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

You know, when I was a young person this was kind of a surprise to me. I remember I was hearing about redemption, maybe for the first time, and they were asking this question. I was thinking, well, he must have paid it to Satan. No, no, no, they said. No, it's not to Satan. He’s paying it to Himself because of His holiness. God is so holy that He can't accept a person who is sinful to be in His presence. So He sets up this redemption plan, that when someone accepts this price of Jesus Christ, then they have the benefit. Remember, there's a fourth thing, the benefit. They can have this eternal life, they can have this close relationship with God because God pays the price to Himself. That's this grand plan that God has. I go, wow, this is big. It's not just about a baby. It is about a whole plan that exists. So when we catch this wonder of Christmas, we say, “Wow, something's going on here.” That's verse 8.

Well then we go on in verse 9 and down to the rest of this passage. Notice the word therefore. Because now what He does is because of this humility that Christ has, this obedience, God is going to exalt Him. Let's read the verses. In verse 9 it says – Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. What is that name? We'll come back to that in a minute. So that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Is the name Jesus? No. The name is Lord. That's the name that was given. There's a lot of people named Jesus, but the Lord is this idea that when He's given this name Lord that's when every knee will bow.

And notice it says every knee will bow, in heaven (those are the angels that are bowing their knee and worship to God), on earth (that's us who are here on earth at the present time, bowing our knee to God), under the earth (that's those who have died, gone to hell). Okay, they know now that God is God. They bow the knee. There's no one that will ignore the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord. It's powerful. Every person somewhere is going to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord. The best thing to do is to acknowledge that right now. That's why there's a prescription that Paul tells us about that’s salvation.

What is salvation? How do you get saved? Very important question. So in Romans 10:9-10 we have the prescription. This is how you get saved, I want you to make sure you understand this. You don't get saved, Paul says, by being baptized as a baby. That doesn't save you. You don't get saved by doing good works or joining a church. Here's Paul's prescription and we need to know this because this is what it means to be saved. It ties right into the verses he shared in Philippians. But he says – If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with your heart you believe and are justified, and with your mouth you confess and are saved.