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

Now the interesting thing about all of this as we look back, let's look at the whole passage again together. Because as we look at this whole section of scripture, it goes back to verse 5. There's something that takes place, a universal truth here, that we want to grasp in our own lives. This is the present, I think, that we receive from this passage that God wants us to take and use. That we could put into practice in our lives this week.

Notice what he says at the beginning – Have this mind among you, which is yours in Christ Jesus. In other words, take all these ideas that I've told you about, and put them into your own practice. Here's why. Because if you humble yourself like Jesus did, then you're exalted. The world doesn't understand this. The world thinks if you want to be great, you need to tell everybody how great you are. If you want to be great, you need to compete with others and step on them to get ahead. If you want to be great, then you need to make sure that you're making it happen. That's not God's message here for us. I think it was hard for some of the disciples to get this idea. Not everybody gets this universal truth that when we humble ourselves, then God is the one who exalts us. I think Paul gets it as he writes these words in Philippians.

I think Peter gets it. Peter writes in his book – Humble yourselves, therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. This is a principle that God has laid out in His word, that humility, when we demonstrates self-sacrifice, when we're unselfish (as we talked about last week), when we do that, we're emulating Christ because Christ did it and He was exalted. The same thing is true about us. We don't focus on greatness, we focus on servanthood. We focus on being caring, and loving, and sharing, and all of those things that are in this unselfish category. We allow God to be the one who exalts us. Peter got it.

James here… This is James, the brother of Jesus, who didn't get it at first, until Jesus was crucified. And then somewhere in that whole thing, James realized, “Wow, this is more than just my brother. This is the Messiah.” And James writes in his book in James 4:10 – Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. That's the principle. That's the general principle. It was hard, I think, for the disciples to grasp this.

Do you remember the story in Mark 10 of James and John? Now this is a different James. James and John were brothers. They came to Jesus and they said, “Jesus, when we come into your kingdom, could one of us sit on the left of the other on the right?” And when the other disciples heard about it, they were indignant. Why? Because how come they would ask that question? We want to be first, we want to be best. And so Jesus answers them. And He says to them, “You know, guys, I don't know who's going to be in my right or left. That's not for me to give. But I'll tell you…” Here's a principle. This is the universal principle. This is the same principle that Peter tells us about here that James tells us about, that Paul is telling us about. Jesus said it first. He says, “If you want to be great in God's kingdom, learn to be the servant of all.” It's this universal principle that we take away and we start living in our lives, because that's where greatness comes from. It's this ability to humble ourselves and allow God to do this bigger work. We're just a part of this bigger piece of what God is doing.