Sermon Brief
Date Written: August 5, 2011
Date Preached: August 7, 2011
Where Preached: OPBC (AM)
Sermon Details:
Series Title: A Series from Philippians
Sermon Title: Honor God – He Will Honor You
Sermon Text: Philippians 2:5-11 [ESV]
Introduction:
How many people here LOVE to BUY stuff or GET stuff as a gift? [ask for show of hands] It is great when we get stuff, but I find it even more thrilling when I buy something I have wanted… but what about when you buy something that needs assembling once you get it home?
Now let me ask… How many LOVE to get stuff you have to put together? [ask for a show of hands] Not as many as before I believe…
This past weekend we met at my mother N law’s house for our grandson’s 3rd birthday party and our niece’s college sendoff party! It was a great time and Michelle and I even brought a gift for her mother… a brand new grill.
Why would we buy her a new grill? Well when we go up there, I am usually the one who is asked to do the cooking and her old grill was worn out and I wanted something I was familiar with to grill on when I had to cook… SO… we bought the same grill (basically) that we have here at our house! Only the grill comes UNASSEMBLED…
We arrived there on Friday night and needless to say I spent MOST of Saturday morning putting that dad-gum grill together… SHEESH! I opened the box and goodness gracious at the parts and screws and bolts and all sorts of different things I had to put together… I was lost at where to start, I was lost at how to proceed, I had NO idea how I would get this thing put together… and then I looked at the instructions!
I looked at the instructions and they began to take me through the assembly step by step. Some of the directions did not seem logical to me and I wondered why I had to do this or do that… why do I put this together before that? But when I followed the instructions, after about 2 hours, there before me was the completed grill!
This week as I began to look at our Scripture, that event from this past weekend came to mind and I thought that it is a lot like what we deal with in our spiritual walk with Christ.
We receive this great and wonderful gift from God… it is something we LOVE and cherish, but when we go to OPEN it (so to speak) all the parts look unfamiliar and we wonder how they all fit together and how in the world are we going to put this life out there for the world to see… and it be functional and the way it is supposed to be!
Well the simple answer is that we DO have instructions for this wonderful gift of salvation that God has given to us…those instructions can be found in God’s Word… in the Bible! I have heard the Bible being described with an acronym B.I.B.L.E. which stands for Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth! [show powerpoint slide here]
Just like many things we have to assemble after we receive them… the Christian life does NOT come fully assembled. God gives us salvation by way of His grace, love and mercy… but what God gives to us is not something we can open up and put into motion without effort on our part!
The GIFT of salvation is something we can NEVER earn or even deserve, but the living OUT of that gift is something we HAVE to work at every day, every hour, every minute of our Christian walk! But preacher HOW? How do we do that… if it does not come fully assembled, how can I put together a Christian life in which God will be pleased?
Well to do that, we must follow the instructions! The Bible is filled with great instructions for the believer and all we need to do is get into His word and God will provide us with what we need to live the life He desires… in our passage this morning Paul has just challenged the believers at Philippi to WALK the Talk and to live their Christian life OUT LOUD, even when there is adversity.
Paul uses these next few verses to reveal the most perfect example of living one’s life out loud for God and with this example comes instructions for the believer to help them to piece together their Christian life in order to walk worthy of the Savior they profess as Lord!
Let’s look at Phil 2:5-11 and see what Paul is saying…
Show verses 5-11 here…I will read
5Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,6who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8And 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, 10so 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.
In chapter 1 Paul let the Philippian believers know that he had dealt with adversity and had shown a faithful life through living out his walk with God in all his attitudes and actions. Then in the early verses of chapter 2… what we looked at last week, Paul challenges these believers to walk the talk as he has walked the talk!
However, Paul did not want the Philippian believers looking to him as THE example, but Paul’s desire was for these believers to focus on Christ and Christ alone, so Paul uses these verse to reveal how Christ is THE main example that all believers should look to for building and walking their Christian lives. Jesus Christ is our instruction for living as God wants us to live…
In v. 5 Paul lays out the purpose of the upcoming segment of Scripture…
Show verse 5 here…I will read
5Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
That purpose was to let them know Christ IS their example! Look what this verse says here, “…which is YOURS in Christ Jesus…” Christ’s example is meant for YOU is what Paul is saying! His attitude, His actions,
His mindset… all of these things Paul paints about Christ… these are meant to be examples for ALL believers!
And Paul wanted these believers looking to Christ for their example not him, and this is still the same today… you may know someone who seems to have it ALL together… who seems to be that spiritual rock… but what this passage tells us very clearly is that we must look to & focus on Christ!
When we look at these verses they reveal some characteristics that make Christ the perfect example for us to follow. We can see His humility, we can see His humanness, and we can see His selfless love… and finally we can see what God does when we submit to His plan!
So let’s look first in v.6-7 at the humility of Christ…
The Humility of Christ (v.6-7)
Show verses 6-7 here…I will read
6who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
Humble is the root word for humility. Humble is defined as modest and unassuming in attitude and behavior and it is also defined as feeling or showing respect and deference toward other people, but the final definition I could find that described the word humble was without pretention and low in rank.
You may say wait a minute, Jesus was NOT low in rank, but when we read this passage we find that even though He was ruler of all things, Creator of all things, and the One who spoke creation into existence… Jesus was absolutely willing to step out of that position and down from His throne in Heaven… Jesus did not see His position as something that should prevent Him from showing respect and deference to His creation.
So the picture Paul paints here about Jesus is one of complete and total humility as He was fully willing to step from EVERYTHING in power and position… He was willing to step DOWN to humble himself, as Paul said, to make himself NOTHING, all for the sake of our eternal soul!
Show verse 7 here…I will read
V.7 illustrates this… 7but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant... This tells us that God was willing to step out of His rightful place in the universe for the VERY specific reason of saving those He had created.
What does that mean for us today as believers? How do we apply that truth to our lives? Well we see the sacrifice and humility of Christ who had all the power and position in the universe… who did NOT have to do this… who sacrificed FAR more than we will ever have… we see Christ’s example and it brings us to the realization that we are called to that same humility… to the humility of Christ!
This means that regardless of where we are in life, that we are willing to humble ourselves for the sake of Christ and the Gospel. You are called to be modest and unassuming in your attitude and behavior. You are called to have respect and deference toward all of humanity. You are called to place others ahead of yourself and without pretention you are called to serve… them and Christ!
Well preacher this is a hard teaching… if I strip myself of all my dignity and position, people will use me and abuse me and I will never have anything in this world… I will be a doormat for all society! When we think about God has called us to… that is the world’s assessment, but God has told us that He would NEVER leave us nor forsake us, and we are called to obedience and submission to Him, the question then becomes, are you willing and ready to serve Him?
Preacher this is tough, after all I am only human, how can I do this? Well Paul understood the human condition and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Paul reveals to us that Christ was fully human as well… Christ dealt with this submission as a human… look what he says in v.8
The Humanness of Christ (v.8a)
Show the partial verse 8 here…I will read
8And being found in human form…
For many people throughout the centuries since Christ lived here on this earth, this thought of Jesus being fully human has been a stumbling block.
In fact this started very soon after the life of Christ in the teachings of which we have come to know as the Gnostics that came onto the scene in the 2nd century but had their beginnings in the time of Paul. The Gnostics were those who sought the pure knowledge, they had a belief that all things physical were tainted and fallen, and that all things spiritual were pure and godly.
With this premise, they began to teach that because Jesus was God’s Son that He could not have possibly been here in a physical body, if so He would have been tainted and fallen and therefore could NOT be God’s Son. So they developed a theory that Jesus only APPEARED to be human… Paul taught against this and the church fathers throughout the centuries fought against this heresy…
Jesus becoming human is vital to the nature of his mission here on earth and that is to redeem HUMANITY. He became one of us to open the door of salvation and eternal life for all who would believe in Him. God clothed himself in humanity and lived among His creation… not as an apparition but as a true to life, in the flesh, human being with trappings of what it meant to be human… YET Jesus did this without sin!
Do you know why Protestants call the birth of Jesus the Immaculate Conception? For 2 reasons, first Mary conceived without the normal human contact, she conceived by way of God’s intervention into her life. But the 2nd reason and I believe the most important reason this is known as the Immaculate Conception is the fact that Jesus was born without sin!
From the time of Adam, sin had been passed through the blood lines and the sin nature was passed on to all who were born of woman, but here God intervened and made it so Jesus was born of flesh into flesh without the sin nature that comes with flesh…thus the term Immaculate Conception… conceived without sin!
Now although Jesus was born WITHOUT sin, it did not mean he was immune to sin! Jesus was faced with temptation all around and the Bible is clear that even though sin waved its ugly hand in his face, that Jesus NEVER succumbed to sin… He never sinned while here on this earth.
Jesus who WAS a man… faced all that we face… and yet did NOT sin! Instead, this Scripture tells us that not only did Jesus come to this world as a REAL LIVE Human being… but when we read the entire verse we see that not only did he NOT sin, but He willingly did what NO human would do on its own… let’s read the last part of this verse…
The Holy [set-aside] Obedience of Christ (v.8)
Show verse all of v.8 here…I will read
8And being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Jesus was free from sin and yet he chose to die on the cross for all those who were enslaved TO sin. Jesus who was perfect and stainless made a choice to NOT take up residence in His worthiness or perfection but rather He chose to MAKE HIMSELF low… He chose to humble himself… He chose to be obedient to the calling of God on His life and He chose to become the sacrifice that all humanity had to have… Jesus chose to die on the cross!
As we process that in our minds, what does His example mean for us? It means that we must learn to humble ourselves and submit to God’s plan as Christ was willing to do… Christ is our example… and we should follow! Yes you are human, but so was Christ… Christ submitted to the plan of the Father and so can you! Christ was willing to humble himself… are you?
Well preacher I don’t know if I want to go that route… after all look what happened to Jesus! He was beaten, whipped, flogged, stabbed and crucified on a cross. He was ridiculed, mocked and make a public spectacle… He was HUMILIATED by the government and by the religious leaders of the day! Why would I want to subject myself to that?
All you say is correct… Christ WAS humiliated by Roman authorities and Jewish religious leaders and the people themselves. Christ was beaten, flogged and crucified; Christ was mocked, ridiculed and made a public spectacle… all of that is true! And your question is why would I put myself through that type of shame and punishment?
Well the reason is the love of God! God’s love has freed you from your sin, and has made a way for you to know eternal life with God the Father. Our calling is to submit to His calling, and when we submit the world will come against us in full force! But regardless of how hard the world comes against us… God is going to triumph!
You see Friday was a bleak and dreary day for the followers of Christ as they saw Him beaten, mocked and crucified… but Sunday was coming! On Sunday, Christ gloriously ROSE from the dead and God exalted Him! Look how Paul describes what God did…
The Honoring of Christ (v.9-11)
Show verses 9-11 here…I will read
9 Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, 10so 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.
Jesus was exalted by God the Father for His obedience. And because of Jesus’ obedience and willingness to submit to the Father, Jesus will one day stand and rule the nations… Jesus will one day be the judge of all the living and the dead. All will recognize Jesus as LORD… and confess His name with their mouths and bow to Him with their knee!
This may not be a willing confession… but one day ALL will bow and all will confess!
But what I want us to see here is the underlying precept that we can take and apply to our lives… Jesus was submissive and obedient to God’s calling on His life… and God exalted Him!
We are NOT Jesus and God is NOT going to call us to die for the sin of humanity… BUT God is calling us to submit to His plan and to work for His glory and for the growth of His kingdom! We are called to be obedient!
The precept we see here in this passage is that when we honor God with our obedience and total submission and humility… God is going to honor us! You have heard me say this time and time again, when you honor God, he is going to honor you!
How do honor God? The language God understands is our obedience to His calling on our lives… when we are obedient God knows we love Him. When we are obedient and submitting to His calling…we are honoring our Father God… when we honor Him, He is going to honor and lift us up!
Now we must understand that honor from God does not come dressed as honor from men or this world. Honor and exaltation from God is at His discretion and in His timing. We may NEVER see any honor here in this world, but when we step inside those pearly gates and stand before our Lord, and we hear the words, “Well done my good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of YOUR Lord!” We will receive the ultimate honor and exaltation…
Honor and exaltation in man’s eyes will please us for a season but it is fleeting and will fade away. Honor and exaltation from God is eternal!
This morning you have heard how Jesus submitted to the plan of God for YOUR salvation. How He made the active and willing choice to die for your sin so that you could know salvation… my question to you this morning is will you accept what Jesus is offering?
Will you accept His gift of salvation and surrender your heart to Him today? As bro Ken comes to lead us in our hymn of invitation… I call on any here who do NOT know Christ as Savior…come and surrender to Him this morning.
Are you here today and you profess Christ as Lord and Savior but you are NOT submitting to Him daily… you are not being obedient to His calling? Today I call on you to surrender your pride, and step out and come to this altar and make things right with God and begin to live obediently and submissively in Christ Jesus… come as we stand… Bro Ken would you lead us…
