Sit Down, Be Humble

We're going to be in Philippians chapter 2. We're going to be in verses 5-11. And since I can't see you and it's dark in the room and I can't tell if you're awake or tired, we're all for only six verses, we're going to stand for the reading of God's word. If you cool with that, say, "Yeah." The rest of you can still, you can still stand. What else you got to do?

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

And I just, I just like to coach, right? So if I say something like, if I say like, like if I pause at a word and I'm leading into another word, feel free to say it with me because that's kind of what I'm leaning towards. I might just straight tell you, but hey, lead, lead it with me, man. There are people in here who listen more to your amen than they do to my whole message. And so, just I want that culture to be solid.

Starting in verse 5, Paul says this to the Philippian church, this love letter to them. They're super excited, I'm sure, to receive it because they thought he was in trouble and they thought their guy, Epaphroditus, was dead. He writes to them in the first chapter about a few different items. And he jumps in talking about unity in verses 1-4. And in verse 5, he begins this process of what we call the Christ hymn, where he gives them an example of how we ought to live.

And he says this:

"In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he 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 by becoming 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 acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

And all God's people acknowledged with their tongues by saying, "Amen." You may be seated. I'm excited about this passage.

Just a very familiar, common passage for you all. So I don't get fidgety, I'm going to set this graciously right here. Don't want anyone who's superstitious to think I'm treating the Bible poorly. It's a book. You can buy another one if you lose it.

I don't, I don't know about you, but I have been a person that struggles with pride. And this entire passage is about moving from a prideful state to a humble state. It's a process — we call it this, you can call it humility developing or humility building —, but it's really humiliation. It's a process whereby God puts you in a position where he humbles you so that later on he can lift you up to the highest places for all of eternity. My sermon title for today is "Look at Your Neighbor." Tell them, tell them my sermon title.

Look at — no one's turning their head. Sit down. Be humble. Yeah, I was excited about it. Someone at Trajectories actually used that title, for one of their teachings, but I'd already written the majority of, at least I'd chosen the sermon title already, so I'm not copying you if you're in this room right now.

But it was a good title. I just want you to know, great minds think alike. Holy Spirit led minds probably fall in sync once in a long while. So good job. Sit down.

Be humble. You don't have — I know we're doing song titles, but you don't, you don't have to look it up. You shouldn't look it up. But I just kept thinking about how often in my life I have been told to be humble. Anyone in this room, if you're willing to be honest with me, you've been told to be humble.

Are there more hands raised than I see? Cuz some of y'all are just so humble. The most humble, aren't you? Look at your neighbor. Tell them, "I'm, I'm the most humble." Cool.

Now we're all in the same boat. None of you are humble. Get it? It's a little joke. Pastor did it before, so I just, I just copied it.

I got to stop copying stuff. I've been told a lot that I am not humble. And what I don't want to do today is just tell you, "Stop being prideful, be humble." I think there's a process whereby God teaches you what true humility looks like and what true pride looks like. And I don't think someone saying to you, because you thought you were good at something, that you were prideful, is the full story. Now granted, if you're bragging on yourself, someone's going to say, "Don't be so prideful." That would be what I would say to my kid when he brags on getting one hit out of how, however many hits he could have gotten.

You know what I'm saying? Like, don't brag about it, don't be so prideful. That is different than the humility that we're going to be talking about today. It's different than the pride that I'm talking about today. When you think of pride, you think of that dude in the gym who wore a shirt that was way too tight and he's looking at himself in the mirror the entire time.

That was me until I turned 24 and stopped gyming as much. You know, just, that's who you think of as prideful. The person you think of as prideful is the person who never thinks about anybody but themselves, but they always have something to say about everything, right? Like, that the prideful person, like, that's who you think about when I say pride. But what if I told you pride is simply your world being consumed with thoughts about you and your stuff.

Like, pride is not just bragging. Pride is you living your life without subordinating your preferences to the call of God and subordinating your will for the sake of others. What does the Old Testament say as he's about to give the Ten Commandments? He says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind." And the second is like it: "Love your neighbor as yourself." It says "like it." It doesn't say "like, slightly beneath it." You know, it doesn't say like it's about 5% less important than honoring God. Now, I think we all understand that in order to love our neighbor properly, we have to love God wholly, wholeheartedly.

Like, we have to revolve everything in our lives around our creator God, around Jesus and following his footsteps, in order to love our neighbor properly. But it is still extremely important. But most of us, you may not brag — that's just a social skill you've developed — but you're still prideful. You're prideful because the only thing that you think about, it's not even yourself, it might be yours. Like your family, the stuff that you deal with, your extended family.

You might be selfless within your pride bubble, but you were filled with pride if your starting point doesn't start with God. That, like, pride is you saying, "I can do this without God."

And you might not be so sure about this. You might not believe me. "Hey, I put Jesus first." Maybe you do, maybe you don't. "Hey, I love others really, like I'm really gracious." I know a lot of people who don't have a relationship with God who are way nicer than those Christians, I know.

Let me prove something to you about your pride. Pride is often shown in our visceral responses to mundane activities. So anyone in this room drive? I'm assuming you will, all drive in Phoenix. You know you're prideful if you struggle sometimes driving in Phoenix because of the way that other people drive.

That's how — that's, I mean, that's a visceral response that I have. When someone's so selfish that they would drive and not consider me, as they're changing their lane without a blinker, that they wouldn't consider me when they stopped at the stop sign and it wasn't their right of way and they went as I was about to go, and now my life is halted for an extra five seconds — how dare they treat me that way? That's your pride. That's just one example. Another example, the way that when you go to work — I'm getting into the nitty-gritty today.

Brandon, this is my brother-in-law, one of my favorite people. You should introduce yourself to him after church. He's probably on the top 10 list of my favorite people to exist in this world that I'm aware of. You know what I'm saying? So you should go talk with him, he's a good dude, I like him.

My favorite person in the entire family, no offense to the three of you that are sitting there in my entire family. He's not prideful, I'm quite prideful. But when you go to work and your boss gets frustrated at you because you didn't do something that they specifically asked you to do, and they chastise you a little bit — they're trying to be gracious because they're a manager and they're struggling to tell you directly what to do while also being loving and empathetic to what you're dealing with — and they lightly tell you to do something, and then your first response is, "I did the best I could." You may not respond to your boss that way, but internally that's what you felt, right? It's this posture that starts with, "I need to be the most important." You would never say this, and if you would, you should come up here for prayer afterwards because you need some social skills and some pride work. But most of you, you wouldn't say this.

And how do we get to this place where pride is no longer a huge part of the process and humility becomes natural? And Paul tells us, as he's writing to the Philippian church — most of whom are probably more faithful than us, just based on what I've seen in Scripture — he really likes the Philippian church. And he writes to them and he tells them this process. He knows that there's some disagreement happening about how to respond to Paul, some disagreement happening. You'll see in chapter 4 between two women named Euodia and Syntyche, there's some political stuff happening.

He talks about Jesus being Lord, and they're in a free city where they're trying to like cozy up, cuddle up to the Roman Empire. And when they say Jesus is Lord, it's really difficult because they want to say Caesar is Lord, right? There are a lot of things that Paul's trying to address with this group, but he loves them, he appreciates them. And he tells them, even though they're doing really well in their spiritual walk, you need to have the same mind as Christ Jesus. The literal translation for that, "have the same mind" — and I didn't come up with this on my own, I was in Greek class and my professor would tell me this frequently when we were studying through Philippians — he said the translation is better if you say it this way: think this way about yourself the same way that Jesus thought about himself.

And then he gives us this Christ hymn. When I say hymn, I'm talking about hymn like a stanza that they might have sung in a worship service, that they might have voiced over music in a worship moment in somebody's household. It was a hymn. This is what he gives them. And it is a process whereby each of us, the Philippian church — they don't constantly stress about not being prideful, but they shift their focus to look at somebody who emptied themselves on our behalf, Jesus.

That's how you move from pride to humility. And I think one practical piece of advice as we jump into that hymn that I could give you is that you would save yourself a world of improper perspective if you would simply recognize that there are bigger things in the world than what you're currently dealing with. There are bigger problems in the world. Let me just simplify it even further: the world is simply bigger than you. You guys agree with that?

Like, you're frustrated because your latte was cold when you got it. You're frustrated because someone cut you off in traffic. You're frustrated because you ate that breakfast burrito, but then your kid took it out of your hand and ate a bite and then dropped it in your back seat. Like, you're frustrated, like you feel like you're just God's weary soldier because you struggled in traffic this last week. And I'm not trying to talk mess about you, but that is the lifestyle of pride that doesn't default to saying, you know, there are bigger things.

Like, peace will come when you don't stress out about these things. And it's not just small things, it's the biggest things. Like, how does a believer who puts their faith and trust in Jesus, revolving everything around him, get to the place where cancer could be happening to their body, where the worst things could be happening to their kids as they've gotten older? Everything could be going awry in their life. Yet because of their focus on Jesus and their willingness to subordinate not just their preferences but every aspect of their life to Jesus, enables them to have peace, recognizing that even when I'm struggling — like Paul, even when he is guarded by guards at the palace, imprisoned in somebody's house — he can say, "Whatever happened to me, God's using it for the advancement of the bigger picture."

How do you get there?

You get there by looking at Christ. But you get there to look at Christ properly at first by just zooming out a little bit and recognizing the world is bigger than you. Like, do you realize your problems in this room? I know you got problems. I'm not saying don't stress sometimes.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't solve your problems. Not saying that that like nothing bad ever happens to us and we should never like just sit down and struggle and understand a little bit of what's happening within our minds. I'm not saying depression doesn't exist. I'm not saying pain doesn't exist. What I am saying is, even in this room, there are other human beings who probably have an equal amount of problems.

Maybe greater, maybe a little bit lesser, maybe equal, but radically different. Like literally, if you just look at the person next to you—you don't have to say anything to them—just stare into their soul. Make them feel borderline uncomfortable, but they're doing the same thing to you. So it's like mutual. It's okay.

It's like consensual—wrong word, but still, you know what I'm saying? Like, look at them. Just look at them for a second and empathize. Think of all the problems that you currently have in your life. All of them.

And then remind yourself that they have an equivalent amount of problems to deal with. It just helps you sometimes. You ever felt like, "I've been stressing out because I had to work an extra hour on something I didn't want to work an extra hour on, " but then you get a call where someone said that their relative just passed? You don't always have that phone call, but you can always zoom out and remember that. And the problems in this room of about maybe 150 people right now—that's only a portion of the problems on this street, and that's only a portion of the problems in Buckeye, only a portion of the problems in the West Valley, only a portion of the problems in Phoenix.

And there are 5 million people in Phoenix, and Phoenix is only the 10th right now—this is new stats—the 10th largest city in the country. There are 350, probably in the next couple of years, million people in our country, and our country only takes about 1.8% of the world's mass, and there are 6 to 8 billion—I don't know the number, but like 7 to 8 billion people in this world—and every single individual filled with problems, some greater, some lesser, some equivalent, we're all just standing on a rock that's floating in empty space. And we're in a solar system, and the only thing that's ever gotten out of the solar system that we have produced is this little thing that took a picture, and we have no clue where it's at right now. It sent a picture and then went off into deep space. They call this picture the Pale Blue Dot.

And there is an almost seemingly infinite cosmos around us, with, people say, whether you believe them or not, billions upon billions of galaxies, and that is only the known portion—they say they know it—of the universe. It is bigger than us. Way bigger. Yet we struggle with this self-importance. And if I were to go even further, I would completely bypass all of the physical things that exist in the universe, because there's this thing we call the Fermi Paradox that says we have not found life in other parts of the universe.

Which means that the fact that they haven't found us, when there should be life elsewhere that could have found us by now, and the fact that we haven't found them, when we're one of the younger planets in a younger solar system in a younger galaxy, means that either something's crazy or there may not even be complex life on other planets. So look at your neighbor again and realize about this person that you have failed to empathize with, failed to have unity with, frustrated because of their political opinion, frustrated because the way that they raised their kids, frustrated because the way that they talked to you or didn't talk to you, frustrated because they didn't treat you a way that you anticipated or expected that they would treat you, frustrated for whatever reason. That reveals to you right now, in this moment, how much we're thinking about our own desires and ourselves. You look at them and realize that what is in their brain right now is infinitely more complex than anything we have ever discovered in the entirety of the cosmos. And God put every hair on their head.

They're the apple of his eye. And that's why he says, "Love the Lord your God, " and like, love your neighbor as yourself, because we are each created in the image of God. My point in saying all that is not to make you feel bad. It's to humble you just a little bit so that you can recognize that you are not the be-all-end-all of created beings. And here's what's so cool about that.

I think pride is a result of our sin. Pride is a result of the fall that we saw in the Garden of Eden. But Jesus represents for us not just God made flesh, but the embodiment of the true character of God. And when God—I'm gonna read this for you, I got to read this for you—and when God decided he was going to bring us into connection with himself once again, in his process that we call salvation, here's what he says, Paul, that Christ Jesus, verse six, "Who, being in very nature God"—now the translation there is a difficult one, some translations will say "likeness of God, " some translations will say "being in the form of God"—whatever it is, it's not just saying he has like God attributes. They understood this, to know they're talking about God, who, being God with all of his authority, his power, his attributes, his character.

Though he could have had all authority under his footstool when he came to earth, though he could have argued with the Pharisees who had a different religious, spiritual, and political opinion than he did, when he could have argued more and more with the people who crucified him, when he could have subordinated the Romans who were occupying Israel at the time under his feet, when he could have come down off the cross, when he could have called down angels to attack and destroy, he could have taken the iron scepter that we see in the Old Testament and demolished the nations. He came down with all authority, yet didn't consider that authority something to showcase. Instead, in the infinite goodness of his character, it says he did not consider equality with God something to take advantage of. Instead, rather, he made himself—what's that word there? Is it with me?

Verse seven, "He made himself"—are we good? Okay, he made himself, say it with me. Nothing. And we try being something, but he made himself nothing, taking the very nature of whom? Of a servant.

I know you know this about the character of God, but I think we have conditioned ourselves to looking at God in a way that we qualify all of the things that he does based on the fact that he's God. I don't know if that makes sense—let me clarify that a little bit further. When we look at God, we give ourselves an excuse for not being like God. And when we look at Jesus, we say he subordinated himself, didn't consider equality with God something to be attained, something to be grasped, something to showcase, something to seize of his own authority. Yet he emptied himself to the point of a bondservant for people who were hostile to him, for people who wanted to kill him, for people who disagreed with him, for people who, if he's driving, would have cut him off in traffic, for people who just don't even think about him.

That's who he died for. And we're like, "Yeah, but that's God." But what Paul says is you need to have the same mind—think of yourself the same way that Jesus thought about himself. And this is Scripture. This is not Matt Rose trying to get people to sign up for a kids team and literally sit down with these kids and humble ourselves so that they might know their savior the way that we know our savior. That's not even what I'm talking about.

This is what the Scriptures say. What did Jesus do? He emptied himself. He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant. We're called to do the same.

So how do you think of yourself? You actively and intentionally think of yourself the way that Jesus thought about himself. Jesus thought of himself as someone who, though carrying all of the authority, set it aside, because he knew the authority wouldn't get the result that he intended. Do you ever notice that? I know that there's a sacrificial system, there's a whole process put in place, and this is a lot of us as we look at history trying to comprehend the will of God, the puzzle pieces he was fitting together, so that when Jesus came, it was perfectly ordained that when he died on the cross and rose from the grave, it would fulfill a sacrificial system, save us for all of eternity, validate his existence as God by the resurrection from the dead, and ultimately we would be seated with Christ in the heavenly places.

That's a huge puzzle that he was putting together. But do you ever think about the fact that he could have done it, but he chose to make himself nothing? I think it's because of what we find in the Old Testament, that the Lord is gracious, slow to anger, patient, rich in love, compassionate, kind. Another verse: it's his loving kindness, not authoritative hand, that leads us to repentance. And when I look at the cosmos, when I look at the infinitely complex people in this room, when I look at God's creation altogether, I am baffled, and it forces me, like Nehemiah, when he realizes the problem of the people in Israel at the time—he's looking at the people that God created who were struggling, and he knows the complexities of it, and he can't do everything about it, but he can do something about it—and so he's so humbled by the realities around him that he has to sit down.

You might be humbled by the bigness of our world and our universe, and it causes you to sit down. But man, right now I am so both exhilarated and stressed about the amount of love that Jesus shows us. But rather than seizing his authority, he stepped down, robed himself in flesh, hung out, dealt with our stuff, and then was crucified by the same people he came to heal. That's baffling. I don't know if that's humbling to you, but it's humbling to me.

And I realize how prideful I am, because when I look at how Jesus operates and then I parent my kids, I recognize this thing about myself, that I have the—y'all got parental authority, you know what I'm talking about? Anyone here proud of their parental authority? You're scared to raise your hand. I'm proud of it. You can't raise my kids like I raised my kids.

I've got the authority to raise my kids. The problem is, a lot of us lead from positional authority, parental authority. But if you look at Christ, you recognize that the way he ordained things to happen, there's a better solution than utilizing the authority, whether you have it or not. And so what do I have to do with my kid? I can't just—sometimes you got to, they're running out in the road, say, "Stop it, son." You don't slap Bibles in the process, but maybe you pull them in.

Sometimes you've got to utilize that parental authority. But I'm learning, and I'm learning—you're going to realize about me, I'm not the best parent in the world. Neither are you. So don't get all judgy, but I'm not the greatest parent in the world, and sometimes I default to parental authority, and that's pride, cuz I'm in the position. It's like that manager you had that you didn't like because they were in the position and they could tell you whatever they wanted to do, when reality was they would have gotten better results from you if they

Sat down.

Even if they had the authority, you still got to humble yourself so you can get the results that you're looking for. It's not only the thing that offers us salvation in Christ Jesus, it's also the very thing that God uses to develop us as parents, husbands, wives, leaders. This is a beautiful process. And here's what happens. It says this in verse eight: "And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross." Therefore—everybody say, "Therefore." I'm going to teach you this till I'm blue in the face because nobody ever remembers it.

They just read through Scripture, get bored with it, and then fall asleep because they did it at night rather than doing it in the morning when they would have had a better headspace to read the Scriptures. But when it says "therefore" in Scripture, this is your cue that something is shifting. We always say it's there for a reason. And so he puts the "therefore." What did Jesus do? He robed himself in flesh, died on a cross, humbled himself to that point of death.

That's what obedience called him to do. This is what we're all called to do. In our obedience, he calls us to bear our own cross. In our obedience, he says to die daily to ourselves. In our obedience, the Scriptures tell us to crucify our flesh and its desires daily.

It says that we are offering ourselves—

Paul says a drink offering. It says in Romans chapter 12, as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God. He calls us to empty ourselves, get down a layer, so that God can use us in his loving kindness, as he teaches us to love our brothers and sisters, to guide them to the place—because you can't guide them when you're just telling them, you guide them when you're humble and you serve them. It's our servant leadership that guides people into repentance. And when we.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

Guide them, we develop, they develop, God is glorified. But it doesn't stop in this low place. Here's the beauty of this formula. When you humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, He will shape you. He will humiliate you.

He will get you to the place where all the fluff and all the dross and all the trash and all the sin is rooted out of your life. And when you're at that place, you're perfectly primed for Him to lift you up. Amen. Verse N says, "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, under the earth, and every tongue acknowledged that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." We look at Jesus in two ways specifically for today. We look at Him as our Savior.

And what does Paul say? Gave us salvation. He says it's what Jesus did. His death on the cross offers us forgiveness from sin. His resurrection validates that that is a true historical fact.

And then God exalted Him. He ascended to the Father. His was cool. He. He's.

Where is He at right now? Seated at the right hand of the Father. And it says later in Philippians, I believe — maybe it's Ephesians, correct me if I'm wrong, sweetie — but it says we will be seated with Him in heavenly places, doesn't it? I could be wrong. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Correct me if I'm wrong, somebody. I'm trying to remember. It's a paraphrase, but I do know this: when we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead, the Bible says that we're saved. The Bible says that we are sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit into eternity. So whether we're seated in heavenly places, we're still going to be in heaven.

I don't know if we're seated right next to Him. I don't know if we're surrounding the throne. I don't know if we're the people bowing on our hands and knees for all of eternity — holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. But here's what I know: I know the process for you to pragmatically walk through life is better when God humbles you. And the way that you get to heaven is when you become humble enough to accept Jesus as your Savior.

And for all of eternity, you will have the peak of joy. And there's some people in this room, you get it, you understand it, you know what's supposed to happen. There's some of you in this room, you're like, "Yeah, I've been told I'm prideful.", you've been listening to Kendrick all day. You know, it's like, "Sit down. Be humble.

I know I'm prideful. I got all this stuff to deal with. Nobody likes me. It's so frustrating. You're better than me." Comparison trap.

All this other stuff. You've been listening to that message all day. That's straight from Satan. I told you it was going to be a little bit different. Here's here's the reality: you do not get rid of your pride by just getting rid of your pride.

You get rid of your pride by getting rid of yourself. And the way that you get rid of yourself is you lift your eyes to the hills. You look at God and you recognize how big He is, how beautiful He is, how loving He is, how kind He is, how patient He is. And when you look at God and you see who He truly is and recognize that He had a plan for you to receive life abundantly and life eternally, you hand it over —

your entire life. You hand it to Jesus, because when He takes your life and does something with it, you're not going to end in a humble state.

That's the trajectory of your choices. You go upward in this life, keeping up with the Joneses, getting where you think you want to be, and then when you die, low place. But when you give your life to Jesus, He takes you down into humility. He shapes you. Iron sharpens iron.

He puts you around people who help you deal with your preferences and put purpose in front of them. And He takes you down to this place. But at some point, He grabs you — whether it's at the end of your life or in the middle of it, I don't know how it's going to happen — but He pulls you up

into eternity, or into spiritual success, or into what you've always dreamed of. Job had to learn this lesson. And I'll close with this.

The lesson Job had to learn was that sometimes God allows the most horrid things to happen to us so that He can connect at a deeper level

with us. That we can recognize that even though all of those things are horrible — and I'm not talking about pain and suffering today — all those things are horrible, He sees a bigger picture. He helps you get to the place. And what He did with Job is the same thing that He does with us: He shows you His glory. And when He shows you His glory, none of us can help but sit down.

And so if that's you in this room and you've never experienced Jesus, I want to give you that opportunity. It's humbling. I'm gonna show you a video in a second. It's someone who decided to serve. It's humbling.

But you can do what feels good the rest of your life. You'll end up in a low spot, or you can start now with this humiliating but beautiful process with Jesus. So everybody bow their heads and close their eyes. We're going to pray this prayer together out loud, for the benefit of those praying it for the first time. If you just repeat after me, say, "God, I believe —

God, I believe —

that Jesus is your Son." Jesus.

I believe He came. I believe He came. I believe He died. I believe He died. I believe He rose.

I believe He rose. And I believe He's seated

at your right hand. Father, forgive me of my sin. Forgive me of my sin

and my pride. And my pride.

Help me humble myself. Help me. And I will follow You

for the rest of my life. For the rest of my life. Father God, we thank You for this moment.

Humble us by the power of Your Spirit and by the example of Your Son. It's in Jesus's name that we pray. And God's people said, "Hey, " let's celebrate those who just made a decision to trust in Jesus.