Today's text is Philippians chapter 2 verses 1 through 11.
So if you'll join me there in your copy of God's Word.
And while you get yourself there, I'll remind you that last week we studied the last four verses of chapter 1,
where Paul tells us that the gospel demands a consistent conduct and it affords a togetherness.
He concludes that section by telling Christians that suffering has been given to them and to us as a gift.
It's been granted to us that we would suffer.
And so we need to be careful not to lose sight of this as we begin our study of chapter 2.
Now I also want to say, just as a precursory comment,
what we often do when we study through books of the Bible together this way,
is we borrow an outline from someone else.
So typically a good commentary will find their outline and their breakdown.
And we decided this time around to do a more condensed outline.
The scheduling just worked out really, really well for when Easter falls and some things like that.
I regretted a little bit to cover these 11 verses this morning.
There's a lot packed into these 11 verses.
Now I think the commentator that we borrowed this outline from was doing so
because Paul is driving a primary point.
And so this needs to be the focus of our time together.
But as I was working and studying this week,
I really think I could have done this in three weeks instead of in one week.
And so if you at any point feel like,
wow, he really didn't spend much time on that.
I know, I know.
I would encourage you to continue to study these verses in the future.
So Philippians chapter 2, verse 1 through 11.
Before I read, let me remind you, beloved, that this is God's word to us.
It was written for his glory and our good.
So we would all do well to listen to it in order to believe its promises and obey its commands.
So if there is any encouragement in Christ,
any comfort from love,
any participation in the Spirit,
any affection and sympathy,
complete my joy by being of the same mind,
having the same love,
being in full accord and of one mind.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,
but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
Let each of you look not only to his own interests,
but also to the interests of others.
Have this mind among yourselves,
which is yours in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant,
being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Therefore,
God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.
So 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.
Now,
this morning's sermon will have only two prominent points.
And of course,
we'll work them out.
And there's some sub points to be found,
but they are number one,
a call to a lowly life.
And number two,
a perfect pattern for a lowly life.
So we see first a call to a lowly life in the first four verses.
The lowly life is a humble life.
Many of your Bibles have likely subtitled this portion,
Christ's example of humility.
And we will find the exhortion to humility in verse three.
Humility is foundational to the Christian faith as in thinking rightly about ourselves.
It's understanding who we are.
However,
the humble person has a proper view of who they are.
And one can only have a clear vision of who they are when viewed in the light of their creator.
The creation cannot understand itself apart from a revelation from the creator.
This is why Jesus says in Matthew chapter five and verse three,
blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
He's talking there about humility.
Those who recognize that they have nothing to offer to gain their admittance into the kingdom of heaven.
It's those people who are given the kingdom of heaven.
People who recognize that we are created in the image of God.
We have an intrinsic value in that way,
but nothing to offer God for the salvation of our souls.
This is the very beginning of humility,
rightly understanding ourselves.
This is why Paul wrote Romans chapter 12,
the beginning of verse three,
for by the grace given to me,
I say to everyone among you,
not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think,
but to think with sober or serious judgment,
to really understand who you are.
Now the Greeks had no value for a posture of humility,
none whatsoever.
They despised the idea of a lowly life to the degree that they had no word for humility.
The word that we see here in the Greek is not found in other Greek texts.
Many believe that the word was created by the church and possibly by Paul in the very writing of this text.
They had to frame it and communicate it in a way,
and so many think that the church actually made the word up to help us understand this,
because the Greeks fully and flatly rejected the idea of the type of humility that Christians are called to have.
Perhaps that is why Paul takes some time to explain what he means by in humility,
count others more significant than yourselves, right?
He's bearing out this idea at length.
Just inserting the word humility didn't quite cover the gamut of what he meant.
He begins this section saying,
so if there is any encouragement in Christ,
any comfort from love,
any participation in the spirit,
any affection and sympathy.
And he is not suggesting that there may or may not be encouragement in Christ,
or comfort from love,
or participation in the spirit,
or affection and sympathy.
What he is saying is,
because there is encouragement in Christ,
because there is comfort from love,
because there is participation in the spirit,
because there is affection and sympathy,
live this way, right?
This way that he's about to expound for their benefit and for ours.
But before we get there,
let's consider for a moment the things that Paul says are ours in Christ.
For the very part of verse 1,
he says,
if there's any encouragement in Christ,
and I think it's right to say that we can also add that phrase,
in Christ,
to the end of any of these things.
Any comfort from love,
in Christ.
Any participation in the spirit,
in Christ.
Any affection and sympathy,
in Christ.
This is what he's developing and bearing out in the text for us.
What is it that is ours in Christ?
Having believed in him,
and having been positionally moved from an enemy of God to a friend,
clothed in Jesus' righteousness.
What is it that's granted to us?
I don't think that Paul means for this to be an exhaustive list.
I mean,
you think about the way we speak to one another all the time.
We give examples a lot as we're talking.
I think this is what he's doing.
These are things that are ours.
So,
live this way.
So,
because there's encouragement in Christ,
this word means to come alongside and to help,
right?
To prod on toward holiness.
And we do this by the gift of the spirit,
right?
He works in us holiness.
He moves us in the way that we are to go.
There's comfort from love,
right?
This is a synonym for encouragement.
It's bearing out this idea a bit more because of the great love that we've been shown
in Christ.
We ought to experience great comfort.
If there is participation in the spirit,
this word for participation is the word for partnership.
The spirit is given to us as a gift that we might be empowered by him to do the things that we are meant to do,
right?
He's going to specifically tell us some of those things momentarily.
And then finally,
affection and sympathy.
Think here,
love,
right?
Care and compassion.
This is ours in Christ.
Jesus has loved us in this way.
And therefore,
we are to then turn and love and have compassion in a particular way.
And we could spend our entire morning considering this first,
right?
We could have spent the whole Sunday on this first.
We're going to spend a life trying to understand all that is ours in Christ.
And I'd even suggest to you that we're going to spend eternity doing that.
Just this unfolding of who God is to us in Christ forever,
right?
But Paul is driving us to a point.
There's a point he's making here.
He goes on in verse two to say,
complete my joy by being of the same mind,
having the same love,
being in full accord and of one mind.
Paul states that what will complete his joy,
fill him up with joy is to see these Christians living in unity.
Let's let that sink in for a moment in our current day.
Paul would have been so grieved by the Christians of our day,
at least American Christians,
our context of our day,
because these people,
us having received encouragement,
comfort from love,
participation in the spirit and affection and sympathy in Christ,
we are not united as we should be.
We are too often divisive.
We want everyone to know how smart and superior we are.
We are too often haughty and not humble.
Paul warned the Galatian believers in Galatians chapter five,
verse 13 and following,
for you were called to freedom,
brothers,
only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh,
but through love,
serve one another for the whole loss of filled in one word.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
But if you bite and devour one another,
watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
Yeah,
you can feel like right now American Christianity is consuming itself.
Just real.
I mean,
I'm just really,
really worried about the church today.
I've been worried about the church across the past couple of decades for many,
many reasons,
but all the more right now for the way we are so disunified.
And I really don't want our church to be part of that,
be part of that problem.
I want us to be unified and I want us to be working for unification amongst churches,
people who profess the name of Christ everywhere.
I think this is the right thing.
I think this is the proper response to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Paul exhorts the Philippians to be of the same mind,
having the same love.
He's referring to this love that Christ has shown being in full accord or agreement and of one mind.
Like what?
And how,
how are we to do this work?
Right?
Is he encouraging group think?
Does he want all of us to come in together and pleated khakis and white polo shirts,
button to the top?
I don't think he's asking us to be a cult.
I don't think this is what he's doing at all here.
Is he suggesting that there can be no variance in our convictions?
I don't think so.
I don't think this is what he's driving at at all.
But we are really apt to want that.
We are really apt to want to enter into an echo chamber,
right?
Where everything we say and think is agreed upon by everyone we say or think it to.
And first,
note that he exhorts us to show one another the same kind of love that has been shown us in Christ.
Right?
He's going to elaborate on that.
The kind of love that Jesus showed us in just a bit in the following verses.
If we love one another the way that Jesus Christ loves us,
we will do all that we can to maintain unity in the church.
You just take a moment and think about your own life.
Across this past week,
maybe just this morning,
you have not agreed with the Lord Jesus Christ on something.
And yet,
he loves you.
He bears with you.
He helps you to grow up into him.
We expect things of others that Jesus doesn't expect of us.
How dare we?
So last week,
I kind of skipped a stone off the idea of theological triage.
I'm going to take a little bit more time this morning to talk about it.
I hope that you'll find its setting in what we're talking about together.
But I think this is going to be so important for us to understand together as a church.
And you may be a visitor this morning and go off elsewhere.
You may be a member here for a short time and go elsewhere.
Wherever we go as Christians,
we're going to have to think clearly about what things should we hang on to with a closed fist.
Like,
don't even try to take this out of my hand.
And the things that we should hold with an open hand,
and maybe some things we shouldn't hold on to at all.
Some stuff that just doesn't matter a bit.
This is not a terribly easy thing.
So I'm going to explain it to you a bit,
give you a couple of examples.
And I'm going to give you,
I think,
I'll give you one complication.
It's a thing that needs to be practiced.
It's a thing that needs to be exercised.
Right?
We ought to be able to do this and do this quickly.
Now,
quickly,
triage,
I explained it last week.
If you don't know what triage is,
just in case,
if you were a emergency room doctor and a bus had gotten in a terrible accident
and they were rushing in lots of patients,
triage would be prioritizing those who need care the most and those who don't need care so much.
Okay?
So if you've ever been to an emergency room with a broken arm,
that's why you sat for hours and hours and hours and hours.
That's why the urgent care exists in the world.
Right?
Because people didn't want to go to the emergency room and sit for hours and hours.
Right?
But if you go to the emergency room with a cardiac arrest,
you get whisked into the back.
They don't make you fill out forms and wait for that to happen.
Okay?
They're doing triage when they do that.
So theological triage,
right?
Theology is the study of God,
can be broken down into four categories.
Usually we talk in terms of three and you'll see why in a moment.
The first are primary doctrines.
Primary doctrines.
These doctrines or truths are foundational to the Christian faith.
Right?
I'd suggest to you that we ought to think of primary doctrines as those things that if you didn't believe them,
you could not be a Christian.
Right?
Just the basic things,
the core things that you must believe.
We talk on Sunday morning,
and I talk about repenting and believing in the person and work of Christ.
I'm in a little phrase summing up all those things that you must believe.
You must believe these things if you're going to be called Christian.
If you have any hope for the salvation of your soul,
these are things that you must believe.
Right?
These are the things.
These are the things that we live for and we die for.
I mean,
these are the serious,
serious matters.
Must be defended.
Men,
we talked about courage yesterday.
I think these are the things we get angry about.
Rightly,
appropriately,
these are the things that we go to war over for the good of people and the glory of God.
Right?
So an example.
We'll talk about it in just a little bit here.
The hypostatic union of Jesus Christ.
Right?
That Jesus is both fully God and fully man.
Right?
This would be a thing if somebody claims otherwise that warrants being called heretical.
Say,
no,
no.
This wasn't the state of Jesus.
This is the kinds of things that might bear that label of heresy.
You'd say to somebody,
you're a false teacher when they mess with these kinds of doctrines.
Next,
secondary doctrines.
Right?
These form local church agreement.
Now,
these are things that we have,
quite frankly,
the luxury of having some division about.
Right?
We could be united in Christ and go,
we believe the church.
We're baptistic.
We believe in believers baptism.
That's a really easy one.
Right?
Because you can clearly draw some lines around that.
That doesn't mean that if I move to a new place,
or let's say the Lord took me to another country,
and there's one gospel preaching church,
like one church that you could actually call a church that holds the primary doctrines,
those things rightly,
and they baptize infants,
that I wouldn't be there.
I'd have some really uncomfortable moments.
Right?
I'd have some kind-hearted conversations with the leadership.
Like,
I really think you're confusing everybody.
Can I,
can I make the case to you from the scripture?
Um,
right?
So,
so we have to figure out where,
where do we,
you know,
but where we are,
if you believe in believers baptism,
you have the opportunity to go to a church that also believes these things,
unites us together,
helps us to function together in the life of a church.
I'd suggest to you that these are not things worth dying over.
Right?
But they are things worth discussing.
They matter.
They're important.
Right?
How,
how we do the ordinances matters.
Then we have tertiary doctrines.
And these are personal convictions.
And I think that the,
the,
the thing people react to this sometimes because it feels like we're making people's convictions unimportant.
I'm not saying they're not important.
An example,
what could be your conviction concerning alcohol.
We can make a Bible case.
You should never be drunk,
but we really can't make a Bible case that you should not drink.
But others,
right?
Might read some of the texts,
like some of the proverbs that give warning about strong drink and say,
yeah,
I don't think so.
I don't think that I should drink.
And I say,
hold that conviction.
Right?
If you believe your conscience will be clean before God by wholly participating or not participating,
then you should do that.
You just shouldn't force everyone else to have it as their conviction.
Right?
We need to be careful about tertiary doctrines.
It doesn't mean that it's not a good and God given conviction that you have.
I think that we should appreciate the differences that we have in tertiary doctrine.
Right?
It holds us.
It gives us tension as we're working out the gray areas of the Bible.
Right?
I want to hear your case for X,
Y,
Z.
Another example.
We,
by conviction as a family,
are homeschooling right now.
But not absolutely.
We're not like,
I can't show you the text that says you must keep your children at home with you and teach them.
But what I can say is,
look what the Bible says about whose responsibility it is to educate our children.
And we think that the best way we can do that,
the most efficient way we can do that,
is to do it at home.
But we've also agreed that every year we'd have a conversation about that.
And reassess and think about,
is this the best way to pull this off?
My very good friend Wes Shelnut lives in Utah.
And his children are in public school.
And we had a wonderful,
kind-hearted conversation in which we pushed at each other a little bit.
Right?
I said to him,
Brother,
how?
How are you going to help grow your children,
fear and instruction of the Lord,
when you send them away most of the day?
I knew he had already thought about it.
I knew that he had some conviction about doing this.
And he gave me a wonderfully winsome answer.
He didn't try to convince me that I should do the thing that they were doing,
but he helped me understand.
And it was a good answer.
I appreciated it.
He's doing a good,
good work there
with his children.
And we tugged at each other.
And it was good for us both
at the end.
We ought to appreciate this
and not run from it.
So those are tertiary doctrines.
Right?
Personal convictions.
They matter.
They just aren't the things you should always be convincing everybody else
that they should be doing.
And then I learned a word this week.
If you already knew it,
congratulations,
but I'm going to teach it to you now.
Quaternary doctrines.
And we just wrote up there,
non-existent and unimportant.
And we do this.
The example that I thought of
that people ask me from time to time
is,
is there life on other planets?
To,
to which I would respond kindly,
but inside I'm going,
who cares?
Who cares?
These aren't things that we need to pick fights over.
It doesn't really matter.
Have some thoughts.
Okay.
Does the Bible speak to it?
No.
I don't think that's much of a problem,
generally speaking,
but that does exist out there.
Basically,
there are no quaternary doctrines.
Just don't think about them at all.
Right?
So,
okay.
So you can clean that off there.
So it doesn't become distracting.
So at what level is Paul encouraging agreement?
What level?
What is he saying?
Be united in this way.
And I would suggest at the primary level,
right?
That very highest level.
That's what Paul is exhorting them to.
Right?
And I say that based on Philippians chapter one and verse 27.
He says,
only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.
So that whether I come and see you or I'm absent,
I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind,
striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.
I think this is what he's talking about.
Like those things that save.
He's not minimizing the importance of other truth at all.
But he's saying,
boy,
if we can't be united on this,
we are in trouble and we're not living in a way that is a response to the gospel of Christ.
So,
beloved,
I don't think for our church,
the work here is to unite on primary doctrines.
I think,
I think we're already together on this.
If you remember here,
you came,
you came in under an understanding of a statement of faith,
right?
Do we understand these things perfectly?
No,
but we're working at it together.
I don't find that there's disagreement in our congregation on primary doctrines.
I think that we maintain a very workable unity on secondary doctrines.
We don't always know quite,
quite where it fits.
And is this secondary?
Is it primary?
Is it tertiary?
I don't know.
But I think a very workable unity on those secondary doctrines.
I think that we don't busy ourselves with quaternary doctrines.
In fact,
I think that that may have been the last time I ever used the word.
I think it's the thing that we really have to talk about.
The work for us is to be sure that we don't get distracted by tertiary doctrines.
That we don't take those tertiary doctrines and move them into places,
move them up levels where they don't belong,
which causes division.
And that's going to come in so many forms.
It is going to come at us.
And it's hard to know quite where to put.
Even some topics fit in multiple places.
So this is the complicated case I told you I would bring up.
Music.
How we do music as a church together.
I would suggest to you,
as a primary doctrine,
the content of our music really, really, really matters.
Right?
It must be true.
Right?
We must have the gospel taught in our singing together.
Right?
I could see myself in a place where I'd go,
no, no, absolutely not.
I'm leaving right now.
Get up.
I'm going to take my family out of the room.
A lot of that music floating around in our days.
Right?
Troubling.
Stuff.
But the style of the music?
Probably not even tertiary.
Right?
Probably not even really worth talking about.
I prefer an organ.
Good for you.
That's a preference.
It's wonderful.
It's neat.
We sang Jesus Paid It All this morning.
I don't like the additional chorus.
I was kind of taking it.
It's okay.
It's just a preference.
But I was kind of taking the temperature of the room,
and it seems like a lot of you really like it.
Great.
I would prefer like, you know, like seven verses and no chorus
with lots of words that I have to look up.
Like, I'm like, whoa.
I don't even know this word.
That's kind of my preference and my style
and not things that are repetitious.
But that's okay because it was true, right?
It was good and it was true.
So there's an issue.
You can see it kind of spans some of these categories.
We have to be able to think clearly about this, right?
We have to know what things we're going to die for, right?
Things that should divide us.
Those things exist, right?
And not things we should be uniting over, right?
We should just let go.
There's so very much of that.
Things that are, in fact, good for us as we get pushed and pulled
and walk the tightrope of faithfulness to Christ,
living in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So he goes on to elaborate in verses 3 and 4.
Paul says,
Do nothing from selfless ambition or conceit,
but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
That each of you look not only to his own interests,
but also to the interests of others.
Paul gives us this call to live a lowly life,
a life that puts other people in front of us, right?
Our Lord came not to be served,
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Why do we think that it's everybody else's job to serve us,
to serve our whims?
We want to put ourself in the prominent place in our life
and everything must revolve around us.
When Jesus let everything he revolved around,
he came to serve, right?
He came to give his life.
For others.
I said to you last week,
If Jesus is your Savior,
then he is your Lord,
and you will most gladly follow him wherever he leads.
And he leads us to put aside our self-interest,
to be self-denying,
to not think that we know better than everybody else, right?
To be humble and count others more significant than us,
to look toward their interests and serve them.
And then Paul gives us Jesus as the perfect pattern for a lowly life.
And again,
there's so much in here that can be said.
I just want to unpack it for the next two hours,
but I won't.
I promise.
But remember,
he's making this point to them.
This is the way you ought to be living your lives.
And it feels to me like he goes,
he goes like Jesus did for you,
which he's already said up at the beginning of the chapter,
but it's like he can't help but expounding on it, right?
He can't help but talking at length about this Jesus
and the way that he came to love and to serve.
He says,
have this mind,
what he's been referring to,
among yourselves,
which is yours in Christ Jesus.
It's been granted to you.
If you're in Christ,
you have the spirit of Christ,
and therefore you have the mind of Christ.
Last week,
again,
I read to you quite at length,
a big part of Ephesians chapter four,
but just the first three verses say,
I therefore,
a prisoner for the Lord,
urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.
Parallel to here in Philippians chapter one and verse 27.
He goes on with all humility and gentleness,
with patience,
bearing with one another in love,
eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace,
right?
Maintain it.
It's been given to us.
Have this mind among yourselves,
which is yours in Christ Jesus.
So this unity,
this type of humility,
it is a work,
right?
It's not a thing that's just going to happen,
but it is a work that has been purchased and it is empowered.
We can do the things that are being exhorted to us here.
So 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 he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant,
being born in the likeness of men.
The greatest example of humility that the world has ever or ever will witness is the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
From eternity past,
Jesus was fully divine.
And I know we can't really grasp what that means,
but Jesus is God from eternity past.
We view the world through the experience of created.
It's hard to understand what it is to be the creator.
This is who Jesus is.
All of the divine perfections that belong to the father and the spirit also belonged and belong to the son.
When Jesus came to dwell among us,
Emmanuel,
God with us,
with us,
he self humiliated.
He put on human flesh.
This doctrine,
the incarnation,
or the hypostatic union of Christ,
pages upon pages upon pages upon pages have been written about this.
There is so much great writing out there on this.
So I'm going to read you a little bit of it.
Because when things like this are tough to understand,
I've discovered it's good to let smarter people explain it.
So,
so first,
Steve Lawson in the commentary,
it's his,
it's his outline that is making me do this this morning,
these 11 verses.
Said,
the son of God added to his person a human nature without surrendering any of his divine attributes.
This was an act of self-renunciation on the part of the son of God,
by which he voluntarily chose not to exercise all his rights as God
during the time of his earthly life.
But at no time did he rid himself of any divine perfections,
right?
So he set off voluntarily,
said,
I will not function as God in every way,
yet he remained God.
John Calvin,
this is on your bulletin,
wrote,
Jesus had been brought down to the level of mankind
so that there was in appearance nothing that differed from the common condition of man.
mankind,
right?
He walked this earth,
a hundred percent a man
and a hundred percent God.
One of my pet peeves is like a coach that says,
give me 110%.
I hate that.
You can't do that.
This is the only place that more than a hundred percent is applicable,
right?
Jesus,
God and man,
two hundred percent,
two hundred percent.
An example of this,
Clay pointed this out to me last week.
Acts chapter two,
this is Peter's sermon,
verse 22 and following.
He says,
men of Israel,
hear these words,
Jesus of Nazareth,
a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst.
Now,
Peter understood,
Jesus,
fully divine,
fully human,
that it was the power of God working in him as a man that accomplished all of those mighty works.
He self-humiliated,
was a self-renunciation that he didn't use his own power to accomplish these things,
but the power of God,
the father working in him.
And I know that that's a mind trip.
I know,
fully aware that it is.
Our triune God is a difficult thing to grasp.
And again,
I think we're going to learn and learn and learn and learn about the nature of God for all of eternity.
Wayne Grudem in his systematic theology defines the hypostatic union this way.
Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man in one person and will be so forever.
And Grudem is helpful in that way,
giving you a sentence to help you wrap your mind around such a thing.
John frames,
contemporary theologian also wrote systematic theology.
If you ever write a systematic theology,
maybe some of you will take on that endeavor.
I think you must title it systematic theology and nothing else.
There's a lot of them out there.
He wrote this though.
How can one person be both divine and human,
infinite and finite,
invisible and visible,
eternal and temporal,
omnipotent and suffering,
omniscient and limited,
in knowledge.
Try to imagine the psychology,
the feeling or experience of such a person is baffling.
The general pattern,
I think is that while on earth in the state of humiliation,
Jesus often limited his specially divine attributes.
For as we have seen,
the specific purpose of the incarnation
was that God should live our life
and feel our sufferings in order to be a perfect substitutionary sacrifice for our sins.
This is a wonderful,
wonderful truth.
And that's what Paul goes on to say in verse eight.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Right?
Not only did Jesus humble himself,
came and served,
give his life as a ransom for many,
to become obedient to the point of death,
but even death on a cross.
Again,
we've,
we've heard things,
right?
We,
we know the facts,
many of us do about what death on a cross was like.
We've never witnessed it.
I don't think anybody's witnessed what this was like.
Paul,
Paul knew,
Paul knew how horrid death on a cross was.
It's the most horrific form of corporal punishment ever devised by a government.
It was so terrible that Roman law forbade Roman citizens from being crucified.
They wouldn't allow their own citizens to be put to death in this way.
Jesus suffered greatly physically
as he hung on the cross on the hill called Golgotha.
We ought not minimize the physical suffering of Christ.
It was a horrible,
horrible death.
But more than that,
so much more than that,
beloved,
he bore God's wrath for all the sins of those who would believe in him.
This was the much greater suffering,
what was going on.
Praise God that if you're in Christ this morning,
that's a suffering you will never understand.
You'll never taste the suffering that Jesus suffered.
That infinite wrath being poured out on him for the sins of those who would believe in him.
Now,
Jesus was aware.
He understood when he became incarnate,
when he self-humiliated,
he understood what he had come to do.
He was aware of all of the Old Testament texts that spoke of God's wrath.
One example,
Psalm 75,
verse 6 and following,
for not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up,
but it is God who executes judgment,
putting down one and lifting up another.
For in the hand of the Lord,
there is a cup with foaming wine,
well mixed,
and he pours out from it,
and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.
Drink all of God's wrath.
The debt that we owe God for our sin is an infinite debt.
It's due infinite wrath.
And that's why it had to be bore by an infinite Savior.
That's why we needed Jesus Christ to become a man and come and die in our stead,
to be a propitiation for our sin.
It was this aspect of the crucifixion that Jesus,
the man,
was vexed by in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his murder.
Let me say this to you with humility.
If there would be some great benefit to any of your lives
for me to be crucified physically,
I would do that for you.
I would lay my life down for you in that way.
But the wrath of God of that?
Forget it.
Just forget it.
I love y'all.
I would not bear the wrath of God for you.
This is what Jesus came to do.
And I wouldn't do it because I couldn't.
Luke chapter 22, verse 39 and following,
And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives.
And the disciples followed him.
And when he came to the place, he said to them,
Pray that you may not enter into temptation.
And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying,
Father, if you are willing,
Jesus the man, remove this cup from me.
He knew what was going to do.
This cup that he's referring to is the cup of God's wrath.
It's a reference to all those Old Testament texts.
Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.
Such stress.
This great anxiety and agony over what was going to happen just the next day.
Jesus knew that he was made incarnate.
God, the Son, indwelling human flesh for this moment.
So, with me, if you've been here a while, you've heard me do this before,
but imagine, just for a moment,
the cup of God's infinite wrath do you
for your infinite sin
as a mass of water being held back
by a dam 1,000 miles wide
and 1,000 miles high
and you're standing at the bottom of it.
Infinite wrath.
You can't see the ends of it this way
and you can't see the top of it this way.
It's a dam that is holding back
that crushing punishment.
Suddenly and all at once,
the dam gives way
and a wall of water comes rushing towards you, right?
Certain death.
A crushing blow.
It's hurtling towards you
and just before you're swept away by it,
a hole opens up at your feet
and all of this wrath,
God's infinite wrath for you
that you justly deserve
is siphoned into this hole
and it's swallowed up.
Into the hole
and it's swallowed up.
This is what Jesus accomplished on the cross
for those who believe in him.
He drank the cup of God's wrath for you.
He turned the cup over.
He slammed it down on the bar
and he declared,
it is finished.
I read this week that the last words of Buddha
were,
I exhort you,
all individual things pass away,
strive on untiringly.
The last words of Jesus,
it is finished.
He became a man that he might die that death,
right?
That we would have full redemption
declared justified in him.
This is an astounding truth.
This is a massive reality.
And what Paul is saying
is that it should inform the way we live
with one another.
How dare we not love each other
when we have been loved like this?
Verse 9 to the end.
I think Paul just can't help himself
and I'm so glad he can't.
He says,
therefore,
because of what he has done,
his death on the cross,
God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name, right?
Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father,
the place of honor, right?
His name is a name that is greater than.
He is supreme, right?
He's more excellent.
He's preeminent over every other name.
So 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,
like that this will be the end of all things
when Jesus returns
to the glory of God the Father.
We have in Christ a perfect pattern
for a lowly life.
So,
we ought to humble ourselves
and walk in a manner worthy
of the gospel of Christ.
Christ is the reasonable thing
for us to do.
Why don't we spend so much time
trying to make much of ourselves
in this life
instead of preparing ourselves
for the life to come,
which will last forever.
It's reasonable.
God help us all.
Jesus said in Matthew 23, verse 12,
whoever exalts himself
will be humbled
and whoever humbles himself
will be exalted.
Just like Christ was exalted.
We won't be just like Christ,
but they'll still be above us.
But if we will humble ourselves
and serve one another,
live the lowly life
that we've been called to,
the suffering life
that we've been granted,
then for eternity,
we will be exalted.
Let's pray together.