Aaron Hlavin Biblical Honor: Welcome to the Faith Alive Sermon Podcast. This is a replay of a past sermon from Faith Alive Church. Whether you missed it, want to hear it again, or share it with someone you know, we're glad you're here. This sermon is by Aaron Halavan, the superintendent of the Michigan Ministry Network. It's great to be with you. As Pastor Jordan was sharing all that, I thought I looked at my wife and I said, Why are we doing this? That feels overwhelming. so it's great to be with you. how many are grateful for your pastors? Come on there. Amazing people and we had so much fun last night. we went out to dinner with them and their kids. Boy, does Walter like sharks, I tell ya. And Mabel and Olive, they they will just eat ketchup with nothing needing to be on it. Just it was it was like a ketchup mageddon. At one point it was all over fingers, there were straws. It was It was wild. And and we loved it. How many know when you're at the age where your kids are out of the house and you don't have grandkids, you start thinking, someday I'd like to be a grandpa, and then you realize when you go out, they have to go home and clean those kids. We didn't have to. It was wonderful and we loved it. And what a sweet, sweet I I think their kids are gonna be world changers and we're just so thankful for the opportunity to come and share. I wanna encourage you if you ever have a a moment I would hear this often at my church. Pastor Aaron, I was gonna send you a text or an email or a card or something just to let you know I appreciate you, but I know you get that all the time. I encourage you. If that ever happens to you, that's the Holy Spirit wanting you to encourage your pastors. Send them a card, send them a text, encourage them. We want to be always uplifting to our leaders. They carry a heavy burden. And listen, your church is amazing. In fact, I've been here for if you've been here a long time, there was a a stretch where I would preach almost every year here and ran into somebody in first service who said, where have you been? I thought you died. And I said, no, I I didn't. And so I I discovered today I didn't die. That was a good start to my day. Anytime you discover that, that's a good day. So thank you again, Jordan and Jotty, for allowing me to come. today I want to talk to you just about biblical honor and You might wonder why it what's the difference between honor or biblical honor, but let me give you the reasoning behind what's on my heart. honor is difficult to find these days. How many understand that? I'm talking not just praising someone. We all praise athletes or whomever it is that you really follow. By the way, for all you NBA fans, Jordan is undoubtedly better than LeBron. So I'm just saying that. And if you don't like it, then you'll get saved at some point and the Lord can still work. in your life. we praise football programs, we play praise people, but how many know honor is different than just simply praise? It includes it, but it is separate from that. We live in a time where dishonoring attitudes seem to be prevalent in really, I think, in my lifetime, in an unprecedented manner. Critics are everywhere. In fact, I've learned something about criticism. Criticism is the lowest form of communication. It requires no thought, no restraint, no self-examination. Criticism is just a thought and an irritant comes into your heart and you just say it. And how many know you've said things that you probably regret? Because you later found out you didn't have the whole story. I I'll tell you, we say things in the church world, well, I'm not that way, I'm not really rigid, I don't get into those things. Well, we're more comfortable in our own selves than we'd like to admit because you all sit in the exact same seats every single Sunday when you come to church. Go ahead, realize that's true. That's how pastor knows when you're not here. There's a gap. And they say, so-and-so hasn't been here. And so, and by the way, at Christmas time, my custodian used to hate it because there was always those glitter people who destroy the chairs of a church every Christmas. I'm just saying that on behalf of you guys before that happens this Christmas. yeah, everyone wear glitter. yeah, actually, do it. No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. That's bad. That's not honorable. I apologize. Here's what here's what I've learned. Disagreements. Can be had. Different perspectives are okay. Disagreeable spirits are not. Those are two different things. This isn't a message to say, don't have an opinion, don't have a thought. That's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is even in your most critical thoughts, you can be honorable about the way you express them, the way you live them, or the way you don't share them. Honor In the Bible is very different. See, we live in a culture that doesn't really want to hear your opinion, they want to hear their opinion come out of your mouth. And if not, it's often a duel to the death. It becomes a fight to the end. Someone's got to win. And what's right is often sacrificed at the altar of who's right. Who's right has become too important as opposed to what's right. And as believers, I think God calls us to live different. I think he calls us to be honorable people. It's really about God's grace. Jesus didn't expect you to be perfect, and he came to you in your sin and offered grace. He got the bad end of the deal. How many knows? He gives us forgiveness. He takes our sin. And he offers grace. By the way, your third service is way more up to beat. I like this. You all got some sugar and caffeine in you, and I'm I'm I'm I'm liking it. First service are supposed to be the awake people, but they they're a little bit reserved. Middle service, yeah, but you guys, you got some fire in your bones. I like this. you're just all here because you don't care about the lions. That's why you're healthy. Because your heart hasn't been broken for years. I did find out your pastor is a Green Bay Packer fan. So apparently our vetting in the Assemblies of God is not at a high level because That should have been caught in your credential interviews, but we'll deal with that another day. How many say amen to that? A Packer fan in Northeast Michigan. I don't I don't know. This is a good thing. His team's much worse than our team. So I just I'm just I'm throwing that out there. Just throwing it out there. Just saying it. Just saying it. but I wanna get back to the to the message today. listen, God gave you grace and yet what we do is we want God's grace, but we don't want to give it. We we become professional collectors of God's grace in our own lives and we kinda hoard that to ourselves and don't offer grace to the people in life around us. We don't know how to walk in biblical honor, and I wonder if that's part of the reason the world around us doesn't see a church that means what it says, lives the right way, and honors God through what they say and do. I wonder if that's why we're in trouble in America. I want to talk about three parts to biblical honor today. The first part is honor that is chosen. Biblical honor is not contingent upon our understanding of another person's value. In other words, it's not because somebody pulled you out of a out of a fire, or it's not because somebody saved you from drowning. Those are moments we should give honor and we should give credit to. But biblical honor is different than earthly honor. Earthly honor is often given because you received something. Biblical honor is to be given because you chose to give it, even when the person doesn't deserve it. You'll see that in just a moment. Now, we know there are scriptures like Proverbs 27:2: Let another praise you, not your own mouth. Somebody else's it, not your own lips. There's a celebratory side to that. Proverbs 11:25, a generous man will prosper. He who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. We understand that there is that give and take. I'm just going to tell you: if any of you rescued me from drowning, I'm going to be grateful to you. That's okay. However, it goes deeper than that in the Bible. When we speak of honor, we think of a depth that really shows and demonstrates the maturity we have in our relationship with God. If we have a good view of what God has done for us, it should give us a view of what God wants to do in others and recognize that we might be part of the process of helping them discover something about Jesus that we might have already discovered ourselves. The Ten Commandments are given, and I know we're under the new covenant of the New Testament, but I also know that those are principles that are still good. I know you believe that the Ten Commandments still it's it's good to not kill someone. How many understand that? And the Bible gives this to the the nation of Israel because he's trying to teach them how to honor him. He's trying to teach him how to live honorably with a relationship with him. And we go through them and we know most of them. And then we get to Exodus chapter 20, verse 12, and it says this honor your mother and father, your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land, and that the Lord your God at the in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. I want you to notice that doesn't bother you if you had really good parents. But if you have terrible parents, how many know that's a hard one to follow? You think about how your parents raised you or what they did. Maybe you grew up in an abusive home or an awful situation, and you say, Man, I I could never honor them, but biblical honor requires that. How many know? This is not a message to those who were dishonorable. It was a message to people on how to live honorable, even with those who are not. There's no conditions. It doesn't say honor your mother and father if they're good. It is a command. Honor your mother father. The priest the the the the requirement, the conversation is with those who follow God to say you have to learn how to do this well. Now, some of you are like, Well, I how do I do that? I'm not suggesting that respect is the same thing as honor. How many know there's a difference? I'm not suggesting you put yourself in abusive situations, not at all. I'll share the story. I had a lady in our church whose dad passed away, and she came to me and she said, Pastor Aaron, I need you to do my dad's funeral. Would you be willing to do that? I had never remembered meeting him. I don't think I ever did. And I said, Okay. So I met with her and her brother. And I said to them, so what do you guys want to talk about? And they said, Nothing good. Don't don't lie. I said, Well, I I wouldn't lie. They said, My dad was an awful, abusive, terrible man. There weren't a lot of good qualities about him. If you say anything, Anything positive about him, everyone will know you're lying. Just just preach Jesus and we'll be okay. Said, okay. And they said, but we would both would like to share something. And I thought, boy. I told Pastor Jordan this in both services, and and I told him, always have people speak at the beginning so you can fix everything they say wrong. And and and there's some good stories. Someday I'll share them with you of how I learned that lesson. And and so we get to the funeral and she goes up to share, and what I witnessed was to a very detestable, horrible, awful man. They shared with me all the things he had been a part of. They taught me something about biblical honor. She got up and she said, This, I want to let you know, you know my dad, all of you who are here know my dad and know our whole story. But I want you to know one thing I learned from my dad was he was a hard worker. He worked overtime, and I assume he did that to being provide for his family. And we always had nice things, and we never really went with that without. And I'm really grateful that even his cheapness, that he saved all his money, has allowed us to be able to pay for his funeral, and there's money left over that will go to his grandkids to help them with their lives. I'm grateful that my dad taught me how to work hard. And I thought to myself, all right, one of them down. Let's see what he does. But I thought to myself as she's talking, she is doing the biblical honoring thing. She's honoring her father in a way without being dishonest or untruthful. She's not ignoring who he was, but she found a quality that was good inside of a package that was not. So he gets up and he says, Well, many of you know my dad, and and you know how he was to us as a father. And I just want to acknowledge that I I learned how to be a dad by learning both things that my dad did wrong and things that he did right, but but really I have been changed on how I wanted to be a father because of the example my dad had. How many know? That's actually telling the whole story without saying anything disparaging. And you should have felt the room change its atmosphere as two people got up and talked about honor and how they learned a lesson, even though their dad was a very detestable, horrible human being. My dad grew up, he was a mensa-level IQ. he if you met him, you wouldn't really know that. he doesn't kind of present that way, but he is. He was double promoted in school, skipped, I believe, sixth and eighth grade. I could be wrong on the grades he skipped. But he grew up with a dad who was a very difficult man. My grandpa was not very kind, warm, or loving. I won't go into all the details, but my dad had bucked teeth. He was double promoted, so he was in a grade with people that were two years older than him. His mom was his only friend. She died of cancer. My grandpa said, Jeff, your mom died. Go in the room. You got 10 minutes to cry, and then I don't want to hear you cry for her anymore. He would come to visit our church from Florida. He'd come up for a couple weeks, and he would go to church and we would go out to eat afterwards, always to Chi Chi's restaurant. Anybody remember Chi Chi's Mexican restaurant? They had really good cornbread. And my grandpa would say things like this in front of me and my brother. He'd say, Jeff, I think your church loves you more than I do. And my dad would say, You're probably right, Dad. He Decided to teach my dad how to drive a car, a stick shift, and instead of doing that in a parking lot or in the privacy of their neighborhood, he decided to bring it in front of the entire school. And as school was letting out, put a 15-year-old kid who was starting to learn how to drive a stick shift in front of his whole school, jerking the car back and forward as he had to learn to work the clutch, and didn't care that that humiliated and already awkward boy. My dad, though, taught me something about honoring a man who really didn't deserve honor, and I won't go into all the other reasons he did, didn't, but my dad, my whole life, told my grandfather, I love you, on the end of every conversation. I remember being in my 20s, early 20s, maybe late teens, but I think it was in my early 20s. And I got off the phone and I was talking with grandpa and I said, love you too, Grandpa. And I hung up and I looked at my dad's face and he was just staring at me with this blank look. He said, What did Grandpa say to you before you said that? I said, He told me he loved me, and he goes, Huh. And I said, What? He goes, You know, my dad has never told me that my entire life. He told me before he told my dad. But I watched my dad give honor to a man. He would go down to his house, clean his house. He would be there for him when my grandpa went in the hospital. My dad took a flight down, telling him I love you, until one day I heard my grandpa say, Love you too, Jeff. And I said to my dad, I said, Dad, I don't understand. Grandpa wasn't really great to you. And my dad said, That doesn't matter. I know what God did in my life. And I was gonna model something to you on how to be honorable to a man who didn't deserve it. I said, But he didn't deserve it. I'm fighting for my dad at that age. And he says, It doesn't matter, God requires it of me. See, biblical honor is a choice. It's about grace offered to other people. And by the way, the person in your life who you think the least of, who you are irritating, the most irritating to you, can I just tell you, Jesus loves them just as much as he loves you? He's created in the image of God. She's created in the image of God. She has value not based on your experience, but value based on God wants to know them. And sometimes we have to choose it. In fact, the second time the Ten Commandments are given in Deuteronomy, he says this: honor your father and mother as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and it may go well with you in the land the Lord is giving you. Here's what he's saying: Don't expect me to bless you if you don't know how to be a blessing to others. mother and father as you do this blessings will flow as you don't don't e expect me to do that. We had a lady in a life group of ours, I didn't share this in the other services, but this is third service, so I don't feel as pressure pressure. But she was in our life group and she was very bad diabetic, type one, and and so she's sitting there drinking a regular triple, quadruple, whatever gulp, big gulp you can get from 7-Eleven, Mountain Dew, slugging it down, and she does a prayer request and she says, She says, Can you pray for my diabetes? It's out of control. So all of us in the life group, including my wife and Jamie, were like, obviously, we didn't. That was awkward, but we all were like, Well, we'll pray. And finally this one guy in our group goes, No. And we're like and he goes, I'm not praying for you while you're drinking your sugar water. That was an awkward moment, I will tell you, I will tell you. I don't know why I told that story. Now that I think about it, that would be in a message about how not to be honoring. So it's third service. I've done two and I'm tired. I'm tired. Sometimes we have to choose to be honoring. I just skipped that story. We have to choose it. And I want you to know my role is a role that oftentimes is hard for me to do. I deal with mostly problems. I had a guy call me one time and he says, I just want you to know I don't like you. Said, well I I I well did I do something to you? No. Well what what? He goes, I just don't like you. You just irritate me. I said, okay. Well thank you for taking the time to I I honestly I want you to know I was thinking in my head, you could have just kept that to yourself. I would have never known. I don't know why. But in that but I decided to I decided to have a different attitude. So I said, Well, tell what's going on in your life. How's this going? And finally he makes this comment about his grandson. He says, I'm praying for my grandson to come to know Christ. He's about nineteen and I just pray in that God sets up an interaction with somebody that helps get his attention. I said, Okay, I'll be praying for him. So this guy and I s and he says, But I still want you to know I don't like you. I said, That's that's fine So I hung up. So I decided to text him every so often, praying for your grandson, praying for your grandson, praying for your grandson. Some time goes by, and I'm at an event, not a church event, just an event. I can't remember where it was, but I remember sitting down with a young man and he just noticed what I did and said, so you're a pastor. He goes, Yeah, blah, blah, blah. My grandpa's a pastor. He's driving me crazy. He's been asking for God to introduce me to someone to invade my life and talk to me about Jesus, some blah, blah, blah. And I said, I know a guy like that. He goes, Yeah, that's They're out there, and that was it. I didn't make the connection. A few days later, the guy calls me and goes, Did you just meet with a kid? Yeah, I goes, That's my grandson. He came home and he told me I met some guy in the assemblies of God, and he says, I showed him a picture. He said, That's you. He goes, I can't believe it. Guess what? This guy really likes me now. But I will tell you when I wanted to say, I don't know why you're calling me you jerk. I decided that he still had value and I wanted to have a culture that said, There you are, not here I am. It wasn't about me. I didn't need to be right. And because I prayed for his grandson, something undeniable happened. That grandson could not believe when he found out. By the way, that grandson, I didn't share this in the first two services. That grandson texts me every so often now to tell me about the updates of his faith journey with God. He's not there yet, but that guy whose grandson is involved now knows that God was working through. Through his bad attitude because some biblical honor came to him. Second part is this, you choose honor. The second part is it is modeled by presence and commitment. I've learned this that isolation often is a dangerous thing in people's lives. If you ever read the chapter, the book of Ruth, it's a story of Naomi and Ruth, but it's really Naomi's story. Chapter one is a very depressing chapter. Don't read it on a bad winter day when you're sad. But the story basically summarized real quickly is they live in Bethlehem. Their family, her husband and two sons, go to Moab because there's a drought and a famine in Bethlehem. They go there to try to kind of survive and and do agriculture there because it's not as bad. And while they're there, her sons get married, but then tragedy comes. Her husband and both sons die. She is devastated. This meant the end of a lineage. This meant the end of a life. This she would have been thought of as cursed because all the men in her family had passed away. She was coming back home to Bethlehem with nothing, no future, gonna lose everything. The family lineage was gone. No one would marry someone who lost three family members in a short period of time because it just would have not been done. She has two daughter-in-laws she wants to get rid of. She can't stand them. Not that she hates them as people, she doesn't want them with her. She wants to be alone. She wants to go and die by herself. So she's telling them constantly: if you read the chapter, go away, go back home, go back home, go back home. One of them does. I can't blame her. But then there's Ruth. And Ruth makes this statement. She chooses to honor her. By staying present and committed to her. Listen to verse 16 of chapter one. But Ruth replied, Don't urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me. How many know that's a committed s person? And Naomi, it says, when she realized this, Ruth was determined to go with her. She stopped urging her. Let me summarize everything Ruth said to Naomi into four words. I am with you. Can I just tell you, as a congregation, those are some of the most powerful statements anybody can make to somebody in life? I am with you. I shared this in one of the services, not the other. Jim Westheim and my and June and my mom and dad were very close. My mom has passed away. But Jim wrote a wonderful story that I got to read that I didn't even know of how my mom helped Jim through a really tough season. And really what my mom was, she said a lot of things. My mom could talk. She could talk. In a really high-pitched voice. Sometimes it gets so high that humans couldn't hear it and dogs would start barking. It would be like, Aaron and I you just it she had a high voice. but what my mom was basically saying to Jim and June was this, I'm with you. I'm with you might be one of the greatest answers to what this world needs. I'm with you means you go across rows in sections where you don't sit in the church. I'm with you happens when you show up and say, There you are, not here I am. It's when you go to a men's breakfast, not to get, you don't determine if you go to a men's breakfast, I don't know if I'm gonna get anything. It's when you go to give. So when you say someone might need me to be there so I can build a relationship, so I can say, I am with you. See, biblical honor is a commitment by presence to choose to stick with humanity. Fact, it's so bad for Naomi, verse 19. I won't read it, but at the end, she comes back into Bethlehem, and all the people who knew her look at her and they say, Can this even be Naomi? In other words, she's so beat up, she doesn't even look like herself, she doesn't even sound like herself. But what's interesting, as she comes back into town, so does this little lady named Ruth behind her. And as she comes in and says things like, I'm a dead dog, and the Lord did this to me. She has no idea that I am with you will change not only her life, but every person sitting in this room here today. See, verse 22 tells us that she came back right as barley harvest season was beginning. That means while she's away going through tragedy, rain fell, seeds were planted, things started to grow. There was a custom, a taught tradition, a requirement that farmers would leave the corners of their fields, they called that gleaning, where they would leave it for the poor, and the poor came and would do the work, and they would harvest the grain that was in the corners of the field. And Ruth does that to provide for Naomi. Through that process, she'll meet Boaz, who owns the land's farming team, and then they introduce her to Boaz. Boaz ends up marrying Ruth. Ruth and Boaz have a unique relationship. Boaz reclaims the whole lineage of Naomi as well as Ruth, because they weren't blood. Ruth and Naomi weren't. The house that once, that's why he's known as a kinsman redeemer, very symbolic of Jesus and what he would do through the cross. What's a powerful thing is that the house that Naomi returns to that is empty and sad and no one's there, where little boys used to run through making noise, is now empty except for her daughter in law, will someday be filled with a boy that Boaz and Ruth will have. That son, check this out, will become. The very family lineage that leads to King David. The family lineage of King David is the one that leads to the lineage of Jesus Christ. Which means, check this out. Come on, church. You're the live church today, so let's get excited. Can I just tell you this? That means one single act of biblical honor through commitment and presence by Ruth made it possible for you to know Jesus today. Come on now. One person named Ruth, who was grieving herself, the loss of her husband, said, I choose biblical honor. You're my mother in law. I will follow you. I will die with you. I will eat what you eat. I am with you. And that little boy that would be born, they had no idea, would lead to Jesus' family, to salvation through the cross. Because of biblical honor. What if the next revival across America could be triggered if Christians just started to walk this way? What if fighting inside the walls of churches went away? So when people showed up, they experienced a joy they could never experience before. The third part is this: biblical honor, chosen, demonstrated through presence and commitment and through time and words. The Apostle Paul took three missionary journeys over the course of his life. And in this one, he arrives in Corinth. Let's just say here, and he meets this couple who were expelled from Rome. They're Jewish people, Aquila and Priscilla. Paul is a tent maker, they're a tent maker. He stays with them for a year and a half. And the custom would be as if you're staying at someone's house back then, they would feed you. How many wish that custom returned? Like you go to you go to someone's house and you're not sure what you're gonna eat. How about they just order you a pizza and it's required? I'm good with that. But while they're feeding him in the physical, he's feeding them in the supernatural. Sharing the stories of what it was like probably to be there when he saw Stephen be stoned to death. Moments when he talks about how he thought he was persecuting the false Christians only to have Jesus tell him on the road that he's been wrong all along. Scales come on his eyes, they fall off. He goes to the disciples and they don't trust him. They don't want him to be a part, but there's a guy named Barnabas, son of encouragement, who says, Hey guys, you don't trust him, but you trust me. Put him on my account. You know what he's saying? I'm with you. Because Barnabas saw something the other. And then other disciples were just naturally scared. I get it. But Barnabas saw something more. Paul tells them about the Holy Spirit and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Tells them about being shipwrecked and beaten and planting churches. And they grow together. And then they leave Corinth and they go to Ephesus. Paul says, I'm leaving, you're coming with me. When they get to Ephesus, Paul goes on to Syria, and you would expect the book of Acts to continue on with Paul's story. But the book of Acts, the history of the church, stops. Paul goes on, and they focus on Aquila and Priscilla. In Acts chapter 18, verse 24 through 25, we see the story in Ephesus. They arrive, and a guy named Apollos is preaching accurately, brilliant orator. He's communicating the things of Jesus well. But he only has ever heard about the water, a baptism in water. So what do they do? Verse 26 says, When they heard this, they invited him to their house. This was our whole discipleship model at Freedom Christian when I pastored. We did this whole model. We talked about tables all the time. See the table where they learned in Corinth, here's the beautiful part. They became the table they brought with them to Ephesus. And they invite Apollos and they the Bible says they explain the way of God more accurately. In other words, they introduced them to the baptism and the Holy Spirit. They wanted them to know what they knew. They were willing to close gaps by giving their time and giving their words to them. Here's what I've learned, church. Time is kingdom currency. Time is the most valuable thing you can ever give to somebody. So I've loved coming to preach. But I will tell you my favorite time was sitting at Culver's last night. And I'm going to tell you why. Because that was my opportunity to tell them we care about you. And it was my joy to love their kids who are spectacular. And I want to be their best friend. But I know they won't like me. But I want their kids to grow up and see me at an event to come up and say, Hey, Pastor Aaron, how are you? Hey Walter, how are you doing? Hey Mabel, how you doing? Olive, what's happening in your life? Do you know why? Because I want their parents to know, and I want those kids to know that my words and my time are valuable enough to give to them because their value is greater than my sacrifice. Always for their life. And so Paul at the end of his life writes a letter to Rome. He's going to die. And in Paul's letter to the church in Rome, we read this this couple that came from Rome, exiled to Corinth, meet Paul, who now share the message of hope with Apollos. They're now back in Rome. And Paul says this in chapter 16 as he's writing to the church in Rome. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, and I want you to see his words. My co-workers in Christ Jesus. The students. Are now, as Paul says, equal in the game. By the way, that's the powerful definition of discipleship. And then he says, they risk their lives for me. See, Paul, here's the thing about biblical honor, folks. Listen, this is really, I don't even know if I fully grasp this. But biblical honor has that way as God says, to the honor your mother and father, and I'll bless you in the land. When Paul sat at the table in Corinth with them, I don't think he ever thought these people will try to risk their lives for me. That wasn't why he did that. He did it because they were valuable. But we find out that God blesses Paul for what Paul blessed them with. And at some point in life they risk their lives for me. But watch this not only me, but all the churches of the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people. God uses a conversation of time, honoring people with time and words by a choice of Paul, commitment and presence to allow a couple to grow where they're willing to risk their lives for the message of hope. And they go across generations and they go again across ethnicities and divides on racial things. And they're Jewish people ministering to non-Jewish people because biblical honor taught them something. When someone gives their life to me, I will give my life to others. And we know this because we also read in chapter sixteen verse five, greet also the church that meets in their house. They became pastors. Can you imagine what might happen if we understood how honor works in the kingdom? Honor is always sown before it is reaped. Always. Luke 631 says this, as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. Paul has deposited something in their lives. They deposit something in Apollos' life, and everything begins to change. I didn't say this in either service, but let me say this to you. When we honor God, God honors us. Honor is not only something we give, it's something we steward. Your time is something you spend. Your words are something you spend. Your commitment, your presence is something you spend. Do you know what I miss most about my mom being gone? Is when I'm at restaurants and I see a son bringing in their elderly mom to have lunch. I really wanted to do that. I don't know if my dad was dead in my mind or not, but apparently I killed him off at some point. But I see that and it makes, do you know why? Because my mom was one of the greatest people I've ever met in my life. And I wanted, and I do it with my dad, I wanted to spend my last years with her on earth, giving her honor for all the things she did for me. And I feel I got ripped off a little bit. Because when we honor, we steward that. I'll read you one other verse. Jesus modeled this for us. Listen to this, John chapter 5, verse 19. So Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can only do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. Do you know what he's saying there? He's saying this: I honor my Father. And if we're supposed to be like Jesus, We need to do the same. I didn't share this story, but I'll close with it. It's a it's a I don't know why. My mom's just on my heart today. When my mom was dying, she she was really sick. She was down to about 80 pounds, cancer spread throughout her body, and her arms would move involuntarily like I had to hold them down a little bit to keep her peace. And she would be mumbling something over in the corner, and she had told me, I said, Why are you so Okay with dying and she said, 'cause my grandkids are watching. And I'm gonna teach them how to die with hope in Jesus Christ. And Now she also said to me, I said, Well, Mom, I'm I was a mama's boy. I would call her every morning at 8 a.m. I'd Mom, I'm gonna miss you. And she goes, I know you will, honey, but I'm gonna die and go to heaven. I'm not even gonna think about you ever again. I was like, that's not. That's not nice. She goes, but it's true. It's what the Bible makes it clear. And and I was like, but I don't like that. She goes, it doesn't change it. It's just what it is. And I was not nice. So she thought she was real. She goes, Huh, that was a good one. I was like, that was not a good one, but But as she was sleeping, she'd wake up and it was she was in that state where you didn't even know if she knew you were there, but I would listen to her whispering in a out of you know, just not in her right mind, but I would listen to her and I would hear her singing, All my life you have been faithful. All my life you have been so so good and she'd fall asleep and she'd wake up with every breath that I am able. I will sing of the goodness of God. At her funeral, people came to it. I don't know if you guys were there, but at her funeral, it would start off. We started off with the goodness of God. And I could tell people were thinking, what is going on? Had nothing to do with that. And to this day, every time we hear that song, all her grandkids will weep with joy in Jesus, not out of mourning, because their grandma taught us how to honor God, even in the most painful moments of her life. I often say this, my mom taught me how to walk, she also taught me how to die. She taught me how to talk. She taught me how to die with hope in Jesus Christ. Because biblical honor that goes on. Listen, the stories my grandkids, her grandkids are gonna tell their kids who never met her are gonna be. Let me tell you about my grandma, who loved Jesus with so much of her heart that she honored God even when she was dying. She lifted the name of Jesus. And that biblical honor she showed God will pay off generationally. As the story of her life. You're hearing her story. How many were touched by her story? See, biblically honor does something beyond the moment. So my prayer for you is that you love each other like no one else does. That you honor God by the way you honor others, that you choose it, that you walk with commitment and presence, and your time and your words will be spent in steward wisely for his name's sake. Because I got a feeling, ending with this, I got a feeling. If this church with all that God has blessed so far steps into a new season of that, hell will be nervous that faith alive exists at a level it never has. May you shake the foundations and make the devil worried by the way you honor God, by the way you love people. God bless you, Pastor. Thanks for listening to the Faith Alive Sermon Podcast. We hope this message encouraged you. If it did, be sure to subscribe or share it with someone else who may need it. If you want to get connected or reach out to one of our pastors, go to our website at faithalive.church. We'll see you next time.