As we've seen in the last few
weeks where Paul says that we should look out for the interests
of others. That we should be deeply embedded in looking after
each other. Not just physically, but most
importantly spiritually. Above our own spirituality. Above
our own intimacy with the Lord. Above our own worship of God.
Because that which we seek after in others, then others would
seek after in us and then we would grow and mature. It's really
the secret of maturing as a church. Nothing's been as disheartening
as what I've seen in the last few weeks speaking with several
very professional people in the community. Discussing with them
their walk with the Lord and ultimately their location of
worship or their people that they worship with. Their comment
to me was that we worship here because it's best for my business.
We're part of this church because it's best for my role in the
community. To which I did not respond, for there was nothing
to do but rebuke them in the name of Jesus. So I thought,
interesting, and just decided to move on. But friends, if we're
not careful, we'll fall into that category. We'll find that
place and say, well, that church would better suit it for me because
it's better respected, it's got more richness in it, it's got
more programs in it, it's better for me and my family because
of this, that, and the other. It provides opportunity for socialization. It provides opportunity for investment
in the community. People see that as a respectable
place to be, a respectable people to be a part of, to which the
Lord Jesus Christ would say to those who put their hope in that,
depart from me, you workers of iniquity. Now you hear that? Because if we
are born of God, those things, though they enter our minds,
are immediately washed out by the Holy Spirit. Like an enema
of spiritual proportions. Gone. And I say that to you because
if these things are being confronted in my life, I guarantee you,
you are seeing them as well. People that you work with, maybe
even in your own consciousness. Maybe you're thinking, you know,
my business might pick up if I was at a bigger church. Or
I would be respecting the community if I was with the church with
the, I'm not saying this, with the mayor or the city council
or the governor or the president. That would be the church I would
want to go to. My friends, I'll tell you that those churches
may not be churches. Maybe good people, and I'm not
saying that in the antithesis of that. We are the good church.
No, I'm saying that the church of Jesus Christ is not something
to be tampered with and played with. We do not use Jesus as
an opportunity for personal gain. It's the exact opposite. That
when we as the Christians of the world actually serve and
pray and dedicate our lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ,
what it means typically is that we lose everything. We lose it
all. We gain nothing in this world
but hurt, heartache, poverty, death, dismemberment. If being a Christian in this
world for us, any of us, is an opportunity for personal gain
and prestige, we, beloved, are not in Christ. In my heart, though I'm angry
about things like that, I'm fearful for people like that. Above anger. Why would you be angry? Because
it's blasphemous. It's a joke. It's not something
that we should... As a matter of fact, I think
it's more damnable than what SCOTUS has done in approving
gay marriage. Why? Because they're worldly.
The church, when it does what it does against the gospel, is
more wicked than the world. When God's people subject themselves
to worldliness, it is more evil than that which the world is
supposed to do. If the world does righteousness,
it's wickedness. And so my heart today is that
as we see Christ and what He did in humility, and if you want
to change the word humility to humiliation, that's exactly the
same meaning. Christ's humiliation is the epitome
of His humility. And His humiliation, as we'll
see, started at the Incarnation and ended at the cross. And if
we're to have the mind of Christ, we better really start to sense
where the world has crept in. And as John commands us to not
love the world, friends, there are some deep-seated loves of
the world that we cannot see. May we pray with all the fervor
of everything, of our being. May we pray with the fervor of
Christ who prayed in the garden. May we pray with the passion
of the apostles that God would first and foremost reveal the
love of the world in our lives. and that we would look at it
and not think, well, I must collect that. I must keep that. I must
go for that. I must strive for that. I must
have that. I must be that. But yet we should look and say,
I give that all away. I become nothing for the sake
of Christ so that he and his name may be glorified in my life,
that I may honor Christ in my body, though alive or dead. Do you see what Paul is teaching?
This is the thing that we must see and understand as Paul teaches
to these Philippian Christians. This is not a place, the world
is not a place for Christians to set up shop. We may do things,
we must be honorable in our doings, we may have jobs, we should have
jobs, we should have businesses, we should do things to earn wages. That's a part of the Bible teaching
that we work, therefore we eat. But these are not ultimate. Our
names are not ultimate. I think the greatest legacy of
a man or woman who is in Christ is that they are not known for
anything that they've done in this world when they die. But
that people walk around and go, I remember somebody. Can't really
remember them. But I know what they talked about
and I know what they lived for and all I remember is Christ.
I think that was Paul's heart. I think that was the heart of
the apostles. I think that was the heart of Christ, that His
life honored the Father, not him. So if that is the mind of
Christ which is ours, then we should really take note. Friends,
it would be really easy to preach a negative aspect from this. It would be really easy to preach
a guilt-driven sermon. Because in studying this, it
brings guilt. Doesn't it? It makes us feel
guilty because we look at it and we go, I'm a loser. I'm a failure. Absolutely. Hallelujah. Christ is not. So then, as Christ
has never failed and is faithful, then we will not fail for we
are in Christ, though we fail. And our hyper-grace friends,
around the way that believe that obedience is not an imperative
of the church have missed the boat. If the mind of Christ,
at the core of the mind of Christ is obedience, then the mind of
His church should be obedience. As a matter of fact, Jesus even
says the proof of your love for Him is that we obey Him. But
we've mistaken obedience with morality. We've mistaken obedience
with some of us who would sit and say, I haven't had alcohol
in 20 years. I'm such a good Christian. Well,
maybe you should drink a little wine. It might chill you out. Or, you know, I don't watch movies
that are sci-fi because that's just anti-creation. Or maybe
you should enjoy a Star Wars show every now and then. I'm
not saying you should. That's not going to impress God.
What impresses God is His Son, the fullness of deity, and the
fullness of humanity. Two persons, one body. Two natures, one person. And then God looks at Jesus Christ
and is thoroughly impressed, thoroughly pleased, thoroughly
approved as a human being. God the Father is thoroughly
impressed with Jesus Christ. Now, that can take us into a
lot of places, and I'll be honest, I did not realize there were
so much heresies that have been driven from Philippians 2. But there are plenty of false
doctrines and false assumptions and false teachings that have
been derived from this teaching. Let's look at Philippians 2 with
these things in mind, and I'll just start in verse... Let's just look at verse 8. Verse 8 says, "...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 is Lord to the glory of the Father. Now, last week it
told us to have the mind of Christ. who, being equal with God, did
not take equality with God something to be grasped, something to be
boasted upon, something to be entertained and displayed, but
rather made himself a servant, a slave, becoming a human and being found as a human. And so when we look at this,
I want to bring some things to your attention. I want first
to bring to your attention a couple of errors in our thinking. Because
of the way English works, and because of the way English changes,
all language changes. Not just English, all language
changes. If we look at English of just a hundred years ago,
and we bring some... I'm not talking about new words
that we've just created, that we use. new weird phrases that
we have, but I mean just words. If we heard someone, or someone
from a hundred years ago heard us speak in a normal way, they
would hear words that they might not understand. They would think,
what does he mean by that? If we look at just phraseology,
if you look at just how letters were created. S's used to be
F's. in Old English. It was the weirdest
thing. They were pronounced sss, but they looked like f's. It
was the weirdest thing I've ever seen trying to read Old English
for the first time. Their thing is totally misprinted,
but I guess it took them seven years to write this with an ink
pen or a quill feather, so they just decided to leave the typos.
I didn't realize it was all correct. But if that's the case, then
what does it mean to be in human form? Is that what your Bible
says? Human form? Being found in human
form? See, when we think of that, we
think of what we realize is form. The form of something would be
what? We would automatically think of a type, or a shadow,
or an anti-type, and the real. We would think that it's like
the form of human, but it's not human. Some people have argued
that. I don't think that because I
guess by the Lord's grace at a young age I understood what
it meant. And so therefore I defined my
meaning of the word human form or the phrase human form based
on my theology that the Bible taught rather than the other
way around. But many of us, many people in our culture today,
the Bible is such an afterthought. Let me tell you that. The Word
of God is such an afterthought that when it does appear in the
lives of professing Christians, they have to use their culture
and their language and their understanding of the world to
inform their meaning of the Bible, when it's supposed to be the
other way around. Well, how do you say the Bible's
not important? Well, just, I was going to say
visit churches. Don't visit other churches. But when you happen
to visit other churches, ask yourself how much of the Bible
is used in expressing what's being taught. How much of God's
Word is actually given in context of the preaching? If someone
says, this, this, this, are they showing you in the Bible where
that is in the context where they're preaching? Or are they
having to use a screen to show you the 35 different contexts
of different verses all throughout the Bible in different versions
to make it fit? Friends, if I have to go to another
version of Scripture to prove my point, it's probably wrong. If I have to go through and try
to get creative, and you see the first part of that phrase
here, and start breaking up sentences to prove a theological position,
it's probably an error. Even if it's correct, the argument
that's made when it's pieced together like that is not a good
argument. Well, you're walking with a limp, and you've got a
headache. You know, I saw somebody earlier,
and I did a blood test on him, and he had a virus. You probably
got a virus. How would you like your doctor to say that? No,
I fed on the stairs, doc. No, you've got a virus. The guy
I saw before is about your height, about your age. He had a virus,
you've got a virus. That's how we deal with the Bible
sometimes. Well, so-and-so told me this. I heard this over here.
Well, hey, I saw the word faith somewhere in the New Testament
when I was in the fifth grade Sunday school class, so at that
time I thought that's what it meant, so that's what it means.
Well, now this is getting ridiculous. It is. I move on. The point I
want you to see is that God's Word defines that. God's Word
informs our understanding of itself, of God. When we see that
Christ was being found in human form, we need to understand that
what's happening there is that Paul is reiterating what he's
already said. He's recapitulating because it's
a matter of grave importance that his readers remember and
receive that Jesus Christ is Fully human. He wants his readers
to know that Jesus, though He was fully God, at the same time
He was fully man. And His humanity was not divine. It was human. But yet He had
a fully divine nature. As well as a fully human nature. We've spent time and time on
Tuesday nights dealing with this, and last week I listened to some
sound bites based on observations from some of you, and there is
very good sound bites to prove me a heretic from last week,
if you take them out of context. That's why I gave a warning not
to judge me on what I say this week or next week, but to take
a few weeks to see the fullness of what Paul is arguing. Then
make your judgment. If I'm wrong, call me on it.
Don't run. Because I want to be correct.
I want God's Word to be true to you. I am not the expert,
I'm the mouth. Christ is the speaker. And if I misquote Him, I better
be called out on it. Why? Because that's what the
church is supposed to do. That's what pastors are supposed
to want. That's what the Bible does for
us. It calls us out. It corrects
us. And it puts us in a place of
joy like we've never seen before. Jesus is fully human. He was
found in human form. Much misapplication has arrived
at the doorstep of many people because of this human nature
of Jesus Christ. Paul wants, as I've said, to
reaffirm that Jesus Christ was an authentic person of human
birth. He wasn't a manifestation of
humanity. He wasn't in the form, if you
will, like a sort of looked human, but He wasn't. We don't want
to see Jesus that way. We want to see Jesus as an authentic
human being. That's why it's continued to
be said over and over again. Because if Jesus was not fully
human, then Jesus' obedience, as we'll see, has really no merit
for humanity. I hear that. If Jesus was not
fully human, then Jesus' obedience to the Father and to the law
of God has no merit toward humanity. I'll say it again, three times
a charm. If Jesus was not fully human,
then His obedience makes no difference for us. Because if he's just
looking like a human and he obeys, then how can he satisfy the judgment
of God against humanity? He can't. You can't make a voodoo
doll and hang it on a gallows. You can't take a mannequin and
dress it up like a murderer and hang it and say, satisfied. You can't put to death a criminal or someone else with the mask
of a criminal on. Jesus took the humanity as His
own. Jesus took a body. Jesus took
on a human soul. Jesus was subject to the law
of God and Jesus obeyed absolutely perfectly at every aspect of
His existence from birth to death with no fault, no error, no hesitation
at any moment Everything that God requires of every human being
who has ever or will ever breathe air in this world. Jesus has
obeyed fully. And because He is a man, fully,
then God, as He punished Jesus Christ, did so not because Jesus
deserved the punishment, the wages of sin, but because the
very opposite is true, He did not deserve it, so therefore
His sacrifice is worthy to substitute for mine and for yours. See, the Gospel has been condensed
to this plan and response. And there is nowhere inside the
entire Bible in its context that teaches that. The gospel, which
means good news, in the Greek the word is evangel, which is
where we get the idea of being evangelicals and doing evangelism. But yet the evangelism that we
do as evangelicals is not the evangel at all. When it is, Jesus
loves you, died and rose from the dead. Do you want that? Who
doesn't want that? You want to go to heaven? Close
your eyes, bow your heads, and come up. The gospel is that Jesus is God,
become man, and lived holy. The reason Jesus' death makes
sense and is actually effective is because He lived as a human
for thirty-five years or so. That's why it makes a difference.
Anybody can die and it be a good act, but no man can die and say
that his death was an unjust death and can be a substitute
for a sinner. You can't substitute for my crimes
to the Lord because you've got your own to pay for. You can't
pay for my sins because you have your own that you're guilty of.
Just like I can't pay for yours. As honorable as it may be, it
won't work. Well, I've never murdered. You
probably have. I have. The Bible says that murder
is hatred in the heart. And the first step that we see
in the application of murder, not just taking lives, but talking
ill of people. talking bad of people, saying
even what might be true to someone else that that person's reputation
might be tainted or that someone might agree with you. That's
murder according to the scriptures. So we've all murdered. And if
we haven't done it with our mouth, we've done it in our hearts.
And if you haven't driven downtown Atlanta, go do it. You'll be
a murderer. Maybe in both senses or all three.
But here Jesus is fully human. But remember, His human nature
was not divine. His divine nature is divine.
His human nature is human. Friends, this is a mystery. And
it's not for us to figure out. In several months we'll move
into a new class on Tuesdays. We're going to deal with the
Trinity. We're going to look at the nature of Jesus. We're
going to look at the function and the work of the Holy Spirit.
We're going to see about the headship of God the Father. We're
going to understand that as best we can so that we might apply
it to our lives as worship. And being found in human form,
Jesus is found in His humanity. The Bible says in Hebrews 5.8,
although He was a Son, what? He learned obedience through
what? He suffered. So though Jesus
was the Son of God, He learned through suffering how to obey
God. And so if we see that, that Jesus'
humanity is found in His obedience, then we need to understand that
He learned His obedience. Jesus was found as a human being. He was seen as a human being.
He learned as a human being. He obeyed as a human being. He
then was tempted as a human being. The writer of Hebrews says that
He's tempted in every way known to man. Every way that is common
to man. So that we know as an advocate,
as our great high priest, Jesus can sympathize with us. Jesus
sympathizes with us when we have a murderous heart. Jesus sympathizes
with us when we are tempted and allured by the world. Jesus knows
what it feels like to be tempted, yet in His temptation, He could
not sin, for He was holy. You know what satisfies temptation? I want you to see this. What
satisfies temptation is when we give in. Listen, if we're tempted, let
me just use something that I'm tempted with. Confession, eating. unhealthy things eating. Birthday
cake, I could live in one. And you could put the door up
every day, twice a day, you could build a door of cake and I'd
eat my way out of it and go outside and as I'm gone you build up
another one, I'd eat to get back in the house. I love cake that
much and there was a time in my life where cake and pastries
and sweets dominated everything I did. Everything I did. You
might think, that's the silliest sin. It's just as bad a sin as
a controlled substance. It's just as bad a sin as anything
you can look at with your eyes. It's just as bad a sin as anything
else you can do with your hands. It's gluttony. And it's feeding
the flesh and thinking that satisfaction comes through the taste of the
mouth and the combination of chemicals in the body that sugar
gave me. And still gives me. It's a sin. And the point I was trying to
make is, there's cake. And what are our sins? We are
tempted. You know, you ever wanted something so bad, you just think
about it all the time? You say, that's just dumb. No, that's
how I am. Me and Robin sort of made a bet the other night that
she'd give up something if I give up cake. And then we go to a birthday
party yesterday, and I'm going. So what did I do? Walking out the
door, I snatched a little piece like this. All I can think about
all day long is this birthday party, I'm going to eat cake.
But I told Robin I wouldn't eat cake, so I don't eat cake. I
eat cake, cake, cake, cake. So I ate a pound of blueberries,
trying to satisfy the sweet tooth. Blueberries are healthy. I ate
a pound of blueberries. Get to my aunt's house, eat another
pound of blueberries. Some bean dip. It's not sweet enough. Cake.
They cut the birthday cake like a crackhead. Give me the cake.
I love it. But that's cake. What else tempts us? You know
what? I was so just frustrated. I just want to eat that. I just
want to taste that. I bet it's good. Is it moist? You know what's
really bad? You get a piece of cake that's nasty, you eat the
whole thing so you can find a better piece. But you know what stopped me
from stressing over that? Eating it. Once I had a piece
of cake, man, I need to go take a nap. I've been stressing out
for two hours. I want some cake. Why can't you
eat cake? It's bad for me. in the way I
want it as bad. And I know that sounds... I'm not exaggerating. That's
really the way it is. And so Jesus, when He was tempted to
eat bread because He'd not eaten for 40 days, understood what
it was to be tempted by the devil, but His temptation wasn't even
wicked. His temptation of His flesh was necessary. He needed
food. It was right for Him to eat to
live and not starve. Do you hear this? And He didn't
do it. He did not exercise His divine
authority. He did not exercise as the human being His creative
divine power to make bread out of stones. He did not subject
Himself to be the God of heaven as He walked the man of earth. But He could have. He had the
right to. But He obeyed the Father. And He never gave in. He never
gave in to the fear of concerning Himself with what would happen
at the cross. What was death really going to be like? Would
He be raised from the dead? And so, Jesus knows what it's
like to be tempted. We know what it's like to be
tempted until we stop being tempted when we give in to that temptation.
Or, well, I've defeated some things in my life. Yeah, but
you probably replaced them with others. This is what I really
desire, so I'll just do this. I'm not going to eat cake, I'll
eat Twinkies. There are only two in a pack. I'm not going
to do that, I'm going to do this. I'm not going to say that, I'm
going to say that. I'm not going to feel this way, I'm going to feel this way.
I'm not going to be ugly to my neighbor anymore, I'm just going
to walk around under my breath and grumble about him. I'm aggravated,
so I'm just going to go to the punching bag and beat that thing
senseless. Jesus is fully human. He was
tempted as every man was tempted and beyond. Jesus, in His humanity,
He was found through obedience, through temptation. He was seen
through the eyes of men as an obvious human being. He was seen
as a person of human origin. He didn't walk around with this
glorious beauty. He didn't walk around with this
air of spirituality that people looked at Him and saw Him in
a crowd and went, wait a minute, wait a minute. He'd have blended
in easily. Jesus was known as a human being
by all who saw Him. Jesus was found in His humanity. And His human obedience was holy
and approved by God. And as Paul writes to the Romans,
so by one man's disobedience the many became sinners, so by
one man's obedience the many would become righteous. 18th
verse of the 5th chapter of Romans. And so when we look at Jesus,
He was fully human. That's what Paul wants us to
see in this verse, in this first section of reiterating that idea. And because He was human, He
humbled Himself by being obedient. Now think about this. Here is
the God of heaven becoming human and obeying His own law. Well, that's a good thing, right?
You see, the law of God is not for Him to obey. It's the essence
of His being. God doesn't have to obey the
law because He is the law. God, His holiness, depicts the
truth of the law, the existence of the law. It's revelation of
God's essence, of His intrinsic worth, His value, And now Jesus lived in obedience. He lowered Himself. He humbled
Himself. The second part of verse 8 there,
by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
So Jesus lowered Himself in His humanity. First, in the Incarnation. Jesus lowered Himself from His
position of glory. See, think about the first thing
that you think of when you think of the reflection of God's glory. What comes to mind? Well, let
me tell you what comes to mind to me. Sinai. Mount Sinai and
the power and the authority and the fear that comes from the
presence of God. That the Shekinah glory of God
enveloped the mountain in a cloud. And I don't think it was gorillas
in the mist type cloud. I think it was, oh my gosh, this
world's about to be sucked up cloud. thunder and lightning. The tempest is what the Scripture
calls it. The presence of God's glory enveloped
the mountain, covered it, and that He commanded that if a beast
should touch the mountain, that it should die. Do not come to
the stone where My Spirit resides, lest you die. Do not look upon
My face, Moses, for you would die. This is the glory of God. This is what is due Him. This
is the majesty of His power. This is the greatness of His
ineffability that you can't even see Him. He covers Himself. Jesus,
in humiliation, birthed Himself from one of His own creations. Naked, He came into this world. An infant. And he was seen just
as a man when the Scripture says that the heavens declare your
glory. The people of earth said, isn't that Joseph's son? Isn't that Joseph's son? Isn't
he from Nazareth? What good comes from Nazareth? Do you see the contrast there?
Sana to send. Heavens to the cross, being known
because you see the wind blow, you know there is God, that God
is, to being a nobody in a no man's land, in a failed ministry, hated by all, and hanging across
the dies of criminals. Jesus proved His humanity. He
was human. He proved His humanity through
obedience. He proved His humanity in this way, His humiliation,
through His death. And not just that He died, showing
that He was human, because He could die as a human, but showing
His obedience and His holiness as a human being, obeying the
Father by dying on the cross that was not His to bear. For the wages of sin is death.
and Jesus took the wage of sin that He did not own. He who had
no sin became sin that we might be the righteousness of God.
This humiliation provided proof of Christ's holiness. This humiliation
of the cross provided power in the death of Christ. This humiliation
provided purpose in the coming of Christ. This humiliation is
the point for which God created the world, that He would redeem
a people through being humbled Himself as a human being and
taking on the suffering of all who believe. Jesus became the lowest thing
on this world when He was the greatest thing in the cosmos
and beyond. Verse 9, Therefore God has highly
exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every
name. Let's look at that. Here is Jesus
becoming nothing becoming lowly, being humiliated, being ridiculed,
being hated, and for what purpose? Because the hearts of humanity
are wicked and depraved, and when they see the righteousness
of this man on earth, they hated him. The same way that Cain hated
his brother Abel. Why did Cain murder his brother?
Because Abel's works were righteous. Cain hated Abel because Abel
walked in obedience with God. And Stephen as he preaches in
Acts chapter 6, he looks at the Pharisees and he preaches the
entire Old Testament and then he says, and just like the prophets
before him who you murdered, you've murdered Jesus, the God-man,
the Christ. And then they murdered Stephen.
who we already know was a man of good reputation and filled
with the Holy Spirit. You know why they hated Stephen?
Why did they select him, you think, to run that scam on? You
know what they did? They found the most holy of the
deacons, the most well-respected, gentle, quiet, beautiful, godly
example of a human being, and they said, let's get that guy.
He drives me nuts. You know, there's six others,
but let's get that guy. Because He makes me madder than
any of them. Because when we confront Him,
He just walks away quietly and He prays. And He gently expresses
the Word of God with great patience. Let's kill Him. Let's get Him.
It makes me furious. That's why people hate Him. Christ. That's why people hate
Christ's church. Everybody loves the religion
of Christianity when they're not accountable to living as
Christ has made them to live. When we can hate and gossip and
sin and live greedy lives and not have to worry about studying
the Bible, not be perplexed by spiritual things. When we can
go around and do all the fun stuff and our activities and
our entertainment without worrying about the consequence of seeing
and listening to things that aren't pleasing to our Father.
We're fine with Jesus, but when someone stands before us and
quotes Scripture, we hate them. when someone stands in a pulpit
of the common church of America and says, Be holy, for I am holy,
saith the Lord of heaven. Oh, hellfire preacher, this ain't
going to win people to Jesus. It surely will not win people
to Jesus. It will show them that they are
lost without Him. What wins people to Jesus is
when God in His sovereign mercy, as they hear the command of holiness,
as they see in the Word of God, you will perish except you be
holy. And then they see that they can't
be holy, and that the only man that's ever been holy to walk
this world is Jesus Christ. And if their trust and hope is
not in Him, they will perish in eternal damnation. That is
not fear. That is hope. Christianity is not a culturally
inclusive, precious club. Christianity is the holiness
of God made known to the wickedness of man through the person of
Jesus Christ and the consequence of that wickedness being poured
out on His person. The power of God in the resurrection
of Jesus who promises to raise us from death to life through
Christ. It's not a joke, church. It's
not a game. Walking with Christ is costly.
I think I might have said this in the introduction, that when
we live as Christ has called us to live, it will cost us everything. And the true saints of God thrive
in it. Those who are not of God run
to another place where they can be comfortable. And I dogmatically stand on that
until I die. And the beauty of it is that
you and I are all accountable to Him. Together. Isn't that
great? Isn't that great? To be the body of Christ together
instead of just the one who's by yourself. Having to be accountable
to the Lord by yourself, though you are. As the body, we grow. Had you rather Jesus knock on
your door and confront you with your sin, or had you rather Some
of us knock on your door. I'll be honest with you. I'd
much rather see y'all drive up in my driveway than the cloud
come down to heaven. But because I'm in Christ, because
you're in Christ, there is no condemnation for those in Christ
Jesus. Jesus was exalted and given a
name that is above every name. He is raised up. to the highest
place. Look at that. God has exalted
Him. God the Father exalted Jesus. Jesus bowed in humiliation and
in obedience to the Father through death as a criminal, and in response,
don't hear what I'm not saying, in response, God has exalted
Him. Some would argue Jesus earned
that. No, Jesus was due that before
He came to earth. He didn't earn it. No man, us, the God-man,
yes. None of us can follow Jesus in
obedience and earn salvation. It's impossible. No one can do
it. But yet, few evangelicals believe
that you can, but yet most evangelicals would argue when you say that
the most precious of holy people If they die in their sins without
Christ, they're condemned. They would argue with you. Oh
no, sweet old Betty, she was sweet. She was sweet. But God's not
letting us in based on our sweetness. to His presence. God's not giving
us eternal life based on our morality. God's not giving us
eternal life based on the absence of sin. God's not giving us eternal
life because we're part of a church and doing ministry. God grants
us eternal life because Christ satisfies His judgment against
us. And faith alone in Christ alone is just that. That when
we see our sin at any given time in our life, As a believer, and
especially as an unbeliever, we trust that Christ alone satisfies
God's wrath upon us. It is faith alone in Christ that
gives us eternal life. And that faith, though it is
alone, I hate this cliche, is never alone because Christ's
Word in us then presses into us obedience. Not perfection,
but obedience. Are we striving to do what God
has called us to? And if we look at how Paul especially
has written to these letters to these churches, the core of
living the Christian life is together as the church. My home and living as a godly
husband and father is important. But if I do that apart from the
community of faith, it's worthless. Because my family is not the
church. We're just a tiny little speck
of the church. We're the toenails of the body. The kneecap. So we may be right
and healthy as that particular part, but we must be there with
the rest of us so that we might live in completion. God has given His church exactly
what you need. He has given His grace through
the ministry of someone else in the body. Because I don't
know the last time, maybe you have, that God came to me from
a bush. And I don't know the last time
that God commanded from a cloud. Most people that I hear say that
kind of stuff, I call them a heretic. Just like the one who, not six
weeks ago, told me he almost died and had a vision, and God
told him some stuff that we needed to know about heaven, to which
I just sort of smiled and prayed and thought, thank God nobody
else was in earshot of that, because I'd have had to hurt
his feelings. No. We know everything we need
to know from God's Word. And God's Word is written to
His people, us, who collectively live as participants of grace,
as partners of grace, and partners of ministry, partners with suffering,
for the sake of His glory. Jesus is exalted. He became nothing
and was humiliated to the lowest one, and then He was exalted.
to the Lord of everything. He has all rule, all honor, all
dominion, all authority, all power. Christ humbled Himself
and God exalted Him. Christ's honor and glory is due
Him and it was awarded Him by God. And in doing so, God vindicated
His unworthy death. His quiet resolve, His holy obedience,
where the world mocked and said, take yourself down off the cross.
They put a crown of thorns on Him and put a sign above His
head, King of the Jews, as a mockery. They put purple linens over His
ripped up flesh, tore them off at the cross that He lay bare
and naked, ripped apart from limb to limb, nothing to cover
Him. as He bled and as He suffered
and as He died, as He pulled open the flesh wounds from His
back to breathe just one breath for six hours, as they mocked
Him and ripped His clothes in half and sold them and gambled
over them. There's no lower place than that
for the God of heaven. Because of His lowliness, God
exalted Him to the highest place. And sadly, it saddens me, but
at the same time it is the cause of my greatest joy to know that
Christ suffered that way. It saddens me because in all
of His glory and majesty that was due His name, that was due
His person, that was due His role and His place, He did not
reveal it there. How amazing would it have been
if after He died and they stabbed the spear into His side and the
blood in the water ran out and they took His body off the cross
in a whirlwind of fire. He just came up off the ground
and the cross melted. He said, I told you I was God. And just like a superhero just
started burning everybody. I mean, you know, that would
be worthy of a movie. What's worthy of a movie, watching
a man die? Nothing. A holy man. No? But it is the greatest place
that joy is ever found. And he was exalted. to the highest
place. It was revealed to the world,
to the church, to the cosmos, to the rulers of the heavenly
places, the enemies of God, that Jesus Christ, though He died
as a humble servant in humility, He now shows His real place,
which is with all authority and honor and glory and power and
dominion over all things. Christ was worthy as God of all
the prerogatives of God, and now as a man, He received those
same honors as Christ was raised from the dead. And friends, Christ
wasn't raised from the dead because of His obedience, but it was
because of His holiness. Christ was worthy as God, and
He had not earned the wage of sin. He had not earned death,
but He took it. was given the name above all
names, and I don't think it's the name Yeshua. Or in the Greek, the name Jesus.
In the Hebrew, the name Joshua, if you want to translate it into
English. I believe it's the name of Lord. I know that's His title
and His office and different things. But listen, I mean to
tell you that Jesus is Lord. Paul says it there. He's exalted
Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name. He
became the One who is below all things, and yet now He is the
One who is above all things. Christ is Lord. The Hebrew word for Lord in this
context is Yahweh. Jehovah. God is Lord. Jesus is God. And the word God means the high
one. In every language. So that all the qualities of
God are His. All the power of God is His. All the dominion of the divine
is His. For it was His. And He subjected
Himself to become man. And He gave that up. And that's
what the Scripture says. But it doesn't mean that it was
not His. It doesn't mean that he did not contain all the divine
attributes of God, but he exercised them not because he was fully
man. His humanity was not divine,
though he was divine. How many times I'll say that
and it'll still puzzle us. And I hope it causes more questions
than it does answers. So that, verse 10, God exalted
Him, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, not just
the church, but all the knees in heaven, all the knees on earth,
and all the knees under the earth, and every tongue from there and
from those places will confess that Jesus the Christ is the
Lord God, to the glory of God the Father. And we'll look at
that more in depth next week. But in a nutshell, it is this.
Christ bowed and became nothing, and therefore the Father set
Him over all creation. The eternality of Christ is this. While He was not before the Incarnation
the God-Man-Human, He is now forevermore the God-Man. so that the nature of Jesus Christ
is fully divine in its completeness. How does that work? We'll have
to spend some time in another place on that because we'll have
to study a lot to see it. What difference does it make
for us? It makes all the difference in the world. It makes all the
difference in the world in that we don't treat our faith and
our church and our ministry as something to be bragged upon
or to be looked at. We don't want to be looked at.
We don't want to be counted among the successful pastors and ministers
and Christians of the world. We don't want to be counted.
as someone to esteem because we're in the right place, doing
the right stuff, with the right title, with the right authority.
We lay it down and become nothing. I think some of the greatest
men listed in the Bible are those faithful men who buried the body
of Stephen. Who was just wrongly accused,
wrongly tried, and murdered by the Sanhedrin. Saul of Tarsus,
giving license and approval of the stoning of Stephen. And yet, the Scripture says that
unnamed men with loud lamentations carried the body of Stephen through
the streets of Jerusalem and gave him a proper burial. Those
men, by nature of history, most likely were arrested and stoned. Nobody knows them. Jesus says, the least of these,
the humble shall inherit. The last shall be made first. You know what that doesn't mean?
Is that as we do our things humbly, that God will give us an exaltation. God's going to exalt us because
Christ humbled Himself. And because Christ humbled Himself,
we can humble ourselves. Because Christ gave us forgiveness,
we can forgive each other. Because Christ became nothing,
we can become nothing. Because Christ subjected Himself
to suffering and to ridicule and to revile, we can do the
same without being loud, angry, right and authoritative. This
is anti-American. But it is so proof of the gospel
in us that God's name is glorified. Because what we want to do as
the body of our Savior is to reflect Him. To show Him. And part of the suffering of
Christ that we participate in is to take what Christ took as
Christ took it. What's that mean for you? It may just be that in the community
in which you live, you're not seen as much of anything because
of the faith that you have and the fellowship that you keep.
It may mean that in some circles of professional life that people
ridicule you or are behind your back and you never know it, and
they never include you, or they put pressure on you to become
part of what they have. Or it may mean that as you love
your neighbor, they make accusations against you and they hate you.
It may mean that you have to put up with unbelief in your
very own home, from your spouse or your children, with a quiet
mouth and a prayerful heart. Most importantly, it means that
as we relate together as the church, we do so in the power
of the gospel. We remember what God has done
through Jesus Christ who broke His body and shed His blood so
that we would have eternal life and forgiveness from the Father.
And in that, we then relate together. I'm going to pray and Brother
Jesse's going to come. Father, as we continue in our time of
worship, help us to focus fully on the Gospel of Jesus. That
we might know that we know in the depths of our soul of Your
love for us, and of our hope in Christ. In Jesus' name we
pray, Amen.