Last week I began a series of sermons on “The Journey To The Cross” wherein I talked about how we get started on the Journey and how we continue on the Journey from Luke 9:23-25. I mentioned that we need to come to an experiential awareness of what the cross means in our lives today.
In this sermon I want you to see another biblical picture of The Journey To The Cross in “Jesus Journey to the Cross” as revealed in Philippians 2:5-11. This is a snapshot of Jesus journey to the cross and your journey will mirror Jesus Journey. Our cross will correlate with His cross. That is to say, we need to come to an experiential awareness of the cross through, humility, suffering, and brokenness. That’s what Jesus did and that’s where we must go on our journey to the Cross.
The point we need to see today is, when God is breaking us, we need to give up all rights during that process of brokenness. We have to give up all rights to defend ourselves, because it’s God who’s at work in us, it’s He who is breaking us. When Jesus went to the cross, He had to give up all rights to be accepted. He had to be willing to be rejected. When Jesus went to the cross he went through tremendous rejection. I mean when you think about it, one of his best friends, Peter, denied him three times. In fact, a lot of the people turned on Jesus because He wasn’t fulfilling their dreams of rescuing them from the Romans. When Jesus went to the cross He had to leave behind his mother and brothers. And the three friends who went to pray with Him fell asleep on Him. He was misunderstood and even when He was dying, He cried out, “My God, my God, Why hast Thou forsaken me?” He felt rejected by His own Father. So before we look at our continuing journey and in the midst of this context, let’s look at Jesus journey to the Cross. As we do the first thing we need to see is:
I. The ATTITUDE of Jesus as He took His Journey vv.5-6
Have you ever thought about why God picked the experiences He did for Jesus to have on the way to the cross? Why did those exact things happen to Him? Why weren’t there other things? Why were those particular things prophesied and told beforehand. Well, it seems to me that God hand picked those things in order to allow us to know what we might have to suffer as God breaks us and sets us free from our "Selves." Because in Philippians 3:8-10 Paul testifies, “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own . . . but that which comes through faith in Christ . . . that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death...” Do you see, that what we go through is going to conform us not only to his sufferings, but his death. This is so that His death can be experienced as our death (identification).
Now, in our text one of the first things God tells us is that we have to have an attitude. The same attitude Jesus had as he was going to the cross. And when we have this kind of attitude we’ll understand why we have to go through what we experience. We’ll understand why this sense of loss is necessary. You see, God is setting us free from our "Self" and the flesh – we’re being conformed to His death. God is at work in us to will and to work according to His good pleasure (v.13). So we have to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling (v.12). You see, God put a salvation in you (Christ’s life). Now that needs to be worked out of you. Christ needs to be worked out of you so that He’s manifested to others, to your brothers and to the world. Your salvation needs to be manifested in terms of your past, in terms of whether your parents still control you, whether or not a tragedy still controls you, whether or not you’re a mere survivor or you’re "more than a conqueror." All this salvation needs to be worked out of you on your way to the cross.
It was worked out for Jesus in that he had the right attitude. He humbled himself. There’s something in us, that thinks it’s in the form of God too and it’s the flesh. So I need to be emptied of my Self, my self-sufficiency, my own control. However, I can’t empty myself as Jesus did, but I can be emptied and will be at the cross. Hence, our need for the journey to the cross. Now this matter of humility is important. In 1 Peter 5:5b we read, “clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Grace is another part of this important attitude. Sometimes we talk about grace as something that we’re helpless over – that we have no effect upon, that God just gives grace and you either get it or you don’t. Well, according to this verse the Bible tells us that grace can only be ours if we humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. And so we do have something to do with the receiving of grace, it’s in our attitude. Well, what happened to Jesus when He humbled Himself? Philippiand 2.9 says, “God highly exalted Him . . ." So, as a result of the attitude of Jesus we also need to see the:
II.The ACTIONS of Jesus as He took His Journey v.7ff.
(as a result of a humble attitude, a broken spirit)
When Jesus went to the cross He gave up all rights to his own reputation v.7. Sometime ago a man who was Pastor in a large church, very successful in everything he did except one thing – the most important thing. He was failing in his marriage. The reason was, because his wife could see through him. She knew what he was really like. Not what he was like up in the pulpit, but at home. That’s where it counts. This man had written many books, served on one of the presidents staff, and from start to finish was successful except, in his own home. He knew a lot of the truth of the Word as shared here and his pastoral counselor was becoming very frustrat-ed because they weren’t making any progress. So in praying, the counselor asked the Lord, “What’s standing in the way of this man’s being broken?” The next day as they discussed that very subject, he said, “Jesus was made of no reputation, how would you like to be made of no reputation? “NO!” he said! “Why not?” He responded, “I’ve spent my whole life trying to make something out of myself.” Then he remembered he was born in a little town in the South where his Dad was the town drunk. And he was embarrassed as a child for time and time again he and his mother would go to the bars and get Dad and bring him home. He vowed as a little boy that he would restore the family name and he did. But he was failing in his marriage. And when he began to realize that he had to be made of no reputation, just as Jesus was, he got on his knees, humbled himself, and agreed -- surrendering his right.
Now another thing that happened to Christ is that He had to give up all rights to His possessions. Of course He didn’t have many. He had a cloak and that’s about it. The Bible says, He gave up His cloak, ie., they took it from Him. There’s a lot of things we look at in this world to meet our needs. We think that they’re going to be our source of supply. They’re going to be things to meet our need for love, acceptance, value and worth. And of course, if God sees that, and He’s in the process of breaking us, we won’t know we have a false God until He removes it. So, we need to give up all rights to our money, to our home, our education, whatever it is that we think is going to meet our needs, so we can put our trust in Christ alone. Jack Taylor says “you don’t really own anything, God just gives you the right to move things around for a while.” You really don’t own anything. So why not give up all rights to it and give God permission to remove it if He wants to. That’s what He’s asking!
When Jesus went to the cross he had to give up all rights to be rescued. There’s a lot of people who are great at rescuing. They rescue others who are in trouble, when God’s trying to break them, and bring them through a period of awareness of their own helplessness and hopelessness. In fact, a rescuer can be a well meaning parent. It can be a counselor who doesn’t understand the process of brokenness, that we have to go down, before we come up. It can be a pill that’s being prescribed for you. I’m not against pills, but if it gets in the way of this process, it’s getting in the way of what God wants to do. It can be a mercy person, one who has the gift of mercy, one who’s prone to rescue.
There’s one more right Jesus had to give up when He went to the cross – the right to be loved by people. I read the story of a twenty-six year old school teacher who had never been married. She said that when she was a little girl her parents had divorced and her mother had gone to live in a far away state while she had stayed with her father who was a physician. She said, “I spent my whole life trying to please that man. No matter what I did it wasn’t good enough.” She said, “I’d come home from school and try to prepare a nice meal and he’d get home and find something wrong with it. I’d spend all day Saturday cleaning the house and he’d come home finding something wrong. I’ve spent my whole life trying to get a few crumbs of love and acceptance from his table.” Now, teaching school, but still unmarried she said, “I desperately want to be married and no one will marry me.’ Why not, she was asked? “When I start dating someone, I’m such a needy, grasping person that they can’t stand the intensity of the relationship. I just smother them and I just want and want and want until they just can’t satisfy me. She said, I even compromise myself in order to get my needs met. The leader of the group asked, “Have you given up all rights and surrendered yourself totally to the Lord, have you given up all rights to be loved by people? She said, “Why would God ask that of me?” She went into a corner of the room & started beating the walls with her fist saying, “why would God ask that of me, doesn’t He know that’s what I need more than anything else!” She struggled for a while, fighting a tremendous war with the Holy Spirit. Then she came and sat down saying, “You know, I have nothing to lose. This trying to get my needs met my way hasn’t worked. And she got on her knees, gave up all rights to be loved, trusting that Christ would meet her need for love and acceptance. A letter came to the leader a couple weeks later saying she was on the way home when God met her and He filled her with enough love for herself and enough to give away. In fact, she took her class of children out to the top of a hill and they slid down the hill on snow by the seat of her pants, laughing hysterically and the kids even came up to her at the bottom of the hill saying, “What’s wrong with you, we’ve never seen you this way before. She said I’ve never experienced such freedom. Well, when Christ went to the cross, the Lord had to give up all rights to be loved. And then of course, God highly exalted him. You see, brokenness comes before the exaltation.
Now you see in the course of events as God arranged for your death of Self, He’s probably arranged for the betrayal or rejection by your best friends or maybe you’ve been misunderstood, or disrespected. However, the question is how have you handled that? Have you been willing to be rejected, have you been willing to be misunderstood, have you given up the right to be accepted? Or are you fighting for your honor, fighting for your respect, protecting your pride? When Jesus went to the cross, he was willing to give up all His rights – are you? This morning I invite you to go to the cross with Jesus as we sing our invitation hymn.
(Much of the content of this sermon series came from a study of "The Grace Life Conference" Audio Tape 5 by Lee LeFebre, Exchanged Life Ministries Aurora, CO.)
