You know, a lot of times, one of the things that people say is, give me something that I can take with me. Well, I'm going to give you something. I'm going to give you something this morning, and if you don't take anything away with what we talk about this morning, it's not going to be my fault. We're going to talk about having the mind of Christ. Now I just want you to think about that. What we're going to talk about is having the mind of Christ, not just thinking about the way I think or thinking about having my mind. I'm talking about having the mind of Christ. And if that's an objective that we can reach, we will have accomplished what I think Paul tells us in Philippians two. And that's where I'd like for you to turn your Bibles this morning to Philippians two. We'll be spending the initial part of our time this morning, in Philippians two. And then we'll look at some passages from various texts in the New Testament as we close the lesson this morning.
But Philippians two, beginning in verse one, Paul says, "Therefore, if there's any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy fulfill my joy by being like minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind." I want you to think with me this morning about how hard it is behaviorally for you to do life with somebody else. Now for some of us, that quickly goes to my spouse. I'm doing life with my spouse. For some it goes to I'm doing life with my friends. For some it goes I'm doing life with my children or I'm doing life with my siblings, or I'm I'm doing life with my boss, I'm doing life with a neighbor, I'm doing life with a fellow church member. I'm doing life with my in laws, or, as we sometimes say, my outlaws. I'm not exactly sure who outlaws are, but we say that a lot. Very few people live completely on their own. I suppose there are some who are so isolated that they simply don't have anybody else in their life. I find that to be a sad situation. But most of us this morning, if not all of us, are not isolated, and we often find it hard to live by ourselves. We find it hard to do that. And so what we really want is to be involved with people, at least to some degree or another, but doing that with somebody else or groups of people is difficult. Being a Christian demands that we get along in every relationship we have.
Let's take the most intimate of physical or earthly, there's a better way to say the earthly relationships, and that would be of a of a husband and wife. As good as that is that takes effort. That takes effort on both parts, because you're dealing with someone else and the someone else is not me. And in my case, her someone else is not her, it's me. So she's having to adjust. I'm having to adjust. And what that does is, is what it's supposed to do. It is intended for me to say what she wants takes precedence over what I want, and vice versa, what I want takes precedence over what she wants. As she thinks about that. That is the nature of what I think Paul is getting ready to tell us. Just think about some of those things that he says. There are four things here. He says, "fulfill my joy by being like minded, having the same love, being of one accord and of one mind." In this particular relationship, he's saying, all these things need to come together. Don't you think about how hard, how hard is this? Let's take this group of people and the relationships that we have with each other in this connection. I want you to think about how hard it is. Let let's all be like minded. Let's have some translation. Let's have the same mind. How long you have to talk to someone here to realize that doesn't happen all the time, and yet, Paul says, Have the same mind. And then he says, "have the same love." Sometimes that's hard. And then he says, "Be of one accord." That's, that's the idea of, of being full agreement. We're going to talk about all this in just a minute, but, but be of full agreement. Think about how hard that is, and have the same way of thinking. It's not just be in full agreement, but it says, think alike. You think about that among this generally population of 200 people, think about how, we're affected by that, and think about the difficulty that being a Christian like Christ intends, is hard, and this passage says it is, but this passage says that's what we have to do, because my life is not just about me. My life is about my family. My life is about my church family, my life is about my neighbor. My life is about a lot of people, and so these-- the things that we're going to talk about this morning, I think can affect us by helping us understand how does Christ want me to react to that?
Let me stop just a minute before we look at this text a little bit more closely, let me ask you this question. Why do you think Paul said this? Why? Why do you think he was moved by the Spirit to say, you need to do these things? I think sometimes we read text and maybe we don't think about the why as much as well, Here's what he said. Instead of saying, why would he say something like that? Why would Paul feel the urge or the necessity. I understand, he was moved by the Spirit, but why would they both feel the necessity to say something like this? Apparently, there was not as much of this going on as needed to go on. And so he reiterates this idea to them. This is how you to are act toward each other, and it and so what, beginning in verse three tells us, it tells us how to accomplish these things. So in verse three, he says, "Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out, not only for his own interest, but also for the interest of others." Wow, don't do anything through selfish ambition or conceit. Do you have any of that? Do you have any selfish ambition? He did not say ambition. He's not saying don't have ambition. He's saying, don't have any selfish ambition or conceit. You have any of that. "But rather, in lowliness of mind, in humility. Let each esteem or count, as some translations say, count others better than himself. You see how difficult this is? Nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. Some of your translations use the word do. Some say be done with it's not in the original. So the idea is used when it's something's not in the original that's added. It's just used in the in the translation to make an English sentence sound reasonable, sound complete. And that's the idea. The original phrase is nothing from selfish ambition, just nothing. Not do nothing, but just nothing, nothing from selfish ambition. The idea is any self activity that pushes a person forward. It puts myself forward. It's not doing what I prefer, that's okay. Doing What I prefer is okay, but it's doing what I prefer in order to push me and my agenda and my motive ahead of everybody else's. That's what he's saying. It's so that I can enjoy personal glory and credit or praise. And he said, Don't do that. I'm guilty of that. I don't want to be guilty of it, but, but I'm guilty of that. Sometime I'm guilty of pushing an agenda. I'm guilty of pushing what I want. He says, Don't do that. Don't do that when you're thinking of what your self centered motives are, and there is a difference in that.
And then he says, the way that you accomplish that is that you esteem others better than yourself. Wow. He's saying, you think of, Kenny, you think of these people more than you think of yourself. And he's telling all of you is that you think of Kenny more than you think of yourself. That's very interesting language, isn't it? Esteem or count. Me doing this counting or esteeming; it's not contingent on if I whether or not I think you deserve that, or whether or not I think that's something that you ought to have because of who you are. It's not that. It's not an evaluation on what you evaluate somebody, then you consider whether or not you ought to count or esteem them worthy. This is the idea of consider others more significant. Period. I am to consider you more significant than me. Period. It's not qualified. It's just, I consider you higher than I consider myself. Now, now that's that's a difficult thing, but just think for a moment when you're around people who consider you more important than themselves. You like that? No, you love that. You don't like it. You love it. Why? Because that's -- they're showing to you. They're showing to you what I think Paul is saying in this context that we consider others more significant than myself, and there, as I said, there's no qualifier with that. That's what happens to us, period. And then verse four also tells us, let each of you look at not only for out for his own interest, but also for the interest of others. In the original the word interest is not in either place. So it would say, let each of you look out, not only for his own but also for others. You see, the interest is put there to help fill the idea. So there's no question about that. But I don't need that word to get the idea. Let each of you look out, not only for his own, but for others. That's not very natural for us. It's just not very natural for us. As a matter of fact, I think it's hard. It's hard for me to consider you before I consider me. It's very hard. But he says that's the spirit, that's the attitude, that's, that's the level of humility, that's the depth of humility as you and I as as a Christian, need to have.
Now he could stop there and just say that's what you need to have, but he but he goes further than what he does, and I love this is he gives what you might expect. He gives an example. That's what this context is saying. Because when we get to verse five, he's going to talk about the context of Jesus humbling himself. Now we're going to read this in just a second. But let me preface this by saying what typically happens when we read verses five through eight. I think what goes on in our minds. We see phrases like, He emptied Himself. He gave up. In essence, the idea is he gave up what he had in heaven, and he gave that up so that he could be what he ought to have on earth, and what we typically do, we say that that's talking about his deity versus his humanity, the fact that he gave that up. And I don't think that's what this context is talking about. I don't think that's anything about what this context is talking about. I don't think what we're about to read is some theological treatise about, Well, God's God, but he's also a man. I don't think that's what he's talking about. I think he's simply saying he gave up some rights as deity because he was humble. Let's read it.
"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ, Jesus, 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 and coming in the likeness of men 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." The point of the text is, is that when Jesus understood what he was trying to do and who he was and what he was trying to teach us, he didn't think about who he was, thought about what he did. The point is that Jesus did not consider his deity a reason to operate for his own selfish purposes. He could have clung to his rights. There is such a word as clung, isn't it? Cling, clang, clung. I don't know how that goes with that. I think clung is a word. You got it. You know what I'm trying to say. He clung to his right. He didn't. He didn't. He could have done. He didn't do that. Even Christ was not above sacrificing himself. I want you to think about that. Even Christ was not above sacrificing himself. Have this mind in you that was also in Christ Jesus, verse five says. You say, Wait a minute. No, he's He's God. Well, that's the point. He's God, and he didn't act like he was God. Even he was not above sacrificing himself. He gave up. Some translations say emptied. Some translations say he made himself of no reputation. I want you to think about that. We're not talking about you and me. We're talking about God. We're talking about God who came in the flesh, who emptied Himself. Verse eight, He humbled Himself. Just think about that. He humbled Himself. Three words that, in essence, summed this up, he looked like us and showed us who humility to the point of dying on the cross. He went that far. He went to that extent, and that he died on the cross. We're not talking about when we think this morning, in which we already have done but when we think about what Christ has done for us on the cross, we're not talking about one of us doing it. There may be, there may be some good thing about one of us dying for another person and that happens a lot. There are people who die for me, and there are people who have died for me, and there's something to be said about that. There's something to be remembered about that we we do that at different times during the year for people who have given their lives for the freedoms that we enjoy. And I think there's every right to do that. I think that's the very thing we ought to be doing. And be thankful for the fact that they were willing to do that, but they weren't God. Did they do a noble thing? Oh, yeah, very noble. And there, there are people in this audience. They've given their lives to to that kind of service. We sometime, we call it military service, but they've given their lives to that. And if they're here this morning, they had not lost their life in doing that, and had they lost their life, that would have been something that we would consider precious, because they gave their lives for something that I'm now enjoying. Fortunately, they didn't have to do that, but others have, but none of those people, none of those people, are God. And what Paul saying is, God did that. God did that by sending Jesus, who empty Himself to do that for us. So that's really, it seems to me, that's the point. Humble yourself, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought. Put others first, and then let me tell you an example. And let me tell you this is not just an example. This is the example. It doesn't get more important than this. The example can't be made more important than Jesus doing this for us. And so Paul says that.
Now let me ask you another question. Why would he-- Why would he say what he's about to say? We're going to read verses nine through 11. And I want you to ask which I think is very important to why would he say what he's about to say in this context. Okay, let's ask-- you ask yourself the question while we read it together. Okay, verses nine through 11, "therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father." There is a sense in which those verses, in my judgment, at a quick look, they don't fit the context, but upon further review, in my mind, they most definitely fit the context. And again, I don't think this is a theology lesson. I don't think this, this is some in depth study of, you know, well, everybody's going to bow to Jesus and because He is God, and I'm not belittling that anyway, it says that. But why say it here? Why? Why? Why say it here Paul? And I think the point is, is that he's saying that the glory that comes with humility is a glory that comes later. That's a word I don't think we're overly fond of. Later. Mommy, Can I have this? We get it for you later. Can we go there? We'll do it later. We're not overly fond of later, because what we want is now.
I think the point again is, is that this humbling spirit of one, this self sacrificing spirit that a person had, it leads to exaltation by God. Let me just parenthetically say, I think that's hard. I think that's hard. Sometimes I think it's hard. Let's make it practical. Are there sometimes during the day where you're faced with the idea of, do I put someone's interest above my own, or do I not? And May I just ask you this question, is that not hard sometimes? Does it almost seem impossible sometimes? And do you sometimes fail to do that? And the answer is yes, yes and yes. And that's why, that's why I think Paul is saying, Well, keep in mind what's what's going to happen if you do what Christ did you, you too will be exalted, just like God has exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name. Because waiting for reward isn't what we want. Usually, we don't want to wait. We want attention. We want focus. We want recognition. We want a pat on the back. And what, what Paul says is, God's going to give it to you. I don't think we need to minimize that. I don't think we act like, well, that's such a that's that takes a back seat to everything else. No, I want rewarded. I want the pat on the back. I want the attention. I want the focus. And God wants me to have it. He wants you to have it, but he says you need to wait. You need to be this in order to receive this. And I don't mean that to sound like this is why we do this, so we get this. But isn't there some aspect of that that's how you think it's not all about I love God and so I love him, and that's not just what I'm going to do. No, there's an aspect of this that says I'm doing this in order to obtain this. And I think if we minimize that, I think -- I don't think we understand this context. I think what he's saying is you too will be exalted. You will have what Jesus himself has.
So let me say it this way, joyful sacrifice will be rewarded. Joyful sacrifice, not begrudging sacrifice, but joyful sacrifice will be rewarded. Let me just run through. May I just run through a few verses that I think state that for us, this passage in Hebrews 12, "looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Well, we know where he is. We know what he's experiencing now, but that's not what he did experience. What he did experience was the enduring of the cross and the shame that went with the enduring of the cross. He had to do that in order to achieve or gain what he gained. And he said, he said, that's going to happen to you. That's, I think that's part of the point of Hebrews 12. You do that. What he just talked about in Hebrews 11 were all these people that suffered and went through all this, but they maintained their faith. And here's what happened to them. Or this passage in Romans eight, "and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ." There it is. "If indeed we suffer with Him that we may also be glorified together. I think some of the problem with us reading a passage like that is we don't see that right now. We're heirs with God. Well, the heirs with Him, and join heirs with Christ. What all that is has to do with the spiritual things we talk about. I'm an heir here on Earth. I'm an heir to these things. I obtain these things, these material things. These are things that have been that have been gathered and and once someone passes, I receive those things. That's not what we're talking about here. But the qualifier is, if we suffer with Him, if we indeed suffer with him, we'll be glorified together with him as well. And we have to think about that.
Or this passage, second, Timothy two, "This is a faithful saying, if we died with him, we also shall live with Him. If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us." I mean there's both sides of it, you see. If we endure, if we endure, we shall also reign with him. Well, this passage in James 4:10 that I think is direct, "Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, He will lift you up." I love, I love that passage in James four, it just gets right to the heart of that in James and verse 10, kind of, it kind of summarizes what's said in those past few verses. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. Humility says I think about you more, and I think about me, and I put you first. And that's what he says you have to do. James says that as well. Or this passage in Luke 18, remember the Publican, Pharisee, and the Publican, or sometimes we call it the tax collector. Jesus said about this tax collector, "I tell you this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other." The other was the Pharisee. "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
Pride destroys. An unwillingness to admit who I am and a proudness, that's the right word, a pride that says I'm somebody and I'm more important than you, or I'm more important than someone else, that that kind of pride will destroy us. And so again, with the Pharisee and the Publican, Jesus says the Publican humbled himself, and he will be exalted. It's also stated in Second Corinthians four, which is one of my favorite text at those last three verses of Second Corinthians four, as you know, are some of my favorites. But in verse seven, he says, "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." I love how Paul, it seems like, I love how he searches for words. And I don't mean by that that he doesn't know what he's talking about, but I think that he tries to use words to help us understand. And there are just-- there just are no words. They're just -- there just are no words. He uses phrases elsewhere, like far more exceeding, far more exceeding an eternal weight of glory. Far more exceeding? That's that's just another way to say, I'm not sure. I can't really fully explain it. You're just going to have to understand it's a far more exceeding and eternal weight glory. There's the issue, it's an eternal weight of glory. That's why it's far more exceeding. And he says, That's what Jesus showed us. But I'm going to tell you, that's hard to do. Being a humble spirit that puts everybody else ahead of myself. It's hard to do, and I don't care who you are, what I said this morning is true. It's hard to put somebody else ahead of yourself. But the more I do that, the more I become like him, which is exactly what Paul said you need to be. That's what Jesus showed us.
So you want a practical takeaway? Well, you got it. You leave here this morning and you say to yourself, Okay, how can I be more like Jesus? I put others ahead of myself. And I would suggest to you that you need to go do that. And I would suggest that I need to go do that. Part of us being willing to do that begins with us acknowledging who Jesus is and acknowledging that in order for me to do what I need to do, you know, my obedience to him that I need to just confess Him as Lord. Words words mean something. The idea of Lord means that He is the ruler of my life. You know who I want to rule my life. Me. I want to rule my life. And God said, No, you can't do that. You have to make Jesus the ruler of your life. And not only will you become humble, but you'll become obedient, and by doing that, you'll be like him, and that's the point. And so this morning, would you begin doing that? Would you be willing to give up what you want for yourself and say, I want what God wants for me? And I'm willing to do that, and I begin with this act of humility that says, Lord, make me what you want me to be. I would hope that that would be what all of us want, even though it is hard to do. But I pray that these thoughts this morning will have made some impact in your life, and maybe we'll offer some opportunities for change as well.
Let me do what I don't often do-- what I don't do as much as I should. Let me tell you briefly what I think you need to do to become a Christian. If you're living in sin and you're not what God wants you to be, you need to believe that Jesus can change you, that he can save you, because of what we've already discussed this morning. But if you believe that He is God, that He is the Son of God, if you believe that, and if you're willing to change how you feel about your life, and that you'll be repent-- you're willing to repent of your sins, if you're willing to confess to the world, beginning even in this place this morning, that Jesus is the Christ, that He is the ruler of your life, then what you lack is having your sins washed away. And as I read the New Testament, as I read the New Testament, what baptism does? It removes your sins. It means that you are washed in the blood of the Lamb. As we talked about in Revelation last week, you're washed in the blood of the Lamb. Your garments are clean. You've been saved from your sins. You're right with God, you have hope for heaven eternally. Is that something that you'd like to have? Is that something that you don't have? Let us help you this morning by rendering obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Won't you come as we stand and as we sing?
