King has come 1

Phil. 2:5-8 "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, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross."

During this Christmas season, I want to take these four verses and bring four messages from them.

These four verses have been called one of the greatest descriptions of who Jesus was, what He did, and of His nature and personality ever written.

It describes His great condescension...

Jesus left the glories of heaven and stepped down into our world, He condescended to become one of us.

This required an incredible humbling process----

He left His position in heaven to become a man....

Then allowed Himself to be mistreated by the very mankind He created....

And ultimately went to the Cross as a common criminal...

This is inexplicable condescension!

To really understand the profound nature of what we are told here, we need to start where Christmas started, for it didn't begin in the manger in Bethlehem.....

Christmas began in eternity past before the universe was even created...

How could this be?

Well, let's begin with the first thing Paul tells us about our Lord...

Jesus was God

The first thing our text tells us is that Jesus was very God...He was and is God the Son.

2: 6 "...Who, being in the form of God..."

2: 6 "...who, being in very nature God..."

2: 6 "...who, though he was God..."

So Paul is telling us that Jesus was not just a representative of God, or a spokesman for God, or a teacher about God...He was very GOD THE SON!

The Bible reveals that Jesus identified Himself as God!

He spoke of "the glory which he had with the Father before the world was;"

"And now, Father, glorify Me in your Presence with the glory I had with you before the world began" (John 17:5)-----RIGHT THERE HE CLAIMS DEITY!

We know this was one of His claims because it got Him in trouble with the Jews...

In John 5:18 it says: "...the Jews began trying all the more to kill Him: not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God."

So Jesus claimed to be God!

Now folks, either He was indeed God the Son, or He was a delusional psychopath in need of a hospital....

Does a delusional psychopath teach the sublime things Jesus taught?

Or heal the sick and raise the dead?

Or live a short life of 33 years only to become the primary centerpiece of the human race to this day? NO!

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And we see that, after His death and resurrection, this is exactly what His followers said of Him....that He was God.

The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Colossians tells us plainly that Jesus, like God, was and is an eternally existing personality, with no beginning and no end....

Paul writes, "He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation" (Col 1:17).

John's gospel affirms this, "In the beginning was the Word (Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God."

LB "Before anything else existed, there was Christ,* with God. He has always been alive and is himself God" (John 1:1-2 ).

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Then next the Bible says that....

II. He was the perfect reflection of God the Father...

If you want to know what God looks and acts like, you need only look at Jesus!

Colossians 1:15 "Christ is the visible image of the invisible God."

Heb.1:3 "He is the radiance of His (God's) glory, the exact expression of His nature..."

And again, Jesus also said this very thing about Himself!

One day He told a follower named Philip, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you?" (John 14:9)

Look in your Bible and SEE His compassion on the sick and lost, WATCH Him heal and comfort the downcast, BEHOLD His mastery of understanding the heart of man....CONSIDER how the forces of nature obeyed Him, PONDER all these things knowing that they are a perfect reflection of what God is like!

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And thirdly, we are told that as God...

III. He also CREATED all things...

John 1:3 "All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made."

LB "He created everything there is—nothing exists that he didn’t make" (John 1:3 ).

In the book of Hebrews we also read, "...He (God) has spoken to us through his Son...through whom he made the world and everything there is" (Heb 1:2).

NLT "...through the Son he created the universe."

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ILLUS: You know that I love nature....it is the handiwork of God.

And when I watch a beautiful bird sitting in the branches of a tree, or consider how a gorgeous Monarch butterfly emerges from a lowly cocoon, or think about the vast reaches of outer space, I realize that all these things came from the fingertips of the hands that were nailed to a Cross for me!

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Apparently the creation of the universe went like this:

God spoke it, the Son "amen'd" it, and the Spirit brought it to pass.

Jesus Himself said in the gospels, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does" (John 5:19).

So there was and is a beautiful cooperation and unity between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit!

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SUMMARY: Jesus was very God the Son, He perfectly reflected the Father, the creation of the universe flowed through Him, and finally....

IV. He is the literal SUSTAINER of His creation...

Col 1:17 "All things are held together by Him."

Heb 1:3 "He sustains everything by the mighty power of his command."

He is "upholding and maintaining and propelling all things [the entire physical and spiritual universe] by His powerful word [carrying the universe along to its predetermined goal]." AMP

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Let me blow your mind here...

This means that by His word the universe is a cosmos instead of a chaos.

Without Jesus the universe would all fly apart, it would instantly implode and explode.

One commentator writes, "Were He to merely relax His grasp on the universe, every atom would come apart."

Scripture says that the universe is SUSTAINED by His Word, and it will END by His Word...

Why does He still sustain this old world with all its problems and heartache and bloodshed and wickedness?

Because He is "not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Pet 3:9).

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But as it did with Noah and the ark, the day will come when the last person that's going to be saved is saved, and the door of salvation will be shut...

The Bible describes exactly what will happen when, by the Word of Jesus, it all ends...

"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up" (2 Pet. 3:10).

The Greek word translated "elements" here means "the building blocks of the universe."

The word "dissolved" comes from a word meaning "unloosed."

Clearly this first-century former fisherman but now a great Apostle, Simon Peter, is telling us by the revelation of the Holy Spirit that the day will come when God will let go of the nuclear forces that hold the atom together.

The result will be a deafening noise accompanied with a universal melt down!

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Now, breathe deep and lets return to the FIRST 7 WORDS of our text that say, "Who, being in the form of God."

Here we see that Paul is reaching back to a time before the first Christmas, before the creation, when Jesus, God the Son--the Word--was with God.

And it is there, somewhere in eternity past, when Christmas was first conceived.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit had a conference.

They knew man would be created, and they knew he would fall into sin.

And so...the plan for man's salvation was decided....

We would be redeemed by blood, the blood of God the Son...

God the Son said, "I will become one of them, I will live a sinless life, I will then give my life for their redemption, and will rise from the dead on their behalf.

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We know this is true because the Bible says...

"God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake" (1 Pet. 1:20).

"Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes" (Eph. 1:4).

Don't ask me to explain it...I can't!

But as Christmas approaches, let's remember that very God became a man, lived a sinless life, was killed on the Cross as a common criminal, spilled His blood for our sins, and rose from the dead on our behalf.