The Dreaded D Word

For tonight, Philippians chapter 2. Everyone should be able to obtain a yellow outline that will prepare you for tonight. It says, the D words of Philippians 2. If you have your Bibles, let's look at Philippians chapter 2, beginning in verse 5. If not, I'll be reading, you can just follow along. Does everyone have an outline that needs one? Okay, thanks, ushers, appreciate you. Philippians 2.5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing. Taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became 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 confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. One of the most easily identifiable characteristics of most successful churches, ministries and other ventures in America today is their inclination to teach about the blessings of God. If you want to see crowds of people, generally speaking, go where you hear the message of prosperity, success, increase, multiplication, favor and blessing. Generally speaking, where that's being taught, you're going to see crowds of people. It kind of fits with America. It's part of our mentality. We are a success-oriented culture, are we not? Much, much more so than other cultures. It's kind of like Americans are built with an internal compass that always points up. Most compasses point what way? North. There's something in us that always, when left to ourselves, every one of us thinks up, increase, more, better. So much of our thinking about getting ahead seems to overcome lots of other things that maybe God would want to tell us that have to do with bringing balance into our life. Anyone who challenges the idea, I already know this is going to be unpopular, anyone who says that maybe that isn't all there is, is considered to be out of touch, not really with it today, not really aware of what's out there, living in the dark ages of religion. And when you bring up the D words, you've started yourself on the pathway of alienation. Just mention, go to a barbecue or a luncheon with somebody or a place where people are gathered and mention the D words like demotion or decrease or downscaling. Or death. Losing. You start mentioning those words and it gets just as quiet as it did right here, right now. People don't want to hear about those things. You're not me, don't talk to me about it. Let's get back to the pleasant subjects, the things I'm into, like promotion and upscaling and increasing and winning and keeping. Not denial and decreasing and downscaling and demotion. Talk to me about the good things and then you'll have my attention. But when we come to see and understand who Jesus Christ is and the way God operates, folks, we've got to come to terms with this. I prayed with the elders tonight. This is not one of those happy bell messages. I was going to call the tape ministry and tell them, don't even show up tonight. We're not going to sell any tapes. This does not sell tapes. People don't want to hear this one. They won't say, you know what? I really needed to hear that. Now they may say, I know someone else who needs to hear it. But you see, these aren't popular things. Very, very few people really ever come to terms with this passage of Scripture and its implications. I have said in past times, and I'll say again, there's no Scripture that's more revealing about the nature of God than this one in Paul's writings. Very few people consider what this message means to them. I know that you and I probably have all wrestled with, well, what does it mean to go to the cross? But folks, we're going to look tonight at the way that Jesus embraced the D words. We're going to see what the Son of God did to allow the D words to come true in his own life. Now remember a few weeks ago, we said that the center of Paul, the apostle's life, was Christ and the kingdom. It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me, Paul said. And Paul lived to do two things, to glorify God and to expand the kingdom. When we made that, it was our first message. He wanted to glorify God and expand the kingdom. But here we're learning how we can do that. And this is where it's going to get a little practical tonight. And I'm afraid a little uncomfortable, but that's just the way it is. It needs to for most of us. How does a person live a life that glorifies God and expands the kingdom? How do you do that? Do you just listen to WPIT on the radio? Does that make you a God glorifier? Do you give a little bit of money to a ministry? How do you do it? Well, tonight, the essence of it is right here. Now, this isn't, when I talk about the D words, I'm not talking about, listen, discouragement or disease. Because God's not into those two things. I don't believe. I'm not talking about having to accept those. I'm talking about how can we become what God wants us to be? How can we take on an attitude of humility in the spirit that will enable God to do what he wants to do with our lives? The secret of greatness in God's eyes is found in these passages. And so I want us to look here at these verses. I want us to see what the D words mean to God and to us. And hold on now. Are you ready? Because it's scary. I mean, it really is. It's so countercultural. How many of you have ever gone into a bookstore or magazine rack and found anything about the joys of downscaling? I mean, there are magazines, Self, Me, More. But you're not going to find them about these kinds of things. But we as believers need to come to terms. Well, first of all, where do we start? He says, have this attitude, verse 5, among you that's the same as Christ Jesus, and then look at verse 6, who being in very nature God. First of all, let's understand something about how much Jesus gave up. Folks, Jesus wasn't an assistant to God. He wasn't a junior partner in the company of God and Son. Jesus was fully God. We have to understand that sometimes, you know, I think Susan might have said, when our familiarity with things, we lose sight of the fact that it's God that we worship and acknowledge when we mention Jesus' name. He was fully God, fully man. Just turn for a moment, hold your place there, just a couple of pages over to Colossians chapter 1. Read what it says of Jesus Christ. He is the image, verse 15, of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things were created for Him and by Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body of the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy. Look at verse 19. For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him. So Jesus was fully God. When Isaiah bowed down and said, Holy, holy, holy! Woe is me! He was seeing a vision, Isaiah 6, of God, Father, Son, and Spirit. When Thomas, who we'll read about in the Easter story, reached up and touched Jesus' side and put his hand in Jesus' hand, he bowed down and what did he say? No, he didn't say that. What did he say? My Lord and my God. Think about it. My Lord and my God. Jesus just isn't our buddy. I do get a little uncomfortable with bumper stickers and all the rest. It kind of just brings it all down to this co-pilot kind of mentality. He's God. Fully God. Alright, that's where he started from. So he can't get any higher, okay? So when you're thinking, how far did Jesus come? Let's realize He was at the top with the glory of God. And here's His demotions, number one. Verse 6. In your yellow outline it says, Jesus did not grasp equality with God. That's the first one. He didn't grasp equality with God. In other words, He didn't hold on to this blessing of being supremely over the universe, being all in all. He didn't consider something that He had to clutch this whole thing of being privileged as God. He didn't hold on to it. He didn't clutch it. Folks, I want to ask you a question. How easily do you relax your grip on your stuff and on your privilege? I mean, how easily do you just kind of like turn things over that you have the right to have? Remember, Jesus willingly did this. He had the right to keep it, but He turned it over. Now, here's a little self-disclosure time. I'll risk it. You'll love me. Most churches of this size have a parking spot for their pastor. I mean, so that, you know, I mean, when you come in here, you can look like the wind blew you in and no one really cares all that much, except maybe your wife or husband or a friend or whatever. If I came in and, you know, rolled in the mud and stuff like that, you'd say, boy, he looks weird today and all that stuff. Okay, ten years now, for the last five, I've had to come to terms with that. You say, well, that's no big deal. You're right. You're right. It's no big deal. Now, how many of you think if I'd have said to the elders, gee, you know, I ought to have a parking spot so I can just be a little closer to the building, they probably would have said, sure. But, you see, I don't want to have something that I have to hold on to. You see that? And so it's kind of been a lesson, an experience for me of just letting it go. No big deal, all right? A little, just a little dumb illustration. I told you, it was like, you're going to probably think he's weird, but that's all right. You try parking up over there in Forest Oaks, okay? In the rain and in the snow. And you do, and I appreciate it. Many of you do do that. It's no big deal. But, you see, that's one of those things, and you have your little sphere where you feel like, hey, you deserve this. And I don't want to see a sign out there with my name on it, all right? I don't want that. Don't even think about doing it. I'm not even interested. Especially when I'm at the handicap spot, all right? I know what you're thinking. Now, you see, the point being in all that, God says, don't hold the privilege that you could hold. Don't clutch it. Close your hand up like that. Take the pencil out for a moment. Why does God say don't clutch those things that you could have? You know, the recognition, the money, the privilege, the power. Why does He say it? What are you going to put in there? How can I get anything into that? You see, the only way God can put anything in is for you to open up enough. Let Him do it. And I have to say, I don't know about you, but I am plagued with this is my stuff mentality. This is my privilege mentality. This is my property mentality. This is my stuff, my ministry, my everything. And I just want to say, Lord, I don't need to clutch it. How many of you have discovered the joy of holding things loosely? And I may have learned it five years ago, and I have to learn it again tonight because I'm so prone to wanting more, clutching more, holding on to more. The first thing that Jesus did, His first demotion, He did not count equality with God something to be grasped. So let's watch Him now. He's starting down the ladder. Number two, His second demotion was that He emptied Himself. He emptied Himself. Look at Philippians 2, verse 7. It says He made Himself nothing. He emptied Himself. The word in the Greek is kenosis. That means an emptying out. Folks, whole books were written on this one word. What does it mean for the Son of God to divest Himself of His godly privileges and rights and take on manliness? I don't really know how to describe it to you. I wrestled with how to do it. It means certainly He let go of His privileges and He downscaled and He gave up some of His glorious powers and so. To make it more concrete, when He says He emptied Himself, He wasn't less God. He just laid aside some of His divine aspects. He could no longer just appear in a room. Think about it. Remember now, He had the privilege of doing anything He wanted to do whenever He wanted to do it. Now He voluntarily and willingly, without protest, without moaning and crying, just decides to empty Himself of many of the things that He could just automatically have done as God. Then number three, it says that He took on the appearance of a man. We skipped down a verse or so. At the end of verse eight or verse seven, it says being made in human likeness. Verse eight, being found in appearance as a man. Alright? So He looked like a man. And then it says, number four, that He was made in human likeness. And number five, becoming or taking on the nature of a servant. Now think about this, folks. These three steps. Here He is the transcendent Creator who takes on the appearance of His creature, becoming fully man, appearing to us as we are. And you notice something. Jesus didn't come as an emperor or a king or as a gladiator or a warrior or as a banker or lawyer or doctor. He came as a carpenter. Simple. Straightforward. Like us in every way except without sin. Jesus who knew no limits, okay, now suddenly finds Himself defined and confined by human flesh. Realize this now. At one point, just by imagining it, Jesus could transverse the universe. Now suddenly He's got skin and flesh. He can no longer do that. At one point, He could have simply just imagined Himself there and He was there. Now He uses doors and rides donkeys. Now He says, okay, mom and dad. Can you follow what that might have meant to Him? I mean, all this human stuff is simple, but when you think of what He emptied, what He poured out to become this, it's almost overwhelming. Think of the difference when once even being in heaven, He had the angels all around bowing down to Him and saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Now He walks through the streets and He gets bumped by people saying, get out of my way, Jew boy. See, the God who had all of this privilege now has emptied Himself of it. And I wonder if we can really come to grips with how that must have been. Catch a glimpse, will you, of the magnitude. Now some people say, well, Jesus becoming human like us is like us becoming an ant. Or if you like The Fly, maybe that helps you relate to a movie, all right? I mean, if that helps you. But think about that. If God became a man, is that like man becoming an ant? My answer to that is it's not even close. Why? Well, because, you see, God becoming a man is Creator becoming creature. Man becoming an ant or a fly is just another order of creation. Now when you think what might have to happen for you to become an ant, and you think of the limitations of you being an ant, we're not even in the same well of finite and infinite, you see. Do you see how great the emptying was? Do you see how much he loved you? And that's the point of this, isn't it? To leave that enormous privilege and become like us. He humbled himself then. Number six, it says this. In verse eight, he humbled himself. That same Jesus, who was the giver of all life, the Bible says humbled himself, number six, unto death. Unto death. The one who gave life to everything that lived now humbled himself unto death. Imagine it. The one who had the ability simply to speak life, when he breathed, we came alive. Genesis chapter two. That one now willingly gives himself to death. I don't know if we can fathom what that meant. It's as though Jesus came, he faced death, he walked up, looked death square in the eye, had his hands on his guns, and death faced him, and he unclipped his belt, and the guns dropped to the side. He said, you win for now. I'm going to die. And he did. What an enormous sacrifice. And then notice number seven, the seventh step of the demotion. How did he die? Did he slip off to the side and just take a little bit of poison and kind of just painlessly slip off? Is that how he died? Look at it. He humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Dear ones, there's no way tonight I can do justice to the nature of this demotion. You see, it was one thing to relax his grip. It's another thing to empty himself and become like a man. It's another thing to become obedient. But this last one, this last one, even in this culture with all of our crudities and all of our pains inflicted on others and all of our barbarian kinds of things that maybe we see around us, it can't touch this. The Romans invented so as to underscore their helplessness, their opprobrium, or their worth of being worthy of scorn to the people around them. This means of death was so painful that it many times would take three days for the person crucified to finally die. And over that time, they struggled for each breath because being stretched out on the cross with their feet nailed and their hands nailed, they couldn't lift up their lungs to get the breath. And eventually, the reason they died, by the way, wasn't that they bled to death. They died because they suffocated because their body couldn't get enough oxygen to clean out the toxins that had been produced by everything happening in the piercings and the stabbings. And if you were here Friday night, Dick Hatch did a marvelous job describing that for the singles. It was powerful. And so Jesus slips down to the very last rung. All seven steps. Do you see it? I mean, he's down at the very bottom of the human life chain. Now, all of that is just so much doctrine unless we can allow it to touch our lives. It's kind of ironic to me that here is Christ, here is how he gave his life and modeled God's love. He took seven steps down. And everything we read and everything that's popular and everything that's cool and hip is let's climb, let's go higher, let's do more. Are you against success? No, not at all. But I just want to appeal tonight that it be success in God's way. Success in the way that God not only modeled, but commanded of us. Paul says in these verses to me, he says, come on Philippian believers, wake up. You're not going to be sucked in by this whole success kind of thing out there, are you? You're a little deeper than that, aren't you? You're more discerning than that, aren't you? You don't run off the fuel of higher, higher, higher, do you? You have more substance in your life than that, don't you? Isn't it kind of ironic that the most important story in all the world is not a rags to riches story, it's a riches to rags story. And it's a true story. It's a story that others saw and verified and one of which we have a written record tonight. It's the story of God giving up His life that we might find life. So that the penalty of our sin would be paid, not just for now, but for eternity. Not just for those few that were there, but for all of us through all of time. And because God did it, look what happened. Verse 9. Therefore God exalted Him. And I want to say to you, folks, this isn't bad news. This summons to a life of demotion is good news because if we go God's way, we can exchange our D words for God's E word. If we're willing to die to the things that we would hold so dearly, God will say, I would delight in exalting you. And notice that it says, not only did He exalt Him, but that every knee. He gave Him the name above every name that every knee should bow. And verse 11, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. You see, there's going to be a day when all the world is going to wake up and say, wait a minute, this Jesus wasn't just an option. He wasn't one path up a winding mountain that lots of other people were climbing to get to God. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. But for some it will be too late. And the Bible says, for those who wait to that moment to do it for the first time will find themselves weeping and gnashing their teeth. You know what that's a picture of? Gnashing the teeth. It's grinding it. Oh! Oh! It's utter, total, complete despair. And the One who gave His life yearns that everyone that hears my voice right now would bow the knee now and raise up the name now and confess with the tongue now that Jesus Christ is their Lord. So that on that day you'll be among those who will be able to sing the song of praise with great joy and liberty. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. I was blind, but now I see. And when we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first began. You see, this whole thing of success now and all, I mean, I'm grateful for God's blessing. I am. And you all know that. And I know I appreciate those of you who work hard to see your businesses prosper and raise families and all the rest that you do. But folks, keep in mind, this life is but one grain of sand and the whole ocean of eternity. It is. Why not live it God's way so that eternity can be lived in the fullness of His joy and provision? Now, why did Paul write these words? Why? Well, was he trying to show us what Christ was like? Did he primarily want us to know what Jesus did? My answer to that is yes. But he also had something in mind for us and for the Philippians. You see, let me end with this. If God's Son found that the way to please His Father was to embrace the life of surrender, the D words, so that He might please His Father and do what God wanted Him to do. Keeping in mind now, this isn't a life of glumness and despair, but a life of joy in serving God. If the Son of God had to do that, how many of you think that God has a different and a better plan for you? Oh, I don't think so. Listen to what I'm saying. If the Son of God had to give His life, do you think God has an easier way for you to do it? Do you? I mean, how many of you have prayed, Lord, I want to be like Jesus? Do you still want to pray that prayer? Oh, no, I want to be like Jesus when He's doing miracles. I want to be like Jesus when He's like multiplying the fish and the bread, you know. And I want to be like Jesus when He's telling these guys to get behind Him. I want to have a power ministry. But I want to be like Jesus when He's taking these seven steps down the ladder of glory. You see, one of the misconceptions that I see all around me are people who think that the way up is to climb up when the way up is still to go down and to embrace the life of the cross. These aren't easy words, dear ones. But let's make no mistake. God doesn't have one plan for Jesus and a better one for you. Do you think? I don't think He does. In fact, the life I now live, I live by the faith in the Son of God who's in me. So, you don't need to be afraid. You don't need to try harder. You don't need to feel bad about yourself. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about simply saying, Lord Jesus, let that same grace that was in you that willingly let it go, willingly obeyed, willingly embraced the demotions, let it be in me. Because God says, if you'll do that, I promise you something. I'll exalt you. And I've found something. It's a whole lot better when God exalts me than when I try to exalt myself. It's a whole lot more refreshing and a whole lot more enjoyable when God's been at work in me, not me in myself. I don't know how we can increase or how God can increase unless we decrease. Do you? Didn't John say that? I must decrease that He might increase. You see, I don't know how more of Jesus is going to come through us unless less of me comes through. Imagine a water glass full to the top. Now, how are you going to get something else in there? What's the first thing you got to do? Pour it out a little bit. How is more of God going to be flowing through you unless less of you is there to muddy it up? You say, well, how do I do that? Folks, it is not as hard as we might want to think. I just want to submit to you, if you do the basic things we've been saying here for the last 10 years, you spend time with God, you listen to Him, you just obey the providence of His Spirit, you stay in fellowship with other believers, your life will begin to have the marks of a disciple, the marks of sacrifice and maturity, the marks of a joyful countenance because God is alive in you. I want to just say as I end tonight that these verses to me, they tell me something about God's love for me. They tell me that God loved me so much and He loved you so much that Jesus would go down every one of those seven steps willingly and gladly. Now, the Bible says, and Jesus said, I don't do this because I have to. He says, I do it because what? I was willing. I wanted to. How many of us tonight could say the same thing? Lord, I am willing. I am willing to give it up. I am willing to quit fighting, quit clutching, quit seizing, quit having to have it my own way. When are we going to stop our quest to climb up to obscurity? This is something we need to wrestle with, church. Because I have to say this, now that the war is over, now that things will get optimistic once again, we need to be very careful that in our Christian walk and in our life as a church, we're not out there trying to wow the world with our great successes. We need to wow the world with our great sacrifice, our great love, our great surrender, and let God wow them with his great Savior. I don't know what this all might mean, but I want to say to the men and women who hear me tonight, would you help me just to keep walking down? And I'll see you at the bottom. Let's stand for prayer.