The Humility of Jesus.pages

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THE HUMILITY OF JESUS
 PHILIPPIANS 2:6-11

Pastor Duane Smets

December 11th, 2016

I. The Holy Divinity of Jesus

II. The Humble Humanity of Jesus

III. The Humiliating Gift of Jesus

Good morning everyone. We are in the Advent season, Advent means coming or appearing of Jesus Christ. It's where Christmas gets it's name from, from the coming of Jesus. We recognize when He came into the world as a baby and we anticipate the time when He'll come again to gather all His family together. There are four weeks to Advent and this week is the 2nd week where we focus on the humility of Jesus and now have both the Prophecy Candle of Hope and the Bethlehem Candle of Humility lit.

Since this week is the humility week I thought I'd start my sermon off by talking about Santa…cause you know, Santa is just so humble, born in the O Little Town of Bethlehem. And to start us off I’ve got a short video for us to watch.

Increasingly in our culture the Christmas season has become more about Santa and presents than the Christ Christmas gets its name from. This week we put out a blog I wrote on Santa called “What We Tell Our Kids About Santa” which you can check out on our website.

Every year  in our home we love to fully embrace all the fun that goes along with Christmas.   We decorate our house inside and out, we have a tree, an elf on the shelf…which we’ve done fun things with. One morning he found and ate all the leftover Halloween candy and left all the wrappers all over the floor. One morning he found leftover spaghetti and put a bunch of M & M’s in it with syrup. We have a lot of fun with Joe, our elf.

So we’re into the Santa and have fun talking about Santa’s elves and playing along in all the fantastic stories about him.  However, usually during our nightly family worship times we have a number of serious discussions about Santa.  

When we we’re new parents we hadn’t really thought much about what our approach to Santa would be. Then in 2009 my first daughter was about two and we were walking by the Santa center at the mall and my daughter stopped, froze her step, and in her pause stared in confusion at the whole hoopla... Santa, his big chair, some elves, reindeer, candy canes and the whole bit.

I thought I'd try and help and clarify for her so I said, "that's Santa, sweetie." That only made things worse because then she said, "Santa scares me, daddy." I was sort of dumbfounded at how to reply so I just said, "Well you don't have to be scared honey, because Santa was a pastor just like daddy." Some pastors used to wear red robes when they preached and that’s why he wears that funny suit.

The real Santa was a pastor during the third and fourth century who's name is remembered in conjunction with the city where he pastored, "Nicholas of Myrna." The ancient city of Myrna is now the modern town of Kale, Turkey. It's about 700 miles north of Jerusalem.

Details of Pastor Nicholas' life are askant but basically what had happened is Jesus told the disciples to start the church and take the gospel out from Jerusalem, into Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Turkey is just north of Samaria. So it took a couple hundred years, but by that time there was a solid church in Myrna as the gospel just started to reach "ends of the earth."

We don't know if Pastor Nicholas started the church in Myrna or was appointed there. Due to many posthumous legends it's difficult to decipher what is actual history and what is fantasy. However, there are two things that are clear about his pastorate.

First, he was present at the council of Nicaea which produced the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed is a powerful and beautiful declaration of both the divinity and the humanity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the gospel which saves from sins and gives us new life through the resurrection of Christ.

It was drafted to protect Jesus' church from a heresy running around which speculated of a Jesus who was not fully eternal God and thus insufficient to fully pay the eternal penalty of sin. Thus, we know Pastor Nicholas cared deeply about doctrine, the true gospel of Jesus Christ, and it's power to save souls.

Second, though there are several extrapolated stories about Pastor Nicholas' generosity and how he extended it...what is consistent is that he was apparently very active in ministering to the poor. Whether it was in the form of money, food, or clothes he consistently made it a point to offer outward expressions of the work of the gospel in the heart which takes a poor and sick soul and gives it new life. Thus, we know that Pastor Nicholas cared deeply about mission and seeing as many people as possible come to know and experience the goodness of the gospel.

It's not much but these two facts about the real Santa paint a far different picture than the caricature of him in popular culture today. Today's Santa looks a lot more like a God figure than a pastor who serves as Jesus' servant.

Today's modern Santa is supposedly everywhere present..."he sees you when you're sleeping" and supposedly all-knowing..."he knows when you've been good or bad." But being everywhere present and all-knowing are simply not gifts God gives to pastors, they are attributes which belong to God alone.

In addition, the modern Santa apparently seems to give good gifts regardless of whether or not kids have been good or bad. You never hear the stories about what happens to the bad kids.

Does Santa the all-knowing bookkeeper then punish kids for being bad? If he doesn't, is he really good then? If he just sweeps bad under the rug and pretends it isn't real or didn't happen then isn't Santa corrupt for giving good gifts to bad kids?

Christmas is a time to celebrate the gospel. The gospel is the good news that though we are all bad kids and deserve not gifts but eternal judgment, God sent His son Jesus to be born as a little baby in order to grow up and take our place of punishment as a substitute and suffer eternally so we would not have to. Jesus is the greatest gift of all that God has ever given unto the peoples of the world. He’s so much better than Santa.

Today with the second week of Advent on humility what I want us to dig into and see is the humility

of Jesus as being one of the biggest reasons why Jesus really is the greatest gift of all. So if there’s a phrase or line to take away from today it’s this: Jesus is God’s greatest gift.

The passage we’re going to work with today is Philippians 2:6-11. Why don’t you all stand with me in honor of God’s Word. I read the passage, declare it as God’s Word, we’ll thank Him for it and I’ll pray.

“(Jesus Christ) who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so 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.” – Philippians 2:6-11 • Pastoral Declaration: This is the Word of the Lord.

• Congregational Response: Thanks Be To God.

• Pastoral Prayer

The significance of the Christmas, the Advent story is found in those first three verses. This is the Christmas story. What we have here in Philippians in these first few verses is a theological explanation of what was happening when Jesus was born

If you read the story in the Gospel of Matthew we get a narrative explanation. Philippians is the theological significance, Matthew has the narrative story. Here’s the narrative story in Matthew.

"Now the birth of Jesus Christ  took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.  But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife,  but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.” – Matthew 1:18-25 What the passage in Philippians does is explain character of Jesus displayed when He became a little baby and I’ve got three points for us to walk through in looking at that: The Holy Divinity of Jesus, The Humble Humanity of Jesus and The Humiliating Gift of Jesus.

I. The Holy Divinity of Jesus First, notice Jesus is God. The angel told Joseph Jesus would be "God with us." Here in Philippians we read, "he was in the form of God." What that means is Jesus is God.

Before Jesus was born He already existed. One time Jesus was teaching and preaching and telling people how if they were not serving God, the one true Father, then they are serving a different Father,

the devil. That didn't make people too happy, so they start saying Jesus has a demon. And Jesus says you dishonor my Father and you dishonor me.

Then the dudes who are there are like, "What! Who do you think you are? Are you greater than Abraham, the Father of our faith?" And Jesus says, I tell you the truth before Abraham was I AM (John 8:58)." In the Bible you have four different Gospel accounts, four different stories like four different news channels, about the life and ministry of Jesus. In the fourth one, the gospel of John, John often calls Jesus the Word and the first words of his gospel read like this, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us… Jesus Christ (John 1:1.14,17)."

Jesus was there…in the beginning. When God said, "Let there be light and there was light." Jesus was there. When God made the expanse of the sky and caused the stars to shine…Jesus was there. When God made the animals and the plants…Jesus was there. And when God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed life into him making him a living being…Jesus was there.

Colossians 1:16 in the Bible says "All things were created by (Jesus) and for (Jesus).” This is the deal, this is what makes the Christmas story so huge and significant, that Jesus was God, very God, the one wonderful, powerful, beautiful, glorious, Creator of the universe…and He became a man.

If Jesus were just another person who was born and who did some good things in His life, it would not be as big of deal, He would merely be on par with some other people who did some good things. But if God, God Himself, Jesus, became a man…that is a big big big deal.

You see it makes all the difference in the world if you believe little baby Jesus was actually God or not. Because if He was, then it is one of the most astonishing miracles and events that have ever taken place AND it is the most humble act any person has ever performed.

The heights the all-powerful God of heaven came from to come here, to earth, as a little baby is unfathomable.

J.I. Packer in his seminal work, “Knowing God” says the real difficulty in believing in the Jesus of the Bible lies not so much in the the fact that He died on the cross but believing that Jesus really was God come to earth. He writes,

“The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man. The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught like any other child. And there was no illusion or deception in this: the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth.”

It’s a staggering claim and it’s more than a claim, it’s what actually happened. The story of Christmas is the story of a God so humble that He would condescend to the lowest form of a little baby. Friends, we serve and believe in a humble God. Jesus is God’s greatest gift.

The humility of God is shown in the birth of Jesus as the divine one of God. Likewise the humility of

God is shown in the life of Jesus as the truly human one. So let’s move into our next point for today, “The Humble Humanity of Jesus.”

II. The Humble Humanity of Jesus Jesus becomes man. Look at our passage in Philippians. Each word here is chosen with special care here by the Apostle to describe Jesus. Jesus did not…"count equality with God a thing to be grasped (held onto, retained) but made himself nothing (or emptied himself) and took the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself…"

Wow. Are you sure? God, Jesus Himself becomes human? "Born in the likeness of men…human form?" Astounding. How does God do that? I don't know. How to you create or cause things to exist before there is anything? I don't know. I suppose when your God and you make the rules and the laws of gravity, you have more resources at your fingertips.

But it is clear. God becomes a man. God, the God who always has been and was never born, undergoes the experience of being born as a man.

Hardly anyone these days questions whether Jesus was a man. It's so clear here and when you read the life of Jesus it's clear. He walks, talks, eats, sleeps…yep, He's a man.

The challenge today is to believe that Jesus could actually be God. I merely submit the account of Jesus to you and I also ask this… If God didn't do something like this, become a man, what hope is there for us, unless God stepped into our world to save us? We need a savior who is both like us and yet unlike us, greater and better than us.

Maybe you’ve wondered why God waited thousands years before coming into the world? Why didn't He just come into the world right after everything went haywire in the garden of Eden?

I believe one of the answers is to show us how much in need of Him we are and how apart from His intervention we will push God away and turn toward other things. The result not recognizing God and worshipping is turmoil within our hearts. We try and make the turmoil stop by doing all kinds of things or seeking some solution from other things and other people but nothing works. The results are ruined joy, ruined relationships, and strife with people and nations. We needed Jesus to become a man to save us.

That He was willing to do so is incredible. It’s incredible because Jesus becoming a man is humiliating. If you are the God of the universe…how humbling is it to become a man, born as a little baby? Think about it.

Jesus in taking on real human flesh shows us true humility. I mean, if anyone has any right not be humble it's God. If you’re the most powerful being ever…and you know everything there is to know…there's nothing to be humble about. It's just fact. Your it God!

But God is not just a wonderful God because of His power and knowledge but also because of His character. His character is one of compassion and humility. "(He) did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped."

He could have counted or consider it a thing to be grasped, to hold on to and retain and he would be fully within his rights! But instead He considered us and our plight and how we have all wandered away from Him, like sheep led astray, and He decided to do something about it.

What He did is the most supreme example of humility that you will ever find. God surrenders His glory. Not His God-ness. When Jesus becomes a man He did not stop being God, He doesn't give up His divine power or wisdom or any of those things. They were and are still firmly in place. But He gave up His glory, the constant display of His God-ness.

In verse 7 where it says He "made himself nothing" or some translations say "emptied himself." He did not empty himself of divinity but rather of constant divine display. He was humble. He clothed or veiled the light of His deity. He let it out on occasion, like when He walked on water or commanded the wind and the rain to stop, or when He told the fish where to swim and put coins in their mouth.

But He was very careful about who He showed His divine glory to and when. Jesus had some things to say and some things to do and if He let the cat out of the bag too soon, He wouldn't be able to do what he came to do. Namely going to the cross to die for us.

Jesus was a humble man…and He was humble from the very beginning. In this week of Advent we light the Bethlehem candle and it's called the Bethlehem candle to remind us of Jesus' humility demonstrated in being born in a little town. You might hear the song playing in the stores during this season, "O Little Town of Bethelehem." Let me read a couple of the stanzas,

O little town of Bethlehem

How still we see thee lie

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by

Yet in thy dark streets shineth

The everlasting Light

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight

How silently, how silently,

The wondrous gift is given!

So God imparts to human hearts

The blessings of his heaven.

No ear may hear his coming,

But in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive him, still

The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem!

Descend to us, we pray;

Cast out our sin and enter in,

Be born in us to-day.

We hear the Christmas angels

The great glad tidings tell;

O come to us, abide with us,

Our Lord Emmanuel!

Oh the need for us to humble ourselves and have Jesus be born in our hearts. Jesus, God Himself, becomes a man, and is born in Bethlehem.

Bethlehem was a small, largely insignificant town. It was about 5 miles south of Jerusalem, the big city. It probably only had a couple thousand people living in it. It wasn't prestigious in any way. Just a small little town.

Some of you know that I'm into the UFC, I try to watch as many of the fights as I can and keep track of the fighters and stuff. Before any two guys fight, they always show the "Tale of the Tape" which has their weight, height, reach, how many fights they've won or lost, and then they say where they are fighting out of. Almost always it's some big city, like L.A. or San Diego, or something. But every once in awhile there is a guy who from some little town.

Recently, there was this farm boy dude who was from Elign, Minnesota. Anyone ever heard of Elign? It has a population of like 826. When the fighters get a chance to thank people and stuff, the only guy this dude had to thank was his little brother for taking care of the farm for dad, so his dad could fly out and watch the fight. Elgin, Minnesota. That's like Bethlehem.

You are the God of the universe and you can be born anywhere you want, but you decide to be born in Elgin, Minnesota…Bethlehem. Humility from the start. Can you imagine how humiliating it was for Jesus?

He's poor. Ends up doing a poor carpenters job. Nobody knows who He really is, and when He tries to tell them, they just mock him. What humility!

When He’s about 30 years old He decides to just take a few guys to try and really teach them. These disciples. So He hangs out with them for a few years and they barely get it. So on one occasion, Jesus says let me show you.

They’re about to have dinner but before they eat He gets out a bowl of soapy water, grabs a towel, and gets down on his hands and knees and starts going around the room washing everyone's feet all dirty from wearing sandals and walking around in the dirt…He says this is who I am and this is what I'm doing. I am a servant and He says in Mark 10:45 “I did not come to be served but to serve and give my life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus, born in Bethlehem as a little baby. Born to give His life away. Can you imagine it?

We covenanted these children today. Each of these parents know. When you look at your fresh brand new little baby, it’s such a powerful experience. Everything is so small. Small little hands, small little feet, fingers, nose mouth…all these little small parts but it all works!

Imagine, God born a little baby…and then throughout His whole life lives as a perfect example of what we are to be like and then dies a death in our place so we do not have to suffer the consequence of not being like we are supposed to be. What a gift of God! What love! What humility!

The humble humanity of Jesus. There is nothing like it. Jesus is the most humble man who has ever lived. Jesus is God’s greatest gift.

When we look at the humble humanity of Jesus and see it and truly see it the only appropriate response is not only to admire it and realize how much we need the humility of Jesus. That’s the funny thing, the humility of Jesus actually ends up humbling us.

So let’s talk about that more in our third and final point for today “The Humiliating Gift of Jesus”,

III. The Humiliating Gift of Jesus The humility of Jesus is what we need.

Fredrick Neitzsche taught that humility is weakness. He once said,

“Religions that teach pity, self-contempt, humility, self-restraint and guilt are incorrect. 
 The good life is ever changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense, creative and risky.”

Jesus teaches and shows us something different.

C.J. Mahaney, a Pastor and leader of the Sovereign Grace denomination, wrote a little book called, "Humility." It's great little book. In it he explores the nature of humility and why it is so important. In it he quotes 1 Peter 5:5 which says "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." And then Mahaney says humility must be considered next to pride.

He writes,

"Humility and pride, cannot coexist. Where one is fostered, the other is defeated…Pride is when sinful human beings aspire to the status and position of God and refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon Him…Humility is honestly assessing ourselves in the light of God's holiness and our sinfulness… Pride is an attitude of self sufficiency in relation to God and self righteousness in relation to others." Humility is attitude of dependence in relation to God and service in relation to others."

Humility. It goes to the heart of our issues and our need for the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are all proud. It may be in different ways but we are all proud.

Pride can be found by thinking about the things we get angry about. I get mad when things happen that don't go the way I want them too. Why? Because I'm proud and think I deserve things to go my way. Or you get angry when someone says or does something that hurts you because you feel insulted and mistreated…your pride kicked in and says this person or that person should do this or be this way toward you. We so often think the world revolves around us.

Pride can be found in what we are afraid of. Maybe you don't think you are a very good person and you are afraid that God is going to punish or can't love you or doesn't want you? That's pride which calls God out on His compassion and says He can’t or won’t be good to you.

Pride can be found in our motives. If you are like, "I got to stop doing that because I don't want to be that kind of person." This is bad, where the motive is pride, where you are comparing yourself to other people instead of looking to God and desiring to be who He made you to be.

Pride can be found in a false humility..where we deprecate our own sanctity, gifts, talents, and accomplishments for the sake of receiving praise or adulation from others. So you try and act like your not proud…but in your heart it just shows how proud you are.

Pride can be found very simply when we think we are smarter or we know better than God. When we know what is really true but we resist it and heap up our own reasons.

Pride… We are experts at justifying ourselves…at giving and finding reasons to tell ourselves that what we are doing or that our attitudes are fine and rightly justified.

The Puritan Charles Bridges says this,

"Pride lifts up the heart against God. It contends for the supremacy with Him. How unseemly is this sin. A creature so utterly dependent, so fearfully guilty, yet proud in heart."

The reality is the only way we can ever become truly humble is by a work of the humble Jesus in our hearts. It is the sublime and perfect humility of Jesus coming in and changing us. You see we need Jesus, but we need more than just to follow His example. We’re unable to do that no matter how hard we try.

And the way Jesus changes us is through His chief work. What we need is the ultimate expression of Jesus’ humility, which is found in His culminating life work of the cross. On the cross the humble God, born as a humble baby, who lived a perfect humble life, gives up His life on a cross to die for prideful sinners like you and I.

When we believe that, truly believe that it humbles us. Not just by thinking of it and thinking it was a humble act, but in believing Jesus humility enters our hearts as we say, “Lord, I’m a sinner, save me.”

What happens then is we are changed. We’re changed deep down and the result is I don’t have to try not to be prideful because our identity changes from being one who has tried to earn favor with God or get ahead in life by my own efforts to being a person who simply sees themselves as a gift of God’s humble grace.

Then and only then do we naturally start being humble like Jesus. We start to naturally live lives of thanks and worship rather than petition, demand, and disappointment. This is the humiliating gift of Jesus and it’s a wonderful gift.

Being humiliated like that is one of the best things we can ever experience as a human beings because in it we find, that no matter what our faults and failures are, we have a God who loves us and has given us His Son to cover and free us from all those damaging things.

The gift of Jesus humiliates us and that’s why He’s such a great gift. Jesus is God’s greatest gift.

Conclusion

Well, it’s been good today to talk about The Holy Divinity of Jesus, The Humble Humanity of Jesus and The Humiliating Gift of Jesus.

We started out the sermon today talking about Santa. We end the sermon today talking about Jesus. Christmas is about Jesus Christ, God’s greatest gift. Jesus is God’s greatest gift because He was God who became a man and died for our sins. That’s better than any Christmas present. It’s the Christmas present.

We’re going to conclude by having a time of response like we do every week here at The Resolved where we get up out of our chairs and come to the table of Jesus to receive His gift to us. His gift is this reminder that He loved us enough to come into the world, live a perfect life and to die for our sins and rise again.

At this table we take a piece of bread as His life come into the world and we dip it into the wine or the juice as His blood shed on the cross for us. This act and response of coming to the table and partaking is actually a pretty humbling act. In it we humble ourselves before God saying, yes, I’m a sinner and I need you Jesus. Thank you for coming, for me. Thank you for living, for me. And thank you for dying, for me.

So as you come today. Humble yourselves before God and say, “Thank you Jesus. you are the greatest gift of all.”