Sermon Tone Analysis

One of my main jobs while I was volunteering with Supply and Multiply during the six months I spent in Haiti in 2018 was to work with short-term mission teams as they served with us for a week or two — and sometimes as long as a month at a stretch.

I would help them plan their days in country, give them options about how and where they could serve, coordinate their days with our Haitian staff, help them find basic medical supplies as needed, and — to whatever extent it was possible — just generally make sure that they had a positive and spiritually rewarding experience in Haiti.

Sometimes that meant helping someone to process the things they’d seen and done during the day; sometimes, it meant explaining why they shouldn’t wander off on their own; and sometimes it meant helping to identify some strange new rash.

All very glamorous, as you can imagine.

But that work gave me a chance to get to know just about everybody who came to serve with us in the town of Montrouis.

And it sometimes put me in a unique position to be able to evaluate a person’s maturity in the faith.

As it turns out, one of the situations when spiritual maturity reveals itself most clearly is at the dinner table.

Now, to explain what I mean, I need you to understand what dinner looked like when we had short-term teams visiting with us.

Usually, there would be eight to 12 people on these teams, but they could be as large as 20.

And we had only a very small area where they could serve themselves before sitting around the picnic table or in chairs or hammocks to eat their food.

So, we set up a short buffet line, and folks would file through, putting rice with beans, fried plantains, bread, and pickliz (which is a very spicy sort of pickled slaw) on their plates.

Once in a while, there were chicken legs from the scrawniest chickens you could imagine, and on a very few occasions, there might be sliced tomatoes.

But by and large, the menu was rice and beans, plantains, bread, and pickliz.

We kept jars of peanut butter nearby that had been brought from the U.S. to help supplement the protein that we needed for energy.

Aside from that, the greatest expense was for the rice, because it was American rice that was bought from various sources.

you see, Haitian rice normally includes small stones and requires some skill to eat without breaking teeth.

So, the ladies who cooked our meals would bring out a big bowl of rice and set it down on the counter outside, beside a plate of fried plantain slices, and a small bowl of pickliz, and then everybody would line up to serve themselves.

And the first thing I would watch for would be who would get in line first.

Occasionally, a group would insist that I go first, but I normally stood far enough away to keep that from happening.

What I wanted to see was whether there would be one or two people who seemed always to be at the front of the line.

And then, what I would look for would be people walking away with plates heaped to the brim.

You could tell that some folks were used to Golden Corral or church potlucks, where there seems to be a limitless supply of food.

They’d heap rice onto their plates, grab a couple of chicken legs, scatter some plantain slices on their plates and then load up on pickliz and head off to find a seat.

Those were the people I knew we would have to work closely with to help them grow a bit more spiritually mature.

Usually, it took only a couple of times for the food to run out before everyone had been fed for them to get the message that this was a limited resource.

And the lesson that pickliz is delicious in small quantities but dangerous in excess was one that EVERYBODY learned after one encounter with it.

Now, we might all agree that taking a little food from the buffet until you’re sure everybody has been fed is simply good manners.

But when I look at the Apostle Paul’s 13 imperatives for the church in Romans, chapter 12, what I recognize is that there’s a spiritual component to what we might simply call good manners.

The spiritual imperative or command that Paul has for Christians in today’s installment of this series surely implies having good table manners, but it goes well beyond that.

Let’s read the passage together, and then we’ll take a look at this week’s particular instruction.

Now, you may recall that we have said everything in this passage flows out of Paul’s first two commands here: Let love be without hypocrisy and abhor what is evil.

Indeed the command to love genuinely is a sort of lens through which all the other imperatives here come into focus.

We detest evil, in part, because we love others and want the best for them and know that sin will interfere with what is good in their lives.

In turning from evil, we understand that it is necessary to turn TO what is good, to cling to it as if our lives depended upon it, because the abundant life that Jesus promised for His followers does, indeed, depend upon clinging to what is good while rejecting evil.

And as we love one another genuinely, we learn to be devoted to one another in brotherly love.

We learn to cherish one another as brothers and sisters in the family of God.

Today, we’re going to talk about the next of these 13 imperatives — give preference to one another in honor.

Now, the first thing to understand about this command is that the Greek verb translated as “give preference” appears nowhere else in Scripture.

And even outside of Scripture, scholars have had trouble finding other places where it’s used in a similar way as it is here.

Because of that, it’s hard to translate.

The literal definition is “to go first and lead the way.”

What makes things more complicated is the order of words as they appear in the Greek.

The seven words we have in this English translation are only four words in the Greek.

So, the literal translation would be something like this: In honor, one another first.

Some translations have this clause as “be eager to show respect for one another.”

Others have “let each man consider the other worthy of more honor than himself.”

Others, something like “outdo one another in showing honor.”

And there are certainly fine distinctions among all those possible translations.

But the general thought seems to be the same.

“Paul is telling the Romans not to push for first place for themselves; they are to seek honor for one another rather than for themselves.”

[Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), 445.]

In other words, don’t try to be the first in line at the buffet.

But, as I said earlier, the command he is giving Christians here goes well beyond simple good manners.

And, as we might expect, things become a little clearer when we look at this command through the lens of the first imperative of this passage: Let love be without hypocrisy.

Genuine love — the agape love of verse 9 — is characterized by humility.

It is only in humility that we can set aside our own rights — our own desire for love to be reciprocated — and CHOOSE to love others, regardless of whether that love is returned to us, separate from any emotional feeling we might or might not have.

Paul talks about this kind of humility-empowered love in his letter to the church at Philippi.

In chapter 2 of that letter, he encourages the people of that church to approach their relationships with one another with the same attitude that Jesus had.

Look at verse 5.

From all eternity, God has existed in three persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

They are distinct from one another but share the same substance and character.

What Paul is saying here is that Jesus was of equal station, position, honor, and power as God.

He had every right to be revered and worshiped and loved AS GOD.

But He didn’t assert those rights.

Instead, He set aside his station, His honor, and His power, and as we see in verse 7, He....

He laid aside His rights and privileges as God so that He could come to us as a human.

And even in His humanity, He didn’t choose to be King or a ruler, but rather a servant.

And that’s what marked His life and ministry here on earth.

He was certainly a great teacher, and He had followers, as any great teacher might.

But unlike the teachers of His time, Jesus served those who followed Him.

He healed the sick, He raised the dead, He fed the hungry.

He washed His disciples’ feet.

But His greatest act of service — and His supreme act of humility — was the one Paul describes in verse 8.

It was in humility that the sinless Jesus Christ gave Himself as a sacrifice at the cross, taking upon Himself our sins and the just punishment for them so that all who believe in Him would be saved.

Jesus had the right to call down a legion of angels to lift Him from the cross.

He had the right to call down fire and brimstone from heaven to consume those who had crucified Him.

But it was only by bearing God’s full and just punishment for sin — for your sins and for my sins — that the debt we owe God for our rebellion against Him could be paid.

And so, Jesus humbled Himself to the point of death so that all who put their faith in Him could be saved through HIS blood.

So that we who follow Him in faith can one day stand before God clothed in HIS righteousness.

He lowered Himself so that WE could be lifted up.

That’s what Paul says in verse 8.

And so, looking back with all this in mind at the imperative from Romans, chapter 12, genuine love takes the position of humility when it comes to relationships.

Genuine love sets aside my desire to be the first in line.

Genuine love says, “No, you go first.”

Genuine love looks at that big bowl of rice and beans and says, “I’m hungry, but I’ll bet that person is hungrier.”

And remember that this is about more than simple good manners.

This is about more than who gets into the buffet line first and how much food they put on their plate.

“In honor, one another, first.”

We can certainly infer that one of the situations to which this command implies is the buffet line, but Paul’s bigger point here is about honor.

The Greek word that’s translated as “honor” here was one that dealt with prices.

It means “the amount at which something is valued.”

So, we’re talking about value when we talk about honor.

Indeed, we might even translate the imperative like this: Value one another best.

The idea is that the Christian should no longer value himself or herself higher than everything else.

That’s what the world tells us to do.

The world says, “Look out for No. 1.”

But Jesus said:

Do you want to be a true Jesus-follower?

It starts with denying yourself.

From a salvation standpoint, that means giving up the thought that you can somehow earn your way into heaven.