Transcript
This is now the fourth sermon in a series of expositional sermons we've been preaching on Paul's letter to the Philippians. Last week we looked at the close of the first chapter, the beginning of the second chapter, as Paul is encouraging the Philippians to be teammates. He's encouraging them to live their lives in a way that's congruent with the gospel. He urged them to stay calm, unflappable, in the face of intense trials. While Paul encourages them to
be in this kind of team, he also asks him to be able to put others in front of them in line. It's one of his images he uses to show that this is what a team is. And at point in Paul's letter he decides to give his readers an illustration. And the illustration that he uses takes over the chapter. Have you ever had that kind of experience where you're trying to explain something and you say, well
it's like this, and then when everything is over people remember your illustration, what it's like, they may have forgotten the original point that you were illustrating. Paul is illustrating what it means to be teammates who encourage each other and are able to put someone else in front of them in line. And then he says, here I'll show you what I mean. And then he has the illustration. And the illustration begins to, like an avalanche, it begins
to gather momentum and become larger and larger. And as you know, and when you hear this text I'm about to read, it becomes what we call the great hymn of the Apostle Paul, the great Philippian hymn. In fact we have evidence that the early church actually took this section and used it as a hymn and sang it in worship. It became a part of the worship hymnity of the early church. And so here we have a
chance to see it yourself as it unfolds. This is the second chapter of Philippians. I'll read where we were last week and then you'll see the hymn as it develops. So if there is any encouragement, this is the way the second chapter begins, in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy. Complete my joy by being of the same mind. See, being in that united team. Having the same love, being
of full accord and in one mind, of one mind. Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourself. And remember I explained to you last week that that's a first century saying he's using. He doesn't mean that you should see other people as worth more than you are, but he says because of humility and a lack of conceit on your part, you're able to encourage the person alongside of you, your teammate
in this great venture that these Philippians are facing, in the world that they're in, and put another person in front of you in line and he uses that image. So he says, do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourself. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also have the look into the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus. Now
notice he used the word mind here four times. The word mind here that means perspective or a way of looking at things. So he says have this mind or perspective among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus. And now comes his illustration. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of
men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on the cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which 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 confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And that's the great hymn. This wonderful hymn
to who Jesus Christ is which takes over this great passage. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this text. We thank you for what Paul has taught us here. And now help us to understand what your will for our lives is as we discover with these early Philippians who Jesus Christ is in this passage. All these things we pray in your name. Amen. Do nothing from selfishness or conceit. Let me give you one word
study here with regard to the word conceit. The word conceit is a combined Greek word. It's made of the word kenoo which means empty and doxa which means glory. And the reason I'm telling you that you'll see that Paul's going to do a play on that word. Kenoo means empty, doxa, glory. Empty glory is the word translated here conceit. And he says if you're gonna be a teammate you can't have empty glory which we call conceit.
You can't have conceit but with humility put others in front of you in line. And then he says here I'll give you an illustration. Have the mind in you which you have from Christ Jesus. And now comes this great hymn. In other words not empty glory that you have for yourself put others in front of you in line. And it says now here's an illustration. Have the same perspective that we have from Christ. The mind of
Christ. Who though he was in the form of God. Now in this one hymn we're going to have three key words that Paul's going to use to describe the person of Christ. Paul has a marvelous grasp in the Greek language and he decides to pull into this hymn three different words that help us to understand who Jesus Christ is. The first is this word who is in the form of God. The word morphe here means essence.
The essence of God. It's Paul's great statement concerning the deity of our Lord. Notice he was in the form of God. The essence of God. Morphe of God. He did not count equality with God. A thing to be held on to. That's what this means. But he emptied himself. Now notice the play on words. He's urged these Philippians not to have kenodoxia. Empty glory. And now he says but Jesus Christ kenoo himself. He and that's
why this is called the kenosis hymn. He emptied himself. Just the opposite of empty glory. So you can see there's a play on words here. He emptied himself taking the form now the same word is used again morphe. The essence of a slave. Here you have Paul in a dramatic way affirming the great Nicene Creed. The great Creed of the Apostles Creed. The great affirmation of Christian faith. That Jesus Christ is fully God. The morphe of
God. Essence of God. And fully man. The essence but no not just man. Slave man. Man at the lowest that you can understand man. Because remember in Greek culture a slave according to Plato was not a full man. Well Jesus Christ went underneath all men and became the essence of our humanity. Man woman. And he became a slave. The essence of the slave. And so he uses this word morphe of a slave. But he's not finished.
He emptied himself taking upon himself the essence of the servant. Being born in the likeness of man. Now here's the word homo matia. Homo in Greek means like. He became like us. He's still not finished in the likeness of man and being found in human form. Now here's a different word than morphe. It's the word schema which means outward form. And the way to So here's Paul's description of Jesus Christ. He's of the essence of God.
The morphe of God. He became the essence of man. Slave. And he became like us. Homo matia. And he even looked like us. That's important. If you saw Ben Hur. One of the most unconvincing scenes in that movie. Ben Hur was when they first see Jesus. He's a carpenter. You don't see him on stage but a soldier is coming by remember and he's beating someone and then this carpenter is a carpenter shop in Nazareth and evidently
Jesus comes and the Roman guard sees Jesus and he falls back in horror or shock. Listen it wasn't that way. People might have fallen back when they saw John the Baptist. John the Baptist in a sense was more terrifying to meet than Jesus was in the first century. That's the whole point. Jesus looked like everybody else. In fact when John the Baptist first said behold the Lamb of God who take it away the sin of the
world probably everybody said where is he I don't see him because he looked like ordinary people. And Paul wants us to know that Jesus was like us. He even looked like us. And when you saw him you didn't fall back like this. It was a full identification with us and in his beautiful use of the Greek language Paul makes that point clear. He's of the essence of God. He became the essence of the slave. He was
homo matia. He was like us. He even looked like us. Schema. On the outward he looked like us. And now he continues. Who as though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be held on to but emptied himself, kenoo himself, taking the form of servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form outward form. He humbled himself and became obedient to death unto
death even death on a cross. Here we have the Apostle Paul now affirming to us the death of our Lord as he identifies with us. Therefore now we're at the lowest point in this hymn. Therefore God has highly exalted him. Paul loves to use what we call the hyper words. He'll take a lot of words and put a hyper in front of them which Greek means it's a superlative. He does it in Romans 8 when he
says we are more than conquerors. He's taking the word nikao conquer and just puts a hyper in front of it. Hypernikao. We are more than conquerors. And here he more than exalted him. So it's a hyper exaltation. So God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name. That at the name of Jesus notice he uses our Lord's earthly name Jesus of Nazareth. He doesn't use his his title Christos which
is the Messiah. At the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And in the first century that's a way of saying the whole created order from the heavenly creation to the earthly creation to that below earth the realm of death. The whole created order bows before Jesus Christ. Should bow before him. There's that sense of ought that sense he deserves. And every tongue confess and that means agree
in Greek that Jesus Christ is Lord and now to the glory of God the Father. Doxa. Do you see what triggers Paul's mind is he says don't have conceit that's empty glory. Kenodoxia. Empty glory. Here I'll give you an illustration he said of the kind of person that put someone else in front. It's like Jesus Christ who was with the Father in the beginning is shares in the very essence of God and yet he Kenno
himself he emptied himself. And this same Jesus Christ who identified fully with us even in death now God has hyper exalted him and God has given him the Doxa the glory that's the last word. So you have this wonderful play on language and a first century we don't catch it because we don't know that play on words with Kenno and Doxa but you can see it when you look at it. And now Paul has completed this
hymn. Why is this hymn so important that the early church would use it. They may not even the early church may have not used the whole book of Philippians in a worship service but they use this hymn. Why is this such a marvelous and important Christological hymn. I want to make three reflections on the importance of this hymn for us today. First the hymn to Jesus Christ is important because we need to know what is the
source of our encouragement. Notice he started the passage that way. If there is any encouragement if there is any incentive of love if there is any participation in the spirit then he said you should be on the one hand unflappable which we saw last week these three signs of our salvation you should be live under the gospel you should obey this and you should be teammates you should stand together. Well what is the source of encouragement
so that you can do this. How can you put someone else in front of you in line whether it's at a Safeway store or whether it's in life. You can only do it if you feel good about yourself. Well how can you feel good about yourself. Well you need to have a source of encouragement that endorses who you are and what is that source of encouragement. It's Jesus Christ himself and so Paul gives us his hymn
to point that out to us and we need to know that. We need to know the source of our encouragement. We need to know that Jesus Christ who is fully divine and yet is the one who's also fully identified with us and we get this marvelous portrayal of our Lord's Christology and of his humanity and we need to know about Jesus Christ his humiliation and we also need to know his sonship his victory and his vindication.
We need to know this if we're going to trust him in hard times. If he's really going to be our resource in hard times we need to know this and the Apostle Paul shares it with the Philippians. He starts as an illustration and it takes over the whole chapter. We need to know who Jesus Christ is. Let me give you another way of putting it. This text shows that the Apostle Paul and here now we make
a theological reflection on Paul as a writer. We discover in this text that the Apostle Paul cannot speak of any subject or any theme without relating it to Jesus Christ. The living center of his faith that's why I titled this morning sermon the instinct for the center. Paul has an instinct for the center. His ethics which is what he's talking about here every single theme in Paul's theology is related to its living center. That's why in
Paul you don't have an ethics that says you should be good or other kinds of guilt trips that we often lay on one another where we have a command that we give a you should put other people in front of you in line. That isn't the kind of ethics that Paul works from. He says you know Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ's love for you enables you to put someone else in front of you in line. In other
words we have an evangelical ethic. We love because he first loved us. We discover Christ's love and that enables us to love other people around us. So you can see Paul's ethics as we have in this passage is dependent on his living center of his faith. Karl Barth wrote a remarkable book actually it's a series of lectures he gave after World War II at the University of Bonn and they were written from the notes in that
lecture called dogmatics and outline. It's a remarkable book on the Christian faith. It's his commentary on the Apostles Creed. You know the Apostles Creed which is article one I believe in God the Father, article two I believe in God the Son, and article three I believe in God the Holy Spirit. This great creed one of the oldest creeds in Christendom and in the second article Barth has some just remarkable words to say about Jesus Christ and
as the center of our faith. Let me read now from his lectures the University of Bonn 1945 Karl Barth on the second article Jesus Christ. He says Christology which is a second article is the touchstone of all knowledge of God in the Christian sense. The touchstone of all theology tell me how it stands with your Christology and I shall tell you who you are. It's a very famous line from Karl Barth. In other words tell me
what you believe about Christ and I'll know everything you believe about ethics and every other thing if I know what you believe about Christ because that's the touchstone of all theology. This is the point in which ways diverge and this is the point which is the is fixed the relation between theology and philosophy the relation between the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man the relation between revelation and reason the relation between gospel and law
the relation between God's truth and man's truth the relation between outer and inner the relation between theology and politics at this point everything becomes clear or unclear bright or dark for here we're standing at the center and however high and mysterious and everything we want to know might seem to us yet we may also say that this is just where everything becomes quite simple quite straightforward quite childlike right here in this center in which as a
professor of systematic theology I must call to you look this is the point now either knowledge or the greatest folly here I'm in front of you like a teacher in Sunday school facing his kiddies who has something to say which a mere four-year-old can really understand the only error Paul Barth makes in this whole theology four-year-olds are mere but forgive him for that he says I have something to say which a mere
four-year-old can understand the world was lost Christ is born rejoice see here's the center and the Apostle Paul can't talk about any subject without relating it to this center there is no ethics without this center no Christian understanding of politics no Christian understanding of life in in general in any sense apart from this center and Paul gives it to the Philippians now there's one last thing I want to observe and that is it it's
a see me this last observation may seem odd but it's it's see it to me it's very important it's kind of whimsical to in a way notice it in this passage Paul writing to the Philippians doesn't take it for granted that the people at Philippi know who Jesus Christ is he feels he has to say it again and we in the Christian Church I think should follow Paul's lead don't take it for granted that people know
who Christ is he doesn't take for granted that the Philippians know that Christ emptied himself he knows that sometimes we forget these things he knows that sometimes we become Christians and then they forget why they became Christians they have a sort of general Christian but they don't really know the living center we lose the instinct for the center and I think that's why Paul decides in the middle of this letter to those wonderful Christians at Philippi
to remind them of their starting point to remind them of where they began which is when they discovered Christ can I tell you a story in 1985 our family fulfilled a an ambition and a goal we looking forward to for our whole life since our kids were little and that was to ride in the Trans-Siberian Railroad all across Russia and we did it in 1985 we started in Beijing actually and we got on a train
there the whole all five of us and we rode on the Trans-Mongolian Express up to Irkutsk and then we switched trains we added a couple days in Irkutsk then we took the Trans-Siberian Express all the way across Russia to Moscow and then to Leningrad and finally Helsinki and it was just a lot it was an incredible experience and we met so many fascinating people but one of the highlights of that whole trip that I
was looking forward to the whole trip was to be in Leningrad and have our children see the great Hermitage Museum my wife and I in 1968 had been there and we had been so overwhelmed by that museum and we wanted our kids now who were young adults to see it and so we went there we had a guide and we since we were five we had a guide just for ourselves and she was an interest guide
she had been a guide for 11 years and she took us on a tour of that museum it's a thousand room palace built by Catherine the Great which probably is the greatest art museum in the whole world because there are more Rembrandts in the Hermitage than there are in any museum in Holland there are more Renoirs there are there van goes every great artist is shown in the Hermitage we went through and this guide she had
so much information she was kind of comical because only there were only five of them she still held a card up we were walking by so we could find her she was used to large groups I'm sure and we went from place to place and she explained all the paintings she there wasn't any question I could ask she didn't have a funded information in all these there was whole one whole room of Picasso's and a whole
room of Renoir it was incredible and we saw we went had lunch we came back for the second half of the day the part that I wanted to see most of all was the Rembrandt collection because I'm a Rembrandts one of my heroes and I have got I think I've got every Rembrandt there is of course now we realize some of his students did some of the Rembrandts but that's all right that means there are other
great painters out there too but I have all these Rembrandts that I've been collecting and he was a Christian and he was a Protestant and an incredible man and I just and I knew that in the Hermitage was the most famous of all Rembrandts the return of the prodigal the last painting was found in his room when he died it's unfinished and it is the it's the crown piece of the Hermitage collection in fact in their
great Hermitage book on the Rembrandts they have the picture of the father and this and the return of the prodigal on the cover so we went to the Rembrandt collection and that's the biggest crowds in the Hermitage and she explained all the Rembrandts and the self-portraits and his wonderful head of Christ and all those paintings and then she saved the return of the prodigal to last because it's the one that the biggest crowd stands around
and she pointed out to us and said what a great painting it was the last painting found in Rembrandt and it's our most famous painting we have here and it's unfinished she pointed out how there's a lot of darkness around the edges some sketches that not quite completed because he died and then she pointed out the hands of the father which most art critics feel are the greatest portrayal of hands there is in any of all
art are the great liberating hands of the father on this son the prodigal kneeling in front of him as he doesn't clutch at the Sun but releases the Sun with those great hands we see the mysterious figure of one man standing alongside with the staff is that the elder brother we don't know but he's standing alongside kind of baffled it's incredible and then finally she said now notice this great painting notice the hands of the blind
father as he blesses his son I said what now this you have to realize this crit this art guide was very militant and we did not talk back to her she was extremely powerful and and all the way along when we got the Rembrandt question I thought you know I can explain all these paintings to my kids but I wanted to learn from her so I kept quiet as if I didn't know anything like I didn't
in all the other places but I did know about these paintings and so she I said what was that she said notice the blind father as he blesses his son and I said no that's not right and then I recited to her the parable the prodigal son which Rembrandt built this painting on and I pointed out that the very point of the prodigal son parable the whole parable turns on the good eyesight of the father that's
the point of the parable while the boy was a long way off the father saw him in fact the boy was lucky the father had better eyesight than his elder brother or he never got home brothers got detectives and everything out memories that your son wasted the money on harlots and all he's knows all about this boy but the father saw him before the elder brother and he rushes to the boy that's the point of the
parable this is not a father who's blind is giving a blessing that's Jacob Esau that's a whole different story from the Old Testament this is the father in the parable the prodigal son and the father has such good eyesight that later on that evening it was out in the dark and finds the elder brother too in the dark and says my son you're always with me it was right that we have this party because this your
brother was dead now he's alive to the whole point is the father can see but then we we want our she after I finished this she said oh she did not argue with me then we got in the car we were riding back to the hotel and I said to my kids I said isn't that amazing because during the tour she told us that her specialty was American student groups and British student groups that's that she
led because she spoke magnificent English and she'd been doing this for eight years or nine years and then we rode in the car we said is this amazing she's been saying for nine years because this was the premium painting that she loved the best was her favorite painting and she loved it she said notice the blind father as he blessed the son and she'd been saying that to group after group after group and evidently nobody now
she was militant so it'd be hard to speak up to admit but group after group no one said no no no it's wrong and we sat the car we said I wonder why no one did that then we remember what Alan Bloom I had just been reading that summer Alan Bloom's book the closing of the American mind in which he says the problem with American students is they don't know the Bible and it ruins all the
art galleries of Europe for them I remember that line because they don't know the Bible and the art galleries of Europe you've got to know the Bible to make sense of the art galleries and I realized the reason no one said no to her is that no one knew the difference we have a whole generation of people who don't know that the father can see very very well he's not being duped into blessing you that's our
Lord's most famous parable and yet many people don't know it and the Apostle Paul knows that many people at don't really know Jesus Christ oh they know about Christianity they know about the church they know about great Christian values if you would ask him what's the gospel they would say to do good to your brother to put other people in front of you in line it's safe way I heard it at the church is that the
gospel no it's not the gospel that's good advice the gospel is the one who possible for you to do that it's Jesus Christ who emptied himself and who has very good eyesight and is able to come out and find you and forgive you and heal you whether you're broken like a prodigal or whether you're self-righteous like an elder brother also the father is very rich in fact you know the parables it's not the parable the
prodigal son it's really the parable the prodigal father because you know what the word prodigal means luxurious it's the luxurious father that's what the parables about Paul doesn't take for granted that the Philippians know who Jesus Christ is and I think that's the beauty of this him we should never take it for granted either do you know who or do you know Christian truths now we're at the gospel Heavenly Father thank you for this text thank
you for the way it points us to our center and the center is Jesus Christ and he's the one who is in the essence of God is with the not created but shares in eternity in deity he has your glory and yet he emptied himself to find us Lord thank you for this portrayal of Jesus Christ brothers and sisters are there someone here who has never met Jesus Christ if you want to meet him if you
want to know him turn your eyes upon this great him and meet Jesus Christ he knows your name he's your servant he's come alongside of you he wants to come into your heart you can open your life to him ask him in as your Lord he is your Savior bow twice in admission that you need him and in attitude for his love and faithfulness now you're a Christian that's all it takes to be a Christian now
tell someone tell someone you trusted Jesus Christ you