Kids Camp 2026

Philippians 2:5-11

Tonight I want to talk to you about culture. Culture refers to the shared beliefs, values, behaviors, customs, and social norms that a particular group of people uses to perceive, interpret, and respond to their social world. It encompasses both material aspects, such as art, food, and technology, and non-material aspects, like language, ideas, and traditions.

A lot has happened over the past few decades which has had an impact on our culture. I can remember when I was younger, not much older than all of you, and I can remember my parents and grandparents, bosses, older colleagues, all saying things like, “wow, the world is changing”.

As a young person I would just shake my head in disagreement and let the comments role off my back as some boomer nonsense. Every older generation has something to say about how things are changing and getting worse and how they wish it could be like it was.

But you know, now that I am older, I find myself saying the same thing. And I am beginning to recognize that the reasons my elders, and the elders from so many generations before us have made this statement is that the things they had become accustomed to - art, food, and technology, language, ideas - have changed dramatically.

It’s literally a culture shock. I mean, when I was young, my dad might have said groovy, rad, cool, dude and I understood what that meant, but there is no way he will understand what no cap, bet, cringe, rizz, ate that, skibidi, cook, or delulu means in current context.

Now, every generation has new slang, new music, new cuisine, new style. That’s been happening for millennia, but what we are seeing as a generation of human kind happening in our world in just the past few years goes beyond shared cultural shifts.

I’m sure that the assassination of Charlie Kirk is still fresh on many of your minds. I know that for a lot of people that was an extremely emotional time, and it’s a stark example, but I want to be stark with you because we need to have real talk. You are the next generation of leaders, the next generation of politicians, the next generation of Christians if the Lord delays His coming, so you need to hear real things.

Now, it would be disingenuous to say that Charlie Kirk’s assassination was a stand alone event in history. Unfortunately, in a fallen and depraved world, political and idealogical assassinations have occurred not infrequently, and unfortunately will likely occur again.

You have all likely learned or read about Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. You know of President Lincoln’s assassination. Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 for his non-violent stance. There are hundreds others in history that were killed because they believed something that someone else did not.

However, our generation, our time, is seeing a shift towards cultural and politcal violence akin to very few other eras of human history. Now depending on who you speak with, when you raise this observation, you might be met with a rebuttal something like this:

“Yeah, but the civil rights era of the 1960’s was a very violent time. Many people were hurt, murdered and beaten at a level that had been unseen in history”. Or you might hear:

“What about the civil war era and slavery? Millions died for their beliefs then and slaves were treated horribly”.

Now, on their face, these retorts would be acceptable, however, I would argue that these times and issues were culturally isolated. You had a clear distinction of right and wrong, and a clear distinction within society of what was acceptable and in both these cases we find that good and right won out.

Now some of the sentiments that were at the crux of these issues still linger in our society today. Human kind is made up of sinners and sinners gonna sin. People will hate and people will murder and people will continue to act depraved. It is an unfortunate fact.

However, this is where I want to make a clear distinction about our culture today. Over the past few decades, and specifically beginning in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, a time before most of you were born, our western culture (which is to say American and western European/British culture) has seen the abnormal growth of some of it’s more negative aspects.

Before we go farther, I want to isolate some of these things with you, because not everything about western culture is bad. There are so many good things about it, and especially about being an American. So I am going to give some examples and then I want to ask you for some examples.

So, some of the things that make western culture great would be patriotism (a good definition for that would be a love of country expressed through actions that strengthen its people, preserve its principles, and advance its promise — not through exclusion or hostility toward others, but through hope, stewardship, and moral courage).

Generosity (we generally like to see people taken care of, we have over 1.5M non profit charities in the United States and roughly 300K of those are focused on humanitarian needs)

Hard work, or work ethic and inventiveness or ingenuity. The US ranks among the top large economies for it’s output. We are generally hard working. Western culture sees that type of ethic as a positive thing. The US is also the top country for inventions and patnets gloablly. By 2020, the US patent office had issued almost 600K patents across all fields.

So what area some other aspects about our culture we esteem or hold in high regard?

WAIT FOR ANSWERS

Individualism… Individualism is the belief that each person’s life, choices, and potential are paramount, and that society should enable individuals to flourish according to their own values, talents, and efforts.

Western culture has put a premium on individualism. We see this everywhere we turn.

When you scroll through tik-tok, you see people parading themselves each in a way that is attempting to garner more attention to who they are. Instagram is a platform made to share images and reels about you or what you want to share with the world. Facebook, which I know none of you use because that is such a boomer platform, is all about individualism, thinly veiled by marketing that says it a way to share our lives with one another.

You tube channels are all about the individual’s desire to share something THEY are passionate about. The most popular channels are generally about the presenter in a round about way.

I have spent 20 years in sales and marketing and when I want to make sure people know about my products, I go out and find the INDIVIDUAL who has the most influence, because I know they garner the most attention from the people I am trying to reach, and because they are such a popular INDIVIDUAL, I know they will be very influential with their followers.

Now, I am not knocking social media, as it can be used for Kingdom work and for God’s glory. Like most things in life, they can be good but when humans get involved along with their sinful inclinations, the good can be distorted. SO this is simply a warning and an example of excessive individualism.

As well, this is just a symptom of the bigger issue with our cultures’ obsession with individualism. Now, individualism is not bad in and of itself either.

God has made each and every one of you to be individually important, special, and unique. And that is a beautiful thing. God’s creativity is unmatched. And He fully intended you to be a special person, with a purpose in His kingdom.

It says in the first part of Jeremiah 1:5 “5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;”

God knows you specifically and made you uniquely. So to say that individualism is wrong would be to say that God did not intend each of us to be an individual.

Jesus also shared the parable of the sheep.

Luke 15:3–7 “3 So He spoke this parable to them, saying: 4 “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ 7 I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.”

Jesus makes it clear that He sees each and every one of you, of us, as individually important. And as a matter of fact, He went to the cross and died for you, and me, individually.

But, unfortunately, mankind has a special ability to distort what God has initially intended. While God created the individual, mankind, in his sinful flesh, with help from the enemy Satan, has made individuality an idol.

It has become, especially in western culture, something to attain to. To be famous, to be unique in a way that your identity has become what you do or what you represent. It’s become who you are not Whose you are.

Our culture has taken individualism and personal identify so far, and distorted it so badly, that we now associate actions with identify.

I’m not going to go down the rabbit trail of identify politics tonight, that is a discussion for another time, so I will boil this down to a simple principle as best I can.

While individualism comes from the Creator Himself, man, in his sinful tendencies, and Satan, who attempts to distort everything God created, has made it one of the key focuses of our individual lives, so much so that we become blinded to the needs, desires, feelings, and condition of others.

Society at large has so over emphasized individualism within the context of “self” it has distorted our ability to see others in the way God intended.

When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was, what did He say?

Matthew 22:36–39 “36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

See, our culture would say, “You do what makes you feel good, you do you”. “Go out in the world and get yours”. “Get paid dawg”.

But that’s not what Jesus says. He says, you treat one another in the way you want to be treated. He says, I love you so much individually, that I came and died for you - you are unique and special to me. Be a shining light in the world individually, but do so in a way for others that you would want them to do for you.

And that brings us to our text tonight.

This morning - and I wasn’t here to hear the teaching , but I assume you learned about Philippians 2:3-4

Philippians 2:3–4 NKJV

3 Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. 4 Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

See, individualism is not a modern cultural phenomenon in that humans have always been selfish. Our modern culture has just refined individualism to it’s current state of depravity whereby the world would have you believe it’s okay to do whatever you want to and for yourself all in the name of personal identify.

But we see here in Philippians that Paul was dealing with a degree of individualism in his day some 2,000 years ago. After all, human nature is human nature…

Now there is nothing that would lead me to say that the Philippians were exercising the kind of individualism that we’ve been discussing. So I don’t want to paint the wrong picture, but we can infer that Paul, being an astute man and an observer of human nature through the filter of a Godly world view, would have understood the tendency of people in general.

Paul knew, that unchecked, our hearts tend towards selfishness. That’s why he said in verse 3

Philippians 2:3 “3 Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit…

Now I know you guys read and learned about verses 1-4 this morning, but I am going to grab a bit from those verses primarily because context matters. When we study God’s word, we need to understand the context so that we can discern and apply the teaching properly. So we need to rewind a little bit to understand what Paul is trying to say throughout the first two chapters of the book of Philippians.

Earlier in the book of Philippians, in chapter 1, Paul writes about some people who are preaching Christ out of envy and strife. He says they preach Christ from selfish ambition. He goes on to say that by doing so, they are trying to make his situation harder.

Now we don’t know how they intended to make his position harder (he was in prison at the time he wrote this), but one way in which they could have meant to do this was by drawing attention to themselves and thereby diminishing Paul’s message.

That would make sense, because we know they were doing it with selfish ambition.

The word Paul used, in Greek, for “selfish ambition” was eritheia. Now in Greek, words have deeper meaning than their equivalent in english. In this case, the word eritheia translates directly to selfish ambition, but it actually means to do something for hire. To get paid for the doing of it. But not in a positive sense like you or I would do, say, like getting paid for working at our jobs.

No, this word means that someone is doing something for wicked gain. In the context of the book of Philippians, it is my interpretation that they are doing it for selfish attention. They are trying to steal the thunder so to speak, so that they can get noticed. They are feeding their individuality in the negative sense.

“Look at me, look at how well I speak, look at how well I teach, listen to my amazing words and my amazing insights.”

Now, in addition to this, there is some evidence that the Church of Philippi was the only church that Paul planted that was supporting him financially. It says in chapter 4, verse 15:

Philippians 4:15 “15 Now you Philippians know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church shared with me concerning giving and receiving but you only.”

So, it’s also likely that these other preachers, who were preaching the gospel to be noticed among men were also aware of the financial windfall that might be had by trying to take “market share” from Paul’s ministry.

This is all to say that Paul is giving an example of selfish individualism being driven by greed and ambition which will come at the cost of others.

Now with that context we can reread chapter 2 verse 3 and 4 which says:

Philippians 2:3–4 “3 Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. 4 Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.”

Paul is saying, “Can you believe this? People are so self absorbed, so conceited and hungry for attention and to promote themselves they would use preaching the gospel as a way to gain attention and money…”

BUT…

he continues, “don’t let that be you. Don’t you let what society says is okay - self promotion, self enrichment, selfishness - don’t let those be the things that drive your actions. You people, Christ’s people, people that Jesus died for: you look out for others first and foremost in everything you do.

You know, we already talked about the way of the world, that the world says you need to promote you, that you need to promote your identity and your individualism. That that’s the way you’re going to be happy, by thinking of your desires and your needs, and your wants first and foremost and by fulfilling those, you will be happy.

You’ll be happy and your self esteem will be fulfilled and you’ll have tons of followers on social media and tons of friends cause your so popular. But guess what?

That’s a lie.

You wanna know why? Cause that hole in your heart that cries out and says “fill me with self indulgence, fill me with the recognition of others, fill me with likes, and followers, and the financial gain that come with them and you’ll be satisfied. That hole in your heart, that bucket of selfishness, WILL NEVER BE FULL ENOUGH TO SATISFY YOU.

But Paul doesn’t leave us hanging. He tells us, via the Philippians, exactly how to live a fulfilled and fulfilling life in Christ.

You remember what I said about context?

Well, Paul now ties together his thoughts on selfishness, and his direction to he Philippians on how to treat others, gives us example, and application.

He says in verse 5

Philippians 2:5 “5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,”

Let this mind (which points to verse 4, each of you should look out for others interests) be in you, which was also in Jesus. He takes the human principle, points to Jesus, and says 1)He had this mind, this ethos, this outlook, and 2)He was the ultimate example of it because He lived it out perfectly.

Paul goes on to describe for us what it looked like for Jesus to have this mindset and to live it out as our perfect example:

Philippians 2:6–8 “6 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.”

When Paul says that Jesus did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, he means to say that Jesus didn’t consider it something to be used for His own advantage. Jesus, even though He had every right to lay claim to His unique individualism as God in human form, did not pursue that for His own benefit

Do you see the parallel here? If anyone in history had the right and authority to promote their individualism, it was Jesus, but what does Paul say about that?

Philippians 2:7–8 “7 [Jesus] 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.”

Even though Jesus had every right to proclaim His identity, to receive all the likes, shares, and followers, He humbled Himself for others. He set aside all of His glory as God, all of His rightful claims so that He could die for you and I, that we might have eternal life with Him.

This is the mind that Paul is saying you and I should have. That we would love others in such a way that we would set aside our individualism for the betterment of others. That the way to live a fulfilled life is to love others as you love yourself.

Jesus said in John 15:13 “13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

Do you wan’t to know how to fill that hole in your heart that cries out for recognition. The hole that screams “fill me with attention, fill me with likes and follows, fill me with your ambition?”

Well the answer is right here. You give it up. Let go of self, and grab on to others. Paul is telling the Philippians just this, that if they want to be fulfilled, that if they want to fill that desire to belong, they can have it by humbling themselves and thinking more highly of the needs of those around them than of their own selfish desires.

And he uses the greatest self sacrifice known to mankind, the death of Jesus on the cross, as the primary example of what it looks like to think of others first.

Paul continues in verse 9 and he says:

Philippians 2:9–11 “9 Therefore [because of this humble sacrifice and mindset to serve others] God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 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, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Now, Jesus is uniquely special in the recognition for His sacrifice. For one, He is God, he came as God in human form, and died for you and I. Therefore, as Paul writes here, He has been exalted above every other name in the universe.

But Paul is also using this to make a point. He’s saying that if the only Person in the history of the universe that had the unique right to self promotion set that aside fro others, how much more should we be doing the same? And not only that, what was the result of Jesus humbling himself in obedience, to the point of death so that others could live?

He was exalted. He was rewarded.

Jesus said in Matthew 16:25 “25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

Do you want to find your life? Do you want to be fulfilled and fill that desire to be known. It starts with others. It starts by seeing the needs, the desires, the hurt, the pain in others and laying aside your life for theirs. You will never be so fulfilled as you are when you are serving someone else. There is something very special about the blessings that come from service to others.

Now we’re going to wrap this up by coming full circle back to individualism. We’ve talked a lot about the negative aspects of focusing on individualism, but I want to speak some life into you here tonight concerning your individualism.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made according to Psalm 139. You are uniquely individual and God intended you to be exactly who you are in His eyes. And you are loved by Him more deeply than you will ever understand this side of heaven. And He wants you to know Him personally.

He desires a personal relationship with you, one that can never be snatched away. Romans 8:38–39 “38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Jesus loves you so deeply, exactly the way you are, that He humbled Himself to the point of death so that you could have eternal life with Him. He died so that your sins could be forgiven and that you could spend eternity where there is no pain, there is no sadness, there is no loss.

And in this life, you can have a relationship with Him, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that you belong to Him: a friend that will never leave you nor forsake you. A friend that will always be there when you need Him. A friend that can fill the hole in your hearts that screams for attention and belonging. That hole can be filled by Jesus because of what He did for you on the cross.

If you want all that you can have it tonight.

Altar call…..