Honoring Christ (Part 2)

John 8:48–59 ESV

48 The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” 49 Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. 50 Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51 Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” 52 The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon! Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.’ 53 Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” 54 Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ 55 But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” 57 So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” 58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” 59 So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

John 8:48-59

Introduction

This morning, we are going to finish up our series on the core truths and commitments of the Christian faith by looking at how we can honor Christ in the world that we live in today. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that there are very few things that are sacred in our society. And to some degree, the contemporary church is at fault. Often times the way we approach worship and the way that we live out our relationship to Christ is less than honoring, less than respectful of who He is and what He has done. We often laugh with the world as they dishonor Christ and the notion of living to bring him glory and honor has become a foreign concept to many Christians. Jesus is seen as this doting figure, that solely exists to console us, to make our lives comfortable, and to help us deal with our guilty conscience. Without even being aware of it, God exists for my glory and not the other way around. And this has been disastrous for the health of the modern church and ultimately our witness to the world has become incredibly weak. (If we will not honor Christ, how can we expect them to take Christianity seriously.)

Early in my growth as a Christian, I was taught to study the biographies of men and women whose walk with Christ made a difference in the world. John Piper has whole series of messages entitled “Of whom the world was not worthy” where he chronicles the stories of some of the most important people in church history. And you’ll notice that as you go through their life stories, there is a common thread that ties them all, each one of them, regardless of situation, culture, or time in history understood what it meant to honor Christ in their generation. A great example of this can be found in the life of Henry Martyn. He was a missionary to the Muslims in the 1800s and one day he was presented with the image of Christ kneeling before Mohammed because the Muslims had just killed hundreds of Russian Christians. Henry Martyn became stricken in his heart and when someone asked him what was wrong, these were his words, “I could not endure existence if Jesus was not glorified; it would be hell to me if he were always so dishonored.” In this passage, we can readily see how the world continues to dishonor Christ and through that we see how we can practically honor Christ in our day to day. The three ways to honor Jesus are:

To stand firm in the truth of His word

To rejoice in our relationship with Him

To live out of holy reverence for Him

Each of these points can rightfully be a message of their own but I do want to give us a broad picture of how we can exalt Christ in both our private and public lives. The place that we all need to start is keeping his word, which would include knowing it, living it, and when necessary defending it. I want to focus in on this last part because I know that in our current political and social climate, it is so much easier to remain quiet about our beliefs and to not hold a strong positions on matters of faith and ethics. When I first moved up to the Bay Area, I immediately felt this reluctance to share certain aspects of Christianity that I judged to be offensive. I was perfectly fine letting people know that I was a Christian and even a pastor of a church and I reasoned to myself that was enough of a witness. I though, at least I’m not like those other undercover Christians who never reveal their identity. But I found myself getting into some awkward conversations that seemed to warrant a stronger response than simply identifying myself as a Christian. For example, I remember going on a field trip with my daughter’s school as a chaperone and I started up a conversation with one of the other parents. And generally these conversations lead to the questions of what brought you to San Francisco and what kind of work do you. So I told her that our family came up to start a church in the city and I’m the pastor. From there I asked her if she went to church and she shared that she occasionally went to this Episcopal church for mediation and to spend time in their garden. I then asked her what she liked about the church and she said, “I like the fact they don’t push any one religion, you can believe whatever you want and find your own path to God.”

To use a baseball analogy, this was a fastball right down the middle. It was a perfect opportunity to ask her if she had ever considered that there might just be just one way to God but I completely froze. For some reason those words would not come out of my mouth and all I ended up doing was nodding politely. That evening and for weeks after, it killed me that I had missed a clear chance to be able to share the gospel. Now, I have heard enough messages about not being ashamed of Christ to be pretty motivated to be open about my beliefs but there is something in the religious climate in the Bay Area that makes it incredibly difficult for Christians to stand firm in the truth. And here is what I believe is the main reason in a nutshell.

In a place that sees truth as largely relative, the pursuit of truth is not only unimportant, it is greatly discouraged. And the way that it is discouraged is through one unspoken rules that seem to govern everything that we say and do. The new golden rule in our society is that intolerance is the greatest evil. But there is a problem in that that we fail to realize that there is no such thing as a completely tolerant society. There are lines we need to draw in terms of what we tolerate and what we refuse to tolerate. For example, we should not tolerate pedophiles and rapists and for the good of society, that type of behavior cannot be tolerated. If I said, every sex offender should be appropriately punished, no on would charge me of intolerance although that is in effect what I am being. Therefore, it is an unavoidable fact of life that every society has to draw lines of the things they will tolerate and things that they will not.

Tolerance is the greatest good

Intolerance is the greatest evil

In this post-modern, post-Christian socio- political climate, those lines are being drawn arbitrarily on people’s opinion. In fact, the only thing that it seems we will not tolerate is anything we judge to be intolerant. Remember I had mentioned that the unspoken rule of our society is that intolerance is considered the greatest evil, the unforgivable sin. If you screw up even one time with a racist, sexist, or homophobic comment, you are shunned as a pariah of society. Now I am completely in favor of less racism, sexism, and homophobia in our world but not when that end is achieved through lies, coercion, and manipulative force. (That will never change a person’s heart.) For all the short term gains that we have made in the areas of race, gender, and sexuality, it has come at the sacrifice of the very things that can help change the hearts of people and that is the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the pursuit of truth. The right to be able to freely exchange ideas without the fear of reprisal is the pillar on which the Western Christian ideal of tolerance was born out of. DA Carson in his thoughtful but somewhat boring book on the evolution of tolerance points out that:

The classic definition of tolerance is to accept the right for people to have different views and opinions from your own. (A quote that is attributed to Voltaire illustrates this classic view of tolerance. “I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death, you’re right to say it.”

The new definition of tolerance is the acceptance of different views and opinions (as being equally valid and as right as your own).

It is a subtle change but an incredibly important one because to judge another’s person’s belief is tantamount to intolerance. You can no longer disapprove of another person’s viewpoint on politics, ethics, or religion with one key exception and that is when it has been deemed that a viewpoint is intolerant. The charge of intolerance has become the gatekeeper of our society and it is what Carson call’s the defeater belief. Once something is categorized as intolerant in the public conscience, it is no longer up for meaningful public discourse because anything that is considered intolerant is quickly dismissed as evil and untrue. People may be listening to you politely but inside they think you are dead wrong or ignorant or worse. And increasingly it is the Christian views on religion and ethics that have fallen under the label of intolerance and in the greatest of hypocrisy, it has become okay to punish Christianity with ridicule and vitriol that is not permissible against any other group. For example, in a public safety drill for active shooters, the Burlington Police Department in New Jersey depicted the terrorists as Homeschooled Christian Fundamentalist. There was a little of frustration expressed by some local churches but it died down very quickly. Could you imagine if the mock terrorists in this drill were depicted as turban-wearing Islamic jihadists? The outcries of intolerance and Islamaphobia would have reverberated around the country until someone was fired. The inconsistency of this new tolerance is growing everywhere. Let me give you one more example. Duke University, which was founded as a Methodist University, had a long standing tradition of giving all their graduates a copy of Bible at the graduation service. But because some Jewish faculty and students considered this to be offensive, there was a protest and the school ended the practice in the late 1990’s. Dennis Prager, a conservative Jewish talk show host, called out his fellow Jews with these words:

One of the best words to describe this attitude is actually a Hebrew/Yiddish one - chutzpah. Another word might be ingratitude. We American Jews are probably the most fortunate Jews in Jewish history. We live the freest, most economically secure lives in Jewish history in a country that not merely tolerates our religion, but has always honored it. And who made such a country possible? Men and women, nearly all of whom were Christian, who regarded Judeo-Christian values as the basis of this society, even as many of them fell short of these values.

Brothers and sisters, we should not forget that Christianity was forged out of the evils of intolerant religion as well as an intolerant Roman empire. I think it is sufficient say that our Savior knows firsthand the pain and the evil of real intolerance and against those evils, he has taught us how to be tolerant, “Love your enemies, pray for them.” Win them over with the truth of his word because is the only thing that can change a person’s heart. Jesus is the most idealistic realist that I have ever seen. He knows that every society will be comprised of those who we consider our friends, and those who we would consider our enemies. The key to a truly tolerant society is to love our enemies as if they were our friends, and to pursue the truth with kindness and civility. In the face of this hostile and intolerant crowd, he stood firm on the fact that His knowledge came from God and that His charge was to keep his Father’s word. That is the example that we are called to follow!

Now what does this have to do with honoring Christ?

Well, the polar opposite of honoring someone is being ashamed of them. (Makes sense, it you are ashamed to be connected to someone, it becomes one of the clearest forms of dishonor.) In the Gospels, Jesus extends the warning against being ashamed of Him to also include being ashamed of His words.

D. A. Carson. The Intolerance of Tolerance (Kindle Locations 953-956). Kindle Edition.

I had heard enough messages out of the gospels to know that being ashamed of Christ came with a frightening warning.

The polar opposite of honoring someone is being ashamed of them. (Makes sense, it you are ashamed to be connected to someone, it becomes one of the clearest forms of dishonor.)

Luke 9:26 ESV

26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

As I thought about this verse in regards to my conversation with that mom in Carissa’s class, I realized that I had made up a false dichotomy in my mind. I reasoned to myself that if I identified myself as a pastor that would mean I was not ashamed of Christ but in regards to his teaching, well then it is okay to remain quiet. I don’t have to tell this person who I consider to be in the wrong that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. Admittedly the social climate makes this difficult to say but Jesus gives us no room to make that distinction. To be ashamed of His words, is to be ashamed of Him. That realization shook me!

Unknowingly and maybe even subconsciously, we can find ourselves to be ashamed of His teaching and one of the signs of that is when we lose the joy in our relationship with Christ. (During the early elementary grades, my grandmother would walk me to school and I would be so happy to see her when she picked me up at the end of the day. Well a few intolerant punks started to make fun of her because she walked with a hunch and I began to feel ashamed of her and so when she would pick me up, I started to lose joy in seeing her. Eventually I told her to stay a block away from school. Isn’t that what we often ask of Jesus.) Jesus tells this hostile crowd around him, “If you were like Abraham, you would have rejoiced at see my day. He saw it and was glad.” And the crowds responded with the appropriate skepticism, “When did you ever see Abraham, you are not even 50 years old and Abraham has been dead for thousands of years. In Genesis, there is only one instance in which God came to visit Abraham physically.

Genesis 18:1–2 ESV

1 And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. 2 He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth

When you go through this chapter, you see that there were 2 reasons for this divine visitation:

The first reason was to promise Abraham and Sarah that they would have a son in the following year, born miraculously in their old age even though they were well past the child bearing years.

The second reason was to pronounce judgment on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. What is evident from this story is that two of the men are actually angels.

Genesis 18:22–23 ESV

22 So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. 23 Then Abraham drew near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?

Genesis 18:22

Genesis 19:1 ESV

1 The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth

If you do the math, one of the men was not an angel and so it must have been a physical appearance of God. This is what theologians call a Christophany, an appearance of Jesus in the OT. Two of these three men were angels, one is the LORD. Jesus is most likely referring to this visit as his appearance and that Abraham rejoiced to see that day. This isn’t to say that the entire visit was a cause for celebration. Yes, Jesus fulfills this amazing promise of a miraculous son to Abraham because in Him, all the promises of God are yes and amen. But Jesus also fulfilled his judgment against the people of Sodom and destroyed the city. But during this divine visit, there is a key exchange between the LORD and Abraham where Abraham begins to contend for Sodom.

Genesis 18:22–23 ESV

22 So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. 23 Then Abraham drew near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?

Then Abraham begins to bargain with God. If there is 50 righteous, would you save the city? 20? 10 It turns out there is only one semi-righteous person, Lot and he is suspect at best. So that’s not good enough to save the city. Abraham received gladly both the good news of Christ’s promise and the not so good news of His judgment. But far more importantly, you can see that the gospel is what is being preached through this divine meeting. We know that Abraham’s physical son would be unable to save the people in cities like Sodom and in cities like San Francisco and New York and Hong Kong but one day another miracle child will be born, a child conceived by the Holy Spirit who will be able to save these people and the simple plan of salvation is that those who ultimately follow this child will become the salt and light of the world and a city on a hill. They will be the 50 righteous, the 20, the 10 who will save these cities from certain judgment. Brothers and sisters, that is us! God is patiently waiting for us to share the word of Christ, to share the gospel of salvation, and to uphold the truth. This is why Abraham rejoiced when He saw the Lord on that day. He wasn’t just rejoicing because he was going to have a baby, there was an infinitely better reason to celebrate. And the question is are you rejoicing in your relationship with Christ for the same reason, that He came to save us and we get to be a part of this incredible plan of God’s salvation.

Conclusion

However, rejoicing in our relationship with Christ does not mean treating him casually. In our time, we treat Christ and the Gospel without the due reverence that He is worthy of. And we often do this in the name of being relevant. I agree that it’s important that we don’t take ourselves too seriously but it’s equally important that we take the Gospel dead seriously and sometimes we blur that line. Jesus is the same person that gave Abraham the promise of a son causing Sarah to laugh but in the next moment, He gives the order to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. He is to be both loved and feared. Within that mix of love and reverence, we discover how to properly honor Him. At he end of this passage, we see that Jesus reveals His identity explicitly to the crowd. As the crowds ask how is that someone who is less than 50 years old could have possibly seen Abraham, Jesus tells the crowd, “Truly, truly, before Abraham was, I AM”. This isn’t a case of Jesus using bad grammar, the phrase “I AM” is the most honored and revered name for God in the Jewish faith. I AM describes the essential nature of God as the one whose existence is dependent on nothing else but Himself. Jesus was saying to this skeptical crowd, “Before Abraham, before creation, before time and space, I AM! In some sense, the crowds were right to pick up the rocks to stone him because if Jesus’ claim was false, He was absolutely deserving of death according to the Jewish law. But within their own Scriptures, the Jewish people were given clues to how God would reveal himself. In the OT, this most revered of names for God is given to us in the famous encounter of Moses with the burning bush. Of all the ways for God to reveal himself, why a burning bush? It isn’t that awe inspiring or and doesn’t seem to be worthy of the creator of the universe. In fact, it was nothing more than a curios oddity to Moses when he first saw it.

Exodus 3:3 ESV

3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”

Exodus 3:

The great American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, understood that the burning bush was an image of the gospel in the Old Testament. A tree surrounded by fire but not destroyed by its heat is a prototype of the Son of God on the cross, enduring the wrath of God but ultimately not consumed by it. When Moses gets close enough to this burning bush, the Lord commands him:

Exodus 3:

Exodus 3:5 ESV

5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

The great American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, understood the burning bush to be an image of the gospel in the Old Testament. A tree surrounded by fire but not destroyed by its heat.

And if a mere symbol of what God will do for his people is considered holy, how much more so is the real thing? Later in this important chapter of the Bible, from within that burning bush, Moses ask the name of his God and the reply is the same one given by Jesus to the crowds. :

Exodus 3:14 ESV

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.’ ”

Exodus 3:

When we first encounter the gospel, it is an oddity, a curiosity for those who might be casually seeking God or religion. Eventually, when you truly get close enough to this gospel and understand with the eyes and ears of your heart, the God of Moses and Abraham, the Great I AM calls out from within that burning bush and He command us to take off your sandals and everything that has been defiled by this earth, because the ground that we are standing on is holy. I am to be loved, I am to be revered, I am to be honored, I am.

And if a mere symbol of what God will do for his people is considered holy, how much more so is the real thing?