Honor Others
Others
Let’s talk about one of the most important parts of living a life that honors God. It’s something we all believe in but all struggle to do from time to time.
Most people, if you were to ask them at the end of their life if they could go back and change one thing, they might say this is the one thing they would have done differently, they would have done better.
I wish I would have treated people better.
I wish I would have done better by my wife, or my kids, or my friends.
I was too busy, or too stressed, or too distracted, or too worried and I didn’t spend enough time with them, or help them, or show them the love and attention they needed, and now I wonder if I missed the chance to make a difference in their life.
Which raises the question…
How do we HONOR others?
When all is said and done, will we look back with regret on how we treated others?
Making Things
My grandmother made the most beautiful things.
My memories of her growing up, going to her house in Memphis, TN, are of her sitting in her chair that had a small table with a lamp on it and her needle and thread. She was always making something. Doing some kind of cross stitch or needle point.
I was a youth minister for 16 years before I started preaching and so, as you might imagine, I had about a million youth group t-shirts I had designed through the years. One of my favorite gifts ever was a quilt she made for me from those t-shirts. I also have another quilt she made. She was a huge St. Louis Cardinals fan. They would watch every Cardinal’s game on TV and they knew all about every player. And she made a St. Louis Cardinals quilt with each players number. And somehow, she got a number of the players to autograph it! It’s a treasured possession!
When you see something handcrafted, something that takes time, precision, and careful attention to detail to make, you appreciate it. You know it has worth. It has value.
We want things that are carefully and skillfully and wonderfully made. We’ll pay a high price for something like that. We know it has worth, it has value, especially when we consider the maker and the amount of time and effort it took to make it, whatever it is!
They say it took Michelangelo approximately three years to sculpt David, working on it from 1501 to 1504. The process involved transforming a massive, abandoned block of marble into one of the most iconic masterpieces of the Renaissance. It is considered priceless but has been valued around $200 million!
It took Leonardo da Vinci approximately four years to paint the Mona Lisa, working on it off and on between 1503 and 1506. However, he continued refining and perfecting the painting for several years afterward, possibly up until his death in 1519. Today, it’s widely considered priceless and it is not for sale, but if it were it could possibly go for as much as 1 billion with a “b” dollars!
Things that take time to create, that require incredible attention to detail, and are the work of a master craftsman have immeasurable worth. When we see them we see their value.
But what about people?
Why is it that we so often devalue people?
Why are we so ready to cancel people who disagree with us? Or ghost people who bother us? Or ignore people who annoy us? Now, if you’re not a follower of Jesus you really can treat people however you want, but as Christians, as followers of Christ, this is a core belief for us.
We believe every person is created by God, in the image of God, and for the glory of God.
We believe that… Every person is a person of immeasurable worth!
And we learn this from the opening pages in scripture… Genesis 1.27.
So God created human beings in his own image.
In the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
Every person is created by God, in the image of God, for the glory of God! So every person is a person of immeasurable worth!
Even people who don’t look like you, act like you, believe like you, vote like you. Even people who worship different than you. Even people who are guilty of unspeakable things. They, too, are created by God, in the image of God, for the glory of God.
And because of that, even though by the world’s standards they might not be worth the time of day, they actually have immeasurable worth.
Created ON Purpose FOR a Purpose
We were created on purpose and if you keep reading in the very next verse, you realize we were created for a purpose. Genesis 1.28…
Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”
We were created on purpose for a purpose. We were created with intention and with design.
We were created male and female, the fullness of the image of God in each gender yet each respective gender having it’s own unique design and purpose in how we image God.
He created us as we are on purpose with a purpose. He put His image in us and on us. And then He called us to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and reign over it.
This is a core belief for us. Because of that, it has to affect our every day lives.
The way we see, interact with, and treat other people. Even if they are confused about who they are, we aren’t. Even if they’re living in darkness, we can see them clearly in the Light. Even if they don’t believe the truth about who they are, we do! And we love, respect, and treat them accordingly.
We practice radical hospitality, welcoming everyone. As a person created by God, in the image of God, for the glory of God, every person is a person of immeasurable worth. So our words are always filled with love, grace, and compassion. With everyone, at all times, but especially those who for whatever reason have a hard time believing that this is true. That they are loved by God, created by God, for the glory of God with intention and purpose.
You’ve probably seen the commercials on tv created by the “He Gets Us” campaign. This one called “Love Your Enemies” caught my attention recently.
It’s just a 60 second commercial, but doesn’t it capture so well what’s happening in our world on so many levels. People lashing out against other people, we see it every where we look. Yet the way of Jesus is different.
Who would it be?
You remember the story of the Good Samaritan. There’s a guy beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. A couple of God fearing men pass by at different times, neither stops to help the man.
Then along comes a despised Samaritan. He helps the man, presumably a Jew. Jews and Samaritans don’t get along. But it’s hard for us to really understand because we can’t comprehend the hate that existed between those two groups some 2000 years ago. So we have to reframe the story and think,
Who would be the Samaritan if Jesus were telling us this story today?
Would it be a Republican? A Democrat? An Illegal immigrant? A black person? A white person? Or someone with a different color of skin? A Muslim? Or a homeless person? A former convict?
Who would it be that if they stopped and helped you if you were the person beaten and left for dead on the side of the road, it would shock you because you saw two people who were like you walk right by you and yet this person, THIS PERSON, stopped and helped you in your greatest time of need?!
When we wrap our heads around the story then all of a sudden we get a little clarity and begin to understand this eternal reality… that every person, regardless of background, beliefs, rights, wrongs, this or that, every person is a person of immeasurable worth. Created by God, in the image of God, for the glory of God.
God Formed
The psalmist certainly understood this when he wrote…
Psalm 139
13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
We are God formed, God created, God made, knitted together cell by cell by His hand. It’s one thing for my grandmother to work away for hours to sew and knit together special things for our family, but it’s something else entirely for God to knit us together!
Honoring God, if you really want to honor Him, it begins with remembering every person was formed in the womb with intentionality and purpose by God!
When I was in middle school, I was at our annual youth group fall retreat. Right after that retreat I was leaving on a trip to Nashville with our chorus from school to be a part of a choral festival at Lipscomb University. I was pretty excited to have these two trips back to back. It was going to be a lot of fun. At least, that’s what I thought at first.
On the second day of that fall retreat I was enjoying free time with all the guys. We had found a place to play football and, for what ever reason, there were no adults with us. So, left to our own devices, we decided not to play two hand touch football, or flag football, we thought we would go ahead and play full on tackle football.
No pads, nothing like that, just a bunch of middle school and high school guys on a church retreat ready to kill each other for the glory of God during a free time football game with no adult supervision.
It was all great, until… my team was losing. My team was on defense and I’m covering some kid playing wide receiver. As luck would have it, the ball came my way and it was awesome, I made the most incredible interception you’ve ever seen.
If there would have been cell phone cameras back in the day it most certainly would have made the Sports Center top 10 list! Now I’m flying down the field. I’ve got one thing on my mind. Scoring a touch down. What’s better than an interception? A pick 6!
One problem, one of my good friends was on the other team. He was in high school. I was in middle school. His name was Ben, but everybody called him Big Ben. He probably outweighed me by 200 lbs, not even joking! I thought I could avoid Big Ben. I was running fast. But he was like a brick wall. And when he tackled me… well, have you ever seen a fly hit your windshield? This was kind of like that.
The side of my head crashed into his face. We both fell to the ground. You should know, I did not fumble. Ben thought he had busted his lip. He did not. His teeth had gone through my ear! All our friends gathered around. No one wanted to look at me. My ear was in 2 pieces. Someone ran to get an adult.
Before I knew it, I was on the way to the ER. A doctor looked at the situation and he knew what to do. He sewed me up. I can’t remember how many, but I needed a lot of stitches to reconnect my ear! I still have the scar today. I’m not sure what was worse, all the stitches or having to go to Nashville the next week with a huge bandage on one ear!?
It takes a skilled and careful hand to sew a person back together. Can you imagine what it takes to knit one of us us together from scratch!?
Fearfully & Wonderfully Made
We are fearfully and wonderfully made. YOU are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Did you know that a single strand of your DNA, if it were to be fully stretched out, it would be about 6 and a half feet long? In your body there are approximately 37 trillion cells. If you took all the DNA from your cells and stretched them out together in one line it would go all the way to the Sun and back… more than 300 times!
Did you know the circulatory system in your body that moves blood throughout your body keeping you alive is made up of a combination of arteries, veins, and capillaries. If you took all the veins, arteries, and capillaries in the human body and laid them out end to end they would stretch out approximately 100,000 miles! That’s enough to circle the earth FOUR times! And that’s just from 1 person!
Did you know that the human brain has about 86 billion neurons, and each neuron forms connections with thousands of other neurons creating a network that results in about 100 trillion synaptic connections, more than the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy! That’s what’s happening in your head right now! Your brain is essentially a supercomputer that can out perform anything Apple or Microsoft has made to date!
YOU are fearfully and wonderfully made. YOU are created by God, in the image of God, for the glory of God with purpose and for a purpose.
And so is the person next to you.
So why would you ever devalue another human being. Even if they’re different than you. Even if they disagree with you. Even if they are an enemy to you. Even then, Jesus taught us…
“love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!” – Jesus, Matthew 5.44
This is perhaps one of the most important ways you honor God.
You honor God when you honor others.
You honor HIM when you honor them.
Even those who you think might not be worthy of honor.
Even those who our world says are unworthy of honor.
Honor
Jesus didn’t just teach us this, He demonstrated this at the cross. And because of the cross you can know your worth, your value.
We live in a world that says your not enough, you’ll never be enough. And nothing could be more untrue, nothing could dishonor God more than that lie!
Jesus spread His arms on the cross at Calvary to declare this eternal truth, you are a person of immeasurable worth. That every person is a person of immeasurable worth. He paid the ultimate price for you. And, He paid that price for the person next to you. That person in the line at the grocery store beside you. That person who cut you off in traffic. That person at work who annoys you. Those people that you tend to disparage or who disagree with you. Those people who live in other places who you don’t know but you know you don’t like.
Every person is created by God, in the image of God, for the glory of God.
You honor HIM when you honor them.
How can you, in an everyday, ordinary ways, HONOR the image of God in others today?
Maybe it’s praying for your enemies, for those who have hurt you. Maybe it’s showing a little compassion to those who annoy you. Maybe it’s asking God to soften your heart, to open your eyes to see people the way He sees people.
This week, find a way in your own heart and life to HONOR God by honoring His image in others. Remembering that they, whoever they are for you, are created by God, in the image of God, for the glory of God with purpose and for a purpose.
Immeasurable Worth
One of my favorite things my grandmother made for me was a little sign.
She made it to commemorate the day I was baptized. I don’t know how long it took her to cross stitch this.
It wouldn’t have any value if I tried to sell it today. But it is of immeasurable worth to me. And it reminds me of my immeasurable worth to God.
This is a reminder of the day I was baptized into Jesus, my sins washed away, my life committed to Christ. It’s a reminder of my immeasurable worth, the price paid for me, for all of us, at Calvary.
Every person is a person of immeasurable worth.
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