I'd like you to turn to Philippians chapter two. We're gonna be in verses one through 18. Fire up your phones, your tablets. Some of you actually have Bibles, that's fantastic. Let me read this passage for you. So if there is 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 interests of others. Have this in mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as 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. 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. 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 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'm glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise, you should be glad and rejoice with me." Word of the Lord, brothers and sisters. I may have shared this with you before, but I think it's worth you sharing again. I was in the Senior High Orchestra, and they moved me to first French horn, and our concert that year was Ballet High. And what my orchestra leader wanted me to do was to tilt my horn up at the beginning of Ballet High and go, do-do-do-do. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it to save my life. And the night before the concert, I'm in the practice room. He brought in some other guy that knew how to do this and was trying to coach me. And I got it. I got it. The night of the concert, the auditorium is full. You know what high school auditoriums were like, right? Little chairs, everybody sitting like this. Yeah, and we got to that point in the concert, and my teacher raised his hands, and I stood up, and I'm flipping my horn up, caught the end of my music stand, and it went up in the air, and the music went everywhere. And I just sat down. And the orchestra leader, looking at me, broke his baton. He turned to the audience, and he said, for our next number. And we moved on. Now, that was humiliating. But the next Monday, the orchestra leader asked me to stand up and apologize to the band. And I've got to tell you something. It was something really difficult for me to do. I was trembling. I was nervous. I didn't want to apologize. I'm thinking everything in the world about, why did he make me do this? He should have known I couldn't play the notes. It's his fault. It's not my fault. I went through every justification I could in my head to avoid doing this. And what I found out was it's really difficult to humble yourself. I don't know if you've had that experience, but I got to be honest with you, I don't like I don't like being humble. It makes me uncomfortable. And our passage today kind of deals with this. You know, we find out Paul's in prison. He's awaiting execution. They could come for him at any time. And he's writing what is gonna turn out to be the very last letter that he writes to the church at Philippi. It's a small church, but it's a powerful one. He's been blessed by the Philippian church. They've encouraged him with their prayers, with their offerings. They've actually helped him establish the gospel in Macedonia. So he wants to bless them now, and he writes this letter telling them what's really important about their faith. He wants to give this to them before he goes, and he wants them to have this information so that they know how to carry on without him. So his teaching here is vitally important to them. They might not know it yet, but what he passes on is gonna help this young church mature, and this is gonna be the foundation of how they move forward, and not just for their own survival, but for the future of the Christian church. The first century church is being built on these foundations here. So in today's passage, Paul's going to give us a lesson on humility. And he sees it as a primary characteristic of the church. And we're going to see that humility, godly humility, doesn't really come easy. So our sermon today is it's hard to be humble. And I know what you're humming right now in your head. And that was intentional, so that you would remember that it's hard to be humble. Amen? We've got three lessons in humility today. We're gonna see the essence of humility, and that's gonna show up in verses one through four. Then we're gonna see a great example of humility in verses five through 11. And then we'll see an exhortation, an encouragement to be humble in 12 through 18. So let's take a look at this essence of humility starting in verse one. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit and affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind." So the passage begins with the word so. And so Paul plays off the end of chapter one where he told us that believers have been granted their faith, and we kind of like that, amen, but he also infers that the believers have been granted their suffering and that all this is for the sake of Christ and for the message of the gospel. And the result of those two gifts, if we would call them gifts, should bring some comfort, comfort in the love of Jesus Christ, comfort in the presence of Christ, but it should also bring participation in the Spirit. Now what does that mean? Paul means that we, the church, should also take part in the love of Christ. We should also be lovers the way Christ is, and we become lovers like he is, and we're enabled to do so by the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit in us. So we should be having affection for each other. We should be expressing sympathy for others and doing it all in unity by having the same mind, sharing the same love that we have received and agreeing with each other in this unity that Paul keeps talking about. We do it all with what he calls one mind. Now that sounds good. It sounds very idealistic, but if we're honest with each other, it sounds impossible. I mean, just think about it. We're all different people. Amen? We have different motivations. We have different desires. We have our own ambitions. We each have different goals, different reasons that we're getting through the day. We have tons of differences, not with each other, but maybe even in particular, we have differences with people that are outside the church. The world out there, beyond the walls. How can we possibly achieve the type of unity that Paul keeps talking about? Well, the first thing we need to realize is that we can't do it on our own. I mean, Paul's already hinted at it. We need the help of the Holy Spirit moving in our hearts. Paul also shows us what our part of this is as well. Starting with verse 3, he says, do nothing. He doesn't do some things. He says, do nothing. And the Greek translation of nothing is nothing. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves. This is a life-changing thought. It is huge. And what it says is that maybe, just maybe, my desires and my ambitions are not the way to achieve the type of unity that Paul calls us to express. Maybe the way to true unity, godly unity, is to actually treat other people as more important than myself. to cater to their welfare and not my own. Paul says we set aside any self-interest. Abandon the idea that maybe we know better than anyone else what's good for us. Or maybe abandon the idea that we just know better than anyone else what is good. Verse four, he says, let each of you, I mean, he's not done. He says, let each of you look not only to his own interests, so we don't abandon all self-interest, but also to the interests of others. And what he's saying is that the priority goes to the interests of others, not towards yours. Again, to work for the welfare of those around you, not just your own. And this, brothers and sisters, This is humility. This is what Paul's talking about. It's the foundation of the unity in Christ that we're supposed to have. He died to give it to us. So the first lesson we get from Paul is this lesson in humility, and it is acting in the interests of others. Now he's not talking about altruism here. He's talking about setting aside your own personal goals and working towards the goals of others. Ouch. We're not done with that yet, but let's move on to his second lesson, an example of humility. So how do we know what it looks like? Verse five, have this in mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. This is the bedrock. This is the foundation of the church, our unity in Christ, having among us corporately the mind of Christ. Now this corporately is kind of an important word because we do this together. We have the mind of Christ together. There's not one person that has more of the mind of Christ than others. There's not a leader of the church that is somehow anointed to know what God wants. We do it together. This is the essence of congregationalism. So we do this corporately. So we have this standard. that is set by Jesus Christ and Jesus made himself the example of what he's talking about, what Paul's talking about. Verse 6, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped. Now we're going to look at this closely because the word for form here means of the same essence. Jesus is of the same essence, in the same fashion, in the likeness of God. He is the same makeup, the same type of being of God, but he did not count equality with God as something to be grasped. Now, this is another word that has incredible implications because what he's saying, what Paul is saying is that Jesus did not pursue his equality with God to his own advantage. He wasn't looking to get something out of this for himself. Paul doesn't say Jesus is not equal to God, he doesn't say that, but that Christ does not make his equality into a self-centered right or a privilege. This is a message for us today. When we're told over and over again that we have to protect our rights, Jesus had the right to be equal to God, but that's not what he pursued. It's not what he made the issue of. I mean, when they go to carry him away, they go, oh, you don't have to put up with this. He goes, don't you know that I could bring down 10,000 legions of angels to take care of this? But I got to do this because my father says so. They say, I have a right to this. I have a privilege of that. Don't you know I'm a child of God? Now we all know that the three members of the Trinity are equal, but Jesus didn't see his equality with the Father and the Spirit as something he had to emphasize. It was there. When I worked in retail, I used to train managers. And one of the first lessons I tried to teach him was that you don't have to exercise your authority, you already have it. These people know that you can fire them. You don't have to make that an issue. You know, when you do that, it just weakens your position. That's a hard lesson for them to learn. It's a hard lesson for me to learn. Jesus was equal to the members of the Trinity, but it didn't go to his head. His goal was not equality. It was God's will. We see that over and over again. It was what was best for others, not himself. Indeed, he went so far as to, in verse 7, it says, empty himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Now, the word for form here is the same word we saw in verse six. In other words, he took on the essence of a servant. He became like a slave, the creator of the entire universe. God created everything in him and through him. A full-fledged member of the Trinity took on a human nature, became a man. And folks like to pay a lot of attention to this phrase, emptied himself. I really kind of like the NIV here, where it says, he made himself nothing. Doesn't mean that he was no longer God. When he took on the essence of a slave, he maintained his Godness. His oneness with God remained intact. And we see that in the high priestly prayer where Jesus prays, make them one as we are one. So he doesn't abandon his God-like character and nature. But he took on the nature of a man while maintaining the nature of God. Now, the theological term for this is the hypostatic union. And it means that two complete natures in one being. And we've talked about this before. He doesn't phase in and out of him. He's not God here and man over here. He's both man and God completely, fully all the time. That's kind of hard for us to process, but that's how it works. So we don't want to make too much out of he emptied himself because that misses Paul's point. We have a tendency to zero in on things and Paul's not making the point of whether or not Christ changed or didn't change or whether or not he abandoned his nature as God. But he goes on to explain in verse eight, and being found in human form, he humbled himself. by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. See, that's the point. Jesus humbled himself so completely that, listen carefully, he allowed himself, Jesus allowed himself to be beaten, humiliated, spit upon, ridiculed, and be nailed to a cross by those who hate him." Did you hear that? And he did it just so that you and I, when we recognize the fact that we're sinners, when we confess that with our mouth, when we repent, Jesus did all that so that when we repent from our sins and recognize him as Lord and Savior, we could be saved. He allowed those who hate him to torture him and try to kill him so that we could be saved. This is the ultimate expression of treating others as more significant than yourself. And look what that obedience and sacrifice led to. Verse nine, therefore God is highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. Christ is exalted. It says he's highly honored, he's highly esteemed. It doesn't mean that his status has changed. It has more to do with the role of Christ, the Messiah, being fully revealed to the world. The Messiah is finally identified. He has a name, and that name is above every other name. It is superior and has authority over all other names. Everything in creation falls under His name, under His authority, under who He is, under His character and His nature. We see in verse 10, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under earth, and every tongue, verse 11, confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. Now, what this verse puts on display is Jesus Christ's dominion, the dominion, the authority that he has over all creatures. And I gotta tell you something, there's been a lot of debate over this. So some believe that it says that all people are gonna come to know the Lord and be saved eventually. But it's a quote, it's a quote from Isaiah 45. And so we have to take it in that context. It's a chapter about King Cyrus of Persia being God's chosen instrument to bring about repentance to his chosen people and send them back home to Jerusalem. And as much as Isaiah speaks, he speaks frequently about the strong parallels to Christ that we see in the Christ figures in Isaiah. And in verses 22 through 25 of Isaiah 45, God says through Isaiah, listen to this, turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, For I am God, there is no other. For by myself I have sworn from my mouth, has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return. To me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear allegiance." Now, that sounds fantastic, amen? But look what it says right after that, because God's not done speaking through Isaiah. In verse 24, only in the Lord it shall be said of me are righteousness and strength. To him shall come and be ashamed all who were incensed against him. To him shall come those who have incensed God, they shall come to God and be ashamed. And then verse 25 says, in the Lord, all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory. Now, let me tell you what this says. We see in Isaiah that every knee will bow. Amen. And every tongue will share allegiance to the Redeemer. Amen. But there are two groups of people mentioned here. And we can't ignore this, the righteous who will be strong and those who incensed the Lord, the ones who have earned the wrath of God, those who have angered Him are going to, the scripture says, be put to shame. The Hebrews will hear this and know that it means to be disgraced, to be guilty, to be distressed. And the implication is that those people that have earned God's wrath will be eternally guilty, eternally distressed, eternally shamed. And those who obey God will be eternally justified and eternally righteous. See, this is true of what Paul says about Christ. It's why he's quoting Isaiah. Every knee will bow. They all belong to him. You know, I've told you about my atheist friend. He says, I'm not answering to God. Yes, you will. Oh, no. But then he wants to tell me that if when he sees God, he's going to argue with me. So you admit there's a God, right? No. But he said, I refuse to answer God. I said, you know, that'll get you only so far, but there's gonna come a day when you stand before him because he created you in the womb. He's the one who made you and you will answer to him. Everyone belongs to him. God has created all of them and has dominion over every living creature. Some will bow in glory and others will bow in shame and distress. It's a picture of judgment day, isn't it? It all comes about because Jesus set the example of humility for treating others as more significant than himself. And it's an example that we're called to follow. So we've seen what humility is, and we've seen this example, and what do we do with this? Paul's third lesson is an exhortation to walk this out. Look at verse 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. Another controversial verse, amen? Has to be taken into context of Paul's overall message to the Philippians so far. We can't just lift this out and start debating it. He's already mentioned participation in the spirit. and participation in loving each other, now encourages participation in working out our salvation. Read this as in participating in our sanctification, a process we go through. The working out of our salvation results in sanctification. Now, it doesn't mean that we work to get saved. It doesn't mean that we have to do work to stay saved, but we do participate in the process of our sanctification. We participate in the development of our holiness. Well, how do we do that? Paul says it comes through obedience. You know, that's almost a bad word in the culture that we're in. And he wants the Philippians to be obedient whether he's there or not. Paul's giving hints that you may never see me again. But did you catch what Paul said? Paul wants them to obey, not for Paul's sake, but for their own, for their own sake so that they can grow closer to God. And the great news about this is that they're not on their own in it. They don't have to work this up. They don't have to conjure up perfect obedience. They have the help of the Holy Spirit. We see that in verse 13, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. God will help them. God will help us obey, not force us to obey, but help us. And God is pleased by our cooperation in this. Pleased that they participate. Pleased that we participate in God's work in our hearts. So we're not giving God a helping hand in going out and building his kingdom. We are obeying God as he works in our hearts and submitting ourselves to that, participating in it. Then Paul lowers the boom by asking them to characterize their obedience. So it's not just enough to be obedient. He says, do all things without grumbling or disputing. Can I mention that again? Do all things without grumbling or disputing. I gotta tell you something, I love to grumble. Did you see that? Did you know what they're doing? Do you know what happened to me? I love to grumble. Paul says, don't do that. And he's talking about some of the same folks he mentioned back in chapter one as examples. They're preaching the gospel for selfish reasons. Some of them are doing it to afflict Paul, to give Paul a hard time. And what he's saying is this type of behavior always leads to dissent. to dissatisfaction, to anger, to paranoia. When other people start acting in their own self-interest, it causes everybody to start moving in the same direction, causes wholesale division, as people are set against each other and feel like they've got to take sides. Boy, I'm glad we're not in that environment. Oops. Paul says, Do the work of the gospel. Work with the Spirit in you toward your sanctification, and do it without complaining, without whining, without arguing. And when he talked about without arguing, not without arguing with each other, but in particular, without arguing with the people outside the church. In other words, don't be consumed with yourself like those guys in chapter one are. Well, why not? It sounds like a good idea to me. Verse 15, don't be consumed so that you may be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish. And then the key phrase, in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom you shine, as light 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." You see that? Brothers and sisters, you and I, we are the light of the world. We stand against the darkness, and we're not to become part of it. We're not to become absorbed by it. We're not to engage in argument and anger and division and self-righteousness. We're not to be haters. And we're certainly not to be without hope. We're to stand apart from all that. We're to bring blessing. We're to be conveyors of compassion. We're to share hope. Listen, we are bearers of the blessing and anointing that was given to Abraham over 4,000 years ago. We're called to be a blessing to the nations. Not some of them, not our own, but all of them. We're called to be a blessing to nations, every one of them. And Paul gets this and he wants his readers to embrace it even after he's gone. Look what he says, verse 17. Even if I'm 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 should also be glad and rejoice with me. Paul's exhortation to them is to carry on, to follow after him, to do what he does, but only do that because he's doing what Jesus Christ did. rejoicing in his sufferings, offering forgiveness and blessing rather than anger and self-righteousness. So those are our three lessons in humility. We saw the essence of humility. Paul's saying that acting in the interests of others, you know, totally counter-cultural, isn't it? I mean, that's not what we're told. In particular, even in the church today, we're constantly warned to protect ourselves, constantly cautioned to preserve our rights. And if you take, just look at social media for about 10 minutes and find out that we're also encouraged to judge other people, to evaluate them, determine whether or not they're godly, whether or not they're holy, like us. Isn't that what the Pharisees did? Thank you, God, for not making me like this awful tax collector. And we say, thank you, God, for not making me like that Pharisee. The culture today does the exact opposite of what Jesus did, the exact opposite of what he taught. The culture today brings death. Christ brings life to others. to others for eternity. We saw this example of humility, and it's Christ. And we're to be imitators of Him. Why are we supposed to be imitators? Because we already have what Christ has, eternal blessing. We have joy with the Father, and there should be some desire deep down inside of us to share that with folks that don't have it. That would be everyone around us. And then we saw the exhortation to humility. Paul wants his brothers and his sisters to be like Christ, who humbled themselves, becoming obedient even unto death, death on a cross. There's a promise that comes along with that type of obedience, and we can find it in Matthew 18, it's there in Matthew 23, Luke 14, and Luke 18. Here's what Matthew 23 says, verse 12. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Now I don't know if you struggle with this, but I gotta tell you something, it's a hard lesson for me. I don't like being humble. And you know why I don't like it? Not in my nature. Just not in my DNA. But you know what? The good news for me, maybe for you too if you struggle with this, is God is giving us a new nature, amen? And he calls us to participate in that newness, which means that I have to consciously set aside my old nature and begin the process of embracing my new nature. I think this is the foundation of obedience. You know, when we hear obedience, we kind of have a tendency to think that, well, I'll obey the things that I like. That's easy. Oh, I need to be reading my Bible every day. I'm doing a really good job. It's not hard to obey when we're asked to do the things that we want to do. Somebody say amen. The challenge comes when we're called upon to do the things that we are unable or unwilling to do. To do the things that are counter to the nature that we were born with. The challenge comes when we're called to obey the things that are hard to do. Now the good news is that because we've done that process, we've confessed, we've repented, we've accepted God, we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, that we have a helper. We have somebody that can help us through these things. We don't have to do it on our own. And when we do that, brothers and sisters, we do exactly what Paul is trying to encourage us to do. We put God on display. We set them up there and go, look what God is doing in me. This is hard. It is counter to who I am, but God is changing who I am. He's molding me and shaping me into his image. And I don't like the process, but I really like where it's going, because I know that the more I obey, the easier my life is going to get. That I can live in the blessing and the peace and the joy of being a child of God, even though life is a little bit uncomfortable right now. Isn't that what Paul's saying? I'm in jail, they're gonna kill me? This has been rough. None of it has been fun. Certainly wasn't the way I planned my life to go. Man, I thought I'd be down in the Sanhedrin standing up with everybody listening to me and being the teacher of Israel, just like Gamaliel was. And look where I am. And then he does the most amazing thing when he gets our attention with that. He says, praise God. Praise God, I count it as joy. All that other stuff, garbage. It pales in comparison to what my Father in heaven has for me as I surrender my nature to his. Let's pray. Father, we give you thanks that we're not alone. We give you thanks that you've put us together as a body to be encouragers, to lift each other up, We give you thanks for your spirit, Father, which is here to help us in these efforts. Oh, Lord, give us the temerity to bow to your spirit, to surrender our nature to yours, to walk this walk that you've given us step by step, each one bringing us closer to you, not by our power, but by yours. We thank you for grace, Father. Without it, we're totally hopeless. We thank you for your son. who made all this possible. And we give you thanks. And we pray, Father, that everything we do would be to your glory, to your honor. And we pray this in the precious name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. I'd like to thank those people online for tuning in today. We'll be back again next week. Thank you. If you have any questions or comments, I'll be right over here.