Outdo One Another in Showing Honor

I'd like to read from Romans 12, verses 9 and 10. Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil.

Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.

About a month ago, Wednesday night Bible study was taken up almost the entire time with that last sentence. Outdo one another in showing honor. I believe that all of us who are here were convinced that the Spirit of the Lord was dealing with us that night about an area of our corporate life which we've neglected.

As person after person stood up and shared things that were coming straight from heaven, it became clear that to outdo one another in showing honor is certainly much, much more than being polite. But to outdo one another in showing honor is really a basic, a necessary practice of the kingdom of God. That if we're going to experience the life of the kingdom at all, this is a lesson we have to learn.

Just as in order to enter into the presence of God, to break through the veil and come into the presence of God, it's necessary for us to take off our shoes, to learn what it is to bow and worship before the Holy. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. We don't get any closer, we don't really begin to experience the presence of God until we learn to hallow his name.

So also, just as we have to take off our shoes to get into the presence of the Holy, it's also necessary if we're going to cross the line where that wall of hostility once separated us from each other, that wall of hostility that Jesus tore down by his shed blood, if we're going to cross through that wall which has now been torn down and enter into genuine communion with each other, we have to also take off our masks of arrogance and pride and self-righteousness and cynicism and begin to show each other honor. Listen to Jesus in Matthew 5.21. You have heard that it was said to the men of old, you shall not kill. Whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.

But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to the judgment. Whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the counsel. And whoever says you fool shall be liable to the hell of fire.

So if you're offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift. Make friends quickly with your accuser while you're going with him to court.

Lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison. Truly I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny. Here Jesus raises the command thou shalt not kill to the level of the kingdom and makes it very clear that our relationship with God is absolutely connected with our relationship with our brother and our sister.

If I bring my gift to the altar and remember that my brother or my sister has something against me, I go no farther, it's a waste of time until I first get right. And if my brother and my sister has something against me, better that I should get that thing right, be reconciled while we're on our way to court to the judge who is absolute and who makes no mistakes. He makes clear that now, see, instead of my old habit of belittling and dishonoring many people, if I enter into the kingdom of God, it now becomes necessary for me to learn how to treat my brother and my sister always with high honor.

That if I in any way belittle my sister and my brother, I put myself under the judgment of a God who is not only mercy, but holy. And that when I belittle my sister or my brother, I isolate myself not only from that person, but from God himself. Jesus then takes in Matthew 5, takes this thing beyond showing honor to my brother and my sister in the community, in the kingdom of God, in the household of faith.

But now this goes beyond to the stranger, to the enemy, not just to my neighbor whom I know, but to the one I don't know. And so we read in Matthew 5.43, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven.

For he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you salute only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, even as your heavenly father is perfect. And so now, not only do I honor my sister and my brother in the household of faith, but I pay honor to the stranger and even to my enemy.

I pray for those who despitefully use me and persecute me. And I love my enemy. This is the kingdom life, and nothing less than this.

And the place where we learn how to practice that kind of honor is here in the body. Here in the fellowship. We begin to change our ways.

We've always, all of us here have been in the habit of outdoing each other in pursuing honor. All our lives we were raised that way. But now instead of scrambling around trying to get some kind of recognition, we are to begin to outdo each other in showing honor.

In fact, we can't even begin to perceive the reality of the kingdom of God. Our eyes are blinded to it until we begin to show honor to each other. So Jesus says, how can you believe, how can you have any faith at all in God, who received honor one of another and seek not the honor which comes from God only? How can you have any faith if you're always scrambling around trying to get recognition? And so he puts this in reverse and he calls us to do the same.

Now the object is to give honor. Every time we gather here, week after week, even with all our problems and all the chaos that may take place among us, so many times an awesome mystery unfolds as God visits us in the broken body and in the shed blood of his son. But in order to apprehend the mystery, so that the kingdom of God which comes down into our midst begins to touch us with life so that we can receive and be changed by that life, it's absolutely essential that we learn to do two things.

First, we have to learn how to take off our shoes when we're standing on holy ground. We have to learn how to worship God. I'm not talking about the mechanics of worship.

The mechanics take care of themselves. I mean the heart. And we also have to learn how to take off our masks and pay honor to each other.

Now most of us are already convinced of the essential requirement of worship. We know that it's necessary for us to take off our shoes. We may not be doing it as we should, but at least we acknowledge that that's necessary.

But we haven't even begun, really, to appreciate how radically important it is for us also to show honor to one another. Look at Jesus. See how he honors all people.

He's sitting on the edge of the well in Samaria. Along comes a Samaritan woman who is absolutely astonished to find that this Jewish man speaks to her with clear, simple respect. I mean the fact that he's a man in the first place and then a Jew to top it off, talking to me, a Samaritan woman, this is absolutely unheard of.

But she can tell even as he addresses her that he speaks to her as one whom he honors. Leopards. Nobody wanted to get near leopards.

Jesus treated each leopard with honor. He wasn't afraid to touch or be touched by them. And even when Jesus had to speak to the scribes and Pharisees with scathing words, you brood of snakes, how can you escape the damnation of hell, he says to them, he still treats them, even though he speaks like that, with honor.

He speaks to these people as men who are responsible. And when he calls them fools, he doesn't call them people who are born fools, but people who are choosing to be fools and calling them to repentance. Children, tax collectors, the thief on the cross, are all elevated by Jesus to a place of high honor.

Watch how he treats his disciples in John 13. Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And during supper, when the devil had already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, that he had come from God and was going to God, rose up from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel.

Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with a towel with which he was girded. Now what's he doing? Washing their feet. He's cleansing them.

But in cleansing them, he's hallowing them. He, their Lord and Teacher, down on his knees, wrapped in a towel, as their servant, elevates them to a place of honor. Now, when he had washed their feet and taken his garments, he resumed his place and said to them, Do you know what I've done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am.

If I, then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet, for I have given you an example that you also should do as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

Many people have the idea that marriage is based on love, romantic love, perhaps. Now, granted, there is to be love in marriage, and indeed, romantic love in marriage. But the foundation of any marriage, which is to become the foretaste of heaven it was meant to be, is not love, but honor.

This man treats his wife always with honor. He honors her in the presence of God. He honors her in the presence of their children.

He honors her in the presence of the world. He honors her when they're alone. Always, always he treats her as a person of great worth.

And this woman honors her husband, always honors him. She honors him in the presence of God. She honors him in the presence of their children.

She honors her husband in the presence of the world. She honors him when they're alone. Always treats him as a man of great worth.

There are times when they disagree. Sometimes their feelings get hurt. Sometimes there's resentment.

But no matter what goes on between these two people, they never, ever, ever compromise the honor that they pay to each other. When you have that, you have a marriage which is the foretaste of heaven it was meant to be. Now, this honor, which is to take place in a marriage, is but a foreshadowing, just a hint of the kind of honor which should be going on in the kingdom of God, in the body of Christ.

In the body of Christ. Every follower of Jesus, every member of the body, no matter what their problems or their weaknesses, is to be treated with high, high honor. We will have the unity of the Lord as an actual experience, as a fact among us.

When we see each sister and brother covered with holy blood. When we see each brother and sister as royalty under God. And when we see each brother and sister, without exception, as a bearer of some gift of grace.

We will have unity, the Lord's unity among us. When we see each brother and each sister as covered with holy blood. From Ephesians chapter 2, verse 13.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility. So, when we see this man covered by the blood of the lamb that was shed for him, just as for us.

It becomes much easier for us to check ourselves and to repent every time we're tempted to in some way exploit that man. To figure out a way we can get something out of him. Use him for our own ends.

The minute we begin to move in that direction there is conviction from the spirit as we see this man covered by the blood of the lamb. How can we do that? When we see this woman covered by the blood it becomes much easier for us to check ourselves and to repent the instant we're tempted in some way to exploit her. To see her with eyes of lust.

To figure out some way we can use her for our own ends. How can we do this when holy blood covers her? And when we see this young person who's messed up time and time again covered with blood. The blood of the lamb.

It's much easier for us to check ourselves every time we're tempted to think of this person as totally hopeless. They've already blown it. They've ruined their lives.

They're never going to amount to anything, etc. When we see them covered with blood we think like that. We will have the unity of the Lord actualized among us when we treat each sister and each brother as royalty.

From 1 Peter 2, verse 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness So that man walking toward us is a prince. You know, he may have all kinds of problems but he's a prince. He's royalty walking toward us down the path.

And that woman sitting in that chair she can hardly hold herself together. She's wracked with pain. Her body is old.

She's half-sent on. But she's a daughter of the king. She's royalty sitting in that chair.

She's a queen. When we see that person as royalty, as holy, then that wall of partition, that wall of hostility and cynicism and skepticism that separates us from our sister and our brother, that wall falls down and the life of the Spirit of God begins to flow between us and we begin to experience communion. Finally, we will see the unity of the Lord actualized among us in reality, not some kind of cult unity, not some kind of force-imposed unity, superficial, but the genuine thing when we see each sister and each brother as a bearer of some gift of grace.

Reading again from Romans 12 where we began just a few verses ahead. Romans 12, 6. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, he who teaches in his teaching, he who exhorts in his exhortation, he who contributes in liberality, he who gives aid in zeal, he who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.

And the list goes on in 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, on and on. And the point is that every single member of the body is brought into the body by God himself carrying a gift of grace unique and special that's needed by the body in order for the body to live for the purposes of God in this world so that we can bring healing and hope and salvation to the world around us so that we don't exist for ourselves. We exist in the name of God and we are being used.

They won't even begin to be used until we begin to recognize and honor each bearer of the gift with the honor God wants us to show. So when I see this person for all the shortcomings and all the stumblings they've made just like we've made as a bearer of a gift from God, again the wall of partition falls down. Now the life of the Spirit flows between us and we begin to experience communion with each other as well as with God himself and the kingdom of God is in our midst.

There is a longing in all our hearts for that kind of unity. Certainly we all desire that among us there should be communion which is of heaven itself. We desire that this body here, this assembly of believers for all our problems be of holy glory for everyone who comes among us with any kind of integrity at all.

And we will have that kind of communion when we take off our shoes and worship in the presence of the God who comes to us even now in the broken body and the shed blood of his Son who comes to us even now in the life and power of his Holy Spirit. And when we learn to take off our masks and pay high, high honor to the God who also in the name of Jesus comes to us in the person of each sister and each brother outdo one another in showing honor. We're going to follow what we've been doing in the last few weeks by taking a period of time in absolute silence.

No prayers, no prophecies, nothing for a while. Just silence before God. And then I'll break the silence.

A chance for us to think, Lord show me exactly how that applies in my life. And then I'll break the silence and we'll pray and anybody who feels led by God is welcome to join in as they're led. Lord show us that we may be by your grace a flesh and blood manifestation of the kingdom of God.

Impart to us even afresh this day a spirit of repentance. Enable us to be Lord God by your grace poor in spirit that the kingdom of heaven may be ours in such abundance that we may be able to live in peace.