Honor - Philippians 2:3-5 Series

I also want these young men and young ladies to know that my target audience on Sunday morning is between ten and twenty-six. That’s who I'm trying to speak to. The rest of you old folks can listen. But that's what I'm targeting the sermon because I just am very interested in reaching the next generation for Christ.

When I first started working in parenting ministry (which is something I really loved and I loved it for a long time, trying to help parents work with their children), I came to this interesting understanding that God has created a job description for children. It is described in Ephesians 6. It has two words – obey and honor. Obey and honor. In other words, if children will fulfill their job description of obey and honor, then they'll be learning so much in their lives. Now I used to think that obey an honor was for the parents. So parents would feel good when their children obeyed and honored. At least as a parent, I felt good when my kids did. But then I realized it's not about the parents only. It's something that happens inside of the person's heart. That really when you obey and you honor, it does something inside of you. In fact, God has designed our life so that when we learn obedience and honor, it has the secret ingredients for success in life if we learned those two things. Unfortunately, some people don't learn those in childhood and they've got to learn them elsewhere. They've got to understand more about obedience and honor and practice those things in their lives.

So today we're going to learn a little bit more about honor. Because in our passage in Philippians 2:3-5, we have a description of what honor is all about. I think it's just so fancy. The word isn't used there, if you pull out your notebook, so you take notes here, you can write the word ‘honor’ next to Philippians 2:3-5. The word is not used there, but it's a definition of honor. It's a description of it.

See, I wanted to test my theory. My idea was this, that if children learned obedience and honor in childhood, they would be more successful in life in general. So I went to a job performance evaluation form. You know one of those forms if you go and work somewhere and they give you an evaluation, they evaluate how you're doing and what you're doing in life. I looked at every one of the things on there and I asked this question, if you learned obedience in life, which ones of these things would you do well in? If you learn honor in life, which ones of these things would you do well in? I'm going to share with you some of those. These come actually off of a job performance evaluation form.

If you do well in obedience when you're growing up, these are the kinds of things you'll get high marks in when you get a job:

Completes job without being reminded.

Able to do tasks without constant supervision.

Completes tasks thoroughly.

Is persistent.

Accomplishes the job to the manager’s expectation.

Reports to the supervisor with progress reports.

Manages time effectively.

Acts in the best interest of the organization.

Completes tasks in a timely manner.

Is punctual.

Doesn't use company time for personal business.

Wow. Isn’t that interesting? If you learn obedience when you're young, it helps you to do better in the job market when you're employed someday. That's obedience. Obedience is about getting the job done.

Honor is completely different. Honor is the relational idea. It's how you get along with other people. When you honor them or value other people, then good things happen. Here's some things from a job performance evaluation form that you would do well in if you learn to honor when you're growing up: Gets along with fellow employees.

Respects the rights of others.

Shows a cooperative spirit.

Listens to others.

Seeks to improve the organization.

Promotes a team attitude.

Is courteous with customers and vendors.

Is pleasant to be around.

Oh how fascinating. Unfortunately, we all know people who are adults now who didn't learn obedience and honor when they were younger and are having trouble in life now.

So the passage today is strategic. It’s strategic today to understand what God has to say from Philippians 2:3-5. Because in that passage we're going to learn more about honor, we're going to understand what it looks like. In fact, let's take a moment and read the passage from Philippians 2:3-5. There are three verses, three ideas taught here. These three things we all need in our lives to understand how we can get along with others better, how we can do better in the job market, how we can do better in our families, how we can demonstrate honor. Let me read the verses.