0:02 Welcome to the truth sermon YouTube
0:04 channel. Please subscribe for powerful messages.
0:10 The teaching this morning is found uh is
0:12 based on the passage which is printed in
0:14 your bulletins and I'm going to read it
0:16 now. It's Philippians chapter 2
0:24 Philippians chapter
0:35 11. Do nothing out of selfish ambition
0:38 or vain conceit, but in humility
0:41 consider others better than yourselves.
0:43 Each of you should look not only to his
0:44 own interests, but also to the interests
0:48 of others. Your attitude should be the
0:52 same as that of Christ Jesus, who being
0:54 in very nature God, did not consider
0:56 equality with God something to be
0:58 grasped, but made himself nothing.
1:00 Taking the very nature of a servant,
1:03 being made in human likeness, and being
1:06 found in appearance as a man, he humbled
1:08 himself and became obedient to death,
1:12 even death on a cross. Therefore, God
1:15 exalted him to the highest place and
1:17 gave him the name that is above every
1:19 name, that at the name of Jesus, every
1:21 knee should bow in heaven and on earth
1:22 and under the earth, and every tongue
1:26 confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the
1:28 glory of God the
1:38 Uh if the if the Bible was a mountain
1:39 range, this would be one of the two or
1:42 three highest peaks. Uh there's there's
1:44 an awful lot of treasure in here. It
1:47 kind of overwhelms me as I read it, even
1:50 just now. Uh too much to say. You say,
1:51 "Well, that's that's always true for
1:54 you." Yeah, I know. I uh you know,
1:56 ministers, it's it's a it's a danger of
1:57 being a minister. I'm always saying,
1:59 "This is the greatest passage. This is
2:02 the greatest truth." I know, but this
2:04 is what do I do about that? I don't
2:06 know. Why would you even believe me? The
2:09 word inflation. Anyway,
2:13 uh we live in a we live in a time of of
2:16 talk shows, revelations of people's
2:18 inner lives, inner secrets, inmost
2:21 thoughts. Uh this is the ultimate
2:23 revelation because we not only have in
2:26 this passage maybe the most complete
2:28 picture of
2:31 all of who Jesus is and what he did.
2:34 This is the most complete passage. It's
2:37 all here. He was God. He was also God
2:40 man. He was God. He was incarnated as a
2:42 human being. Beyond that he became a
2:45 servant and went to death. The death of
2:48 the cross. Therefore, God has highly
2:50 exalted him. It tells us all about who
2:52 Jesus is, all about what Jesus has done.
2:55 But here's what's especially important.
2:58 This text not only tells us about him,
3:02 but it tells us his mind. You know,
3:04 verse 5 says, "Have the same attitude."
3:06 Your attitude should be the same as that
3:08 of Christ Jesus. Boy, does that blow
3:10 apart the real freight. That's a bad
3:13 translation. It says, "Have the same
3:15 mind in you that was in Christ Jesus."
3:17 Literally, it's the word mind. This
3:19 passage is not only about the fact that
3:21 Jesus was God, about the fact that Jesus
3:22 became human, about the fact that Jesus
3:24 became a servant, emptied himself, made
3:28 himself nothing. It tells us also about
3:31 what Jesus thought about those things.
3:34 It gives us his inmost motives,
3:37 revelation, his inmost thoughts. It
3:39 tells us why he did the things that he
3:41 did. It shows us his inmost motives. Now
3:43 when talk shows do
3:46 it, they only show you the inmost mind
3:48 of somebody else for the just for
3:50 itself, just for the sake of doing it,
3:52 for the pure salaciousness of it, you know.
3:54 know.
3:56 But when God does it, when the Bible
3:58 does it, when the Bible would for the
4:01 Bible to take the curtain away and to
4:03 show you this kind of revelation, the
4:05 inmost thoughts of Jesus Christ, the
4:08 mind of
4:10 Christ, it only will do
4:13 that in order to transmogriphy your
4:15 mind. It'll only do that to electrify
4:17 your mind, to melt your heart, and to
4:19 change your life. In other words, verse
4:21 5 does not say, "Here's the mind of
4:24 Christ." says, "Let this mind be in you,
4:28 too." God would never be will so willing
4:30 to share his inmost thoughts with
4:34 you just so you could say, "I saw
4:38 it." He does it in order to change you.
4:39 He does it in order to change the way in
4:41 which you look at everything and think
4:42 about everything and act toward the
4:45 world. Let me show you the three things
4:48 that Philippians 2 tells us about Jesus.
4:51 Basically, it says he was God. Secondly,
4:53 it says he became human. Thirdly, it
4:55 said being human, he humbled himself and
4:58 became a servant even to the death of a
5:00 cross. Those three things and what he
5:02 thought about them. But it's not enough
5:04 just to say, "Oh, that's interesting."
5:06 We also have to say, how does that
5:07 change our
5:10 mind about the way in which we think,
5:11 about the way in which we act? How does
5:13 it change our mind? There's so much
5:15 here. Let's go. Number one, first of
5:17 all, this passage tells us Jesus is God.
5:19 In fact, let me spend a little time on
5:21 this. There is no passage in the Bible
5:25 wh that more more powerfully,
5:28 dramatically, intensely
5:33 uh puts this fact that Jesus is God, God
5:36 himself. It does it in three ways. Let
5:38 me show you. First of all, in verse six,
5:42 it says being in very nature God. Now,
5:44 let me descend to particulars. That is a
5:47 very good translation. The word the
5:50 Greek word here it says Paul uses a
5:54 Greek word morphe m o r p ph h e mor
5:58 morphe he was in the very morphe of god.
6:01 Now the trouble with this word is almost
6:03 always when we take that Greek word
6:06 morphe into into English uh you know we
6:07 do have the word some places in our
6:09 English words like metamorphosis or
6:11 morphology and so on it usually is
6:14 translated by the word
6:16 form morphe is usually translated into
6:18 the English word form there's a problem
6:20 with that though because the English
6:23 word form has to do with outside
6:25 appearances that's not what the Greek
6:28 word mean for that there's a Greek word
6:31 schema which means the outward fashion
6:33 the appearance the word morphe actually
6:36 means the essence of something it means
6:38 those qualities which make something
6:40 what it
6:42 is and that's the reason why the the the
6:44 translation here the new international
6:46 version translation that we use each
6:48 week gets it
6:51 better this is a much stronger statement
6:52 this is the strongest possible statement
6:54 about the deity and the divinity of Jesus
6:55 Jesus
6:58 Christ it is much stronger than if Paul
7:00 came right out and said, "Jesus is God."
7:01 Somebody says, "Well, that would have
7:02 been a little more clear." Oh, no, it
7:03 wouldn't have been because when you say
7:05 Jesus is God, you can mean an awful lot
7:07 of things. Shirley Mlan says that about
7:09 herself and she says that about you,
7:11 too. And there's a whole lot of things
7:13 you can read into
7:15 that. This is much
7:19 different. Paul is saying Jesus Christ
7:22 has the unique and very identical
7:26 qualities that make God God.
7:27 Jesus Christ is the very substance of
7:29 God. Jesus Christ is the very
7:32 characteristics of God. Jesus Christ is
7:34 the very being of God. This is
7:36 incredibly strong.
7:40 And if you think is it really that
7:42 strong a statement being in very nature
7:44 God, the second way this passage shows
7:47 us this the magnitude of this claim is
7:48 the second pass part of the verse. It
7:51 says who being in very nature God did
7:53 not consider equality with God something
7:55 to be grasped. Now, you know what that
8:02 kept. Again, this is a little bit, it
8:04 doesn't say, it's a little misleading.
8:07 It doesn't say he did not count equality
8:10 with God a thing to go after. By grasp,
8:11 it means held on
8:15 to. This verse means here that Jesus was
8:17 equal with God and he decided not to
8:18 hold on to it. That gets us into our
8:20 next point. The point is here though,
8:23 this is saying as in as strong a way as
8:27 possible, Jesus Christ was not just a
8:28 demigod. You know, it's not like the
8:31 father gave his substance to a string of
8:34 lesser gods. Jesus Christ was as much
8:37 God as God. Jesus Christ was God, as
8:39 much God as the father. He was equal
8:42 with the father, the same in substance
8:45 and being. Now, there's one more way in
8:46 which this passage gets this point
8:49 across and I'll take a moment to say
8:52 it. People have a tendency, one of the
8:54 ways in which the average person today
8:57 gets out from under this, the weight of
9:01 this, the claim that Jesus is not just a
9:03 prophet, not just a a founder of a
9:04 religion, not just a great teacher, but
9:07 God himself. People say, well, you know,
9:08 that's probably not how Christianity
9:10 started. That's probably not how it
9:13 started. probably Jesus in the beginning
9:15 was a teacher of peace and
9:18 love and his followers understood that
9:21 too. But you know as time went on and as
9:23 the stories about Jesus became more
9:25 distant geographically from the original
9:27 site as the the stories uh developed
9:29 they they got more generationally
9:31 distant. In other words, as the years went
9:32 went
9:34 by, the the stories got embellished, the
9:36 legends got embellished, and more and
9:38 more people began to talk about Jesus as
9:40 if he was divine and eventually God
9:42 himself. That it happened over a long
9:44 period of time. The original Jesus did
9:46 not claim to be God. And his original
9:48 followers didn't make him claim to be
9:49 God. And the original hearers didn't
9:51 ever hear him say he was God. All those
9:53 thousands of people that listened to him
9:54 teach, they never heard him say that. He
9:55 never said that. That developed much
9:58 later. Here's the problem with that
10:00 opinion, with that
10:03 theory. Scholars now believe that this
10:06 passage, look, from verses 6 down to
10:09 almost 11. Yeah. To 11, was not written
10:12 by Paul, but that Paul's quoting
10:16 this. Now, we know this from about
10:20 verses 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. It is either
10:24 a poem or a confession or a hymn.
10:27 its lexical links, its parallelism, it
10:29 has the it has the uh the its rhythm, it
10:32 has the features of Greek poetry. And
10:35 either Paul had written it previously or
10:36 else somebody else had written it
10:37 previously, but this was a hym or a
10:39 confession that Paul was
10:42 quoting and that he knew his hearers
10:44 would know about. He's quoting it. Now,
10:46 actually, whether or not he he wrote it
10:47 doesn't make any difference. Here's the
10:50 point, though. Paul wrote his letters
10:52 within 20 years of the death of Jesus
10:54 Christ. And if he is quoting here, which
10:56 he obviously is, and all scholars,
10:58 conservative or not, believe this,
11:00 almost all scholars, that he is quoting
11:02 an earlier hymn, a confession that the
11:04 church used. This means that from the
11:08 very earliest days of the Christian
11:11 church, the very earliest father
11:13 followers not only worshiped Jesus as
11:16 God, but said Jesus was aware of his
11:19 divinity. Jesus taught his divinity.
11:21 Now that you have to see that this is a
11:24 claim that would have been certainly
11:27 contradicted by the hearers. If Jesus
11:29 had never claimed to be God and within
11:30 one or two years all around the
11:32 Mediterranean all the churches were
11:34 saying yes Jesus claimed to be God it
11:35 would have never gotten off the ground.
11:36 The whole movement wouldn't have gotten
11:38 off the ground. This essentially proves
11:41 only one thing that Jesus did make these
11:44 claims. And I'll tell you something. Of
11:47 all the people on the face of the earth,
11:49 the last group of
11:52 people whose worldview would allow them
11:54 to believe that a human being could be
11:56 the transcendent creator of the universe
11:57 were the
12:00 Jews. The Greeks, the Romans, people in
12:01 the east, they had different views of
12:03 God. Their views of God were more a
12:05 matter of God being part of nature. And
12:07 so they could understand this idea of
12:09 somebody being God. The Jews could not.
12:10 The Jews understood God as being the
12:12 transcendent creator, infinitely
12:14 transcendent above the
12:16 creation. They were the last people in the
12:18 the
12:20 world to believe that a human being
12:23 could be God. And if there was a
12:27 man who made these claims and got
12:29 thousands of Jews to believe
12:34 him, imagine the quality of his life.
12:36 Imagine his moral character. See,
12:37 imagine the scrutiny he would have been
12:40 under. Imagine the miraculous power he
12:41 must have had. Imagine the personal
12:44 presence. H imagine the sublimity
12:47 sublimity of his teaching and his and of
12:49 his uh of his of his preaching and his
12:53 wisdom. Imagine he must have been
12:55 somebody. Don't you see what this
12:58 passage is teaching us? Jesus Christ
13:01 claimed to be God. Jesus Christ was of
13:04 such power in his moral be bearing and
13:06 such power in his
13:08 abilities that he was able to
13:11 substantiate that claim with the people
13:13 who lived with
13:16 him. And those people said he is not a
13:18 demigod. He is God. He is not he is not
13:20 under the father. He is equal with the
13:22 father. He is not a he is not a created
13:25 but he is the unccreated creator. He is
13:27 God himself.
13:29 Now before we move on, we have to ask
13:31 ourselves something. How should this
13:34 affect our mind? H see that's the whole
13:37 idea. You have to let your mind be
13:39 impacted by these
13:41 things. And this is what I would suggest
13:43 to you for a moment. And this the here's
13:45 a couple ways in which the fact that
13:47 Jesus is God should have an impact on
13:49 your mind. First of all, if Jesus is
13:57 start to get more optimistic about your own
13:58 own
14:00 future. If this is Jesus Christ that's
14:02 come into your
14:05 life and who says, "I love you and I've
14:07 never I will never forsake you." And if
14:10 he's committed to you, why are you so
14:12 pessimistic about ever changing this
14:14 habit? Why are you so pessimistic about
14:17 ever having any kind of joy in life? You
14:21 see Jesus was a loving teacher. He was
14:24 the teacher of love. He was the one
14:27 little children got up on his lap. He
14:29 was the one you know who comes and says
14:33 to you, "Come unto me all ye who are
14:34 burdened and heavy laden. I will give
14:37 you rest." He is this loving one. But
14:39 who is he? Is he just a well-meaning
14:41 person? Who is this one who says, "I am
14:45 committed to you. This is God.
14:48 This is the one who's come into your
14:52 life. You read Romans 8 where Paul says,
14:54 "I'm not afraid of anything." Look at
14:56 his unsinkable buoyancy. He's not afraid
14:57 of anything. He has the highest hopes
15:00 for himself and his the people he loves.
15:02 There's one place where he says he's not
15:03 afraid of death, nor life, nor angels,
15:05 nor nor demonic principalities, or
15:07 powers, nor things present, nor things
15:09 to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any
15:10 other creature. There's another place in
15:12 the same chapter. He says, "I'm not
15:14 afraid of suffering or hardship or
15:16 persecution or nakedness or peril or sword."
15:18 sword."
15:22 Why? If God is for us, who can be against
15:23 against
15:26 us? Now, if you are not as unsinkable as as
15:27 as
15:30 Paul, if you are not as buoyant as
15:32 Paul, if you look at yourself and say,
15:33 "I'll never
15:35 change." If you look at yourself and
15:37 say, "The great things are never going
15:39 to happen in my life." And yet you're a
15:41 Christian. And yet you say you've
15:45 received Christ as savior. If he's
15:48 God and you're not
15:50 unsinkable and buoyant like Paul in
15:52 Romans 8, you're not thinking. There's
15:54 something wrong with your mind. That's
15:54 what he's saying. There's something
15:56 wrong with your mind. Here, let me show
15:58 you something else. If he's God, that
15:59 also means that's joyful news. But if
16:02 he's God, that's also sobering news. And
16:04 here, let me speak to maybe a different
16:06 slice of our congregation or our
16:08 audience here this morning.
16:11 uh if Jesus is God and if he claimed to
16:14 be God as this little hymn pretty much
16:15 proves that he
16:20 did you realize that the only possible
16:24 way to respond to him is extremely
16:26 uh when I first recently I've been
16:27 thinking about what were the books or
16:29 the things that I read when I first
16:32 became a Christian over 25 years ago and
16:33 what were the most seinal things and I
16:35 know one of the most seinal and
16:37 influential things I ever read was the
16:40 was one chapter in a little book by John
16:42 Sto called Basic Christianity. And in
16:45 that he said, if you read the Bible,
16:47 some of you have heard echoes of this
16:49 ever since, you know, in my preaching
16:50 for years cuz they've always been there.
16:52 He says, if you read the Bible, you'll
16:54 see that nobody who ever met Jesus
16:56 Christ ever had a moderate reaction to
16:58 him. There's only three reactions to
17:00 Jesus. They either wanted
17:03 to, they hated him and they wanted to
17:05 kill him. they tried to kill him or they
17:06 were afraid of him and they tried to run
17:09 away or they absolutely were smitten
17:11 with him and they tried to give their
17:13 whole lives to him but nobody ever had a
17:16 moderate reaction to him. Now the
17:19 average person in America likes
17:23 Jesus. You can't like
17:26 Jesus. Don't you see? If he claimed to
17:29 be God then if he's not God, he's a
17:31 megalomaniac. You shouldn't respect him
17:34 a bit. But if he is God, everything
17:36 about your life needs to revolve around
17:39 him. Don't you see? There isn't anything
17:42 else. How can you like Jesus? Nobody
17:44 ever has liked Jesus who knew who he was
17:46 and knew who he claimed to be. Don't you
17:49 see? See, if Jesus is God, that's great
17:51 news. It's also sobering news. But
17:53 here's one more thing. If Jesus is God,
17:54 see, your mind's got to be changed by
18:03 God, this gives us a whole new dynamic.
18:08 people. You know what this is teaching
18:10 us about? This is teaching us about the
18:13 trinity. The
18:16 trinity. Uh you sing it by the way. You
18:19 sang it very well this morning. Uh you
18:21 know we sing it in the
18:24 doxology. Let all things their creator
18:26 bless and worship him in humbleness.
18:28 Allelujah. Allelujah. Praise. Praise the
18:30 father. Praise the son and praise the
18:33 spirit. Three in one. You You sing it.
18:34 Well, some of you sing it every week.
18:37 You have no idea what that means. What
18:39 the heck is that? You sing it well
18:42 though. Uh and I I can't get into that
18:44 too much right now, but this is teaching
18:45 that the Father, the Son, and the Holy
18:47 Spirit are equally God. They're three in
18:49 one. One God, three in one. Three
18:51 persons equally God. You say, "Well, I
18:52 don't understand that. Can you explain
18:55 it to me?" No, not tonight. Not today.
18:58 But here's what I will tell you.
19:02 Augustine in his great work on the
19:05 Trinity makes an incredible
19:08 point. He says, you know, if you're a
19:10 non-trinitarian, many people believe in
19:12 God, but they're non-trinitarians. They
19:14 say, well, there's only one God, one
19:17 person. Jesus was a nice man or Jesus
19:20 was a kind of created being, but there's
19:23 only one person, one God. Augustine
19:24 says, "If you are a non-trinitarian in
19:26 your view of God, you have got a
19:30 defective God. You have a God who never
19:34 loved anybody until he created the
19:37 world. God existed from all eternity,
19:39 but until he created at least angels or
19:40 until he created other human beings,
19:42 other persons, he had never had a relationship."
19:48 And Augustine says, "Therefore, not only
19:51 do you have an imperfect God, but you
19:53 have a God who
19:56 created to meet a love
19:59 need. He created in order to have
20:02 love." Augustine says that's not true of
20:04 the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible
20:05 Bible
20:09 is love and relationship is internally
20:11 inherent in him.
20:15 He's always had love and relationship
20:18 beginninglessly. And therefore, when he
20:19 created the world and he created other
20:22 persons and angels and human beings, he
20:24 created not to get love. He created to
20:27 give love. He created not that use us to
20:29 meet his needs. He
20:32 created to just to let us take in the
20:34 richness and the spillover of the love
20:36 he had within himself. Father, Son, and Holy
20:37 Holy
20:39 Spirit. You know what that
20:41 means? This is pretty interesting. The
20:43 greatest temptation is to move out
20:45 toward other people. We say we're being
20:47 creative. We say we're serving. God the
20:51 Father created us not to use us not to
20:53 get love, not to meet his needs, but to
20:56 give. Jesus Christ came to earth and to
20:59 serve us not to meet his needs for love,
21:01 but to to give us love.
21:04 It is extremely seductive and absolutely
21:06 a very very strong temptation to move
21:08 out into other people's lives more to
21:11 meet your needs than to meet
21:14 theirs. You get involved, you serve, you
21:16 listen, you counsel, you help, you love,
21:18 you say, but you're using them. You're
21:22 not loving them. If you go out to more
21:24 meet their mind, your own needs than
21:25 their needs. Now, you're a human being.
21:27 You're not God. You're not the father,
21:29 son, and holy spirit. And therefore, of
21:31 course, there's a fulfillment. Of
21:33 course, there's a meeting of needs as
21:36 you meet needs. But when you have more,
21:39 when you're more meeting needs of
21:41 yourself, when you move out to meet
21:43 needs and others, really to meet your
21:45 own needs, more to meet your needs than
21:48 theirs, you have got an imbalance
21:51 here. You are not, you do not have the
21:53 same mind as Christ. And here's some of
21:56 the ways you can tell. Do you find when
21:57 those people who you're trying to love
21:59 and meet their needs, do you find what
22:01 if they don't respond? What if they're
22:03 not grateful? What if they don't act the
22:06 way you want them to act? Are you the
22:08 kind of person who is continually
22:10 getting hurt
22:12 feelings? Are you the kind of person
22:14 continually feeling
22:16 snubbed? Are you the kind of person that
22:18 needs to control the people that you're
22:20 with to get them to do and act just the
22:23 way you want them to?
22:25 You know what you got
22:27 there? You have moved out into their
22:28 lives more to meet your needs than to
22:30 meet their needs. And there's going to
22:33 be nothing but destructiveness in that
22:35 relationship. And in the end, they're
22:36 going to feel very empty. And you're
22:38 going to feel empty, too. And you're
22:40 going to blame each other. And you're
22:44 right, both of you. What can you do? Ah,
22:47 have the same mind in you that was in
22:49 Christ Jesus. Jesus
22:55 Christ was in the
22:58 trinity before moving out. So do you
23:00 have to do so do you have to be a
23:02 Christian is somebody who goes into the
23:04 trinity before you move
23:07 out. A we know I know we're human beings
23:09 and therefore there is a fulfillment of
23:12 needs as you meet needs. But you
23:16 primarily have got to say, is this
23:19 loving heavenly father my heavenly
23:22 father? Does he love me in Christ? Does
23:25 he accept me? Is there now no
23:27 condemnation to those who are in Christ
23:30 Jesus? Do I really belong to him? That
23:33 has got to be settled. And the bottom
23:36 line of your worth and your significance
23:39 in your life has got to be settled
23:41 before you move out.
23:43 You've got to do what Jesus Christ did
23:46 or you're going to find yourself going
23:50 out not to give love but to get it.
23:52 it.
23:54 Okay. Second major thing you see here is
23:56 not only that Jesus is God and if he's
23:57 God that should change our mind but
24:01 secondly he became the God man. He's not
24:05 just divine he's human. In verse
24:08 six it tells us and verse 7 it tells us
24:09 something. Now again I'm I'm being
24:11 careful about the grammar because this
24:13 is one of the key verses in the
24:16 formation of a biblical christologology
24:17 in the whole Bible a biblical view of
24:20 Christ. In verse 6 and 7 look carefully
24:22 it says who being in very nature God did
24:24 not account equality with God something
24:27 to be kept but made himself nothing
24:29 taking on the very nature of a servant
24:32 being made in human likeness. It's
24:34 another word
24:36 morphe. In other
24:40 words, he took on a human nature. But
24:41 you have to be careful because verse
24:44 six, the word being in very nature God
24:45 stays in the
24:48 imperfect. And therefore the grammar
24:52 does not say having been God, he instead
24:56 became human. But it says being God, he
24:58 also became human. He didn't stop being
25:01 God, but he became human as well. He
25:05 became God man. He became both at once.
25:08 Now what does it mean that God See,
25:11 there's a lot of people who
25:14 believe that matter and the physical are
25:17 evil who could understand the
25:19 possibility that Jesus was God and
25:21 instead he became human. He stopped
25:24 being God to become human. The one thing
25:27 that most philosophies could not stomach
25:30 is the idea of God continuing to be God
25:34 and still being human at the same time.
25:36 Why? Here's the practical
25:38 difference. Two, let me just give you
25:40 two practical impacts that this should
25:42 have on our minds. The fact that God
25:47 became human. First of all, our God is a
25:48 God. In fact, I'll go so far as to say
25:52 our god is a god is the only god in the
25:59 matters. In the west, the Greek or Roman
26:02 religions thought matter was impure and
26:06 kind of polluted. God could never become
26:09 human. In the east, eastern religions
26:11 don't see matter as being impure, but
26:12 they see it as being unimportant. They
26:15 see it as an illusion.
26:17 So they could say, "Oh, of course the
26:19 idea of God becoming human is fine, at
26:20 least temporarily. I mean, it's all an
26:23 illusion anyway." But neither the West,
26:24 neither the Greek or Roman religions,
26:27 nor the Eastern religions, nor of course
26:28 Judaism or Islam would say what
26:31 Christianity has said. God inhabited a body
26:32 body
26:36 permanently. God took into himself the
26:40 physical. It says in Colossians 2:9, "In
26:41 him all the fullness of the Godhead
26:44 dwells bodily." Nobody has ever had, no
26:45 other religion has ever had the audacity
26:50 that. And that changes everything for
26:53 us. You know why? Here's what I want to
26:57 press on you. We are the only religion
27:00 that knows that God does not think of
27:01 the physical is more important than the
27:03 spiritual or the spiritual is more
27:04 important than the physical. And that
27:05 changes the way in which we deal with
27:07 things. Look at the Bible itself. The
27:09 first picture you have of God in the
27:12 Bible is God with his hands in the mud
27:14 creating the world. God's not afraid to
27:16 get his hands dirty. He's involved with
27:18 matter. The last picture you have of God
27:21 in the Bible is God cleaning up the
27:23 natural universe of the toxic waste of
27:26 evil and sin and rehabbing a beautiful
27:30 new urban home for himself.
27:33 And in the very center of the Bible,
27:40 main, they're about the physical. At
27:43 Christmas, human, God became human, took
27:45 on a physical. And at Easter, God
27:49 redeemed a body. See, God created both
27:51 the soul and the body. He redeemed both
27:54 the soul and the body. And that
27:56 means that they're both important to
28:05 can't sin has kept body and soul apart.
28:06 The whole purpose of Jesus Christ is to
28:08 do what it took to let body and soul
28:11 live in integrity. Now, what does this
28:14 mean? It means first of all, in the
28:16 gospel, you can keep these together, but
28:18 outside of the gospel, they don't.
28:20 They're not together. If you don't
28:22 understand Christianity, you can either
28:24 be religious or irreligious. You can be
28:26 religious, meaning you're trying to earn
28:28 your salvation by being a good person.
28:29 Or you can be irreligious in which you
28:31 say, "I have to live my own life the way
28:32 I want to live my own life." And get
28:34 this, if you're
28:40 uncomfortable. You'll feel like, "Well,
28:41 I need to get away from that. I need to be
28:42 be
28:44 spiritual." And I I don't know how many
28:46 times I've seen people who when they got
28:49 very religious were got kind of
28:51 anti-physical. They don't they only
28:53 worry about the phys the spiritual now.
28:54 They don't worry about their body. They
28:56 don't worry about other people's bodies.
28:57 They feel like, well, why should we help
28:58 people who are
29:02 hungry? Why should we rehab houses? Why
29:03 should we work on trying to make the
29:05 city a safer place to live? After all,
29:06 that's physical stuff. That's all going
29:08 to burn up. I'm concerned about the
29:10 spiritual. Religious people are almost
29:12 uncomfortable with the physical or they
29:14 think it's unimportant. Irreligious
29:18 people, you see, worship the physical
29:20 cuz that's all they have. Your body says
29:22 have sex, you do it. Why? I mean because
29:24 all there is to life is having a nice
29:26 body and having physical comforts and
29:29 and having the pleasures of life apart
29:31 from the gospel. You can't keep body and
29:33 soul together. Either the physical will
29:35 become your idol and it will drive you
29:37 or the physical will become something
29:39 you're afraid of or or or you consider
29:42 unimportant or you're only in Jesus
29:46 Christ. We alone as Christians can say
29:47 at the same time we can talk about
29:49 salvation of the
29:52 soul and cleaning up a neighborhood so
29:55 it's safe and people have a place a warm
29:57 place to to live and and food to eat.
29:59 Why? We can do it with integrity. That's
30:01 what Jesus is about. He came in order to
30:03 let body and soul live in integrity. And
30:05 that's your future, too. When you see
30:08 Jesus Christ, you see your future, a spiritual
30:09 spiritual
30:11 body. You're not going to be a
30:13 disembodied intelligence.
30:15 you know, kind of hovering around in
30:17 heaven. Don't you know that? You're
30:18 going to eat and drink. You're going to
30:20 hug and be hugged. We're going to hug
30:22 each other in heaven. We're not just
30:25 going to have Vulcan mind
30:27 melts. We're going to sing in heaven.
30:28 There's going to be music. There's going
30:30 to be food in heaven. There's going to
30:32 be bodies in heaven. There's going to be
30:34 the physical, but it's going to be
30:36 spiritual. They're going to dwell
30:38 together in integrity.
30:41 Only Christians can be just as concerned
30:43 about the poor and social concern as
30:45 they are about evangelism and saving
30:46 somebody's soul. Everybody else without
30:48 the gospel, those things break apart.
30:50 You're only concerned about one or only
30:51 concerned about the other. Not
30:53 Christians. Not Christians who
30:56 understand that being God, he also became
30:58 became
31:00 human. I'll tell you something else. It
31:04 tells us because he's human, he
31:06 understands you.
31:09 because he's human. He knows what you're going
31:10 going
31:14 through. You can go to him. Have you Are
31:15 you Have you been betrayed? He's been
31:17 betrayed. Have you been lonely? He's
31:18 been lonely. Are you facing death? He's faced
31:19 faced
31:23 death. He died. Have you died?
31:26 No. He had a prayer turned
31:30 down. He has been here. He knows what it's
31:32 it's
31:37 like. He knows all about our troubles.
31:39 If you don't go to him as a wonderful
31:40 counselor, if you don't take your
31:43 burdens off with him, if you're
31:46 not able to see, it's just as important
31:50 for us to be fighting as Christians
31:52 against disease and poverty as against
31:54 unbelief and heresy. If you can't keep
31:56 those together, you need to have a mind
31:59 change. Let this mind be also in you
32:01 which is in Christ Jesus. Now, lastly,
32:03 got to say one last thing.
32:06 Jesus did not just become human. He was
32:08 God, but he didn't just become human. He
32:11 became a servant. And notice, it's very
32:13 careful to point out that Jesus could
32:16 have come as a human being and become a
32:18 kind of powerful human being. He could
32:21 have come as a king. But it says he made himself
32:22 himself
32:25 nothing, taking the nature of a servant.
32:26 And being
32:29 found as a human being, he humbled
32:31 himself and became obedient to death,
32:34 even to death on a cross. Therefore, God
32:36 had hath highly exalted him. Now, I want
32:38 you to see how that is utterly different
32:41 than our career. Take a minute. Let me
32:42 show you how that is utterly different
32:43 than our
32:46 career. Can I tell you, if you know your
32:47 own history, let me tell you about you
32:50 and me. Here's our history. Though we
32:53 were not equal with God, we counted
32:55 equality with God something to be
32:57 grasped. See that's totally the opposite
33:00 of him. Though he was
33:02 equal, he let go of equality with God.
33:06 He became a servant. He took a lower
33:08 position. Though we were not equal with
33:11 God, we do grasp after equality with
33:13 God. And you say, "When do I do that?"
33:15 Friend, anytime you've ever said, "I
33:17 know what the Bible says, but I've got
33:19 to do what makes me happy." You have
33:21 been gr you're grasping equality with
33:24 God. Though you're not equal with God,
33:26 you hold on to it. Though he was equal
33:29 with God, he let go of it. And we keep
33:33 going. It says, "And he made himself
33:35 nothing and took the role of a servant.
33:38 But you and I desperately want to become
33:41 something. We want to be somebody and we
33:45 want to be kings."
33:48 Therefore, because he did that, God hath
33:49 highly exalted him and given him the
33:53 name above every name. Here's the irony.
33:56 We try desperately to be somebody. We
33:58 try desperately to be our own God and
34:00 our own king. And therefore, God lets us
34:01 fall to the bottom and we don't even
34:08 are. This tells us that Jesus found his
34:14 name by losing it. Jesus got up by going
34:18 down. Jesus got his identity through
34:20 service. Jesus became somebody because
34:23 he served something bigger than
34:26 himself. Believe it or not, he became He
34:27 came and lived the life we should have
34:29 lived and died the death we should have
34:31 died. He came and took and showed us
34:34 what it means to be a human being. Now,
34:36 what does that mean for us? It means
34:39 this. The way to become saved is you've
34:40 got to go
34:43 down. If you say, "I'm trying very hard
34:45 to be a good person. I I' I've started
34:48 coming to redeemer. I'm I I'm starting
34:50 to read the Bible, and I'm hoping that
34:52 if I really turn over a new leaf, God
34:54 will accept me." That's trying to go
34:57 up. That's saying, "I've got a
34:58 righteousness of my
35:01 own." You've got to say, "I have no
35:04 righteousness of my own." That's to go
35:06 down. And then what happens is only when
35:09 you say that when you say I deserve to
35:12 be lost and therefore I have no control
35:13 over my
35:17 life. Lord save me for Jesus' sake. I
35:19 make you my savior and lord. The minute
35:22 you go down we're told he adopts us. He
35:25 gives us his name. He accepts us. He
35:27 brings us into his family. We get the
35:30 name which is above every name. If you
35:33 want to go up, if you say, "I've got to
35:36 do what I got to do. I got to find out
35:37 what makes me happy. I got to find out
35:40 who I am." If you go up, you won't even
35:42 know who you are. If you go down, you
35:44 will find out who you are. You'll get
35:51 name. And one last thing, the Christian
35:53 friends, we're told here that Jesus
35:56 Christ became a servant. The Bible
35:57 actually tells us that he emptied
36:00 himself right here of his prerogatives
36:03 and his power and his
36:05 glory. He didn't stop being
36:08 God, but he complet became completely
36:10 dependent on God. We're told he became a
36:13 servant only. Now, somebody says, "Wait
36:14 a minute. How could he have emptied
36:16 himself? Look at the feeding of the
36:18 5000. Look at the uh walking on the
36:20 water. Look at look at how he preached
36:22 and taught and they said, "Never man
36:24 spake as he spake." I mean, Jesus
36:25 Christ, how could he have emptied
36:27 himself and done all these great things?
36:30 We're told in Acts 10:38, God anointed
36:31 him with the Holy Spirit and he did
36:33 great deeds because God was with him. He
36:37 shows us what we can do. Do you know
36:38 that all of his wisdom came from the
36:40 father? Remember that place where he's
36:41 asked, "When are you coming back?" And
36:43 he says, "I don't know. God hasn't told
36:45 me." All that wisdom was because he was
36:46 dependent on the father. He wasn't doing
36:48 it in his own wisdom. He was being the
36:50 perfect human being. He was being a
36:52 servant. all of his power, all of his
36:54 healing, all of his
36:56 miracles, all of his
36:59 greatness. There was not one thing he
37:03 did that you and I couldn't
37:06 do if we were as dependent on the father
37:08 as he
37:10 was. And that's an
37:12 indictment. You
37:16 know, this is we got to be careful here.
37:18 I don't know all that means. I do know
37:19 this Christian brothers and sisters,
37:20 this means we've got to give up our
37:22 small ambitions. I don't know where
37:25 humility even comes into this exactly.
37:28 All I know is by Jesus Christ giving up
37:30 his power and glory, he had far more
37:32 power on earth than any of us who refuse
37:35 to. Don't you see? It's by giving up his
37:37 prerogatives, by being saying, "I'm
37:38 going to be a servant that he had this incredible
37:40 incredible
37:42 power." Six years ago, when Kathy and I
37:44 came to New York, we just wanted to
37:45 survive. We just hope we could get some
37:47 little church that would just not fold
37:50 in three or four years. And you know,
37:51 you know, you want to be humble and it's
37:52 good to be humble, but I'll tell you
37:54 something. I never want to dishonor
37:58 God's power with such low expectations ever
38:00 ever
38:03 again. And how many of you and how and
38:07 how am I continuing to do that by
38:09 saying, "Well, I don't have I'm nobody.
38:10 Of course, you're nobody." Jesus by
38:13 making him nobody himself nobody got a
38:15 power to do things and he actually comes
38:17 and says to us you can do greater things
38:19 than I remember where he says
38:22 that there is nothing that he's done
38:24 that we couldn't do because he did it
38:30 servantthood he's God let that change
38:33 your mind he's human let that change
38:36 your mind he became the servant let that
38:40 change your mind go down to come up to
38:44 be saved. Go down to come up to become a powerful
38:52 servant. Let's pray. Our father, we
38:54 thank you that you gave us so much in
38:56 the passage. I pray that you would help
38:59 us to uh I I'm sure that everybody here
39:01 because there were so many uh little
39:03 vignettes in this sermon. There's so
39:06 many different points, so many tangents,
39:09 and yet I know that all of us had one
39:11 probably that stuck out more than
39:14 others. I pray that you would take these
39:15 sermons and preach them to our hearts by
39:17 your Holy Spirit. Just move away from my
39:20 mouth and from my notes. And Holy
39:22 Spirit, I pray that you would now take
39:25 the very sermons that you want us all to
39:27 hear and just screw them down into our
39:30 hearts till they catch fire until we
39:33 have the same mind as that which also is
39:43 Amen. Together we will discover God's
39:46 power and love more deeply. If you would
39:48 like to join us on this journey, don't
39:50 forget to subscribe to my channel. You
39:52 can share my videos with your friends to
39:54 bring God's promises to more people. And
39:56 of course, it is very important that you
39:58 support me by liking the video. Let's
40:00 grow together and spread God's light everywhere.
