Philippians 2:1-11 - Pursuing Jesus By Adopting His Outlook
Main Idea: Following Jesus’ example, we must humbly & intentionally care for others.
1. THE ENCOURAGEMENT TO HUMILITY (vs. 1-4)
a. We’ve been given everything we have.
b. We bring joy by sacrificing our own way.
c. We are called to value others more than ourselves.
2. THE EXAMPLE OF HUMILITY (vs. 5-11)
a. Jesus did not value His position more than us.
b. Jesus sacrificed Himself for our joy.
c. The Father gave Him everything as a result.
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)
I really enjoyed our series 1 Pursuit, and this letter from Paul to the church at Philippi. This was written from a jail cell. This wasn't written from a cushy place in his life.
He was on house arrest in Rome. He had received a care package, if you will, from one of the pastors in Philippi, Epaphroditus.
And Epaphroditus told him what was going on at the church, how they were experiencing some persecution, just like Paul was experiencing persecution. They were going through some infighting.
There were some false teachers that were coming along, and were telling them, Jesus is great. Grace and faith is wonderful, but how about you add in some of the Old Testament laws?
And I think if you add these in, then you'll really have some great spirituality. And so Paul's writing to kind of combat some of those things, to tell them, hey, here's how I'm doing. I'm doing great, still spreading the gospel.
I've got a captive audience, even though I'm in the jail cell, all of the guards that are guarding me, they're getting a front row ticket to the gospel concert.
And you could even see some of that in Acts chapter 16, where Paul and Silas, when they were at Philippi, planting the church, they were arrested. They were thrown into prison. And while they were in prison, they were singing praises to God.
And at midnight, an earthquake came, broke open the jail cell doors. And God was able to work many miracles through that.
If you're following along in our Tabernacle Talk podcast, which is going through the book of Acts, I think we get there probably in a day or two now.
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So I would encourage you, if you haven't been following along with that, you can do so on our church Facebook, our church YouTube, wherever you listen to podcasts, or if you go on to our church website, the most recent episode is always right there
for you. The only reason I make that plug is because it's directly tied to so many things, both that we're going over today and in the coming days. So I would encourage you be in God's Word. It's a wonderful thing.
It's a great thing. Today, we're going to be looking in verses 1 through 11 of chapter 2 of pursuing Jesus by adopting His outlook. Have you noticed that expectations, what you expect to happen can change your whole perception of an event?
Let's say someone plays the violin. If I were to tell you that, oh, so-and-so plays the violin. Well, big deal.
Lots of people play the violin. Not everyone does, so it's kind of cool, but it's not a big deal. But if I told you that they didn't have arms and played the violin, now you're interested.
You can look up, I know I can't remember the artist's name at the moment, but there is an individual that they play violin with just their feet, and they have worked all of that out. It's an incredible thing.
If someone says, I'd like to order a McDouble, the only amazing thing about that might be the damage to their health, maybe, but it's not that big a deal. But if that someone that said, I'd like to order a McDouble was a dog, incredible.
I can't believe he said that. Your expectations of something can change your entire outlook.
In our passage today, Paul encourages the Philippian believers to change their outlook, to change their expectations of what other people owed them and what they owed to others. He didn't just give them this instruction though.
He gave them the ultimate example of what he wanted them to do. He wanted them to follow Jesus' example in his actions and in his mindset.
In fact, as we come to this section of Philippians, every other portion of the book ties into this story of Jesus, how he lived his life, how he viewed his role, what he did for us, and his exultation by God the Father.
There are words and phrases that are tied from this central section. Everything else connects to it. I'll highlight a few of them as we walk through the passage this morning.
But the central point of our text for today is that following Jesus's example, we must humbly and intentionally care for others. We must humbly and intentionally care for others. We can see this stated in verse number five.
Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus. What was the attitude that Christ had? What was his outlook?
Humility. An outlook that said, I'm not anything special, but you're valuable and special and worth something. And so I'm going to spend my time and energy on you.
How in the world could we have that kind of outlook in life? Well, let's dive into our passage and see from God's word first in verses one through four, we see the encouragement to humility. The encouragement to humility.
And we see first that we've been given everything that we have. We can see this in verse number one, if then there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and mercy.
In this verse, Paul's going to bring everything to a head, but he starts off by saying, okay, I want you guys to be humble based on this.
He says, if there is any encouragement, if anyone has ever come alongside you, the word here is the same word that's used of the comforter of the Holy Spirit when Jesus is saying, I'm gonna go so that the comforter will come and be with you.
He says, if there has been any encouragement for you, someone has come alongside you in Christ, if any consolation of love, he says, if anyone has ever said any kind word to you, any loving word to you, he says, if there is any fellowship, this ties
back to the partnership that he mentioned in chapter one and verse five, if there's any fellowship with the Spirit, if any partnership, if God has partnered with you, he says, if any affection and mercy. So here, in Greek, the very literal term is,
if there's any bowels and intestines, which doesn't translate super cleanly to us, we go, I think there's bowels and intestines, so yes, I gotta be humble. But the specific phrasing used here in most of our Bibles communicates the exact same type of
thought. It's the affection. So your bowels, if you'll remember from chapter one and verse eight, your bowels are kind of that seat of love, seat of emotions. If you really felt angry at someone, you were angry at them from your bowels.
And there in mercy is your intestines. It was thought to be during that time where compassion lives.
He says, if you feel strongly about anything, if you have felt the compassion that God brings in your life, he says, if any of this stuff is true, then you need to be humble. And I want us to notice something in all of these things.
The encouragement in Christ. Okay, encouragement in Christ. Does that originate from us or from God?
From God, it's the encouragement in Christ. If any consolation of love, how do we know God's love? Is that strictly from how we interact with each other?
Could you look at our world today and say, oh, yes, definitely godly, divine, sacrificial love. That happens between people very naturally. No, of course not.
That's something that comes down from the Lord. There is any fellowship with the Spirit. Okay, well, does our fellowship with the Spirit happen because he was doing his own thing and we reached out to him or because he reached out to us?
Okay, the Spirit fellowshiped with us. Here, the affection and mercy. How do we know the love of God?
How do we know the compassion that he has? I think several times throughout the gospels where it says that Jesus, looking at needy people, looking at people who did not have a shepherd, he was moved with compassion.
How do we have that same compassion? Because he has given it to us. All of these things do not originate from you.
So it's not, okay, well, I don't have a couple of these things and so I don't have to be humble. No, no, no, my friend. All of these things come from God.
He has given them to every single person, whether you have known Christ for 60 years or whether you are just embarking on your faith journey, Jesus loves you. He has given these things to you. He wants to know you, to have a relationship with you.
Not only that, but I think of our very life, our very breath, our daily sustaining, all comes from the Lord. Psalm 145 says, let everything that has breath praise Yahweh.
In the Book of Acts, Paul would say that in Jesus, we live and move and have our being. Psalm 136, the psalmist would write, he gives food to every creature.
In Ecclesiastes 6, Solomon would write, God gives a person riches, wealth and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all he desires for himself. If you have anything today, it comes from the Lord.
You do not have breath, you do not have strength in order to accomplish everything that you have in your life. Your family has all been placed there by God because he loves you.
It says in the Bible that he causes it to rain on the just and the unjust. Nowadays, we think of rain as a bad thing. It makes it hard to drive.
We get our hair wet. Back in these times where it was agricultural and you wanted crops, you wanted food to be able to eat, rain was a good thing.
And he says he causes it to rain on the just, the righteous, the ones that have it all together, and the unjust, the ones that are far away from God, that have no interest in it. God supplies to every person their breath and their life.
So we can't take credit for any of it. We can't exalt ourself and say, ah, well, God may have given a couple of things to me, but I really made all of this. No, no, no.
God has sustained you every moment of your life. Everything that you have is a wonderful gift from him. But not only is just our life, our breath, our daily walking, not only is all of that from God, but our salvation itself is from God.
Titus 3.5 says, not by works of righteousness that we've done, but according to his mercy, he saved us. Ephesians 2.8 and 9 says, by grace, by God's unmerited favor, you have been saved through faith. And that's not from yourselves.
It's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Orman's chapter 3 says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God in order that Christ's righteousness might be shown to be the only remedy.
Our salvation is not something that we did. We can't say, oh, wow, God, I'm really glad that, I'm really glad for you that I signed up to your team because some of these other people, no, no, no, no, salvation is all of God.
And I see our sanctification in Galatians 3 where Paul says, did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? After beginning in the spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
Today, who you are, if you say, man, I've really come a long way in my Christian walk since when I started, that is all from God. God didn't just get you started off on the path. He has been with you every single moment.
If you look a little more like Jesus today than you did three years ago or 10 years ago or two weeks ago, it is only by the grace of Jesus. It is nothing that we can boast in.
We can't say, oh, well, you know, I really give a lot of money to God and I'm pretty great. No, no, no, God gave you all that money. God gave you the desire to be able to give money.
You might say, oh man, I do all sorts of things for the poor or for the needy. That's a wonderful thing. That's something God has done in you.
It's something he has gifted you with. It is not of our own righteousness.
Jude in his letter wrote, now to him who is able to protect you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory without blemish and with great joy to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power,
and authority before all time now and forever. Amen. If you say I've stayed on the right path, it's not you. It's him protecting you and keeping you from stumbling.
If you say I have stumbled in the past, and now I'm not stumbling anymore, it's God that picked you back up and put you on the path so that he could present you blameless. We have been given everything that we have. Why has God given us all of this?
1 Corinthians 4 and verses 6 and 7 would say this, the purpose is that none of you will be arrogant, favoring one person over another, for who makes you so superior? What do you have that you didn't receive?
If in fact you did receive it, why do you boast as if you hadn't received it?
Think about if I were to give my son, my almost four-year-old son, a bumper car, and he were to go around to all of his four-year-old friends, he has so many of them, four-year-old friends and say, hey, look at this bumper car that I put together
and, you know, I worked for the money, I bought it and it's got all of one horsepower in it. And we would go, what are you doing? You didn't do anything for this.
And yet when we come to our spiritual life, we often think, okay, yeah, I've done all of this. No, no, no, it is a gift from our loving heavenly father. So Paul starts it off with this, okay, I want you to be humble.
I want you to be humble because we've been given everything that we have. Secondly, we bring joy by sacrificing our own way. We need to be humble because we bring joy by sacrificing our own way.
Verse number two, make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.
Almost all of these phrases, he's taking things that he started off with in the beginning of the letter and he's re-utilizing them. So make my joy complete. He's saying, I want you to fill up my joy, just like he said in chapter one and verse nine.
He says, I want you to fill it up by thinking the same way, by setting your mind on the same thing. So Colossians three, where it says, set your affections, put your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.
He says, I want you to set your mind on the same thing, just like he said in chapter one and verse seven.
He says, I want you to have the same love, that agape, that love that goes just beyond, I'm really good friends with this person, a sacrificial love. He says, I want you to be united in spirit. He says, I want you guys to have one soul.
It's one way that you are thinking, one purpose that you have. He says, intent on one purpose. He actually uses the exact same word again.
It's franeo, thinking the same way, intent on one purpose, same Greek word. So here Paul is making like a sandwich of humility that he's telling them to have.
The bread is, I want you guys to put your mind on the same thing and what goes inside the sandwich. Why would I think the exact same thing as Myron's thinking? Why would I want to think the same thing that Dean is thinking?
Well, because of our love and because of our spirit, that we are together with them, that I love them and I'm together with them. And so that's why we can have this humility sandwich, eat a humble sandwich.
This is a commitment to those, specifically here he's talking to those in a local church.
He's telling them to have a commitment that you would say, you might naturally drive me crazy if our relationship was based on similar personalities or interests.
But because those things don't matter, like people matter, I'm 100% with you no matter where this road takes us. Here he's telling them, I want you guys to have one focus, love each other while you're doing it, be united in what you're doing.
And just because this was something that we went over recently in Tabernacle Talk in Acts chapter 15, I wonder if Paul's mind went to a point in time where he didn't do this, where him and Barnabas were going to set out on their second missionary
journey, and John Mark, Barnabas' nephew, had abandoned them on the first journey. And Barnabas on the second one said, Hey, we'll bring John Mark along again. Paul went, No, no, no, no, he abandoned us the first time. I'm not taking him again.
And it says that there was such a sharp disagreement between the two that Paul ended up taking Silas. He would go to Philippi in the following chapter, and Barnabas took John Mark, and they went to the island of Cyprus.
And I wonder here if Paul might be thinking back along that journey, even along that journey where he first met the Philippians, and he goes, yeah, I didn't work with love towards John Mark.
Later, he would get that relationship rectified, and we could see that in other places in Scripture. But in that moment, I wonder if he thought, oh, we didn't have our mind on the same thing.
Barnabas' mind was on reconciliation, on loving, on forgiving, on doing the gospel work together. And my mind was not on that.
And I think many of us have been in that boat before, where we're not focusing on what the Lord has for us and where we have detoured.
It's kind of interesting from that passage where Paul and Barnabas split up, where it says that there was such sharp disagreement.
It's a big emotional outburst, is the same word that the writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 10 says, I want you to provoke one another to love and to good works.
I want you to kind of stick it to them, not to get them angry, but I want you to help bring an emotional response to love and to good works. Many of us have big emotions about lots of things.
Do you have big emotions about loving others and about doing good works?
That's our call as Christians, that we are to have a humility that says, all right, God, this person definitely rubs me the wrong way, but it doesn't matter because I'm putting my mind on the main thing. The main thing is the gospel.
The main thing is the furtherance of your kingdom. So here Paul says all of these things. He has the sandwich.
He says, if you eat the sandwich, you're going to make my joy complete. You're going to fill my joy meter all the way up. Who gets joy when we give up our wants?
Obviously, the Apostle Paul is no longer with us. He's in heaven. So who gets joy when we surrender our wants?
Well, God gets joy. He gets joy when his children decide they're not going to bicker like the devil's children. They're not going to fight amongst themselves, but they're going to be unified, having the same spirit, same love, united in one purpose.
God gets joy. Our church gets joy.
Would you rather have a church that is full of infighting and bickering and complaining, or a church that is focused centrally on God's work, on seeing people saved, on seeing people discipled, on seeing our community reach for Christ?
Which one of those brings you joy? Our church gets joy as we surrender our own way, as we sacrifice our own wants.
Our community gets joy when they have a church that they're not seeing, you know, 1 Corinthians where there's some suing of different members that's going on.
Well, that didn't bring joy to a community, but when a community can see a church that loves one another and loves them, that brings joy.
And the other person that you're interacting with, that you're sacrificing your wants and your desires for the big picture, that you're being humble, that you're not demanding your own way, well, that brings joy to the other person because you are
showing deference to them. And you get joy as a result. The joy of knowing you are following and obeying Christ. The joy of knowing that you are mimicking Jesus' example that we'll get to in just a moment.
Lastly here, we can see that we are called to value others more than ourselves. So we've been given everything that we have, we bring joy when we sacrifice what we want, and we are called to value others more than ourselves.
Verse number three, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others. Why be humble?
Many of us would wonder that. We say, I have nothing to be humble about. I've done a lot of great things in my life.
I haven't done a bunch of bad things. I'm pretty great. Why should I be humble?
Paul says this, do nothing out of selfish ambition. This is from chapter one in verse 17, that electioneering, that's that politicking, that trying to make yourself look really good.
Oh yeah, I've done all these wonderful things as we enter into an election year. You'll see a lot of electioneering. May we not have that kind of attitude, that selfish ambition, I want to have this, I want to be this, I want to do this.
Let nothing be done out of selfish ambition or conceit. This is empty glory. It's someone that's talking about stuff, and they say how great they are, and everyone knows none of what they're saying is true.
None of it's real. He says don't do anything out of electioneering or boasting about yourself, but in humility, which is thinking lowly of oneself.
This would be back in the day where you would have kings, you would have different people that maybe you would bow to, that you would kneel before as a show of reverence for them. He says you need to think lowly about yourself.
And he says I want you to consider, to lead your mind to think this way. It's not that your mind just naturally considers other people more important than yourself. You have to lead your mind.
You tell you what to think. You aren't a slave to your thoughts. The Bible says we can take thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ.
That is our call. So he says lead your mind to think of others as more important, as superior to yourself. So why be humble?
Realize why would we think of ourselves as lowly? We are sinners. We are sinners from our mother's wounds.
We are enemies of God by nature and by daily choice. We are sinful. We are naturally far from God.
Paul called himself an apostle, the chief of sinners. He realized I am nothing special. I have nothing good that I bring to the table.
Anything good comes from Jesus. So when I think about me, I'm thinking of myself lowly. I'm thinking of myself humbly.
We have no reason to boast ourselves. Now, I say that, now some of you might be thinking, okay, then why should I think highly of other people if they're all in the exact same boat that I am? Here's why.
Because they are images of God, pictures of His order and His personality. They were created for relationship with Him, and He doesn't want a single one of them to die, but to experience eternal life through Christ.
Once saved, others are His royal heirs, indwelled by God the Holy Spirit. They are your spiritual brothers and sisters. They are priests of God, who will judge the heavenly beings who rebelled against God.
Other believers are worthy of your love and respect and attention. That's also true of you, by the way. But as we think about humility, it is esteeming others highly and saying, I don't deserve anything.
I'm here to serve other people. And then I noticed in verse number four, it says everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others. This word, look, is the Greek word, skopas.
It's literally to scope out. How many hunters are in the room? OK, small handful.
If you are going to scope something out, if you're just looking with the naked eye and you're just maybe looking in the woods, you go, ah, there's nothing. The word scope out is, OK, lock in. Look for how you can care for others.
It's not a passing glance. It is an intimate job that you have been given by God. All of you are snipers for the interests of others.
Some of you might be better shots than others. But you are now designated snipers for the Lord. How can you care for someone else?
What are you trying to scope out? There are so many ways that we can care for the interests of others. We can pray for others.
We can take time to look at, to see what do they need prayer for, to ask them, maybe to ask someone close to them if they are a little bit shy or they aren't as likely to give the information. Scope out how you can pray for other people.
Scope out if others need time from you. Maybe they might be someone that's lonely and they just need some time.
Scope out, intentionally look at not just what you can do to fill your schedule, but how you can help others, how you can be invested in their interests. Scope out prayer. Scope out time.
Maybe if someone needs food. I love you all. I don't want anyone to amen this.
I might not be the person that really needs food that badly, but there are people in our community that are in desperate need of food and help. And maybe you are equipped by God to be able to see those needs, but you gotta scope it out.
You gotta look intently. If we're just doing a passing glance, we won't notice it. Food, for some people it might be clothing.
For other people it might be finances. For some people it might be you are able to care for their interests by giving them correction, going, hey, I see that you're hanging out with these people. This is not a good crowd to run with.
The actions that they are doing are not good. And maybe you can scope out how you can help them by helping them back on to the right path. It might be scoping other people out for fun, that God has given us joy through the Holy Spirit.
And some people need a little bit of that joy to, Pastor Ron, what's the word, slosh over onto them? They need some of that joy sloshing over onto their life.
And maybe you say, okay, I don't see many of the other things, but there's someone that I can invest some fun in. Don't care just about your life. Care about the lives of others.
Scope it out. I have in here written, Wednesday is Valentine's Day, guys.
This week, Lord willing, some of you are going to be scoping out, if you haven't already, some needs for your wife, some things that she wants, some flowers that she might like. And you can scope that out.
You're hopefully paying attention to that because she's important to you, and you care about her.
You need to have, maybe not that level of scoping out for other people, but we ought to have a level that says, I am caring not just about me, I'm caring about others. Because others, from the passage, others are more important than I am.
Because I'm called to love them, I'm called to serve them, I'm nobody, other people are important, I'm going to serve and love them. This is a tall task. How in the world could we possibly do this?
Everything we just said is now going to go in reverse, reverse order. If you have your little handout that has the outline on it, you can see everything goes to the central point, and then it mirrors itself as it goes out.
Here's the example of humility that Paul sets out in verses 5 through 11. First, he says, Jesus did not value his position more than us. So we're called to value others more than ourselves.
Jesus did not value his position more than he valued us. He says adopt the same attitude.
This is that set your mind, set your mind to be the same as Christ Jesus' mind, who existing in the form of God did not consider, so that's leading his mind to view, he didn't consider equality with God as something to be exploited.
So just because he was equal with God, just because he was God the Son, didn't mean that he needed to continue using that for his own gain. He says instead, he emptied, he debased himself.
It is so empty glory from chapter 2 and verse 3, that empty false glory, empty glory. He says he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.
So Paul says, I don't want you to boast yourself of empty glory that has nothing in it because Jesus who actually had glory, emptied himself of that glory by looking like you. And he says, taking on the likeness of humanity.
And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross. So Jesus did not value his position more than us. Jesus was God.
If you've been around in church a while, that's not a new statement. If you are new to Christianity, if you're new to faith, maybe that is a new statement to you. Jesus is God himself.
He is fully God. He's not a lesser God. He's not a, at some point along the line, became God, he is very God of God.
He is eternally existent. John 1 says, In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In Revelation, Jesus is called the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
Jesus was known and worshiped in the Old Testament. He is the angel of Yahweh that appears to Hagar, to Ishmael, the Samson's parents. He's the fourth man in the fire who receives worship of men.
And unlike the other angels, he did not say, no, no, no, no, I'm not God. He received the worship. He was the one that said, this is what the Lord says.
And he says, I will accomplish this task. Jesus has been eternally existent. In Colossians 1, Jesus is called the creator and the sustainer of everything.
Daniel chapter 7, he is highlighted as the son of man, the one who sits beside Yahweh, the king of all the ages, victorious over this earth's kingdoms. Jesus is fully God. Jesus had all authority.
He said to the disciples, do you not realize I could call 80,000 angels right now to defend me?
He had authority over all demons, that when demons saw Jesus coming, they freaked out that they said, we'd rather go into pigs than have to deal with the judgment of Jesus.
Jesus had the authority to forgive sins, and he has the authority to command us to do anything. And yet, he humbled himself. He didn't stay in heaven.
He came down for you and for me, to live a perfect life, to offer redemption, that you didn't have to earn your way to God. Jesus did all the good works.
He died in your place, taking your punishment, and now offers you that relationship with God freely, if you will turn to him as your Lord and your Savior.
I love the song, What a Beautiful Name, that second verse that says, you didn't want heaven without us, so Jesus, you brought heaven down, that he came down for us.
Jesus could have left us in our sin, away from him, and we would have lived the lives we wanted to live. But he did not value his comfort and worship by angels over a relationship with us. What does it look like to value others more than ourselves?
It looks like sacrifice. It looks like leaving comfort and what we deserve in order to give someone else time, attention, love, and what they need.
Mark 10, Jesus said this to the disciples, you know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. But it is not so among you.
On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant. And whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave to all. How could we do this?
For even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. So Jesus didn't value his position more than us. Jesus sacrificed himself for our joy, that we sacrifice so that joy can be brought.
Jesus sacrificed himself for our joy. It says, he humbled, he made himself low by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross. This word, obedient, is to listen in order to accomplish.
He became obedient. God himself, the one who has authority to tell others to do things, became obedient. Do you view it as demeaning to listen to other people?
When they ask you to do something, does it bother you? How about in church? You're serving in an area, putting in work, and someone comes up to you to either complain about it or to tell you how you could do it better?
Jesus was obedient. He humbled himself to the point of death. I promise you, Lord willing, no one in this church will ever put you to death.
So if Jesus became obedient even to the point of death, I think of Jesus during his life. He didn't just listen to the commands from God himself. He listened to the requests of his mother.
He listened to the requests of random wedding hosts who ran out of wine too early. He listened to the requests of Samaritans, of a Canaanite woman, of Roman centurions, of those silly erring fishermen. He listened to them.
He heard their requests, and he served them. If Jesus could obey and follow and sacrifice himself to death, can't you show some humility and give yourself in service to people? This goes against what we want, but it's following his example.
And then we see lastly, just as God has given us everything, God the Father gave Jesus everything as a result of his obedience.
Verses 9 through 11, For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Whereas God has given us everything, and so we have no reason to boast because we did not earn anything outside of him, Jesus had everything, gave it all up, spent himself fully in service for us, earned every
praise and accolade and all worship, and now God has re-given him everything. Colossians 1 says, He is before all things, by him all things consist, and he's the head of the church, he's the one who fills everything.
What's fun here in verses 10 and 11, with the every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess, Paul is quoting here from the scroll of Isaiah, and chapter number 45, he says, Turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth, for I am God and
there is no other. By myself I have sworn, truth is gone from my mouth, a word that will not be revoked. Every knee will bow to me, every tongue will swear allegiance, it will be said about me. Righteousness and strength are found only in Yahweh.
All who are enraged against him will come to him, and be put to shame. All the descendants of Israel will be justified, and find glory through Yahweh.
So Paul here is reinforcing Jesus is God, the Yahweh of the Old Testament, God the Father, Jesus is God. He is not a lesser God. All the praise that goes to Yahweh, all that praise goes to Jesus.
You do not worship a different God from the God of the Old Testament. You worship the exact same God. Jesus Christ, the writer of Hebrews would say, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
The wonderful promise of God's word, God didn't just give Jesus everything. He's promised he will give us everything in Christ. Mark 10, 29, and 30.
Truly I tell you, Jesus said, there's no one who's left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, who will not receive a hundred times more.
Now at this time, houses, brothers and sisters, mother and children in fields, with persecutions and eternal life in the age to come, God's keeping track of everything that you've lost for him.
God's keeping track of every hardship that you're going through, and he has promised a reward on the other end. He's given it to us through Christ, not through our works, not because we earned it, but because of what Jesus has done.
We are given everything richly through Christ. Romans chapter 8. What then are we to say about these things?
If God is for us, who is against us? He did not even spare his own son, but offered him up for us all. How will he not also with Jesus grant us everything?
Revelation 5, where the praise that goes to God in heaven, you are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals because you were slaughtered and you purchased people for God by your blood from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they will reign on the earth. Why be humble? God's got a glorification day coming, but for now, we are called to live out the life of Christ as he served, as he didn't think anything of himself.
He subdued himself. He became lowly. He became obedient.
He served. We are called to mimic him. And one day, as he was glorified, as he was raised from the dead, we too will be glorified, raised with him.
What an incredible truth. Today, following Jesus' example, we must humbly and intentionally care for others. Eat that sandwich of humility.
Put our mind on the things that matter. Love other people. Be united intentionally.
Not just I guess I have to be united with someone else. Choose it. Eat the humble sandwich.
Scope it out. Look for how you can meet the needs of others because Jesus showed us what it looks like. I would encourage you today, if you have not bowed the knee to Jesus, if you've not confessed that He is your Lord, get that settled today.
Right after service, I'm going to be standing right there in that back left corner, kind of across from the main doors as you enter. I would love to talk with you.
Pastor Ron would love to talk with you about how you can know that you are going to heaven, how you can have Jesus as your Lord and your Savior. What areas have you been insisting need to go your way that you can show humility in this week?
We're called to surrender our way for the purpose of humility. How can you show humility this week? Whose needs and interests can you intentionally care for?
Whose needs can you scope out this week? Who have you been undervaluing in your Christian life? View others as more important than yourselves.
Who's someone that you have undervalued in your estimation of others? How can you show them their importance to you and to the Lord this week? Jesus was the perfect example.
It's by adopting his outlook, his perspective on life, that we can accomplish this task of humility. Thank you.
