Mind of Christ - Philippians 2:5-11

Let me just say thank you for all of you who are still saying

Merry Christmas, and I'm grateful that we're still

singing Christmas songs. I don't know if you can relate

to this, but it just feels like it comes and goes so quickly.

Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but there's something

about just staying in this season of remembering Jesus

coming into the world that in fact, on Christmas Day, my

daughter came up to me and just probably representing all

children in the, the families of our church just came up to me

and said, I don't ever want this to end.

I said to her, I don't either, but you know, it does and we

have to move on. And it reminded me of, I think I

was in 8th grade. I got a calendar and I still

remember to this day around this time every year.

It was the new year calendar, but it had the, you know, the,

the last month of the old year and it said December 26th, the

worst day of the year, 364 days until Christmas comes again.

And that, that is the, the, you know, the feeling of our

culture. Our culture moves so fast.

It's the feeling of our hearts. We move so fast from thing to

thing. But the good news is that the

message of Christ coming into the world, the message of

Christmas is not meant to give you just a warm feeling.

Contrary to all of the good feelings we have around this

year because of the message of Christmas, it is not akin to a

Hallmark movie. It's like, oh, I like that so

much. And now it's over, back to real

life. The message of Christmas is

meant to change the way you live.

And so we're going to look at another passage of Scripture

today as really an in between the advent in the new year.

We have another week in the word before the end of the year to

look at what this message means. And it is meant to change the

way you live. And before we look at the

passage, I'll just say a simple truth that will come up in the

first verse that we read this morning.

To change the way you live, you must change the way you think

that that will be tested and tried and true for anyone who

attempts to try to change anything about the new year.

Whether you try to get into shape or get out of debt or get

through something difficult, goals, anything you set before

you to to change anything starts in your mind.

It says in Proverbs, for as he thinks in his heart, so he is.

And this brings us to one of the most profound passages of

Scripture, maybe in all of the Bible.

It it is a message of Jesus coming into the world that gives

us a model not just how we should feel, but how we should

think. So may this word stay with us

long after the lights come down. May we receive the message once

again that Christ has come to change the way we live.

And it starts. If you have your Bible, we're

going to look at one of the Mount Everest passage of

Scripture today. Philippians chapter 2,

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

Philippians chapter 2. I'm going to start our reading

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

in verse 5 where Paul is writing to believers encouraging them on

how they should treat one another, how they should love

one other, how they should look at the person of Christ as an

example for their lives. He says in verse 5, let this

mind be in you, which was also in Christ.

Look at Christ, look at his life, look at what he did to

enter the world and think like that.

And as he says, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ.

He then goes on to not give us the history of Christmas.

He's now going to give us the theology of it.

And you have to have both. It is a historical event.

It's also a theological event. He says this in verse six.

Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to

be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking

the form of a bondservant first taking the form of a babe and a

Manger to take on the form of a bond servant.

And coming in the likeness of men, He dwells among us in

flesh, And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled

himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death

of the cross. We'll stop there before we

continue. As we look at this, we now have

the Think Like Christ extension of the Christmas message that it

would define your very life. That as you hear this Jesus

entering in the world, it is supposed to now give you a model

for everything you do and how you think about how you live.

And very simply, this is the Christmas message we left off in

the Gospel of Matthew. And then we looked at Luke.

But both times we referenced that one of the names he was

supposed to be called was Emmanuel.

God is with us. And what we just read

essentially breaks down into two theological points of Jesus

coming that Jesus is God and that Jesus is with us to

understand. Those two indisputable and non

compromisable points of theology will change the way you think

about everything else. So that's what we will look at

today. Jesus is God.

That is what this is saying. Jesus is God Incarnate.

It says in verse 6 of what we just read who being in the form

of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God.

This is the theology of Christmas.

Jesus is all together different than anyone who was ever born.

It says being in the form of God.

Now, that word form can be misleading as though it's just,

you know, a likeness to God, but it what it at its core is saying

is being the very nature of God. This is a very important

question that all of us must answer.

Who is Jesus of Nazareth? How you answer that question

will determine how you respond to the message of Christmas.

And regardless of where you come from, it seems as though

everyone around the world has an answer to the question, who is

Jesus? Most religions acknowledge Jesus

as someone to be admired, from Mormons to Jehovah's Witness to

Muslims to even New Age spirituality.

And some atheists will even acknowledge it's undeniable that

he came historically, made an impact that was undeniably a

good, a net positive for humanity.

But what sets the believer in Jesus apart from all of those

religions is every religion mentioned does something to

diminish the deity of God. They all have one thing in

common in their answer to Jesus. He wasn't God.

What we believe as believers of the creeds and orthodoxy and the

the historical Christian believer believe that Jesus was

God Incarnate. Emmanuel means God is with us

and it's important for us to stand on that doctrine as a non

negotiable doctrine. It's important for you as a

believer to know that you are in the household of faith that

acknowledges the deity of Christ.

It is a a question that no doubt people may ask you.

If anyone ever knocks at your door, it's most likely that they

will come with a message about Jesus that is going to lower or

diminish his deity. And it would be good for you to

know that there are all sorts of ways that we see this with

reason and Scripture that Jesus is in fact undeniably Jesus or

or God. It's we looked at the prophecy

given to Matthew in a dream from Isaiah and we can start there.

The Christian message says you will call him Emmanuel.

God is with us. You can go on with the the the

Christmas message that is seen in the Gospel of John, John

chapter one. In the beginning was the Word

and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through him and without him nothing was made

that was made. This is the introduction in the

Gospel of John to Jesus the Christ in Titus, which we looked

at early in the year. There was a moment with that

exalted Jesus in the grace of God and said, looking for the

blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and

Savior Jesus. John chapter 8, where Jesus

John 8 · chapter mention

himself declares, without a doubt to the listeners of the

scene described in John chapter 8, that He himself was the great

John 8 · chapter mention

I am, He says most assuredly I say to you, before Abraham was I

am the name that Yahweh gave to Moses, and they picked up stones

to stone him for blasphemy. They understood what was at

stake. Jesus also indirectly teaches of

his deity. You'll remember when he was

teaching in a house that was so full that the only way to reach

him was to lower a man through the roof.

And the friends of a paralytic took the paralytic and they

removed tiles from the roof and they lowered him into the house

that Jesus was teaching. And he looked at the man and

what did he say? Your sins are forgiven.

To which his the hearers, the the critics, the skeptics said

who can forgive sins but God alone?

Exactly that they knew exactly what was at stake when he said

your sins are forgiven. I I know what is at stake when

my kids come to me. And they are they're they're

kind of reporters of sin at their ages right now.

It's what they do. They're basically like they

sinned. She sinned.

A lot of it has to do with hitting and, you know, fighting.

They're in that stage. And, and what they want is for

me to make a judgement against them that would declare them

guilty and then they would have to, you know, make retribution.

What they don't want is for me to hear that they've been sinned

against and me to say, well, I forgive them.

They don't want that. They know I don't have the power

to forgive on the other person's behalf.

What what Jesus is saying is I do have the power to forgive

sins because ultimately when you sin, you are violating God's

design for humanity to live in perfect love and you're sinning

against God himself. And when you sin, Jesus has the

power to forgive you because he is himself the creator of all

things. He has the power to forgive

sins. There's also in the text we read

a the the the Mount Everest of theology given to us in

Philippians 2. This is also a historical

account that this is not a new teaching that developed down the

line as as the myth of Jesus grew that the deity of Jesus

grew. Scholars believe that Paul is

actually quoting some sort of early Christian creed that as he

quotes the verses that we just read.

Most people think that that was a shared confession amongst the

earliest Christians that's central to their faith was that

Jesus was declared the Son of God, the power to raise himself

from the grave and the earliest of the believers staked their

life on Jesus being the Incarnate Word become flesh.

And so hopefully those of you who have been journeying with

our church and our part of the faith or celebrating or just

taking a moment to exalt Jesus higher and higher, we cannot

exalt him high enough. But this is also a question

about the fleeting emotions surrounding the Christmas story.

What does this do to change your mind?

How does this mind of knowing the the story of Christ?

Paul says, I want you to think like Christ.

You got to know Christ. To understand His deity is to

ultimately understand His authority, and by nature of the

converse, to deny His deity is in fact to deny His authority in

your life. That is essentially what happens

with all of the cults and all of the people that are presenting

some false way to God that is always based off you doing good

works to lower the deity of Christ and to exalt yourself.

And we would never do that as orthodox believers on purpose.

We would only do it in practice. We would only fail to exalt

Christ in the shadows of our heart, in the shadows of our

mind, not verbally, but we would do it to exalt ourselves.

And that is why Paul is reminding these believers, if

you really want to love one another and serve one another

and be like Jesus, exalt him so that you no longer exalt

yourselves. Jesus says I am.

The way to understand his deity is to accept the authority of

him being the way to live in your life.

John Stott says you can't like Jesus.

You can only love him or loathe him.

And we have a lot of people in our day and age that like Jesus,

like the idea of him as a teacher, like the idea of him as

a good moral compass. But you can't like him if he is

God. You must love him.

You must make a serious decision about who he actually is in your

life. And that is the beauty of the

Christmas story, the Christmas history is that people who

encountered Jesus made a serious decision about who he was.

We looked at some of those decisions in our lead up to our

celebration of the Christmas message and the Christmas

message on Christmas Eve itself. There is no one who heard the

message and then just kind of went back to life as normal.

The shepherds heard on high the message of heaven that Emmanuel

has arrived. And it says they they left, they

went and found him and then they just told everybody all about

it. The the chosen father and mother

of the Lord would would have to make all sorts of serious

decisions about what it meant for their lives.

They would eventually flee to Egypt to care for him.

They made a serious decision about how to follow the will of

God in the relationship they had to this newborn baby.

And you know who else made a serious decision?

Herod the king. He did not take this as a

neutral point. He seriously hated him.

Which is where anyone who actually considers the claims

that are being made this morning, this is where it has to

take you. It cannot take you to a place

where you come to a Christmas Eve service and you once a year

you get warm fuzzy feelings about Jesus in your life and

then you go back to being the Lord of your own life.

To understand the deity of Christ is to understand the

authority that he demands in your life.

Have his mind in you have his life, his example as the

definition of your life. So Emmanuel, God with us.

The first point of this theological Mount Everest is

Jesus is God is Jesus God in your mind, in your heart, in the

way that you respond to the living word of God in the

message of Christ. The second part that we read is

that Jesus is with us. This is why we celebrated with

song and message. And I hope just the joy of your

heart that this is good news, that he is not God come to

condemn, He is God come to save. And Philippians chapter 2, verse

Philippians 2:7

7 gives us just the beauty of that theology of what it means

that Jesus is with us. It says he made himself of no

reputation, taking the form of a bond servant and coming in the

likeness of men. Other translations say he

emptied himself. Now He didn't empty himself of

his deity. He is fully God.

He added to himself humanity and fully man.

He emptied himself of His glory, of his divine position in

heaven. He emptied himself of the

eternal praise that is due His name, and he came into a world

of shame and ridicule. He poured himself out.

He gave up his divine privilege prerogative and He came in the

likeness of men. I love what it says.

Hark the herald angels sing. I think it's growing in my list

of favorite Christmas songs. The the the the the words just

just meditate on the words even without singing them.

It says Christ by highest heaven adored Christ, the everlasting

Lord. Late in time, behold Him come

offsprings of the Virgin's womb, veiled in flesh, the Godhead.

See hail the Incarnate deity He is.

He's just veiled in his flesh. He came to us in humble human

flesh, a veil that is someday going to be lifted and we will

see Him in all His glory. We now see through a mere dimly

lit, but then face to face, a veil that we get a preview of in

the Mount of Transfiguration when He shined with a radiance

that was whiter than any launderer could get.

But now he comes veiled and he comes to be with us.

And you consider all of the revelations of God leading up to

the babe in the Manger, the God of the Old Testament.

Rightfully, every time he interacted by message, by

messenger, by some sort of encounter, it was a terrifying

experience. Remember in in job we get this

picture of a whirlwind, a tornado.

My my kids wanted to watch Twister and my, my wife said

that movie would be way too scary for you guys because

Twisters are terrifying. They they're just destroying

everything. And so it's considered, at least

for kids my age, a horror movie to see a Twister in live in live

action. It's terrifying.

He comes to Abraham in a flaming torch that passes through.

Between the the dead carcasses of animals to make a covenant, a

flaming torch. He comes to Moses in a burning

Bush. This is not something you want

to embrace and hold. He comes to the people of Israel

in the Tabernacle with the Shekinah glory that will destroy

all but the all but the priest. And even he goes in but once a

year. Glorious, magnificent, holy,

terrifying. And Moses in just to see his

hindsight, whatever that means. He he, he has to wear a veil

over his face because he radiate with the radiance of just

encountering him from afar. And now we have an altogether

relationship difference. Paul will notice this in his

letter to the Corinthians. He says Moses put a veil over

his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily

at the end of what was passing, but their minds were blinded.

For until this day, the same veil remains unlifted in the Old

Testament because the veil is now taken away in Christ.

Now God comes to be with us in a relationship that is like a

relationship with someone who wants to live in your world, not

a passing encounter, not a terrifying God that is only

coming to give you a message to give you the law.

Now He comes in human flesh. John chapter one, verse 14.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His

glory. We understood the glory of God.

In Christ was the visible image, God's nature on display in human

form so that we could see and hear and have a mind that could

be modeled after the mind of God, begotten of the Father,

full of grace and truth. He comes with grace.

He comes as a baby. I don't know if there's anything

less threatening than a babe swaddled, a babe that can be

held and he comes, it says, taking the form.

There's that word again, taking the nature of a bondservant says

in Mark chapter 10, Jesus in his own words.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve

and to give his life a ransom for many.

Emmanuel, God is with us in human form.

Come to serve, no longer terrifying, now filled with

grace and truth and the definition of love in human

form. What does this mean for your

thoughts? How does this change your mind?

If God is willing to come and serve you, who are you to live

any other way? This should change your view of

the entire world you live in. You know, one of the reasons

that people will give for keeping God at a distance,

staying away from church or just holding their heart and not

opening up to the reality of God in their life is look around in

this world. Why would a God allow this?

Well, the good news is there's a lot of ways you can answer that.

One is that God is putting all things to write.

There will be a day where God will no longer allow the pain

and the suffering in this world. It is a mystery of sorts as to

when and how exactly that's all going to unfold.

But what is no longer a mystery? What you cannot say of Jesus as

God is that he doesn't care. You cannot say I'm not

interested in God because God's not interested in me.

God came to serve you, not with an idea, not with good

teachings, not with moral principles, but as a servant in

human form amongst you in this suffering and fallen world.

God cares about your life. And for that, this theology

says, change the way you think. God didn't stay distant from

your pain and suffering. He came and was tempted.

He was tried in every way you were tried.

And for that reason, that's the God we believe in and that's the

mind we are supposed to have. And this is another challenge of

our lives. It's, it's sometimes hard to

want to be with people in the mess.

Not bad being with people right now.

You all look great. You can keep some, you know,

seats between you if you need to.

But to be people with, with a, with a mess is a challenge.

There is a psychological study that actually gives us the term

the bystander effect. I don't know if you've heard of

the bystander effect. It comes from a real life case

that happened in the 1960s of a woman in New York City that was

being robbed and eventually beaten.

And it was in a public area. There was people all around her.

There's people that could see down from their apartments.

They could hear her screaming. And it's a case that is studied

as to why no one did anything to help.

And it's called the bystander effect because many people said,

I thought somebody else would call the cops.

I thought I thought somebody else was going to jump in.

I, I, I, I, there were so many people, I didn't think I was the

only one that could help. And many people, pastors and

psychologists, have used this as a story to try to figure out,

you know, the downfall of, you know, American morality or just

the human heart. But there's one quote that's

very interesting. One person actually said, I

didn't want to get involved. How often have you felt that

when there are the needs of others, when you are called to

esteem others, that means esteeming their problems bigger

than your own. That means to esteem their

heartbreak and their emotion and their challenge.

And you look at that the same way you would look at your own.

And how many of us say we I didn't want to get involved.

It's messy to get involved. And, and Paul says, but what,

what kind of God do you believe in?

Do you believe in a God that gets involved?

I read an article and one of the passage of the quotes in this

article stuck with me for this very reason.

And it mentions the American church.

So you know, that's us, so we might as well listen.

You're in America. Welcome, says the American.

American Christianity is dying a comfortable death.

Isn't it interesting? American Christians face almost

0 persecution. Faith costs almost nothing.

Church attendance is safe and optional and comfortable and

socially acceptable. The ease of American

Christianity has weakened the faith of the American Christian,

making it optional and ultimately forgettable.

I sometimes feel that we, we, we make the messages catered to,

you know, all of our busy schedules and they're supposed

to be entertaining and funny. I'm sorry about the second part.

We can do better. And, you know, it's we do so

many things to reach the Americans altar of

entertainment. And it has reduced the actual

call to get involved in the mess of each other's lives.

And so we die a comfortable death of faithlessness.

And we look now at the the the picture, the mind we're supposed

to have. He comes as a bond servant and

look at the death he dies not a comfortable death.

It says in chapter 2 of verse 8 and being found in appearance as

a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of

death, even the death on the cross.

His this message was not that Jesus was born in a Manger.

This message starts in a cradle and ends with the cross.

This message starts with the mind of Christ.

And the mind of Christ shows us the ministry of Christ.

The ministry of Christ was that he came into the world to die a

death on our behalf. That's why he was born to give

his life a ransom for many. We think.

And we, you know, we're, we're very educational, we're very

academic. And so to hear a message about,

you know, thinking is probably appealing to, you know, the, the

mood and the moment that we're in.

You came here to think in some ways.

But the whole point is that when you think, right, you live,

right. It is not a message to say,

think about this and come back next week and we'll think about

some other stuff. To think is to live.

Last night we had a family dinner, my, my family and I.

And at the end of all family dinners, we pass out little

chores. You know, my wife does such a

she works so hard to make the dinner special and nice.

And then the end is like, OK, wipe the tables and, you know,

do the dishes, clear the tables. My, my goal is to have her not

have to do any of that because she works so hard.

It doesn't always happen. And as that was happening, I'm

still thinking about this message and and could you

imagine if she said, Hey, are you going to help?

And I said, no, I'm just thinking about it.

I'm just, I'm hold on, baby, I'm meditating about thinking about

helping someday. The whole point is you think so

that you can do you have the mind of Christ, so that you can

have a ministry of Christ. This is the whole point of

Paul's messages. If you really see what happened

when he left heaven and came to earth and lived to die, and you

really think about him being God, you will change your life

for that. You will, as many people that

have gone before you all the way back to the first disciples, you

will die the death of obedience. And this is where we end it

says, therefore, if there was a third breakdown of the sermon,

it would be Jesus is God, Jesus is man, and Jesus is in fact

worthy of every way that you can model your life after him

because look what Paul says. Therefore, here's how the story

ends. Verse 9.

Therefore, God also has highly exalted him and given him the

name which is above every name. This is a message of extremes,

extreme glory. He's God himself, extreme

humility, bond, servant, extreme obedience, death and then

extreme glory. The name above every names.

And here's the, the, the, the message that Paul is getting

across to anyone who would listen.

If you live this way, contrary to your earthly mind, if you

live like this, it will work. And this is this is contrary.

This is why we don't live this way because we we don't

necessarily connect the glory to the cross.

We think if I esteem others better than myself, if I lived a

life that got involved and got messy, that would not be good

for me in the end. But the whole point of this

message is if you look at the life of Christ and you study the

mind of Christ, he emptied himself and he became the lowest

to be exalted as the highest that truly the the way that up

is down and here's how we think this whole message filtered

through the actual human heart is everything opposite as it was

described for Christ as it's actually believed in our hearts.

It says that he did not think equality with God a thing to be

grasped or clung to. We do you actually do think that

you are equal to God. You say how every time you

listen to the word preached, every time the Holy Spirit

prompts you to live like Christ, every time you read the

authority of Scripture telling you how to live and you think

not today you're you are equal in your mind to God as the

authoritative voice in your life.

It says that he took on the form of a bond servant.

He didn't come to be served, but to serve.

We want to be served, of course we do.

In our world, the, the, the, the, the goal is CEO, not

janitor, and that lives in your human heart.

The goal is to get to the place where people are under you and

you are not under them. That's in the human heart

because this is contrary to our mind.

And Jesus breaks the human heart and shows you the way of God's

mind. And we think our reputation is

something to be clung to, don't we?

In the end, if you lived out a humble life and you went low and

and no one knew the great things you did and you didn't have any

followers on Instagram and you have anyone acknowledging your

greatness and your achievements and your award and your work and

no one was there in the end to acknowledge you, you have no

reputation that violates everything in you.

And yet here's the bad news for you.

You can strive for a reputation on earth and reality that

sometimes you don't want to hear.

No one will remember you anyway. They say you died twice, the day

you die and then the day the last person whoever knew you

died. It'll be about 40 years and a

little test for this. None of you probably know your

great grandma in details of her life.

That's only three generations and they're gone.

You know who will remember you every detail of your life, the

judge of your life, He will remember every lowly act that

you did for his namesake. And you may never be great on

earth, but you can be great in the Kingdom of God that last for

eternity. Make a decision.

And this is the picture we have of the Christmas story.

The lowest that you could ever go would be God becoming a

slave, and he is now exalted as the name above every name.

And that mind in you will have the same story.

Paul goes on in Romans chapter 8 to say, For I consider that the

Romans 8 · chapter mention

present sufferings of this present time are not even worthy

comparing the glory that is to be revealed to us.

This is your story as well. This is the believer's story.

This mind in you will make the sufferings of this present time

incomparable to what God has in the revelation of eternity.

For all that He has for you have this mind in you also that was

in Christ and whatever you have planned for the upcoming year.

If you put this at the very beginning, if you put this

picture and this model of the way to live, at the very

beginning of any goal or expectation or plan, you will

find the blessings of God for your life.

Jesus is God, Jesus is with us, and Jesus is worthy.

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