A Refreshing Taste of Humility - Philippians 2:1-8 (Jan 28) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

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Glorify God for the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

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Alright, I feel like God just wrote an introduction for me on humility and what it means to be humbled and to stand here in front of you in this embarrassing moment and talk about how sweet humility is.

I wonder if I want to ask you this question.

What is it in life that would make your joy absolutely complete?

Like if you were to say, uh, if I had this, like that's everything I need, what is it in life that for you is like that?

Paul wants to talk to us about what it was for him.

Look at Philippians chapter 2, verse 2, and notice the first four words there, what Paul says, reading from the ESV, he says, Complete my joy by.

Philippians 2:2

Now, maybe as we thought about that question, some of us had something in mind.

Maybe some of us were just a little more skeptical.

Like, like we kind of have this idea of there's nothing, okay?

Like life is hard.

And joy can't be found.

And yet here we find in the inspired word of God, Paul saying these words, that there is something that you can pursue in life that would complete his joy.

And because Paul's affection, we read in Philippians verse 1, is the very affection of Jesus Christ.

And because we read in verse 25 that Paul's life mission was to progress the Philippian church, to see them mature.

We know that if Paul's joy was made complete by the Philippian church pursuing this one thing he has in mind, then it's our joy as well.

That we could say so much as this, that this thing that Paul has in mind, whatever it is, we'll read about in a moment, it's a pursuit that if we take up, it can make our joy complete.

And so let's read this together.

Philippians chapter 2, verses 1 to 8.

Philippians 2:1–8

This is what God's word says to us this morning.

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.

Now Paul has really two key words in here that come up over and over and over again.

And the first one you'll notice there is this word mind.

Paul's joy, he says in verse two, would be completed if they are of the same mind.

He says at the end of verse two that they are to be of one mind, and in verse five is really the main exhortation of this text.

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

And Paul is exhorting us this morning to a way of filling up our life with joy, and that way requires that we think a certain way.

And as if we think really think really about the second key word of this text, we come to understand what it is.

Our mind is to be filled up in such a way that it leads to humility.

Paul says in verse 3 that in humility we are to count others more significant than ourselves.

And then really in verses 6 to 8, he shows us the example of humility in Christ who humbled himself to obedience, even obedience to the point of death.

And so, God, what God wants to give us this morning, what he wants to teach us this morning, is that humility is essential to joy.

Humility is essential to joy.

Now, I don't know what comes to your mind as you sit on the edge of a few minutes, a few moments as we talk about humility.

I don't know what your feeling is.

What do you think about as you as you think about the need to grow in humility?

I think for many of us, it's it's a lot like taking Buckley's medicine, isn't it?

You know, you read about Buckley's medicine, what's what's their advertising?

It tastes awful and it works.

And that's kind of the feeling.

It's like it feels like kind of going to the dentist.

Well, I know I need humility, but like, man, there is humility is not fun at all.

Humility is boring.

Humility is painful.

As I reflected on God's word this past week, I thought about how many times I've said myself in a pastoral context or in a discipling context or in a counseling context, I've said, or many times even to myself, well, you just need to eat your humble pie.

I don't know if you've ever heard that, but but when I've said that, I haven't had in mind like an apple pie or like a butter tart pie.

In my mind, it's been like one of those gross, like mincemeat pies, one of those like liver pie.

Those, like I've never had one, but I've seen them and it looks really gross.

That's humble pie to me.

It's something that you don't want to eat, but you kind of have to eat it sometimes in life.

Now it's interesting as we come to God's word, Paul doesn't see that.

What Paul sees is that without humility, you can't actually experience joy in life.

It's interesting, C.

S.

Lewis thought the same thing.

He he said this to even near humility for a moment is like to drink water being a man in the desert.

Tim Keller thought the same thing of humility.

He said there's nothing more relaxing than humility.

You know, it's what you know when you're when you're pride, when you're living in pride, you you grumble about everything.

Nothing is ever good enough.

You're never getting what you deserve.

But when when you embrace humility, all of a sudden you can receive all these things in life as a gift.

And so both these men came to understand that if you ran into a humble person, it wouldn't just be a person who like doesn't care about himself or doesn't think about himself.

It would actually be a person who's like really enjoying life.

They they see everything around them sort of as this gift that has been given to them.

And you begin to understand how without this humility in us, we can't actually begin to experience joy.

And so Paul is very concerned, and God is well concerned that we embrace this humility, this joy-giving humility.

Well, if we're gonna do that, I want you to see three things we must know.

Paul says the mind is so important in this, and so our thinking needs to be informed by three things, and I'll tell you them right now.

It's the picture of humility, the place where humility is found, and the practice of humility.

The picture of humility, the place of humility, and the practice of humility.

Now, first, I actually want to start at the end of the passage that we read together this morning, and I want to talk to you about the picture of humility.

See, at the end of this passage, Paul gives us an example of humility in Jesus Christ that really helps us define what humility is.

He shows us the picture of humility, in fact, the most in the most humble form in Jesus Christ Himself.

And so Christ becomes our example, he becomes our definition.

And in order for us to understand how Christ embraced and really defined humility for us, it's required that we do sort of some Trinitarian theology.

We need to understand who Jesus has been for all of eternity, and then we can really begin to understand the significance of what Jesus did in humbling himself to become a man.

And so you notice there in verse 6, after saying that Jesus is our example, that we can only have humility in Christ Jesus in verse 5, notice that Paul says that this is Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, we can stop there.

Paul wants to take our mind all the way back to eternity past and ask this question: Who was Jesus?

Who was Jesus before the very first Christmas?

That glorious day we celebrated just a few weeks ago.

Who was he?

Well, Paul looks at him and he says, Jesus for all of eternity was in the form of God.

This is what the writer of Hebrews talks about.

In Hebrews 1.3, he says, Jesus for all of eternity was the radiance of his glory, the exact imprint of his nature.

Now, to be in the form of something is to be like the model of something.

It's to be the display of something.

And so this is what we come to understand.

For all of eternity, Jesus' role in the triune relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Jesus' role is to put on display the glory of God.

He is the radiance of the glory of God.

Now, what that looks like before the incarnation, before Jesus takes on human form, I think each of us are interested in.

You're probably very curious right now, hoping that I'll answer that question.

And yet at the end of the day, all I can say is, I don't know.

What I can affirm, though, is that for all of eternity, Jesus has displayed God's form.

He's been the form of God, displaying God's radiant glory, and that before the incarnation, he did not have a human form.

That's what the incarnation was.

And so Paul says that though he was in the form of God, he then goes on to say he 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.

Now, as we read this passage, we need to tread with caution.

Many people have read this passage and taken the wrong conclusion and gotten themselves into heresy because of it.

And the reason for that is that, kind of on first reading, it sounds like a funny thing, doesn't it?

But when we read that Jesus did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped.

The question there is like, was Jesus at any time not God?

Was it like Jesus looked at the Father and saw the Father's deity?

And the thing that separates maybe Jesus from Adam is that instead of trying to grasp for the Father's deity, he instead became a human and humbled himself so that it was God who exalted him.

There are many who read this passage and come out of it with that really the only way we could define it is heresy.

But I want you to understand here that Jesus, in not grasping for the deity that the Father had, it wasn't that he wasn't equal with God.

It wasn't that for all of eternity Jesus wasn't God.

The kind of grasping here that Jesus didn't do is the kind of grasping like when you have a football, I'm not a football player, but you know, I've played enough times and been tackled by people 100 pounds more than me enough times to know this reality about football.

That when you're playing the football, one of the most important things is that you keep holding on to the ball.

That is the most important thing.

You can't let go of that ball, you cannot drop it, you cannot let it be knocked out of your hands.

And this is kind of the picture that we get that for all of eternity, Jesus was divine, he was God, he was and is equal in the respect to his divinity with the Father, but he did not grasp it in the sense that he did not keep holding on to that divinity, but instead he humbled himself.

Now we need to ask this question: how did he humble himself?

Because another way we can go wrong in this passage is by believing that the way Jesus humbled himself was by like emptying himself of divinity.

As though the humbling that Jesus did is that he was God for all of eternity, and then on Christmas Day, that first day that he was in the womb of Mary, in Mary's womb, he kind of emptied himself of divinity so that he was no longer divine, now he was just human.

And to say that would be a heresy as well.

You see, Jesus's emptying that Paul talks about in verse 7 is not an emptying of subtraction.

Do you know what I mean by that?

It's not an emptying of Jesus saying, okay, I'm no longer going to be God, now I'm going to be a human.

Jesus' emptying is an emptying of addition.

Jesus emptied himself, Paul says, by taking the form of a servant.

And so it's not that Jesus became anything less than God, it's that Jesus added on to himself the humanity of God's creation.

Jesus added on to himself human flesh.

What Jesus emptied himself of then was the privilege of not being human.

Jesus emptied himself of the privilege of not being a created being.

The moment that Jesus entered into the womb of Mary and became flesh, he emptied himself of the privilege of not suffering, of not being in this afflicted world.

Never had Jesus for a moment shed a tear in his pre-incarnate eternal history.

Now he takes on flesh and we find him at Lazarus' tomb and he's weeping.

Never for a moment had Jesus slept for a moment in his eternal history with the triune God.

And now he takes on flesh.

And what do we find in the gospels is that often Jesus is tired and he needs to sleep.

And so the the humbling of Jesus is the taking on of humanity's struggle.

This is why theologians will call this state of Jesus when he takes on flesh.

They'll call it the state of humiliation, as opposed here to the state of exaltation, which comes after the cross.

In the state of humiliation, Jesus is humbled by taking on human flesh.

This is how the Westminster Catechism describes it that Jesus being born and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross, being buried and continuing under the power of death for a time.

This was Jesus' humbling.

He took on these things.

You and I have seen humility before.

You and I have seen, you know, this person who we think much of, who we think is like, you know, this great figure, get on the floor and condescend into a child's world.

And we look at that display and think, wow, what humility it would take to do that.

We've seen people do jobs that we would look at them and say, that's a little beneath you.

And we look at that and we say, well, that's that's humility.

And yet we've never seen humility like this.

Consider this for a moment.

God, the very, the very God Himself in the womb of Mary.

In the most in his humanity, the most powerless position you could be, the most dependent position you could be.

Think about this for a moment.

God in his life, walking towards the cross, the very God who reigned for all of eternity.

Like we're talking about, Jesus was worshipped by angels for all of eternity.

Everywhere he went, angels are flying around him, and they're calling out, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come for all of eternity.

He's worthy of this worship.

And God is looking to him, and with Jesus, he's creating the world.

It says that through Jesus, the world was created.

He is the power that creates the world.

Jesus is sustaining all things up until this point that he comes to the flesh.

He's sustaining all things.

And then here he is held under the power of death itself.

See, we you and I have never seen humility like this.

And the more that we understand Christ's exalted place in heaven for all of the time, the more you know our jaws drop and our hearts are filled with awe as we consider what Jesus did in coming to us.

Now, Amber and I, we we really had this illustrated this past winter.

We had our wood fireplace fixed, and so on the few cold days that we've had this winter, we've just jammed that thing full of fire.

And it's blasting heat in our living room, it's getting to like 78 degrees, and it's just like the warmest, coziest, at times with kids, sweatiest place that there is.

And you really feel the sense as the thermostat shuts off because it's so hot in the living room and the rest of the house gets cold.

It's like we gotta stay huddled here.

This is an amazing spot.

This is so warm, this is so cozy, the kids are wanting to do things.

I'm saying it's gonna have to be a really good reason for me to get up out of this chair.

Like this room is so cozy.

And it really became a powerful illustration of what it meant for Jesus to leave the comfort, the power, the exaltation of heaven, and come to earth and take on the humiliation of being born in the likeness of men.

Now, Jesus had good reason to leave, though.

Jesus came with a mission, and we read of this in verse 8.

Look what he says in verse 8.

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

Now, here what Jesus is doing is he's showing us how humility is formed in our life, and really what humility looks like.

Humility to Jesus, the perfect Son of God, and his humanity, humility was displayed in his obedience to God.

In other words, in the way that Jesus displayed humility, it was through his obedience to God's will, an obedience that was carried out even to the point of death.

And so we begin to understand this about humility: that humility starts when we find our proper relation to God.

That's when humility starts.

It's when we find ourselves set before the Creator and in proper relation to Him.

Apart from that, you cannot have true humility.

All that you can have is pride.

We get the sense even in this text that Paul might have in mind Adam.

Isn't it interesting as you consider Adam?

Adam did the very opposite of Jesus.

Jesus was divine for all of eternity, and he came down to heaven and added on humanity.

But what did Adam do?

And what have we done ever since then?

Every time we've sinned, what we've done is in our humanity, we've looked at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and we've said, if I eat this, I'm gonna be a little more like God.

That's what all of us have done.

And that's pride.

That's that's looking at God and saying, I could do a much better job than God.

Isn't that sin at the very root of it?

The very heart of sin isn't all of it saying, Well, God's word says one thing, but I know better.

And so the very heart of humility Jesus shows us, it's it's looking at God's word, it's looking at God's will, and rightly positioning yourself under it.

Humility is a right relation to God.

It's recognizing He's the creator, we are the creature, and lining ourselves up in the right way.

It's not a preoccupation with ourselves, it's not totally forgetting about ourselves.

Humility is remembering who God is and living in light of that.

Humility, you could say, one of the ways you could say it is this it's it's preoccupation with God.

My mind is so filled with God's greatness that I just forget everything about me for a moment.

I'm not concerned about my greatness because I'm standing beside a God who is so great.

Well, this is the humility that Jesus displayed in his life.

This is the picture of humility, but I want to begin then at the beginning of chapter two to see humility's place.

Where do we find humility?

How do we become humble?

See, there are many in the world who say that you can't, that it's it's sort of just something that needs to happen to you, an experience that needs to happen outside of your control.

And yet here we find that Jesus humbled himself.

And and really the whole thrust of the passage is that we not live in selfish ambition or conceit, Paul says in verse 3, but in humility we count others more significant than ourselves.

And so the question for us needs to be if we've seen the picture of humility, where do we find humility?

How do we get humble?

Now, Paul begins in verse 1 by saying this if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy.

He then says, Complete my joy by being of the same mind, by pursuing humility.

Now, Paul, each of these in the original language, there's four clauses here.

And you kind of see them there with likely the commas that are in your passage.

Four different realities that Paul is pointing us to.

And each of them begin with this construct, if there is any.

And so you could read it like this: if there's any encouragement in Christ, if there's any comfort from love, if there's any participation in the spirit, if there's any affection and sympathy.

But we need to understand here that Paul is not questioning if there's any encouragement in Christ.

It was Paul who, in Romans 15, verse 5, he said, God is the God of endurance and encouragement.

Romans 15:5

It was Paul who said to the Roman church, you actually can't find endurance and you can't find encouragement anywhere other than in God.

Paul understood that all encouragement is in Christ.

Paul understood that all comfort from love comes from Christ.

Paul understood that all participation in the Spirit comes from Christ.

Paul understood that all affection and sympathy came from Christ.

And so he's not questioning, you know, are these things in Christ?

What Paul is saying is that to the degree that you experience these things, that you come to believe these things, your life will be clothed then with humility.

The degree that you come to understand that there's encouragement, that there's love, that there's union and power with the Spirit, that there's affection and sympathy from Christ, to the degree that you come to understand this, your life will grow then in humility.

And so he begins with encouragement.

Paul says in verse 1, if there is any encouragement in Christ.

And what he's doing here is driving us to true and ultimate encouragement, telling us that there is one place.

If you want to be encouraged about your life, if you want to be encouraged about your work, if you want to be encouraged about your family, if you want to be encouraged as you look around the world, there is only one place to look.

And Paul says this it is in Christ.

Now, this needs to be such a word of reminder for us, because man, to the ways that I've wrestled with this, even this week, anytime you look any other place, there will be nothing there but discouragement.

There may be encouragement for a moment, but man, you cannot find in yourself, you cannot find in the world any encouragement that is lasting.

And so many of us, we we live our lives trying to find encouragement.

And so, you know, we're looking at our own life and we're trying to find encouragement.

Maybe if I just work really hard, I can, you know, impress my boss at work, I can fix my marriage, I can save my kids, I'm just gonna work as hard as I can.

And then there's seasons where you know that hard work pays off, but then aren't there seasons where it's just for some unexplainable reason, apart from your hard work, it's just so discouraging.

Everything seems like it's against you.

And so you can kind of have like you know, muster up by your own power and energy this season of encouragement, but man, it doesn't last.

But you know what the reality is?

Every time you look to the cross, every time you look to Jesus Christ, you know what you find?

Lasting encouragement.

Well, just think about it for a moment.

What's discouraging you in this moment?

Is it your sin?

How are you gonna find encouragement in the midst of that discouragement?

See, if you look to yourself and you say, I'm just gonna get over this, man, it's not gonna take long for you to be discouraged.

But you know what, you know what happens when you look to the cross?

You find that this sin that is discouraging me has already been dealt with.

Jesus already paid for that sin.

Maybe it's it's your situation, your suffering, it just feels like the whole world is against you, like you just can't get a step forward.

And you look, what happens when you look to the cross?

You see Jesus and you see that the one who suffered more than you could ever imagine, like you will never even suffer 1% of what he suffered.

And that through his suffering, he was exalted.

And you're you know, you become encouraged in kind of like this twisted way of like, man, suffering is actually for my good.

There is a crown coming after I bear this cross.

But you look anywhere else in your suffering and you just will not find lasting encouragement.

Paul's pointing us to the cross, he's saying, when you look to the cross, any degree that you come to understand it, you will find comfort.

Encouragement.

Next thing he comes to you then is comfort.

It says in the second part of verse one, if there's any comfort from love.

And so we ask this question Is there any comfort in love?

And the answer is absolutely 100%.

Whenever we embrace the love of Jesus that was poured out on the cross, we find comfort.

And so Jesus is looking to those of us this morning who walked in tired, you walked in burdened, you walked in weary with life.

Maybe like I just I don't know how I'm gonna make it.

I don't know how I'm gonna carry on.

And Jesus is looking to those of us who are in that place, and he's saying this, I can offer you comfort.

I can offer you true comfort, true rest in my love.

So many of us looking for comfort in the things of this world, and man, you you can find little tastes of comfort, can't you?

You can go on that vacation and get away from the stresses, and and maybe after a few days, you can even unwind and stop thinking about work.

But man, you doesn't it feel like on those vacations you're just looking at your clock, the time is ticking, there's this sense of like anxiety.

Oh man, this this vacation's coming to an end, and I gotta get back into that chaos.

You can turn on the TV and for a moment, you know, kind of dull your mind with some story that takes you away from the things, the weights that you're experiencing in life, but man, that episode will come to an end.

You say, Well, I binge watch.

Well, that season will come to an end.

You can turn to food to find comfort, you can turn to hobbies to find comfort, and yet every one of these things fade away.

They provide comfort for a moment, but it is not lasting.

And here is Jesus saying that if you turn to him, you can find ultimate comfort, ultimate rest in his love.

And so we look to the cross and we find comfort's not in and of ourselves.

We can't get it ourselves.

The comfort is external to us, it's in the cross.

Paul goes on.

If there's any participation in the spirit, here this word participation is this word that's come up so many times in Philippians, it's this idea of fellowship.

And Paul's pointing us to this idea that we have fellowship with this, the Holy Spirit.

You are united to the Holy Spirit, so that because God is now in you, the very Spirit of Christ is now in you, God is going to accomplish his good work in you.

That's why the Bible calls the fruit that you bear the fruit of what?

The Holy Spirit.

Because at the end of the day, it's not gonna be, well, you know, when you get to heaven and God says, Man, you had so much joy in your life.

What was your secret?

Your secret's not gonna be, well, you know, I had seven steps that I followed.

Your secret's gonna be it was the Holy Spirit.

These things are the fruits of the Spirit, they don't come through my own doing.

It's like it's like the Holy Spirit has to bring about this fruit.

It's your participation with the Holy Spirit that leads to any lasting fruit in your life, any lasting joy in your life.

Lastly, Paul looks to this if there's any affection and sympathy.

And so we look to the cross and we find this that there we see the love of Jesus for us, his affection for us, there we see his ability to sympathize with us in our suffering, having a great high priest who knows the challenges we face, who endured the weights that we bear, and he endured them successfully.

We have a God who is sympathetic.

And we find that when we look to the cross.

Now, as we consider these things, this sense that should be growing in us right now is this sense of humility.

You have nothing in and of yourself to find the encouragement you need, you have nothing in and of yourself to find the comfort you need.

You have nothing in and of yourself to find the power you need that comes from the Holy Spirit, and you have nothing in and of yourself to find the love and the affection and the sympathy that you need.

All of this is external to you.

None of this flows through you.

And so it's this humbling recognition should kind of be like washing over us right now of like we can't get the very things we need to thrive spiritually.

It cannot come from us.

And if it doesn't come from us, then what possibility is there in our lives to then be prideful?

See, the cross, as Christians bow before it, is this constant reminder of our need for humility.

Like we sang that, we just sang that, didn't we?

Like we were arrested by sin.

We were captivated by a power that we could not release ourselves from, and yet God came and he did a mighty work and he set us free.

It was his work.

And so every time we get to before the cross, we're reminded of the great need that of humility there is for us, but of how great our God is, of how powerful He is.

See, we looked at the cross and we're reminded that we were once ransomed in a sinful state.

We were once in a broken state, but we were redeemed.

We were once in a guilty state, but we were justified.

We were once in a lost state, but we were rescued.

All of these things have happened outside of your ability to do them.

And it's at the cross that you are then humbled because you're reminded that the cross was for you.

The death that Jesus died, he died for you.

You needed it.

I love what Gavin Ortland says here.

He says the gospel cures us of needing to compare ourselves to others because it teaches us to measure our pride by the cross of Christ.

It teaches us to measure our pride by the cross of Christ.

He goes on to say, the cross shows us the depth of God's love, but it also shows us the depth of our sinful need.

It reveals what God was willing to do, but it also reveals what he had to do.

Our pride is such that it put the Son of God on the cross.

Now, this is so helpful for you and I.

See, to the degree that we compare ourselves to other people, we will always fuel this sense of pride in our life.

You cannot compare yourself to another person without fueling pride in your life.

No matter what the per you know what quality of the person is.

If the person's way better than you, then you're gonna fuel this sense of pride in yourself, and that you're gonna see them, and you're gonna see maybe how good they are, and this sense of pride is gonna be, and that you start, all you're thinking about is yourself.

Oh, well, I'm not as good as them.

Man, this is the pride that I've struggled with.

This is a sneaky pride.

It's like this pride of self-humiliation.

And I found myself battling it last week.

I was at a senior pastor's retreat and and hanging out with these pastors that I've watched for years.

Like these pastors have been in it forever, and you start to realize you're having conversations with them and you can't really relate because they're talking about how they, you know, having how they're having trouble standing for the whole sermon, and you're like, you're old, man, I cannot totally relate to you.

But man, you've been in it for a long time and you've endured, and and you know, I've been in the fellowship of churches and watching these guys preach and watching the faithfulness and the way that they've endured in the ministry and so encouraged.

Just like, man, these guys are like Paul to me.

They're such faithful preachers.

I've grown so much from them.

And I find myself sitting there, I feel like the only way I can describe it is like, you know, you go to the Leafs game, you see like the little Timbitz leaf that come leaves, they come out, they play hockey on the ice.

It's really cute because you know, there's no strategy, they're just skating everywhere, falling everywhere.

I feel like I'm a Timbitz at this retreat.

I feel like the Timbits Hockey League player sitting on the bench with all these leaves, and I'm looking, I'm like in the first period, thinking, how do I get up to speed?

And yet, even in that, I found myself at moments in the conference, like expressing this false humility of like, oh man, well, you know, I'll never be as good as you.

And you know, that's pride.

It's pride, it's the sense of like all I'm thinking about is myself here.

I'm not thinking about God and what he's done through these people.

I'm not thankful for God, for the way that he has empowered these people's ministry.

All I'm thinking about is myself and how I don't compare to these people.

See, if you compare yourself to great people, you'll just fuel this like this pride of self-humiliation, but it's still all you care about is yourself.

And so then maybe what you do is then you go to a you know weak person.

I'll just find someone who's like not nearly as good as me, and then I'll feel really good about myself.

And yet then you're just fueling this pride of like, well, at least I'm not as bad as they are.

At least I'm uh, you know, doing better in life than that person is.

Like, I I could give that person a whole book on ways that they can improve their life.

And all of these things are pride, but but what happens then when you stop comparing yourself with people and you start looking to the cross and you see that at the cross, that the whole point of the cross is that Jesus had to die because of how tiny and unable you are to achieve your own salvation.

You measure yourself against the cross, you're reminded that you're not great, but that Jesus is.

I love D.A.

Carson.

He writes about how he was sitting with two theologians who had just, you know, had this list of books they had written and conferences they had preached and articles that they had written.

And the list went on and on and on.

All these accomplishments that these two scholars have had accumulated for themselves.

And D.A.

Carson, a great scholar himself, asked them, they said, How do you how do you stay humble when you've achieved so much?

And with sort of like this gentle outrage, the theologian responded and said, How on earth can anyone be arrogant when standing beside the cross?

And man, this this is the it there's an this is the app, this is the so what of this message.

There is nothing practical I can give you to cultivate humility in your life than to stand regularly at the foot of the cross.

Which leads to our next point humility's practice.

Humility's practice.

See, what we could do then at this point is kind of think, okay, well, here's ten practical ways you can be humble in life.

The issue with that though is that humility has this way of clothing itself.

Sorry, pride has this way of clothing itself to appear like it is humility.

And so you can do all the things that, you know, a humble, someone that you look at it who you say is humble might do, but you can do it all in pride.

This is the sense that we get.

See, the very first thing Paul warns against in verse 3 is this do nothing out from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourself.

See, this understanding is that before you can get to humility, you need to understand that like the temptation for you is to do everything in selfish ambition and conceit.

This is the temptation.

See, selfish ambition, it's it's dangerous because it clothes itself in humility.

And so before we even get to the practical aspect of how we get to a place where we can find humility, you need to understand what humility is not.

If God is cultivating humility in your life, you're not gonna kind of like hide the good things about you.

Sometimes we have this feeling that humility is hiding.

I love what one pastor said.

He said, if you have a 95 mile per hour fastball, you're a pitcher, you don't have to sit on the bench and not tell the coach about that.

That's not humility.

Humility, it looks at the gifts that God has given you and it is able to rejoice in them, not because you're great, but because you recognize anything that's been given to you has been given to you by God.

And so humility doesn't have to look, you know, you know, someone thanks you.

Humility doesn't have to say, well, it was, you know, it's not me at all.

I'm just a worm in the dust, I could never do anything.

That's the opposite of humility.

Humility can look and say, man, all the praise goes to God because if anything good has come through me, it has been ultimately from Him.

Humility is not hiding.

I want you to also recognize that humility is not self-humiliation.

As though what you need to do in order to be humble is constantly put yourself down.

You need to constantly talk about how you are nothing but dirt, you can't get anything done, but praise be to God for his grace, somehow he is working through you.

It's not this idea of just self-humiliation.

Listen, this can be so sneaky.

I was, I was so um, this was so out of left field at this pastor's conference I was at, because we say something around here pretty often.

We say we don't, we it's it's actually a verse in scripture in Chronicles, say we don't know what we're doing, but our eyes are on you.

And we kind of say it with a sense of like, we love that verse because it's an amazing verse of like you gotta get your eyes on the Lord.

But we would often, you know, and especially myself, I would, I would just like kind of emphasize this we don't know what we're doing idea.

Kind of as though it was humbling, you know, like, oh, I'm a senior pastor, but I have no idea what I'm doing, and so I'm just looking to the Lord, I have no clue what I'm doing.

It's almost like practically you'd cut off that second half of the verse, the looking to the Lord, the most important part of the verse, and you just focus on the we don't know what we're doing as though that's a really encouraging thing.

And I realize in a lot of ways, we actually do know what we're doing.

The word has been so clear, like it shows you how to make disciples.

You know what to do, but the reason you know what to do is because your eyes are on the Lord.

You're looking to the Lord.

The reason you're able to do that is because you don't know what you're doing in and of yourself, but your eyes are on the Lord and He is leading you, and you are following.

There's a sense of like you don't need to put yourself down in order to embrace humility.

Instead, you need to look to the Lord and understand that everything comes from him.

So humility starts here.

It starts, Paul says, by doing nothing from selfish ambition or conceit.

Nothing is about yourself.

Everything then is about God, and as that overflows, it overflows into others, so that he says, in humility you count others more significant than yourselves.

In verse 4, he says this let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

That's really interesting because what we'd expect Paul to say there after saying, do nothing out of selfish ambition, we wouldn't we kind of expect Paul to say, don't do anything out of your own self own interest.

Do everything for the interests of others.

And yet what Paul says here in verse 4 is to look out not only for your own interests, but also for the interests of others.

So here we get this clear picture.

How do we find humility?

Well, it begins when I vertically look to God and rightly position myself under him.

That's me looking to my own interests.

It's there that I find encouragement, Paul says in verse 1.

It's there that I find comfort, it's there that I find the power for living the Christian life, it's there that I find the affection and sympathy that is in Christ.

I need to look to him.

And once I look to him, this overflows in a desire to be used in other people's lives.

All of a sudden I care less and less about myself, and I'm freed from this need to look after my own interests because God has got me.

This is Psalm 23.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

My cup is overflowing.

Because I have everything I need in this vertical relationship, I am then able to then actually pour out and serve other people.

Listen, you understand this?

One of the most destructive things in your marriage is that you need your spouse to fill up your cup, so to speak.

When you expect your spouse to be Jesus, but they cannot even compare to him.

One of the most healthy things in your marriage is when both of you are looking vertically to God and your cup is overflowing with him, and out of that overflow, you can then serve one another in a way that you can say this I can love you and I don't need anything in return.

Man, apart from this, looking to Jesus and your cup overflowing in him, you actually can't love anybody.

Do you understand that?

You can use other people to sort of fill your identity, to sort of find your identity in him, but man, you cannot love anyone unless you're looking at Jesus and He's filling you up.

See, true love, it gives without any expectation in return.

But if you're trying to love, thinking that you can find your identity and loving this person, man, you cannot really actually love that person.

It's a hollow shell of love.

How do we become humble then?

Well, the only practical thing I can tell you from this passage that Paul is pointing us to time and time and time again is that we center our life day after day, hour after hour, in the gospel.

This season, more than any other season in our home, has been the season where we have talked about gardening more than I can ever remember.

And we're kind of, you know, in this new house and we're imagining this summer, you know, there's gonna be a garden and it's gonna be here.

And there, I'm not a gardener, so I can only understand this by like, you know, looking into this world, but I've come to understand this thing for gardeners in that the garden is like this sacred place.

It's like no one else can understand it.

This is my garden, it's this sacred place, you're in it, and you're caring for it, and you're kind of freed from the anxieties of the world.

It becomes like, you know, this little 10 by 10 garden patch of dirt I have is sacred to me.

And in many ways, what needs to happen in your life if you're gonna cultivate this humility is the gospel needs to become sort of like this garden of refuge that you run to time and time again.

And the more you find yourself at the foot of the cross, the more humility will then pour into your life, and the more that you will find yourself being able to, like Jesus, pour yourself out for others with no expectation of them needing to inflate your view of yourself.

This is what Paul gets to in verse 5.

It says, Have this mind among yourselves and listen to what he says, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

How do we practice humility?

We get to Jesus.

Really practically, let me say two things, or let me just point out two times of the day that become incredibly important for us.

First is the way that we begin our day.

You need to begin your day in that garden.

You need to get yourself into the Word of God, and you need to get your heart.

I I've been so trying to be practically aware of this, of getting your heart to a place where you are finding refuge in the gospel.

Don't you notice, like, it can be really easy just to read the Bible and kind of like, okay, I'm done for the day, but not have your heart in that place.

Get into God's word and give yourself enough time to, maybe not every day, but regularly find yourself in this place where you're just in awe of something that you're reading in God's word, where you're humbled before God's word, where you're you recognize all that God has done for you, and it's not only filling your head, but it's it's filling your heart with this joy of what God has done for you.

We need this regular start to the day.

Other words, otherwise, I just find so often in my own life, I start my day in pride.

I start my day forgetting that everything I have has been given to me, my God.

So if anything of eternal value is going to be accomplished today, it's gonna be done through God.

We gotta start our day in the garden that is the gospel.

And second thing I can point you to this is the way that you end your day.

You end your day in the garden in this, the spirit of thankfulness for all that the Lord has done to carry you that day.

This this has become a running joke kind of in our family that whenever my wife and I climb into bed, we turn to one another, and it's kind of like who can say it first, but we remind ourselves each other hey, you know how you're laying in this bed right now, and it's like you don't have to do anything.

This bed is just carrying you.

Every single muscle is just relaxed because you're being carried completely by the bed.

That's kind of like how God's grace has been to you today.

Every minute of the day you have been carried, every fiber of your being has been carried by the grace of God.

And you only made it to this moment because God's grace has supported you.

And it's kind of become this joke, but man, as you think about that reality, it floods your life with this humility of like, I'm not gonna make it unless God does that again tomorrow.

And it floods your life with this thankfulness for the many things that he did in your life.

We begin our day in the gospel, we end our day in the gospel.

And the third reality I would point us to is this is that being part of this gospel community humbles us.

And Paul, he's been he's been pointing our mind to this so many times that there's so much about this passage.

You could preach a whole other message just on unity.

In verse two, he says, Complete my joy by being of the same mind.

This sense that like humility is cultivated in community.

It says being in full accord, being of the same mind, having verse one, participation, this fellowship in the spirit, that humility is cultivated as we come together.

And this is why we end every one of our services like this, with a song that we can stand up and sing together and declare the same truth together to say this.

I want this truth to be my reality this week.

And so we're gonna do that right now, and we're just gonna praise God for the way that Christ came and humbled himself.

So would you stand with me?

Let me pray, and as our worship team comes up to lead us.

Father, we thank you.

Lord, we thank you for the picture of humility we have in Jesus Christ.

Lord, all that we need flows from this humiliation that Christ took upon Himself to come to this earth, take on human flesh, which was humiliating in and of itself for the very God of eternity to do.

To walk in humanity, to grow as a child, to live as a man, to endure suffering, to endure betrayal, all these things that he did not deserve, having no sin in and of himself.

And the most humiliating act to climb onto the cross and though being God and able to deliver himself, to inhumanity embrace helplessness, and to in his humanity endure the very wrath of God.

God, we will never taste humility like that.

And so, God, it spurs us on and it drives us to the foot of the cross to ask that you would accomplish a work of humility in us and that you would help us to taste the joy and refreshment that can come into our lives when we truly have embraced humility.

Help us, we pray, even as we sing this song, and are so reminded, Lord, of all that you have done for us.

Lord, we give you all the praise and we thank you.

It's in the name of your Son we pray.

Amen.