How do you know if someone is “honorable” in your life?
In our society, we address judges as “honorable.” What does that mean? How do we give them honor?
Recently, I was in a courtroom for a hearing. The judge called a defendant to the stand. This defendant, a friend of mine, stood before the judge in some of his best clothes. He made good eye contact with the judge, speaking clearly as he answered questions. “Yes, sir.” “No, sir.”
My friend understood who the judge was, and what kind of power this person had in his life.
I also saw other defendants in the courtroom. Some were not so well-dressed. Some of them looked like they had just rolled out of bed, and put on the first clothes they could find, possibly from the bottom of their laundry hamper. I watched one defendant slouch and mumble to the judge as if he was put out and had someplace better to be.
They did not seem to understand the gravity of the situation they were in as they stood before the judge.
It seems to me that people in our society have forgotten it means to honor the just judge. Do you agree or disagree? Why do you have that opinion?
On Sunday, I made the case that to honor is to say “Nothing is better than you.”
What or who do we honor in our lives?
How do you know? How is that person or thing honored in your life?
Are we good at honoring God? Why or why not?
I think we have gotten bad at honoring God… In fact, I think we have gotten bad at even talking about God in honorable terms. I think we tend to talk about God in our own terms… We describe Him in terms of how he makes ME feel, or how he blesses ME, or how he affects MY life.
Are we really about honoring him, or about honoring ourselves?
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Romans 1:21 (ESV)
Is this a good description of us today?
Long before the first words of the SCRIPTURES were ever written, God intervened with Moses out in the desert. God’s people were being held in bondage in Egypt, and God wanted to do something about it. For some reason, He chose Moses to act on His behalf before the Pharaoh.
Moses was not sure he could speak for God… in fact, he wasn’t even sure who God was!
Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
Exodus 3:14-15 (ESV)
In this amazing interchange, God proclaims something about himself that Moses could not have fully understood at the time. Rather than give his name right off the bat, God defines who he is… What does he say about himself?
What doest it mean that “God IS?”
Talk about these implications with your group in your remaining time:
-GOD IS because he never had a beginning. Nobody made him.. He simply is.
-GOD IS means He is the absolute reality. There is no reality before or outside of him. He is ALL that was in eternity. No space, no universe, no emptiness… Only God. Absolutely all.
-GOD IS means that God is utterly independent. Nothing supports him or counsels him or makes him better. God doesn’t “learn.”
-GOD IS means that everything that is not God depends totally on God. The entire universe is secondary, not primary. It came into being by God and consists because of God.
-GOD IS means God is constant. The same yesterday, today, and forever. He cannot be improved, and he is not becoming anything. He is who He IS. There is no progress, no development in God. (you can’t improve on perfection!)
There are many more ramifications to the fact that God IS, but how could we ever possibly have time to go into all of them?