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 chapter 2. I'm going to start our reading
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
himself declares, without a doubt to the listeners of the
scene described in John chapter 8, that He himself was the great
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
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.
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
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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