Open your bibles with me to Philippians chapter 2 verses 5-11! Thank you, you may be seated.
These verses bring us near to the core of the early Christian faith and early Christian preaching… these verses most certainly are distinctive as they relate to the articles of our Christian Creed, the divinity of Christ …his pre-existence… his equality with God the Father…. His incarnation… and his true humanity… his voluntary death on the cross… the certainty of his ultimate triumph over evil… and the permanence of his future reign because Ephesians 2:5-11 is the counterpart to Isaiah chapter 14 where Satan lifts his throne above the throne of God.
In Isaiah chapter 14 the word reads from verse 12 how art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nation's! 13 for thou has said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the Mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north. 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High… but the verse 15 reads… yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
When you read Satan's words in Isaiah 14, he is gradually going up, I will ascend... I will sit on the mountain… I will be like the Most High… but the counterpart of that is Jesus saying: I will come down and be in a body of weakness and corruption, I will come condescend, I will lower myself… whenever you're going up against God, that's satanic … but whenever you're coming down to be a servant… you're humble like Jesus Christ!
Going up against God is devilish but coming down to be a servant is Christ-like! every verb in Isaiah 14 is Satan lifting his fist in God's face… I will, I will, I will, I will be like the Most High… but Jesus in his incarnation says: to come down is to be most like God… so if we are going to serve him… he says let this mind be in you… that was also in Christ Jesus…You can't serve God from up there…. service is down here!
Let me see if I can get that over to us from the NT… when they were on the mountain of Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John saw Jesus transfigured before their eyes… and Moses and Elijah came and spoke with Jesus on the mountain, and it was ethereal, and from the Otherworld, a supernatural encounter, something they had never seen before but that was not where the real mission was… the real mission took place when they came down from the mountain… because this man brought his
son to Jesus disciples who was fallen in the fire and fallen in the water and he said I brought him to your disciples but they could not heal him… and Jesus said bring the boy to me, and Jesus healed him!
His disciple surprised says: how come we couldn't do that? and Jesus said this kind does not come without prayer and fasting… If you're going to do God's work… so, being a president doesn't make your servant! being a chairman doesn't make you a servant… teaching in front of the class doesn't make you a
Servant… if you would be my disciple, you've got to deny yourself take up a cross and follow me and go out there!
In verse number 6, the word translated in (the form of God) is the word morphe from which we get our English word metamorphosis… to change, to become, he morphed, the
essential form… in verse 7 Paul says he “took the form of a slave”… in verse number 6 he is “Morphe Theo” in verse number 7 he is “Morphe doulos” and so Paul puts these two utterances side by side that Jesus is “Morphe Theo” and “Morphy doulos” meaning: he is God and man in essential nature with neither of them changing!
I don't think I got that over to you, I has been preaching for 10 years and I cry before the Lord always for God to give me understanding, and for a new word, or a new revelation…
Last few days in preparing to preach this sermon, I got a new revelation… because I've been preaching this text without paying attention to details… because talking about the Incarnation, my preaching has been that Christ took off his divinity to become humanity…. but that's an inaccurate assessment and teaching of the Incarnation…. because the correct assessment and teaching is that Christ did not remove divinity, he lowers himself by adding humanity!
The self-emptying is not that he takes off divinity, because if he does that then he cannot not be God… but he lowers himself by putting on my poor humanity and limiting himself in a human body like mine and yours!
He does not divest, deny, disassociate himself of the perfections of his divine nature, which were not in the least diminish by his assumption of our human nature… for the Bible says all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in him, bodily!
Hear this, though he took that which he had not before… he
lost nothing of what he had! he engaged cheerfully, he attended diligently, and he finished completely what God started in him for our salvation!
His essential nature in divinity and his essential nature in humanity unified, joined, intermingled in the form of a man Jesus Christ… it's called theologically the hypostatic Union It means that Jesus is both fully God and fully man. Jesus has all of the characteristics that are true of a person, and all of the characteristics that are true of a divine being. so much so the high priest accused him of blasphemy in Matthew 26:64 Jesus said to him, Nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” 65 Then the high priest tore his clothes, saying, “He has spoken blasphemy! What further need do we have of witnesses? Look, now you have heard His blasphemy…. Then In John 10:27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. 28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. 30 I and My Father are one.”… Jesus quoted Psalm 95:6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. 7 For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice: 8 “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, As in the day of trial in the wilderness.
I still don't think I've got that over to you… Basil the great who was the Bishop of Caesarea, and Gregory of Nyssa, and
Gregory of Nazianzus along with the early church fathers
developed what now we know “the Trinitarian doctrine”… that Christ who is the son, and God who is the father, and the Holy Ghost who is the spirit are all of one essential nature in three personality… God is the three-in-one… living and operating in hypostasis… they are one in three personality, and in their three personalities, neither one of them loses his essential essence! God the Father, in coming God the Son, is no less God the spirit… and God the spirit who is here in place of God the Son, is no less than God the Father because they coexist in hypostatic union… essentially three-in-one but of the same essence! he morphes, he becomes without losing anything… His name was called Emmanuel, which means “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). “Emmanuel” describes the concept of the incarnation—God becoming man.
Jesus being called “God with us” is consistent with John 1, which refers to Jesus as the Word who was with God, and who was God, and who became flesh (John 1:1, V14).
That's the person of the Christ, he becomes a man but he lays aside his attributes, he lays aside his authority, he veils and covers up his divinity with human flesh, and every now and then he lets it peep out… he doesn't do it all the time (because according to John 8:29 for I always do those things that please Him), but every once in a while his essence as divinity sneaks out…
• At a wedding feasts in Cana of Galilee it came out!
• When Peters mother-in-law got sick it came out!
• When the woman had an issue of blood it came out!
• When they ran out of food in the wilderness it came out!
• When Zacchaeus was up in the sycamore tree it came out!
• On the mountain of Transfiguration it came out!
• When he knew everything about the Samaritan woman it came out!
• In the wilderness when Satan was tempting him it came out!
• When he casted the demon out of a mute man and made that man speak it came out!
• When he forgave the paralytic lying on a bed it came out!
• When He and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace, be still!” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm, his divinity came out!
• When he raised Lazarus after four days from the dead it came out!
• On the cross when he died it came out, and early one Sunday morning… all that he had before he left, joined back with him as he was in the beginning…
John says it like this: in the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God and the word (the logos) became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and Truth!
Any Jews hearing the words, “In the beginning…” would have immediately recalled the Genesis account and they say: God spoke and His idea or plan for Creation was made manifest…they say: The text does not say, “In the beginning was the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was God.” Neither does it say “In the beginning was God the Son, and God the Son was with God, and God the Son was God” … but John here refers to the (Alaph tav) in Gen 1:1 brasheet bara Elohim at hashamaeem vat ararez.
Now who is the alaph tav, the alpha and the omega?
Rev 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. But in Rev 21:6 Jesus said to John I am the alpha and the omega…
Christ's incarnation was not an emptying of himself of his divinity but a clothing of himself in humanity in order
to become a servant, “a doulos”, a bondservant, a slave is one who is devoted to another to the disregard of his own interests….
So Paul said Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus… Paul is trying to tell us that “when you consider what you want, you’ve got put what HE wants in that place”… and what he wants is always better than what you want! what he desires for you is always more than what you desire for yourself…
Peter who was always quick to speak and slow to think, said to Jesus one day we've left everything… we left it all to come follow you… we want to know Jesus, what's in it for us?
We left our mothers, and fathers, we left our brothers, and sisters, we've left our wives, and children, we left our fishing nets, we've left our farms, we left our vocation, we dropped everything to do what you say… what are we going to get in return?
Jesus said Mark10:29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life. Some preachers and pastors told us that serving the Lord will pay off after a while, but I can go a step further than that and say… serving the Lord pays off right now… there are some dividend, there are some benefits to serving God… he redeems our life from destruction, he satisfies our mouth with good things… Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!
I learnt from my early days following Jesus that if you can’t say a word, just wave your hands… sometimes it gets dark and slippery, sometimes it look like the devil is getting the upper hand BUT serving God, trusting God, giving God your best hallelujah, giving God your most reverent Amen, praising God
when you don't feel like it, giving God glory when you're sick, telling God thank you when you don't have enough, giving God the praise when you come up short, giving God all you got even when you don't have enough… that will not go in vain…God will fix it for you, God will hear your desperate praise, He will make it happen, God will open the doors before you and no one can shut them!
I'm getting happy here, I’m getting exited, I'm not through yet but I feel the holy spirit moving in the house…
I wouldn't serve no other God, I won't take the names of other gods on my lips, I won’t offer any kind of sacrifices to any false god, I would have nobody in my life but Jesus! Psalm 124:2 If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose up against us: 3 Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us: 4 Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul: 5 Then the proud waters had gone over our soul. 6 Blessed be the LORD, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. 7 Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. 8 Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
When my father and my mother forsake me, then the lord will take care of me ….I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, where does my help come from? my help comes from the Lord, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness!
In his person, when he became a man he did not and could not cease to be God… and as God, he was the eternal one, the uncreated creator, the unmoved mover, the self-existent creator of the universe who left the place where angels sang his praise!
Peter tells us in his epistle that there are some things angels don't know… in 1 Peter 1:12 the Bible says that some things angels are looking forward to looking into… because angels are created beings who never sinned and so… they may have no need of salvation… so when we get to heaven and start singing about Redemption, angels got to hush!
Can you imagine that? when we start singing about salvation
angels will stand aside and listen to us… because they know nothing of redemptions sweet melody, there are some things they want to look into because they were not acquainted to this kind of information!
When God decided to send Jesus, angels didn't have that information… they heard that Jesus was leaving the Imperial courts of King Emmanuel to see himself into a body of weakness and contamination… and they watched him get off the throne, at the seat of the Father at the right hand, divest himself of his divine attributes and lay them aside from another moment… and walked down the streets of glory, taking off omnipotence, taking off omniscience and laying it aside for another moment… and when Jesus gets to the handrail of
heaven to come down to become a man…they were thinking that he's going to come in a flash of light and blind them with his presence… but he comes in a 13-year-old peasant girl, unmarried to her husband in the backdoor of humanity in a stable, in a horse trough… and then the angel starts shouting over that news and singing over that Incarnation, and the music gets so loud that it spills over heaven and they hear it in the field!
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, to men of goodwill… and that music didn't go to Kings, it went to Shepherds, and when God gets ready to save, you got to come down because that music can't be sung by people who are up there… you got to come down here… and maybe the reason some of you can't shout over your salvation it's because you're too high up looking for a God that's too far ahead!
But those of us who can sing redemption song… I've been washed in the blood of the lamb, I've been redeemed, my sins have been forgiven, he looked beyond my fault, he covered me
in my mess, he covered me when I could have lost my mind, he sheltered me when the devil was all around me…
I’m honest enough to admit that had I died just 24 years ago, I'd be lost and in hell right now, come on talk back to me if you can! But in spite of all… he just keeps on opening doors, he just keeps on making away, he just keeps on finding a way to lift up your bowed down head… now angels can’t understand all that, but you and I who've been redeemed, who've been washed in the blood of the Lamb, as a matter of fact the Bible says let the redeemed of the Lord say see so!
Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus who (talking about Jesus), being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God… thought that equality with God was not a prize to be grabbed… like Satan tried to do in Isaiah 14!
Satan tried to grab what really only belongs to Christ, Satan tried to grasp equality with God but Jesus does not grasp equality with God because when you're comfortable in
your own skin… you don't run after praise! you don't run after honor! You don't run after Pat's on the back! You don't run up to people and ask them “am I doing a good job”? you're not trying to impress anybody, you're not trying to make sure everybody's on your side… no, when you know who you are, when you're comfortable in your own skin, you just serve God because it's right to serve God!
You get joy out of serving God, there's a satisfaction, and a contentment, and peace in knowing I don't have to be in the
front… Jesus found the highest honour in the lowest place, and that’s where we find it as well.
We find honour in the place of humility. We find respect only in the place of service.
God has Exalted Christ to the Position of Absolute Supremacy, in verse 9 "Therefore also God highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name"…That exaltation was fourfold: resurrection, ascension, coronation, and intercession. He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. There He was seated on the throne of God to intercede as High Priest of His people.
Just as the descent of Christ into humiliation was in steps (He was in the form of God but willing to let that go; humbled Himself; became a servant; was made in the likeness of men; was found in fashion as a man; and was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross) … so His resurrection, ascension, coronation, and intercession show the steps of His exaltation by God.
A man who is really saved by grace, does not need to be told that he is under solemn obligations to serve Christ; the new life within him tells him that. Instead of regarding it as a burden, he gladly surrenders himself-body, soul, and spirit, to the Lord who has redeemed him, reckoning this to be his reasonable service"
If Christ, being God, humbled Himself to become a servant for others, then how can we as His followers, who are not God, in any way exalt ourselves? If He died for others, how can we fail to live for others?
The question is: are you here to serve or are you here to be served? Are here to be exalted or to humble yourself? Is your attitude like the world's or is it like Christ's? Are you going through the motions of service or are you becoming a servant? The example has been set; the call is clear. All that remains today is your response, your decision, your commitment. Will you be like Jesus today? There are some benefits of serving:
• By serving God you are serving other people, and when you serve other people…you are connected to them!
• Serving God Gets Your Focus off Yourself!
• By serving God You will Discover Your Spiritual Gifts and Talents!
• By serving God You will Understand God’s Character… Serving God will cause you to abide in Him, and this will enable you to have a personal relationship with Him.
• By serving God You will Receive a Reward!
• Serving God Brings Joy!
• And advances the Kingdom of God
Humiliation in God's economy is at the heart of the gospel.
It's in the heart of how you and I are exalted, at the heart of how you and I come to know God through Jesus Christ's own humiliation and as he conforms us to the image of his son, in Jesus Christ, we are made new.
He has borne our grief, sorrow, and shame, and we can appropriate through His cross freedom and wholeness to live free of the pain and shame of the past… The writer of Hebrews declares of Jesus, in Heb. 12:2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
