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