2:1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 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,16 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,27 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,3 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. 9 Therefore 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 Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Lights in the World
12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
14 Do all things without grumbling or disputing, 15 that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, 16 holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.
Footnotes
[1]2:5Or which was also in Christ Jesus [2]2:6Or a thing to be held on to for advantage [3]2:7Or slave (for the contextual rendering of the Greek word doulos, see Preface)
2:1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 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,16 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,27 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,3 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. 9 Therefore 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 Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Lights in the World
12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
14 Do all things without grumbling or disputing, 15 that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, 16 holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.
Footnotes
[1]2:5Or which was also in Christ Jesus [2]2:6Or a thing to be held on to for advantage [3]2:7Or slave (for the contextual rendering of the Greek word doulos, see Preface)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:
Tonight, we'll be looking at Philippians chapter 2 verses 1 through 16 so you can go ahead and turn there in your bible. Philippians chapter 2 verse 1 through 16. We'll read this together. This is the word of the lord. So listen carefully.
Speaker 1:
So if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 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 made himself nothing, 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. 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.
Speaker 1:
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent children of God, without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ, I may be proud that I did not run-in vain or labor in vain. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Speaker 1:
Let's pray. Lord, we come to you right now, and we ask you to speak to us. We ask that your spirit will come and move in our midst. They will speak through this this passage of your word, Lord, that you'll speak through me. You'll speak in spite of me.
Speaker 1:
Lord, we ask that you will soften every person's heart here. We know that, this gospel that we believe, this truth of Jesus coming and giving up himself for us, this is the heart of the gospel. This is what we believe. It's so vital to us, lord. And so we ask that you will teach us something from this tonight, lord.
Speaker 1:
Nobody here needs to hear from me. We wanna hear from you, Lord. So we ask that you will do this. Give us receptive ears and hearts. Open our minds to the truths here.
Speaker 1:
Lord, we wanna give you credit for all this, and we thank you because we know they are always pointing people towards yourself and your glory, and we thank you for that, Lord. We ask these things in your name. Amen. Alright. Well, I'm glad to be here with you guys tonight.
Speaker 1:
I'm not Joel. I'm not Jeff. I'm not Thomas who preached last week. This is a little bit of a new setting for me as well. I feel inclined to tell you that my typical audience is made up of elementary school students and middle school students from Cornerstone.
Speaker 1:
The school down the road, I preach to them each week at their chapels and I am very demonstrative with my hands. I pace back and forth. I interact with them to keep their attentions a little different. I also speak to the guys in the rec center down the road and they will text while I'm talking to them and I'll get them to come up and do push ups while I'm talking. So I hope that none of you guys do that.
Speaker 1:
If I see cell phones, I might get you up here to do push ups. So, but I I am glad to be here talking with you guys tonight, and this is a great text that we're gonna be looking at here. Philippians 2, it highlights Jesus' example to us of service and humility. We've been going through several of the disciplines of the faith over the last several weeks and it works out really well, that Thomas preached last week about worship. How everything that we do is based off our heart and our motivation and that everything we can do has the potential to be worship towards the Lord when done with that proper mindset and service falls directly into path with this.
Speaker 1:
If we serve other people with this mindset, this example that Christ has given us, it's worship to the Lord. And so, rather than talk about service as a topic as much, we're really going to dig into this text. There's so much here. It's a rich text. And we did we're just gonna go and dig right in.
Speaker 1:
So first, I wanna go ahead and tell you guys a little bit of context about the book of Philippians and who it's being written to and and by, and this will help us to see what's coming alive right away in chapter 2. Paul is writing to the church at Philippi. It's kind of obvious. It's a Roman colony and this is a specifically close church to Paul's heart. This is Paul's quite possibly, though I'm sure he didn't play favorites, maybe his favorite church.
Speaker 1:
You have the church of Corinth, the church of Galatia. You have all kinds of different churches that were full of all kinds of doctrinal, social, theological issues. The church at Philippi didn't have as many of these. The church at Philippi had been a church that had stuck with Paul throughout his whole ministry. It was actually the first church that he founded in Europe.
Speaker 1:
When he first came, you may recall the story of Lydia. She was the first convert in Philippi. He went there and this woman immediately responded to the gospel. For the rest of their ministry, she took care of them. You may also recall the story of the jailer that got saved.
Speaker 1:
Paul and Silas were in prison, for casting out a demon from a slave girl who was fortune telling. And they got thrown in prison, They were singing all night. There was an earthquake. They got out of prison. The jailer got saved.
Speaker 1:
This all happened in Philippi. All kinds of fruit and a church was established here. And it's a growing thriving church, and Paul is writing a heartfelt letter to his friends here. And he's saying, I want to encourage you. I want to I want to push you towards good things.
Speaker 1:
And there are a couple things he's gonna kind of bring to their attention that are, some issues that he sees that that could potentially be threatening to this church. And the first is disunity. And Paul already addresses this at one point prior to chapter 2. In in verse 27 of chapter 1, he says, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. And later in chapter 4, he actually calls out 2 women in the church that are having an argument that's in front of everyone and it's causing all kinds of disunity.
Speaker 1:
And he's warning them right away, already in this letter, he's telling them, you must be unified. And we see that at the beginning of chapter 2. In these first two verses, he's saying, as believers, as Christians, we have the spirit of God living in us. And this is the same spirit in each of us, unites us. And so if you have any encouragement in Christ, which comes from the spirit, and and the the word there if is actually better translated since.
Speaker 1:
He says since because he knows that these Philippian believers, they have the Spirit of God in them, and they're united in this together. So he says, if since you have these things that bring you together in Christ, you have comfort in the spirit, you have participation in the spirit, you have affection and sympathy for each other. If you have these things, and you do, you must be unified as well. It's gonna confuse people if you display some attributes of the spirit, but you lack unity. They're going to look and see a disunified body.
Speaker 1:
So he's saying, you need to be unified, and the things that are threatening this unity we see in verse 34 here. He says, do nothing from rivalry or conceit. Now rivalry or conceit, he's immediately contrasting with humility. In verse 4, or in verse 3, he says, do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility. So think about rivalry and conceit.
Speaker 1:
Considering yourself better than others, having a higher view of yourself than you need, competing with other people. These are things that contradict humility, and Paul is saying it's an attitude of the heart. You have to be thinking towards others from the very beginning or all you're gonna be concerned about is yourself. Now this strikes home with me. If I think about this, am I guilty of this?
Speaker 1:
Ask yourself, are you guilty of thinking of yourself above other people? And I think we all have to come to the same conclu conclusion that we are guilty of this. My heart seeks after its own gain, and always thinks I'm more important than other people. I was, studying for this for this sermon here, and and I came across something that John Piper said, a definition of humility. I thought it was really insightful, and it's very brief.
Speaker 1:
It's it's very simple. He says that humility is the opposite of a sense of entitlement. Opposite of a sense of entitlement. Think about it. Human nature, we always think that we deserve things.
Speaker 1:
Whether we do or whether we don't actually deserve them, we think we do. All the time, we think that we should get treated a certain way, we should be given certain things, if we work hard enough, we've earned something. And that's our sense of entitlement. And so if we get wronged, that's what's being threatened right there. What we feel we're entitled to.
Speaker 1:
But humility denies the sense of entitlement and puts others' needs above your own. And this week, the Lord brought that home to me in a very humbling way. It was it was really interesting. I was preparing, as I said, for this sermon, and it was Wednesday. I'm sitting here.
Speaker 1:
I had all my schedule planned out for the day, because that night, we had the Theological Coffee House. I don't know if any of you guys went to that, but it was that evening, and so I had a couple hours of studying planned, a couple errands I had to run and do for work, some emails, and then I had dinner, and I was gonna go to the coffee house. While as I'm sitting here studying this text, I get a text or I get a a text message from Joel and, it says, Dwight, will you run by the warehouse and get 40 chairs for the coffee house tonight? And immediately my heart was just furious because I had my day planned out. I thought, how am I supposed to go get chairs?
Speaker 1:
I look out the window and it's pouring. Just pouring. Pouring. Don't ever have a truck too because then you get these things thrown on you. And so I thought, I'm gonna be out in the rain digging through a warehouse, finding chairs, putting them in my truck in the rain, unloading them in the rain.
Speaker 1:
I've gotta be studying the word. I'm supposed to be learning about humility and service. And then all of a sudden I'm like, wait. Oh, man. I'm really missing this, aren't I?
Speaker 1:
I'm missing it. This is exactly what I'm studying right now is what the Lord is bringing home, hitting home with me and routing my heart. That I thought that my schedule, my expectations were more important than anything else. And I felt entitled to my schedule and my time. But Paul's saying here, don't.
Speaker 1:
Put other people's needs above yourself. How do we do this? We're fallen sinful creatures. Our nature is to seek our own gain. How do we do it?
Speaker 1:
And I think there's an interesting key right here in verse 3, do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. This is something that John Piper pointed out in that same sermon. Count others more significant. That word count is very interesting because he doesn't say, are others more significant than than you? Is their schedule more important than yours?
Speaker 1:
Do they earn or merit something more than you do? That's not even in question. But count them more significant than yourself. When you think about it, decide that they are more worthy of your time and your service than, whether they are or not, than your own good. This totally changes the way we view service, because now, it's not based on need, or merit, or value.
Speaker 1:
We put other people first. Verse 4 says, we'll naturally look to our own interests. But when we start looking to the interests of others first, then we know we're displaying this humility of Christ. That word interest, it's also a word that we should look at. It's actually a filler word in the original text.
Speaker 1:
It it it's just kind of ambiguous. There's not actually a word there in the text that just says, don't look to your own. Look to other people's. And they put interest in there. So fill that in with something from your life.
Speaker 1:
Don't look to your own blank, your own schedule, your own time, your own job, your own relationships, your own car, your own finances or worries, but look out for others blank. And bring it home to yourself. Think about what this week have you maybe considered your own interests, your own blank before other people's. When we realize that we have to count others more significant, it begins to change. But this is such an unattainable goal.
Speaker 1:
How could we ever do this? Well, Paul moves on here, because this is just a little intro, but the the meat of this text is here in verses 6 or 5 through 11, and he's about to say the only way we can do this is the key here in verse 5. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. I want us to come back to that time and time again. Have this mind of Christ.
Speaker 1:
And it's interesting because he doesn't just say, have it. He says, it's ours already. As believers, as Christians, the spirit lives in us. We're spirit filled. We now have the mind of Christ in us.
Speaker 1:
We're the old has gone, the new has come, we're new creations. And so we have to live out this mind of Christ that he's about to tell us. Christ's example right here. In 1st John chapter 2 verse 6, it says, whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. And we're about to see how Christ walked here in 6 through 11.
Speaker 1:
Paul launches into what is known as the hymn of Christ. Frank Thielman, one of the, he's actually a professor at Beeson Divinity School and one of the commentators that I read this week. He says that this is one of the most hotly debated passages of the Bible. Great. I read that and I thought, why am I preaching from this text?
Speaker 1:
One of the most highly debated passages. People talk about, is Paul the author? Was this hymn of Christ already around beforehand and then he tweaked it? What theologically does this imply for us? There's all kinds of uncommon words in here.
Speaker 1:
We're not gonna dig into all that because this is so rich and it's most simplistic form. This example of Christ, it's a beautiful picture of the gospel. It talks about Christ from before time, his preexistence as divine, as God. Then his incarnation, he came to earth. His death, his crucifixion, resurrection, his ascension, and how he reigns with God.
Speaker 1:
It goes through the entire gospel in a matter of a few verses right there. So let's dig into it. First thing Paul establishes in verse 6 is the deity of Christ. He says, this guy, Jesus that we're dealing with, he is God. He says in verse 6, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
Speaker 1:
That phrase, form of God, is very tricky. It actually does not appear anywhere else in the New Testament. It's very hard to decipher then what specifically it means, the form of God. But a lot of other texts point to the fact that this word always deals with the very essence of something. The very substance of who it is.
Speaker 1:
Not the external features that can change over time, but the substance of a being. And so Paul is saying the very substance of Jesus is God. Who he is. Scripture says it in all kinds of different ways. Hebrews chapter 1 verse 3 says Jesus is the exact imprint of God's nature.
Speaker 1:
Colossians chapter 3 verse 1, chapter 1 verse 15 says, He is the image of the invisible God. All these are saying the same thing in different ways. Jesus is God, and yet, he says right after, but he did not count equality with God something to be grasped. It's very confusing at first, but that phrase, something to be grasped, is best seen to take advantage of. And and this is also not used anywhere else in the New Testament either.
Speaker 1:
So again, everyone's looking at trying to figure out from non biblical text and other ways that this is used. What does this phrase mean? It carries a strong sense of taking advantage of somebody, even robbing them at times. And so, while Paul just said, Jesus is God, he's saying he's not trying to take advantage of that identity. He's not clinging to it.
Speaker 1:
He's not grasping it tightly. He's willing to let it go. His very identity as God allows him the ability to not take advantage of that position. It's counterintuitive to us. Romans 153 says, Christ didn't please himself, but took on our approaches.
Speaker 1:
I want you to turn to John chapter 13 real quickly. We're gonna look at at one one passage, John chapter 13. We're just gonna read a few verses that really makes this come alive to us. John 13 2, this setting is Jesus about to have his last supper with the disciples. Verse 2, during supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper.
Speaker 1:
He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet. So Jesus, in verse 3, he says he knows that the Father had given all things into his hands. He knew he came from God, and he knew he was going back to God. So his identity enabled him to serve.
Speaker 1:
The knowledge of who he was in relation to his father gave him the ability to give all that up and say, I'm going to put others' needs above my my own. I'm going to wash their feet. This is the opposite of how we act. We normally cling to whatever little bits of power and prestige we can get, but Jesus gave up what was fully, legitimately his. Remember that that word count, count others more significant than yourself?
Speaker 1:
Look at verse 6. Jesus did not count back to Philippians. Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He was equal to God, but he wasn't looking, are people worth it? Are they not?
Speaker 1:
Do they merit it? He didn't count it as something to be grasped, and we should count others more significant just like he did. This is has immediate application for us. Jesus saw his status as god as a means of unselfish giving to other people. We are children of God.
Speaker 1:
We can look at our identity as children of God and say because we know who we are in relation to the father, we can give to other people too. And that should prick your heart the same way that Jesus used it to prick other peoples. Now Paul moves on. He says, first, Jesus is God. Now he says in verse 7, but he made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant.
Speaker 1:
Now this seems a little bit contradictory because he just said he was God, and now he's saying he's nothing. He made himself nothing. Again, no surprise here. A very difficult phrase. Only used 4 other times in the new testament, all by Paul.
Speaker 1:
He made himself nothing. The best way to look at it is, he emptied himself. Now that leads to all kinds of controversies. Did he empty himself of his divinity? Was he still fully God?
Speaker 1:
But every time that this is used, it does not talk about a literal emptying of the essence of anything. The being still retains all its natural qualities. It's more of a figurative phrase. Jesus is not shedding his divinity here. He's Paul just established his divinity.
Speaker 1:
Now he's establishing his humanity as well. Fully God, fully man. The same phrase there that he used, he's in the form of God, now he says in verse 7, he took on the form of a servant. So in his very essence, Jesus is God, and also in his very essence, Jesus is servant. These seem to contradict.
Speaker 1:
This is shocking, but it reveals that the nature of God is a servant. The very nature, who he is in his substance, in his being. He is a servant. And when he emptied himself, he didn't stop his divinity. He defined it.
Speaker 1:
Equality with God found its truest expression when he emptied himself, and this is the beauty of the incarnation. 2nd Corinthians 89 says, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. Now if we look at Paul outlines in the next few verses the extent, the progression of Christ's condescension. He started out preexistent, eternal, before time even began. He was there at the creation of the world.
Speaker 1:
He was part of the divine of the triune God, and he started as this, but he didn't cling to his divinity. He made no account of himself, and he gave himself up taking on the likeness of human form. That's hard for us to understand how God condescended all the way down to human form. That would I mean, our minds just can't comprehend that. That would be like a human becoming a gnat.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely no significance whatsoever. But he did this. He became like any other human, and he experienced pain and weakness and all these things, and he became a servant. He took on the form of a servant, who was the most he he was deprived of the most basic rights in society. The lowest of the societal positions.
Speaker 1:
And Jesus willingly did this in obedience to his father. It says obedience to death, and not only death, but death on a cross. Now Paul makes a big deal about the cross right here. He says that the cross is huge. It was the most humiliating way you could die at this time.
Speaker 1:
Even criminals who were tried to to die, if they were Roman citizens, they weren't gonna die by crucifixion. It was just too humiliating. But Jesus took this on, and Paul says, you know what? There are some of you guys who don't want to embrace the cross, but Jesus took it on. The cross was such a scandalous, humiliating thing during this time.
Speaker 1:
We can't we can't comment it. When we think of crosses, wonder how many people in here wear a necklace that has a cross on it. That just wouldn't make sense for the people in the time of Paul. That'd be a little bit like us going around wearing an electric chair on a necklace. It just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:
It's the sign of torture and humiliation and death, but Paul turns all this upside down on his head and says, this is life for us as believers, and we embrace this. We even see in 1st Corinthians 123 that the cross was a stumbling block to Jews. Philippians 3 18, some people were enemies of the cross, and yet they still tried to have a place with with God, but he says we must embrace it. This is the level of Christ's humility, and because he humbled himself, we see in the next few verses, 1011, that God exalted him. He exalted him because Jesus lowered himself.
Speaker 1:
Jesus lowered him. Now we see a dramatic reversal. God raises him up. Jesus gave up his name and his identity. God gives him the highest name.
Speaker 1:
That is above every name, and names are important in the Bible. They're big deals. They define someone, but Paul says Jesus is gonna have the highest name of any. Jesus was ultimately humiliated before men on the cross, and God will humble all men now before him by having every knee bow before him. We see a great reversal here, And we see that through Jesus' service, people are gonna be pointing.
Speaker 1:
It's it's gonna point to Jesus. And we can see the same thing in in our lives, in our examples of service. When we serve, it points to Jesus, and ultimately it says that every knee is gonna bow, every tongue is gonna confess. This should enable our service. This should encourage us because ultimately people are gonna be brought to the Lord.
Speaker 1:
Everyone's gonna know in one form or another, and all the glory is gonna go to God the Father. Jesus wasn't seeking his own glory, and we shouldn't seek our own glory. Paul follows this up here in chapter, or in verses 12 through 15 with a little application now for the Philippians. He says, you've seen this example of Christ. Now I want you to work this out in your own lives.
Speaker 1:
Work out your own salvation, he says. Now right away we need to establish that this is not an appeal to a workspace salvation. It's not. This is working out what God has already worked in. Nowhere in this text, nowhere in the letter of Philippians is Paul talking about or addressing how we are saved.
Speaker 1:
He talks about how we live out our salvation. The Philippians are an established church, and he's saying you need to have Spirit filled obedience, and this obedience should lead you to have a change of of life from what you were. Paul saw Paul saw service as a demonstration of faith. It was already in these believers' lives. They had faith.
Speaker 1:
There's a demonstration of it now that he's pushing them towards. But then he follows it up here with tension here. One commentator, Mosoi Silva, he says that the tension between verse 1213 is unbearable. It's an extreme paradox of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. These verses are meant, they're put together like this in a way that we think work out my own salvation, but it's God who works in and through us.
Speaker 1:
I want us to deny the natural impulse right away to fix this, to resolve this tension. Because we run the risk of saying if we're going to embrace one part of this that we should work out and we throw it the other way, then we're having a workspace salvation. And if we do the other, then we think we have no role in working out our salvation. Wrestle with this truth. There's supposed to be a tension here, and realize that they don't contradict each other.
Speaker 1:
Verse 12 is a strong appeal for works. This is obviously important in the life of a believer. James 2 says that faith without deeds is dead. It's all throughout scripture that works are important for believers. But verse 13 shows that the only way we can do works is through Christ.
Speaker 1:
He's the one doing the work. Romans 4 says that the man who doesn't work but believes, his faith is counted as righteousness. Clearly there's this combination here where we're supposed to rely on the Lord for any source of strength. Any way that we can have any good works at all comes from him. And this goes back to that mind of Christ.
Speaker 1:
We have the mind of Christ now who empowers us and gives us the desire and ability. John 15, we see Jesus saying abide in me to his disciples. Bear fruit. But then he says, apart from me, you can do nothing. So apart from Jesus doing this in us, we're not going to be able to do any of this, and yet we're called to do it.
Speaker 1:
In the end here, Paul calls the Philippians back to unity again. He says, don't grumble, don't question, don't argue, and this is a reference back to Israel. The Israelites in the Old Testament were accused all the time in the wilderness of grumbling and complaining and arguing with each other. And because of that, in Deuteronomy, they're referred to exactly as what is here, a crooked and twisted generation. And Paul is saying, don't get this reputation of being a crooked and twisted generation because you don't have unity.
Speaker 1:
Instead, he says, have the reputation of lights shining in the world. Matthew 5 14 through 16 says, you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. Jesus says you're already lights.
Speaker 1:
You are the light of the world. And then he says, let those lights shine by your good works. Now Paul has set a really harb high bar here. Who in here thinks that they can really attain this level and this example of service and humility and unity. I know I can't.
Speaker 1:
I mean how do we measure up? Do we do do I do things out of rivalry and conceit? Do I, in humility, count others more significant than myself? Do I look to the interests of others more than my own? Do I have and live out this mind of Christ working out my salvation?
Speaker 1:
I hope that we see fruit and signs of this growth, but more more often than not I see failure in my own life, and maybe you can relate to that. But here's the exciting thing. Paul points them back to Jesus, and he says that no matter what, Jesus did what we could not. Isaiah 64:6 says our best efforts, our righteous acts are like filthy rags before the Lord. So he didn't just set the example for us to follow.
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He did what we never could do. He gave up more than we ever could even if we displayed ultimate humility in our own lives, Jesus gave up far more than we ever could. And so he did what we could not. Jesus held tightly, did not hold tightly to who He was, God. But He became man, so that we are not held by who we are.
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Men, sinful men. And now we can become children of God. Even as we seek to imitate him, to have this mind of Christ, we must realize we will fail, but that Christ did what we could not. And now he extends grace in our failures, and he gives us power for Christlikeness through his spirit so that now we can shine as lights in this crooked and depraved generation through our Christlike service. Pray with me.
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Lord, we thank you that you did what we could not. We thank you that you are the ultimate servant, that you displayed perfect humility. You gave up so much for us, Lord. We thank you that we can cling to that truth, not our own efforts to do this. Lord, we will fail, but we thank you that we cling to the cross, and we look to you, and we thank you that because of your example for us, you were lifted up, and now we can reflect this.
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We have the mind of Christ. And when we do this now, it's only through your power, and it will only point men to God the father ultimately. So we thank you for this, lord, and we pray that these truths will strike our hearts. Lord, change us. Don't let us leave this place unchanged.
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Help help these thoughts to come back to our minds throughout this week. Help us to stop in the moments when we are looking out for our own interests above others, and help us to count others more significant because you counted yourself as nothing for us, Lord. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.