Philippians 2:1-11 | "Unity in Humility"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Brandon for Sinaka.

We are going to be in Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible, there should be a black hardback Bible in the seat in front of you.

If you don't have a Bible, we would love for you to have that as a gift.

We would love for you to have a copy of the scriptures.

And we go there to follow along.

We believe that the power of transformation is not in the messenger, but rather in the message.

So we open up God's word to see what it has to say for us here this morning in prayer and hope that it will change us as we leave.

We're going to read it, we're going to pray it, and then hopefully as we leave here this morning, we are going to live it out in our lives.

So let's go ahead and read it.

Again, that's Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

We're going to be in verses 1 through 11.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Philippian church, he says, So if there is any encouragement in Christ, 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 yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, 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 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.

Will you join me in prayer?

Lord, we come to you this morning to ask that you would open up our minds so that we would know what your word says, but not just so that we can make a mental ascent and gain knowledge, but so that we can leave here transformed.

And that will take conviction in our hearts.

So, Lord, we also ask that you would open up our hearts, not just to understand the message of the scriptures, but also to uh feel the conviction, to live it out, to be transformed by it.

Teach us this morning, Lord, the means of encouragement in Christ and comfort from love, participation in the Spirit, affection and sympathy.

Teach us where these things come from in the life of the church.

Lord, teach us what it means to not have selfish ambition or conceit.

Lord, teach us this morning how we might have the mind of Christ.

Because that is what it seems to be everything hinges on.

Be with us here this morning and work in our lives.

We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.

Well, in her book Grapes of Wrath or Grace, Barbara Brokoff tells the story of a group of American tourists in Rome.

They're touring uh the Roman uh city, and they're looking at ancient ruins and and all that stuff, you know, the whole affair.

Um and they go, they they're they're touring a basilica of a church.

So they have this bus that comes and drops them off, and they have their their tour guide taking them across and letting them kind of look around, and he answers questions, and um they go into this basilica in a in a piazza, and they go in, they look around, and after about an hour, they're all done and they're about ready to board the bus again.

But the problem is the bus is on the other side of the street from where they dropped and got dropped off.

And if you know anything about Roman uh about European driving in general, and this is just I've only heard stories, but it's chaotic, okay?

It's crazy.

They don't stop for anything, especially in Rome.

And so what you have is this group of tourists trying to cross the street to get back on their bus, and they're trying to cross one by one.

They're like spread out across the street, and they're just basically playing chicken with traffic, okay?

They're kind of stepping out, okay, that almost got hit.

Okay, maybe now.

Nope, nope, nope, not happening.

And so it's basically like a competition to see who can get to the other side first.

And so the the the tour guide is on the other side, he's with the bus already, and he's frantically calling to them, saying, No, stop, don't cross one by one.

You cross one by one, they hit you one by one.

And so then he says, But if you cross together, they think you will hurt the car.

They will not hurt you, they will stop.

And so in that illustration, you have a tremendous example of the potential and power of a thing we call unity, right?

As individuals crossing the street, they had no power to stop any vehicle uh in traffic, but as as they gathered together as a unit and crossed together as a unit, they had the power to stop traffic.

Uh there is tremendous power and potential in unity.

Historically, when countries unite together around a common idea, uh, whether it be a nationalistic identity or even a threat posed to their existence, they become a powerful force in the world.

And uh, in the same way, when citizens of a government unite against tyrannical governments, it can lead to the overthrow of empires that have stood for thousands of years.

Uh speaking of nations, one of the most common laments in our current American culture is how divided we are as a country, right?

We want to be united.

In fact, this is one of the things that we look in politicians.

It's what you hear in a lot of the political commentary.

Is this going to be a person who unites the country or are they going to cause deeper division?

We all want unity and we understand that there's great power and potential in unity.

Bringing it down to our level, one of the most common um needs I hear expressed in the church is a desire for unity.

And conversely, this is one of the biggest uh arguments against Christianity, one I you hear all the time.

How can Christians claim to know the truth when they are so divided?

How can the Baptist Church be right over there and the E Free Church be right and the Lutheran church down the street be right all at the same time?

Yet you won't meet together and you all teach different things.

How can how can Christianity possibly be true when there's so many divisions among it?

I have no uh I really don't have time to uh get after that argument other than to say is that there are many, many churches who believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, who believe in the supremacy of Scripture, and we uh divide over minor issues, okay?

So if that's your if that's your uh question here this morning, I hope that puts you at ease.

I'm happy to talk about it more after the service.

Um digressing a little bit, not only is one is is unity one of the most common needs I heard expressed in the church, uh, but it's also one that everybody's trying to grasp at.

So it's like we need unity in the church, but how do we get there?

And I hear it in a lot of different ways.

Uh sometimes it's philosophically.

People think if we understand the same thing about the church, like how church should be practiced, like if we all go on the same page about outreach, our church will be unified.

Or if we all go on the same page about children's ministry or youth ministry, or whether we should sing hymns or whether we should have a rock band, whatever it is, that's what we're going to get on the same page about, and then we'll have unity in the church.

Sometimes it's theological.

We need to have theological unity.

If we all know and understand the same doctrines, we'll have unity within the church.

And that's all great and grand.

Those things are good.

Theology is good, and it's in fact needed based on the text and what the scripture teaches here this morning, but it's not enough to unite a church.

It's not enough to unite the people of God.

In fact, it's going to be quite surprising to you because it is to me as to what actually brings a church together.

So let's look at it here this morning.

And we're going to we're going to unpack it kind of in reverse.

Because we have uh the grounds for unity at the end of today's passage, and we have the method of unity right there in the middle, and we're going to start with the blessings of unity.

The blessings of unity.

Uh, if you look at verse one, Paul says, So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy.

He begins this with so if, not to propose a hypothetical, as if this is something that might be an idea out there that you might be able to attain, but rather he's setting up an if-then condition.

Okay?

So if one aspect of this condition is true, then the other is true, okay?

I'm gonna I'm gonna illustrate this uh for the kids real quick, okay?

Because you adults are all very smart people, and just in case you're not tracking, you can cheat off the kids' illustration here.

So, kids, all right, here's an if then.

If I let go of this book, what is going to happen?

Kids?

Any children in here?

Okay.

How about adults?

Adults, what is what's gonna happen?

If I let go of this book, what's going to happen?

It's going to fall.

So if I let go, then it will fall to the ground, right?

Okay, so that's an if-then condition.

If I let go, it falls to the ground.

Great.

We're all tracking.

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, this is the first half of the what, of, of the uh if-then equation.

And these are all things that I concluded are experiential blessings for the church.

And these are really all things that we come into a church longing to experience, don't we?

We want to come into a church, not beaten down with how much of failures we are, because we get that throughout the week in our own conscience.

We want to come in here and we want to be encouraged.

And the only type of lasting encouragement that is out there is the encouragement that comes in Christ.

Which is why Paul says, if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any comfort from love, we want to have love, we want to experience it, the type of love that comforts us, even in the deepest, darkest places of our soul.

When we are going through those rough times, we want to feel the love of God manifested around us by the people of God.

Okay?

That's the comfort we get from love.

If there's any participation in the Spirit, and really this is the life following Jesus, is participating with the Spirit of God.

If you want to know the Bible better and deeper, you cannot do that by merely uh reading it and trying to do it on a human level.

You need the participation of the Holy Spirit active in your life to understand it.

If you want to be a more faithful father, a more faithful husband, a more faithful follower of Christ, you need the work of the Spirit in your life.

It's a both and.

It's you and the Spirit participating together.

If there's any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy.

And these words kind of ring hollow to us because we think affection being something you like and sympathy is merely feeling sorry for somebody, but it's not quite that shallow.

I used this illustration last week.

Uh you know, I love Chick-fil-A, okay?

Number two, spicy deluxe, no pickles, okay?

None of that weirdness.

I'm a Christian.

With an Arnold Palmer and waffle fries, that stuff is delicious.

I love me some Chick-fil-A.

You want, you want to love on your pat me?

Just get me some Chick-fil-A.

I'd love Chick-fil-A, okay?

But I will also say I love my wife.

I love my wife and children.

Now, surely I do not love them the same, okay?

At least I pray I do not love Chick-fil-A and my wife the same.

All right?

I'm going to have serious problems.

My life is in danger if I love them the same.

I love my wife on a much deeper level than I love Chick-fil-A, but I will use the same word, okay?

Here in our English speaking culture, we use words that don't quite have that same depth of meaning.

And these two words, affection and sympathy, if you look at the language that the Bible was originally written in, you'll you'll see that this is actually a much deeper uh meaning here.

It's actually, these are both words used to refer to kind of the bowels of the human soul.

Like it's it's a type of affection and sympathy that is deep within a person.

It's a kind of affection and sympathy that you feel for somebody that when they're hurting, you actually hurt with them.

You weep with those who weep.

You you are you are deeply troubled when you see your brother or sister in Christ falling away from the faith.

When they're experiencing hardships, it hurts you that way too.

It's kind of a tight-knit community, like a family bond that we have within the church that we all desire to experience.

If these things are present, Paul says, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy.

Here we get into the second half of the equation.

Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord, and of one mind.

So here we get to the method of unity.

We had first the blessings of unity, all those great things that we want to experience in the church, but now Paul gives us the method of unity.

And really, it's a call to unity.

It's it's having the same mind, being together in how we think, having the same love, being together in our affections.

And then he uses this word being in full accord, which really is a synonym for having the same love.

Uh it comes from the Greek word synpsychos, uh, which is the only time this word is used in Scripture.

It's made up of two separate words, uh, sun meaning together, and psychos meaning the seat of the feelings or desires and affections.

So really Paul's repeating himself on both things.

If we were to sum it up, if we were to boil it down, this call to unity is being united in how we think and united in how we feel.

Jesus cares very much about how you think.

Christianity is not a faith where you check your brain at the door and you come in and you get filled up with your emotions and then you go out and live it.

Christianity is a thinking man's faith.

It is a call for you to engage your brain, to understand theology, to understand who Christ is, but not merely to leave it as a mere mental ascent, because the other half of that is how we feel.

Feeling together.

Thinking together, being of the same mind, feeling together, being in full accord, and having the same love.

Again, this is the call to unity.

This means unity within the church that Paul presents.

If you have a desire to have a unified church, especially in difficulty, it's 100% vital that we think together and feel together.

This is the method of unity.

I'm going to illustrate it real quick with a story from uh Bill White, who is a pastor of a church out in California.

He tells the story of his cousin Johnny, who uh took his family to a pool party.

God bless those people who can go to pool parties at all times of the year.

I'm not jealous, I'm not mad, okay, maybe a little bit.

Um, but uh he took his family to a pool party at a relative's out house outside of LA.

And at one point, the guests were all taking a break from the pool and were milling around by the house, eating and talking, and no one noticed Johnny's young, uh, two young children, Jack, who's age five, and his sister Blair, age two.

Okay, Jack and Blair, again, Jack age five, Blair age two, they wandered out from the party down to where the pool was.

Everybody else was taking a break.

No adults by the pool.

They walked down to the pool and Jack hadn't been in the pool yet, so he still had his clothes on.

Blair, however, had her new pink bathing suit on and was just dying to take a dip in the pool.

Jack played with the long-handled pool net and Blair tested the water.

She decided it felt good, so she climbed over the edge of the pool and stood on the first step.

Then she climbed down to the second step, the water now up to the middle of her chest, and then Blair took the next step, and the water went over her head.

No one was there, and no one saw her go under, except for Jack.

Again, Blair is age two, Jack is age five, and at that moment, Jack tossed aside the pool net he was playing with, he screamed out Blair's name at the top of his lungs and dove in after her.

Johnny heard the scream, raced to the pool, saw Jack underwater, pushing his sister to the surface, and Johnny dove in and pulled them both to safety.

On the first day of school, uh a couple weeks later, Jack's teacher asked the class to draw something from their summer vacation and tell the story behind the picture.

Jack drew a picture of himself and Blair at the pool, and then the story he wrote was that when he was cleaning the pool, his sister started to go into the water without her floaties.

When she got on the deep steps, she started to drown.

Then I jumped into the pool.

My dad jumped into the pool too.

We both got her.

We took her out of the water, and she was okay.

Both Jack and Johnny.

Now again, Jack is five.

Johnny, presumably much older.

They think about different things throughout the week.

Jack probably thinks about ninja turtles and Legos.

Johnny probably thinks about his work stuff caring for his family.

But at this moment, both of them were thinking the same thing.

I need to save Blair.

And then they felt the same thing.

A deep love for Blair and a fear of losing her.

This is the call of unity within the church in how we think and how we feel.

Now, this might sound a little contradictory because everybody has different opinions within the church.

So how are we to unite around what we think?

Because some people think one thing about the church and other people think another thing about the church.

Some people feel very strongly about certain aspects about the church, others feel very strongly.

Well, this is not a call to personal opinions about the church or personal thoughts and feelings about the church.

It's a call for us to unite around the same thinking and the same feelings that are devoid of any human interference.

Let me explain.

We're going to look at the source of the method.

So again, we have the blessings of unity.

We have the method of unity.

We are to think the same and feel the same, but now we have the source of the method.

What are we called to think and feel the same in?

Verse 3.

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

Think of other people as more important than yourselves, and feel a compassion and love for them.

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

The word for selfish ambition here is a word that conveys a political term that refers to partisanship or electioneering.

And being in the good old US of A, we know very well what that's like, right?

It's a political term.

We look at it as uh jockeying for power, like win at all costs.

I'm gonna manipulate people, I'm gonna use people, I'm gonna work through systems, and I'm gonna try at all costs to try and get my way.

I don't care who I hurt in the process.

And some people even take good intentions and use this in a bad way and do things out of selfish ambition.

We love the children's ministry so much, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure it's successful.

I don't care who I hurt or what money we take, from what ministries, we're just going to make sure it goes great.

And so on and so forth, right?

That's what selfish ambition is referring to.

That's a mindset within the church that we are to avoid at all costs, that we are to have nothing with.

It's an enemy of unity.

The second mindset and attitude that Paul presents as an enemy of unity is the word conceit, and it's similar to selfish ambition, but it focuses on self-glory.

Okay?

Rather than just meeting my needs, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure I am exalted before everybody.

Both of these are the overflow of a person who's focused only on themselves.

And Paul contrasts that and says, But in humility, count others as more significant than yourselves.

And he qualifies this statement with the phrase, in humility.

And it's vital because you cannot authentically count other people as more important than yourself.

Unless you have a humble perspective of yourself.

You can serve other people out of selfishness.

How it makes you feel, how it makes you look.

Oh, look, I'm feeding the poor.

Isn't that great?

Look at how cool I am.

Look at how holy I am and awesome I am.

That's not the kind of humility that Paul is talking about.

Genuinely, authentically thinking less of yourself.

In fact, C.S.

Lewis has a quote that I think sums it up pretty well.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

That's what humility is, and that's what we are to take on and count others as more important than ourselves.

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

Don't just sit back and observe, but lean forward and get involved into the well-being of others.

It's not bad to look to your own interests.

In fact, he says, look not only to your own interests.

He doesn't say, don't look to your interests.

He says, don't only think of yourself, but also to the interests of others.

This involves getting messy.

Getting involved in other people's lives is messy.

People are messy.

But Paul says, don't just sit back and watch them caring only about yourself.

Get involved in their lives.

Look to their interests and their very well-being.

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

Can I ask an honest question?

Is this what our lives look like?

I've wrestled with this over and over this past week.

Going back and forth and what my life looks like.

Am I categorized as a selfish man looking for his own selfish interests, own selfish desires?

Or can I be genuinely categorized, characterized as a person looking to the interests of others, serving my wife, serving my family, serving my church?

Is this what your life looks like?

Do you consider others as more important than yourself and look out for their well-being?

Is this what faith at large looks like?

Can we as a church be characterized by this?

Would we be able to say with absolute integrity that this is a congregation devoted to the well-being of others?

Or do a congregation only looking out for themselves?

Now I gotta say, last week I thanked you all for being so kind and generous and loving to my family.

Because, you know, we're we're the new people here.

You know, I'm I I love that how how well you guys took care of us.

But honestly, I think this passage really kicks in when it talks about taking care of people that you're not excited about.

The people that are hard to love.

Not the new youth pastor who generates a little bit of excitement, the person that you intentionally avoid at church, at work, in your family, that crazy uncle.

If you are that crazy uncle, okay, we'll pray for you.

I'm sorry.

I am the crazy uncle in my family, okay?

It's not about looking after the interests of people that you like and love.

I think this really, really tests where we are when it comes to those people that you don't love.

You don't like, the people who make you nervous.

Jesus talks on this in Matthew chapter 5, verse 46 through 47.

Matthew 5:46–47

He says, For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?

Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

The tax collectors were the worst of all people in Jesus' time.

They betrayed their own to turn a buck, to get rich quick.

They aligned themselves with the Romans and sold out their own people just so they can get rich.

And this group of people on the fringes of society, on the fringes of Jewish uh culture, they welcomed each other.

They were kind to each other.

What makes you so different than them if that's all you ever do?

He says, and if you only greet your brothers, what more are you doing than others?

Do not even the Gentiles who don't believe in God, who are pagans, who know nothing of Jesus, who knew nothing of Yahweh, do not they also do the same?

We're not called simply to love those who look like us, think like us, act like us, smell like us.

The true test of this passage comes down to when you're encountering those people that are hard to love.

And not just saying, hey, I'll be okay with you, I'll tolerate your existence, but leaning forward and getting involved in their lives, looking after their interests as you would look after your own.

These are not moralistic commands.

Again, I told you this is the method of unity.

We are to think this way and feel this way, but it's not merely moralistic commands.

We're not like other faith systems where we just tell you, do these things and everything will be alright.

Do these things and your life will be better and you'll feel better about yourself.

That's not at all what we're saying here because look at what Paul says in verse five.

Have this mind among yourselves.

Again, Paul has said mind, okay, the way you think, three times already in this passage.

He's very concerned with how we think, engaging your brain.

What are we to engage our brain in?

He says, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

Again, it's not based in moralistic commands, it's based in the personal work of Jesus Christ.

Look at what follows.

Verse 6 Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

I don't know if your heart skipped a beat, but I don't know, because I don't know if you know who we're talking about here.

This is Jesus Christ.

Jesus, not an obscure carpenter from Nazareth 2,000 years ago, not a good moral teacher.

This is Jesus.

This is God in flesh.

This is the one by whom all things were made and for whom all things were made.

You and I exist right now because of Jesus Christ.

And not only that, he sustains all of creation, all of creation right now with the power of his word.

That's the Jesus of the Bible.

This is the King of glory.

This is the Jesus who spoke the world into existence.

This is the Jesus who is the line of Judah.

This is the Jesus who is the king and judge of everything.

And this is the Jesus who stepped off his throne in heaven to come down and intentionally get involved in your mess and in my mess.

Not looking after his own interests, not looking after only himself, even though he was perfectly right in doing so.

The only one in all of creation to ever say, you know what, I'm going to let them have their way with themselves.

They've rebelled against me.

I have every right to judge them.

And yet he didn't.

He stepped off his throne.

He came down to earth, born in a manger, raised by two poor Jewish people in an obscure village, lived three years, had a ministry, he taught the kingdom of God, and ultimately paid the highest price.

He served you and I by taking on our sins, by becoming the very object of God's wrath, taking every ounce of hell that you and I deserve upon himself when he died alone on a cross, beaten naked and alone.

He served us in that way.

The king of the universe, crucified on a cross, to serve rebellious creatures.

You want to know the basis for unity?

You want to know how we are to think and how we are to feel we are to think the way Jesus thought.

We are to feel the way Jesus did.

The way he thought and the way he felt.

It's going to hurt.

It's going to cost me a lot.

It's not going to feel very good.

But I'm going to do it.

That's the essence of love.

I think Paul emphasizes this point of exactly who Jesus is.

Because the de the cross is not the end of the story.

Jesus rose again, and therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.

So that 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.

Again, this is Jesus.

God in flesh, who served you with his life.

The call here this morning.

If you're not a Christian, this is the Christian message.

If you're new to the faith or you're just visiting, you're kind of trying to check out what Christians believe, this is what we believe.

We don't believe in a system of commands that we have to adhere to.

We believe that Jesus Christ is the perfect righteous one who took all your sin upon himself and gave you his righteousness in exchange.

We're free from living up to moralistic commands because we're free to obey God, knowing that if we stumble and fall and fail, God is there with grace through Jesus Christ.

He is the example, he is the method.

He is the source of the method.

The method is that we should look not only to our own interests, but to the interests of others.

And again, bringing it back to where we started.

There are tremendous abounding blessings that this church will experience if we think the way that Christ thought.

It's not complicated.

If you want to get to know more doctrine, it should point you to Christ.

If you want to know theology, it should point you to the example of Christ.

And it should not remain just a mental sense, but it should lead you to living out this kind of life.

And the church is going to experience tremendous blessings, encouragement in Christ, comfort from love, participation in the Spirit, affection, and sympathy.

A church united, experiencing these things, and we will become a powerful force for God in this world.

Let's pray.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

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