Well, at this time, I'm going to introduce very briefly, I did get the okay from Pastor David here, how to introduce him. So I'm not winging it, a little bit, but I'm not winging it too much here. But Pastor David Wilson, we've invited him to come preach for us today. We have been going through this summer a series on the Holy Ghost through the Gospel of John specifically, but we are taking a break today from that, okay? So today we will be in Philippians chapter 2, Pastor David will be Preaching through that he is the director of bent tree ministry which is overseen by M&A mission to North America in the PCA and has been a campus minister for RUF for many years And also has been a church planter and also been a senior pastor in Denton, Texas So good stock good stuff, and we welcome him to the pulpit this morning if you'd welcome him with me all right We're in Philippians It's in your bulletin, but if you've got a physical Bible, it's just like any other book, go to the table of contents, it breaks it up into Old Testament, New Testament, this is in the New Testament. You'll see Philippians right there. The big numbers are the chapter, the little numbers are the verses. If you've got one of them special Bibles, it's got tiny little letters, that means it's cross-referencing it back to another passage that says something similar to that. So we're going to look at Philippians chapter 2 verses 1 through 18. While I'm doing that, I need you to multitask. I want you to listen to the word, but also I want you to think about as I'm preaching, what the perfect model would be for you. A model for like a home or a meal, or maybe it's the car that you've always wanted. You know, for me, it's like a 65 vet or I mean, you know, the boat or the house or the garden, you know, whatever it is. Think about those things. Alright, so we're in Philippians 2. Here's Paul's exhortation to this church. He goes, 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 selfish ambition 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 interest 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 emptied himself by 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. And 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. 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 disputing. 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. Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise, you also should be glad and rejoice with me. All right, let me pray for us. Father, as we think about your word, and man, they are hard words. We ask that you would, well, a couple of things. You pour out your spirit on me. You guard the hearts and minds of everybody out there. You convict some folks. You afflict some folks. You comfort some folks. And you convert some. And that you would be honored and that your son would be lifted up in your son's name. Amen. I'm old, and so I'm on Facebook. We stole that from young people. It was a big deal when I was a campus minister. I couldn't figure it out. And they were like, it's not for you. And then now we've taken it over. And so on there, there's people are always announcing things, you know, birthdays and whatnot. And every time they announce an anniversary, instead of saying happy anniversary, I have gotten in the habit of saying, keep going. And so that's what we're going to talk about today, not just in your marriage, but in the Christian life. And we're going to use The incarnation that Paul describes for us here as kind of a model, as the perfect model for that. I used to watch a lot of P90X and use the Tony Horton videos. My wife and I would do this. He would say that most people find exercise too hard. They give up too easily. And so he was constantly saying in there, do one more rep or just keep pushing play. In essence, he was saying, keep going. Now, I fight every day giving up. I want to give up on everything. I want to give up on my marriage. I want to give up on my kids. I want to give up on my job. I want to give up on God. I'm the least qualified person to talk to you about this. My wife is more qualified, but we're in the PCA and we don't do that. And she would never do that. So, I'm sorry, this is who you get. You know, doing life in the flesh, it's got a short shelf life. And so I'm not telling you to keep going like pull yourself up by your bootstraps or kind of do this on your own. What I'm saying is you need to trust in that you are united to Jesus and what he has done and what he's continuing to doing and what he will do so that you can keep going. And we're going to look at three things briefly. Verses 1 through 4, why do we want to give up and why have we given up? Verses 5 through 11, the incarnation as both inspiration and motivation for us. And then kind of a primer on how to keep going, looking at verses 2 through 5 and verses 11 through 18. All right, so first of all, why do we want to and why have we given up? I used to ask God, I would pray for patience. And then I thought I could, you know, and you don't want to do that because he'll answer that prayer in a heartbeat. And so I thought I'd beat the system. And I would, I would pray to God, don't give me reasons to be patient. But that's not how it works. So in our text, what he says is if there is any encouragement, Now, y'all know the people who need encouragement are the ones that are discouraged. But we don't just need an attaboy. We don't need a slap on the back. What we need is encouragement in Christ. And we need it in the midst of our discouragements. We need to be united to the person and work of Jesus. All right. This is what he's done. He's lived this life. He died for us. He rose again. He's ascended to heaven. He's sitting at the right hand of the Father. We need for Him to come alongside of us and share with us comfort and safety. Now, y'all don't know me from Adam, but I'm a little bit right wing. And so I would never be accused of being woke. And there are times when I have despised things like that. But you know what? Because folks are always looking for a safe place. But they're not wrong. And so I need to repent of my arrogance. Because you and I are looking for a safe space too. I mean, that's all we want. We want the safety of being united with Jesus so that the discouragements we face can be answered, not out of a place of no discouragements, but rather in the midst of them being hidden in Christ. In the face of our discouragements, we need to find encouragement. I mean, think about Psalm 23. Where does the good shepherd prepare a table for you? You can say it out loud, I don't think you're charismatic. In the presence of my enemies. And where does he want me to walk? In the valley of the shadow of death. Couldn't I just walk in a nice place and eat dinner with my friends? No, that's not how it works. It goes, if there's any comfort, Literally, Paul's making up words here. He says, is there any coming alongside of the mystery one gets from self-sacrificial love? You got any theology nerds in here? Anybody know who Meredith Klein is? Yeah, so this is sort of Paul channeling his inner Meredith Klein. Comes up with these new words. He makes up this word that captures perfectly the mystery born of self-sacrificial love. that's best described as comfort. I mean, it seems counterintuitive. I'm going to receive comfort from sacrifice. But Paul says, if you want comfort, that's where you're going to get it, is sacrificing yourself. He goes, if there's any participation or fellowship in the Spirit, So oftentimes in the hard times, we feel as though we are not participants with the spirit. Rather, what we are is we're participants in getting our butts whooped. I'm in the midst of a butt whooping, and God is out here, and we go, we sit there, and this is what Christians do, and I've been in the church forever. I go, okay, what is God trying to teach me right now? That's what I gotta figure out. What's God trying to teach me? In reality, he's right there with ya. He's right in the midst of this butt whooping. He is taking it with you. We are united with the Holy Spirit since he indwells us, so he's there for it all. There's this great movie out. It's got a lot of bad language in it. Don't take your kids. But it's called Father Stew. I think you can rent it on Amazon now. But it's so good. I mean, it's so good. Because he's crying out to God in the midst of his disease. And his testimony to his congregation immediately after he gets ordained. And that whole process is just amazing. I mean, he's completely jacked up at this point. And he goes, I find my fellowship with the Holy Spirit, it includes both the good and the bad. And even in the bad, I'm okay with it because it always draws me closer to Christ. Paul keeps going, he goes, if there's any affection or any sympathy, it presumes that there's going to be a lack of both, okay? any of this stuff. So why do we want to give up? Why have we at times given up? Well, it's because we're discouraged. It's because there's this counterintuitive comfort that comes from sacrifice. There's participation in life and there's this lack of affection and lack of sympathy and lack of empathy. So It's understandable that we want to give up. So we got to look to something. And so Paul says, well, let's look to Jesus. So that's our second thing, the incarnation as both inspiration and motivation. I want you to think about. Jesus becoming a man, as is described for us here in Philippians 2. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit create perfection, right? They create this perfect world. I mean, it's beautiful. Everything's going wonderful. And then for no good reason, our ancestors decide, let's set it on fire. We'll blame everybody around us, which is just me and you, and we'll blame God too. And we will sink all of humanity into the mire of yuck. And the perfect, loving, holy, good, and just triune God covenants with himself somewhere in the process. And he goes, we're not going to scrap it and start over. We're not going to scrap it and start over so that there's no chance that these humans can screw it up. Instead, Jesus, second person of the Trinity, I don't know what he called him at that point, you're going to enter fully and irrevocably into the midst of this horrible mess, willingly, lovingly committed to the nth degree. Look how Paul puts it, who though in the form of God. Remember I said you got a picture of the form in your mind, what you thought was perfect. Well, think about, take that, put that aside, but think about yourself. Everybody in here has got an idea of what the perfect you would be. You know, you think physically this is what the perfect me would be, educationally, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, all of these things, relationally, all this stuff, right? And maybe you've come reasonably close to a couple of those. The rest of them have kind of fallen by the wayside. you know, you just didn't have the vigilance that you needed. You got this thing called sin that keeps interfering with everything. If you're old enough and you've been blessed with children, you've had them. You've lost the war of attrition. So before we talk about incarnation, just for a second, meditate based on your experience and expectations of what you had for you. There was this point where you had dreams about who you were gonna be and what you were gonna, you know, when you did all this stuff, right? The second person of the Trinity, he was in the form of God. He was perfect in everything that he did. Perfect. Right up to zero AD, he goes, I'm gonna set that aside. I'm going to set that aside, my right to that. I'm not even going to grasp it. Paul says he didn't count equality with God a thing to be grasped. And what he means by that, a thing to be hoarded, a thing to be robbed or clutched or stowed away. Stephen King had this horrible novel, don't read it, called Needful Things. And basically what he says in there is that he equates equality with God a thing, actually a bunch of different things, to be grasped. If you want to be like God, you've got to grasp. I mean, he's got such a good insight on the evil of the human heart. I mean, it was scary to read. And this verse, like King's novel, kind of harkens back to the Garden of Eden. where Eve said, you know what, I think equality with God is an actual thing to be grasped. She saw it and she took it and she ate it and gave it to her husband. Jesus, the one person who could actually claim equality with God, never objectified it. It simply was. That's it. Always will be. And he could set aside his right to the full equality because he knew there's nothing that can change my equality with God. It is not a thing to be grasped. I'll never forget asking my dad. My dad was a high-powered CPA, successful businessman, believer. But he bought a Mercedes. And it's so funny because, I'll just add this to the story, my dad was so conservative fiscally, he wanted a Mercedes for the status, but he bought the bottom line of the bottom line. 240D, roll the windows down, zero to 60 in four days. But I said, why did you buy a Mercedes? He says, because I like looking out over that hood and seeing that symbol, because it says I'm successful. He spent his whole life craving affirmation for the success that was so obvious. Vince Vaughn has this great line in the movie Swingers. Once again, don't watch it. He's talking to his buddy who had this horrible breakup and he's saying, hey man, you need to get back in the game. He says, you're so money and you don't even know it. The essence of keep going is that you and I are hid in Christ. who actually does know how money he is, and he didn't grasp so that you and I can let go, that we can quit trying to objectify God and grasp a hold of it. Paul keeps going, he says, you want a picture of who this Jesus is and what he did in the incarnation? He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. And this is so fascinating to me because the Bible is awesome and it's got all sorts of great stuff in its pages. It says he emptied himself by adding. He doesn't lose his divinity. He adds humanity. It's sort of like he pawns his divinity and he says, I'll come back and collect it later. And if you think that's heretical, Calvin said this, he puts the divinity, the divine nature was in a state of repose. So take it up with Calvin. The thing that interests me is that adding humanity was sort of a demotion of sorts. From being the second person of the Trinity in spirit only, the word, the logos, he goes, I'm going to add humanity. That's never going to take away. So from zero ad till forever, he will always be incarnate. And he did that for us. He did that because love and goodness and mercy and kindness and justice and righteousness constrained him. He could do no other. so that the incarnation becomes this model for us to keep going simply because he who knew no humanity became human forever. You know a lot of times you and I can say well I'm gonna be this way but eventually something will change or eventually I'll just die and I don't have to do it anymore. He says no I'm doing it forever and it's so fascinating to me that even in his glorified body He says, I want to keep the scars. I want to keep the holes in my hands and in my feet and in my side. You and I were like, well, a six pack would be nice. I guess I could have hair for eternity. That would be good. Forever, he's a human. We always seem to go to extremes. Self-denial in the Christian world, mortification of sin, those are good things. But what happens when we go to extremes is it turns into works righteousness, and if you're really out there, it turns into asceticism. You go and be a monk and live in a monastery. That's really not a big problem nowadays in the Christian world. The pendulum has swung back. And so now what we have is self-care. That's a big thing now. And what self-care has turned into, self-care is not a bad notion in and of itself, but what it's turned into is the avoidance of pain, the avoidance of suffering, and an absolute refusal to persevere if it costs us pretty much anything. So Paul says, well, I want you to see how much of what he did with his humanity. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. See, Jesus wasn't, he wasn't really good at self-care. Self-care, this is Susannah Winters. She gave a TED Talk on this, and this is how she defined it. Deliberately taking care of your well-being through restorative activities. And that sounds awesome. It just sounds awesome. Because obviously you can't serve God and man if you're so committed to asceticism that you aren't able to. But the pendulum has swung so far that self-care has turned into self-preservation at all costs. I think it's awesome that Ronnie's on a sabbatical, but you understand that 30 years ago, that was unheard of in the church. Absolutely unheard of. He needs it. Of all people, Ronnie needs it. But there are a lot that have said, you know what? I want to give up cross bearing and take on self-caring. I actually heard a pastor's wife, nobody in here, say that she was taking a sabbatical from her church for three months. This is, her pastor's a good dude. This is not a toxic church. She wasn't going to church anywhere, as far as I could tell. And I didn't ask it, but I thought, okay, but what are you preserving yourself for? Are you preserving yourself so that you can die more later? Or are you preserving yourself so you can just simply die less? He said I do this thing called Bent Tree. I've been doing it on the side for like 15 years, just helping my buddies stay in the game one more day. We pastor pastors. They pastor each other. I just kind of coordinate the whole thing. And we exist to give guys and their wives and elders and their wives a rest from the grind. But we do it so that you can get back in there and grind out a little bit more. Jesus was doing all of this so that he could serve. That's an inspiration for you to keep going, because you go, wow, he did all this. He set aside everything. But now Paul goes, all right, I'll give you some specifics. And man, this part stinks. You might just want to close your ears on this part. How do we keep going? Look at verses 2 through 5, and then verses 11 through 18. Combining our individual notions of self, being of the same mind, that means thoughts and dreams, the way we process the world around us, so this would include stuff like culture, right? And this means everybody. This means male, female, Republican, Democrat, right brain, left brain, American in all its forms, African, Asian, Midwestern, Western, Texan, Southern, Northern, Coastal, all that stuff. with all the other world's cultures, Paul says, all of this, we gotta be of the same mind and have the same love. Being presently and continually in full accord, another compound word that Paul made up, being of co-spirited mind is what he means. This one verse, verse two, of Philippians two, is both enough to make anyone wanna give up Say, that's it, I'm out. I can't do that. And it's one of the greatest apologetics for the glorious reality and truth of being a Christ follower and the picture of the kingdom of God and his amazing grace because it forces us to see how bad our sin really is and how far from God and to what extent he went to bring us back. This verse, in my mind, separates the sheep from the goats. Because, I mean, when I do premarital counseling, I say, look at Philippians 2. That's what your life is. This is what your life is going to be. You constantly have to go back to it. Apart from Christ creating in everyone a new person, a new creation, a new spirit, we absolutely will refuse to be of the same mind and have the same love. And you know why? Because it requires us dying every single second of every day. And I just don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. Paul keeps going and keeps hammering, do nothing. Oh my gosh. from self-ambition or conceit. But in humility count others more significant than yourself. Look not to them, look not to yourself, but look to others." Think about whatever your favorite story is, your favorite experience. Maybe it was that model you had in your mind of, this is the car. And if they said this car was going to be available to the first person in line, you'd camp out for weeks so that you could be there. So whatever it is. but you're just the thing that you spent your whole life trying to do. Alright? Your favorite store, your favorite restaurant, your favorite experience, all of that. Most of our lives are spent, and this is both for Christians and non-Christians, okay? We're the same. We spend most of our lives trying to be first in line for that thing. Let's take a poll. How many of you get really upset if people cut in line. Come on. Really? I mean, you may not say nothing, maybe in your head you're like, I can't believe that person cut in line. I'm the type of person that would say, hey, hey. What Paul does in first in Philippians chapter 2, is he comes and he knocks a slap out of the frame. He commands us to keep going by letting everybody else in your life cut line. Not as a strategy per se to get whatever we want, but simply as a way of life. You put everybody else in the world before you and your desires. You're going to have, if this is true, you should start repenting now before you come to the table. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. Paul understands we don't keep going as individuals. We do it as a group. It's among ourselves. We do this in community and we do it in the knowledge that the perfect Jesus is united to us and is united to you. So even if we fail, And we will miserably at doing this. He has it. And he says, you get to take my, um, my perfection as your own. So yeah, you failed, but get back up and try it again. This is what the church does. We encourage one another to look to Christ, not at our failures. It will never be about us doing it in our own strength. It will always be about Jesus. We just get to come along for the ride. And you do it horribly, but you keep trying to do it nonetheless. All right, here's a checklist, and this is what we'll end with. All right, verse 11. When you're troubleshooting how to keep going. We had this guy, let me just say this, had a Bent Tree Conference. Actually, Ronnie was at it. And we had this, uh, this guy up here speaking and he's telling what he's given wonderful information. Okay. About how to, how to, uh, do church in a post pandemic world. And he's up there and he's some high powered preacher from Orlando and really good information. But we had a dude that had shown up, um, on his last legs. He was getting beat up like crazy in his church. And, uh, He just came as a last-ditch effort because he didn't know what to do. And so this guy finishes this wonderful spiel, you know, he's giving his checklist for troubleshooting stuff. And he goes, are there any questions? Thinking that, well, I've got all the answers. I'll give you the wonderful answers. And this guy blesses hard. He goes, what if I don't want to? You know, the room's kind of quiet. You know, what if I don't want to do all that stuff? What if I just want to give up? Bless his heart, the perfect preacher didn't know what to do. I was so thankful for it because this is what Paul is speaking into. He's like, all right, you don't want to give up? Verse 11, here's what you do. You confess Jesus Christ as Lord to the glory of God the Father. You're having a hard time giving up? I mean, you're having a hard time staying in the game and you want to give up? Go to church. Sit in the back. Maybe you can make it for the whole thing, maybe only make it for a few minutes, but confess Jesus as Lord. Verse 12 and 13, obey, practice the faith, and know that your God is with you. It isn't what you do, it's what he's doing in your life. Verse 14, this one's tough. do all things without grumbling or disputing. Both the words grumbling and disputing refer to talking. So maybe one of the remedies for not giving up is shutting up. Verse 15. What's he say there? I don't have it written down. I gotta go back to it. Verse 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. You know how you best figure out, hey, maybe I can keep going. If the free verse says, why don't you talk, not talk so much grumbling. And in this way it's saying, why don't you talk, not talk so much out there in the world, AKA on Facebook, on Twitter, on whatever. on your blog that you think is so awesome for you and the four of your followers. Why don't you be a light in the world? Verse 16, hold fast to the word of life. That means you got to be in the word and you got to be in front of it. You're going to hold fast to it. Verse 17 and 18, realize that keep going might, probably will, look like and feel like death. Paul says, if it has to be, just pour me out, pour me out like a sacrifice. And this is why it's good that you're in a church like this, because resurrection is really important when you're out there dying. Sorry that I'm using so many. I feel like I'm a campus minister all over again using movie references. I'm really not that hip, but I am that bored in ADD. Another great movie, Hustle. Don't watch it. It's got a lot of bad language in it. It's a great basketball movie, though. This guy blows his chance at making the NBA combine. He blows it. He fights some guy, and he just can't make it. And then there's one last chance. They're having a pickup game with all these coaches and scouts that are there. And his coach, Adam Sandler, says, hey, man, come on. Let's try this one last thing. And right before he goes out on the court, he says to them, hey, look, just remember this. They can't kill you if you're already dead. And that's what you've got going for you. If you're pouring yourself out, don't worry about it, because you've got resurrection. Both literal, when you die, and when Jesus comes back. But every day, resurrection is there for you. God breathing life back into you. People around you, your husband, your wife, your kids, your parents, the elders, the people in your church, or your neighbor that you can't stand, they can't kill you if you're already dead. If you're committed to pouring yourself out, if you say it's not about me, it's about you, and I'm saying it's about you because I need to be about Jesus, that's a good way to keep going. It's hard, but it's better than giving up. All right, let me pray for us, and then I think we're supposed to sing. Father, we thank you for your word. Oh, Lord, please give us the energy and the humility the strength to keep going, that we would look to your son and we would trust him and would look upon him. In his name we pray. Amen.