5/17/2020

Philippians 2:1-11 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with , 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 one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ : 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 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 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, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Exaltation

This scripture should be familiar to you because as you hopefully remember it was last week’s scripture lesson, too. I wanted to stay on this scripture one more week, though. Last week I asked you the question, “Have you ever been humiliated?” and I shared with you a funny and embarrassing story about me taking a daring and ultimately very unsuccessful ride on a “mo-ped.”

When we hear the word “humiliation” we often think of something like an embarrassing experience that shows someone to be either incompetent, clumsy, or forgetful. And although that’s one way to look at humiliation, we learned that it’s not the only way to think of the word.

Last week we learned about humiliation through the lens of Christ’s humility while we studied verses 6-8 in our Philippians 2 passage. His humiliation began the moment Jesus left the heavenly realms where he existed with and as a part of the Triune God before the world began. We know this because John

1:1-4;14 reminds us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with

God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind...14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” These verses from the of John so beautifully help us understand Christ’s divinity

- the majestic glory and God-like aspects of Jesus the Son, reminding us that there was never a time when Jesus did not exist. When we read verses like this, we are reminded of what a world and history altering thing it was for God himself to “take a nose-dive from heaven” (prase from author Charles Martin) to earth and make himself known to us.

And then finally, we talked last week about how Christ’s incarnation

(becoming human) was only the beginning of his journey of humility. Jesus breathed, ate and drank, walked, sweated, and lived like a human for 33 years, experiencing the joys and pain of human life. And then he sacrified himself on the cross, was despised by so many, held the weight of sin and then finally tasted death. Last week we remembered Christ’s ultimate humiliation.

But as you might have noticed in our scripture passage, Paul doesn’t end the retelling of Jesus with his humiliation and sacrifice. And we know why he doesn’t stop there, right? - because that’s not the end of the story! Paul tells the rest of the story in verses 9-11 when he writes, “Therefore God exalted him

[Jesus] 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, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” So as verses 6-8 remind us of Christ’s humiliation, this part of the scripture lesson reminds us of Christs’ exaltation. In fact, in invite you to grab your pen and write those words in your . Around verses 6-8, make a bracket and write next to it “humiliation” and then bracket together verses 9-11 and write next to it “exaltation.”

By the way, it’s ok to write in your Bible, in fact I encourage it! I consider the Bible to be a workbook for our lives. You know, there are certain like the one on the altar in our church that of course I wouldn’t write in, but my Bibles at home have lots of lines and highlights and notes in them so that I can remember the things I learn from God’s word for when I revisit those passages again! So keep your pen nearby. I’ll invite you to use it again later.

Ok So, you just wrote the words “humiliation” and “exaltation” in your

Bible...but what does that second word mean exactly? To exalt means to elevate, or to lift up. And what does our scripture say about exalting? It says, “God exalted him [Jesus] to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,...” God the Father exalted Jesus. Isn’t that interesting? Just linger on that thought for a moment - really think about it. Sometimes our ears have heard words so many times that it’s easy to not really think about what this means. God the Father elevated Jesus to the highest place and gave him the name above every name. Ok, so hold that thought - keep that thought in mind, and then let’s skip down to verse 11, especially the second half of the verse.

Listen carefully. Verse 11 says, “and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus

Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Again, really think about what that means.

We see here in verses 6-11 some really amazing truths about God the

Father and God the Son, two persons of the Triune God (the Trinity). And what we see in these verses is how these two persons of the Trinity are interacting toward one another. We get a really cool peek into the relationship between these two persons of the Triune God. And what do we see?

We can read in these verses that God the Father and God the Son are doing exactly what Paul is telling the Church in Philippi to do. In these verses

Paul tells us that Christ, the Son, humbled himself to do the will of God the

Father, becoming the likeness of humanity and then becoming the sacrifice for our sins. And these verses also say that because of what Jesus did for the

Father’s glory, the Father gives the Son the name above every other name, places him in the highest place, and says that every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

So what does this beautiful example of God the Father and God the Son have to do with what Paul is asking the church to do? Ok, here it is. Grab your pen one more time. If you have room in the margin of your Bible, make a bracket around those other two brackets you made earlier - the ones that point out the sections of the passage that are the humiliation of Christ and his exaltation. Make a bracket around those two brackets and draw an arrow up to verses 3 & 4. And again, if you have room, write next to the arrow the words “Humility like the

Trinity.”

Actully, let’s read those verses again. Verses 3 & 4 say, “3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Do you see the connection yet? Well, there’s one more clue - the very next verse (verse 5) is the tie that brings these two sections together. Verse

5 says, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ

Jesus.” Paul clearly wants the people reading this letter to connect these two sections together since he put in that connection phrase between verses 1-4 and

6-11. The group of believers called the Church should think of others’ interests above their own, exalting others higher than themselves, just the persons of the

Trinity model for us. You might remember from last week that we learned that the church in

Philippi (who Paul was writing to) was beginning to be divided among themselves probably because they were human - you get a group of us humans together and we can’t help but divide and disagree with each other, right? Paul later describes these divisions in verse 14 as “grumbling and arguing,” so we can can probably guess that these divisions were not big theological disagreements… most likely these divisions were just the conflict that comes with living in community. And

Paul, with this letter, was reminding the church in Philippi, and reminds us again today that just as Jesus Christ lowered himself to bring glory to God the Father, and just as God the Father exalted Jesus and lifted his name to be above every other name, so too in our relationships with others we are to lower ourselves to lift each other up. Then we will be, as verses 1 & 2 say “united with Christ,... being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind,” and through all of this, ultimately reflecting the amazing love of the Triune

God here on earth as it is in heaven.

Do you need this reminder today? I sure do. We humans constantly need reminded to not think of ourselves higher than others and to consider others’ interests higher than our own. It’s so hard to remember! It’s as hard for us as it was for the church in Philippi 2,000 years ago. But I’m so grateful that we have the Word of God to remind us again and again - as much as we need it. Because the power of God is found in love. As the words of a great Christian song go, “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord; We are one int he Spirit, we are one in the Lord; And we pray that all unity will one day be restored. And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love.” When we love each other well, we are living out of the love of the

Triune God.

Let’s pray --

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we thank you for your Word that shows us how to live lives that glorify you. God, how us how to love like you love. Teach us how to think of others higher than ourselves. We desire to be more like you,

Jesus. We exalt you today and we hope to exalt you with our whole lives. Amen.