Honor

The podcast discusses the topic of honor, particularly in relation to honoring fathers and ultimately honoring God. The speaker explores the meaning of honor and its importance, using various biblical verses as references. The speaker emphasizes the need to honor God in all aspects of life, including our relationships, possessions, and time. The speaker also highlights the significance of humility and fearing the Lord in receiving blessings and honor. Lastly, the speaker expresses concern about the state of the church and calls for a genuine honoring of God rather than mere lip service. Welcome to CCIFellowship's podcast. Thank you for joining us. At CCIFellowship, we are reaching God, reaching each other, and reaching our community. We pray that this brief message challenges you in your walk with the Lord, causes you to grow in your faith, and encourages you in your love for the Word of God. God preaches according to the holiday, unless it's like Easter or Christmas. But otherwise, it's the holiday. I just, I don't know what it is about me. I just, I don't know. But anyway, as I said last week, I was going to preach this message last week, and then God worked something else and had it to fall on today. But I think, in the end, it's fitting that we talk about honor on the day that we are honoring the fathers. And, of course, ultimately honoring our Father, God. The word honor in Hebrew, it means being heavy, or it speaks of the importance given to what is being honored. It means splendor, majesty, vigor, glorious. One of the main recognized, most recognized verses that we can think of, and one that, of course, falls appropriate for today, is Exodus chapter 20, verse 12. It says, honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you. This is the first place in Scripture where the word honor appears attached to a promise. Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long. Or, as one verse says, that it may go well with you. And there's a lot of debate sometimes of what does it mean to honor your father and mother, especially as you become an adult. Does that mean that your mother and father still controls everything that you do, that you still have to ask their permission, that you still have to do what they want you to do? And that is not true, because God expects us to grow. He expects us to be adults, to mature and to make our own decisions. And so, what does it mean to, throughout our lifetime, continue to honor our father and our mother? Well, the honor, as we read the definition, means to speak, it speaks of importance given to what is being honored. So when it has to do with our parents, honoring them throughout our lifetime is considering how they raised us, considering what they would advise us in. That doesn't mean we have to do what they say, but it means that we honor what they would want us to do, that we behave ourselves in a manner that others see that we honor our father and mother. In the same way, during our marriage seminar a couple weekends ago, we talked about how the wife's body is not her own and the husband's body is not his own, and it had to do with how we portray ourselves when we go out in public and when we interact with other people. How are we honoring our spouse in the way that we conduct ourselves or the way that we behave ourselves when we are out in public? In the same way, when it comes to honor, not just about our father and mother, but what does it say about how much we honor God, if when we are out and about, people see us, see our conduct, see our speech, see what we do. See the way that we accomplish things. What does it say about how much we honor God through our lives? Can people tell that you honor God through the way that you conduct yourselves? Can people tell that there is something different about you in your life because you honor God through what you do and say? Some of the other verses that we can see is 1 Samuel 2 verse 30. The last part of it says, For those who honor me, I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. God speaking here. For those who honor me, I will honor. Psalm 8 verse 4 and 5 says, What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor. We as man, we as beings, God has crowned us with glory and honor. It says in this version, you have made him a little lower than the angels, but the word here is actually you have made him a little lower than God. You have made man a little lower than yourself, the psalmist says, and you have crowned him with glory and honor. If that is the case, how do we see each other? Do we really see each other as the image of God? Do we really perceive each other in the glory and honor that God has bestowed upon us as human beings? Do we really want to give up how we see ourselves in favor of seeing somebody else with that same honor and glory? You know, a lot of times we as human beings, we want to receive grace from others, but we are very stingy when it comes to giving grace to others. And the same happens in regards to honor. The same happens in regards to how we esteem others, the importance that we place on others. Proverbs 3, verse 9 and 10, one that is very well known when it comes to offering time, honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of all your increase, so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine. Some people have problems with this verse because they say, well, it's just giving to get. Well, I mean, God put it there in that order. Honor the Lord with your wealth. Honor the Lord with your possessions. What does it mean to honor God with everything that we have? Well, how much importance do you place on the amount of money that you have? How much importance do you place on the possessions that you have? How much does it hurt when you've got to give something extra or when something costs more than you want to pay, but you really want that thing and so you give our perspective a lot of times about the things that have to do with ourselves. We tend to honor those things more than we honor God. How well do we honor God with our time? How well do we honor the house of God with arriving on time? Well, our actions display what we honor the most. Our behavior displays what we honor the most and most of the time it is going to display that the number one thing that we honor in our life is ourselves. We are quick to want to promote the things of our own selves rather than the things of others. We are quick to give up everything else so that we can do what we want to, but when God calls us to do something sometimes, we fight with it. We have a discussion with God. When God calls us to go to another country to study, when God calls us to take a time away from places that we love, when God calls us to move into a job that maybe it's not the one that we want the most, we have these discussions with God. And why should we? Why should we have such discussions with Him? Why should we fight God when we know that He has everything good for us? If He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords as we profess, do we truly honor Him in that position of who He is? Or do we get sloppy? Do we get lax? Do we get comfortable in our relationship with God and forget to honor Him in the majesty that He is, holding and containing the weight of His glory? Remember praying one time before service that God would cause the weight of His glory to descend upon us, and Richard was in that circle with us and that hit him in such an impactful way that God would allow the weight of His glory to come upon us. What a heavy, heavy thing, but that is what honor is. God honors us with His presence. His presence is here today. We were praising Him. Psalms says that He inhabits the praises of His people, and He did so today as we praised Him, as we worshiped Him, as we sang our songs to Him. He was here with us. He honored us with His presence. Do we then honor Him back in the same way by giving Him all of ourselves? Or do we hold back some of that honor from Him because we don't want to give up all of ourselves? In Proverbs 22, verse 4, it says, By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life. It means that when God does want to pour out blessings upon us, when He does want to put us in a place of honor, Scripture says that He'll bring us before kings and He'll bring us before judges and He'll bring us before important people by the gifts that He's given us and the anointing that He has placed upon us. When He wants to do that, when He wants to bless us with life, the way to receive those things is not to say, yep, God, I deserve that, but it's by humility and fearing the Lord. Mark 7, verse 6 says, He answered and said to them, Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites. As it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In this last couple weeks what has been heavy on my heart in regard to the nation as a whole is the condition of the church. Last week we had the General Assembly for the Evangelical Fraternity and a new president was put in place and it is amazing to me to be in that General Assembly and see how the attitudes of people turn from being servants of God, because they're all ministers. You can't be part of the Evangelical Fraternity if you're not part of a ministry. How the attitude turns when it comes to who's in leadership and who is not. Our organization has been part of the fraternity since we started, for a long time. And I can't remember one General Assembly where I left there thinking, now that is a room full of holy people. That's sad. That is a sad testament to the state of the church in this country. And it's not getting any better. Does God want it to get better? Absolutely. And I believe that that is what God is doing here in this church, is moving us into a place where His holiness, His name, His honor becomes more the central focus of everything that we do. I firmly believe God's going to use this church and He's going to use this congregation to impact this city and by extension, impact this nation. But if we ourselves fall into the same pattern of a church that only honors God with their lips and not with their hearts, we're not going to see anything happen. We can sing Ring in the Robe until our faces are blue, until we have absolutely no more oxygen left. And it's not going to do anything to bring the prodigals in if we ourselves don't have our hearts turned to God and available to honor Him in everything that we do. Not just with lip service. Not just by the things that we say, but that our heart yearn and our heart burn to be closer to Him. Romans chapter 2, verse 10 says, but glory, honor and peace to everyone who works what is good. To the Jew first and also to the Greek. Not to everyone who says what is good. It's to everyone who works what is good. That's not talking, of course, about salvation by works. That comes by a gift of God and by His grace through faith. But when we do receive salvation, then we must work. He has called us to good deeds. Things he has prepared for us before the foundation of the world. And then he comes to this, Romans chapter 13, verse 7. Our key verse for today. Because I haven't said it yet. Open your Bibles to Romans chapter 13, verse 7. When you're there, say amen. I know it's up there, but open your Bible. It says, render therefore to all their due. Taxes to whom taxes are due. Custom to whom custom. Fear to whom fear and honor to whom honor. Now the Hebrew words spoke of the importance given to what is being honored. The Greek version of this word means perceived value. That which has value in the eyes of the beholder. In other words, what is the value that you place on this or that? If we think of the Latin culture, the Latin culture is very much based on honor, very much based on titles. Everyone has a title. Everyone wants to make sure their title is known. Everyone wants to be called by their title. In the North American culture, it's growingly and increasingly the place that it doesn't matter what title you have. You don't get honor and respect unless you earn it. In the Latin culture, you give it based on the position. In the North American culture, you earn it based on your actions. So it's the value perceived by the observer. But we are not our own, right? We've been bought with a price. We belong to God. So are we the observer when it comes to who we are to honor and who we are to respect? No. God is the observer. He is the one that assigns the value. And he says to us, give honor to whom honor is due. Pay your taxes. Give tribute to who tribute is due. Respect the one that is supposed to be respected, regardless of their actions. It's the same when it comes to any type of relationship that we have with people, whether that's the relationship you have with your parents, the relationship you have with your spouse, the relationship you have with your kids, relationship that you have with governors and rulers, with your bosses, with your co-workers, with your spiritual leaders. God says to honor. He's the one that places the value, and he gives us the command in this verse that we are to give honor to whom honor is due. Now, not everybody acts honorably. In fact, even talking about fathers today or parents honoring our fathers and mothers, there are fathers and mothers who have not acted honorably. They have not treated their kids with respect. They have not acted in such a way to earn honor. However, that doesn't change the command of Scripture that we are still to find a way to honor them. To ask God, help us, Lord God, to honor people that we don't find honorable. It's very easy to look at government and find them not honorable. It's very easy to look at authority figures in our lives, and because we just inherently, as human beings, have a submission problem to authority, to look at them and find every excuse imaginable not to honor them. To do so just enough so that we don't get fired, but behind their backs as we talk to each other, our speech is not in such an honorable way. I received a WhatsApp yesterday of somebody that said something, and this morning I received another one from that person that said, Can you please delete what I said? It was not honorable, and the Lord convicted me of that, and so could you just remove it from our chat? And the comment that they said, the person would never find out that they had said that, but it's not about whether the person finds out or not, it's about our connection with the Father, our interaction with him. Did anyone do their homework this week, reading Ephesians 5? A couple of you? The verse that says, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit is surrounded by verses that talk about our interaction with each other. Not grieving the Holy Spirit hinges on whether or not we are getting along with each other. It hinges on whether or not we are honoring each other in our conduct and in our speech. So it doesn't matter the relationship we have to honor, even if the person we feel doesn't deserve it. In 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 17, it says, Honor all people. I think it pretty much covers that. There's nobody left out of that. Honor all people. You mean I'm supposed to honor the policeman that just stopped me on the highway and he's trying to get a bribe from me and just detaining me? You're just wasting my time, dude. I'm not going to give you money. Yes, we have to honor him. We have to honor that person. Trust me, I'm the first to be upset when I get stopped for no reason whatsoever. You can ask Adriana. Oh, come on. I had good momentum going and now you're messing me up. I was going to beat the GPS by three minutes and now you've made me lose it. That's true. But even then, honor all people, love the brotherhood, love each other, the body of Christ. Fear God. We live the way we do because we fear and reverence God. Not because we're afraid that he's going to strike us down and send us to hell. We have received Christ as our Savior. We have accepted his gift of salvation. We have become new creatures. We are being made into his image. But we fear God. We fear his judgment. We fear disappointing him and thus we live according to what he says in his word. Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, and then it ends with honor the king. Who was the king when Peter wrote these words? Who was the emperor of Rome in the moment that Peter penned these words inspired by the Holy Spirit? It was Nero, the worst emperor you could ever imagine. Nero concocted a conspiracy just so that he could have his own mother killed. He set his mother up so that he could justify killing her. He killed so many Christians. He was in charge of Rome at the height of the persecution of the first church. And Peter said, honor the king. There was nothing about Nero that was honorable. But God put a weight, put a value on the position of authority. I was listening to something recently that talked about the verse that says God puts people in authority and he removes them from authority. We shouldn't fear authority because they're there for our good. I read that verse sometimes and I think, I know people in authority that are not there for my good. They're there for their own good. So what is the explanation, God? How are we supposed to understand this that you tell us that we're supposed to honor those in authority? It's that God is the one who created authority. And we are to honor authority because he is authority. Though the person is not honorable, we must still honor the position because when we honor the position, we honor God. I had somebody call my office years ago. I picked up the phone and they said, is Prophet John Motyka there? And I said, who? Is Prophet John Motyka there? I said, no, he doesn't work in this office. But I'll take your question. I'm John Motyka. The person was just trying to honor. Badly, but he was trying to honor. Let us make sure that we are honoring as God wants us to honor. Why is it so important that we honor? Why would God even tell us to honor bad leaders, whether they are governors or civic leaders or whether they are spiritual leaders that just happen to not be good leaders? An excellent book on authority is A Tale of Three Kings. And it tells the story of King Saul who was a terrible king. It tells the story of King David. And then it tells the story of Absalom who was trying to usurp the throne. I suggest you read it if you can get your hands on it. It's very good because it will put you in your place. It will help you see that as David exemplified, he honored King Saul even until after his death. Even to his descendants he honored King Saul. And Saul was a leader that wanted to kill him. Absalom, he wept over his son when his son was murdered. And Absalom was trying to get rid of his father. They weren't honorable things, but David understood honor because he understood fear in God. So why is honor important to God? I'll leave you with these three things as the worship team comes up. If we cannot honor each other, remember the verse says, honor all people. If we cannot honor each other, how in the world can we say we are honoring God? We can pretend to say it, but if we don't honor each other, which is a command from Him, which is an instruction inspired by the Holy Spirit, if it is in Scripture as something that we are to do, then when we fail to do those things, we are not honoring God. So we can't pretend to say, yes, I honor you, God, while at the same time dishonoring each other. Number two, if we cannot honor our earthly authorities, then in all reality we'll have trouble honoring God's authority in our lives. We'll have trouble submitting to God's authority over our lives. We'll have trouble surrendering every part of our life to Him, to saying, I'll go where you want me to go. I'll live where you want me to live. I'll do what you want me to do. We learn that level of submission. We learn that level of honoring God as we live out honoring each other. And thirdly, when it comes to our spiritual leaders, because, I mean, a lot of times we don't like what our spiritual leaders say. If they say things that convict us, I want you to know beyond all doubt, please hear me. I do not preach to a person-specific situation. I'm not looking throughout the week when I talk to you guys what my sermon topic will be for the next week. If you're going through something and we happen to talk about it, and it happens to be the sermon in the next couple of weeks, that's because God is trying to get to you, not because I'm trying to address you by addressing everybody. I'm not going to go around and sneak around in that manner and say, well, you know, I can't really say this to this person, so I'm going to say it to everybody and hope they get the message. I don't work like that. God doesn't work like that. If you're convicted by something that's in the message, it's because the Holy Spirit's trying to convict you, not because I'm trying to condemn you. But when it comes to our spiritual leaders, when we do not honor those who, as Hebrews 13 verse 17 says, watch over our lives as those who must give an account, then we fail to honor the sovereignty of God in our own lives. God puts a high importance on honor. A high importance on honor. And when we live it out with each other, the amount of response that comes from God is incredible, because honoring each other honors Him. So if we want to honor Him, if we place an emphasis, if we place a value as the observer of God on honoring Him and we place such a high value on who He is, then let us be sure that we are honoring each other in our interactions. Honor all men, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the King. Let's pray. Let's stand together as we pray. Father, we worship You and we magnify You, Lord God. Father, we want, Lord, to be in that place where we have submitted our entire being to You, God. God, we want to surrender everything, but Lord, we do need Your help. We do need the Holy Spirit to guide us in this and to help us in those moments where our flesh just wants to promote itself, to crucify our flesh daily and to honor You with our obedience to Your Word and how we interact with each other and how we speak of those who are in authority over us. Father, we present ourselves to You still as clay that has not been hardened, clay that is still moldable, clay that is still able to be shaped, Lord God. May we not be hardened clay that is impossible for You to work with, but in the end, You have to shatter. Father, we surrender to the hands of the potter to be moved this way and molded that way, to be stretched in this manner, to be pulled in that manner, Lord God, that we may be formed, Lord, into vessels of honor fit for the master of use. God, have Your way in us and through us. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you for listening to this week's podcast. If you are ever in the Tegucigalpa area and looking for an English-speaking congregation, please join us on Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. in the main auditorium of Iglesia CCI in Colonial Trepici, just off Boulevard Sollapa, near Una. If you would like prayer or more information about our church, contact us at fellowship.cci at gmail.com. That's fellowship.cci at gmail.com. Or follow us on social media. We hope to see you or hear from you soon. Blessings.