Why Did Jesus Come?

Introduction

Last night we began by looking at why we are here and what the Bible tells us about our purpose. One of the things that the Bible tells us is that we are here to know Jesus and to live for Him. We’ll continue looking at how we can live for Him tomorrow, but tonight I want to really look into why Jesus had to come in the first place. Jesus came to do 3 key things: Seek, Save, and Serve.

We talked last night about how Jesus came to save us from our sin - does anyone remember what sin is? (Anything we think, say, do, or don’t do that displeases God) This makes sense because we usually think about Jesus being our Savior. But what about Jesus coming to seek and serve? Jesus gives a story about a shepherd having 100 sheep and 1 getting lost and the shepherd leaves the 99 to go and find the 1 that is lost. Isn’t that how Jesus is? He goes after and pursues those who are hurting and lost. He seeks us out and lets us know that we are loved. But what about Him serving others? Did Jesus ever serve other people? Much of His ministry was built on serving others. He fed those who were hungry. He healed those who were hurting. He encouraged those who were healthy. Jesus came not to be served but to serve others and He calls on us to be servants too!

Tonight we’re going to look at these 3 reasons why Jesus came and we’re going to do this by looking in the book of Philippians! Philippians is in the middle of the New Testament toward the end of your Bible. We’ve been studying out of Philippians 1 at FBC Salem the last few weeks and we’re going to study the whole book this summer. Do you know what this means? This means that what we study the rest of the week here at Camp Joy will help you be ahead of your parents and friends at church the rest of the summer - you’ll know where we’re going and you’ll know some of the key themes in this book.

Here’s a quick background about this book: Paul is in prison - things aren’t going the greatest. If you were in jail do you think you’d be happy or sad? Probably sad because we’d want to be with our friends and family… But not Paul. He’s not sad, he’s happy because he knows that he is exactly where God wants him to be. Paul writes this letter in prison and in Philippians chapter 2, where we’ll be tonight, Paul talks about who Jesus is and why Jesus came to the earth in the first place. Tonight I pray we’ll give thanks to Jesus for what He has done and if you haven’t trusted in Jesus as Lord and Savior, my hope is that tonight you would see why we all need Jesus so desperately!

Philippians 2:1–11 CSB

1 If, then, there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, 2 make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. 4 Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others. 5 Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, 6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. 7 Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, 8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross. 9 For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow— in heaven and on earth and under the earth— 11 and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus Came Because of Our Sin

Sin is serious. Sin separates us from God. Sin is so serious that Jesus had to come to this earth and die in our place on the cross. Did Jesus ever sin? Can you imagine that? Whenever someone was mean to Jesus, He was nice back to them. Whenever things didn’t go His way, He didn’t complain. Jesus lived a perfect life and He had to do this because the only way that He could die for our sins was to be a perfect sacrifice. He had to be perfect.

One of the things that Jesus lived out was humility. Do you know what the word humble means? Being humble is the opposite of being prideful. It means that you don’t boast in yourself, you have a level head. Jesus was humble. He helped others. He put the needs of others before His own needs. We often do the opposite. How many of you have siblings? Is it easy or hard to put their needs above yours? It’s hard to do that! Do you know why it’s hard to do that? Because of our sin. Because we want to do what we want to do first. We want to help ourselves and if there’s room leftover then help someone else.

Look at what Paul says in these opening 4 verses - he ways to do nothing out of selfish ambition but consider others as more important than yourselves. Does this come natural to you? It doesn’t for me! It’s really hard to consider others as more important. It’s hard to look out for the interests of other people. But this is what we are supposed to do as Christians. We are supposed to know Jesus and live a life that points other people to Him. One of the ways that we do this is by helping others and serving them.

Think about how Jesus serves us. Where was Jesus before He was born in Bethlehem? He was in heaven! He was in the perfect place. Yet, He came to the earth. The reason that He came was because you and I can’t make our own way to God. How many of you have flown on an airplane before or have been to a really tall mountain? The highest we can go is still not nearly high enough. We can’t get to God on our own. It’s kind of like this picture. We’re on this side and God is on the other side. There’s a bottomless pit between us and the pit is too wide that we can’t jump across it. We need help - we need saving! This is what Jesus comes and does! He is the loving bridge that connects us to God. He is the only way that we can be saved and He left the glory of heaven in order to do exactly this!

The reason that He had to do this in the first place, though, was because of our sin. Think for a moment about how serious your sin is and my sin is. What did our sin cost Jesus? His life. Yet, He put our interests above His own. He died in our place because He loves us so much. He wants you and me to live for Him and He wants you and me to follow Him as our Lord and Savior. As Jesus comes to save us from our sin, we are reminded that this is all a part of God’s perfect plan.

Jesus Came Because of God’s Plan

Now, doesn’t this plan seem a little strange? The only solution for us to be saved is to have Jesus, the Son of God, come to the earth and give His life in our place? Lots of people wonder if there could have been a different way. A better way. Have you ever thought that you had a better plan than someone else? Whenever I was in 7th grade me and a couple of friends thought that it would be fun to play hide and seek at our church in Ozark. After all, churches have lots of awesome hiding spots. Plus, at FBC Ozark our youth group would play a game called Romans and Christians a couple times each summer which was basically a big game of hide and seek. Whenever we played Romans and Christians there were a couple of rules: you have to stay in the building, you can’t go into a locked room, and you had to come back to the fellowship hall at a certain time to restart the game, even if you had the perfect hiding spot. Now in 7th grade I started working at the church as a custodian and had keys to unlock certain rooms and I had a brilliant plan. I was going to play hide and seek with my friends and I’d go and hide on the roof of the church. I thought my plan was the best plan because no one would find me up there - after all, you had to have a key to unlock the door and no one else did.

How do you think my plan worked out? Terribly. My boss saw one of my friends running upstairs and walked up to the youth area and asked what was going on. They mentioned that they were looking for me and that a light was on in a room that was locked. My boss climbs the ladder and catches me on the roof with a friend while its dark outside. I was just thinking about winning the game… I wasn’t thinking about being safe or potentially putting my friends in danger. I wasn’t thinking of getting in trouble with my boss. I wasn’t thinking about the consequences of my plan. What’s the moral of the story? Never play hide and seek on the roof - I’ve done it and it’s not a smart thing to do, take my word for it.

But what’s the bigger picture? Sometimes we make a plan or we think that we know best and we come to find out that we really don’t have it all figured out. Sometimes people read in their Bible about Jesus coming and dying on the cross and they think that this is such a strange plan and they think that they could come up with a much better one. The problem whenever we think that our plan is better than God’s is that we put ourselves above God. We lower God to our level and we raise ourselves up above His. This is never a good thing to do because God is the ultimate authority and created everything! He is good, all-knowing, and all-powerful!

Do you know just how powerful God is? Do you know how God created all things? He spoke it into existence

Genesis 1:3 CSB

3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

John 1:3 CSB

3 All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.

God simply spoke and there it all was! That’s how powerful our God is. What is something cool that God made?

Heart

Grand Canyon

Mountains

Rivers

Earth

Do any of you all like science? Do you know how big the earth is compared to other planets and stars? Say the earth is this golf ball. Do you know how big the sun would be compared to this golf ball if the golf ball was earth? The sun would be a 15 foot wide soccer ball. You can fit 1.3 million earths inside the sun… Meaning that you’d need 1.3 million of these golf balls and I don’t have enough to show you how many that would be! That would be enough golf balls to fill up our big church bus with golf balls and one of those golf balls is planet earth and you are here in Salem, Missouri, in the United States on that tiny golf ball. The sun is huge and our planet is small! But did you know that there are stars much bigger than our sun? There’s a star a long ways away from our planet called Canis Majoris which means the “Big Dog” and whenever I heard about this star in Junior High School is blew my mind… If the earth were the size of a golf ball, Canis Majoris would be Mount Everest - the tallest mountain on planet earth. If the earth were a golf ball, you could cover the entire state of Texas in golf balls and it would be 2 feet deep… And on one of those golf balls there you and I are in Salem, Missouri, in the United States. You could fit 7 quadrillion earths inside Canis Majoris. Guys, our God is a big, big God who spoke Canis Majoris into existence just like He did the sun, moon, and ocean. See, we might think that we have a good plan, but unless it’s God’s plan it’s not going to be good enough! We always want to do what God wants us to do and part of that means that we have to trust what He says even when we can’t fully understand.

Look at Philippians 2:5-8 tonight and look at what Jesus did.

He is the same form as God but emptied Himself and became a servant and came to earth as a man. He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death on the cross.

Jesus loved us so much that He came to the earth and became a man who would eventually die for sinners like you and me. As He does this, it’s not like Jesus stopped being God. After all, He healed people and did all of these miracles that we talked about last night. Somehow, Jesus was fully God and fully man. He was 100% God and 100% man. This doesn’t add up in our brains because anything over 100% is impossible. See this water cup? It’s as full as it can be. What will happen if I try to pour more into it? It pours out - why? Because anything over 100% full is impossible. But not with God. Jesus was fully God and fully man, not 50/50 but 100/100. He came to this earth and humbled Himself by becoming a man and dying on the cross for our sins. Where is the good news in God’s plan? Look down to verses 9-11 as we see that Jesus wins the battle for us.

Jesus Win’s The Battle For Us!

The last 3 verses remind us of what Jesus did. He died, yes, but He rose from the grave and was exalted by God and given the name above every other name.

In the past whenever a country had a king, it was expected that people would bow down to the king in order to respect him. In the Roman world people would not only bow down but they would say that “Caesar is Lord.” Lord means master or ruler. A lot of people today think that they are their own master… But the Bible tells us that we have a different master. For some people this world is their master and for others Jesus is their master. In Philippians 2, Paul is telling us that because Jesus died and rose and ascended back to glory, we have hope today that He has won the victory and we are called to worship Him today.

How is there victory in this life? Only because of what Jesus did. Only because of God’s perfect plan of sending His Son in our place. Look at what 1 Corinthians 15 shares with us

1 Corinthians 15:56–57 CSB

56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

How does Jesus win the victory for us? By dying in our place.

One day every knee will bow and confess that Jesus is Lord - that He is the ruler and King of all things! But here’s the sad part. Lots of people today don’t believe that Jesus is the Lord. They think Jesus is a nice guy and a cool teacher. They might not like Jesus… One day they’ll bow to Him, but unless you worship Him now it’s going to be too late. Jesus wants you to worship Him today. He wants you to repent of your sin, deny yourself, and take up your cross as you follow Him!

Recap:

Jesus came because of our sin

Jesus died on the cross in our place

Jesus rose from the grave

Jesus ascended back to heaven and will come back

Jesus will be worshiped as Lord by all people

I have the opportunity to worship Him today

Tonight, who are you worshipping? Who are you serving? Do you know Jesus as Lord and Savior? Have you repented of your sins and placed your faith in Him? If you’d like to learn more about that, I’d love to talk with you and I know that your cabin leaders would love to talk with you about that as well. The most important thing that you can get out of this camp is that you are here to know Jesus and part of knowing Jesus means that you know why He had to come… We all need Jesus to save us from our sins and only He has the power to do that.