Charlie Loften: Hello, and welcome to the Grove Church podcast. I'm Charlie Loften, the lead pastor there, and we are so glad that you're joining us. Whether you are a member and you're just catching up on a sermon that you missed or you're someone who's brand new, we are really glad that you are joining us. And if you are new in some way, and I know that a lot of people will do that, we'll listen to sermons first before they visit. I want you to know that we would love to meet you at any point.
You can join us live in our services on Sunday, nine and 10:30 or our streaming service at 10:30. Either way, we would love to be able to get to know you. And regardless of why you are here listening to this sermon today, thank you so much for joining us.
Spencer Street: Hey, good morning. My name is Spencer. For those of guys who haven't met me yet, I am the youth pastor here. And so I get to hang out with all the kiddos. Shout out to you guys, whoever's sitting in the audience.
Glad you guys are here. Hey, I hope you guys have had a great fourth of July. If you guys are new here or visiting, I know that we have some new faces here. I'd love to meet you in the back after the service. We'd have a gift we'd love to give to you give to you guys, and I'd love to just get to know you guys more.
And so for fourth of July, kinda how I celebrated is I actually just got back from Florida. I flew back from Florida on Friday. This was my first kind of solo trip that I've taken by myself. So it was a big step. I booked my own flight.
I did all the things for the first time. And so it was quite nerve wracking, but it was a great trip. I got to go visit a campus ministry I was a part of in college down there and got to visit some friends, got to recruit some people, some college students to the church, which was really awesome and a good experience. And I've also been watching all of the FIFA, the World Cup games, and it has been awesome to see how well The USA's doing. For the first time in twenty four years, they're top 16.
I think they're taking it home. Probably not. Probably not. Let's be honest. They're probably not gonna take it home.
It's probably gonna be France. France looks really good this year. So France is probably gonna whoop everybody like they've been doing the entire tournament. But I can hope for it. I can hope for it.
And so last time I was up here, it was in February, and I kinda talked a little bit about my obsession with Breaking Bad that I had grown over the last couple months. And I finished Breaking Bad, and so then after I finished Breaking Bad, I had to find a new thing. What was my new thing that I'm gonna do? And so some of you guys might know this, but I love movies. I love to go to the movie theaters.
I love to watch movies at home. It's usually what I will do just if I have any free time. And so what I've been doing recently, the kids know this, I have been on a Marvel kick recently. And so if you guys seen the new trailer that just came out, the new Spider Man trailer just came out, looks so good. I'm so excited.
It's coming out this month. If anybody wants to go see it with me, please, that'd be awesome. But yeah, so I saw the new Spider Man trailer coming out, and I've just been super excited and super hyped up for Avengers Doomsday coming out, all these movies that are coming out. And I've been watching all these movies over again. I got through all of the Infinity Saga, got through Thanos, all of that.
And the first couple times I watched these movies, I always thought that Infinity War and Endgame and these huge battles at the end were like my favorite movies. They're always the best movies. But the reality is is I started realizing the movies that I actually liked the most rewatching were the origin stories. I loved the Iron Mans, the Captain Americas, the Black Panther, Thor. But all the rest, the first movie is always so good.
First Spider Man, like, always so good. And I just love the origin stories. And so kind of over the past little while, this kind of ties into our series that we've been going over. We've been going over this series called Foundations, is what we're calling it. And basically, with this is we're just talking about these big moments in scripture where God has presented himself maybe in a different way, or maybe in a way that has molded and shaped our faith now.
And these foundational moments that have really shaped the way we've maybe we look at God or the way that our faith is now. And so we have gone over creation. Charlie started us off on creation, kind of explained this series to us and just what creation looks like. And then we went into Noah and then Abraham and talked about how Abraham chooses chooses his people. He has chosen them, and he chooses us.
We talked about Moses and Mount Sinai and the God who gives a law and instruction. And so we have all these different things. You guys are probably wondering, what am I talking about today? Well, luckily, just turned July, so I'm bringing Christmas to July, guys. So yeah, woo hoo.
So AKA, I'm talking about Jesus being born. I'm talking about the birth of Jesus, the incarnation, just this idea of God turning to flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. And so I truly, truly believe that this story is very overlooked. I think that oftentimes when you think about Christmas, we think about Mariah Carey. We think about National Lampoon's Christmas vacation.
We think about, like, a nativity scene or anything like that. Right? We think about all these different things. And then this story about Jesus being born, we overlook it. We overlook it.
And so because it gets so familiar, we look at little things like where Jesus was born and who Jesus was and the fact that Jesus is God as a baby. We overlook these things. So I'm really excited to be talking about this this morning with you guys and really just to point out some of the things that, man, I think that this story really reveals a part of God's heart that we haven't seen in scripture until this point. So I'm excited to share this with you guys. Today, if you guys have your Bibles, I'd love for you guys to open them.
We're gonna be in Philippians two, five through 11. And so this passage, it isn't traditionally a Christmas passage, but I really do believe that this reveals the part of God's heart that we're trying to get to this morning, and really what's behind the birth of Jesus Christ. And so I'm excited to share this with you guys this morning. So we're starting in verse five. I'm in the NIV.
In your relationship with one another, have the same mindset as Jesus as Christ Jesus, who, being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant. Being made in the being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has exalted him to the highest place and gave the name that is above every name, that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. So we're really gonna the main reason I spoke on all of that is to just give you guys some context.
But really, what we're going to focus in on this morning is verses six through eight. I think this is where the oomph of this chapter's at. And so this first point I have for you guys is humanity expected a God who would come in power. Humanity expected a God who would come in power. So when I think about this, when I think about God coming in person or a king arriving, I think about Aladdin.
So if you guys don't know about the story of Aladdin, the Disney show, one of my favorite I guess this one's a Prince movie, not a princess movie, but they're great. But Aladdin's one of my favorites. And for Aladdin, he goes to this cave and he finds a little genie lamp. And with the genie, you get three wishes. And so he rubs his lamp, and one of the wishes he makes, he ends up meeting a princess named Princess Jasmine, and he makes one of the wishes to become a prince.
Because he just sees this princess, and he's like, I have to marry her. I have to be with Princess Jasmine. So he makes the wish to be a prince. And when he makes this wish, they end up going back into the city where Princess Jasmine is. And the presentation behind him being a prince is huge.
It's elaborate. It's this big they break out into song. They're singing Prince Ali, fabulous hee. Da da da, right? They sing all of that.
And they're bringing them in. And this whole song is about how rich, how powerful, how strong a prince is and a king is and a ruler is, and trying to impress everyone around them. And this is what we expected with God coming here. We expected a king, someone who is of high stature, someone who's coming into the world and is gonna be this strong, rich, and powerful person. And so I want us this morning to put ourselves into the feet of the Jewish people.
We've been waiting four hundred years. There's no prophets. There have been no prophets, no revelation, completely silent. And they're waiting, and they're under oppression from the Romans. They're under taxation, and they have all of this oppression on them.
And so all of the Jewish people are thinking, well, the Messiah is gonna come save us from the Romans. He he he's gonna be this powerful political figure, this this warrior, this person who's gonna fight our battles, and he's gonna bring justice to our people. Shocker. We didn't get that. We didn't get that.
So what did we get? We got Jesus. And how did Jesus come? As a as a baby. The most vulnerable thing.
A baby who can't even take care of himself. He comes as a baby. Not only that, he's born into an ordinary family. He's not born into royalty. Ordinary family.
Mary Magdalene was a teenager. Right? Born into an ordinary family. And in fact, they didn't even have enough money to go to a place where you would birth. And so they beg this innkeeper, can we stay with you?
Can we stay with you? And they end up staying in their separate area because they were full. And so they stay in this barn area. And he's laid in a manger, and there's animals all around him. And you guys know the nativity scene, what that looks like, that that is not what we expected.
That is not what the people expected. There was no chariots. There was no golden horses. There's no riches. They're poor.
And he's coming as a baby, vulnerable, in a vulnerable state. And that's how Jesus came to us. And so humanity, they did not expect this God. They did not expect him. They expected him to come in power.
So they expected him to come in power. And so what how did Jesus come? Well, Jesus, God, God chose to come in humility over prestige. So God came in humility over prestige. Have you flip to that next slide for me?
Thank you. Yeah. So God chose humility over prestige. Philippians two, six, and seven. We're gonna go back to the passage here.
I'm gonna read real slowly to you guys. Starting verse six. It's talking about Jesus, who being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. So Jesus was in the very nature of God. He was God.
He is he he has everything and every attribute, every characteristic that God has. He has the divinity of God. He has all of these things, but yet he's a baby. He has all of these things. And it says, he did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.
Rather, he made himself nothing. So Jesus made himself nothing. And what exactly does this mean? Does it mean he just stopped being God? Like, no, no, no.
He's still God. That never left. And so he's still God, but he's willing to go from this place that he is being exalted. He's in heaven at the right hand of God, creating everything and everyone around us, but he's willing to come to earth to be with us. And not only to be with us as as God, but also as as human, as fully human.
Not not not giving up his divinity, but also but adding humanity to his divinity. He's not subtracting that from himself. He's adding humanity. And ultimately, it continues. It says, rather He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in the being being made in human likeness.
And Jesus, like I said, he becomes man. He becomes fully man. Went up to him and pinched him, he'd feel it. He's gonna feel sad. He's gonna feel all the emotions, everything that we feel.
He feels that because He chose to become man. And so the question is, like, what does this reveal about God? Why is this important? Right? Why was this so shocking for us to know?
Why is this shocking for our faith? How does this lay a foundation for our faith that is different than before this point? Nothing has really changed about God, but God has revealed something to us. He's revealed this humility. He's showing his power through the humility of becoming a human, becoming like us, seeing us.
And to kind of continue here, we've got verse seven. We kind of continue. So I said, rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of his servant, being made in human likeness. And then verse eight says, and being found in the appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. And so this next thing is, is God, instead of staying in heaven, God comes close to us.
He comes close to us. He doesn't ask us to climb up to him. He comes close to us. He comes down. So for those of guys that don't know, a couple months ago well, maybe more like a month, maybe, Charlie.
Yeah, probably a month ago. I had a little bit of a health scare. Yeah, and so I had a little bit of a health scare. Some of you guys might know about it. Some of you guys most of you guys probably don't know about it.
But I was just it was a normal Wednesday for me, and I had gone to the gym. And I was at the gym. And as I was at the gym, I was lifting weights, and I was bench pressing. And so I was bench pressing. First set or two was fine, just warming up.
And then I put a little bit of weight on there. And so it was a little bit more of a struggle to get the weight up, but nothing out of the normal. And all of a sudden, get this instantly, I get this splitting headache. And at first, I'm like, oh, I broke some blood vessels. No big deal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll be fine. And I'm always just, I'm the person that's like, yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine. I don't need the doctor.
I'm fine. I'll just take ibuprofen. I'm good. I'm good. I know some of you guys are probably like that as well.
Don't want to go to the doctor. Sorry, Dan. But yeah, I'm like, I'm fine. I'm fine. No big deal.
And I'm like, all right, it'll go away. Then I start feeling nauseous. And I'm like, oh, that is not good. And then I start feeling like I'm going to puke. All right, cool.
This is not normal. I go to the car. I call my mom. I'm like, hey, mom. What do you think I should do?
And she's like, to be honest, I have no idea what to tell you. Maybe go to the doctor. Do you think it's that bad? And she was like, you don't sound normal on the phone. And I'm like, when mom says that, you're kind of just like, Okay, mom knows best.
All right, cool. I'll go to the doctor. And so I went to the urgent care. Went to urgent care, they got me checked in. They took my vitals, all that stuff.
And when they took my vitals, they didn't really explain a whole lot to me. They were just kind of doing their thing. Come in, they're like, do you want us to swab you? I'm like, absolutely not. I'm not sick.
What are you talking about? Then they come back in. They're like, alright. We're gonna need you go to the ER. Okay.
Why? They're like, well, your blood pressure is about 180 over 90, and you need to get a CT scan right away. Okay. And then they're like, do want us to an ambulance? No, I'll drive.
So I drove, got to the ER. And at this point, I'm kind of getting to the point it's a Wednesday. I'm like, man, I don't think I, I don't really know how long this will take. I hope they're quick, but I don't know if Roots is gonna happen tonight, because we have a small group, we have like Roots get together on Wednesday nights. We do our thing on Wednesdays.
And so I'm like, maybe I should text some people. Because at this point, I'm just doing it all by myself. I'm like, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.
And then so I text the staff group chat. I'm just like, hey, just so you guys know, I'm in the ER. And then I text the Roots group chat. I'm like, hey, just so you guys know, I'm in the ER, so I'll let you guys know when I get out. Immediately, my phone started blowing up.
Are you Okay? What's going on? Oh, my gosh. And I'm just thinking, oh, yeah, it's fine. I'm just at the ER.
No big deal. Yeah, I'm good. I'm fine. I'm fine. And immediately, get a text message from Charlie.
Hey, I'm on my way. Oh, Okay. Cool. Thanks. Thank you.
I guess. Nothing's wrong. I get checked into the ER, get pulled back. Within five minutes, the nurse comes in. Hey, should we get the stroke room ready?
The stroke room? I'm having a stroke? What's going on? And so they take me back. They do a CT scan.
I get back into the room, and Charlie shows up a little bit later. And he sits in there with me. And I just remember just kind of feeling this anxiety this whole time. And I didn't really realize I had this anxiety during this, all by myself, checking into the ER for the first time on my own, and going through what could be a stroke, for all I know. And Charlie comes, and he sits down.
And just a couple minutes, he's just kinda quiet. And then he looks over at me, and he goes, hey. Just so you know, you don't have to do this by yourself. And I didn't know that I needed that in the moment, but there's just something really powerful about someone's presence, someone being there with you. Not because not because Charlie was under obligation to do that, not because he had to do that because it's his job.
He came to sit with me and be there with me, not to tell me, oh, man. You should have drank more water, you should have done this. You should have done that. No. No.
No. He didn't say any of that. He just sat there with me because he wanted to understand what was going on with me because he cares for me. And sometimes sometimes people don't need to fix your problems, or they don't need their problems fixed. They just need someone to be with them and to know that they're not alone.
That's exactly what God did for us. He's in heaven, and he comes down in person, in human form so that we aren't alone, so that we're no longer alone. He understands us. He's compassionate. He understands what we felt, and he doesn't watch us from a distance.
He comes to us. He steps into our world. He experiences hunger. He experiences exhaustion, rejection, temptation, grief, betrayal by one of his best friends, his closest people. He experiences pain and suffering.
Why would he why would God do this? Because he wants to be close to us, not just physically as the person, but to also understand what are we going through. What are the things that we're suffering with? What are the things that that causes pain? What is temptation?
He wants to feel all of these things because he wants to relate to us. He wants to be with us. He didn't just create us and let us do our own thing. He comes to us. And because we have this God who isn't interested in having a distant relationship, he comes into creation, and he sits with us in a similar way that Charlie came into a time of my life that I needed somebody.
It was just somebody. I just needed somebody. And I was doing it by myself. And I think that sometimes we look at this life, all this temptation, and all of the all these things that we're struggling with. And I and I don't know what you guys are struggling with this morning, but I think we look at it sometimes like we're alone, doing it by ourselves.
But the reality is is God chose to become human. He chose to become like us, made in the likeness of human nature so that he could relate to us, so that he could love us better, so that he could understand us. Like I said, we don't we didn't have we don't have to climb up to him. We don't have to do anything to get to Jesus because Jesus comes to us. So maybe this morning, you guys are in a place where you feel like there's been a lot of things that are just going wrong.
Maybe you feel like you need to go to church more. Maybe you feel like you are struggling with this one sin, and it won't stop. You just can't do without it. Maybe it's family. Maybe you're struggling with family.
Whatever it is, we have a God that isn't from a distance telling us things to do, but a God that's come to us to do it with us. And so to kind of recap what we've talked about, humanity is expecting this God, this powerful, strong person to come, to be a warrior, to be this political figure, this person who is powerful and rich and is gonna take out the Romans. And they're expecting this, but instead, God reveals his power through humility. He doesn't claim the prestige that he earns, that he deserves to have. He's created everything.
He doesn't claim that. He claims humility. He claims us by becoming human. And he comes in the person of Jesus Christ, and he invites all of us through this into a relationship with him. So as you guys are sitting here this morning, maybe you guys are thinking, man, I haven't made this decision.
I'll just invite you guys this morning that this decision has been laid out for two thousand years. So if you're waiting for a feeling, if you're waiting for a moment, it's already been done. There's not going to be a perfect moment. There might not be the goosebumps that you feel in church. There might not be the perfect song you hear for worship, the perfect sermon.
None of those things might those might never happen. But it doesn't matter, because two thousand years ago, God came to us, and he's coming to you guys this morning. So I just invite you guys. He's come to you. The work is done.
It has been finished. Are you guys going to him? Whatever area of your life it might be this morning, God is calling you guys to see that he has come to you, He's with you, and He desires a relationship with you guys. Let me pray for us. God, I just thank you.
Lord, I thank you that you don't just look at us from afar, God, but that you come to us. God, you desire a deep and personal relationship with us, and you know and you knew that the only way you could do that is by being born in the person of Jesus Christ, to come to us, to relate to us, to suffer with us, so that you could understand us better, so that you could love us better. God, pray this morning for anybody that's in here, and for myself, God, pray that we would just realize this truth, that we would accept this. And I pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.
Charlie Loften: Thanks again for joining us on our sermon podcast, and you can learn more about us at thegrovechurch.org. If you go to thegrovechurch.org/connect, there's a form you could fill out. Just let us know that you've been listening. And if you want to dig deeper on some of these topics that we cover in our sermon podcast or just another issues of dealing with culture or theology, those kinds of things, you can check out our cultivate podcast. Which is on the same feed, however you found this particular podcast.
So again, this is Charlie, the lead pastor at The Grove, and thank you so much for joining us.