THE STORY OF THE HUMBLE KING

INTRODUCTION

Good morning!

One thing I've realized as I've been growing up is that Christmas is a little bit different as an adult, and especially like as an adult with kids. It's still great and I still love it, but I feel like so much has changed.

I mean, when I was growing up, I was one of those kids who tried to stay up all night because I was so excited about what would be under the Christmas tree. Anybody else try to pull those Christmas Eve all nighters? We had our like cassette tapes and we had Mr. Henry and adventures and Odyssey and we put them in back to back and we tried to stay up all night just because we were so excited—but you know it never worked. We always ended up falling asleep.

But can you imagine what it would be like if you were able to stay up all night as a kid and you run downstairs at the break of dawn and you see all these presents with your name on it, and you start ripping them open and checking it out and you open the first present and realize it's empty. And you get to the next present, you open it up, it's empty. The next present, you open it up, and it's empty—and even though you have all these gifts that have your name on it, there is actually nothing in them.

[[We would feel cheated! Violated!]] Like something that was ours had been taken from us! I mean, if this was a joke, this would be a totally cruel joke!

But if we zoom out, what’s so interesting is that at the end of the day, everything under that tree is a gift—it’s something that is undeserved, and freely given! And yet what we discover is that you and I can become so used to these sorts of things, and we can develop this sense of entitlement. We can feel like we have every right to those gifts! And we can feel so betrayed when it doesn’t go our way.

We see this more and more around this Christmas season sometimes, but I think the same thing is true generally.

We can spend our lives, if we're not careful, just trying to get what we want, just trying to insist on what’s ours, just trying to leverage what we have to get more of what we think we need. If we're not careful, our whole lives can become about building up our own kingdom—and yet we know we know that in the end this is a losing game. because when we leave this world, all the toys go back in the box. You don't get to take it with you. [[And so, this is not the kind of life that's worth living, this life that's just after selfish gain.]] And yet it’s like this is how we’re hard-wired.

And so with that in mind, the question I want to ask as we continue our study this morning is this: In a world that’s hard-wired for selfish gain, what is the better way demonstrated in the story of Christmas?

PASSAGE SET UP

And to answer that question, we’re going to look not at one of the Gospel narratives, but we’re going to jump into one of the Apostle Paul’s letters, the book of Philippians. So you can go ahead and start navigating your way to Philippians 2.

As we are getting ready for Christmas as a Church, we’ve been in this Advent series called “The Humility of Christmas,” and we’ve been looking at the example of humility set by different people who surrounded Christ’s birth—first Mary, and then Joseph. And today, we’re going to look again at the story of Christmas, in the book of Philippians where Paul writes, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).

And what we’re going to see is that Paul tells the story of Jesus’ life, including His birth, because Jesus sets a new example for us. He shows us a new way of doing things. And for those of us who are followers of Christ, He sets a pattern for us to follow after. And my hope is that what we’ll find once again, and what we will begin to have a greater appreciation for, is that the story of Christmas is the story of a Humble King.

So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up to Philippians 2, and once you’ve found verse 5, please stand with me to honor the reading of God’s Word.

Phil 2:5-11 “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming 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 acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

You may be seated!

POINT ONE

One thing I want to point out right at the beginning is that, in the NIV, you’ll notice that the words are formatted differently to appear as prose. This is because many people believe that Paul is either quoting a hymn that was used in the early church, or at least that He is using this highly poetic language to describe Jesus. But in either case, the words that we read here almost speak for themselves! I mean, we have an absolutely beautiful depiction of the life of Jesus and what it was about. And we get a glimpse into his mindset, which is Paul wants to show as an example for us. [[And so as we work through the Text this morning, we’re going to unpack the Word of God to see how Paul is pointing to Jesus as our example, and then in the end we’ll close by considering how we should respond to Him. ]]

When we pick things up in verse 5, we’re catching Paul right in the middle of an idea. So to give some context, if we rewind back to verse 3, Paul is calling the Philippians to “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Philippians 2:3–4 ). So evidently, the church in Philippi was having trouble with their relationships. They were having trouble living together in harmony. And the fact that Paul is calling them to look “not to their own interests but to the interests of others” seems to strongly imply that you had people who were looking to their own interests at the expense of others! And after all, isn’t this what we tend to do? Like we talked about earlier, we have this hard wiring that causes us to live for ourselves—which is the same kind of sinful pride that we’ve been talking about throughout this series, and is causing problems in the community of believers in Philippi.

So Paul is calling the Philippians to a different way: Out of self-centeredness. And now in order to do that, he turns to point to the example of Christ—and specifically, to the “mindset” of Christ. And in these first three verses of our Text this morning, as we consider the story of the Humble King, Paul is going to show how Jesus brought Himself low. So let’s go back to the beginning of our Text and see what we can learn from Jesus’ example.

Reading the Text again, Paul tells us that Jesus, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.”

The first thing I want to point out here is this phrase, Christ was “in very nature God.” Because as Paul is telling the story of Jesus, and showing us His mindset, the first thing he wants us to know, which is very important, is that Jesus was not just like God, but that He was in very nature God. In other words, that Jesus is God!

And as God, Jesus is the immeasurable, eternal, almighty, unmade, self-existing Lord. And part of the reason I believe Paul uses this as a starting point is because He knows that you cannot fully appreciate the story of Jesus if you think it began in the manger.

What Paul is doing is setting up a contrast, and he’s showing us that if we are going to understand the story of Christmas, and the example that Jesus set for us, we need to first understand His starting point. If we’re going to understand what it means that Christ was brought low, and if we’re going to learn from His example, then we need to know where He was lowered from. Because the truth is that, when Christ came to the Earth, He was not merely some human being who lived an exemplary life; Rather, He was exercising the greatest humiity that had ever been known on the face of the Earth up to that point. Because when Christ came to the Earth, He gave up a life of indescribable glory.

You see, Christmas is about Christ’s birth; but it’s not about Christ’s beginning. So you can write down long-form one of the most significant truths of the Christian faith: that Jesus eternally pre-existed as God.

And part of the reason I want to have you write this out is that, even though the Christmas story is so widely known, people are confused about the story of Jesus. And just to demonstrate this, there is a large survey that goes out every few years called “The State of Theology,” and in 2022 they had something like 4,000 people respond to this survey. And when asked whether they agree with the statement “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God,” 40% strongly agreed, and 15% somewhat agreed. And I was a little bit suprised by that, so I filtered the results to only include those respondents who identified as Evangelical Christians. And among the 711 Evangelical Christians who responded, 70% strongly agreed that Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.

And because this is the case, I don’t want to shame anyone here, but I do want to state very clearly that this is wrong. This is NOT what we believe! This is not the teaching that we receive from the Text. [[ Friends, Jesus is NOT the first and greatest being created by God, because Jesus IS God! ]] And like Paul says in Colossians 1:16, “in Him all things were created!”

And this means that the story of Jesus began before the beginning of time! Jesus always existed in the Triune dance of the life and glory of God. He lived in this perfect union in the Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit. Or in other words, because Jesus eternally pre-existed as God, He enjoyed perfect glory, power, and intimacy with the Father and Spirit forever.

And yet... like it says in our Text, He “did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage.” In other words, even though Jesus Christ is God, He did not use His status as God, look at what it says, “to His own advantage.” Or some translations with say, “something to be grasped.”

So the idea here is that Christ did not cling closely to His rights and privileges. It’s that Jesus did not hold on to His life in glory at all costs. And to a world that is hard-wired for selfish gain, this sounds totally unbelievable!

See, we’ve all heard the phrase “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and the reason this is so popular is because human beings tend to use their status and their power to serve themselves at the expense of others. And if we’re honest, this same tendency lives in us. It’s our self-centeredness. It’s our ego. It’s our pride. This is how the world works!

If you have the power and status to have it, you should have it! If you have the right to it, it should be yours! If it feels good, you should do it!

And if someone says otherwise, we feel totally violated, [[like a kid on Christmas morning with empty presents!]] Don’t I have a right to my money? Don’t I have a right to my time? Don’t I have a right to my happiness? But friends, these attitudes, these mindsets destroy relationships. They ruin us, because they are all about serving King Me!

So we insist on our way. We insist on our comfort. We insist on our pleasure. We insist on our rights.

And yet what Paul is saying is that in Jesus, we have someone who had absolute power, status, authority—and yet who did not use it to serve Himself! Rather, in giving up a life of glory, Jesus did just the opposite. So this is the example we see in Jesus: Instead of insisting on His rights, Jesus willingly gave for the sake of others.

And that giving for the sake of others cost Jesus everything.

See, in the story of the humble king, if Jesus didn’t use His divinity to His own advantage, what did He choose instead? Let’s go back to the Text. Paul writes that, rather than insisting on His own privileges, Jesus “made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (vv. 7-8). It’s in these verses that we get the word for our series, “The Humility of Christmas.” So not only did Jesus give up a life of glory, but He gave up a life of glory so that He could live a life of humility.

And this meant, as Paul says, that Jesus “made Himself nothing.” Or as the ESV has it, “[He] emptied Himself.” This is such a powerful phrase that it causes people to wonder, what is Paul really saying here? What does it mean that Jesus emptied Himself? And while we can speculate on what exactly that means, we don’t have to wonder too much because Paul tells us how, or in what manner, Christ emptied Himself in the next two phrases. What does it means that Christ emptied Himself? How did He empty Himself? It was BY “taking on the very nature of a servant,” and BY “being made in human likeness.” So you can write down: Jesus emptied Himself by becoming human. And the word that we use to describe Jesus becoming human is the word “incarnation,” which literally means “to take on flesh.”

See, when Paul says that Jesus “made Himself nothing,” what he is NOT saying is that when Jesus came to the Earth, He stopped being God. Neither is he saying that Jesus gave up His divine nature for 33 years, and then went back to being the eternal Son.

[[The point that Paul is making is not that Christ ceased to be God, but that during His time on Earth, He did not exercise His rights as God.]]

And I think that the best example of this in the Scriptures is the account of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. You recall that in Luke 4, we read that Luke 4:1–2 “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.” So here we see several things: First of all, Jesus, even though He was God, did pave His own road. Instead, Jesus lived His entire life in obedience to the Father, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And we also see that because Jesus was human, he was hungry! He knew what it was like to live in a body that experienced normal human needs and appetites.

And then finally we see the enemy tempting Him by trying to get Jesus to turn a stone into bread—in other words, to use His divine power to avoid the suffering of being human! We see the enemy tempting Jesus to take a shortcut to ruling the nations, and being recognized as the Son of God. The temptations of Christ are all about getting Christ to avoid the suffering of His life and the shame of His death on the cross!

But the reality is that Jesus could have come to the earth in all His glory. He could have used His power to skate through His life. He could have demanded the worship of all the kings of all the nations of the world. He had every right to do so! He was entitled to their worship, and as God He could have demanded it! But He willingly chose to take on flesh and be born like every one of us, knowing that He would suffer. Knowing that it would cost Him. As a matter of fact, Jesus took on flesh for the express purpose of being able to represent us, and become not just a servant, but the Suffering Servant. And that’s exactly what Paul talks about next.

So back in our Text, not only did Jesus empty Himself by becoming human; He also “humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross.” And this word “humbled” is the idea of “being lowered down.” So what Paul is saying is that Jesus went from the highest heights of heavenly glory down to the Earth, and lower still into death. So you can write down, Jesus lowered Himself by becoming obedient to death. And that death would come by crucifixion—the death of a slave, the death that was too gruesome to discuss in polite company, because it was designed to get as much pain out of a human body as you could. And Jesus took on a human body for just this purpose.

But He didn’t do it for no reason. When Jesus took the cross, He did it because He was looking to the interests of others—because He was he interests of those who were dead and lost in sin!

And so just like it says in Isaiah, “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” ( Isaiah 53:3–6).

From heaven, Jesus saw all that would take place. He saw the humility and the suffering and the pain.

It meant that He would leave the comfort of heaven to live out and experience the weaknessess and the frailties of being truly human. It meant that He would go from the worship of the angels to the mockery of His people. It meant that He would go from the throne to the manger. And it meant that He would go from the manger to the cross. But this was the only way! So Jesus became obedient to this way knowing that it would cost Him everything. Knowing that becoming the suffering servant was the only way to save sinful humanity.

So now, before we move on, before we close, we need to pause. This is the way we learn from Christ: [[He gave up a life of glory in order to live a life of humility for the sake of others.]] For Jesus, that meant leaving heaven, taking on flesh, and heading to a cross.

He left the glory of heaven so that He could live the life that we could never live and then die the death that we deserved for sin. And this is the most extreme example possible: From the very highest of heights, to the very lowest of lows. Christ gave up everything for our sake.

And so this is the arguement that Paul is making: If Christ, who had everything, who was owed everything, who deserves eternal honor and glory and praise, if Christ, who is infinitely greater than us, can freely give up what is rightfully His and DIE for us, then surely we can look to the interests of others rather than clinging to what is rightfully ours.

So the question I want you to consider is this: Are you willing to follow that example? Paul says that in our relationships, we are to have the same mindset as Christ. Christ didn’t set His mind on what He had, or what He was owed. Instead He set His mind on our good, and set Himself aside in order to serve. So in your relationships, are you willing to set yourself aside to serve others?

In your life, you have status, and privileges, and rights, and authority in your sphere of influence. What are you using it for? Are you using it to make your life as easy as possible? Are you using it to cut corners and gain an early retirement? As a parent, as a spouse, as an upperclassmen, as a friend, as a boss, as an older sibling… Are you using your status, your resources, your opportunities, your time, your talent, your treasure to serve yourself, or to serve others?

See, Paul isn’t trying to get us to make one big sacrifice, as though it were a box that we could check off. He’s not trying to get us to go and empty our savings account in one big show of humility! He’s trying to teach us to adopt an attitude that will transform our life in a million small ways—where, like it says in verse 4, we begin to value others in the way that we live our daily lives. Where we begin to honestly consider the interests of others as we walk through our days. Where we begin to set our minds on something other than ourselves.

But before we move on, there’s more that I want us to see in this Text. Because that thing that we should set our minds on is not just those around us, but on Christ Himself. (Our horizontal relationships are always going to be impacted by our vertical relationship. We cannot be merely others-centered; we also have to be God-centered).

And just to help you see this, back up in Philippians 2:1-2, Paul says “Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded...”

So all of this, our whole ability to follow Christ’s example and serve one another is predicated upon the fact that because of what He’s done, we’ve been united with Him! That because of what He’s done, we have comfort in His love, and a participation with His Spirit!

In other words, we can give because in Christ God has given us all we need. And only when we realize this will our attitude begins to change. Only then will we actually become free to gladly serve. Because the key is that Christ’s mind was not only set on other people; His mind was also set on God’s glory.

[[And now as we close, I want you to see that this is exactly how Paul wraps up our passage!]]

POINT TWO

In verse 9, we read that “Therefore”—that is, as a result of all these things! On account of the fact that Jesus brought Himself low, “God exalted him.” And so you can write down: Christ brought Himself low, but that wasn’t the end of the story! Rather, God raised Him up!

God, that is, God the Father, responded to Jesus’ humble surrender by exalting Him. After Jesus had accomplished everything that the Father sent Him to do, after He had accomplished our redemption, it says that God exalted Him “to the highest place,” which is before the throne at the right hand of the Father, “and gave Him the name that is above every name!”

And Paul says that all this emptying, all the humility, all the sacrifice, all the exaltation was so that, it was for the purpose that… “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

So from beginning to end, we see that Jesus did not live His life for Himself! He lived to serve us through His life, to save us through His death, and ultimately to bring glory to God. And you and I are to do the same! God responded to Jesus’ humble surrender by exalting Him; and as we set our minds on our Savior, and as we follow His example, it becomes the joy of our lives to respond to Jesus’ humble surrender by worshipping Him.

CONCLUSION

And so in the end, when we consider Jesus’ humility, we find that…

This is a story worth telling.

This is a life worth living!

This is an example worth following.

This is a God worth worshipping.

This is our part to play in the story: Setting our minds on Christ, following His example, and giving Him the worship that is due His name.

Because in the end, “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” This is our right response!

But also, this is language from back in the prophet Isaiah, who writes that God has said, “Before me every knee will bow” (Isaiah 45:23). So Paul is not only reminding us of our right response to the exalting Christ; he’s also reminding us that the day is coming when we will be face to face with the exalted Christ!

And like it says in Revelation 5, there will be a day when we hear the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousands times ten thousands, encircling the throne and saying in a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”

But look what it says next: “Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!” The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped” (Revelation 5:13–14). And so as we consider Christ’s example, I want us to end our time by playing our part of the story, and worshipping the God who would step down from heaven, and take on a cross for your sake, and for mine. Amen? Let’s pray and worship our king.