How can a true Christian honor the Lord Jesus Christ? What does the Bible say?
Arts EntertainmentsThere are some verses in the New Testament (2 Peter 1:17, Revelation 5:12-13) that show us that the Lord Jesus Christ has been honored and glorified and will be even more so when He returns to this earth, but what can we each do? one personally to honor him in the meantime?
After thinking about this for some time, I found myself back in the book of Esther. Esther is a fascinating book with some wonderful characters. If you haven’t read it yet, please do as it is a wonderful, true story about some fascinating people.
There was Ahasuerus, a Persian king and ruler of a great empire of some 120 provinces, a mixture of different peoples, nations, and languages.
There was a Jewish girl named Esther who became queen of this great land, as the previous queen had fallen from grace.
We also find another Jew, a man named Mordacai who was Esther’s uncle and who had been responsible for Esther’s upbringing, as her parents had died when she was very young.
And then there was Haman, quite a magnificent character. A true promising entrepreneur. A man who knew exactly what he wanted and went out and got it. He really knew how to make things happen. He was driven by a great desire to be rich and famous. He comes out great wealth and high position in society. He wanted to be famous, admired and respected throughout the Kingdom of Persia, particularly in the palace. That was his goal and he went out and achieved it.
He was the type of person who would throw a big party and invite all the social climbers just to tell them how big and successful he was and these people were happy to come and listen. Happy to be seen in the “right place with the right people,” they were no doubt made of the same stuff as Haman. Haman would then speak of his great wealth, success in business, and all the great honor that had been given to him.
You can see this guy lying awake in his bed at night thinking about ways he could design things tomorrow and how he could manipulate people to his own ends. Haman was truly a great man – of the flesh.
Now Haman had been promoted to the highest office in the Kingdom and all the people bowed down to him and praised him except one, and that person was Mordecai the Jew. I don’t know why Mordecai refused to honor Haman; perhaps she could see right through him to the man who was entirely a product of human greed and selfishness.
When Haman saw that Mordecai would not honor him, he was furious. He hated Mordacai and wanted him dead. But Haman, being a somewhat creative man of considerable vision, thought to himself, instead of killing Mordecai alone, why not exterminate the entire Jewish race that produced such a man?
So he put things in place for that to happen. He asked the King and the King gave him permission to kill all the Jews in his kingdom (which makes one wonder how much King Ahasuerus thought about any of his decisions). Meanwhile, Haman had a gallows built about 75 feet (23 meters) high (big enough to be seen from the palace) to personally hang Mordecai.
Now Queen Esther had invited Haman to a couple of banquets. Not just any banquet but just for her the King and Haman. Haman was elated. All his dreams had come true.
But the night before the second banquet, the king had trouble sleeping. Maybe he had eaten too much the night before or maybe an angel tickled his big toe. For some reason he couldn’t sleep anymore. Then he thought it was wrong for the king of Persia to be the only one awake, so he woke up some of his servants and asked them to bring him the daily chronicles and read them to him (after all, if reading the daily chronicles would not put you go back to sleep then what will you do?).
So they were brought and they were read. Time passed until an article of great interest to the King was read. It seems that some time before, Mordecai had uncovered a plot to kill the King and brought it to the attention of the proper authorities and the criminals were dealt with and the King’s life was saved, and that nothing had ever been done to reward or honour. Mordacai.
Just then, Haman reached the outer court and made enough noise to be noticed. When the King knew it was Haman, he said, “Ah! Excellent! Just the man I want to see, bring him.”
Haman, my good man, I have a problem and I need your advice on it.” Haman was very pleased, all his wishes kept coming true. His ego was huge. If his head had swelled more, he would have fallen off. The King Wanted to know what would be the best way to honor someone you thought should be honored.
The answer quickly occurred to him: the way he would like to be honored. He said, “Make the noblest prince dress the man in the king’s robes and put him on the king’s horse in all his finery and lead the man through the whole city, walking before him saying that this is a great man whom the King delights to honor, proclaiming that this is what the King does to honor a great man.”
“Excellent idea said the King! Haman you are a noble prince, go and do everything you have told Mordecai the Jew because it is him I want to honor.” Now Haman knew better than to question the king’s judgments, so he went, dressed Mordecai in the king’s garb, mounted him on his horse, and went before him through the city proclaiming that Mordecai was a great man and that this is how the king delights to do it. honor him After this, Haman covered his head and hurried back to his house ashamed of him. Things did not go well for Haman since then, everything went downhill.
So we see here a classic way to honor someone. Interestingly, Jesus was actually honored in a very similar way to this. In Matthew 21 we find him riding on a donkey to which the disciples had put their garments and others paved the way with their garments and palm leaves and all praised him as the great son of David who came in the name of the Lord.
But how can we honor our God or our Lord Jesus? We can get the best clothes and the best steed but we cannot put them on the horse and carry them through the streets of our hometown. So what can we do?
The main point of honoring Mordecai in this way was that he was put on display. The message was publicly proclaimed to all. For the next few days everyone would be talking about it. “Hey, did you hear what the King did for Mordacai? Yeah! Wow! The King must think Mordacai is the greatest. We better listen to everything he says.”
Mordecai, the horse, and the garments had to be shown and proclaimed to all. It was no great honor to dress up and sit on the horse and never leave the stable. To be truly honored, he had to go out and be seen.
So if we really want to honor our Lord Jesus, it’s up to us to get up and talk to people about him whenever the opportunity presents itself. We have to make it known.
You know when we do this we don’t always get a good reaction. Most people couldn’t care less, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s not our job to save people, that’s God’s job. Our responsibility is to provide God with something to work with, to be a tool in his hand because God loves to work through people. So don’t be disappointed if people don’t respond when you preach the Gospel, we don’t have to be results oriented, we just have to be there as Paul said, He sowed the seed of the Gospel, Apollos watered it or added to the knowledge of the people but it was God who gave the growth, it is God who makes it all work in the people he chooses to work with (1 Corinthians 3:6).
So let’s go out and honor the greatest man of all time, our Lord Jesus Christ.