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.
It says starting in verse 3 – Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.
There's a definition of honor and I'm going to take one from each of these verses. This is the definition. I think you can write this down right in your notebook there next to these three verses. Verse 3 corresponds to the first one, verse 4 corresponds to the second one, and verse 5 corresponds to the third one.
Honor has this definition (this is a working definition): Honor is treating people as special, doing more than what's expected, and having a good attitude. I'm going to show you exactly what that means. We're going to talk about it today so you can implement it in your life, it becomes a goal in my life and in the enterprises that I'm involved in. I want honor to be demonstrated in everything that I do and who I am.
But as I was doing the study of this idea, we… And when I say we, I am referring to Joanne Miller, who's back there. Joanne Miller and I wrote a book about this subject. And so as we did the study of this, we came to this very interesting conclusion which broadened this from family life. This isn't just children need to do this. But all of us need to do this, because we found that the word honor is used in nine different commands in the Bible. Nine of them. Let me just show you them. We are to honor God. We're to honor pastors. We are to honor widows. We should honor marriage. You are to honor your own body. We should honor governmental leaders. Husbands should honor wives. And eight times in the Bible it says children should honor parents. Why eight times? Well that's where you learn it. See, if you learn honor at home, then you'll be much more effective in using it elsewhere.
Now the one verse that is my favorite is the one at the bottom. Honor one another above yourselves. It's not tied to any people group. It's just something we all need to work on. Paul wrote Romans, as well as the book we're in, Philippians, to tell us about this success idea that will help us in life. To honor one another above ourselves.
Wow, it's pretty significant this idea of honor, God values it. He uses it in all of these commands. It’s something we need to embrace and understand in our lives. So let's go back to this definition passage in Philippians 2:3-5 and let's look at each one of the components of the honor definition. So we have practical ways that we can walk out of here and implement God's word in our lives this week.
Verse 3 says – Do nothing from selfish ambition. Now this is going to be this idea of treating other people as special. It starts with this idea of selfishness. Because selfishness is being self-focused, thinking about yourself. Honor is thinking about others and treating them as special. There are many people in life who treat themselves as special, and they don't treat others as special. So Paul is saying the secret here is treat other people as special.
Don't do anything from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility. And that's going to be the key word here because humility allows us to put ourselves in a position where other people are valued. So we value other people. In humility, count others more significant than yourselves. That when I'm listening to someone and they're talking a little bit too much, or I'm listening to someone and they're telling a long story, or I'm listening to someone and they might even be a little annoying. My response, if I'm honoring, is to say is to say, “Okay, I'm in, I'm just going to listen to this person. And I'm going to minister to them by listening. I'm going to care because they're more important than I am.” That's the idea here. Treat other people as more significant, more important than you are. That's the idea here that Paul is suggesting here, that we value other people. When we value other people, it does something to us. See, I think obedience is something that's taken from us, but honor is something we give. That's what we're talking about here. This ability to give.
Now I think that valuing other people is strategic. But I would suggest that there probably are some people in your life that are hard to honor because you don't respect them. It led me to another study of the difference between respect and honor. The Greek word for respect is the word phobos, where we get our word phobia from. It often refers to this idea that I respect someone because I'm afraid of what they can do to me or I have this fear of them kind of thing. So there's this respect that’s very high. Honor is different. It comes from the word timé in the New Testament, which has this idea of value. Value versus fear.
So if I'm approaching this, my wife and I took our grandkids to the Hamilton Tree Lighting this last week. There's a lot of people there. And so there's these police officers who are crossing guards, allowing people to cross the street. Now I stop and I don't cross the street without the police officer allowing me to cross the street. Why do I do that? Well it could be from respect, because I'm afraid of what he’d do to me if I do that or maybe yell at me or something. That might be a respect idea. Or maybe I do it because I honor the position that he has, I honor the role that he's taking in this. And because I'm honoring him, then maybe I wait before I go.
See I think you can honor someone that you don't respect. Think about that. Because honor is something you give; respect is something you earn. And if someone didn't earn that respect, you can't respect them. Because maybe you have a parent, you say, “I can’t respect him. My dad left me when I was young.” We’re not talking about respect here. We're talking about the sense of value. Treating people as special. It’s something you give us. It says more about you when you honor someone than it says about the other person. So honor becomes this strategic goal. So this first part of the definition, treat people as special, means that we're considering others or counting others as more significant than we are.
I tend to think that parents often value their children already. They go to the store and they buy their favorite ice cream and they buy their favorite cereal or whatever, and they come home. I would suggest that sometimes when you're teaching honor, you just might pull the ice cream out and say, “Hey, I honored you by getting your favorite ice cream.” Because in a few minutes when you have to talk to him about honoring you, about the way they're treating you about the bathroom, then you can use the same word. This idea of honor is just a strategic idea that God has created. It captures these success principles that we all need to learn to value other people. Successful relationships happen when we show honor. So learning how to treat people as special is an important part of the honor definition. That's the first verse there. It's really defining what that looks like in honor in practical terms. Valuing others.
Let's go to the second verse or verse 4, which talks about doing more than what's expected. The verse says – Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. See, it’s expected that you would look at your own interest; it's not expected that you would consider somebody else's interest as well.
The best examples of this are Jesus Christ Himself, who taught and practiced doing more than what's expected. Doing more than what's expected. It was Jesus who said – If someone hits you on one cheek, turn the other cheek. Well that's definitely doing more than what's expected. It was Jesus who said – If someone says take my bag and carry it a mile, then go the extra mile. That's what Jesus said. That'd be doing more than what's expected. The words “go the extra mile” are an idiom we use in English. A lot of people don't know where that comes from. It actually comes from Jesus’ words. Go the extra mile. I think some of us need to learn how to go the extra mile a little bit more. And I think that's what Paul is saying here when he says – Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Jesus is the one who said – Bless those who curse you. He's the one who said – Love your enemies. All of those things are doing more than what's expected. I would say this idea of showing honor or doing more than what is expected characterized Jesus’ teaching, but it also characterize the way He lived. Do you remember when the children wanted to come and the disciples were pushing them away? But Jesus said – “Let the little children come to me.” He was honoring them. He was doing something more than what's expected.
There’s a story about Jesus in a parade and He was going up from Jericho to Jerusalem, because the Passover is going to take place. They had special psalms that they would read and even sing as they went up to Jerusalem. He was in this parade leaving Jericho and on the side of the road were these two blind men yelling out, “Son of David, have mercy on us!” And the crowds were saying, “Be quiet. We're having a parade.” And Jesus paused. The Bible says He had compassion on the men. He stopped the parade. He went over to the men and He healed them so that they could see Jesus was doing more than what's expected.
Oh Jesus did more than what's expected in a lot of times with women. Women weren't valued in the society. They weren't cared for highly. That's why the disciples when they came back and they saw that Jesus was by that well talking to a woman, they said, “Wow, isn't that surprising that He's talking to that woman.” She was even a Samaritan woman. Jesus was doing the unexpected, more than what was expected. It's just a powerful way that Jesus was ministering to people.
My favorite story of Jesus doing this was when Jesus was invited over to a Pharisee’s house for dinner. The Pharisee’s name, The Bible says, is Simon. This story is found in Luke 7. And so when the Simon invited Jesus to come over, they're having this big kind of celebration, a big dinner. And the Bible says this woman came in. It says she had a sinful reputation. You can imagine what kind of a woman she was. So she comes in and she goes by Jesus’ feet. She takes a perfume, and her tears are coming on Jesus’ feet and she's wiping them with her hair. Simon says, “Oh if He knew what kind of a woman that was, He would not allow her to touch Him.” Jesus knew this. So he turned to Simon he said, “Simon, when I came into your house, you didn't wash my feet, but she hasn't stopped washing my feet with her tears since I came in the door. When I came into your house, you didn't kiss me as a welcome, as a greeting. That would be expected. But here's what she's did. She's been kissing my feet ongoing. Since I came in, you didn't put oil on my head, which is what you would do with someone of value. But she has put perfume on my feet here since I've been here.” And then He tells Simon this little story when the point of the story was, which person would have a greater sense of value because they were forgiven – the one who had a little gift or a large gift? And Simon says, “Well, I suppose with the bigger gift.” He says, “Yes, that's right.” He turns to the woman, He says, “Your sins are forgiven.” Everybody was shocked. Simon says, “Who is this? This guy thinks He can forgive sins.” And Jesus says to the woman, “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace.” Jesus was doing more than what's expected. That's just what would characterize Him.
See, I think we need to ask the question in life, how can I help? How can I contribute? What else can I do? How can I add to what I've been told to do and do more? The person who gets a good grade on their paper that they turn it in is because they looked at it again, to make sure they're doing more than what's expected. And the teacher says, “Wow, this is more than I expected. I'm giving this person an A.” This is the person at work, who's looking for things to do and the boss says, “Well this person is doing more than what is expected. I'm going to give this person a raise. This is doing more than what's expected.”
When I think about this idea of kind of surprising people by doing more than what's expected, I think of my teacher in seminary whose name was Loren Fisher. I loved my time in seminary, it was great. It wasn't just academic learning. But I sat in classes where we prayed together. I watched godliness happen in seminary in a way that just made such an impression on me. Loren Fisher was a great teacher. I enjoyed listening to him and sitting under his teaching. In fact, he asked me to come and pastor with him when I graduated from seminary, that I would come and pastor with him in his church What an honor that would be to pastor with him. But instead, I chose to go and pastor with my father. It didn't hurt that my father was in Hawaii at the time and we started a church there. But anyway, Loren Fisher was this great guy. But I have this vivid picture in my mind of honor and Loren Fisher, because what he did was… We happened to be in a public restroom and there's a number of people in there because we're going from one class to another and so on. And Loren Fisher was in the restroom. I was just getting ready to leave the restroom when I looked back, and I saw that Loren Fisher had washed his hands and now he took a paper towel out. He took the paper towel and wiped down the sink and wiped off the counter. I had never seen anyone do that before in my whole life. I'm twenty years old at that point. I had never seen somebody do that. I was so surprised. That here's a guy who wasn't just thinking about himself, he was thinking about other people as well, the next people to come into the bathroom. I suppose we could all learn about that in our own home, not just take care of our own business. But look at this bathroom, when we leave and say is this bathroom ready for the next person? That's probably good for marriage counseling. But we'll take that up later.
The point is here, do more than what's expected characterized Jesus. And Paul is now saying – Let each of you look not to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. When you think about others, it does something to you. You’re giving something, not just taking from life. This is a powerful idea. It's strategic for us to understand.
When Dave Miller (that's Joanne Miller’s son) was to get married, he came to me and he said, “Scott, would you marry us?” He and Amanda. Oh man, what a privilege to marry Dave and Amanda. And so we met together. And then I said to them, “Is there something you'd like me to teach or say at the time when I do my teaching at your wedding?” And Dave says, “Oh, yes, be sure to talk about honor.” Because it had marked his life. This whole idea of honor changed both of our family's lives as we tried to understand and grapple with this idea. In fact, not only in our families did it change our lives, but everything that we do. When anyone comes to work for us, they always get a copy of our book that has to do with this idea of honor. Because it's a book that just is the secret to life. This is customer service brought home.
When I went to Walmart some time back to get some furnace filters, I walked into Walmart, which is this mega store. You never know where anything is in Walmart. So I asked the lady at the thing, “Can you tell me where the furnace filters are?” She says, “They're in the back of the back of the store back there.” I say, “Okay,” Well that's a big store. So I start heading back there and I asked another person and this next person demonstrated honor. I said, “Can you tell me where the furnace filters are?” She says, “Oh sure, let me take you there.” So she walks with me back to find the furnace filters. That was honor – doing more than what's expected. That's customer service. You learn customer service in your home. But as you develop it in your life, you become more effective in all relationships. It's thinking about others, not just thinking about your own interests.
Well he tops this off with verse 5 when he talks about having a good attitude. Because that's part of what honor is, it's having a good attitude. In fact, he says – Have this mind. The word mind, as we talked about last week, is the word mindset. It’s when you take your feelings and your beliefs and you put them together, and you develop a mindset towards something and it forms into an attitude. So there's some people who just have a bad attitude in life. You know those people, right? They come into the room and you go, “Oh no, here they come.” Because their attitude is one of complaining and arguing and whining and critical and negative. They just suck the energy right out of the room. This kind of a bad attitude just depletes any energy that's in the room. But someone comes in with a good attitude. And you just love it. Because if they come in with a joyful attitude, it brightens the whole room. If someone has a negative attitude or a bad attitude, it's like they come into the room and it's a cloud. A cloud comes in with them and you can hardly wait till they leave. But you feel sorry for the people they're going to be. But you can hardly wait for them to get out of there. Because it's just this depleting attitude that they have.
Now this particular attitude that's being described here is this attitude of humility, this attitude of not being selfish, of looking to others’ interests, not your own. It's just this mindset, this attitude that you put on. The attitude affects the climate in the room. So when we think in terms of attitude, it's a bigger picture of this idea of honor. It means that we have an obligation not to just come into the room and express all of our negativity. There's some people who believe that if I'm unhappy, I have the right to make everyone else miserable. I know where they get that. But as Christians, we have an obligation to come in and bring joy to people. That's what we do. We come in with this attitude, this attitude of humility that he's describing.
So we have these three ideas here described in this passage. Let me just show you the honor definition again. Because honor is treating people as special, doing more than what's expected, and having a good attitude. That definition really, I think, grabs us and helps us understand what Paul is saying in Philippians 2:3-5. When I look at those verses, I go, “Wow, that's really amazing.” In fact, one of the things that we realize is this. That if you want your kids to fly straight, you teach them obedience. If you want them to fly high, you teach them honor. Because honor moves us to this new level. The same thing is true, not just with children, but all of us. We learn how to fly high when we demonstrate this idea of honor in our lives.
Well after doing all of this research, we wrote a book. We wrote the book and submitted it to WaterBrook Press and they said we want this book. We said the title of the book is Honor: The Secret Ingredient to Family Life because of all that we've said here so far. And they said, “We want your book, but we don't want your title.” That's what they said. “We don't like your title.” That's the title. What else can you title the book? They said, “Well that is not going to sell a lot of books.” So they wanted us to revise the title to appeal to felt needs that people might have. So okay, okay. We'll work on this.
So in the passage, if you have your Bible look down to verse 12. It has the word therefore. Do you see the word therefore in verse 12? In other words, because you've learned all these things about selfishness and honor, and then next week we’re going to see Jesus illustrating it in verses 6-11. Then it says therefore. Therefore…and notice what verse 14 is. Just read verse 14 to me. What does it say? Somebody’s got it. Read 14. Do everything without grumbling or arguing. Does anybody have any other words in there besides grumbling and arguing? Complaining. Just complaining or disputing? Okay, so the conclusion is don't do those things, right? If you understand what selfish is, you're not going to be complaining, you're not going to be arguing. And so, from that we developed the title. Are you interested in the title of this book? I'm just going to throw the book up. There is a book we wrote years ago. This is the new title. Say Goodbye to Whining, and Complaining, and Bad Attitudes in You and Your Kids. Now some people look at that book and they say, “We don't have that problem in our family.” And I say, “Oh man, you're missing it. Because it's not about whining, complaining, and bad attitudes. It's a book about this concept of honor. That every person needs honor. That's why it's for you and your kids.” It's not just about your kids. It's about all of us. We all need honor in our lives. And when we develop it great things happen inside of our hearts. Of course now we like that title. And the little boy on the front sold a lot of books, so that's great. But the point is honor is for everyone.
And then we asked this question: Does God show honor to us? Well let's go back through the definition for a moment. Treating people as special. You bet! When God created us, He created us in the very image of God. He treated us special. He redeemed us, He bought us back. But this description there is He adopted us into His family. So now that we are adopted into His family, we are heirs with Christ. I mean, He treated us as special. Wow. Yes. Yes, God does honor us. He treats us as special.
What about the second part? Does more than what's expected. My favorite verses about that are in Romans 5 where he's talking about salvation, Paul is, as he's describing salvation. He says you know, sometimes someone might die for a righteous man. You might expect that. But Jesus does more than what's expected because the next verse says – But while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He did more than what's expected. And then of course, He gives us this attitude. This attitude about life that perpetuates itself, that we're able to share joy, as Paul is going to say over and over again in his book. Sixteen times in the book he's going to use the word joy. Because God gives us a sense of joy that we pass on to other people. Yes, God honors us.
And what does He require from us? He requires that we honor Him, that we make Him special. That we honor Him with our heart and our soul and our mind and our strength. That's what we do. We are characterized by honor. The whole Christianity is characterized by honor. That's what we do. So when we take that and we apply it into our own lives and we think about what can I do to be more honoring to others? You know, my home, with the people I work with, the people when I'm driving, when I'm with other people. How can I show honor in my life? It's one of those things that God has designed, that if we develop honor in our own hearts, it's going to help us to be successful in life. It's just God's design. It's part of who we are. It's part of our makeup.
So we take today and we just focus in on this idea of honor. I trust that God will use this idea in your life to help you go out of here and share honor, not just so people can look at you, but because people know that your faith in Jesus Christ has changed you to be this kind of honoring person that He's called us to be. Amen.
Would you stand with me? We're going to pray together. Then we're going to sing a song about just giving ourselves to the Lord, a Christmas song about that. So let's pray first.
[PRAYER] Heavenly Father, thank you for so many things. Thank you for honoring us. But Lord, thanks for giving us your word. It helps us know how to live life more effectively. I thank you for the design of the success principles that are in your word. But more powerfully, that they're not just dealing with our behavior but our hearts. So we ask, Lord, that you would be honored in our lives. As we try to demonstrate this quality in our lives, we ask that you would be demonstrated as the person we're honoring, so that people can see you. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
