Honor The Lord

#2005-44

Title: Honor the Lord

Text: I Kings 5:1-7; 6:11-14; 7:51

Truth: People should take actions to honor the Lord (Lifeway).

Aim: to help you honor the Lord.

Life ?: How can we honor the Lord.

INTRODUCTION

It was David slaying the giant Goliath when a 42 year-old black woman on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus refused to give her seat to a white man. It’s been told that Rosa Parks was tired, her feet were swollen and she was sitting on the front seat. She says the truth is she was no more tired than any other day of work, her feet were not swollen and she was sitting on the fifth row of the bus. This was the first row of the “Colored Section.” The famous picture you have seen this week of her sitting at the front of a bus and a white man unperturbed sitting behind her was taken a year after her famous refusal.

In Montgomery blacks were required to pay their fare, a dime, then get off and reboard at the back of the bus. Sometimes the bus drove off before the person got to the back to board. If the white section was full and another white customer entered, blacks were required to give up their seat and move further back; a black person was not even allowed to sit across the aisle from a white person. What made this even more humiliating was that two-thirds of the bus drivers in Montgomery were black.

Most historians date the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the U.S. as December 1, 1955. That was the day this unknown seamstress bravely and quietly refused to comply with an unjust law. She was arrested and bailed out of jail by Clifford Durr, the lawyer husband of the white lady who employed Rosa Parks as a seamstress. That was on a Thursday. After talking it over with her husband and mother, she agreed to challenge the constitutionality of Montgomery’s segregation laws.

In a midnight meeting of the Women’s Political Council, 35,000 handbills were mimeographed to be distributed to all of the black schools the next morning. The message was simple:

“We are…asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial…You can afford to stay out of school for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grownups, don’t ride the bus on Monday at all. Please stay off the buses Monday.”

The boycott lasted 382 days and brought Mrs. Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. and their cause to the attention of the world. In November 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the ordinance under which Rosa Parks had been fined and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation.

Because of threats and hardships, Rosa Parks and her husband moved to Detroit. That’s where she was living when she died on Monday. The city buses in Detroit and Montgomery reserved the first seats on the buses as a tribute to her legacy of positively impacting millions of lives across the world. In 1996 President Clinton awarded her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This is the highest award a civilian can receive. In 1999 she received the Congressional Gold Medal. It is the highest award that Congress gives to citizens. It has to be cosponsored by two-thirds of the members of the House of Represenatives.

Time magazine nor the AP stories I found made any reference to her spiritual life. After some digging I found an interview about her book Quiet Strength. Rosa Parks’s belief in God and her religious convictions were the core of everything she did. It is the overriding theme in her book. Here is what she said she hoped to impart: “I’d like for [readers] to know that I had a very spiritual background and that I believe in church and my faith and that has helped to give me the strength and courage to live as I did.”

It is right for our nation to honor this woman.

Solomon took action to honor the Lord. He built a temple to expresses how highly he valued and respected the Lord. The word respect means “to look behind.” In other words, it involves looking back and seeing a person’s accomplishments, then treating him as very valuable and worthy. Maybe that’s why the Scriptures frequently admonish us to “remember the Lord.” If we’d give more thought to what He has done for us, maybe we’d treat Him with greater honor.

How can we honor the Lord?

I. DETERMINE TO HONOR THE LORD (I KINGS 5:1-7)

Solomon is in the fourth year of his reign when he begins his building project. He has experienced tremendous growth in wealth. He knows that this wealth is not just for his personal enjoyment. Solomon never forgot that he was raised up for the one supreme purpose—build the temple. According to the author of I Kings this is the most important act of Solomon’s reign. I Kings records the great building projects of Solomon. He built the Temple. He built his palace. It took twice as many years. And he rebuilt cities and built entire new cities to protect his nation and its trade routes. But the author gives nearly all the time to recording the building of the Temple.