Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Well, I don't know about you, but there was actually a time when I used to enjoy flying.
[00:00:08] Now, this was in the days, largely speaking, before tsa, days before long lines, days before massive crowds, days when you didn't have to arrive at the airport three hours early to catch your flight, days when airline seats actually felt a bit like seats.
[00:00:29] You weren't pinched there in your hips, you weren't punished in your knees. Seats didn't feel like little torture chambers.
[00:00:38] And when the armrest, right, wasn't fought over like the last slice of pizza at the youth retreat, you know what I mean? You sit down and you're sort of looking and you're like, who's going to grab it first? Do I just throw my elbow out? Do I take that armrest? You perhaps know what that's like.
[00:00:55] You know, we're all familiar with the term road rage, but there's a term that has become also quite familiar to us, and that's air rage.
[00:01:03] And that is sharply on the rise. And do you know what one of the principal complaints is? It's seat etiquette. It's just seat etiquette on an airplane, right? To recline or not to recline, that is the question.
[00:01:19] Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of seats reclined or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing in them, right? A little hamlet seat etiquette that's become a big deal on airplanes. And I'm not going to ask for a show of hands as to how many of you actually recline when you get into an airplane, right? I don't want to spark judgment here amongst us, but in a desire to maximize profits, airlines have reduced seat pitch. You know, that difference between the distance, rather, between seats. They've reduced it down to as low as 28 inches. And so there are times when I go and I pull out my computer and I try to write and the person in front of me reclines their seat, and I'm like a kangaroo like that. I can't even type my screen.
[00:02:05] Well, seats are shrinking. The problem is we're not, right? We're expanding. Larger bodies, smaller spaces.
[00:02:12] And so it wasn't long ago that on a flight from Newark to Denver, a man wanted free reign with his laptop. And so what did he do? You can purchase these devices, apparently. And he attached it to the tray table, and that prevented the woman in front of him from reclining her seat.
[00:02:31] Well, the woman, when she couldn't recline, she complained.
[00:02:35] And when the Flight attendant came and asked the man to remove this device. Well, the man refused. He refused to do it. And so the woman threw a cup of water at him.
[00:02:45] Well, an altercation ensued and that enforced the entire plane to divert to Chicago, where both the man and the woman were removed and charged.
[00:02:57] And the kicker was they were sitting in first class. No, I'm just kidding. They weren't. But they were sitting in Economy plus, right?
[00:03:06] In theory, lots of extra legroom.
[00:03:10] Now, friends, I highlight all that because we have a culture, a culture that loves and insists upon personal rights, loves and insists upon what they are owed and what they are due. Right. My rights, I hold hard and fast to those, even if they may cross some sense of your rights.
[00:03:32] And that's not just true in the public square. That's sadly not just true in airplanes. That can also be true in the Christian life and, and even true in Christian churches.
[00:03:41] So how are we to think about our personal rights when it comes to relationships within the body?
[00:03:49] Well, friends, that's what we're going to be thinking about this morning as we turn this morning to Philippians chapter two, Philippians, chapter two. If you've got a Bible, let me invite you to go there now. Philippians 2, 5, 11. If you don't have a Bible, we've got red Bibles in the pews before you. It should be page, I think, 980, maybe the very bottom of page. Nine hundred and eighty.
[00:04:07] Now, if you're just joining us, Paul is rotting away in a Roman prison, a church he planted some decade before in Philippi. They're concerned for him, so they reach out to him. They write him a letter. Well, he responds back with this letter. We have the letter of Philippians. And Paul in chapter one talks about, really gives an update, and it displays how his life is a life he's seeking to live worthy of the Gospel.
[00:04:30] And then in 127, that's like a key turn in the book, chapter one, verse 27, where Paul flips from his life and what it looks like for him to live worthy of the Gospel. And he goes to the Philippians and he says, this is how you need to live worthy of the gospel. And 127 is the heading, right? Live as heavenly citizens. Live as heavenly citizens. And in 127, 30. It's how they do that when they have opposition from outside the church.
[00:04:58] 2, 1, 4. How do they do that when there's division and disunity within the church?
[00:05:03] And so he calls them, if you remember, Philippians 2:2 to be of the same mind together.
[00:05:10] Right. Do nothing. Verse 4. From Selfish Ambition or conceit, but in humility to count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others and friends. That sounds great.
[00:05:25] I mean, but what does that look like? How does one do that?
[00:05:30] Well, Paul's now going to paint a portrait. He's really going to call us to look to a person, to the perfect picture of what this kind of living looks like. So Philippians 5, or rather 2 verses, 5 through 11, follow along. As I read, Paul writes, have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
[00:06:18] Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
[00:06:43] Well, friends, we've just come to the theological and christological centerpiece of this entire letter, what many would call sort of the crown jewel of the book.
[00:06:53] And some of your translations may have a typeset where it's like a poem, you know, maybe a song. And many think this could have been an early sort of Christian hymn or song or some kind of liturgy. It's hard to know, but the passage, as we look at it, really contains three distinct movements.
[00:07:11] And the first movement is right there in verse 5. This is the one imperative in 5 to 11. It's right there in verse 5. Paul says, have this mind.
[00:07:21] That's the imperative right there. Verse 5. Have this mind.
[00:07:24] And recall again, Philippians 2. Two called them to be of the same mind. Well, what mind is that? Well, Paul says it's this mind, Verse five, namely, the mindset of Christ.
[00:07:37] That's what Paul calls them to share together.
[00:07:40] And then the second movement picks up in verses 6 to 8, where Paul explains this mindset and how Christ condescended and how. Verse 7, what did he do? He emptied himself by becoming man, taking on the form of a slave.
[00:07:55] Verse 8. And he humbled himself by dying the most shameful of deaths, death on a cross.
[00:08:04] And then that third movement is really verses 9 to 11.
[00:08:07] Paul's going to say, on account of that life, the subject shifts. Now God has both gloriously exalted Christ and bestowed upon Christ now the name that is above every name. So that consequence of that result of that is that all will bow and all will one day confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So notice what we have is we have this big V in the text, right? We start up here with Christ and his pre incarnate state and we move down into the incarnation and we keep descending down, down, down into Christ's crucifixion.
[00:08:45] And then that ends like abruptly, hardly at verse 8.
[00:08:50] And then all of a sudden, boom, we shoot back up like catapult up like SpaceX rocket, like up we go to the exaltation of Christ, right, His resurrection, his ascension, and then the consummation of all things, as all will stand before and declare Christ to be Lord. And that's the movement. And we see all that in just seven verses.
[00:09:12] And I think in a nutshell, here's Paul's argument.
[00:09:15] Paul is saying to them, and really to us, imitate Christ together by walking the road of humiliation.
[00:09:27] You wait for God's vindication.
[00:09:31] Imitate Christ together by walking the road of humiliation as you wait for God's vindication.
[00:09:42] And we're just going to take each of those movements as our three points. So that first point will just be imitate Christ together, right? That's verse five.
[00:09:52] Then the second point, really, verses six to eight, walk the road of Christ's humiliation. That's what they're to do together. And then third, wait for God's vindication. Third wait for God's vindication. That's nine to 11. So first imitate Christ together. Paul says imitate Christ together. That's verse five.
[00:10:12] Have this mind, as Paul says, among yourselves, which is yours, in Christ Jesus.
[00:10:18] Again, we saw this mind, this word mind from last week. And recall Paul when he uses that word. We think mind, we think intellect, but it's not intellect. Paul's after so much as a mindset.
[00:10:30] It's not cerebral, it's social. It's about their relationships and their attitude toward one another.
[00:10:38] And so that's why I'm using this word imitate, right? That's what they're to share together, this mindset of Christ.
[00:10:45] Now sometimes that word imitate, when it comes to Jesus, well, sometimes that can make some of our more conservative, like more reformed evangelical circles that can make us feel more uncomfortable.
[00:10:57] You know, how many of us lived through like the 90s and the what would Jesus do? Right?
[00:11:02] That whole craze, it's the WWJD craze. And maybe you remember it and you remember the quips, right? You don't need a bracelet to tell you what Jesus would do. Just open your Bible and read what Jesus did.
[00:11:14] You know, maybe you heard quips like that or Jesus is not first an example to follow, right? He's a savior to trust. Have you heard things like that? Or maybe. And I remember years ago I read St Francis of Assisi, I read the Imitation of Christ. Many years ago I read the Imitation of Christ published back in the 1200s. And Assisi often took a kind of one to one correlation between Christ's life and the disciples life. And so he would travel often with nothing. He begged for bread, he would kiss, he would kiss lepers, he would often sleep on the ground. As he got older, he would move about fully destitute, in abject poverty, often sleeping naked on the ground in order to picture Christ's humiliation, Christ's own suffering. And at the end of his life he claimed to have a vision of Christ and he claimed to have, you know, marks on his hands and feet and blood that would flow from his side.
[00:12:12] And some have continued on in that own pattern and trajectory. So there's a man in the Philippines and every Easter he has himself nailed to a cross to mark the life of Christ in the imitation of Christ. Last year apparently was his 36th time doing that. I don't physically know how that's possible. I assume there's no spear.
[00:12:36] Right? Point being like we hear all this imitation and sometimes it makes us comfortable because we don't think we're really supposed to do that. And we're not meant to do that.
[00:12:45] And that's why some take this whole passage and they make it all doctrinal. It's all theological. The focus is on what Christ did, incarnation, crucifixion, right, all the rest and all of that, and how that is ours by virtue of being in union with Christ.
[00:13:03] And that's the point.
[00:13:05] Well, which is it, right? Is it like kind of what would Jesus do? Or is it what did Jesus do?
[00:13:13] Which direction are we supposed to go with this text? Or is it both?
[00:13:18] Well friends, we don't really have to pick between the ethical and the doctrinal. It is both. But I want to suggest to you, like it's clear from context, the emphasis and the focus, the accent is on the ethical.
[00:13:30] The accent is on how Paul wants, in light of Christ, these Christians to live together and with One another. It's not just what they believe, it's how in their relationships together, he wants them to model and live out the life of Christ.
[00:13:46] And so another way to paraphrase verse 5 would be to say, in your relationships with one another, have the same attitude as Christ, right, Imitate Christ.
[00:13:58] Which doesn't mean we nail ourselves to crosses. We don't have to relive the particulars of his life. Rather we're called to embrace his mindset, right? To imitate Christ's own value system. What principles did Christ live by?
[00:14:14] How did Christ shape his own decisions?
[00:14:18] You know, those are the questions we want to be asking. So unity, remember? Which is what 2 1, 4 was all about.
[00:14:25] Well, if unity doesn't come by embracing the value system of the world, but rather the value system of Christ, then how do we then move from there, right? What's the questions we should be asking? And sometimes the right question to ask is in fact, what would Jesus do? Pull out the old bracelet from the drawer, right? Put it on. Sometimes that is the right question to ask.
[00:14:48] Would Jesus speak up in this situation or would Jesus walk away?
[00:14:53] Well, when you look closely at the Scriptures, Jesus often spoke up when truth needed defending.
[00:15:03] And yet he also walked away when someone was trying to manipulate him to their own ends or they just wanted to observe him like some kind of circus figure, right? He would walk away. I'm done with that place, that town, you know, would Jesus demand his way? Would he start flipping tables? Or would Jesus be quick to relinquish his rights?
[00:15:25] Well, which one do you choose? Well, it often depended in Jesus life. Whose reputation was he protecting? Was it God's or was it his? You know, was God's reputation at stake? Jesus often acted like he did there in the temple. But you know, when it was own at stake, he often didn't.
[00:15:44] Right? What can we learn from that? How do we apply that? How do we imitate that? That's what Paul's getting after in these verses. And that's what I mean by imitation. How do we do that together?
[00:15:56] Okay, so that's what we're to do. We're to imitate Christ, share Christ's attitude. Okay, what does that look like? Secondly, it begins by walking the road of Christ's humiliation. Second thing to see, walk the road of Christ's humiliation.
[00:16:13] Because that's what we have in verses six to eight, we have this road, this path of descent, where Christ descends into the abyss as he goes from a sovereign all the way to a slave from the glory of God in his pre incarnate state with the Father to the gore of his body nailed upon a cross. That is the path of humiliation that Christ trod for us and we see in these verses and he's saying to us now, learn to walk this road with me.
[00:16:49] Do that together.
[00:16:51] That's the path I've chosen, right? There's the broad path we know that leads to destruction, the destruction of lives, the destruction of churches.
[00:17:01] But Christ says the path of humiliation, well that is narrow and yet it leads the only path to vindication, exaltation, glorification.
[00:17:12] So where does that path begin?
[00:17:14] Recognizing verse 6 that though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. Now here's the perfect case where Paul is actually making doctrinal points right here. He's speaking both of Jesus pre existence and, and his essence pre existence speaks to the fact that Jesus isn't a created being. He's not a created being. There was never a time when Jesus was not right. John 1:1. In the beginning was the Word, right pre existence.
[00:17:50] Now essence speaks to nature. It speaks to Jesus own divinity. Right in the beginning was the Word.
[00:17:57] And the Word was with God and the Word was God, right, divinity. Jesus is both co equal and co eternal with the Father. So all the divine perfections that belong eternally to the Father also belong to Jesus the Son.
[00:18:15] And friends, we just have no concept of this state was like with Jesus before the incarnation, no way to conceptualize it.
[00:18:23] So I don't know about you all, but this past Thursday night I was doing some chores and I had my phone with me and I was watching the launch of the roadster. Maybe some of you saw some clips from that. You know, this launch of this car that goes 0 to 60 in under 1 second and it can literally hang suspended upside down and even fly over cars. I thought it was like all AI generated. Apparently it wasn't. Apparently this is what Musk developed. It's what he designed.
[00:18:52] And in that moment, the richest man of the world, like with his car, he literally looks like he's on top of the world.
[00:18:58] I mean, he's an amazing figure in that moment. And yet Musk can't hold a candle to Christ. Nothing like Jesus Christ.
[00:19:07] I mean, Christ doesn't just own a few companies.
[00:19:11] He owns the very ground Elon walks on.
[00:19:15] He owns that very periodic table of elements that he does all of his experience experiments with, right? He owns the very space that Elon is so proud to say. I'm Going to get to Mars. Jesus is like, mars, Are you kidding me? I own everything. Mars is nothing.
[00:19:32] And yet in Christ, all this pre existent glory, all this majesty, all this equality. What do we read? He did not count it a to be grasped.
[00:19:45] In other words, he didn't use all the prerogatives of deity for his own advantage.
[00:19:53] He didn't use all those prerogatives of deity for his own gain.
[00:19:58] You could say that he refused to assert his divine rights.
[00:20:05] Right? What would Jesus do? Right? He wouldn't assert his rights. He wouldn't recline in his seat. Right? That's the point. I'm just kidding.
[00:20:12] Now this, like, this, this is the kind of stuff that should push against us. This is the kind of stuff that challenges us because again, we're in a rights kind of culture.
[00:20:21] So what happens? We're driving down the car, driving in our cars, driving down the road. We see someone speed up next to us. We see the lane merging. What do some of us do?
[00:20:30] Yeah, we step on the gas, we speed up. We're like, you're not gonna cut in front of me. You know that lane's about to end. Get behind me.
[00:20:36] We're like, this is my lane, I own it.
[00:20:39] Like, when did we own the roads, friends? Like, we don't own the roads. But that's how we think, right? This is my right of way.
[00:20:46] How dare you get in front, cut in front or at work. You know, our boss asks us to do something and we think, and maybe even we say, you know, that's not on my job description.
[00:20:59] Don't say that to your boss. Just word of counsel. Not a good thing to say, you know, at home. We come home and we're like, you know what? I've worked all day. I deserve some me time. And so we just check out or at church, you know, I give money here, right? My preferences should carry some more weight.
[00:21:18] We instinctively ask, what's due me, what am I owed?
[00:21:25] And yet Jesus would have us ask, what can I give up and relinquish for another?
[00:21:33] You know how many fights could be avoided if we simply refused to assert our rights?
[00:21:40] I am always struck by what Paul says in First Corinthians 6, right? Why not rather be wronged?
[00:21:49] That verse just sits in the back of my mind. It kind of haunts me in every moment. Why not right now? Why not rather be wronged?
[00:21:56] What's the worst that can happen?
[00:21:58] Why not be wronged?
[00:22:00] I think many of us read that verse and we're like, why not rather be Wrong. What's Paul talking about? Where's my lawyer?
[00:22:09] Well, friends, it would have been the same with the Philippians, right? They lived in a culture that ran on status and privilege, and those that had status and privilege would exercise it to their own advantage and at every opportunity they had. And that was expected of them. So for Jesus to not leverage that status, to lay aside divine right and prerogative, that was nonsensical.
[00:22:38] And yet that, friends, is part of how we imitate Christ.
[00:22:44] We live to give, not to get.
[00:22:48] What did Jesus say? I came not to be served, but to serve and give my life as a ransom for many right lives of humility, not superiority. That, Paul says, is how we imitate Jesus.
[00:23:04] And Paul's saying, imagine if you all live like that to the Philippian Church, right? Euodia and syntyche. Imagine if you all would just lay aside your rights for a moment, what you think is due you, and gave up all of that for the good of the Church. Imagine Philippian Church, how your gathering might change.
[00:23:25] Imagine how this gathering would change. Imagine how your marriage and that conflict might change, how that strained relationship at work or in here, imagine how that might change with an attitude like this.
[00:23:42] And yet Christ pictures for it, pictures it for us in a concrete way, right? He doesn't leverage his deity for his own gain. What does it say he does instead? He what? He emptied Himself, verse seven, by taking on humanity.
[00:23:59] He emptied himself in the Incarnation, and then he humbled Himself, verse eight, by dying on a cross, right? Crucifixion, emptied himself.
[00:24:10] Now, that expression has caused considerable consternation, if you know anything about the history of Philippians 2, because the implication some have drawn from that verb empty is that Christ drained himself of some of his divine attributes, right? In becoming human, in that sense, he emptied. He became sort of less divine. And this was especially popular in the 19th, some of the early 20th centuries. The problem is that elsewhere in the New Testament, that word is used. It's often used physically, figuratively, metaphorically, to deprive, to make of no effect.
[00:24:48] So don't think of this as Jesus divested himself of his deity, or even that he exchanged his deity for humanity. He's like, I'm going to give up my deity and I'm going to take on humanity. That's not how you should read that word empty.
[00:25:02] Verse 7 explicitly says he emptied himself. He deprived himself how? By taking the form of a slave, which is to say, by being born in the likeness of men.
[00:25:14] Paul saying, jesus emptied himself by becoming human fully God, and yet fully man, right? That's the incarnation. That's how he emptied himself. Jesus laid aside not his divine perfections. He didn't lay those aside. He rather laid aside the divine prerogatives that the status as the pre existent Son would have blessed him with. And he did that by becoming one of us.
[00:25:44] There's a Presbyterian author and writer named Brian Chappell, and he knew an African missionary. And he tells the story of this African missionary working with a tribe.
[00:25:55] And in this tribe, the chief was always the strongest man.
[00:26:01] And so the chief would receive this elaborate headdress and these ceremonial robes, and that's what he would wear around the tribe.
[00:26:10] And yet one day, one of the tribesmen fell into this well, a pretty deep well, and he banged and then he hit the bottom and he broke a leg. And there he was, stuck destitute at the bottom of the well and destined to die. No one could get down the well to get him. But because no one was strong enough to get him out.
[00:26:30] Well, when the chief observed this, being the strongest man, there were these little holes in the rock on the way down. You could serve as kind of holders. Well, what did he do? He laid aside his headdress, his elaborate headdress. He laid aside the ceremonial robes.
[00:26:46] And like one of them, he descended down into the depths of that well.
[00:26:52] And then he grabbed that helpless man and put him on his shoulders and then climbed back up out of that well.
[00:27:02] Right? In order to descend into the deep, the chief had to lay aside the status and the trappings of royalty, right? No headdress, no robes. He became like one of the people. And yet, at the bottom of the well, the chief wasn't any less.
[00:27:18] He was still chief.
[00:27:21] And so also Jesus, when he came in the Incarnation, did he lay aside his heavenly glory? Yes.
[00:27:30] He condescended to us in humanity. And he became like us in order to save us, to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, like the man trapped in the bottom of that well.
[00:27:47] And so, friends, we can exclaim, Hallelujah.
[00:27:52] What a savior.
[00:27:55] Because there is no savior like this Jesus, friends. There is none.
[00:28:01] There is none like him. None who would condescend like this. None who would exchange the glory of being with his Father in heaven to be with us. I mean, we like to think we're fun to be with. But, friends, no one would make that trade.
[00:28:19] No one would.
[00:28:21] He became like us, which means he grew tired and weary, hungry and thirsty. Jesus knew pain. Jesus knew suffering. Jesus knew death. He knew mourning. He knew what it meant to be misunderstood.
[00:28:35] Jesus knew what it meant to be unloved. Jesus knew what it meant to be rejected. He knew what it meant to be laughed at, to be mocked, to be ridiculed. And at any point Jesus could have said, you know what, God, that is enough.
[00:28:48] Like, that's just enough. I have hit the limit, I've hit the end and I am done with these pitiful, contemptible, ungrateful people. Like, that's it. At any point he could have said it and he would have been right to say it.
[00:29:06] And I assure you, we in his shoes would have done that at some point.
[00:29:13] And how do I know we would have done that? Because, friends, we do it all the time over much lesser things.
[00:29:20] Every one of us hits that point when we're like, enough's enough, right? No more. I'm not taking it anymore. Just could be a conversation, right? Like, I'm done with this. And we just kind of bite back, right?
[00:29:33] We've been pressed enough. We bite back. It's a sharp word. Maybe it's a passive aggressive text, right? Those are always fun.
[00:29:40] Maybe it's just withdraw and escape, right? That's how we behave.
[00:29:48] Ah, Jesus did none of that.
[00:29:52] And he didn't just empty himself at the incarnation. He then went on to humble himself. And verse eight, at the crucifixion, you know, we read back in two, three, Paul says, in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. What does that mean? Paul's saying again, look to Jesus. All these parallels, verbal parallels between 5 to 11 and 1 to 4, he's saying, look to Jesus. And remember last week, friends, humility in the Greco Roman world, that was not a virtue.
[00:30:23] Humility was a vice.
[00:30:24] Humility was about weakness. Humility was about servility. Humility was only fit for slaves, for those who were subhuman. No respectable human being would ever be humble.
[00:30:35] Certainly no God would ever condescend like this.
[00:30:39] In the Greco Roman world. Humans wanted to become gods, right? You would, you would try to move up in the world. No God would come down and take the form of human flesh.
[00:30:50] And yet that's exactly what Jesus did. He emptied himself in the incarnation and then he would go on to humble himself at the crucifixion and notice nobody did that for him and nobody did it to him, right? Herod didn't humble him. Pilate didn't humble him. The chief priests and the Romans, nobody humbled Jesus. Jesus was humbled himself.
[00:31:16] He did it to himself.
[00:31:21] And I highlight that because sometimes we can read the stories.
[00:31:26] And we're left to think like, oh, poor little Jesus.
[00:31:30] Oh, how poor little Jesus was treated.
[00:31:34] And we pity Jesus like he was helpless.
[00:31:40] Like we pity helpless people, you know, people who can't change their plight.
[00:31:46] But friends, that's not Jesus. At any point he could have changed his plight. Any point, he could have.
[00:31:53] There's no pity for Jesus.
[00:31:56] Jesus doesn't need your pity. He doesn't want your pity.
[00:32:01] Don't pity him. No, stop and wonder at this one.
[00:32:05] Marvel at one who would love like this.
[00:32:11] Awe is appropriate for one like this, who would humble himself. So he doing it to himself.
[00:32:22] Because at any moment, right, he could have climbed up out of that. Well, if you want to put it like that, right? But he didn't. He didn't do that. He kept descending down, down deeper into the hellish deep by becoming obedient to the point of death. We read even death on a cross, friends. Jesus did not die peacefully in his sleep.
[00:32:47] Jesus didn't have a sudden stroke or a heart attack.
[00:32:50] He was viciously tortured. He was stripped naked. He would then nail to a beam of wood before sneering, scoffing, spitting crowds.
[00:33:01] The cross, friends, was scandalous to Romans and Greeks. It wasn't just a curse word. It was like a racial slur, a word that Romans would never utter out loud.
[00:33:18] It was why it was forbidden. The word was actually forbidden in public use. No Roman was ever to use the word cross.
[00:33:25] It's one of the reasons why crosses weren't Christian symbols for hundreds of years.
[00:33:29] Because no one wanted to dangle an offensive slur, a racial slur around their neck or something that was an indication of torture. They just didn't do it for hundreds of years.
[00:33:40] And when we think of the cross, what do we tend to think about? We tend to think often about the suffering, the physical suffering Jesus endured. And Catholicism tends to focus a lot on that. Just think of Mel Gibson's the Passion of the Christ, the emphasis on the physical suffering.
[00:33:55] But, you know, interesting, when you read the Gospels, that's actually not where the Bible puts the emphasis. It's not the suffering, not principally.
[00:34:03] And if it's not the suffering, sometimes we really focus on the spiritual anguish that Jesus endured. As Jesus bore the weight of our sin, even more as he bore the wrath of his own father, you know, and in our tradition, we tend to focus often here on that spiritual anguish.
[00:34:21] What we don't often think about is the shame.
[00:34:25] We're not a shame culture. We don't think about the shame.
[00:34:29] But friends, the Social stigma. The shame of crucifixion was immense.
[00:34:35] The humiliation, the degradation of one's soul and person as they hung naked and exposed the utter abasement to a Roman. The suffering, right. Spiritual anguish. They wouldn't have had a concept for that. But the suffering like that was nothing in comparison to the humiliation and the shame of the cross.
[00:35:02] It's why it was such a scandal. It was why it was such a stumbling block, right? That God of all people would suffer the shame of a crucified like subhuman slave.
[00:35:14] That was despicable. That was unconscionable. No one would do that. Certainly not voluntarily. Not God.
[00:35:21] You know, sometimes we think it's hard to preach Jesus to our culture today.
[00:35:26] Try preaching the cross in Philippi.
[00:35:30] We understand and should understand why it was such a stumbling block, why it was such a scandal.
[00:35:37] And notice Jesus did it out of what? Out of obedience.
[00:35:43] Do you wonder who is he obedient to?
[00:35:45] Obedient to whom?
[00:35:47] To us?
[00:35:49] No, obedient to his own father.
[00:35:52] He's obedient to his own father. You know, it can be easy if we're not careful to make the cross all about God's love for us.
[00:36:01] And thus we become central in God's own affections.
[00:36:05] Oh, how he loves me.
[00:36:08] You know the old David Crowder song, right? You know the chorus?
[00:36:12] Well, recognize then we become of infinite value.
[00:36:16] The cross becomes all about me.
[00:36:19] But actually, that's not what the Bible teaches.
[00:36:23] We are not central in God's affections. God is central in God's own affections. Jesus suffered the shame of the cross not because I'm so amazing and I'm so special, but because God is.
[00:36:38] Because his Father is.
[00:36:41] So when we become Christians, what do we do? We enter into that joy, the same joy the Son has for the Father and vice versa. We enter into the joy of our Master. And nothing satisfies the human soul more than knowing and participating in this love between Father and Son and the obedience that comes where we get to make much of God, not make much of us.
[00:37:10] And sometimes that strikes us as offensive.
[00:37:13] Like, hey, you're getting. You're taking me right out of the equation.
[00:37:17] Well, yeah, a little bit. A little bit. You know, go read John 10. Go read John 14. Read pretty much anything by Jonathan Edwards or just listen to a single Piper sermon and he'll rip you to pieces on this one. All right?
[00:37:32] No, friend, nobody ever started as high as Jesus, and no one ever descended as low as Jesus.
[00:37:42] Friends, if he was willing to relinquish all the rights and prerogatives of Deity if he was willing to descend down into those hellish depths. On what basis do any of us have to talk about rights?
[00:37:57] What basis?
[00:37:59] How can we demand anything before this one who gave up everything?
[00:38:05] He's who we're to imitate and imagine what our lives would be like if we imitated that.
[00:38:13] Emptying ourself for others, humbling ourselves before others, living lives of radical obedience and radical devotion to God, not us.
[00:38:26] What might that mean for us?
[00:38:31] Well, that's how we're to walk. Thirdly, while we wait. Thirdly, wait for God's vindication. While we wait for God's vindication.
[00:38:41] You know, in verse nine, everything dramatically shifts. Kind of like an earthquake happens in sort of the hard, staccato statements of verses 6 to 8. They give way to this thematically rich and glorious depictions of exaltation of all things. Right? And notice God now breaks into the scenes. It's like he's been into the background, but he's waiting anxiously. And he breaks into the scene in verse nine, and he comes to the fore because the story isn't over, right? The consequence of Christ's humiliation is what, therefore, God's vindication.
[00:39:15] He vindicates Christ. He exalts Christ.
[00:39:18] You see that in the resurrection and the ascension and finally the coronation, when he gets the name above all names, crowned as king. As we open this morning, crowned with many crowns, God exalts him and bestows upon him, verse 9, the name above all names. And that name that Paul's referencing is likely the name Lord, the one that comes up later in verse 11.
[00:39:40] Jesus Christ is what is Lord.
[00:39:43] That's the earliest Christian confession.
[00:39:46] Jesus is just the name given to him at his birth.
[00:39:49] Christ is really a title. It just means Messiah. He's the promised and prophesied One from the Old Testament.
[00:39:56] But then Lord really speaks to his sovereign rule that he is the supreme one, the one, as Paul says, to whom every knee will bow and every tongue confess.
[00:40:10] And that's actually a quote of Isaiah 45 that we had for our call to worship this morning. You know, in Isaiah 45, that is actually applied to God.
[00:40:21] And yet here Paul applies it to Jesus, knowing Jesus is both fully God and fully man.
[00:40:31] And the result of the exalted Christian, when God launches him and brings him back out of the depths and establishes him at his right hand. The result is what?
[00:40:44] That knees bow, that tongues confess. And not just some right, but every knee we read in every tongue. Because Jesus is Lord, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. Because there is no realm in all the universe where Christ doesn't cross mine and own it and possess it.
[00:41:04] His rule is universal.
[00:41:07] And friends, that means every knee. That means every knee in this room.
[00:41:11] That means every knee that has ever existed will one day bow before Jesus, either in joyful submission or that knee will be broken in frustration and indignation.
[00:41:29] But don't mistake. One way or another, every knee will bow.
[00:41:34] Adam and Eve, they bow the knee.
[00:41:37] Cain and Abel will bow the knee.
[00:41:39] Moses and Pharaoh will bow the knee.
[00:41:43] Judas, Herod, Nero, who called himself Lord, he will bow one day before the true Lord, Hitler. Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, like just pick whatever name, your unsaved neighbor, your classmate, your co worker, your grandfather, everyone one day will bow the knee.
[00:42:05] The question is not if, it is simply when.
[00:42:09] And all will confess. They're not going to mumble, they're not going to whisper. They will confess. As in, they will declare with their mouths that Jesus Christ is Lord.
[00:42:19] Even Satan himself will cry, jesus Christ is Lord. Through through gritted teeth perhaps. But he will do it because Christ demands it and he deserves it. And he will have it from him.
[00:42:35] So recognize, if you've come and you've come and you're not a believer, you're not a Christian.
[00:42:41] I get this can be a hard thing to hear. I was a Unitarian once. I thought all roads lead to heaven. And then I read Jesus. I'm like, I was taught this guy was a good moral teacher. This is not good moral teaching.
[00:42:52] But this is what the Bible teaches.
[00:42:55] And just know that the same Jesus who died for sinners, who condescended so low to die for sinners, that same Jesus is the one who demands your worship and your obedience.
[00:43:11] And it's right and good that you give it to him.
[00:43:16] So bow before him, come to him, confess your sins to him, entrust your life to Him. I mean, consider how he has lived and loved. Who else would you possibly give your life to?
[00:43:29] You can't live like this.
[00:43:31] Live for yourself. I mean, how's that going to work out for you? What about living for this one?
[00:43:36] This Jesus, fully God and fully man. What an awesome privilege to have him as your God. He can be repent of your sins, Turn to him, walk with Him. He will receive you. He will take you. You will never regret it.
[00:43:52] To the believers who are here, right Jesus, he is living proof that all who humble themselves will be exalted again. Remember, Rome was an honor. Culture, your status in society was determined by whatever aristocrat or whatever authority above you was willing to confer honors upon you.
[00:44:15] And then you carried those honors, you carried those titles with you. And when you were introduced, you were introduced with all those titles. Kind of like, you know, in England, they still introduced, you know, princes and the rest. Right? With all those titles, you're like, what are all those titles mean? It was the same idea.
[00:44:30] And the more titles you received, the more you were elevated in society.
[00:44:35] And Paul saying to these Philippians, listen, I know you love to live for these titles and all of these honors conferred by men.
[00:44:42] But Paul's saying, what about the honor and what about the status that comes when God himself exalts you?
[00:44:50] What about that? What do all these honors and titles today? What do they mean in comparison to that day when God will exalt you in Christ?
[00:45:00] And why would you not live for that day? I mean, who else could honor you? Who would be greater than Jesus to confer such honors?
[00:45:09] Friends, it's a reminder to us that our status before God, that status before Jesus, is of ultimate and final importance.
[00:45:17] Which means we don't have to panic when someone thinks less of us.
[00:45:22] It means we can afford to suffer the loss of our reputation today.
[00:45:28] We don't have to go out and launch a PR campaign to kind of protect ourselves, to restore our reputation and our name.
[00:45:38] Even worse, we don't defame those who would perhaps defame us.
[00:45:47] God will take care of all that because He's God and He's just.
[00:45:53] And nothing escapes his notice. He knows he's got it right. Entrust yourself to him one way or another. God has a way of taking care of all. All of these things.
[00:46:04] Walk the path of humiliation while you wait for God's vindication.
[00:46:11] You know, I note at the outset, our culture is a Washington rights language, right? Road rage, air rage, individuals asserting rights, asserting and demanding what they believe they are rightfully owed.
[00:46:24] And some of that same culture, friends, was alive and well in Philippi. That same culture is alive and well in. In our own culture today.
[00:46:32] Paul points a different way because he knows that kind of thinking doesn't just obscure the gospel. That kind of thinking actually directly opposes the gospel.
[00:46:44] So if we're to live as heavenly citizens, Paul's saying, you've got to value the needs of your brothers and sisters above your own.
[00:46:52] And there is no better model for us than Jesus Christ.
[00:46:56] So Paul is saying, imitate him together. Yeah, you do it, like, individually, but imitate him. Paul's saying, together among yourselves, emptying yourself of your rights.
[00:47:09] Humbling yourself before God and before one another.
[00:47:12] And holding fast to the hope that all who humble themselves will one day be exalted.
[00:47:22] Friends, let's live that way together.
[00:47:25] Let's pray.
