Dear WOL Chapel family,
It was a joy being with you to worship our great Lord a few days ago. I pray and anticipate that your worship service has not stopped as God deserves the praise in our life every day of our life and everywhere we go.
One way that we can worship the Lord appropriately is by honoring our authorities regardless of their actions. This is what we learned from the life of Noah and his 3 sons in Genesis 8:18-29. Remember that Ham responds in a dishonorable way to his father Noah’s drunken blunder, while Shem & Japheth respond to their father with honor.
It’s a special situation in which to teach us how God expects us to honor since the authority figure who requires honor is currently in a sinful state! It’s much harder to show honor to a person who doesn’t seem to deserve it in the moment. But as you heard on Sunday, honor is not due to people because they deserve it, but because God created the order and because they are endowed with value through the One Who made them.
1 Peter 2:17 makes it abundantly clear that we are responsible to honor everyone, no buts about it.
And I want to remind us how important it is that our Christian life is characterized by honoring those over us and around us because Ham’s dishonorable action will bring a curse upon him but Shem & Japheth’s honorable action towards their dad will bring a blessing upon them.
It’s highly important for us to associate with the blessing of Shem because we honor people around us. In other words, this passage of Scripture teaches us that our relationship with God (& blessing) will be proven through the works of faith/fruit of our faith, particularly, honor towards authorities.
On the other hand, if we’re the kind of people who are known for dishonoring authorities, then it’s a sign that our life is in the cursed category.
Remember, the whole world is categorized into 2 categories, the cursed and blessed (Matt 25:31-46). So we’ll find ourselves in one of them.
The blessed are those who have a relationship with God (9:26 says, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem.”) through faith in Him and demonstrate that reality through their good actions towards other people leading them to a future filled with eternal life.
On the other hand, the cursed are those who do not have a relationship with God demonstrated through a lack of faith expressed in actions that don’t love people around them leading to a future filled with destruction. (Matthew 25:31-46)
The key thing that pops out to me is the evidence that accompanies one’s relationship with God and their blessed existence. In other words, if one’s life is not characterized by honoring authorities, but that person comes to Church or claims to be a Christian, then should we assume that this person is in the cursed camp of Ham or the blessed camp of Shem? Genesis 9 as well as the whole counsel of Scripture would say that it’s okay to doubt that they’re really blessed and figure that they may be in the cursed camp of Ham.
As I thought about assessing professing Christians by their fruit or lack thereof, I thought about all of the reasons that we don’t want to do this or we may even think that it’s wrong:
(1) We think that we’re contradicting the fact that we’re saved by grace through faith and not by works (Eph. 2:8-9).
However, never forget that the Bible tells us what is absolutely a result of saving grace: a changed attitude and actions produced by the Spirit. Ephesians 2:9-10 are helpful as they say (paraphrased), ‘though we’re not saved by good works, we’re saved to good works.’
Another reason we ignore the way that a person’s actions provide a massive hint into their eternal destiny, either blessed or cursed, is because we don’t want to judge. However, there is a difference between judging and discerning. We are to discern a person’s blessed life or cursed life by their actions and attitude. In the case of Ham, his attitude revealed his true heart, which revealed his cursed destiny…and his brothers the opposite. Now would be a good time to admit that Christian actions are very important! Please don’t be one of those people who assume that Ham type figures are blessed because of grace. No, if they’re blessed by grace, then it will show in their actions!
In Mark 11:12-14, upon Jesus seeing no fruit on a fig tree, he curses it and it ends up withering away (11:20-21). This describes the destiny for those who bear no fruit of honor, a cursed life.
1 John 3:5-6 says, ” 5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.”
It could not be said more clearly that those who know God through Jesus exhibit changed lives (albeit true, imperfectly!). And in Genesis 9, the emphasis is on changed lives who honor their authorities.
& Titus 1:16 says, “They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works.”
But I pray that we, Church, would prove that we know God by our works, in particular, the work of honoring our authorities, even when they’re at their worst.
And we’re to do this because God’s Spirit is at work in us, producing this through us.
With love and honor towards all of you,
Love in Christ,
Aaron
