Humility

[0:00] So Philippians chapter 2, and we'll read there the first 11 verses. If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

[0:25] Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

[0:41] Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man.

[1:01] He humbled himself and became 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.

[1:17] And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Well, let's turn back to that passage in Philippians 2 and spend a few moments considering it together.

[1:36] Humility is central to the Christian life. Without humility, nobody will ever see their need of a savior. Without humility, no one will ever come to God.

[1:50] And without humility, none of us will ever grow in grace and realize that we need to be more like Jesus. Both becoming and living as a Christian requires humility.

[2:02] In James 4, verse 6, it says that God opposes the proud, but shows favor to the humble. Quoting from that psalm that we sung earlier in Psalm 138.

[2:15] Now, I know this intellectually, and I'm sure many of you do as well. We know that we're not perfect. We know that we fail Jesus daily. We know that we constantly need to come back to Jesus.

[2:27] And yet my pride gets in the way. So often I rely on my own strength, my own abilities, rather than trusting and relying in God. Isn't this what we often find?

[2:38] There's this disconnect between the way we know we ought to live and the way we actually live day by day. Well, one passage that I think really helps me when wrestling with these issues of pride and how I should live is Philippians 2, verses 1 to 11.

[2:55] This is a passage I was first introduced to as a trainee leader at a scripture union camp. The team leader used this passage as his way of teaching the team members how he wanted the camp to be led, what he wanted people to have as their attitude throughout the week.

[3:14] He wanted to teach us not to simply be there for our own enjoyment, but actually be there to serve God and to serve the campers. But what I remember more is not his teaching on the passage.

[3:26] What I remember is the way he actually demonstrated this attitude in the way he led the camp, in the way he didn't just delegate to others the lowly tasks, in the way that he mucked in and helped. He told me once that he had become a Christian at an SU camp when he was a teenager.

[3:41] Because of the influence of one particular leader, his group leader who had been this amazing guy that he'd really looked up to, someone who was very good at football and he loved football, and they got on really well together.

[3:54] And then one day he'd walked into the toilets at the camp and he'd seen this leader cleaning the toilets. He couldn't understand why this amazing guy would be cleaning the toilets. And that got them talking about various things to why that camp leader was at the camp, what he wanted out of the camp.

[4:11] And it got that camp leader to be able to point him to Jesus. And that's one of the massive impacts in his life in becoming a Christian. Now the part of the story that he didn't tell us, but I got to see over many years of going to a camp with this team leader, was that on the last day of every camp, when all of the team have to go around cleaning up the campsite and getting everything ready for people who come next, this team leader would always make sure he was meant to clean the toilets.

[4:40] It was his way of remembering the influence that this person had had on him, and also his way of serving and showing that he wasn't above serving and cleaning the camp with the rest of us. So that team leader took the words of Philippians 2, verse 1 to 11, and he didn't just talk about it.

[4:54] He put it into practice. The words made a difference in his day-to-day life. And that's the challenge for each of us this morning. Can we take the words of this passage and actually put them into practice in our life?

[5:07] So I want to spend a few moments talking with you about this passage and seeing what's in it and showing you things. I want to look at it under three headings. We're going to first of all look at the importance of humility.

[5:19] We're then going to look at the illustration of humility. And finally, the implications of humility. So let's start with the importance of humility. In Philippians 2, verse 1 and going into verse 2, we have what is perhaps one of Paul's most passionate appeals that he makes in any of his letters.

[5:41] If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love of any fellowship with the spirit of any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete. Now, Philippi was a church that Paul knew well.

[5:56] This is a church that he'd actually planted. He'd met the first converts there. Lydia, the wealthy purple merchant that we read about in Acts, had put Paul up in her house for many years where he worked in Philippi.

[6:08] Even when Paul had left this church to go travel elsewhere, Epaphrodites had been sent by the church to comfort and to provide support to him when he was in prison.

[6:20] Now, Epaphrodites had almost died making this journey. That's how much this church and the people of this church cared about Paul. And throughout the letter, his concern and his care and his love of this church come out so clearly.

[6:34] And yet, with every letter of Paul in the New Testament, there's an issue in this church. There's something that isn't quite right. What's the issue in Philippians?

[6:46] Well, the main issue is this lack of unity that we see hinted at in chapter 4, verse 2, when he pleads with Eudea and Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord.

[6:59] But this seems to be a general issue in this church, that the church is disunited. That they're not all coming at it from the same place. They have their own ideas of what's best for the church. Now, disunity can destroy the work of the gospel.

[7:14] People look on a church that's disunified, and they're not interested in what that church is doing. In fact, one of the things Jesus said is that people would know us by our love of one another. So disunity can destroy the work of the gospel.

[7:26] But Paul's concern in this letter is to call the church to unity. And in fact, in chapter 1, verse 27, we see this. He says, So Paul's great concern in this letter is that the people would be united, contending together in one spirit, one mind, for the faith of the gospel.

[8:01] The gospel was meant to unite them together, and they were meant to work together in proclaiming that gospel to others. And that's what leads into chapter 2. As Paul begins chapter 2, in the first verse there, he gives four reasons why the church should make his joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

[8:24] So he gives four reasons there in verse 1. And so let's just look at these briefly. First of all, any encouragement from being united with Christ. Now, Paul knows these people.

[8:37] He knows that they do have this encouragement. He isn't saying if in the sense of, do you really have this? He knows these people. And so he's really saying, wake up. You know you have encouragement from being united with Christ, so you should be united to one another.

[8:51] After all, if we are all united to Christ as Christians, how can we be disunited from one another? There's only one Christ for us to be united to. He continues, if any comfort from his love.

[9:06] Now, the word his there isn't actually there in the underlying Greek. It really just says, if any comfort from love. And I actually think that his suggests it's about Christ.

[9:17] I think it's really about God, the Father. So if any comfort from the Father's love. Because Paul constantly talks about the love of the Father. Any comfort from the Father's love.

[9:28] Because the Father was the one who sent Jesus to save us. So if any comfort from all that God has done to show his love for us, we should be united.

[9:39] If any fellowship from the Spirit. Now, this is another reason why I think it was Father in the last one. Because this is now the Son, the Father, and the Spirit. All three persons of the Trinity.

[9:50] Any fellowship from the Spirit. The Spirit's the one that works amongst us as God's people. And unites us together. As we have fellowship with him, we have fellowship with one another. So what's Paul saying in these first three reasons?

[10:04] He's saying that if on the basis of all that God has done for you. Of all that the Son has done for you. Of all that the Father has done for you. Of all that the Spirit's done for you. Be united. Basically, on the basis of all of the gospel.

[10:18] We don't have to put ourselves first. Because Christ put us first in coming. We don't have to love ourselves. Because God has loved us perfectly.

[10:31] And we don't have to vie for positions of importance within the church. Because we all share in that same fellowship of the Spirit. Any advantage given to any of us is ultimately attributable to God.

[10:44] Now, the fourth reason is slightly different. The fourth reason, if any, tenderness and compassion. Is really the fruit of the gospel in the Christian's life. It's that new creation. That new heart.

[10:55] That new attitude. That means that we, because of all that God has done for us. We show tenderness and compassion to one another in the church. So it's on the basis of all of this.

[11:07] All of the gospel. That Paul is calling the people to be united. He's calling the people in Philippi to be united. And he's calling us to be united. As another church of Christ.

[11:18] Many years later. Unity is vital for the gospel. It's vital for the work of the gospel. How can we work together to promote the gospel and to tell us what Jesus has done.

[11:32] If we don't agree on what that is. If we don't agree on who God is and what's been going on. So unity is vital for the work of the gospel. And it's at this point that we start to ask the question.

[11:47] What's causing disunity? What's causing the church not to be united? Well, the root of so much disunity in our churches is human pride and selfishness.

[12:03] It's the fact that our own preferences we put above the good of God and the good of others in the church. We become more concerned about how we think the church should be run.

[12:13] About how we think things should happen. And less concerned about the purpose of the church. Less concerned about glorifying our God. Of building one another up.

[12:23] And of reaching out to others who don't know Jesus. Pride and selfishness say that we are more important than God. And we are more important than others. And that causes disunity within the church.

[12:37] As people vie for positions of importance. As they compete over their own ideas of what the church should look like. As they do things out of what Paul calls in verse 3.

[12:48] Selfish ambition and vain conceit. So if this disunity is caused by pride. Is caused by selfishness.

[13:00] What is Paul's antidote to this infection that has infected the body of Christ? Humility. Humility. Humility. That's why in verse. At the end of verse 3 he says.

[13:11] But in humility consider others better than yourselves. And then in verse 4. Each of you should look not only to his own interests. But also to the interests of others.

[13:22] So humility is Paul's antidote to the infection of pride. Selfishness. Disunity in the church. So what is humility? At the time that Paul was writing.

[13:35] Humility was not a virtue among the Greeks. It wasn't something that they really valued and thought was important. Some people even suggest that Paul invented the word humility in this passage.

[13:46] Or elsewhere where it's used. Humility in the church. Because he needed to give a word in Greek to a concept that Jesus had taught when he was washing the disciples' feet. When he was doing other acts of service.

[13:58] But also to an Old Testament concept. Because the idea of humility actually comes from the Old Testament. It comes from places like those Psalms that we have sung together this morning.

[14:09] It's the idea of lowliness. Of comparing yourself not to one another. But comparing yourself to God. And when we look to create a God.

[14:19] When we compare ourselves to God. We realize how low we truly are. And that allows us to rest in God's care. To not rely on our own abilities.

[14:31] And it also allows us to recognize that every other human being is made in the image of God. And so we don't have the right to big ourselves up over them. Now this is not some kind of religious facade.

[14:42] Or some kind of false modesty that so often we encounter amongst people. In reality, false modesty. Where someone says, I'm nothing. I'm rubbish at this.

[14:54] Is really just pride in a different form. Because people say that. So that you'll turn around and say, no, no, no. You're great at this. And build them up. So it's not false modesty. It's not a religious facade.

[15:05] It's a proper estimation of who you are. It's realizing that you're not God. That you don't have the abilities as God. That you need to rely on Him.

[15:16] It's a recognition that your gifts come from God ultimately. That you are who you are only because of what He has done. And that your weaknesses are there almost in many ways to actually point you to your need of God.

[15:29] So it's a recognition of your gifts, your weaknesses. It's not thinking too much of yourself. And it's also not thinking too little of yourself. True humility though, actually moves the question away from looking to us to looking at other people.

[15:44] And isn't that what Paul says here? Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. So true humility, because we recognize our state before God, because we recognize how low we are, moves us to look at other people and God rather than focusing on ourselves.

[16:03] It's not focused on us, it's to appeal to the interests of others. Now the Bible teacher John Piper, looking at verse 4, points out that the word interests in verse 4 isn't here in the underlying language.

[16:17] All it actually says is each of you should look not only to your own something, but also to the something of others. The word interest is put in by many translators to try and cover this idea.

[16:31] But Piper says to truly understand this concept, we need to understand interests is much broader. Usually what happens, you see, is that we tend to be quite happy to look to the interests of others in certain areas in our lives.

[16:45] We're happy to give over certain things to God. But there's a few things we like to hang on to. So he puts it like this in order to drive home the message. Let each of you look not only to your own financial affairs or your own property or your own family or your own health or your own reputation or your own education or your own success or your own happiness.

[17:05] Don't just think about that. Don't just have desires about that. Don't just strategize about that. Don't just work towards that. But look to the financial affairs and property and family and health and reputation and education and success and happiness of others.

[17:18] Don't just work towards others. So this is a very strong calling on each of us to look to the interests of others in every area of our lives.

[17:29] That means we have to be alert to the needs of one another within the church. It means we have to know one another and know where we can help one another. And as it says in Galatians, we have to do good to all, especially to the household of faith.

[17:43] So we have to be doing this not just to ourselves within the church, but also outwith the church. We have to serve the community and serve the people in the church. We have to be alert to their interests, their needs.

[17:56] And this is what leads to true unity in the church. Because as we are aware of one another's needs, as we're looking out for one another, and they're looking out for us and everyone else in the church, that's what leads to the church working together.

[18:08] That everyone is caring for one another. So humility leads to unity in the church. And Paul could have just stopped there. He's the first pastor of this church.

[18:21] He knows the people well. He could have just stopped his message at this point. He's made his point that they must be unified. He's made their point that they must look out for the interests of others. But Paul knows his people.

[18:34] He knows the way in which pride infects their hearts. He knows in which the way they know this intellectually, but they still don't put it into practice. He knows how we think as well.

[18:45] So what does he do? He gives us the ultimate sermon illustration. He points us to Jesus Christ as the ultimate illustration of humility.

[18:56] So that takes us to our second point, the illustration of humility. Now, many of you know Bob Aykroyd, the systematic theology professor at Edinburgh Theological Seminary.

[19:11] Now, he's obsessed with telling us as students that all theology is practical, that all theology should change the way we think, should make us worship God more. And so there shouldn't be any kind of academic or kind of theology just for the sake of theology.

[19:29] We always are doing theology to love God more, to learn more about who God is. And all theology should change the way we relate to God and the way we relate to one another.

[19:39] And in this next section of Paul's letter, I think we have the ultimate example of that. What we have here is some of the richest, deepest theological grounds.

[19:52] The incarnation, God becoming man, being expounded by Paul. And he uses that to show how our lives should be changed. How we should, in a practical way, put this into practice in our life by being humble.

[20:09] It's an amazing example of the way in which all theology is practical. So he calls us, in verse 5, Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. Who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.

[20:25] Jesus is God. That's what it means when he says being in the very nature God and didn't consider equality with God. Jesus is God.

[20:37] All of the majesty of deity is his. All of the functions of being God are his. All of the privileges of being God are his. He was loved by the Father from all eternity.

[20:49] He was worshipped by the angels. He was invulnerable to pain, frustration and embarrassment. John 1 verse 3 tells us that through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made.

[21:01] So Jesus made the universe. He is the one who is worthy of all glory, all reverence, all worship. All of the power of God is his.

[21:13] He is fully God. Now as humans, we long for power so often. We seek to dominate and to rule over others. We love to delegate the lowly tasks to somebody else and take all the credit for ourselves.

[21:29] I'm sure many of you have worked for bosses just like that. Or to your shame at times when we have had a little bit of power. That's the way we behave to other people. Human leaders often act out of selfish ambition and vain conceit.

[21:45] We try to grab onto power and to hold onto it at all costs. Jesus, the one person who has all the power as entitled to all the worship and glory, was radically different from that.

[22:02] Even though all the power, all the glory, all the majesty of God is his, he didn't consider that as something to be grabbed, something to be grasped onto and held tight. Instead, what did he do?

[22:16] Verse 7, But made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. This is the mystery of the incarnation.

[22:28] That God became man. It is a great mystery. We don't fully understand how God became man, but we hold onto the fact that the Bible tells us that Jesus was fully God and fully man.

[22:43] We have here that he made himself nothing. Some translations translate this as he emptied himself. And some people use that verse, that phrase, to suggest that Jesus somehow became less God when he came to be a man.

[22:58] That he somehow gave up some of his deity. But that's a complete misunderstanding, because that's missing what this verse actually says. What does it say? It says he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.

[23:11] He made himself nothing by taking our humanity. By taking it with all its weakness, with all its problems and frailty, he took it to himself.

[23:23] So he didn't become less God. He took to himself humanity. He grew weary and was tired. He hungered and thirsted.

[23:33] He felt the throbbing pain of a human body. He subjected himself basically to everything that this messed up world has. All of its temptations, all of its sufferings. I don't know if you've seen the TV show, The Undercover Boss, where basically the manager of a company goes and works on the shop floor in order to find out what's really going on in the company.

[23:56] And nobody knows that he is the manager or the CEO. This is like Jesus. He veiled his glory. He hid his identity. He walked among us.

[24:07] And he allowed other people to mistreat him. We saw how he allowed himself to be mistreated throughout his life. He washed the disciples' feet.

[24:17] He allowed himself to be subject to that mess. And then ultimately in this passage, we learn in verse 8, being found in the appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient even to death, even death on a cross.

[24:35] Crucifixion was the worst form of execution in the ancient world. Paul, who wrote this letter, would never be subject to execution, to crucifixion.

[24:48] He might be subject to execution, not to crucifixion, because he was a Roman citizen. He had rights and a status and privilege. Jesus took on himself the death of the lowest of the low, the death that was reserved for the lowest of the low, even death on a cross.

[25:07] Nobody has ever humbled themselves so much. Nobody ever started so high and went so low, even to the point of death on a cross.

[25:18] God becoming man and dying for us. A hymn that I think recently you've been starting to learn, the hymn The Author of Creation or Across the Lands, has a wonderful verse that really illustrates this.

[25:32] It says, Yet you left the gaze of angels, came to seek and save the lost, and exchanged the joy of heaven for the anguish of a cross.

[25:44] That great exchange is the humility of Christ. Mark 10, verse 45 says, For even the Son of Man did not come to serve, to be served, but to serve, and to give us life as a ransom for many.

[25:59] 2 Corinthians 8, verse 9 says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

[26:12] This is so important to grasp. Nobody ever humbled himself so much. We said Jesus had the full power of God at his disposal, but he didn't use it for his own advantage.

[26:27] He poured himself out for us. As Jesus is dying on the cross, there are people who come and are taunting him. They say to him that if you are truly God, step down from that cross and prove it to us.

[26:42] Show that power. Show that you are God. Tell us all that you are God. Now Jesus would have been utterly entitled to step down off that cross. But he doesn't.

[26:54] He chooses to remain there. He chooses to suffer, to die, to be humiliated. Why does he endure all that? For our salvation.

[27:07] There is no other way in which we can be saved. He knows that on the cross, that we are the ones who rebelled against him. We are the ones who went our own way and are worthy of God's wrath.

[27:18] And he knows that we cannot pay the punishment ourself. He knows there is no other way for us to come to salvation than by him using the full power of God to remain on that cross and to die freely for us.

[27:33] To experience the loss of the father's love, the anguish of the wrath. He knew it was the only way. And so he willingly went to the cross. This is the ultimate demonstration of who God is, his character.

[27:48] His love and his grace that he went to the cross as the only way to save us. In Philippi, there were people in the church who wanted to make a name for themselves, who were anxious that people would understand that they were someone who really mattered.

[28:05] That's what pride does. By contrast, the person who really was somebody, the person who was God in all his glory, chose to make himself nothing, chose to be mistreated and even to die to save us all.

[28:25] Paul's intention in this passage is that we would gaze upon this illustration, this example of Jesus, and it would stir our hearts. It would cause us to realize just who we are and what God has done for us.

[28:40] And in gratitude for that, we would realize there is nothing we can withhold from him. And then to cap it off in verse nine, we read what happens after that death, that God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name.

[28:55] God vindicated his son. The resurrection proved that the sacrifice was acceptable and that we too can be raised. That yes, we might face death. We might face all the horrors of that, but there is a promise of a resurrection to be with our God.

[29:11] And then the consequences of that, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

[29:24] And there's the real challenge. Because the consequences of all that Christ has done is that everyone will bow. Every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Which leads us to the implications of humility, our final point this morning.

[29:39] And the question of will we do this now or will we do this later? The promise in this verse is that one day every knee will bow, no matter who you are.

[29:51] Even the most hardened of atheists now who will never claim that there would be a time when they would bow before God. The promise is that one day they will bow. But for some people, when this happens, when they stand before God, when they bow, it'll be too late.

[30:09] The hour of salvation will have passed them by and they'll face the eternal judgment of hell. The people who refuse to humble themselves now, who refuse to trust in Jesus now, in the end there'll be no salvation for them.

[30:26] So the challenge for each of us is, are we going to bow now and confess now? Or are we going to wait? Are we going to respond humbly to all that God in Christ has done for us?

[30:38] All that Christ secured for us on the cross? Or are we going to continue to go our own way? Remember I said at the beginning, humility is essential for the Christian life.

[30:50] You don't come to God unless you humble yourself. So if you're not yet a Christian here today, you need to ask God to humble you, to bring you to the place where you will bow the knee now.

[31:05] You need to realize that Jesus has done the work, that he waits with outstretched arms to welcome you, but he needs you to stop trusting in yourself and to look to him.

[31:16] You should be glad that you have the opportunity now to bow, to confess and to avoid the judgment to come. And if you are a Christian, you need to ask yourself, are you humbling yourself now day by day?

[31:29] Are you continuing to humble yourself before your God? Are you continuing to grow in grace as you humble yourself before your God? The church is meant to be a community of humble believers who seek to serve one another and to seek to worship their God together.

[31:47] And yet, as we said at the beginning, there's this disconnect between how we know we ought to live and how we actually live. So how can we practically curb those temptations towards pride in our life? Well, first of all, we do need to be praying.

[32:00] We do need to be asking God to help us with this enterprise. But we also need to take practical steps ourselves. We can't just say that it's nothing to do with us. We just pray and God will sort us out.

[32:12] We're called in the Bible to be humble. We're called to act humbly. One book that I found particularly helpful in this area is Bonhoeffer's Life Together, in which he presents seven practical principles for eradicating selfish ambition from Christian communities.

[32:29] So as we come to a close this morning, I just want to go through briefly these seven areas. Some of these might not apply to you, but hopefully in one or two of these areas, you'll see an area in your life where you can work at being more humble, that you can ask God to help you to be more humble in this area and try and put this into practice.

[32:51] First of all, he says that Christians should hold their tongues, refusing to speak uncharitably about a Christian brother or sister. Essentially, don't gossip about Christians.

[33:04] That's what he's saying. Because, so be humble by not gossiping and putting yourself above your brother and sister in Christ. Second of all, cultivate the humility that comes from understanding that they, like Paul, are the greatest of sinners and can only live in God's sight by his grace.

[33:22] All that we've been thinking about in this passage, is the gospel. As we gaze upon this, as we focus upon this, realize that we are only standing here today because of what God has done. And that should humble us.

[33:34] And that should, therefore, cause us to look to others and realize that they're only here as well because of what God has done. So we shouldn't think of ourselves as better than them. Thirdly, we have to listen long and patiently so that they will understand their fellow Christians' need.

[33:49] As we said earlier, we need to know one another in the church. We need to know what's going on and we need to know where we can help one another. So we need to listen. We need to, fourthly, refuse to consider their time and calling so valuable that they cannot be interrupted to help with the unexpected needs, no matter how small or menial.

[34:08] We need to not think that whatever we're involved in is the most important thing in the world, that something can't come along and cause us to stop what we're doing and do something else to serve someone or to serve God.

[34:19] There's a famous example of this with a former prime minister, Gladstone, who was preparing one of his speeches that he was going to deliver in parliament and he was working late into the night and a mother comes and asks him if he will come and comfort her crippled son who is dying.

[34:38] And he leaves what he's doing, he goes to the house, he shares the gospel with that son and helps lead that son to Christ on his deathbed because that work was more important to him than the speech that he was doing and going to be delivering in parliament as prime minister.

[34:55] We need to recognize that our plans for our day, what we have decided that we are going to do might not be what God wants us to do. There might be something better that he has for us to do and it might interrupt us and we shouldn't feel kind of frustrated that our time has been interrupted.

[35:11] We should be thankful that we have an opportunity to serve our God. Next, we have to bear the burdens of our brothers and sisters in the Lord both by preserving their freedom and by forgiving their sinful abuse of that freedom.

[35:23] We will let one another down, we'll sin against one another but we have to forgive one another in recognizing that none of us are perfect. Sixth, we have to declare God's word to their fellow believers when they need to hear it.

[35:38] It's very easy sometimes for us to tell God's word to others and then when a difficult situation comes into our life, we struggle to tell it to ourselves. Now that's one of the reasons the church exists, that we are there to share God's word with one another and to help one another in the difficult times.

[35:56] Finally, we need to understand that Christian authority is characterized by service and does not call attention to the person who performs it. That's perhaps the most challenging for any who are leaders in Christ's church.

[36:12] Leaders in the church have been given power and authority over people. They could insist on their rights and use it to their own benefits. They could delegate the lowly tasks to other people but they must not do that.

[36:25] That's the secular model. The model of leadership that Christ commends is pouring ourselves out for others. So we should never act for our own recognition, our own praise.

[36:37] We should never ask someone to do something that we wouldn't be prepared to do ourselves. And there's another side of this as well that so often we tend to look to personalities within the church.

[36:49] We're so blessed today to be able to listen to sermons online, to read books by great Christian personalities. Now those people should be pointing us like Paul does to Jesus.

[37:02] And that's great when they do that. But there are times when we can idolize the people that we're reading or listening to and that's going totally against the principles we see in this passage.

[37:15] So when you're tempted by pride, when you're tempted to put yourself first rather than the interests of others in the church, remember this passage. Remember your God.

[37:27] Remember Jesus and what he did. Remember that the one who truly was something, the one who had every right to be worshipped as God, chose the humble path, chose to walk among us, chose to suffer and even to die for us.

[37:44] Because that was the only way he could bring us salvation. My sin and your sin drove him to that cross. That knowledge must humble us.

[37:58] That knowledge must motivate us in gratitude to serve our Lord.