Divine Honors to Jesus

Imagine for a moment one of your coworkers or classmates is celebrating a milestone birthday. For some reason, the entire office or classroom decides to celebrate with gifts, cards, and cake. What a great way to honor your colleague!

But how weird it would be if your boss or teacher took the cards and gifts for himself, then ate all of the cake that was supposed to be shared with everyone else. Then, after the party, he sent out an email to the group saying, “Thanks for the birthday wishes,” when it wasn’t even his birthday.

For religious people who don’t believe Jesus is divine, this is what they think Christians are doing when we give honor to Jesus that they believe should only go to God. In other words, they think we are giving the “birthday gifts” away to the wrong person.

Yet, as we study Scripture, we not only see Jesus receive the honors that should go to God, but He welcomes them. So, as we get going with our series on The Divine HANDS of Jesus series, we need to ask: What honors do we see Him receive?

Honors Given

1. Worship

In the Ten Commandments, God makes it clear only He is to be worshiped (Exodus 20:3). Yet, we see throughout the four gospels people (primarily his disciples and various people he healed) worshiping Jesus directly.

2. Prayer

We know it is God who hears our prayers (Psalm 65:2), yet we see the early disciples pray to Jesus numerous times (Acts 1:24, 7:59-60, 9:3-16, 2 Corinthians 12:8-9). And why do they believe they can pray directly to Him? Because He told them to in John 14:13-14!

3. Fear

Numerous times in the Old Testament, people are told to “fear the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 6:13, Joshua 24:14, Psalm 34:9, and many, many more!) This isn’t the type of fear you get from watching a scary movie. This is a fear that is filled with awe and respect because of the power, majesty, and awesomeness of God.

We see this type of fear:

• displayed by the disciples after Jesus calms a storm,
• and commanded by the apostles to be given to Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10-11, Ephesians 5:21, Colossians 3:22)

4. Faith

As we heard in our Jesus in Genesis summer sermon series (which was really a walk through Hebrews 11), many men and women in the book of Genesis put their faith in God, because He is the only person worthy of our faith and trust (Hebrews 11:6). But we see many men and women do the same thing toward Jesus in the New Testament (Matthew 9:28, John 3:15-16, Acts 3:16, among many more).

Conclusion

I could go on. For instance, we could look at the hope we are to put in Jesus (like we do with God). We could also discuss how we are to love Jesus (like we are to love the Lord our God). We could even talk about how we are to give our devotion to Christ like we are to give to God.

But hopefully you see how all of this helps us understand why Jesus said in John 5:23 that “all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father” because He is God! So may we honor Him for who He truly is!