Courage To Sacrifice Series

The Beauty of Sacrifice

Philippians 2:1-11

November 5, 2023

Israel Ziv was taking a bike ride on a beautiful Saturday morning when he started receiving a lot of alarming calls. He raced home, put on his uniform and grabbed his weapon, a 9 mm pistol.

He left his house, a beautiful home overlooking olive groves near Tel Aviv. Ziv is a retired general. He picked up a close friend, Noam Tibon, another retired general whose son was also trapped in a kibbutz.

Within minutes he was flying down a deserted highway in his new white Audi. As he neared the Gaza border, columns of black smoke rose in front of him, and the Israeli army was nowhere to be seen. Ziv said there were 100's of Hamas attackers - - - - shooting machine guns and rocket propelled grenades at him.

He drove his car straight into the battle zone, and started organizing a confused group of soldiers into a fighting unit and overseeing evacuations.

Ziv and Tibon linked up with a platoon of young soldiers, piled them into the Audi and began attacking Hamas gunmen on the road.

They rescued people including Tibon’s son, and saved the countless lives of people they didn’t know.

Whenever I hear a story like this, somebody putting their life on the line for someone else, for another group of people, it really moves me. It’s not a make believe scene from a movie, it’s real life.

Somebody is willing to say, “My life for yours.” Not just my life for me, or my life for me and a little group of friends I happen to like, but my life for yours. That’s the essence of sacrifice.

We live in a world filled with selfishness, corruption and violence - - - - not just globally, but watch the local news and it’s all around us, I wonder, how did it get this way?!

I wonder what part do I play in all of this. How much am I willing to sacrifice? Do I display courage in the face of adversity? How do I display grace, love, and even my frustrations, anger or disappointment? We all have a part to play.

I’m talking about a willingness to sacrifice for others. It’s part of what I talked about last week . . . . as we seek to make small, mini sacrifices in the name of Jesus. Rarely will we ever have to do what General Ziv did. Most of the time it’s those little sacrifices, we do them on a micro level, that become important over time.

Last week, we looked at Paul’s willingness to suffer in the name of Jesus. He preferred death, because he would be with Jesus. To live was to suffer, which means courage and sacrifice.

He also gave us a pep talk as the church - - - - stick together, be unified, put pettiness behind us and stand firm, as one body, not intimidated by the enemy, but stare your enemy down, and he’ll flee from you.

Displays of courage and sacrifice move us. We see flawed people, sinful people, perform amazing acts - - - - and it’s really a foretaste of the sacrificial love we find in the Bible.

It’s the story of the sacrificial love of God the Father sending his Son to die for our sins. Sacrifice isn’t easy, yet there’s a beauty to it, and that’s what I see in Philippians 2, as Paul tells us about the sacrifice of Jesus.

What motivates us, fuels us, and ignites a passion for us to live a life of sacrifice.

We’re going to start in Philippians 2:5, working our way through what’s called the Christ Hymn, then we’re going to look at what’s behind it. Paul wrote - - - -

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,

6 who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,

7 but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

8 And being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name,

10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. - Philippians 2:5-11

I want to look at these verses and help us see what Jesus was willing to do for us.

In verse 5, Paul wants us to have something. The goal in this passage is transformation. When you look at this passage, at it’s root, God wants to put the mind of Jesus Christ in your entire being.