I'll just start with a quick testimony and first service.
I was sitting over there and and you know, sometimes any of you
ever get in your own head a little bit, overthink things,
Anybody, just me, OK, Yeah, I'm sitting over there in first
service. And, you know, sometimes the,
the tendency is for a minister to feel like, or a preacher to
feel like there's a lot of pressure on what I do.
And just for service, I'm sitting over there and I'm just
thinking, I just don't know. And I started to pray and I
said, God, please just make this about you and Take Me Out of it.
And both services now people have come to the altar and
responded before I ever got up here to say a word.
It's just a reminder to me that God is good.
And, and if you're here today to hear a great sermon or anything
like that, I mean, you know, I, I hope it's OK, But but more
than that, I hope you walk away from here knowing that God is
good and that he's with you. And I hope you walk away knowing
his word and hearing his word because it's all you need.
All you need is the presence of God and His word and His
guidance in your life. You don't need some, you know,
fancy pastor or fancy worship team telling you anything.
You just need him. And so that's my prayer.
I don't say it in any way. I don't need any of you to come
say anything to me after. Don't unless you're saying God
is good because God is good. We're starting a series called
Be Humble. This is something I think we all
struggle with. Nod your head if you're super
humble, raise your hand and show everyone how humble you are.
Yeah. Now our world really does
struggle with humility, doesn't it?
And just an all, I mean, even for me, I like, I had a, you
know, I was going to open talking about something I saw on
social media, but let me just say, like sitting there thinking
that that my part of this really is that big of a deal is silly.
Yeah, it's a preach the word and I want to preach the Word, but
the truth of the matter is what matters far more than than how
clever or smart I am is the fact that God shows up and God speaks
to you. And so it's tricky.
I do laugh. Our culture, social media
culture, you guys probably know by now I'm not a fan of social
media. I don't post much.
By the way, thank you to everyone that said happy
birthday a few weeks ago. I, I don't, I didn't even post.
I'm so sorry. I'm a terrible person.
I didn't say thank you on social media, but our, our culture
teaches you that, that I mean, did it even happen if you didn't
put it on social media? Did you really take that cool
vacation if you didn't show it to everyone else?
All right, I, I will, I will have some fun here and I might
make if any other pastors are, are watching, I apologize, but
one of my pet peeves is pastors who speak and then they take
quotes of theirs and they post it on social media, but they
don't just put the quote there like they, they have to put
that, they said it. And a lot of times their picture
with it. I, it's come on, guys, like
we're, we're putting some of these athletes to shame when
we're promoting ourselves to that point.
And even at 1.11 church put a thing and it was a quote from
their pastor and it was actually just scripture.
And I thought your pastor didn't come up with that.
That's God's word. What are, where are we at when
we're giving credit to somebody for something that we didn't
even do? And, and listen, I, I joke about
that, but seriously, that's the pressure, right?
And the, the pressure is that we have to look good on social
media. We got to show everyone that
everything's OK. I'm not suggesting that you go
post your deepest darkest hurts and everything on social media.
That won't work out well. But we live in a culture that
that really emphasizes me, promote me, put me first.
We're we're going to do a four week series here in Philippians
2 and it's called be humble guys.
God has given us a different way.
In a world that tells you that you've got to take care of you,
in a world that tells you that you've got to promote, you got
to tell everyone how great you are, they won't know.
God says be humble, be humble. Find your identity and value in
him, not in what you can accomplish.
And so I want to call you to something very countercultural
and listen, this is so deep. It really is.
It's in the church, it's in our world, it's everywhere.
I want to call you something countercultural.
So we're in Philippians chapter 2, but I want to give you
Philippians is another letter of Paul's to the church at
Philippi. And once again, he's writing it
from in prison. He wasn't going to prison, by
the way, if you can hear me talk, and you're not from the
church and you think, man, this because he's in prison a lot.
That's not the case. He actually was a minister of
the gospel, but he was persecuted and, and put into
prison and, and would find himself in trouble because the
authorities didn't like what he was doing, starting churches and
preaching the word. And so he'd be put in prison.
But instead of sitting there and and feeling sorry for himself,
he would encourage the church. And so Philippians is another
one of those letters In chapter 1, he gives his purpose.
He says, this is my prayer that your love may abound more and
more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you will be able
to discern what is best and be pure and blameless for the day
of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes
through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.
All right, Paul didn't say I pray that you will know more and
more so that you can know what's best so that you can benefit
yourself. He says, I pray that you will
know more and more so that you will know what's best and and
that you can honor God with who you are.
Do you see the difference there? Less of me, more of him stand
with me. We're going to look at chapter
2. We're going to read verse one
through 11 and this is the Christ him.
This is something I've read many, many times or quoted many
times and and it's Philippians chapter 2.
It says therefore, if you have any encouragement from being
united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any
common sharing in 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 of of one mind.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.
Rather in humility value others above others above yourselves,
not looking to your own interest, but each of you to the
interests of others in your relationships with one another.
Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in very
nature, God, did not consider equality with God something to
be used to His own advantage. Rather, He made Himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant being found being made
in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, He
humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on
a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to
the highest place and gave him a name, that is the name that is
above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall
bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every
tongue acknowledged that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of
God the Father. Praise the Lord, Have a seat.
Humility is in short order in our world.
Humility is countercultural. Our culture tells you and
teaches you not to be humble. God's word says be humble.
How can we do that? How can we live
counterculturally? We have a beautiful picture of
it in Philippians chapter 2, that the best way to humility is
to know Jesus and to follow His example.
Jesus set the example. Philippians 2 lays it out
perfectly. So over the next 4 weeks, we're
going to study this today. We're just in the first few
verses, but what does it look like to be humble?
It's to follow Jesus, to be Christ like in the way that you
live. And so we're going to look at
chapter 2 and I just want to look at the 1st 2 verses today.
We ended last week all standing around the sanctuary taking
communion and I said we are one in Christ and the 1st 2 verses
talk about our unity in Christ. It says therefore if you have
any encouragement now there's four ifs here, there's four ifs
then there's the word then and then there are three things that
were called to. So it says therefore if you have
any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any
comfort from His love, if any common sharing in 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 one in mind. Guys, humility starts with not
finding our value and identity in our self, but in unifying
being united with the body of Christ and finding our value in
Him. So we have the four ifs and
that's Him. Then we have the call to unity.
It's not about how great of a Christian you can become.
It's about how we can glorify God by joining together with his
body to bring him glory. I love it.
At the end of the Scripture, the Christ him, it says to the glory
of God the Father. This is about his glory, his
praise. So 4 ifs a then and then three
callings. Let's work through it.
The first if is if you have any encouragement from being united
with Christ. Paul says if you have any
encouragement from being united with Christ, the King James
Version says if there is any consolation in Christ.
Now you may read a different version than both of those, but
but the basic idea here is, is that Jesus gives us strength
that that Jesus allows this. This is from a commentary.
It says the term embraces 3 overlapping ideas #1 comfort to
those in distress #2 encouragement that strengthens
resolve, and #3 earnest appeal that calls for response.
So, so #1 any of you going through anything, any of you
need comfort and distress, Any of you have any of you ever gone
through something and needed comfort and distress?
You have 100% Jesus wants to help you through #2 it, it, it
says encouragement that strengthens resolve.
How do we get through those tough times?
How do we get through the situations that we don't know
how to put the, the foot next foot in front of the other?
Jesus gives us strength and #3 the earnest call for response.
Jesus calls us to make it through to, to be faithful.
And so, so #1 if there's any consolation in Christ, I got
good news for you. Jesus is not distant.
The God of the universe is not distant.
We, we live in a world. Once again, if you want to go
see the President, IIA, couple years ago I went to DC for a
football game, but we went to the White House.
And you know how close we got to the White House?
We got outside the fence a long way away.
If you want to go see the president, unless you've got a
lot of money or unless you find yourself in a lucky spot, you're
not getting anywhere close to the president, are you?
If you're a big fan of athletes or sports, back I remember back
in the the 90s, we went to a baseball game.
We went to a Reds game in Houston, and we just happened to
stay in the same hotel as the Reds.
And so after the game, they came back and we were standing right
there as Barry Larkin walked right by me.
And I just thought, yeah, that stuff doesn't happen much
anymore. You're not getting anywhere
close to the World Series champion Dodgers or, or LeBron
James or, or any of those people.
I mean, they are in a different place.
Here's the good news, guys. Our God, our Savior, Jesus
Christ is not distant. He's not sitting up in some
comfortable place watching us struggle.
If you're going through it, he's with you.
He's walking with you. He knows what you're going
through and, and he's with you. No matter what you walk through,
you never walk alone because God is with you.
So it says if there's any, any consolation in Christ, if you
have any encouragement strengthening in Christ and, and
listen, the the answer is yes, yes, he's with us.
How many of you would say, yes, God has strengthened me and
helped me through a tough time? All right, If you haven't, look
at all the hands that are up and understand that that's who our
God is. He's with us, He strengthens us,
He helps us through. All right #2 He says if there's
any comfort from His love, love is pretty comforting, isn't it?
Have you ever been having a really bad day and then somebody
does something, shows you love and it comforts you?
I know I've shared the story before I grew up, I wanted to
play basketball my whole life. I really thought I was going to
be a basketball player spent hours every day playing
basketball, dreamed of being a college and pro basketball
player and I'll never forget my last game of high school.
I've been playing for four years in high school I was our second
leading scorer. I'm not bragging guys.
We my team wasn't any good. We really weren't if the fact
that I was a second leading scorer is probably why we
weren't any good. But but my last game of high
school, I had all these dreams. I spent hours and hours
practicing. And I remember sitting on the
bench the entire game watching my team get blown out by 3040
points. And with 30 seconds left, the
coach says, hey, go in. It's ridiculing.
I mean, life. And I mean, I was embarrassed.
I wanted to just hide. I wanted to crawl under the
bench. I didn't want to walk into the
game where we were getting beat by 40.
I just wanted to be done. And I'll never forget, I stood
up and I started to walk off the court and my heart was broken.
And my dad came up and he wrapped his arms around me and
he said, I love you, son. Oh, you know what that does for
you? You ever been there?
Ever. I appreciate you guys.
Every once in a while, I'm having a tough day and it never
fails that that one of you sends me something encouraging and I
and on the flip side, if I'm having a good day, one of you
said, I'm just kidding, you guys are great.
Love is comforting and we serve a God of love and comfort.
And in fact, let me tell you the rest of that story.
My dad gave me the big hug. I didn't.
I felt a little better. I didn't feel all better.
I went home. I felt completely like a
failure. I mean, my whole life I'd been
dreaming of this one thing and it became a reality at that
moment that it just wasn't happening and I felt worthless.
And I'll never forget. God clearly said to me, I didn't
hear it, but I heard it through my sister playing the piano.
She's playing a song that says, child, I love you how I love
you. And I'll never forget.
I knew that God was telling me I love you and your value isn't
found in basketball, it's found in me.
If there's any comfort from His love, guys, if you've never felt
the comfort of His love, you're missing it.
He loves you more than you will ever know.
And some of you may feel unlovable.
Some of you may feel like you've disqualified yourself from being
loved. No, I really believe that if
Jesus Christ were standing here in person, He would come to each
and every one of you. And the most important thing He
would want to tell you today is this, I love you.
Our God is God of love and comfort.
If you have any consolation from Jesus, strengthening,
encouraging, if you have any comfort from his love.
The third is if any common sharing in the spirit.
Now here's I told you, God is not distant.
He's not sitting up in heaven, you know, comfortable while we
are struggling. God has sent his very spirit to
be with us all the time. And so this says Paul says if
there's any common sharing in the spirit, if you as have
accepted Christ as your savior. So we know Jesus walked the face
of the earth that that's that's fact.
Jesus was a man that walked the earth and and he died and he
ascended to heaven. Scripture tells us, but then he
sent us his Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit, if you
are a believer, is with you always.
He's always working, leading you, guiding you.
Just this week I'm sitting at home and all of a sudden the
Spirit said, hey, go do this. I didn't hear a voice, an Angel
didn't show up. I just felt the Spirit leading
me to go do something. That's the work of the Spirit.
If you haven't felt that, guys, open your heart to the Spirit.
God's Spirit wants to lead you and guide you.
He's with you to teach you how to live, to teach you how to
treat each other to to correct you when you're wrong.
The Spirit is with us. If you have any common sharing
in the Spirit. The 4th, if there's any
tenderness or compassion, the King James once again says
affection and mercy. If you if you feel the mercy or
the affection of God, if you feel the compassion of God, none
of us, not one person in here deserves to be here today.
Not one of us is good enough in our own strength and power and
record. Not one of us.
If you put our life real in front of us, we we would all be
embarrassed and ashamed, but through the grace and the mercy
of Jesus Christ, we're made worthy.
I talked about this last week. So we are here together because
of His grace and His compassion, and we're called to have that
same compassion. Ephesians 4 says be kind and
compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as
Christ forgave you. None of us belong here if it
wasn't for the compassion and the mercy of Christ.
So, so Paul says 4 ifs, if, if, if, if, and these are
rhetorical. He's writing it to the church,
but he but he knows God is good. God does give you strength.
God does encourage you. God does give you comfort.
God does lead you and guide you. God does all of this.
Yes, the answer is yes. Let me just say this if you
haven't felt all of those things.
It's not because God's not pouring them out on you, it's
because you're missing it. Open your heart and surrender
and you will feel it. If for ifs they're, they're,
they're given, then. So if God is so great, if God
has done all that, what do we do then?
Make my joy complete by being like minded, having the same
love, being one in spirit and one of mind and of one mind.
And what Paul saying here is in light of everything God's done
for you, that that we should seek to glorify him by unifying
together with the body of Christ.
All right, so the world says look out for yourself, promote
yourself, take care of yourself, make sure you're OK.
God says I've got you, seek my glory, join with the body of
Christ. He says if all four of these
things, and the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes, then be like
minded, have the same love, be of 1 spirit and one mind.
How? How can we be unified?
How can a bunch of look around at all the people around you?
Go ahead, take a look around. It's OK.
It's not awkward. Just look at some people.
You probably noticed that we're all a little bit different,
right? If you talk to people in the
room, you would notice we're all different, right?
We all have different taste in music.
We all have different. Some of us like different sports
teams. Some of us don't even like
sports. Well, you don't have to be
hateful. I mean, we're all different.
How can we be one? Well, let me tell you how we can
be 1. Because we all have the
consolation of Christ. We all find our strength and
encouragement in Christ. Why can we be 1?
Because we're all loved by Christ.
We all have the same love in the same grace.
How can we be 1? Because we're all filled with
the same spirit. We're one.
We're brought together in Christ.
Be like minded the unified What does unity look like?
3 things. The then three things #1 having
the same love. We are called to have the same
love. We talked about agape agape
love. We're called to have the same
love. We're not all called to love the
same music. We're not all called to have the
same opinion of architecture or style.
We're not all called to root for the same football teams or any
of that stuff. We are called to have the same
love. In John 13, Jesus said a new
command. I give you love one another.
As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
By this everyone will know you are my disciples.
If you love one another. I didn't say Jesus didn't say,
hey, if you put a Christian T-shirt on, if you call
yourself, if you sing the right songs, if you do this, Jesus
says the thing that will identify you as a member of the
body of Christ. The thing that people will know
that you're following God is if you love well, how can we all
love the same? Well, we're all loved the same
by God as I've loved. You love one another, guys.
I, I really, I mean, I've got my opinions.
I've got my opinions on music. I've got my opinions on a lot of
things. You know what I care far more
than any of that is that we're a people that love well, that we
know God's love for us and that we love others.
Well, that's what we should be known for.
Have the same love not you have to figure it out.
You have to you know, you have to find your interpretation
because that's what our world says that there's a lot of
different interpretations of what love is.
I mean love is this, but no, no, no, no, as God loved you love
others the same love. It's simple.
Once again we look to Christ the second being one in spirit.
This is another from a commentary.
This expresses the state of being one sold soul as in your
inward soul, a deep inward unity where the affections,
convictions and purposes of believers are harmonized by the
Holy Spirit. It's it reaches past
intellectual agreement and to a shared spiritual vitality
binding disciples together in a common life sourced in Christ.
Have one love everybody love with the love of Christ #2 be
one in spirit. Once again, it doesn't say we
all have to look the same. We all have to act the same.
We have to all have to like the same things.
It says we should all have the same spirit, the same deep
spirit, the same guiding force that we want to glorify God by
building His Kingdom. Be unified in spirit.
The third thing it says is of one mind.
It's probably the toughest 1. I have 4 boys and a wife.
And so if we're driving around and I say where do you want to
go for dinner, guess how many places I get?
And it's sometimes 4 to be honest, because usually two of
the boys will try to band together so that they can have
more than the others. And so four or five.
Every time I say where do you guys want to go eat?
And I get four or five different answers.
And we are not of the same mind when it comes food.
Our staff, by the way, we have to have a system for figuring
out lunch because we don't all agree on where we should go eat
every week. So we have a, a very detailed
system that I came up with for where we're going to go to lunch
because we're not always of one opinion when it comes to lunch.
But I do want to tell you that we are of one mind that we want
to glorify God and we want to focus on him.
We can argue over Panera or Chick-fil-A or any of those
places. We can argue all you want, but
we're to be of one mind. That means one focus.
That means our our focus is on Christ.
You can have different opinions, but we should have one mind
focused on him and his glory. And so if God is good, listen
today, the first half of this message is just all about God's
goodness. And if you're new here, I want
to tell you that God is good, that God loves you.
If you're walking through difficulty today, I want to tell
you that God wants to strengthen you and encourage you and help
you through. If you're hurting and you need
comfort, I want you to know that our God is the God of comfort.
If you don't know what you're going to do tomorrow or how to
approach something, I want you to know that the Holy Spirit is
with you. God loves you, He's good.
So what are we called to? We're not called to all be super
Christians. We don't all have to sell
ourselves. We don't have to be the best.
We don't have to convince everyone that we're great.
You know what we need to do? We need to join together and we
need to glorify God by being 1:00.
Not that we have to always agree on everything.
One of the things I love about our church board, we don't
always agree on everything. I feel like we are of 1 heart
and one mind and one spirit that we want to glorify God.
We're called to humility, we're called to unity worship team,
come up, come up, come on up. I had a friend in college and
high school. I've talked about him before.
His name was Kevin. His dad was a pastor as well and
I've had a lot of friends through my life.
One of the things that I've, I think was very unique to Kevin
and I's friendship is that Kevin and I mostly hung out doing
ministry. I mean, we would hang out and
watch games and do all that stuff.
But I told you last week that I went to visit a guy named Dennis
in the Tribeca Healthcare and, and Kevin would always go with
me and, and we would go visit him and we'd go visit other
people and, and, and the beautiful thing about our
relationship is it wasn't built on the fact that we had all the
same interests. It was built on the fact that we
have the same God, we have the same purpose.
And so today I want to call you to something at the beginning of
this series, be humble. The world tells you, take care
of yourself. Put yourself first, promote
yourself. God says find your value and
identity. And me, trust me, stand with me.
Maybe today God is reminding you of his goodness.
Maybe today He's speaking to you.
I'd invite you to respond to His Word.
If there's a part of today's word that that speaks to you,
I'd encourage you just to respond.
However that is, put your hands up, come to an altar, whatever.
Maybe God's calling you to stop being all about yourself and to
join the body of Christ to seek His glory, not yours.
That's you today. Respond.
The altars are a good place to come and pray.
They're always open. It's not a place of shame, it's
a place of victory. You can pray in your seat, you
can put your hands up, you can go talk to someone, you can pray
with someone. Whatever it is, we serve a good
God and God is calling us to unity and humility because it's
the best way. Father, speak to us, lead us,
help us to respond to you in Jesus name, Amen.