Sermon Tone Analysis

Jesus: Marvel of Nature

If you have your Bibles and I hope you do, I want to invite you to open with me to Philippians 2. The stage is set for us to dive into the second facet of the incarnation in Philippians 2. This is the passage that I want to encourage you to memorize over this Christmas season.

Philippians 2:5–11 gives us a picture of who Christ is, the incarnation, God in the flesh.

We talked last week about how He is the hope of glory.

He is in very nature, God.

Now, I want us to talk about how He is in very nature, man, not just the hope of glory, but a marvel of nature.

I want us to look at Philippians 2. We’ll start in verse 5 and just read through the passage to get an overview, get a glimpse of the context and then we’re going to focus in on one verse in particular.

Now we unpacked last week verse 6: “He was in very nature God, and did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.”

Now I want us to unpack verse 7, “But made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Phil.

2:7).

Every single word in that verse is important and I want us to see what truths unfold here.

The Unique Son...

The unique Son.

That’s a literal translation of John 1:14 which we looked at last week when it said, “We beheld His glory, the glory of the One and Only”—in the Greek its “monogenous”, that literally means the unique son—same type of terminology that we see in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten,” or the One and Only, the unique Son.

What makes Jesus so unique?

I want you to see three truths unfold, particularly as we think about Him as a marvel of nature in the incarnation.

Three truths unfold that I think if we can get our arms and our hearts and our minds around these truths, it will radically transform the way we see Jesus, the way we relate to Jesus, the way we walk with Jesus day in and day out through this life.

He is the sovereign Creator, yet He becomes a slave of His creation.

The first truth is this: He is the sovereign Creator, yet at the same time He becomes a slave of His creation.

Now, what verse 7 says is, “He emptied Himself.”

It means that He made Himself nothing, but the words literally say, “He emptied Himself.”

Now, it’s important to be careful here.

Sometimes when people read that Jesus emptied Himself they picture Him as He became a man.

God became a man.

They picture Him taking off some of His divine qualities.

So some of the divine characteristics that He had, He emptied Himself of in order to become a man.

But we know that’s not true.

We saw all last week, as we dove into Scripture, how Jesus is fully God.

He is in very nature God, means that His essence literally is God.

He exists as God.

You can’t just take off some things that you are.

You are this, and Jesus was God—is God.

And so He didn’t empty Himself by taking off divine characteristics.

Instead, He emptied Himself by bringing something onto Himself.

By taking the very nature of a servant.

Now, that word we’ve seen already.

You might circle it.

It’s mentioned twice.

It’s the same word in the original language of the New Testament, “morphē”—the “form”.

It says, “He’s in very nature God.”

You can circle it in verse 6 and then in verse 7 it says, “He took the very nature,” same word there, “of a servant.”

So what we’re seeing is that Jesus had two natures—nature of God and the nature of servant.

Not in contradiction to each other but He took on the very nature of a servant.

So when you picture Jesus coming to the earth and becoming a man, being born as a man, instead of picturing it like God minus something, He takes something off, it’s more God plus something.

It’s God taking on human likeness, being made in human likeness.

So this is what we're saying...

Jesus is one person with two natures.

So what we’re saying is the truth unfolded that Jesus is one person according to Philippians 2:6 and 7, one person with two different natures.

Two natures; a human nature and a divine nature.

We’re seeing two natures.

The nature of God and the nature of a servant.

Now, throughout our time together I’m going to throw out a term that I think will be pretty new to all of us and you might write this down.

We are just going to be so much more intelligent after we walk out of here than we are even now.

You might write it down, the term is hypostatic union.

Now, that’ll preach, all right—hypostatic union.

Now, this is a term that theologians have used to refer to this truth all throughout church history.

That Jesus is one person with two natures and all throughout church history there have been a lot of questions about how this fits together—how can Jesus be one person with both a human nature and a divine nature—bring them together?

This whole idea of the hypostatic union … And a lot of heresies have arisen by denying one of those two natures.

Arianism and Ebionism were two heresies that denied the divinity of Christ—the deity of Christ, that He’s not completely God.

And likewise you had Apollinarism and Docetism that denied His humanity, He’s not completely human.

Then you have Nestorianism that comes on the scene and basically says it’s almost like you’ve got two persons here, not two natures, but two persons.

And they’re all in an attempt to wrestle with the question of how it’s possible for God to become man.

And let’s be honest, it’s a pretty complex question.

It’s baffling to the mind—how can God become a man?

And what are the ramifications of that?

Why would it be inaccurate, then, to say that Jesus is part of God as opposed to having God completely?

He is God completely.

And we start to ask questions.

How is this baby in a manger able to uphold all the universe as we saw in Colossians 1 as He’s sitting there crying in a manger?

How does this work together?

If Jesus is God and He’s praying to God while He’s here on earth then is He praying to Himself?

How do you fit that together?

And I’ll be honest with you, this will give you a headache if you dive into it for too long.

Let’s think for a second, together, about who Jesus is, one person with two natures.

When we don’t know what to do, we focus on what we do know to do.

When we don’t know what to believe, we focus on what we do know to believe.

So let’s focus on what we do know.

As the Son of God, Jesus is fully God.

First of all, as the Son of God, Jesus is fully God.

Fully, completely.

It would be inaccurate, based on what we studied last week, to say, “Jesus is in part God.”

He existed being in very nature, God.

He talked all throughout His ministry about how He was equal with God, “I and the Father are One.

Before Abraham was born, I am.”

We see testimony to His deity all throughout Scripture.

And we know that never stopped.

We know that when it says He emptied Himself or made Himself nothing, that He wasn’t becoming less than God at that point, because Colossians 2:9, which we thought about some last week, says that, “The fullness of deity dwells in Jesus.”

Fullness, He’s not part God and part man, no.

He is fully God.

We see that throughout Scripture.

We dove into that last week.

If you missed last week, let me encourage you to dive into that, maybe through listening on the internet from our website, just to catch that picture because we can’t miss that.

As the Son of Man, He is fully man.

Second facet, as the Son of Man, which is another title Jesus is referred to throughout Scripture, we know He is fully human.

Not part human, not kind of like us, He’s completely like us.

Everything that makes us human beings, Jesus had.

Physically He had a body, flesh, bones, blood—He was a physical human being.

He was born, we are born.

We sometimes have this idealized picture, even of Jesus’ humanity.

When you come to some of our carols, like Away in a Manger-- "no crying he makes..." - Have any of you had a child before that didn’t cry, at some point?

We’ve got this picture of this almost angelic picture of Jesus always peaceful as a baby.