Sermon Tone Analysis

The Apostle Matthew reports that toward the end of Jesus’ ministry an ugly, competitive spirit developed among the apostles when James and John and their mother attempted to get Jesus to promise them privileged thrones in the kingdom.

“When the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers” (20:24).

Harsh words and angry gestures were exchanged among the Twelve.

Tempers flared!

So Jesus called them together and said:

PHILIPPIANS 2.5-11

OBSERVATION OF THE TEXT

We all have favorite worship songs…books of the Bible that speak to us.

Paul must have the loved the Messiah song from Isaiah 45, 52, 53.

The Holy Spirit had him repeat some of that language as He penned this letter to the Philippians.

Paul was a worshiper now.

Verses 6-11 are referred to as the Christ Hymn of the New Testament.

One writer, pointing to Christ as our example, hovers above this text and observes these 3 notions here:

THE CALL to have the mind of Christ (2:5)

THE EXAMPLE of Christ making Himself low (2:6-8)

THE RESPONSE of God raising Him High (2:9-11)

THE RESULT of Christ as Lord of All (2:10-11) All people, everywhere are adoring and confessing Him as Lord.

It’s a good division of the text…I would further suggest that the language pivots the song on v9.

Think of it like a V-Formation

Suffering, Humility, Obedience, Death

(v9) Then God exalts HIM

every body adores…every tongue confesses

Isn’t it beautiful?

1. THE CALL

Verse 5 looks back to the 1 mind that we’ve just been encouraged to possess…our responsibilities of our citizenship

2. THE EXAMPLE: Christ making himself low

First, before we rush to make this text supremely applicable let’s just focus on Jesus...

This Christ Jesus who had always existed:

Though He came to Earth in the form of virgin-born baby, Christ has always been...

Before Abraham was, He was still the “I Am”

He is Alpha and Omega

Beginning and the End (He was before the beginning and He’ll be after the end)

First and the Last

Root and the Offspring of David

And when time has surrendered and Earth is no more, He will still be the eternally existent, Second person of the triune God of this Bible…the Messiah, the Anointed one, the LORD Jesus Christ.

I know “we get it”!

But every generation has had to to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints - regarding the nature of Jesus Christ:

In AD 325, the Council of Nicea, Arius believed that Jesus was the first and greatest created being, but Athanasius won the day, defending the biblical position that Jesus is fully God, being of the same essence as the Father.

Today we still confess the magnificent creed adopted in this historic debate:

[We believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Christ’s Humiliation

Didn’t count equality with God as something to be held on to: didn’t “take advantage” of his divinity in a way that betrayed his coming as a lamb

Wasn’t born in a palace to nobility

Wasn’t really distinct in any way

Emptied Himself (Not of His divinity…but of His privilege)

“Emptied” (kenoō) here does not mean the Son of God emptied himself of his deity in some kind of theological subtraction.

How did the Son of God divest himself of position and prestige?

Through the incarnation.

He “emptied himself”: (1) by taking the form (morphē) of a servant and (2) by being born in the likeness of men.

These two phrases are mutually interpreting.

The only way for the Son of God to take on the form of a slave was to enter this world and be born as a man.

...he is not by subtracting deity but by adding humanity and becoming the God-man, both fully God and fully man.

Form of a Servant, entered the earth born like a man, fully human form

The verb “humbled” (tapeinoō) is striking because it was frequently used in reference to slaves and their loss of “prestige or status.”

Proud people protest that some low position is “beneath” him or her.

Jesus displayed his humility by not regarding anything as beneath him.

Obedient to death - displaying His humility and model for all to see...

He didn’t say, “You don’t really want me to do this do you, Father?”

He didn’t say, “Lord, Here I am, send somebody else.

We cannot pass by this text without reflecting on the cross

D. A. Carson points out that the cross can be viewed from five perspectives.

1.

From God’s perspective, Jesus died as a propitiation for our sins (1 John 2:2).

He absorbed God’s wrath and turned away God’s anger from us.

2. From Christ’s perspective, Jesus obeyed His Father perfectly, saying, “Not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

He carried out His assignment to “give His life—a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

This text in Philippians highlights Christ’s perfect obedience (also a major theme in John’s Gospel).

He became “obedient to the point of death—even to death on a cross” (2:8).

3. From Satan’s perspective, the cross means the accuser’s defeat (see Rev 12:11).

4. From sin’s perspective, the cross is the means by which our debt is paid.

5. Finally, from our perspective, while acknowledging all of these truths, treasuring the love and justice of God as well as the substitutionary life and death of Jesus—His victory over Satan and sin—we must also note that the cross serves “as the supreme standard of behavior” (Carson, Basics, 42).

And then we pivot...”Pivot!

Pivot!”

We move from this cruel Roman instrument of torture past the empty garden tomb, past the ascension from the Mount of Olives to the Resurrected, Glorified (Eternally Existent) Christ seated on the throne of majesty to the Right Hand of the Father!

God does 2 distinct things here in tandem:

God Exalts Him - makes perfect sense.

Jesus made Himself so low in His obedience; the Father will lift Him up.

God Gave/Bestowed a new dimension to His name (same word - charizomai / hah-ree-zoe-meh - as when God gave us the gifts of belief and suffering in 1:29)

The new name likely isn’t Jesus (alone), He already had that…but it’s likely the fact that God is synonymously attaching the name Jesus to Lord, Master, Yahweh, etc.

Very similar to how God changes us when we are saved.

When you and I obey God’s Word and get low as we recognize our need for a Savior and God’s gift of that in Christ.

When we get low and humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God as the we catch a glimpse of the crushing weight of our sin poured out on Christ…and we come to Jesus on His terms — God lifts us up out of the muck and mire and puts our feed on the Rock of His Word, on the Rock Christ Jesus.

He also makes us new.

There’s a beautiful similarity to what we experience as we die to ourselves and come alive to Jesus…but we will not be exalted!

NOTE: If you’re constantly reading yourself as the good guy/hero into the Bible’s heroic accounts, you’re doing it wrong.

Have you experienced that?

Have you been made new?

Have you been lifted from darkness into His marvelous light yet?

You can be today if you know it’s time to do something about it.

All of this results in adoration and confession

Jesus is worshiped.

He is the object of our affecton

EVERY KNEE, EVERYWHERE WILL BOW

EVERY TONGUE, EVERYWHERE WILL CONFESS

JESUS CHRIST IS LORD TO THE GLORY OF THE FATHER...

This is our aim as individuals

This is our aim in our workplaces and spheres of influences...

This is our aim, as a body, in our worship gatherings...

Have you lost your mind?

I’m not asking for you to disengage your mind (we are commanded to use all of our mind at our disposal to love the LORD)

I, of course, mean have you lost this world’s, this culture’s mindset that has exalted itself AGAINST Jesus that creeps in to our lives like a fog.