The Right Attitude Series

If you want to follow along, we are going to be looking primarily at Philippians 2:5-11. How many of you got your fill of Thanksgiving? How many of you when you were finished eating that Thanksgiving dinner went out and went to the pre-Black Friday sales? My hand is raised. We actually went out there. What about the Black Friday sales? Small Business Saturday? Anybody anticipating participating in Cyber Monday? Thanksgiving is behind us and Christmas is coming pretty quickly. In fact, too quickly for some. Although it is a very joyous time of year obviously when you celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, for many adults it can be a stressful and anxious time. Particularly because we have to deal with a lot of people that can be a little bit obnoxious. The sales clerk who doesn’t honor the sales price of an advertising insert. I had to deal with that last week. You get that obnoxious relative. The uncle who takes the last slice of pumpkin pie instead of asking if anybody else wants that piece of pie. Or you have the insensitive Christian who takes your favorite pew seat on Christmas Eve. All those people can be a little bit difficult to deal with. It is sad because this is one of the most sacred times of the year. It is so easy to cop an attitude toward certain people. In today’s passage out of the book of Philippians, we see that the apostle Paul has a remedy for that attitude. The remedy is this. That we would simply take on the attitude of Jesus Christ. The attitude that is expressed in his willingness to step out of heaven and come to earth and become man only to be crucified on a cross for our sake and salvation. That is what we are going to look at today.

As most of you know, we have been going through the series called The Story: God’s story as told through the people, places, and events of the Bible. We are getting very close to the end. We have about two more weeks left and we should be through that series. We have been going through the portion of the story that is referred to as Paul’s letters. As we said before, Paul went on several missionary trips where he planted churches. He did not abandon those churches. Ideally, he would visit them. If he couldn’t visit them he would send delegates. When he couldn’t visit or send delegates, he would write a letter. In the book of Philippians is a letter written by Paul from a prison cell in Rome. Even given the circumstances, if you have read the book of Philippians, you can see that it is really one of Paul’s happier and more joyful letters. He really seems to be upbeat in the letter. In fact, he uses the word joy or rejoice several times throughout the entire letter. You wonder what was Paul so joyful about. I think he is joyful because in the midst of the severe persecution that the Philippian church is dealing with at that time, they seem to be able to be steadfast in their faith and steadfast in their love of Jesus Christ. If there is a church that is a favorite church of Paul, I would say it is probably the church of Philippi. It really is the Philippian church. Even though we get the sense that it is a very happy letter and in some sense people are getting along with each other well, you really pick up from a few lines that might have been some internal conflict going on. Not quite as extensive as we saw in Corinthians but still some conflict where people didn’t agree with each other over certain things. We see that very clearly farther on in chapter 4 of Philippians where Paul writes “I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord.” By reading that, we get the sense there might be some internal conflict. We don’t know exactly the situation there, but some suspect that these two women were very actually very good friends but somehow had a falling out. We do not know the source of that disagreement, but we do know that Euodia and Syntyche are never mentioned again in the Bible, so we really don’t know whether they ever did get along again. But we do know that these two women have been forever immortalized in the Bible simply by the fact that they could not get along with each other. That is not a very good legacy to have.

Although the letter to Philippians does not have the primary theme of disunity, when Paul picks up on disunity of any nature he is one to immediately try to nip it in the bud. In this particular situation, he doesn’t seem quite as combative as he did back in Corinthians. He does it in a very creative way. He addresses the situation in a very creative way by reciting what would be considered an historic Christian hymn. If you have your Bibles, you might see that that particular passage from verses 5-11 is actually indented because some believe that was actually a Christian hymn that might have been passed around from church to church and people would memorize it. It would be a way of summarizing the gospel in a very easy and creative way. Paul used this passage to help the people who were in disagreement to filter their attitude through. We are looking at Philippians 2:5-11. In this particular passage, Paul is saying to the people in the letter that I want you to have the same attitude as Christ Jesus. Then he goes on to say “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped; but instead he made himself nothing. He took on the very nature of a servant and he was made into the image of man. Being found in the image of man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on the cross.” The passage goes on to say that because of this “God raised him up above all things and gave him a name that was above all names. In the name of Jesus Christ every knee would bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue would confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” That is a beautiful verse that is worth memorizing for everybody. It summarizes the gospel. It summarizes the Christmas story and the Easter story all in one. We know that the Christmas story is really about the incarnation. Remember I talked about the carnal nature. Incarnation basically has to do with taking on flesh. That is really what the Christmas story is about. God, who was above everything else, took on human flesh and became a baby. We know the Easter story. It begins with Good Friday where Jesus, in obedience, went upon the cross and following the death of Jesus, soon he was resurrected up and ascended up into heaven. In these few verses, we have a nice recap of the Christmas story and the Easter story.