Philippians: The Key to Joy - 7

Philippians chapter 2? We're going to be in verses 5 through 11 this

morning. As you make your way there, I'm going to read the text down.

We'll put the words on the screen. Just in case you didn't bring your Bible or you don't have the app on your phone, or you just want to follow along with me and my translation. I'm going to read this from the English standard version this morning.

And you can follow along in the ESV if you don't have the ESV or you have another version some pastors have been using like the NASB, which is not the standard Bible. So if you want more standard, just check out the screen

behind me and we'll go through it. So we're starting in verse 5 technically, but because it's been a couple of weeks, let me get a running start. So I'm going to start reading in verse 3 and we'll just accelerate right into verse 5.

Verse 3. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. (4) Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. (5) Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, (6) who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, (7) but emptied himself by taking the. Of a servant being born in the likeness of men, (8) and being found in human form, he humbled himself. By becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, therefore, (9) God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, (10) so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, (11) and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord for the glory of God the Father. Amen.”

You could not ask for a better passage to preach. Really, if you're having your

pick, this is a good one. And the passage really picks up steam, doesn't it? I mean, in the beginning, Paul is talking, really transitioning from our last time in Philippians on this concept of humility. Hey all, let's be humble together. You as a church have a unified mind and humility. Let's look towards Christ. And he

starts talking about Jesus and he gets carried away. He gets lost in kind of a doxology as he looks to Jesus and what he has done and he just like he's trying to close out the Pentecostal church or something like the service. He just gets so excited. He’s  like, Oh my gosh.

Every knee shall bow, every tongue confesses that he is Lord, that he is Lord, that he is Lord, and that used to choir and the band just take off. Like why does Paul get so excitable?

I hope to kind of bring you with me and Paul this morning as we look at why Paul picks up so much steam here. And we're going to start in verse 5, which actually has the only application point that appears in our text today.

●    Have this mind among yourselves.

What is he talking about? South? Verse 5 in the text and in the wider text functions as kind of a roundabout. It is a roundabout traffic circle, like it is both the end of where you're coming from, the street you've been driving on, and it is also at the same time the beginning of where you are going.

So we can say have this mind from verse 3 and 4 full stop.

Don't be selfish, don't be conceited, don't be overly ambitious for yourself. Consider others. Have that mind. Period. And start a new sentence.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus now.

I actually don't like the ESV rendering here because it could sort of convey that there's like this spiritual humility that you get as a gift through your position in Christ, which is not altogether an accurate point, but it's just not what the text is really communicating here. It's just saying have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. If anybody brought the NIV this morning, the non inspired version. That's what this text says literally or if you have the CSV I think I put it on the slides. Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus or the KJV.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

So in order to show Christ's example of humility and selflessness, Paul wants to start with Jesus, his existence even before being born in a Manger. When does Paul start the thematic timeline here in verse 5? I don't know about you, but before I was conceived I did not exist. You would not say I was incarnated in December of 1980.

Jesus was. He existed before all things, and in him all things hold together, by the way. So what was he doing in eternity past? What rank and title did he hold? Paul explains in verse 6. Who? Although he was in the form of God.

Did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped so I emphasize those two words form and equality. We're going to look at some of their meanings this morning because it's important to understand in terms of what the text is actually communicating so form is the Greek word morphe from which we do get words like morphology. I do have a slide for that yes this study in biology

of the form and structure of things Paul is saying Jesus had the form of God if God has. Parts Jesus has them. There is nothing that Jesus has that God does not have. And Paul is trying to make the point that Jesus is God, which is a point that we're going to repeat throughout this passage and Paul is really going to drive home.

Also equality with God. The inequality of the Greek word is isa, from which we get the English phrase is the same. Is the same thing.

A dad joke. It's Father's Day that's not. It's early service, I know we'll get there. It's the same Greek word that John uses to describe one of the reasons that the Jews wanted to kill Jesus.

 So if we have John, I think it's chapter 5, verse 18. Yes, This is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. That equal is Isa in the Greek. The Jews understood that Jesus was claiming to be God. This is why they wanted to kill him. If they suspected there was a possible misunderstanding, that wouldn't have thrown stones at him at that moment. Also, if Jesus thought there might have been a misunder- standing, he would have interrupted.

Guys, I think you got the wrong idea here. I'm not claiming to be God.

And there is no such asterisk in our text. No, he knew what he was saying. They knew what he was saying. Jesus was saying. I am coequal with God.

So Paul understood that in order to introduce Jesus as God, he's got to assign all properties and attributes of God to Jesus. And then he doubled down with the word equality to remove all doubt.

So the next time some member of the LDS community tries to come to you and says, you know, the Bible never says that Jesus is God, where in the Bible does it say that Jesus said that he was God? You can take them if it happens this week to Philippians 2:6, “He was in the form of God. And he had

equality with God.

Including my personal favorite, just for fun. It's from Hebrews 18. We have that, but of the sun. He says your throne, O God, is forever and ever. I don't know how you get around that. Jesus is God. Now. Regarding the divine claim that Jesus has of being God with all rights titled and interest.

Paul is about to teach us something about God that we would have never assigned to Him. Had he not told us? Something counterintuitive about how we imagine or might imagine God to be. Look, we humans, we've been inventing gods for a long time, way back as long as we've been able to carve wooden statues, silver, bronze, gold, whatever we've been. We've been making God

like figures and bowing down to him in worship way back.

You know that God has never given the human race any credit, any credit for all of the attempts that God manufactured. Despite how often we've tried, despite the iterative approach we've had in trying to make gods, he's never gone. Hmm, That was pretty close. Like, you're getting better. Keep going. No, this is good. Keep practicing your art and your craft. Greeks, You're making lots of gods in the city. Maybe one day we'll get there. Let's go. Don't do that.

In fact, Speaking of the Greeks, when Paul goes to the Greeks in Acts chapter

17, he walks around the city and looks at all the idols and he's like, Nope.

Wrong path. I'm being provoked in my spirit. Spirit. I do see one though that's kind of interesting.

There's a blank slab over there that has a caption that says to an unknown God. That's as close as you've gotten. That's the best grade, still an F, but it's like an F plus. That's what you've got for getting close to God. Anytime you build to that, anytime you add to that scaffold, you have gone the wrong

direction. You are not getting any closer as to who God is. To an unknown God, Paul says. I'll tell you who God is, and I'll give you a clue as to why you've been guessing in the wrong direction. The very nature and character of God.

Is so selfless and humble that he will give up the privileges of comfort to serve his creation.

You know, if Jesus had said in his heart. All right, I'm God, so I'm all powerful and perfect, and heaven is pretty comfortable, and they're all sinners anyway, deserving of judgment and hell, and so I'm not going to pay the price to redeem them. That would have violated his own nature of humility and selflessness.

Here's the irony of being God, that the very thing that brings God

maximum glory is the laying aside, the veiling of his glory to serve others.

Jesus deserved to stay in heaven with the Father, and we wouldn't have faulted him for it. You know you're big and powerful, perfect, eternal. We are small, stupid, sinful, dust in the wind. It totally makes sense that you would not want to come down here. You have every right to stay in heaven, and yet for our sake, He came down. Jesus had every right to stay in heaven, and instead He left heaven to bring you and me to heaven who have no right to go to heaven.

Did you see the gospel there? In God's humility, Jesus, who deserved to stay in heaven, left heaven, came down to bring back into heaven people like you and me who do not deserve to go to heaven. You think the Greeks were ever going to carve that statue? Babylonians. Aztecs. Vikings, American Indians of any culture ever going to make a God who so loved the world that he gave his one and only son to whoever believes in him. Will not perish, but have eternal life.

That's why when I hear the skeptics say something like, you know, there's 3000 gods in the world, how do I know that yours is the one true God? And what I want to say is, well, because he's the one you couldn't come up with.

He had to reveal himself. And he did.

Verse 7, “He poured himself out, by taking the form of a servant. Being born in the likeness of men.”

If you want to know what it means that Jesus emptied himself, you really have to use the context here. If you don't, you run into some kind of drift into some mild heresy here with what Jesus did. He did not lay aside his divinities so that when he came in as a human, he was less divine than he has always been. And it doesn't go that way.

Let the context Dr. the meaning. So he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, by being born in the likeness of men. So each subsequent phrase there clarifies what Paul meant by emptied himself. It's the kenosis theory

from Econos in the Greek. How did Jesus empty himself? What does that mean? It means he took on the form of a servant, literally a slave. He emptied himself, being born in the likeness of men.

We know that he was fully divine on earth. I think I have Colossians 2:9 in the slide deck. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” So much of the idea that Jesus was less than fully God when he was among us.

Now he poured himself out. God availed himself to us in Jesus, in service for me and you in his first advent. A few other translations try and make this very clear instead of using the English word empty if you have the KJV or NIV. He made himself nothing. He made himself of no reputation. They're trying

to say he humbled himself by becoming a servant to all.

All right, verse 8. “Being found in human form, which just means now that he was a man, he humbled himself.”

So that's Deja vu a little bit, right? Humbling. Part 1. The original motion picture was God coming from heaven to earth. That's a pretty big gap jump. And then now that he's a man. He does it again. He humbles himself. The sequel.

From first, from God to man doing what God has never done, and 2nd from man to obedient man doing what man has never done. Namely, being fully obedient to the will of God. He humbles Himself in a way that you and I

should be humbling in ourselves all the time, but just can't do it because of that whole sin problem that we have.

I have never been completely humble. I'm probably not humble right now. I'm just going to level with you like this part of me that's like how they like this. I hope they go home like this. This is so bad. I have never been.

What is the 1st and best commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”

All I've ever done is down to my DNA. Nope I've tried. I've just been low key my whole life. Just fallen short of the 1st and greatest commandment. I would not trust my best 5 minutes to get me into heaven. Jesus did.

Even under torture circumstances, he was fully obedient to the will of God.

The text continues making that point, becoming obedient to the point of death.

Even death on a cross.

The book of Hebrews blankets all of humanity under this verdict in Hebrews 12:4. The author writes, “In your struggle against sin, you have not resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

That's true of me. It's true of you. I wish I could tell you from experience how to humble yourself as much as Jesus did, how to serve as much, how to love as much, how to endure the flesh as much, but I can't. Only Jesus reached that milestone and satisfied that requirement. He shed his blood, enduring whips and nails and thorns and mockery and hours of hanging there under unimaginable torturous conditions, all while having the ability, by the way, to

pull the ripcord and stop.

To call down the angels to rescue him. But he didn't. He stayed there for our sake. Even death on a cross, the author says. For you and me. He voluntarily stays affixed to that wooden cross to satisfy the justifiable wrath of God against us for our sin. His blood paid your debt to God if you believe he dies for his enemies to make his enemies his friends, and he does so while all the while maintaining a perfectly humble, servant hearted godly character. He's just amazing. So he dies and he's buried.

So Jesus dissension, we've started in heaven before time began. And this is kind of, you know, the end, buried and dead. Now this is the turning point in the story. So Jesus is going to go this way now.

Verse 9. “Therefore God has highly exalted him”. Paul loves to invent words. He loves to just hyphenate everything together, and that's what happens here.

The word highly exalted is a compound word in Greek. This means he is hyper exalted. He was already high, lifted up as high as possible, and now we're hyperextending that. That's what is behind that in the passage. Having always been General Jesus, he is now awarded the Medal of Honor, which is the praise of heaven and earth forever. The other admissible thing to see here in the text is the resurrection.

If you do look at the passage, there's no explicit mention of being mentioned, of being raised from the dead, But you do see this word exalted at a very convenient place in the text. So it is totally permissible to see the resurrection implied here.

Highly exalted, the resurrection seals the deal for the payment of our sins. For those of us who have trusted Him for eternal life. He is highly exalted in the presence of all heaven and earth. And no one in the universe now questions this new status of His because of what He has done. Not just because of His power and glory, but more so now we have seen the redemption that He has

accomplished.

He's always been worthy of our praise by virtue of being God, but now he is hyper worthy. Hyper exalted, hyper lifted up because he's died for our sins and raised for our justification.

And so we sing the next slide from Revelation. Worthy

Are you to take the scroll and open its seals?

This is from Revelation 5:9. “For you were slain, and by your blood you ransom people for God, from every tribe, language, people, nation.”

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. You can see the runaway doxology they have like Paul.

You can see the seven nouns in Revelation 5:11 if you know your numerology in the Bible. 7 is the number of perfection, just exhausted completion. He gets everything. He is worthy, and He is bestowed the name above every name.

Bestowed in your English Bible is in the past tense. If you're a Greek nerd, it's like heiress in the middle voice. I mean what that means? But it's like this, has this happened once? It's self replicating, but in your English it's in the past.

Tense is hard. There's been kind of an interesting timeline thing going on in this passage, like, when did this happen? Did we miss the coronation ceremony because we were born too late?

God gives Jesus a name. King of Kings. That's a name he already had. He's had it since the beginning of creation. He's always been the King of kings. He's never not been King of Kings. And yet bestowed here does make it sound like there was a ceremony when Jesus was raised from the dead, when he broke the tape and finished the race, and he was seated at the right hand of God.

Hold on to that thought for just a minute. The coronation ceremony thought.

Let's look at verse 10. “At the name of Jesus.”

Here is another thing. I really need to point it out here. If you read that name above all names bestowed upon him, the name is of the name above every name so that at the name of and you pause right there any any Jewish person listening to this would have thought, oh, he's about to say God.

Psalm 148:13, “Let them praise the name of the Lord for his name alone is exalted. His Majesty is above heaven and earth.” You would never give any human the moniker name above all names. Lord of Lords, King of Kings. Paul is delaying announcing who this belongs to until halfway through verse 10 so that at the name of and you're expecting God and Paul says Jesus.

Jesus is who it is. Jesus is God. Not his name. Every knee should bow.

Should Will or shall are your words, depending on your translation.

Tense is hard. Translating is hard. You know where this comes from.

“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; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow,

every tongue shall swear allegiance.” Isa 45:22-23

Well, just in your heads as I follow along here. Turn to me and be saved on all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other by myself. I have sworn from my mouth that I have gone out in righteousness, a word that shall not return to me God, every knee shall bow. Every tongue shall swear allegiance. Paul intentionally borrows from this passage to ascribe it to Jesus in the New Testament.

Paul also quotes this again in Romans 14:11, “We will all stand before the judgment seat of God for as it is written. As I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to me.” That's an explicit future tense in Romans 14. And every tongue will give praise to God. So past Eris, present future.

Jesus is being crowned. When the former things had passed away. I would not be surprised if there's like a coronation Part 2.

If it's a real future event. “Like how Aragorn is crowned at the end of the

trilogy that there's a ceremony in which we get to see Him crowned.”

Every knee will bow in verse 10, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord. Paul is doing his best to be exhaustive here. Angels, demons, archangels to Satan himself, from the Garden of Eden to those alive at the second coming, everyone will bend the knee. This doesn't of course mean that everyone would be saved.

You could look back at Philippians chapter 1:28. This is a sure sign of them for

their destruction. Like no, this is not universal salvation. But everyone will acknowledge God's authority, supremacy, and sovereignty over the whole created order.

Those who love him. We'll do it with joy, happiness, fulfillment, and pleasure.

And those who have rejected him will do it through tears, shame and regret.

Assigning no fault to themselves. Sometimes when this passage is taught, I've heard the illustration used that unbelievers will bend the knee like a conquered army at sword point. The problem with that minor Ed as it is, it doesn't get to the heart. There are two types of people that go to prison, right? There's the people that kind of know what they did was wrong. That they made a moral infraction and they kind of know that they're getting what they deserved and they're going to serve out their time patiently and hope to be released.

But then there's the kind of person that goes to prison.

Hard hearted. What attitude would you like to use? They got the raw end of the deal. They didn't get a fair shake. There's a corrupt justice system. Didn't have a good lawyer. Feeling justified, Feeling like they're angry and mad.

No one who goes to hell falls into that category. Do you know that? No one goes thinking that God was unjust, unfair, They didn't get an advantage or an opportunity to take advantage of His grace.

In full view of God and the Saints, everyone will bend the knee. And everyone will say you were right, I was wrong, you were good, I was bad, they will admit from the heart. That he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. To the glory of God the Father and all things are summed up.

In God the Father. The problem at this point is. I'm supposed to circle back and talk about how? We're supposed to be humble. That's hard to do. Like, I've been enjoying talking about Jesus for the past 15 minutes and what he has done for us and who he is and how he was humble and he was a servant. And it's kind of a spiritual whiplash to be like, all right now, pull out your notepad and take notes about how we're all supposed to be humble this week. And I kind of think you get that. But I just couldn't make that transition.

I was in sermon prep this week, and I do what a lot of preachers do when they hit a writer's block and they go talk to their wife and they're like I don't know how to get from like us all focused on Christ and what he's done for us to come back to like, you know, how to apply this. We were just in heaven and now we're supposed to come down to earth. I don't know if I can do that. And my wife spins her swivel chair around and she's like, well then don't. You showed him Jesus, right? I tried to. Lord willing, yeah. Then close your Bible and get off the stage.

What is the first word of verse 12? It's therefore right therefore and it's going to be like working out your salvation with fear and trembling. You're preaching next week. Yeah, this is your problem. Now you have to figure out how to get people back into the humble mindset.

I'm going to take her advice. Close my Bible. Get off the stage. Fall in heaven.

Thank you so much for your grace and mercy towards us in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Thank you that you and your God, like nature, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but you emptied yourself.

Taking the form of a servant being found as a man, humbling yourself.

Even to the point of death. Even to the point of death on a cross. You are highly exalted this morning, Lord, in the view of your church. Be lifted up in our hearts as we seek to continue to praise and worship you and we love you in Jesus name, Amen.