough to finish, but how do we treat people?

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That's the mark. So what James is saying in so many words, you are in the Christian family, your name is on the church roll,

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but while you talk the talk, walk. You're not walking the walk. So the standard of measurement is how we treat one another. And we have a tendency to treat one another according to our likes and dislikes. I

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remember a person said to me years ago, "I don't like the you look? Well I said I can't change the way I look. In other words someone would say well I don't like so and so. Well why? Well I just don't like the way he looks or she looks. The judgments are based on facts that are inconclusive and according

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to James, there are church members who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ who have missed the mark in that treatment of others. They have deviated from the pattern.

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They have committed themselves to doing the right thing, but they have not done the right thing. So he says, as he illustrates his point, "If there should come into the church

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a man wearing a gold ring," in other words, if he has expensive jewelry and is dressed in the finest clothes, reflecting the latest fashions,

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that sort of man comes, that we incline some other people who were in the church, we'd call them ushers today, when we look at this person, they would make snap judgments and look at this man and say, "This man must be rich. Look at that diamond. Look

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that large gold ring that he has. Look at that jewelry he has. Look at the watch he's wearing. All of these are signs, we say, that the man must be well off. On the other hand, here comes a brother who is in clothes that are torn and tattered. And we

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look at him and say, "Well, he must be a poor fellow." He's He comes from a low socioeconomic level. And the truth of the matter is we have a tendency to judge people by the clothes they wear.

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So some people are quick to say, you know, this came from Neiman Marcus. This came from Saks. They want to throw those labels around, you know.

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And we judge them by the clothes they wear and by the car they drive and by the house that we live in. We make judgments based on those things.

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And we forget, we forget that the clothes do not determine the person. The car does not determine a person. There are a whole lot of terrible people dressed up in

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fine clothes. A whole lot of bandits driving good cars, by expensive cars. And when we look at this, that clothes don't make cars don't make people, and homes don't make people. We have a thing going in this country.

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As your salary moves up to a certain level, you move out into a certain area. And you just keep moving, keep moving as your salary goes up.

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And we make judgments and we overlook this person who doesn't have good clothes, these name brand clothes and these fine cars and the expensive home in an expensive neighborhood.

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We sort of overlook those because we are making judgments that are based on external appearances and material possessions.

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And in this case, James says, case of the rich man, the person who's ushering him in, gives him a choice seat. Follow me, sir.

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And takes him to a choice seat and says, this is a special place, I'm sure you'll enjoy this and you'll be satisfied, take your seat. He treats him with the utmost respect

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and politeness, courtesy and all of that, because he thinks of him as being rich. And he has made a judgment based on that. But on the other hand, a poor man comes

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who is in clothes that are torn and tattered and he just, he doesn't even usher him to the seat. He points it over there and says, you sit over there. Or you stand over there if you like,

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or you can sit on the floor. That's what James is saying. He said, "That's what you're doing in the church." And you are not showing to others the fact

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that your life is committed to Jesus Christ. And to show you what God must have thought of the poor, when he sent Jesus into the world, sent him to a peasant family, poor family, and he did not have the things that we think

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of being rich. He'd never had a home. He said, "Foxes have hoes, birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. He was one who never went to college. And he never had, as one poet puts it,

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he never had any of the things that we usually think of as accompanying greatness. But God sent him into the world. And the place that they show us today,

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Holy Grotto is just a hole in the ground. God identifies with the poor. One of the problems with our school system is we're making judgments. And you hear so much talk about those who are in the low socioeconomic bracket. And many of them write

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"This child must be dumb just because he's poor. "Make a judgment." We're still doing that. James wrote his little letter 2,000 years ago,

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but it's still fresh. It's still fresh. We put them on certain tracks. And once they get on those tracks,

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it is very difficult to get off of the tracks. But what we forget is that God made all people. He made us all. And there's some brilliant minds in poor families.

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And there's some very dumb ones in rich families. In other words, he didn't make any difference based on class and status. And God wants us, if we grow up,

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in his likeness to be no respecter of persons. You know, that's what James was saying. Be careful. We see someone and we immediately make a judgment.

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We put them in a certain stereotype. Stereotype. When I was on the Board of Regents at Texas Southern, one of the regents confessed to me

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after I'd been chairman of the board for some time. He said, you know Marvin, he said I didn't want to see you chairman. He said because I didn't think preachers

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knew how to do this sort of thing. In other words, he had an idea about preachers. They're not able to handle money, they're not able to manage, that's for somebody else.

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But he'd already written it off. but now as I look back, he said, "You've made a good chance." But many times people don't get a chance to prove themselves. And we have already written them off. But he's

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saying here that the church should look upon persons as as persons made in the image of God. All of us are God's children. And God has put a spark of divinity

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in every one of us, covered up by that human flesh, no matter what kind of clothes may be worn, but inside that person is a likeness of the heavenly Father. And he says, "You ought not to be partial.

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"You ought to be impartial in your treatment." But all my brothers and sisters, the problems today that we have in our society are related to the fact that people don't care

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about how they treat people. I was looking the other day and I saw a list of crimes They said, "Lawsury is committed every four seconds. "Burglary committed every 14 seconds.

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"A motor vehicle theft every 25 seconds. "Aggravated assault every 32 seconds. Robbery every 60 seconds. Rape every six minutes.

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And murder every 31 minutes. And all of those things have to do with the mistreatment of persons. Mistreatment.

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And that's the kind of society we live in. And Jesus says, "In everything, in everything," listen, "in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you." Now so many of us have turned that around and we say, "Do unto others before they do

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unto you." (audience laughing) But the golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do to you.

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Do not mistreat one another. Do not create false stereotypes based on race, religion, or region. Do not program people and write them off

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based on snap judgments and false assumptions. Students suffer from that, adults suffer from it, but right judgment is a prelude to right treatment. Do not make ultimate decisions based on mere appearance.

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appearance. You know, once in a very exclusive area in an apartment store, some ladies went out there and were walking around looking on their shopping time and they were ignored by the salespersons because of the way they were dressed. They had ridden them off. So they went home, changed clothes, and came

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back and they were graciously accepted and treated just because of the clothes. Clothes. We had a time when certain persons couldn't go in certain places because of a certain color and here comes an African who has on a turban and robe he could go in, based on clothes. And James says that this ought not be the case.

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And it's so easy, so easy for us to slip into that. So easy to sing, "Oh, how I love Jesus how we love one another and slip into that. A group of us were visiting the University of Ghana in West Africa and we saw this man, he had on some rather worn looking clothes and he was barefoot in the class.

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So having it was a dance class at this university. And he looked in such a way that I thought possibly he was the janitor of some workman. Already I had reached a decision. But we found out he was one of the professors.

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And he took us in and had us to sit down and delivered to us a short lecture. with flawless English, you know, and we were all astounded because many of them just like I had already placed this man in a certain... and if this sermon means anything it ought to help us to recognize that we need to accept people

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as people, not place them in stereotypes, but to accept them as persons made in the image of God. Don't judge people by popular labels, rich and poor. This is good advice for every dimension of human existence. So in the family, that's also true. In the family that's the place we learn. We learn how to treat one

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another right there in the family. But so often we mistreat one another within the family circle because of false judgments. Start out wrong. There's a friend of mine who said he got married and he told me he said he went out on on his wedding night and stayed out all night.

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He said, "That's the way to break 'em in." (audience laughing) "That's the way to break 'em in," he said. I don't need to tell you

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that he's been married several times (audience laughing) and he's not married now. So it's a bad way.

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He had gotten through college and all of that, but he still didn't know how to treat people, not even his wife. So how to treat your wife, how to treat your husband,

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all of that is a sign of maturity. And some of us have a mature body, and we have a mature age, but we do not have the skills of a mature person

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when it comes to how to treat one another. So it is important. For James is saying that in the final analysis, my brethren, that we must all answer to God.

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Judge not! Because the God of all the earth is the great judge! He is the one! And he will judge us all.

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So we must answer to him. And our ancestors understood this quite well. They sang in the midst of oppression and injustice, I'm gonna tell God how you treat me.

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I'm gonna tell God how you treat me when I lay my burden down. So we've got to be right with God, to be rightly related to him,

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and he bases that on how we treat one another. right with God. If you're really right with God, you're going to be right with one another. Get right with God. Get right with the King of all the earth. Get right with God.

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And do it now. Get right with God. He will show you how. Down at the cross where he shed his blood. Get right with God. Get right. Get right with God. This is the opportunity now we extend for everyone. God, that's the wonderful thing about him. God is impartial. He extends the invitation to all,

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"Whosoever will, let him come." He gave his son that "Whosoever believeth in him "should have eternal life." So you may come by letter, by Christian experience,

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or on profession of faith. You may come to unite with the family of God here at Ebenezer as we sing the hymn of invitation. Doors of the church are open.

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Good. All right. [MUSIC PLAYING] Northwood Church, Oakland.

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Not but the righteous. (SINGING) Not but the righteous. Not but the righteous. Not but the righteous.

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Shall see the Lord. None but the righteous, None but the righteous, None but the righteous, Have sinned around the Lord, Come Thou Fount of every blessing. ♪ Do my heart do sing thy praise ♪

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♪ Screams of mercy never ceasing ♪ ♪ Of the songs of loveless praise ♪ ♪ None but the righteous ♪ ♪ None but the righteous ♪

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♪ None but the righteous shall see the light ♪ ♪ None but the righteous ♪ ♪ None but the righteous ♪ ♪ None but the righteous shall see the light ♪

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♪ Here I raise mine evanescent ♪ ♪ 'Til the world I have come ♪ ♪ And I hope I could make it ♪ ♪ Safely to arrive at home ♪

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♪ None but the righteous ♪ ♪ None but the righteous ♪ None but the righteous shall sing of the Lord. None but the righteous, none but the righteous,

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none but the righteous shall sing of the Lord. None but the righteous, none but the righteous, ♪ And that the righteous shall see God ♪ - Let us bow our heads.

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Oh, gracious God, our Father, help us to receive this word that comes to us from your servant James, a pastor in the long ago, concerning how we should treat one another,

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Be with us as we continue our pilgrimage until that day when we shall all gather in that eternal city and behold the glory of your face. Amen.

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- Amen. (gentle music) ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪

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♪ Amen ♪ ♪ America ♪ (gentle music) [MUSIC PLAYING]

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[ Music ] [BLANK_AUDIO]