Philippians 2:5-11
If you have a copy of God’s word,
you’re welcome to turn there to Philippians chapter two, verses
five through 11. Remember, Philippians would be
one of Paul’s many letters he wrote to the churches where he
visited and preached the good news of Jesus Christ. And Philippians
was his letter of joy, his letter of great hope. He wrote it from Roman imprisonment. And yet, even though he found
himself in the midst of difficulty and hardship, he found in Christ
a good bit of joy that he could speak to them about. And he says
these words to the Philippian church and therefore to us, 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 emptied himself by taking
the form of a servant, by being born in the likeness of men,
being found in human form. He humbled himself, becoming
obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 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. Amen. I don’t know about you,
but people seem to be obsessed with royals. If you stand in
the grocery line over at Harris Teeter and you look at the arrangement
of magazines, you know, you get past the Hollywood stars and
you get past the sports stars. There’s the royals. What are
Meghan and Harry, oh wait, they’re not royals, are they, any longer?
But what are they up to? We’re so interested. What are
Katie and, I can’t remember his name, yeah, William, I figured
somebody would help me out. What are they up to? See, I knew
it was true. What are they up to? And one
of the things that we like to see about the royals is that
they’re, well, they’re just like us. They have a heart. And so from time to time, you’ll
see in these tabloids and these newspapers that the royals do
have a heart and they do a little charity work. And you’ll see
that, you know, they’ve rolled up their royal sleeves and they’re
out and about. They’re helping children read.
They’re feeding the hungry. Even in some cases, they do their
couple years of military service. And we see they’re just like
us. They bleed red blood. They are humans and do the things
that normal humans do. Well, for the most part. Well,
tonight, I think it’s good for us to think bit about a different
royal and the reason why this royal came to this earth. And
then therefore how we should as sons of royalty live out of
the grace he’s given to us. One of the things you’ll look
at when you, I guess, study the royals, I guess that’s what we
do. You wonder, are they doing their duty out of their heart? out of humility, or are they
doing it just because it ought to be done and there’s a photo
op? Well, when we consider the coming of the Lord Jesus, when
we consider him leaving heaven and coming to earth, we see very
quickly that our Savior, who was rich beyond splendor, became
poor for our sakes. Paul will write to the Corinthian
church. that Jesus was the rich prince
of heaven, and for our sakes he became poor, that we might
ourselves become rich. And so in the coming of Jesus,
we see an example of super humility, but also a super exaltation. I want us just to pick through
these couple verses for just a few moments. And as we do,
I want to sort of lay out the thinking here. The Apostle Paul
is going to tell us, and these truths are echoed when, as children
and perhaps adults, we learn our catechisms, we learn our
theology, we ask about the Son of God becoming man. I believe
we just mentioned it a moment ago in our confession. our affirmation
of faith. The Lord Jesus, the eternal son
of God became man by taking to himself a true body, a reasonable
soul being conceived by the Holy Ghost and born from the womb
of the Virgin Mary. And then the catechism goes on
to speak about Jesus’ humiliation. He was born and that in a low
condition. We know about the stable and
no room for them in the end. He was made under the law that
he might fulfill all righteousness by obeying it perfectly. He suffered. He died a terrible death, the
death of a criminal on a Roman cross. He was publicly executed.
The Old Testament says cursed is everyone who has hung on a
tree and Jesus died that cursed death, a humiliating death outside
the camp, outside the city of Jerusalem. He was placed in the
grave. He was under the power of death
for a time. And then God, by his mighty power,
raised him up. So we, we think of Jesus and
his humiliation, his coming to this earth. And we have to ask
this question, why did Paul write this in the Philippians? Was
he simply wanting to teach them about who Christ is and what
Christ has done? And the answer to that is, well,
yes and no. In the larger picture of Philippians,
Paul is telling the Philippian church, to get along. Imagine that, telling a church
to get along. Unity is a hard fought thing
in the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the way Paul motivates
them to have unity is to have the same mind as Jesus. Think like Jesus. Y’all remember
the bracelets? This was back when I was a teenager.
What would Jesus do? WWJD. What would Jesus do? And I think Philippians answers
a different WWJ question. What would Jesus think? What
would be his mindset among his brothers and sisters in the faith?
And I think the simple answer to that is humility. He would
humble himself. He would roll up his sleeves.
He would take up the basin and the towel. Remember the gospel
of Mark, the son of man, Jesus says, did not come to be served. but he came to serve and to give
his life as a ransom for ministry. And so the mind of Jesus brings
unity in the church when out of his mind, we live and serve
one another. So one of the purposes of Christmas,
we could say, is to bring unity among men, to bring peace among
men as they see Christ and so live. That brings unity. A couple quick things to think
about from this passage. First, the Son of Man, Jesus,
was in eternity God. He was fully God. Everything
we understand about God the Father or God the Holy Spirit, we can
say is true of God the Son. But we’re told in this passage
of scripture that Jesus Christ, though he was in the form of
God, though he shared all the essential things that God is,
the glory and the divinity and the power and the might. We read
from other places in scripture, Jesus was there at creation.
Jesus is the one who sustains all things by the word of his
power. Jesus is the mighty and the powerful God. But it says,
though he was God, he did not account equality with God, a
thing to be grasped. Or you might say he didn’t leverage
it for his own advantage. He didn’t carry around the courtesy
card saying, I’m the son of God. No speeding tickets. I’m the
son of God. I have diplomatic immunity. He didn’t pull that. It says
he emptied himself. Now that doesn’t mean he ceased
to be God. He just rolled up his sleeves. He came and took the form of
a servant. He was born in the likeness of
men and he was found in human form. His coming to this earth
was a bit of a humiliation. It was a step down from his exalted
place in heaven. We read of this also in Hebrews
11, when it says, by faith, Moses, he was the Prince of Egypt. And
in his first 40 years of living, he was, well, the Prince of Egypt. He was raised in the palace,
educated in the palace. He was probably a mighty military
man who helped expand the Egyptian empire. And then when he was
at the age of 40, he killed a slave or he killed an Egyptian taskmaster
who killed a Hebrew slave. And so he fled to Midian where
for the next 40 years, he became a shepherd. And then we know
good and well what happened in his next 40 years. At the age
of 80, he met God at the burning bush. And he became the mediator
of God’s covenant with his people to lead them out of Egypt and
into the promised land. And Hebrews 11 says, by faith,
Moses did not count. the blessings of being a prince
in the palace of Egypt, something to be grasped as it were. But he fled the palace and identified
with the people of God and gave up the fleeting pleasures of
sin. And that’s a little picture of what Jesus does here in the
book of Philippians. He Though he is the exalted one,
he steps down from his heavenly splendor and takes the form of
the servant. Now, why was that necessary?
Well, we remember Adam in the garden, God told him, you can
eat of all the trees of the garden, except of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil in the day you eat of it, you will surely die.
I remember, just give you the quick version. Satan came and
tempted Adam and Eve and said, oh, you won’t die. God’s just
holding back from you. And he said something very interesting
that I think parallels with Jesus here quite well. Satan told Adam
and Eve, you will become like God. Boy, wouldn’t that be appealing? You just take a bite of this
fruit and you will become like God. Wouldn’t we all like to
be like him and just be able to zap our fingers and say the
word and it is done and have all the riches and the power
and the splendor. Well, that was very appealing to Adam and
Eve. And though God said, don’t eat, They elected to eat. They grasped at the power of
being God. But just the opposite for Jesus.
Though he was God, he did not see it as a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself and took the form of a servant. And Jesus
came in the form of a servant, in the form of a man, and he
undid what Adam broke. He undid all the sin and the
shame and the curse. in order to redeem us. And so
it’s important to see these things about Christ, his divinity, and
also his humanity. While our passage goes on and
speaks more of his humility, he went to the cross. He, at
the cross, had all of the sins of the people placed on Him.
In the Old Testament system, every year there was the Day
of Atonement, Yom Kippur, and the sins of Israel would be placed
through the priest on the head of the scapegoat. And the priest
would impute those sins on the head of the scapegoat who would
then carry those sins out in the wilderness. outside the camp. And so Jesus at the cross outside
the camp was the scape goat. He bore all the sins of his children,
all the sins of his beloved ones. And outside the camp, he was
obedient even to the point of death. death on the cross. Now you might think just reading
this few verses, it was easy for him. No, remember the 40
days in the wilderness, 40 days in the desert where Satan said,
you can do it the easy way. Just bow down to me and I’ll
give you all the kingdoms of the earth. And Jesus knew the
way of his exaltation would come only from being obedient, even
to the point of death on the cross. Just the night before
Jesus, would die on the cross. After he was betrayed, he took
the remainder of his disciples up to the mountain to pray. And
remember, they kept falling asleep. And he kept asking God, if it’s
possible, Father, if it’s possible, take this cup from me. And we’re told that he was sweating
drops of blood. It wasn’t the nails. or the whips
or the beatings that he was afraid of. It was the wrath of almighty
God. God would not bless and keep
him or turn his face towards him and give him his favor. But
God would curse him and God would cast him off and God would turn
his face away from him so far away from him that the son on
the cross would say, my God, why have you forsaken me? And
so verse eight tells us he humbled himself by coming obedient to
the point of death, even death on the cross. But there’s a therefore
in verse nine, a therefore always means what comes before now has
great meaning. And we know that after the death
of Jesus, he was raised on the third day. He appeared to his
disciples. He ascended up into glory where
he sits now at the right hand of God, the father almighty.
We know that his sacrifice, As the great priest, as the great
lamb, as the spotless one was accepted by almighty God. And
so this priest, our priest sat down because he made satisfaction
for sins. He’s no longer standing at the
altar, killing and burning and sacrificing and killing and burning
and sacrificing and offering that that has ended because his
offering was accepted. God has highly exalted him and
bestowed on him. The name that is above all other
names. So that at the name of Jesus,
every knee shall bow. Every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord. Now back up to the nativity.
Back up to the story we will remember of the wise men coming,
the Magi. These men were seeking and looking
for all kinds of answers in all kinds of religions, all kinds
of books, and in all kinds of signs of nature. And they find
all of this in the Christ child. In Him, they find wisdom. In
Him, they find salvation. In Him, they find hope. In Him,
they find meaning to human history. In Him, they find all of the
answers to life’s difficult questions. Something I read this week says
so well of many of us as Christians, we know enough about Jesus Enough
about Jesus to be saved. That is, we know that he died
for our sins and that if we trust him, our sins are forgiven. But
the question, the next question really got me. Do we know Jesus
well enough to worship him? And not just to come to church
and sing a song or two, maybe to clap our hands or raise them
up, but are our hearts overwhelmed because of the fullness of our
minds about the person of Jesus. And I think what the apostle
Paul is saying to the Philippians is if you fill your minds with
the goodness of Jesus and you worship him, being kind to one
another and unified in the body of Jesus is easy peasy. It just comes, it just flows
out of your heart. Maybe you’ll find yourself standing
in the grocery. Well, hopefully in a few days after you’ve eaten
all the Christmas stuff, you’ll find yourself back in the grocery
store, and next time you see People or Us Weekly or whatever
all these magazines are, they’re white noise now, aren’t they,
to many of us, but whatever they are, when you see the Royals
on there, perhaps call back to your mind the things you’ve learned
over the years, the things you’ve recalled to your mind over this
Christmas season about the great Royal, King Jesus, and perhaps
you’ll begin to wonder and adore him more and more, but most especially,
I hope that you’ll put your faith and your hope and your trust
in the faithful one who is obedient to the point of death, even death
on the cross for your sins. Let’s go to God in prayer. Lord, we, with our tongues, confess
that Jesus is Lord. We, with our knees, our posture,
we bow down with heaven and earth to adore the Christ child. And
we want, Lord, him to be central in our lives. So work a mighty
work in each of us this night, helping us bend our knee to baby
Jesus, King Jesus, and even the mighty one who sits on the throne
of heaven. hear us and help us as we make
our prayer in his name. Amen.