The Wonder Of Christmas – Philippians 2:5-11 Series

Philippians 2:5-11

Series: Choosing Joy in a Post-Traumatic World

I think that there's a lot of confusion associated around Christmas in the lives of people. You've got this very, very significant event of Christmas, while at the same time almost a carnival atmosphere going on in society. You've got the humility, the loneliness of the baby, the shepherds, the poverty of that early family that even their house, that baby born in a stable compared to the amazing wealth that's passed on through gift giving and so on during the Christmas time. Just the significance of the gift itself of Christmas, Jesus Christ being given as the gift for us, is so powerful compared to in a modern society all of the like plastic gifts. Many of them don't even last till the end of Christmas day before they're broken. There's just this dichotomy between these different things that are going on as you think about Christmas. That is a lot of stuff happening. And I'm sure that people who are nonbelievers don't do a lot of thinking about it. They don't think twice about it. They're just into all of the celebrating and what's going on.

In fact, they rarely will even say “Merry Christmas” anymore. Now they say “Happy Holidays” because they don't want to offend someone. I make it a point to say “Merry Christmas.” If someone were to say to me, “Oh I don't celebrate Christmas,” my response would be, “Oh that's too bad.” Because Christmas is such a valuable holiday that represents something very significant in all of history. If someone were to say, “Well I don't really believe that,” I would say that's too bad too. Because just because you don't believe it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We as Christians don't say something's true because we believe it. We believe it because it's true. Christmas is true. And that's why we believe it. So as Christians, we do think about Christmas in a more deep way. We do celebrate it and each of us celebrate it in different ways. You have to decide what's best for you and your family. How much of the celebration part and the true meaning of Christmas, how you put all that together. But as Christians, we all have the same thing in common. We come to this special season of the year looking for this wonder of Christmas to go, “Yes. Wow. This was really big what Christ did for us.”

Today I want you to experience that in God's word, I want you to experience the wonder of Christmas. Now we're not going to look at the Christmas story from the perspective of the prophets today. And we're not going to look at it from the perspective of Mary, or Joseph, or the innkeeper, or the shepherds, or the wisemen. We're going to look at this perspective from Paul the apostle as he's looking back on this historical event. It happens that we are in Philippians 2 and verses 5-11 is our passage today. And it is the most concentrated piece of scripture describing the incarnation, the ability of Christ to come down to earth. What does it mean? What does it look like? And what is it all about? We're going to look at that passage today. As we look at it, it is my goal that you today would experience the wonder of Christmas. That it would touch you in a very powerful way that you'd go away saying, “Yes.” In fact as we talk about it today, at the end, I'm going to talk about a present that God gives us right out of this passage that really changes us, that we walk away with and appreciate and benefit from.

So let's dig into the scriptures together. Open your Bibles to Philippians 2:5-11. You'll notice verse 5 is the verse we read last week. So you see it ties right into this whole idea of honor and unselfishness and so on. He says – Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. This mind or this attitude. He's describing this attitude that he was teaching us in these first verses. That we should think of others more important than ourselves, we should value not our own interests but the interests of other people. And then he says have the attitude, this attitude just like Christ did. So now we're going to go into Christ as the example of this unselfishness, of this humility. Verses 6 and 7 take us into the birth of Christ. Verse 8 helps us understand the death of Christ. And then verses 9-11 helps us see His exaltation. That's how the passages develop there. I want to take you right into this passage.

As we go into verse 6, we see right away this word form of God. Do you see how in there I've underlined form of God. Now the word form is a very important word there. The word form is the word morphe which doesn't refer to outward appearance, it refers to the internal essence of something. Now that's going to be important in this story. When Christ came down from heaven to earth, what happened? How did He change? That's really what this passage is all about. What does it look like? And so Paul is saying when He came, He was in very essence God. That He had the form of God, the internal essence. It’s as if I were to say, “I am a person, I'm a human, and that's my essence.” Now I might appear to be a baby, or a toddler, or preschooler, or a teenager, or whatever. That may be what I am outside, but on the inside I'm always a person. Now what Paul is saying is that Jesus was always God. And now He was in the form of God and He's going to continue that. His essence will not change. The form of God.