Philippians 2:5-8 | Finding God

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

Luke chapter two, verse twelve records the angelic instruction to the shepherds.

They said, You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.

That baby, we are told, is Christ the Lord.

So the shepherds, it says, went with haste.

They went quickly from their flocks in the fields into the community of Bethlehem, and there they found the God, the Son of righteousness, swaddled tightly.

The fingers that hung the stars in place bound tightly to his side.

Finding the baby was the sign that the Messiah, the Lord, had been born.

And the news so stirred the shepherds that they left their sheep to find him.

There's another passage in the Bible which speaks of finding Christ the Lord.

And it's in Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

I'm going to read Philippians chapter 2, just a few verses for us this morning so that we get this thought in our minds.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

It begins in Philippians chapter 2, verse 1, with some instruction to people in the church in the ancient Roman city of Philippi.

Philippians 2:1

It says, So if there is any encouragement in Christ, which there is, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

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

Have this mind among yourselves, which is also in Christ Jesus.

Who?

That is Christ Jesus.

Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, to be held on to at all costs.

But he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

And he was found in human form.

Amen.

In 1911, Yale history professor Hiram Bingham launched his Peruvian expedition to locate the lost Inca stronghold known from the Spanish Inquisition of Spanish conquest, I'm sorry, of 1536.

Spanish chroniclers had written of something that had become known as the lost city of the Incas.

A place, a location that was lost to history.

No one knew where it was, no one knew what it looked like, or even if it ever existed.

Maybe it was only a legend.

Bingham never found that lost city of the Incas.

Instead, on July 24th, 1911, with the help of a local farmer, Bingham climbed a steep jungle-covered mountain ridge and discovered what no one ever expected.

There, lying in ruins and massive amounts of overgrowth in a mountain saddle completely hidden from below, were terraced walls, houses and temples of carefully fitted stone.

He hadn't found the lost city of the Incas, but something much more spectacular.

He had discovered a sacred retreat of which no one in the modern world had ever heard.

Machu Picchu, a stunning mountain refuge of a long-lost civilization.

Those shepherds outside of Bethlehem embarked on their own journey of discovery.

They searched for a newborn baby, a savior, Messiah.

But the New Testament book of Philippians shows us that what they discovered was far more astonishing than an infant lowly.

Like Machu Picchu, that simple birth was remarkable because it defies human expectations and standards of reality.

It reveals an incomprehensible truth that must be accepted by faith.

God was born that night in Bethlehem.

Luke 216 says that the shepherds went quickly and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger.

Hiram Bingham did not see the lost city of the Incas.

He never found it.

We may never know if he found something greater or not.

Those shepherds found the baby in the manger.

But is the swaddled infant all they found?

Consider that question with me for a few moments.

What is it that the shepherds found?

Well, first of all, what the shepherds found is something that exceeds human expectations.

We aren't told how long it took those shepherds to find the exact location in the village of Bethlehem where Joseph and Mary and the baby were staying, but they did find them.

They eventually found what they went to see.

And what they saw by the standards of that time was fairly normal.

They went quickly and they found Joseph, Mary, and the baby lying in a manger.

As the angel had said, they found the sign of the infant in the manger.

A tiny baby boy.

Swaddled tightly, helpless and immovable.

They saw what anyone looking for a baby could expect to see.

For them, seeing the baby in a manger was confirmation of the angelic promise.

The Messiah had arrived.

Anticipating and finally seeing the Messiah was a long-awaited dream in Israel.

And there he was, in the city of David, Bethlehem.

The shepherds, Luke tells us, were telling everyone what they had seen.

But like Hiram Bingham seeing Machu Picchu for the first time, covered in lush mountain overgrowth, they probably had very little idea of what lay beneath the surface.

The Apostle Paul in Philippians 2, verse 6, uncovers what those shepherds actually found.

Philippians 2:6

He says they found God.

Of course, they found the infant that the angels had promised.

But Christ Jesus, Philippians 2, verses 5 and 6 tells us, is the form of God.

Philippians 2:5

He is fully God and fully human.

And there are two very profound thoughts or truths about the form of God.

One is that God has a form.

The other is that the lowly infant was that form of God.

This is unexpected because the New Testament tells us that God exists as spirit.

He is without a body.

And so that makes this statement unexpected.

You're following along in your Bible, that word form in verse 6 is the Greek word morphe.

I know you've heard of it.

I know you've heard of it.

Maybe you've heard of the word morphology, the study of forms of things like plants and animals and even words and language.

I know you've heard metamorphosis, right?

Yeah.

Metamorphosis, that change from one form to another.

That term morph form has been a significant term for many thousands of years.

Long before this unique birth in Bethlehem, a philosopher named Socrates wrote about the forms of mythological Greek gods.

Now remember, when we think about morphe or form, we're imagining the shape and the structure of something.

It points to how something appears to our eyes.

Now, in ancient times, there were many legends and beliefs about so-called mythological Greek and Roman gods.

But Socrates, the wise philosopher, taught that human beings should never expect to see the form of the gods.

In fact, many variations of ancient Greek and Roman religions focused on the opposite possibility, that humans could become like gods.

But the common belief was that the form of divine beings would not ever be visible to human eyes.

That word form conveys the sense of what something is.

Christ Jesus existed in the perfection of the eternal God.

That's why the Gospel of John says that Christ is God.

That means that when we close our eyes and imagine God the Son, we don't imagine what he would have looked like as a physical human being.

Instead, we imagine the Almighty sovereign God in all of his astonishing glory before whom angels bow.

That is what the form of God means.

Jesus is the glorious, infinite God.

The infant in the manger is God whom humanity never expected to see.

But here in Philippians chapter 2, we understand that perfect, astonishing glory now is in contrast to the form of a slave in verse 7.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

Who, though he was in the form of God, emptied himself how?

By taking the form of a slave, which is to say, in the form of a human being.

Before his birth, Christ the Lord existed as the glorious, almighty, invisible God.

It's a statement of incomparable deity.

Then at his birth, God the Son doesn't morph into something else like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.

Instead, he takes on another form.

Like he's adding it, that of a human being.

He adds another form to his human, to his divine form.

He remains God in all of his perfection, but is now seen or found in the form of a human being.

He is the God man.

Very God, a very God.

And yet an infant lowly.

Ancient philosophers said that humans should not expect to see the form of a God's being with their own eyes.

So why should the shepherds expect to see anything other than a baby in a manger?

Well, they should expect to find much more than a baby in the manger because the angels promised that they would see a baby who is Christ the Lord.

You understand, I'm sure, that Christ is just a different language for Messiah.

Messiah is the Hebrew, Christ is the Greek.

It's the same word.

But the angels say you will find Messiah the Lord.

Philippians chapter 2, verse 11 tells us that one day every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Philippians 2:11

That was an identification with the God of Israel in the first century Jewish world.

The shepherds would not merely find the Messiah in a manger, they would find their Lord, Emmanuel, the perfection of eternal God in a helpless infant.

Now the Jewish shepherds would likely have interpreted the angelic announcement as the coming of their expected Messiah.

He's here.

We don't know then if they grasped that the word Lord implied that they would find God.

As anyone would expect, the shepherds saw a real, live baby.

But what they found exceeded all human expectations.

Contrary to the standard expectation, God became man so that man could find God.

And that the Apostle Paul says is the greatest demonstration of humility imaginable.

I like the way that J.I.

Packer says it in his book, Knowing God.

He says that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of Christian revelation lie right here at the first Christmas.

He said the word became flesh, quoting John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

God became man.

The divine son became a Jew.

The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie there and stare and wiggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child.

And that wasn't an illusion or a deception.

The babyhood of the Son of God was a reality.

And the more you think about it, the more staggering it gets.

Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the incarnation.

Of course, this shouldn't surprise us.

In a way, we shouldn't sing who would have dreamed.

That doesn't mean don't plan for it, Webb.

I like that song.

The answer, who would have dreamed, is we all should have.

We all should have, because we were told from the prophet Isaiah that we ought to anticipate the birth of a son who is the mighty God.

Yet the reality of God in a manger would have and continues to stagger the human mind because it just defies human expectations.

Discovering God among people, and even more so as a baby human should make us marvel at the wonder of what happened.

The song Mary, did you know, is simplistic at first blush.

Of course, she didn't fully know.

Yet the scriptures tell us that she pondered what had been revealed to her.

She possessed a simple faith in God's promise, and there was much that she did know.

But that song is helpful in that it provokes us to ponder the wonder of Christmas and the reality that defies human expectation.

God the Son, existing in eternity past with the Father and the Spirit, equal to the Father and the Spirit, no difference between them.

Each person of the Trinity is perfect in deity, but in the fullness of time, the Father sent forth his son to be born of a woman.

And in that act, God the Son did not consider his divine status, his authority, his power, or his glory as something to be held on to and to be used for his own advantage.

Instead, he set that all aside and added to himself, surrounding all of the perfections of his deity, the form of a servant, a slave, being born in the likeness of humanity.

In the ancient world, how you appeared in your society was incredibly significant.

You'll have to come back on Thursday night to hear more about that.

But it was incredibly significant how you appeared in public.

Appearance represented status and position in the Roman Empire.

The eternal, glorious God bore the humiliation of being seen in human form, as though he were a slave of no value.

Friends, finding an infant isn't that astonishing.

It happens every day.

But finding God as an infant, visible with human eyes, defies expectations.

Yet that is the wonder of Christmas.

Emmanuel.

Says that he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.

If you look back at verse 3, it says, Do nothing from selfish ambition.

Selfish ambition, or maybe your Bible says vain ambition, is a compound word.

The two words individually mean empty and glory.

Together they form the concept of pride and arrogance that has no basis in reality.

It's empty.

People with empty pride lift themselves up.

They make much of themselves.

They give themselves a kind of glory, a kind of essence and being that isn't real.

It's unfounded.

It's like pretending you're wealthy when you're actually broke and homeless.

It's empty.

The pride in wealth and riches is empty when you have nothing.

Some Christians here in the ancient world were making much of themselves through empty glory.

But that's not the kind of attitude that Christians should have.

We should possess the same mindset as Christ, who, though he was genuinely rich beyond measure, became poor.

There's, I think, an intentional play on words here.

Do nothing from empty glory in verse three.

Instead, empty yourself like Christ.

Here, the idea of exchanging the glory of riches, glory and riches of heaven for the comparative homelessness and poverty of earth plays off of that human.

Pattern of lifting ourselves up and glorying ourselves when it's actually empty.

The instruction is for us human beings.

Don't build yourself up with empty glory.

Instead, empty yourself of all your glory just as Jesus did.

Now the Lord didn't cease to be in the form of God.

God doesn't cease to be God.

Instead, he covered, he wrapped like a gift, you might imagine, all of the perfections of his deity with flesh and bone and sinew.

The kind of emptiness that he took on is the opposite of empty glory.

He tore himself down.

He debased himself instead of building himself up.

Now, if you think it's a far-fetched story, it's a myth that God would wrap himself in flesh to be found like a mere human being.

That just couldn't happen.

Consider the reality of amalgams.

Maybe you've seen a video of someone adding liquid mercury to pure gold.

Kids don't try this at home.

Just ask your parents to find you a video of it.

No, you can see it.

When you add liquid mercury to some gold, it appears as though the mercury dissolves the gold, as if it's being consumed.

It's a fascinating thing to watch because the mercury just makes the gold disappear.

The yellow is gone.

And there's this silverish liquid that remains.

Some people think that something like that happened with the incarnation.

They think that God ceased to be God when Jesus was born.

But that isn't true, friends.

God the Son is always God the Son, even when he appears to be only human.

It's like an amalgam.

An amalgam is when two different substances are dissolved and mixed together.

So when mercury mixes with gold, the mercury doesn't destroy the gold.

The gold atoms remain intact.

It's just that it looks like the mercury eats the gold.

But mercury has a lower boiling point than gold.

And so if you evaporate the mercury by boiling, guess what you're left with?

Gold.

Pure gold.

That exact process is used in some refining methods still today.

The process of dissolving or mixing together is called amalgamation.

But don't misunderstand.

The incarnation is not an amalgamation.

Nothing in the deity of Christ or the humanity of Christ is dissolved when the two come together.

I'm talking about the appearance.

We're looking at the form.

It appears as though the mercury consumes the gold.

Similarly, it can seem as though the infant in the manger is no longer the divine son of God.

But we all know that appearances can be deceiving, right?

God the Son possesses the fullness of divine glory.

For through him and by him and for him were all things made.

He is today the image of the invisible God.

He possesses every divine right and every prerogative that belongs to the sovereign Lord and creator of the universe.

His glory is not empty because of his humanity.

Instead, he emptied himself of the rights, the privileges, and the prerogatives of one so immensely glorious by taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.

It is the height of humiliation for a Roman citizen to be stripped of their status.

Status was a symbol of right, of privilege, of honor.

To have them removed was an incomprehensible dishonor that no one would willingly choose.

Because human beings by nature choose what builds them up.

We naturally choose what establishes and increases our value and honor and privilege.

We labor hard to make something of ourselves, to have something to show for our efforts.

We set our sights on ourselves to hold on to our worth and our value at all costs, but not Christ the Lord.

He chose humiliation.

The perfection of deity and glory took on the form of a slave.

I think that's a symbolic statement rather than a literal one.

That is, the Lord Jesus was never a literal slave of any other person.

He was not owned by anyone.

The symbol illustrated the social status of the Roman world in the first century because slaves occupied the lowest rung on the social ladder.

They had no rights and no privileges.

So the Philippians would have understood then that what Christ did would be similar to the Roman emperor stepping off of his throne, leaving the Roman Forum, and assuming the place of a slave, taking off of his emperor toga and wrapping himself with the clothing of a slave, even while being an emperor.

No human being would do that.

For God, a similar status change would be taking the form of a human being.

The creator would become his creature.

Such a sweet humiliation.

Born on the floor of a hay-scattered stall.

True Son of God.

Yet bearing human feature.

Reverse Adam's curse.

The eternal, glorious Son of God who upholds all things by the word of his power, this one, this one, emptied himself by becoming like one of his created beings, setting aside his rights, privileges, power, position, and his humility, therefore, defies all human patterns.

One of our beloved Christmas songs is, What child is this?

That song asks a question of being, of form.

What kind of child is this?

What kind of infant is this in a manger?

Do you remember the answer?

This, this is Christ, the king.

Shepherds guard and angels sing.

And so it's right then to conclude.

Bring him incense, gold, and myrrh.

Come, whether you're peasant or king, own him.

For the king of kings salvation brings.

Let loving hearts enthrone him.

From Philippians chapter two, we discover that the infant lowly is not merely the anticipated Messiah.

No, he's the Lord God.

He is the word made flesh who came and dwelt among us.

And so in finding the infant, we discover that we have not found a special baby, but a unique God.

And this God has no selfish ambition, no empty pride, no empty glory.

He is utterly humble.

He considers others of such value that he would lay aside his glory to be found in human form to rescue them from their sin.

Being found in human form is, of course, the path to the cross.

That message for the Philippians is the message of utmost humility.

It's a humility that gives of itself for the benefit of others.

It doesn't take, take, and take and take for personal comfort or personal glory, but it empties oneself of all status, pride, and arrogance.

The humble infant, God in human form, becomes the example that we must find, that we must believe in, and we must follow.

So we have to find him.

We must find God who came to us as a humble baby.

He was found by the shepherds, later by the magi who worshipped him.

But friends, it is not enough to find him.

No, that's not enough.

It is not enough to find him.

We must go beyond finding God in the manger.

We must endeavor to be found in him.

That was the Apostle Paul's desire over in Philippians chapter 3, beginning in verse 7.

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

He says, Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.

You see, the fullness of Christmas is not that God is with us, although that's true.

The fullness of Christmas is not that we find God in the lowly infant, although that is very true.

The fullness of Christmas is that because we can find God, and because God is with us, we can now be found in Him.

That is why we must pursue the reality of Christmas with faith.

We must be like the Son of God, coming humbly, believing what exceeds our expectations, and find the humble God lying in a manger and put our trust in Him as Jesus, our Savior.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, may we all come humbly, full of faith, believing what your word says to be true.

Take away all the things that bring doubt.

Lord, bolster and encourage our faith.

Maybe there's those who are who are needing to put their faith in you for the first time to reach out and say, Yes, I believe.

Lord, draw them to do that very thing right now.

Lord, for the rest of us, inspire our worship and our awe of you this Christmas season.

In the name of our glorious and awesome Lord Jesus who humbled himself, we pray these things.

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.

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