John 5:41 – “I do not receive honour from men.”
To ‘receive’ means to claim it for yourself, so Jesus put no expectation on people honouring Him. In fact, it was exactly the opposite; He sought only to please His Father. In John 6:15, when Jesus perceived they were about to come and take Him by force, to make Him king, He departed again to the mountain, by Himself, alone. Notice there, He sees the crowd. They want to make Him king. They want to bring Him to a place of honour and position. He takes off. You find frequently in the Bible, when Jesus did miracles, and His fame went abroad, He immediately withdrew. He didn't feed off fame, or the honour of people. What fed Him was doing the will of His Father, and this is a huge issue for people to face.
Jesus rejected their desire to exalt Him and give him pre-eminence. He was primarily motivated by love for His Father, and desire for His Father's approval, so that meant He was free from pride. I don't need you to like Me, to accept Me, to agree with Me. There was no ego - I need you to recognise Me, to honour Me. There was no demand on anyone, for any of those things; and that made Him free to declare the truth. He could just say what He wanted to say. If people left Him, He didn't chase them. He didn't say: wait, wait, you misunderstood Me… and try to get them back. He never did that! He just boldly declared the truth. If they didn't like it, that was their choice; and when all the crowd left Him, He just said to His disciples: “you going to leave too? And they said: where are we going to go? You've got the words of life!
These are things from the Bible, that tell us the importance of us being free from the need for honour from people. Jesus rejected all self-promotion, all honouring of Himself
John 8:54 – “Jesus answered, and said: if I honour Myself, my honour is nothing. It's My Father who honours Me; and you say He's your God”.
The pharisees did everything to be seen by men. Whatever they did, if they prayed, they prayed to be seen by people, all the long prayers. When they fasted, they dressed up and they looked ‘oh man, you're fasting’! The pharisees constantly did things to get recognition from people, and Jesus said: none of those, it doesn't count. He taught that creating your own honour, is not honour at all. If you're into self-promotion, then God is not on that at all. He's not backing you up one little bit. If you promote yourself, you've got keep yourself there; but if we let God promote us, then He backs us, to keep us where He's promoted us to.
Proverbs 20:6 – “Most men will proclaim to everyone his own goodness, but who can find a faithful man?”
Every one of us has the experience of people, where all they want to do is promote themselves - they just talk about themselves. When you get with someone, and you listen, if they're talking all about themselves, then they're into self-promoting - to honouring themselves, it's all about me. Jesus said: every man who speaks about himself, promotes himself. He's not into promoting Himself in any way; Jesus confronted the honour system. He showed that there's another honour system.
This is also what He taught: if we seek the honour from men, it will undermine your faith, and your trust in God. Tt's going to be a point of conflict, if we seek to honour God, if we seek to honour Jesus, seek to live a life that honours Him, it's going to bring us into conflict with having the trust, having received the honour that God has.
John 5:44 – “How can you believe (or how can you have faith or trust), who receive honour from one another, and do not seek the honour that comes only from God?”
How can you believe, how can you be in a place of faith? Without faith, it's impossible to please God. How can you be in a place of faith, or believe, when your goal is to receive honour from one another; and you're not seeking the honour that comes only from God? There's an honour that comes from men; and there's an honour that comes from God. If I seek the honour that comes from men, then I want to be recognised, honoured; I want to have privileges and titles, and I have an expectation of that. He says: this is going to conflict with me trusting God for that honour; it's a choice, between one or the other.