Well, let us turn to our sermon text. If you have your Bible there, we are going to look at Philippians chapter two today. So I know last week we looked at Colossians three about putting our minds on things above, not on things on the earth. And I said that this week we would return and look more at Colossians three. We will actually do that next Sunday. So this is the bonus sermon. on the You're Changing Body sermon series, dissension and condescension. Jesus humbled himself to be found in fashion as a man, and dissension, complaining, grumbling against one another, that is directly addressed by what the Lord did in humbling himself. So, Philippians 2, 5 to 11. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted him, and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now 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 do for His good pleasure. Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life. Let's pray. Father in heaven, help us. Please, we are not in our normal environment. We prefer to worship you in the assembly of your saints, to praise you in the company of the elders, just as your son does. Lord, you have kept us home today. We want to hear from your word. We want to have the mind of Christ. As our changing body continues to grow and mature, We want to resemble the Son of God more and more and more. So help us to understand the mind of Christ. We have the mind of Christ. We know that's a promise. We need to let his mind be in us. We need to act according to the mind of Christ. Lord, give us that open hand that does not seek to grab the thing that is not ours. Give us the open mind to hear the word that your Spirit speaks to us concerning your Son. and his mind and his attitude. Let us resemble your son more because we hear from his word this morning. We pray these things in his name. Amen. Well, our text really falls into two parts. As the Apostle first says Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus. Then he describes the mind of Christ at length, down through verse 11. And then in the next few verses, 12 to 14, he says, if you have the mind of Christ, here is what you will do. Here is how you will act. So in our series on your changing body, On maturity, we've seen that God has given us knowledge and he's given us community, that these are two aspects of Christian maturity, knowledge and community. That we have knowledge, we have the knowledge we need to grow up in Christ. We have the community we need to grow up in Christ. Paul tells us how to use that knowledge in terms of our attitude, in terms of our mindset, in terms of our actions towards our community here in Philippians chapter 2. So he starts with the point, have this mind which you have in Christ Jesus. Let this mind be in you which is yours in Christ Jesus. There's various ways to render it, but the point is clear. The mind of Christ needs to be your mind. That means you need to know what the mind of Christ is. You need to have an understanding of how he thinks. And for that, brothers and sisters, I cannot recommend the book of Proverbs too highly. The book of Proverbs describes the mind of Christ in great detail with some 900 one-line Proverbs plus many other stories and longer proverbial passages that tell us This is how Jesus evaluates the world. This is how his mind works. He thinks in categories of wisdom and folly, of righteous and wicked, and so on. Read and study the book of Proverbs to have the mind of Christ be in you. But second, of course, the mind of Christ, as Paul describes it here, starts with what I have on the screen, the open hand. How does Paul begin describing the mind of Christ? Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He opened his hand, as it were, and he let go of that equality with the Father that he had had from the beginning. The mind of Christ is not about seizing equality with the Father. All of you, I'm sure, have seen pictures of these smash-and-grab raids on retail establishments. Here are people with hammers breaking into a jewelry case and stealing what they find inside. This is the opposite of the mind of Christ. Jesus had everything, and he had it with his Father. And the mind of Christ is what allowed him to say, I let that go. I give all of that up, and I will come to earth as a servant. Now people have gotten into this, what exactly did Jesus give up? Did he let go of his deity, like Charles Wesley, emptied himself of all but love? What exactly is he letting go of? The answer is, he's letting go of life in heaven. He's not changing who he is, He's not ceasing to be God. He's not emptying himself of his infinitude, his eternity, his omnipotence, all of his divine attributes. That's not what Paul means. Rather, when he opens his hand to let those things go, he's giving up life in heaven and he is coming and living on earth as one of us. That's what the mind of Christ is about, as Paul describes it here. The mind of Christ in being lowly and saying, I don't live to seize my heavenly prerogatives and privileges. I am not all about making sure that I get the respect and worship and honor that I deserve. Jesus is not about that. He's about something else. He's about honoring his father by loving and saving us. He was minded to become a servant. So I've used throughout this presentation pictures of the vineyard. You are the vine, he tells us, or I am the vine, you are the branches, my father is the vine dresser, the man on the tractor as it were. Jesus becomes a servant who comes and works in the vineyard alongside his father. He takes this role of a servant. He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, which means being born, being found in the likeness of men. He takes human form in order to serve better. Now, you all have heard this before, and it's still true. The distance between us as human beings and worms as a very low form of animal life is much, much closer than the distance between the infinitude of God Almighty and our weakness and limited nature. In other words, it would be far less humbling for you to become a worm than it was for the Son of God to become a man. You and I have no desire to crawl through little tunnels in the dirt and to be worms. That sounds like a very terrible life. But the Son of God humbled himself more than that. Far more than that. The ruler of the universe was minded to become a servant. To become someone who would come and work in the vineyard, who would tread the wine press, who would jump up and down on the grapes. That's the second coming. the coming in judgment, to come and to plant and to tend, to make us branches in the true vine, to incorporate us into himself. He came to be this servant who would do all of these things. And he went about doing good. You can read, you should read about his life in the gospels. He didn't go from village to village saying, Bring me money, bring me food, worship me. And then go to the next village and ask for the same thing. Not at all. He went from village to village doing good, preaching the gospel, healing the sick, casting out demons, even making extra wine for a wedding reception. He became a servant. He did the things that needed to be done. He came and helped with life on this earth. to show that he was helping his father with the great mission of saving the world. That is the mind of Christ. He was minded to be a servant. Taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself, right? He was humbling himself just to become a man. But he humbled himself even beyond that, not just to the status of a vineyard worker, but to the point of death. Even, the apostle says, death on a cross. That's how much Jesus humbled himself. God is exempt from death. We were talking in family worship last night about cruel and unusual punishment, whether there are any truly painless or pleasant ways to die. And we determined that no, there are no pleasant ways to die. Every way to die is a bad way to die. But Jesus was humbled to one of the very worst ways to die, something that obviously our Supreme Court today would strike down immediately. as cruel and extremely unusual punishment, death on a cross. The Son of God humbled himself even to that point. Now, as I hope to talk about next week with forgiving each other, I think you and I would find it a little bit hard in our hearts to forgive Someone who broke our windshield and then refused to pay for it. To forgive someone who did damage in the few hundred dollar range to any of our stuff along those lines. Even harder to forgive someone who crippled our vehicle, you know, put sand in the gas tank or something like that, did damage in the multiple thousands of dollar range. The humility of Christ is not humbling himself to accept damage in the few hundreds or the few thousands of dollar range. He humbled himself all the way to the point of death. And not to a nice, relatively painless, pleasant death from old age, but to the worst, most gruesome, grueling, horrible, painful, shameful death the death of a cross. That is the humility of Christ. And he forgave those, right? Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. He forgave those who crucified him. He humbled himself that far. We're not even talking millions or billions of dollars worth of damage, but the worst damage of all, the damage of death. and he accepted that humiliation. Paul tells us about the consequences of that. Because he was minded to become a servant, because he accepted the humiliation first of becoming one of us, and then the further humiliation of being crucified as a criminal, he was highly exalted. Therefore, God has highly exalted him. The Larger Catechism has a wonderful series on the exaltation of Christ. One of the questions that it asks is, how is Christ exalted in sitting at the right hand of God? This is just one small part of his exaltation, brothers and sisters. He is exalted and is sitting at the right hand of God in that, as God-man, he has advanced to the highest favor with God the Father. With all fullness of joy, glory, and power over all things in heaven and earth, He doth gather and defend his church, subdue their enemies, furnisheth ministers and people with gifts and graces, and maketh intercession for them. As Christ sits at the Father's right hand while the Father makes his enemies his footstool, he has the highest favor with God. He has the fullness of joy, of glory, and of power. And of course, I put the name badge here. On the slide, God has given him a new name. That in itself, Paul says, is one of the highest possible tokens of exaltation. The Father has given him the name which is above every name. Right? This is no ordinary name badge. This is the most superior possible name badge. This badge that he wears, or really, as Revelation tells us, it's written on his robe and on his thigh, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the highest possible king. He is the highest possible lord. That is his exaltation. That is his name. And it is utterly superior to every name. Because this is how God rewards the mind of Christ. Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Have this mind in you. What mind? The mind that is willing to become a man. The mind that is willing to open his hand and let go of equality with God. The mind that is willing to go and to work in the vineyard. The mind that is willing to undergo the death of a cross. That's the mind we need to have. Paul tells us five things in the next few verses then about how we need to display the mind of Christ. If this is the mind of Christ, how do we show it? Well, he tells us Therefore, because Jesus humbled himself, and he is rewarded with glory, therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For God is at work 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 perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life." Do it all without complaining. So let's talk about each one of these. He says to obey when no one's watching. I love you Philippians. You are my beloved brothers." So he addresses them with this language of love and the language of family. By the way, that's how we should address each other. We may be a little more uptight and buttoned up than Paul, the Mediterranean man. We've talked about that, how he just bursts into tears and does things like that. He talks about longing for them with the affectionate guts of Jesus Christ. We'll look at that next Sunday. regardless of how expressive or not we are of affection we need to have that affection we need to understand that God has that affection for us he loves us as his beloved children and therefore he wants us to be like his beloved children and the first thing first way you show the mind of Christ is to obey when no one's watching as you have always obeyed not only in my presence but also in my absence." The Philippian church walked with God even when Paul was not there to watch over them. And you can see this person picking grapes in a few different ways, but you should continue to labor in the vineyard even without the boss's eye on you. That's the thing about a vineyard or any orchard. There's a lot of trees. There's a lot of vines. You can hide. You can laze around in the vineyard, but you need to keep working even when no one is watching. This is the first way that you show you have the mind of Christ. If you have to be under supervision in order to do your work, if you have to have someone constantly on you to do your chores, and this, children, this goes for you just as much as it does for us adults. The mind of Christ is demonstrated by obeying both in the presence and the absence of your authorities. So obey when no one's watching. If we do this, beloved, we will be the kind of church that the Apostle is talking about. Not just in his presence, but in his absence. This is a huge component of maturity. Immaturity means you have to be supervised all the time. Maturity means you're a self-starter, able to do your work even as the people around you have stopped watching, are doing their own thing. The second thing he says is work out your own salvation for God is at work in you. You can see all these things emerging out of the word here. I like this picture for this. We have the Word of God, and from it comes the house, the couple, the tree of life, the car, the rainbow, the mountains, the sun, and the balloon. God is at work. We are at work. God makes the world. And in this world, we make cars and houses. Work together with God. And Paul says the two things back to back. Work out your own salvation because God is working out your salvation. In other words, don't let one half of that be used to deny the other. It's easy to say, God is saving me. Therefore, I don't need to do anything. It's equally easy to say on the other side, I need to work out my own salvation. Therefore, I need to do everything. Paul says, do it. You work it out because God is working it out. He says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15. I worked harder than them all, but not I, but the grace of God that was in me. He's working as hard as he possibly can. The grace of God is working in him. Does salvation depend on you? Yes and no. It all depends on God. God is at work in you. But if God is at work in you, you will be at work. God. If you're not at work for God, that's a clear sign that God is not at work in you. So learn to work with Him. That is a key part of having the mind of Christ. You show the mind of Christ by obeying when no one's watching. You show the mind of Christ by learning to work with God. This is a big part of what the Christian life is. You go to the Word and you see that from God's Word emerges the entire world. that he spoke, and it came to be, he commanded, and it stood fast." As God's Word rules God's world, you must work alongside Him, reading His Word, obeying His Word, and yet knowing that it is He who is working out your salvation, giving you the ability to do all of the things He wants, which the Apostle continues by saying what he really wants is for you to stop complaining and arguing. Hopefully most of you have had the opportunity to watch the Argument Clinic from Monty Python. This is a shot from that fun little thing. Don't bicker with each other. Don't walk around complaining, oh, I can't believe my this, my that, oh, the dishwasher died. Oh, why do I have to have a spouse like this? Why do I have to have a dog like this? Why do I have to have a boss like this? Why do I have to have a church like this? We all know what complaining is. Most of us are pretty fluent in it. God says, do all things without complaining and arguing. That shows the mind of Christ, the mind of the one who humbled himself, who didn't go around from village to village saying, please me, worship me, bring me food, and then complain when they didn't. Where do you see Jesus complaining in the Gospels? He confronts the leper who comes and says thanks, and he says, weren't there ten lepers? Where are the other nine? But he doesn't say, I can't believe these lepers these days. Then he laments over Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem who kills the prophets. But does he go to the disciples and say, I just can't believe the Pharisees. I can't believe it. What kind of religious leadership do we have in Judea anyway? Right. You can read the gospels for the rest of your life and you will never find a word of complaint coming out of the mouth of Jesus. You won't. He didn't do it. He didn't complain. If you have His mind in you, you will stop complaining and arguing, fighting with each other. If I have His mind, I will stop complaining and arguing and fighting. That's what the Apostle tells us. Do everything this way. If you have the mind of Christ, this is how you will live without complaining and arguing. We could almost just cross out the argument clinic. We don't do that. We are children of God. And that's where he takes it. Because God is at work in you, be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world. So this picture shows lights in the world and especially India and Arabia are there, kind of right in the center of the picture. And then those points of light are connected to many, many other points of light all over the world. That's the children of God. The connections represent the connections, the family connection that we have with every Christian in the world. Whether we know their name, whether we know their language, whether we know anything about them. And I will point out that this note of light down here is very, very close to the home of our friend and brother, J. Paul. We have brothers and sisters in India and all over the entire world, and we and they, all of the Christians, are supposed to be shining as lights in the world. If people are saying the world is a dark place, if we are living according to the mind of Christ, they will be able to look at us and say, that person is not dark. That person has some light. If you act like a child of God, if you show the mind of Christ, then you will shine as a light in the world. You do that, he says, by holding fast the word of life. How do you gain the mind of Christ? You have to know how he thinks. And you learn that by reading his word. Act like a child of God. That's who you are. That's what you are. Dissension and condescension. Jesus condescended to be one of us. And that should put a stop to dissension within the body, as we complain, as we murmur, as we fuss with each other and at each other. That all needs to come to an end, because he humbled himself. He didn't grasp equality with the Father, and because he is the Son of God, he shows us what maturity looks like. In that sense, we've come full circle back to the Ephesians 4 passage we looked at five weeks ago. The measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ is the kind of maturity we're aiming at. If we're going to act like a child of God, we need to act like the Son of God. And that means regarding one another as brothers and sisters, putting a stop to complaining and arguing, obeying when no one's watching, laboring in the vineyard for the glory of God. He has the name above every name. He promises to give us new names too. As we grow in the vineyard to be more and more like the Son of God. Well, let's close in prayer. Father, help us. We need your strength. We pray that you would work out our salvation. and that you would help us to work out our salvation. Thank you that you are at work within us to will and to work of your good pleasure. Father, we ask for your help and strength to obey when no one's watching, to regard one another as truly beloved, to stop complaining and arguing in every respect. Help us to be blameless and pure children of God shining as lights in the world. We pray that you would keep us safe now on the rest of this snow day and that you would glorify yourself as your people shine as lights in the good deeds you have called us to do and prepared beforehand for us. Help us to grow up to maturity. We pray these things in the name of your beloved son. Amen. May the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up the light of his face on you and give you peace. Amen. The Lord bless you today. Lord willing, we will gather in person once again next Sunday.