Philippians 2:8-11 | The Path to Eternal Honor

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Please take your Bible with me this morning to the book of Philippians.

My desire, my goal for this morning and for next week is exactly what we've just prayed through song.

Is that we would get a glimpse of the majesty of Jesus Christ.

We'd be awed by him, humbled, and seek to follow him.

Philippians chapter 2, we're going to be focusing this morning mostly on verse 8 of Philippians 2, getting into 9, 10, and 11.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

And next Sunday we'll come back and focus on the second half, 9, 10, and 11 primarily, but looking back as well.

The Christian life is like a never-ending game of follow the leader.

Remember playing Follow the Leader?

Hopefully, you're not too old for that.

I remember playing Follow the Leader as a kid, but I was never quite sure what the goal was.

It never seemed like anybody actually won.

What's the point of playing a game if you can't win, right?

It gives you a little hint as to what I'm like playing a game.

Instead, follow the leader felt like taking turns telling others what to do.

As kids, we we go along with following the leader just so that we can have our turn at being the leader.

In some ways, following the leader was an effort to show anything you can do, I can do better.

Often it was motivated by pride.

Either the pride of leading others, or worse, of outshining them.

Our natural sinful nature drives us to seek recognition and honor and to outperform others, to be regarded as it, as the leader.

Achieving dominance and status or recognition or ability or success gives us the feeling of having arrived.

We've made it.

This morning I want to guide us on a different kind of follow the leader journey, especially as we prepare in a little while to participate in communion.

This version of follow the leader has a noble eternal goal.

However, our journey will be challenging because attaining this eternal honor requires profound humility.

Our follow the leader.

So look with me then at Philippians chapter 2, beginning in verse 8, as we observe the path our Lord Jesus took to eternal honor.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

Verses 5, 6, and 7 set the stage for this round of follow the leader.

God took on human form, and not merely human form, but a lowly status like that of a slave.

He was not proud or arrogant in his deity.

He did not demand to hold on to all that he was and is as the Son of God and that it be in force at every moment.

Instead, he laid aside those rights and privileges, being born in the likeness of man.

And in doing so, he showed us the path to eternal honor through humility.

Philippians chapter 2, verse 8.

Philippians 2:8

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 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.

Next Sunday we're going to consider that name above every name.

But to get to the name that is above every name, we first need to see the path that is taken in verse 8.

Being found in human form, he humbled himself.

The path to eternal honor for the Lord Jesus Christ began, according to verse 8, with a kind of poignant self-humbling.

Now notice that the incarnation, that act of God taking on human form, was an emptying, not a humbling.

The typical Roman citizen's form was evident by their wearing the white Roman citizen's toga.

A Roman senator wore that same toga with a purple stripe on it.

The emperor was different.

He wore emperor's clothes.

And so to empty yourself was to appear as something else, to set aside who you were and what you were, and as though to clothe yourself in the form of another person.

Now God doesn't wear clothes.

He is forever clothed, the scriptures say, in unfathomable brilliance.

Light is his garment.

And so the emptying that God the Son experienced was being born as a human being.

He did not cease to be the eternal, glorious, brilliant God.

Instead, he appeared as a humble human being, as if the emperor of Rome, the Roman Emperor, set aside his royal glory and became a slave.

But that's not described as humbling.

The humbling in verse eight is becoming obedient.

And not just obedient, but obedient to the point of death.

But before we get to that detail, we must first recognize that this is a form of self-humbling.

He humbled himself.

It's an emphatic statement about a person's choice.

He humbled himself.

The Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son, humbled himself.

No one forced him to be humbled.

He willingly took this humility upon himself.

So this highlights verses three and four once again, because Christ considered others more significant than himself.

When we look back at those verses, that is not speaking specifically of Christ, but of us.

Verse 4 says, Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also the interests of others.

Why?

Because in verse 3, we have in humility counted others more significant than ourselves.

We are to take humility upon ourselves because Christ took humility upon himself.

It is a self-action.

And so we have to choose to humble ourselves so that others would be lifted up.

We must embrace self-humbling because of our natural sinful pride.

We tend to lift ourselves up above others.

We will follow the leader just as long as we get our chance at being the leader.

But to elevate others above ourselves requires a deliberate act of self-humbling.

We often live, though, with a prideful honor and prestige that leads us to act at least, if not actually believe that we are superior to others.

That must be put aside, the Apostle Paul says, to value others more significantly.

The Lord Jesus, though, did not pridefully believe he possessed honor and prestige.

He has it.

It is his by his very nature.

He is the all-glorious God who inhabits eternity.

He is the maker of all that is.

He is by nature above all others.

And still he took on human form.

That's astounding because of the history and status of humanity.

It's a mixed bag in Scripture.

On the one hand, we are God's image.

That's the way the book begins.

Let us make man in our image, right?

We have the privilege and honor of representing God, of pointing all of creation to his kingship.

What an honor, what a privilege, what a status.

But in Adam, we rejected our honor and we refused God's rule, choosing our own way.

Instead of following the leader, we said, no, I want to be my own leader.

But when left to ourselves, Scripture makes it very clear that humanity naturally reaches a point where the thoughts and the intentions of our lives are consistently evil.

The more we follow sinful paths, the more we reveal the vast difference between God and us.

In fact, the end of the book of Job presents this starkly.

God told Job the end of the book, chapter 38, to dress for action like a man.

Dress up like a warrior, Job.

We're going to have a go at it.

God said to Job, be ready to answer me.

Mankind, God said to Job, darkens divine counsel because we lack knowledge.

As smart as we are, as much as we have accomplished, humans were not around to know how God set the foundations of the earth in place.

We cannot shut the seas in place.

We cannot establish the weather patterns that circle the globe.

God, on the other hand, commands the morning to come every single day.

God set the stars in place with his fingertips, indicating very precise work.

And yet we can't even reach the next closest star to our Sun.

We study, we research, we meditate to gain understanding, but God says He is the one who puts wisdom and understanding in man.

God is so vast, so incredible, so incomprehensible, and we are so lowly.

That difference is as though we are nothing by comparison.

Maybe a thousand years after Job, Isaiah the prophet records the words of God to Israel.

Isaiah chapter 40, he says, Do you not know?

Isaiah 40 · chapter mention

Do you not hear?

Don't you have ears?

Hasn't it been told to you from the beginning?

Have you not understood from the foundation of the earth?

It is he, it is God who sits above the circle of the earth.

Imagine yourself on a warm sunny day out in your lawn chair and your feet propped up.

God uses the earth as his footstool.

And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.

He spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

God asks, that I should be like him.

That is completely set apart.

Book of Genesis makes it very clear that death reigned on earth since the time of Genesis.

And so the gap between creator and his creation could not be wider.

All honor, glory, and privilege belong to the eternal God, with humans increasingly becoming children of sin, living and dying, human lives seeming meaningless, the author of Ecclesiastes says.

How astonishing is it then to see those words that he, that is God, was found in human form.

From verse 7, we know that required a self-emptying.

The one who forms infants in the womb caused his own body to be formed.

Creature come, creator come as creature, unimaginable glory wrapped in flesh.

There was nothing in him to cause us to look at him with desire, scripture says there was no beauty in him that would attract us.

What staggering humiliation for the God of all glory.

And he chose that humbling.

He humbled himself.

But that's really just a description of the emptying.

Because it was only once the emptying happened and he took on human form that obedience began.

Says, and being found in human form, that's the situation.

Being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death.

He humbled himself.

The Lord God Almighty, the one who is, the one who was, and the one who is to come, willfully lowered himself.

He willfully considered others more significant than himself.

There is no greater self-humbling than God taking on human form to obey.

I hope you've made the application connection by now.

We need to adopt that mindset.

We need to have that mindset, being willing to set aside any prestige, any honor, any position we might hold in order to value others more significant than ourselves.

If we choose to follow the leader of our souls, our humility must be a genuine part of who we are.

It's important that we aren't just humble and modest on the outside, while prideful and arrogant on the inside.

You've probably heard me use that story before of a of a young boy in school for the first time who was told to sit down by his teacher.

And he said, Teacher, I'm sitting down on the outside, but I'm standing up on the inside.

Right?

Something to that effect.

That's how we are often.

And that's not what this is.

This is a willful choice to humble all that we are.

True humility isn't something we put on only when it's necessary or advised.

Instead, it's voluntary and a heartfelt choice to follow Christ and embrace this self-humbling.

Connected to that, of course, is the second step the Lord took in his path to eternal honor.

His path to eternal honor included a preposterous obedience.

Master Lord, Son of God, Alpha and Omega, beginning in the end, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

These are all titles of preeminence.

Preeminence means greater than the greatest.

The rulers of our world struggle for greatness and power and might.

The wealthy of the earth labor to get more and possess more and influence more.

These earthly ones are eminent ones.

They are human beings who hold high places of honor and power and privilege.

But there is only one preeminent one.

Nebuchadnezzar, you remember him?

One of the greatest kings to rule the earth, maybe the most wealthy king to ever live.

He was proud of his eminence, of his greatness.

He gloried in his grandeur and his power and his greatness, at least until the preeminent one brought him down from his greatness by giving him the mind of a cow.

Or maybe we think about the builders of Babel, who wanted to make a name for themselves, so that they would be noticed by God and God would take note of them.

They could outsmart God and not scatter across the world by his command, but stay together by constructing a tower to the heavens.

Yet no matter how tall their tower became, God still had to come down to see it.

Scripture tells us that by nature humanity does not seek after God.

There's none who seeks after God.

No, not one.

In fact, we do the opposite.

We labor to ignore Him.

Sometimes we actively oppose Him.

They say, let's throw off His requirements that God has laid on us, and God who sits in the heavens laughs.

Scripture says that He will speak to them in His wrath and terrify them in His fury because He is the preeminent one.

He sits above the circle of the earth.

And one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

He is King of kings, he is Lord of Lords, He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

Without him nothing was made that was made.

He is the light of life, and without him there is no life.

This God is the one whose voice the ancient Israelites were so afraid of hearing that they begged Moses to not have us hear him again because we don't want to die.

This maker of Mary set aside the privileges of his preeminence to become Mary's.

Son.

And as Mary's son, God grew.

And he learned.

The infinite God grew.

The omniscient one learned.

Philippians chapter two, verse eight describes this cost of preeminence as the humility of obedience.

Friends, God doesn't obey anyone.

Others obey God.

No one sets the standards for God.

God sets the standards for everything.

And yet, in the incarnation, in God taking on human form, everything is flipped.

How astounding! How astounding is the humility that God the Son would obey Joseph and Mary?

Let's take a survey.

How many of you think Joseph and Mary were perfect parents?

None.

What humility is on display in the perfect one?

Obeying sinful parents.

Flawed parents.

Like all of us, just struggling to figure out what is this little creature.

What incomprehensible humiliation for the Son of God to submit himself to the laws of blasphemous people.

The incarnation was a display of magnificent humility.

But it cost our Lord Jesus Christ for a time the glory of his preeminence.

For he, the preeminent one, became obedient to the things he made.

The writer to the Hebrews comments on this, saying, although he was a son, that is the son of God, he learned obedience through what he suffered.

God the Son willingly became obedient.

He learned obedience as a human son, obeying earthly authorities, learning from a human perspective what it's like to be human, to learn how to walk, how to speak, how to obey parents, how to submit to government, and even submit to God the Father as a son, even though he is the one to whom all obedience is due.

His humbling himself to be obedient teaches us that the cost of our pride to learn obedience is worth it.

Because it makes us more like Jesus.

Our frustrations, friends, with learning submission and obedience in life are so minor compared to what Christ must have experienced.

Yet Scripture tells us that He is our trailblazer.

He is our pioneer, He's our leader, that we follow in self-humbling and obedience to all of our authorities.

He did this because he considered others more significant than himself.

There's a third step on our Lord's path to eternal honor.

That's the last part of verse 8 that I've called a piercing cost of humility.

Notice the stages or the steps of humility here in verse 8.

First, there's the humility of becoming man, there's the incarnation, being born as a human being.

Secondly, there's the humbling of obedience as a human being, learning obedience.

God taking on human form to learn, to obey.

And the third is the humbling to death.

Humility cost our Lord his life.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal or everlasting life.

How do we understand that word gave?

God the Father gave his Son.

Understanding Philippians 2.8, I think, gives us a richer understanding of John 3.16.

It tells us that there are at least three or four ways that the Father gave his son.

He gave him in human form, so that there would be a sense in which God comes to dwell among human beings once again.

God gave his son by giving him in an obedient form, so that as Hebrews tells us, he would be a faithful and understanding high priest.

He gave him to die, so that God, our Savior, would experience what it's like fully to be a human being.

And he gave him to die in a very specific manner.

More on that in a minute.

God so loved the world that he gave his son to die.

We need to consider a little bit more about the being of God to grasp how humbling that is.

When we think about God, there are some specific attributes or perfections that come to mind.

For example, in Deuteronomy 33, verse 27, we are told that the eternal God is our dwelling place, and underneath us are his everlasting arms.

Deuteronomy 33:27

What does that tell us about God?

Well, it tells us he has no beginning and no end.

He is eternal.

He is everlasting.

The psalmist repeats that in the hymn book of Israel.

From everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

From eternity to eternity.

You are God.

Isaiah 57, verse 15.

Isaiah 57:15

Isaiah says that he is the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity.

Gives us the sense of wherever we go in this concept of time that only exists within creation, God is already there.

He inhabits it.

That's just him.

He's there.

His name is holy because he is separate.

He is distinct from anything that we can comprehend and understand.

And wherever we might go, apart from what we understand and comprehend, God is there.

He inhabits it.

Let's contrast that with human beings.

Genesis chapter 2 warns Adam and Eve that in the day that they eat of the fruit, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

The New Testament tells us living today that because we are descended from Adam and Eve, we die.

Ezekiel chapter 18 tells us why.

Ezekiel 18 · chapter mention

We sin.

And every soul that sins will die.

Why is that?

Because the wages, what we earn from our sin is death.

Notice the distinctions.

God inhabits eternities from everlasting to everlasting.

But mankind is just a blip on the radar.

You're here and then you're gone.

You die.

Yeah, it's because of sin.

God is holy, we sin.

How then does the eternal God, the one who has no beginning and no end, die?

How does the one who inhabits eternity need a tomb?

The only way for the infinite God to die is to become man, to take on Adam's curse.

God gave his son so that God would dwell once again with man, but also to be obedient to the point of death.

Try to imagine for a moment how humbling it would be for the President of the United States to clean the toilets in the White House for four years.

That's number one on the presidential responsibilities.

And not just for the president's quarters, but for the visitors too.

Now, magnify the indignity of cleaning the toilets in the White House by infinity.

If you can do that, you begin to get a picture of how humiliating it was for God to die.

The magnitude of the humiliation is colossal.

Now add to that enormous humiliation the horror and the indignity and the hideousness of death on a cross.

Consider how the pagan Roman philosopher Seneca thought of crucifixion.

Seneca lived during the time of Christ and after, and he wrote in his book, The Moral Letters.

Is there such a thing as a person who would actually prefer wasting away in pain on a cross, dying limb by limb, one drop of blood at a time, rather than dying quickly?

Would any human being willingly choose to be fastened to that cursed tree, especially after the beating that left him deathly weak, deformed, swelling with vicious welts on shoulders and chest, and struggling to draw every last agonizing breath?

Anyone facing such a death would plead to die rather than mount the cross.

Crucifixion was called despicable by the Romans, hideous, a means of death that no Roman citizen should ever endure.

It was the death of a slave, the rebellious, the criminal.

And when you add to that, for the Jew, crucifixion was especially cursed, the magnitude of the humiliation becomes enormous.

It was as though God the Son viewed a lineup of degrading ways to be humbled so that others could be exalted.

And scanning across the scene of degrading, humiliating ways of death, he saw the most humiliating and the most degrading way and said, I'll choose that one.

Because it's the way to pay for the sins of Adam.

And then when God the Son took on the form of a slave, humbling himself through obedience, and died the death of a slave, he rose from the dead.

And then he said to all of his followers, Come.

Take up your cross and follow me.

Friends, the cost of humility is the death of self.

Is it any wonder now why verses 9, 10, and 11 are recorded?

You don't get 9, 10, and 11 without verse 8.

You don't get verse 8 without understanding verses 3 and 4.

Therefore, God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name.

So that at that name of Jesus every single being would respond in humility.

Friends, the path to eternal honor is not exceeding the leader.

The path to glory is not establishing yourself as supreme or better than others.

The first will be last, the Lord said.

And the last will be first.

Jesus is the ideal picture of that truth.

You can believe that taking up your cross and dying to self and pursuing humility is the ultimate and eternal path to glory because it is the path that Christ took and the Father honored him for it.

And we are to follow our leader because he has gone before us into heaven, where he sits at the Father's right hand.

But don't follow him merely because it's the path to honor.

Follow him because he humbled himself for you.

To pay the price for your sin, so that you might look to him in faith, believing in him as Lord and Savior.

To show you then how to consider others more significant than yourself.

So grasping this reality of Philippians chapter 2 ought to draw down our pride so that we can look with eyes of faith to the one who gave himself for us.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

It's only through him that we will be truly honored.

And that will happen only through humility as we find ourselves in him.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, we come and we bow before you.

First and foremost, confessing our sin.

Oh Lord, we live among a sinful people.

We are Adam's sons and daughters.

Too often, Lord, we love our sin instead of loving others.

We confess this to you and we lay it all before you, asking that in your justice and in your faithfulness that you would forgive us.

Asking with the psalmist who himself needed cleansing that you would create in us clean hearts, that we would come before you in remembering your your crucifixion and your death, your burial and your resurrection, that we would we would look to you with hope, trust, and faith that you are the one we need.

And that we, by participating in our worship, and in taking up the elements of the Lord's table, that we would commit to you, yes, we are taking up our crossing and following our leader to the very end.

Because that's the path to honor.

Most notably, bowing before the name above all names.

Proclaiming that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, the Lord of Lords, and the King of Kings, forever and ever.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.