Honor

To think about what is honorable is to think about Christ, those people who honor and exemplify Christ, and to take on Christ-honoring character ourselves.

Note: This transcript was auto generated and may have errors.

This morning, we’re going to turn back to the Apostle Paul’s instruction to us at the end of his letter to the Philippians. This is the second installment in our series, The Contents of the Christian Mind, where we’re exploring the categories of thought that are listed in Philippians four eight. Let me begin by reading that verse for you. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. One of the words that stands out in this verse is the word whatever. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable. It’s a pretty important word within the context of this verse because of what it invites us to do. Uh, Paul isn’t so much limiting what we should think about as he is calling us to discern those things that are worthy of our thoughts. And that’s what that’s what discernment is. It’s it’s weighing the in the something that’s in the world against the standard of the gospel to determine whether or not it pleases the Lord and whether or not it’s it’s edifying to our souls. It’s asking the Lord, can I worship you with this? That’s what discernment is. Can I, can I think this or can I do this? For the glory of God. That’s discernment. And in the case of truth, when Paul tells us to think about whatever is true, he’s inviting us to discern whether or not a particular item is worthy to take up space in a Christian’s mind and heart based on its truth value.

So if it’s a lie, if it’s a half truth, if it’s a misleading idea, then there’s no place in the Christian life for believing it. Certainly no place in the Christian life for sharing it. Let me say that again. For all of us who are entering some of us against our will into another election cycle, if it’s a lie, a half truth, or a misleading idea, there’s no place in the Christian life for believing it or sharing it, right? But determining whatever is factually true and morally righteous requires discernment. And discernment is one of those scary words for some Christians. They don’t like it. I don’t like the idea of discernment. I happen to love it. But there are some Christians who think that it gives too much freedom to the individual. Some Christians feel much more comfortable with a list of clear rules delineating right and wrong on everything in the world, and they feel very uneasy with a list of biblical concepts and principles to guide individual Christians to make choices, especially especially when that discernment process leads Christians to different, sometimes opposite, conclusions. Now, this is not as worrisome when it comes to truth, because something is either true or it is not true. But wait a few weeks when we get to the concept of beauty.

Beauty is very famously in the eye of the beholder, right? What is beautiful music. Can I cook a beautiful steak? For a vegetarian friend. Oh, it got complicated there, didn’t it? What is? What is beautiful, right? When Paul says whatever is true, or as he says today, whatever is honorable, he’s inviting us into a very careful, sometimes difficult process of discerning those things that should occupy the minds of followers of Jesus and those things that shouldn’t. This morning we’re going to look at a second category in this list whatever is honorable. And already just by thinking about the word honorable, you can see that there’s a need for discernment. What makes something worthy of honor? As we we will see this morning, there are helpful ways to identify honorable things, particularly honorable people. And we find them by looking to the one who is most honorable of all. To think about what is honorable is to think about Christ. Those people who honor and exemplify Christ, and to take on Christ honoring character ourselves. As we did last week. We’re going to explore this category first by defining it and then by describing it from the Proverbs and then by seeing it displayed in Jesus. So let’s start by defining honor. If something is. Honorable. It is worthy of being honored, which is totally unhelpful because you cannot use a word to define that word, right? We all know that you can’t do that.

So and here in this case, you can’t just use a synonym, uh, if I say something as is honorable, if it’s respectable, you’re. Well. Okay. What what is what is respectable? How do we know when something is respectable? Well, you know, if something is honorable and respectable, if it’s dignified. Oh, boy. Well, then how do we know when something is dignified? See, these are all adjectives. All these adjectives require an object to be described. And you learn what the adjective means by looking at the the object. And thankfully, that’s what Paul does with the three other uses of the word honorable that we have in the New Testament. All three times that Paul uses this word, he uses it to describe the same object people. He always uses it to describe people. For Paul, honorable is something that people can be specifically. Paul uses this word to describe the character of deacons and leaders in the church. The the ESV translates this dignified. The NIV, I think, very helpfully translates this word worthy of respect. Now some translations use the word reverent or serious, but that’s not actually very helpful. It’s not quite right, because the word isn’t so much about how a person behaves as it is about how other people see that person. Does this person carry himself or herself in a way that causes others to look to them, and as someone to admire and to emulate? That’s an honorable person, but we still don’t know what makes a person honorable or worthy of respect.

What should we be respecting? Well, Paul doesn’t leave us in the dark on this. I want you to look at what he says about deacons, which means, uh, deacons, by the way, are people who serve in the church. That’s what deacon means. It just means servant. This is what he what he says. Deacons, likewise, must be dignified. There’s our word. Not double tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain. So you can see he identifies and he defines this word by giving us three things that a dignified person is not. And that’s helpful because then an honorable person would be just the opposite of all three of those things. So first of all, not double tongued, meaning not a liar. An honorable person is a truth teller, which reinforces everything I said last week. I love it when that happens in Scripture. Uh, not addicted to much wine. Uh, you are not honorable if you’re impaired from good conduct and good choices because of addictions now. Hear me, that doesn’t mean that you’re not incredibly valuable if you’re struggling with addictions. You are. And the grace of God in Christ can transform every life. All this is saying is that an addicted life is not one to look up to right now. Not greedy for dishonest gain. A person who’s chasing money to the point that of being willing to cheat and to steal is not a respectable person.

Honest work and honest gain are very respectable. We find that in Scripture. But but greed that motivates stealing is a sure sign that if someone is not worthy of respect. If you put all these things together, you get a picture of a person whose life is compelled by idols. Compelled by worldly things. He he will lie to gain power and position. He’ll prioritize being rich over being honest, and then he’ll escape into a world of substances and distraction. If you skip down a few verses, you’ll see Paul describe a dignified woman. Their wives, likewise must not must be dignified, not slanders, but sober minded, faithful in all things. Again, we have a negative here, not slanderers. You can’t be an honorable person worthy of respect, and go around gossiping and trashing people all the time. You probably knew that, but here it is, plain as day. You can’t be that. And then he follows that with a positive. Here, sober minded, honorable people will be clear thinkers who make good decisions. And this sober mindedness will lead them to be faithful in all things, meaning that their lives will be characterized by behavior and decisions that are faithful to Christ and His gospel and his mission. Here’s the third use, and it’s in Titus chapter two. Older men are to be sober minded. Dignified. There’s our word again. Self-controlled. Sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.

So you can’t. You can see it’s this word dignified is surrounded by some some of the same things that I’ve already mentioned. But what I want you to see here is the addition of the phrase sound in faith, love, and steadfastness. Faith is a is a reference to to commitment to the truth of the gospel and the life that results. A faithful person is listening, obeying, and following Jesus because they believe in Jesus. Love is the principal characteristic of a person who follows Christ, so the lives will be characterized by love. And steadfastness means that the this Christian faith and love are unwavering. They don’t go away. It doesn’t go in and out. It never fails. This verse is, is for older men in the church, but the very next verse says likewise older women, meaning all of this applies to them too. Honorable, respectable men and women are those whose lives are tangibly, visibly shaped by faith in Christ. Not just lip service to that. Not just saying you’re faithful, but your life is tangibly, visibly transformed by following Jesus. You can see it in their character. You can see it in their choices. You can see see it in the fruit of their lives. You know, in all of these cases, whether it’s men or women who serve as deacons or older men and women in the church, the context here is that people serve as examples. Do you see that people are serving as examples? The idea is that these leaders in the church would be honored by younger Christians because they are mentors to them.

They are. They are people to aspire to be like because of their well developed Christ likeness. And that and that makes sense because honor and respect, those words have the built in dynamic of looking up to something, right? Honoring means there’s an object you look up to. Respecting means there’s something that you respect, that you look up to. So let’s see if we can boil this all down into a working definition of honorable things. Honorable things are the items in the world. Particularly people that we look up to because they they strengthen our faith, our love and our steadfastness in Christ. That’s that’s kind of how I see it, based on the way this word is used. When Paul tells us to think about whatever is honorable. He’s saying, think about those things that you can look up to and aspire to be like because. Because they draw you closer to Jesus, right? They’re bringing you to Jesus. This could this could refer to individual people. Uh, it also could refer to things that are built by people, things like institutions, businesses and governments. Uh, and honorable business, for instance, doesn’t cheat its customers, and it provides goods and services for fair prices. And it values employees. If you find Christ exalting choices and behavior baked right into a business, that then is an honorable business, and then therefore, if you’re a future entrepreneur, then you can look up to that business and think about its practices and aspire to do business like that business that is thinking about honorable things.

So look at how thinking about honorable things is described in Proverbs chapter eight. You heard Proverbs eight, uh, read earlier here in the service. It’s the call of God’s wisdom, personified as a woman crying out in the street to the children of man, meaning all of us. Okay. So that’s that’s kind of what’s going on there in chapter eight. Uh, God’s wisdom personified. It’s it’s it’s a it’s a fictitious person crying out into the street to all of the people out there. And what does what does she say to all those people? She says, oh, simple ones. Learn prudence. Oh, fools, learn sense here, for I will speak noble things. And from my lips will come. What is right for my mouth will utter truth. Wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are righteous. There is nothing twisted or crooked in them. It doesn’t start off very nice. Hey, fools! Listen up. That’s kind of how it goes. Starts. Um, but wisdom has something to say. And here’s the thing. That’s a kind of a sort of a biting start. But the idea is you would sober up, you’d wake up, you’d listen in very carefully to this.

Because unless we listen to what she has to say and we take heart, we will be fools. We’ll remain foolish. And what does it say? What does wisdom say? It says I will speak noble things. Do you see that word? Noble. That’s our word. Noble. Same word as honorable. Just happens to be Hebrew. Here. Translated into Greek. It’s the same word. God’s wisdom personified is crying out with truth that should be taken to heart so that we won’t remain foolish. We won’t remain there. We should look up to her and hear what she has to say, respecting and honoring her position. Because unless we do this, we remain simple fools. Our default setting is foolish in the world, and we need God’s Word to take us the right direction. God’s wisdom is honorable, worthy of our respect, because all the words of God’s wisdom are righteous. There’s nothing that’s twisted or crooked in God’s Word. They won’t mislead us down a path that’ll end with a life of sin and judgement and eternal punishment. God’s word, his wisdom will get you going in the right direction. That’s why wisdom is crying out listen. Listen to God’s word. So the voices that you need to honor are God’s Word and those who speak with the wisdom of God’s Word. Those who are giving you this wisdom, generally speaking, and I think you’ll agree with me. But generally speaking, we we as human beings are not very good at choosing the sources of wisdom for our lives.

We’re just not very good at it. And then we end up honoring and respecting the wrong people and the wrong messages. And by the way, I’m putting myself into this too. I there have been plenty of times in my life where I have listened to the wrong, and I have honored the source, not honored sources of godly wisdom, and gone the wrong way. We’re not we’re not great in general at thinking honorable thoughts because we don’t listen to honorable sources and we accept dishonorable sources. Uh, I’ve talked to to people through the years who are more interested in honoring their parents by listening to their voice than they are in honoring Christ, honoring the Lord by listening to his voice. You say? But doesn’t the Bible say honor your father and mother? Yes, it absolutely it does. But you can do that sometimes by firmly and kindly telling them that if their instruction misleads you from God’s Word, then you need to stay with God’s Word. If your mom is telling you to divorce your husband because you deserve better, sweetheart. Your mom’s thoughts should not be your thoughts. Now let me flip that around so I don’t get all the email from parents this week, okay? There are a lot of very godly, gracious, loving parents trying very hard to share wisdom with their kids that flows right out of the gospel.

They’re desperately trying to share with them this truth that they have that’s that’s that’s gold. And they’re watching their kids dishonor them as a source because they’ve decided to honor new sources of information, like peers and teachers and influencers, whatever those are, right? Why are they doing that? Because they’re not using discernment on the source of the messages that they choose to believe. They’re honoring and respecting deceivers. They have not. They have not given honor, a place of prominence in their minds to those who are speaking godly wisdom to them. Instead, they’ve given a seat of prominence to the sources of thought that should be looked down on, not looked up to. Younger people in the room. By the by that I mean younger than me. Okay. I don’t know young younger younger people in the room. If you if you got some godly parents in your life who point you to Jesus and help you discern truth from error with the Word of God, then you have a great, great gift. You have honorable parents. And you’re like, whatever. Exactly. Whatever is honorable. Yeah. Young adults. If you have a parent in your life who will not just come along and tell you how great you are and how you are always right and no one is as good as you are, you have a great gift if they will do that. Yeah. They’re flawed. They’re growing just like everybody else. But if they are further down the road in this Christian life, then you are.

Their growth in Christ will help you grow in Christ. Listen to the the the Proverbs author tell us how to treat godly wisdom. What do we do when we get it? These are. This is verses ten and 11. Take my instruction instead of silver and knowledge rather than choice. Gold for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her. In other words, honor it, honor it. Let God’s thoughts be your thoughts and give them the place of prominence and control in your heart and in your mind. What do you what do you do with with jewels and gold and money? You protect them, right? You protect them. You make sure that no one can take them from you. So. So we’ll put passwords so long that we can’t remember them with two step authentication and robot thwarting software on every financial thing we have. Right? All the Lord is telling us to do here is to have the same level of care when it comes to protecting our minds and hearts with his noble, honorable wisdom. That’s what we do with it. Just this week I was. As I was preparing for this sermon, I got an email from a friend here at Calvary who asked about the writings and the influence of a particular pastor and author. He wanted to know if I had any reservations concerning this guy or his work.

Now, in this case, it didn’t happen to know this particular pastor author very well. So I was not very helpful. But I bring it up because what my friend was doing is what we should all be doing, helping each other to discern what sources of are communicating God’s Word and which sources aren’t which. Which sources should we honor and which should we leave behind if we if we want to put our thoughts on honorable things, we need to use discernment. And the church, by the way, the church community that’s right around you is one of the greatest tools of discernment that any Christian has. Now let’s turn to Jesus. What do we learn about honorable thoughts when we look to Christ? To honor something is a lesser form of worship. Okay, when you honor something, it’s a kind of lesser form of worship. In fact, uh, in Greek, honor and worship come from the same root word. When we say that we worship God, what we’re really saying is that we honor God above all other things, even other honorable things. We honor God above them. What you worship sits at the top of a kind of hierarchy of honor in your in your heart and mind. Okay, there’s sort of a a hierarchy of honor. And that’s why you can’t be greedy for unjust gain, for instance, and be a church leader. See if you’re willing to be disobedient to God to get money, then then money and not God sits at the top of the hierarchy of honor in your mind and heart.

That’s really what it is. That’s why. It’s why you can’t have both. You can you can literally put anything, anything that you can think of, conceive of. You can put anything at the top of the hierarchy of honor, anything that can be your object to worship, making everything else in your mind and heart subservient to that one thing. So what do we find when we turn to Jesus? Do we find just a good teacher who’s vying for the top spot of honor in the hierarchy? Or do we find something more? There’s a moment when Jesus showed his three closest disciples exactly where he should stand in the hierarchy of honor. And it’s recorded in Mark chapter nine, verses 2 to 8. You heard it read earlier. He takes. He takes Peter, James and John up onto a mountain. Remember that Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up onto a mountain. And there it says that he was transfigured before him means that he was changed. He was changed in appearance before them. His clothes became brilliantly white in a way that nobody on earth could ever bleach them. He was radiating this white light, and Elijah and a and Moses from the Old Testament suddenly appeared. And the great, the great prophet and the great leader of the Old Testament were right there with Jesus.

And so they have to be thinking, what is he? Is he like them? Is he is he on par with them? Was he the next Elijah or the next Moses? The disciples at that point were terrified. Peter said something a little bit dumb as he does, right? You can’t blame him because these guys are scared. They’re terrified. These guys didn’t know what to do. They were seeing something that they didn’t expect to see. They had been walking with their rabbi, with Jesus, their teacher. They’d been walking with him for for some time now. They had great respect and honor for him. But but this was something new. Jesus is now elevated to the level of the great prophets of God’s people. But then, just as he was being equated with them, a great cloud, it says, overshadowed the entire mountain, much like it did when the cloud covered Mount Sinai, when God’s presence was on it, and Moses was there to bring down the law. Much like the cave in the mountain where Elijah hid. And the Lord told him to go out and stand on the mountain, while the while the wind and the earthquake and the fire ravaged that mountain. And then the Lord moved him into ministry with a low whisper. Elijah. What are you doing here? The presence of the Lord once again. Is made known by the overshadowing of the mountain, this time with Jesus.

So what will the Lord say? This is my beloved son. Listen to him. Who is the Lord talking to here? He’s talking to everybody else who is present, everyone else who is not Jesus. Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles. Everyone should look to the Son of God the Father. And what are we then to do when we look to him? We’re to listen to him. He is the Son of God and is therefore the source of godly wisdom, unequivocally and without qualification. The Lord has told us and shown us that when Jesus speaks and acts, we are to follow, listen, believe, and obey. That is why we honor Jesus. That’s why our honor of Jesus is raised to the level of worshiping Jesus. He is the object of primary honor. He is the source of all honorable thought. Every thought that we should have should be tested to see whether it’s honorable, by asking whether it honors Christ and causes us to honor and listen to Christ. Every source of counsel and influence we consider should be measured against Jesus and His gospel. Every source that accurately reflects Christ and His instruction to us can be honored. Every source that skews the gospel, that undermines Christ, that causes us to wander away from God’s word should be safely challenged or ignored. Whatever is honorable church, whatever is honorable whatever raises your eyes and heart to the worship of Christ. Think about these things. Let’s pray.