Looking Out for Number One

Well, we're resuming our study of the book of Philippians this morning. You'll be helped to turn in your copy of God's word. This letter that was written by Paul to a church that has been supporting his work on the mission field, even as he's in jail in Rome. So two weeks ago, we began by thinking about the truth that partnership in the gospel leads to fruitfulness in the church. So churches that set their sights on the spread of the gospel both where they are and where the gospel is most needed, well those are going to be fruitful churches. Last week Paul used his own example. In teaching them that loving the right things leads to living the right way, rather than caring about their own comfort, their own security, their own reputation. They should care about the advance of the gospel. They should care about the honor of Christ. And ultimately, they should care about just being with Him. Thought about what it means that to live is Christ and to die is gain. And Paul is really wanting them to think about their citizenship as being in two places. They're citizens on some level of the place where they are, the Roman Empire, but they're citizens ultimately of a heavenly kingdom. And even while they live on earth, they're supposed to be striving side by side for the advance of the gospel. Well, as we get into chapter two here, we begin to detect a problem that existed in the Philippian church. It'll become explicit in chapter four where he is going to call out two women by name for the conflict that they're having with each other. How would you like for your name to be recorded in scripture because of unresolved conflict? I think that's why there's probably nobody here named Euodia or Syntyche. I don't think we name our children after these two women that were having difficulties with each other. Well, before he tells the church that they need to help these women resolve their issues, he's going to lay a theological foundation here for their unity as a church. So that's what we're thinking about this morning. How can we be unified as a church? Let me tell you something that you probably already know. Churches are not naturally unified. If you think so, you're probably new here. You know, you come in, you start to get to know the community, and you think the people here are really nice. Well, I'm here to tell you, they are nice. It's been a delightful two months for my family getting to know this church. This seems like an incredibly encouraging community. We've been blessed in so many ways, but the best of communities is still a collection of sinners, right? We're sinners saved by grace if we believe the gospel, but we still have the sinful nature inside of us. And so in that regard, conflict becomes inevitable between us. It shouldn't be unexpected. Things will pull at our unity. In some ways, I think that the problem is that conflict catches us off guard oftentimes in the church. Amidst all the good things that come to us through this community, we underestimate the challenges sometimes that are before us. I was thinking it's a bit like doing pre-marriage counseling Sometimes, as a pastor, I've done pre-marriage counseling with a couple that shows up with stars in their eyes. They're still in the infatuation zone. That's wonderful. And it's a bit tough as a counselor sometimes because you find yourself thinking, do I tell them, do I say, hey, you guys are cute, but you're gonna need some conflict resolution skills as a part of this whole thing. They look at you and they say, no, pastor, you must not know how in love we are. I usually tell them the story of Megan and my honeymoon. We drove across the U.S. to Colorado. We were spending our honeymoon on a ranch, a beautiful ranch in Colorado. The first morning, we wake up there because my alarm went off at 7 a.m., which I thought was a generous time. I gently shook my new bride and said, honey, it's time to wake up and have our quiet times. And she gave me a look. It's a look I've gotten to know well over the years. It's a powerful look because it communicates two very clear propositions with just one look. The first is, at the moment, I can't remember why I married you. It's very clear. And the second is, you are in mortal danger if you don't get out of my face. Just a look can communicate all of that. Well, church is a bit like marriage in that regard. It's sinners in relationship with each other. And the way God has designed our community, he actually intends us to display the gospel in the midst of our differences and our disagreements. I mean, if we're gonna be, as Paul tells us we should be in Ephesians 4, 3, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, we're gonna have to know how to do it. Well, this is the passage for us. Where can I find the resources to live in community, to live in harmony, enjoying the best that human relationships have to offer? Philippians chapter two. If you're taking notes and want to write down a main idea, it is this. Unity in the church comes from a Christ-like humility that serves. Unity in the church comes from a Christ-like humility that serves. And we'll have three points. Number one, the power for unity. The power for unity. We'll consider secondly, the practice of unity. The practice of unity. And then third and finally, the pattern for unity. The pattern for unity. So the power. the practice, and the pattern. Let's jump in number one, the power for unity, looking there at verse one, chapter two. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, and then on into verse two, complete my joy by being of the same mind. The so here at the beginning points us backwards, so we're picking up Paul's call to let our manner of life be worthy of the gospel. So if to live is Christ and to die is gain, then how should we live? Note here how eager the Spirit of God through Paul is to ground our ethics in our identity, to have what we do flow from who we are. That's really what's going on here. So look at the if-then construction. You see the if there at the beginning of verse one. There's an implied then in verse two, then complete my joy. But what are these four things that ground our action? Well first, he says, if there's any encouragement in Christ. I think encouragement is a bit of an overused word sometimes. It's also translated comfort or consolation. I think consolation might be a better word here. It's a reminder that Paul's writing to people who are suffering. They're in a hostile city, they're trying to stand for Christ, and it's costing them. But their status as those who are in Christ should be a consolation to them. As things go badly in life, as they often do for us, Paul asks them, do you remember that it's worth it because you are in Christ, you are united to Jesus Christ? It's been said often that Paul's theology could be summed up in that one little phrase, in Christ. when a person turns away from their sins and trust in Jesus, who he is, what he did on the cross to pay for sin. There are many things that will happen. They're forgiven, they are reconciled to God in a right relationship, they're adopted into his family, but they are united with Jesus. Our union with Christ is one of the most profound things that happens to us when we become a believer. So, as Paul says it in Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ. Now it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So we ask ourselves, is that our consolation this morning? When things go wrong, when things go badly in life, do I draw consolation, encouragement from being in Christ? That's the first thing. The second thing is, is there any comfort in love? I think God's love is the first thing we ponder when we become a believer. God loves me. How amazing is that? How could that be with as messed up as I am, with as much as I've sinned against him? I've offended the standard of a righteous God. I don't deserve anything but his wrath, his judgment. But instead, he has showered his love on me in Christ. How could that be? But he does. We might ask, even as was prayed earlier, what is man that you are mindful of us? Why would you care about us? But God does. He loves us. Paul says that should be a comfort to us. The third thing he says there, is there any participation in the Spirit? Well, if I'm in Christ and loved by God, well, that means, according to Ephesians 1.13, that I'm sealed with the Holy Spirit that comes to dwell inside me, to remind me that I'm his child, to empower me for service. The word participation here is the word koinonia, or fellowship. It's often translated, it speaks of the intimate nature of the relationship, I have fellowship with God through Christ by his spirit. Paul adds a fourth thing, and I think he turns from the vertical, from our relationship with God, to thinking about the horizontal, when he says, is there any affection and sympathy? The first three were all God word, now we're thinking about our relationship. Do we have any affection for the saints who are likewise saved by God and they for us? Do we have any sympathy, any shared compassion for one another as sinners saved by grace? Well, if we have all of that, then Paul says, complete my joy by being of the same mind. Can you see what Paul is doing here? As he wants to exhort us towards unity. I mean, we could wonder, is he kind of just ratcheting up the emotional intensity, like, come on guys, you're in Christ, and God loves you, and you've got the Spirit, you've got fellowship, so what's wrong with you? Come on, be unified. No, for one, he's saying that these things are all prerequisites of unity. You're not gonna have unity without these things. But even more than that, he's wanting us to use gospel resources to have the unity created among us. And that's incredibly important for us, because if we just decide, okay, I'm really going to love these people around me in my own effort, Well, that self-effort won't last ultimately. We're going to need something supernatural to happen in us if we're going to love people we wouldn't otherwise love. I think this is so important because it will keep us from walking out of here feeling beat up, feeling bad about ourselves, and uncertain of where we even get the strength to change. As I was reflecting on this, I was thinking about there's a trend popular among many missions groups out on the missions field called obedience-based discipleship. And the idea of this is as you're interacting, especially in Muslim contexts, you can begin to teach people just to obey the commands of scripture before they've actually believed in Jesus. And the idea is that if you can get them to start just kind of living out the commands and seeing them as a good thing, that maybe it will ultimately lead the person to believe in Christ and be saved. And I'm just reflecting on how opposite that is from the way the Bible teaches us about how to live rightly. It doesn't encourage us to think that we even have the power in our own strength to do it. So right from the start here, we should be dependent on God. We should say, thank heaven, we have Christ, the Father, the Spirit, and the fellowship of the believers. So that's number one, the power for unity. But let's move on and think. Number two, about the practice of unity, picking up in verse two. Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. We get more repetition here as Paul states what he wants for them. What I'm summarizing is unity. The same mind, the same love, in full accord and of one mind. Notice that unity encompasses the mind, what we often call like-mindedness, but it has an emotional side too, doesn't it? It is the same love and in full accord or literally same-souled. It points to a deep emotional connection. What we're being given is really a vision of Christian community. Not a club of people who share a common background or ancestry or share a common hobby. Not just a group of people that come together and smile and are nice and polite to each other. No, he's talking about a deep unity born of our common relationship with Christ. And Paul wants us to remember that as they're trying to be a fruitful church, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, they're going to have to have this kind of same-souledness and like-mindedness. I remember when I was a freshman in college, I was not a believer. I was an agnostic, but my path crossed with some Christian guys. They invited me to a Bible study. I didn't really know what that was, but I thought I would go along with them for some reason. After I attended one of these Bible studies, I started seeing the guys that were involved in it just around campus, different places. And especially in the dining hall where I worked, they would come in and they would sit in groups and talk to each other for like an hour, which was very odd to me as an 18-year-old college freshman, just to see guys talking to each other. It actually kind of annoyed me at first because my job was to clean up the dining hall and I wanted people to leave kind of after they were done eating. But these guys, they would just sit and talk to each other. They seemed happy. It seemed like they were asking each other questions and they weren't just talking about sports. It was extremely attractive to me. It made me want to know, where do they get this affection that they have for each other? Well, I think Paul wants us to see that kind of unity as something that's very desirable. How do we get it? Paul gets practical in verse three here. Do nothing, he says, from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. And then a second line, let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. I wonder if you can see how these two lines are in parallel. We've got a negative in the first part of each sentence, a do nothing and a not only, and then we've got a but, we've got a positive that we're supposed to pursue. So in that first line, the negative is selfish ambition. This means a desire to elevate ourselves over, above other people. Your translation might say rivalry. That's a good word to think about. It's the desire to get ahead of someone. Do you have any rivalries that you need to let go of? Any selfish ambition? The second word is conceit. It's the idea of empty glory that was the old King James translation, vain glory. Before we move on too quickly, it's worth asking, am I after self-glorification in much of what I do? I mean, how much do I desire to be praised by other people? How do I feel when someone else gets praised, but I don't? We're being asked to evaluate our actions here. Do nothing motivated by these things, but instead, in humility, count others more significant than ourselves. Humility is the only way you're going to count others more significant than yourselves, right? Humility is not being a doormat, it's not being overly self-deprecating. Humility is assessing yourself rightly according to God's standard. So I was made by God and you were made by God for his purposes, not self-created. And though we didn't live for those purposes, God in his grace chose to redeem us and save us. So we're doubly his. He created us and then he bought us with a price. That should lead us to the kind of mindset that Paul begins his letters with when he says, Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ. That's humility. Are you a humble person? Am I allowed to say yes to that? Well, we've gotta be if we're gonna count others more significant than ourselves. I'm supposed to think of you as more important than me, not in terms of absolute value, but because God calls me to love you, and I love you by placing your good ahead of my own in priority. So I'd like to get the check if I could. I'd like you to let me stay late and clean up, and you go ahead and go home. I'd like to be impossible to offend. Verse four is a word of further explanation. Look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. We're to love our neighbors as ourselves. He assumes you're gonna look to your own interests to some degree, your own business, but by prioritizing other people, you're actually just making it a both and. I'm also gonna look out for your interests. I was thinking about application here. There are just unlimited potential applications of this, right? Let's think about a few. First, it's hard to count other people's interests ahead of your own if you don't take the time to get to know other people. That makes sense, right? In this community, if I'm going to know who needs prayer, who needs encouragement, who might need financial help, who needs help in some way, I'm going to have to get to know other people. I'm going to have to invest time and energy. I mean, if you just show up on Sunday and sing and smile and pray and depart, you're not going to get to know what are the needs around you. How do we get to know people? It takes intentional effort, doesn't it? We want a culture here of setting up appointments with each other during the week for lunch and for coffee, for hospitality in our homes, for play dates and group hikes. The idea is not just to have a full social calendar. The idea is I want to get to know more and more and more people here so I can know how the Lord might want me to help or encourage or pray for you. Now you might think, Mark, I'm so busy. My schedule is so full. Well, it's costly, and Paul knows that. And I would say also that all of us have a time budget to spend. Whatever yours is in the current season, use that, but press into relationships with each other. If it's getting together with one person per week, do that. Use this morning gathering as an opportunity to make one appointment a week with someone new. Try to get to know them. Second application, realize that serving in the church is doing this very thing. When there's an ask for help, when you volunteer for childcare, music, to take food to a gathering, whatever it is, you're giving of your time and your effort for the benefit of others. You're placing their needs ahead of your own. I often exhort our church in China that they should look at the deacons of the church. The deacons hate that. I mean, deacons are deacons in part because they're just willing to serve behind the scenes. But I tell the church, just watch the deacons. They're paid horribly, okay? We don't pay our deacons, right? They're just spending their time and energy because they'd like to serve us. So they become wonderful examples to all of us. of the kind of service that we should be seeking to render. We should want to be like them in that regard. When we started a church in our living room almost 10 years ago now, about 15 people, we would have some snacks before the service would start, and then we'd have the service, and then we would eat something afterwards, which would create a lot of dishes, okay? It's church in our living room, the kitchen's right there. There was a brother, Nathan Boyette, as we would finish, he would slip into the kitchen and start doing dishes. Wouldn't say anything about it. And he did it every single Sunday. It was striking to me that most of the other people, they must have thought that was like his job or something. But I can tell you it was such a blessing to Megan and I because it meant that when everybody left our house and it looked like a bomb went off in our living room, the dishes were done. I just, it's always struck me that something made Nathan just want to do that. Well, that's what we want to be like in a thousand different ways. third application here, realize that there is an outward dimension to this. The context I think is the church here, but this kind of self-giving for the good of others is supposed to flow out into our communities. So we want to be known in our neighborhood as one of the people that's trying to get to know other people. that's looking for ways to serve them when someone moves in, that you bring the baked goods to that person. When your neighbor's working on a project that you go over and say, can I help with that project? I mean, we want to be known wherever we are in our workplace. We want to be known as the people who pick up the trash when it needs to be picked up, make the coffee when it needs to be made. Now, we're not doing that just kind of like, hey, anybody watching here? I'm a Christian. But that will be the effect to some degree. Kids, you may be playing on sports teams. Realize that the way you treat your teammates It's visible. You want your relationship with Christ to overflow into a desire to serve other people. That's what Titus 2.10 says, that this sort of serving makes the teaching about our Lord Jesus the pattern for unity. Look again at verse 5 there. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. We'll stop there. This is one of the great passages that teaches us about the nature of Jesus, that teaches us about the nature of Jesus Christ, the nature of our Savior. So notice three things we learn about him. First of all, his divinity. He's fully God. Verse 6. Many have misunderstood the first phrase, he was in the form of God. This is not saying he was like God, but not fully God. The Greek word morphe for form has a broad range of meaning. Often it's not just by studying a single word in isolation that we're going to understand it. Notice here in the verse that it is in parallel with the second phrase, equality with God. Can you see form of God and equality with God? I think those two phrases mean the same thing here. We're being taught Jesus' preexistence. Before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, He existed eternally as the divine Son of God, fully equal with God the Father. Second thing we're taught is his humanity. In verse 7, we're told that though he is divine, he did not count his divinity as a thing to be grasped, as a thing to be held onto. In other words, he didn't see the advantages or the benefits of his status as God as a thing to be exploited or to be held onto. So in verse 7, We're told he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. Again, many misunderstandings are possible here. It's a mistake to read he emptied himself and assume that he must have emptied himself of something concrete, that he subtracted something. Some have suggested this, that he lost his divinity or his power, his omniscience, or so on. But that's not how the metaphor works here. It's similar to a metaphor Paul will often use of himself of saying that he is poured out for the benefit of others. When Paul says he's poured out, you don't say, well, what got poured out from him? What did he lose? You understand that what he's saying is that he gave of himself for the good of other people. We understand it to be a costly sacrifice, but not one that diminishes the person's being. Again, I think context is helpful, and notice emptied himself is followed in verse eight by taking the form of a servant. Jesus emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. He was fully man. So fully God, fully man, but there's a third and most striking thing that we're supposed to see here, and that's his humility. To go from the glory of heaven to the humility of a man who came not to be served, but to serve. It's a staggering example of condescension. Notice that the downward progression has two stages here, first becoming a man, and then a second downward movement as he becomes obedient to death, even death on a cross. The Father sent him to do the work of dying a substitutionary death for us. And Jesus was obedient to his father. The first Adam was disobedient. The last Adam, who is Jesus, was obedient all the way. Just stop and think for a moment how rare it is in our world for someone to condescend in any significant way. Well, we might imagine how surprised we'd be if the CEO of our company showed up, it's a busy workday, everybody's kind of running around doing things, and the CEO starts cleaning up the conference room table, starts taking out the trash, doing what the janitor would do. Be surprising to us. We might move even further and think how strange it would be for a president or a king to to stop his motorcade on the highway and get out and help somebody who's trying to change a tire. But whatever example we could think of of condescension would be a very temporary condescension of one being to another being just like them. I mean, as we say about the rich and the famous and the powerful in our world, they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like we do. They're just like us in a sense. But here is a condescension that's beyond description. A being who is in the heavens, who does whatever he pleases. A being who cannot be prideful, because to be prideful is to think more highly of yourself than you ought. But he's a being who could not be thought of highly enough. He's the fountain of all goodness, knowledge, beauty, glory. For him to take to himself the form of a servant and to be found in the likeness of man is the greatest of mysteries. I was thinking, I don't know that this is correct, but I was thinking in many ways it goes even beyond the Trinity. When we think about the triune nature of God, that's certainly beyond our comprehension, but we assume that the creator is going to be different than the creation and that we're not going to be able to fully understand that. But how could the divine take to himself humanity? Don't miss these final words. Death, even death, on a cross. How can the immortal die? Wesley's hymn put it this way, "'Tis mystery all, the immortal dies. Who can explain his strange design? In vain the firstborn seraph tries to sound the depths of love divine." How can the immortal die? But it was not just death. It was death on a cross, the most shameful, scandalous, hated form of execution. We understand that there, the father poured out on him all of the wrath against the sin of everyone who would trust in him. Now, we don't have to ask why he did it, because we know, right? He did it because there was no other way that you and I could be saved. For God to be just, human sin must be paid for with death, it's the divine standard. We must die and be separated from God for eternity because of our sin, unless there was a substitute who could come, a substitute who didn't have his own penalty to pay, a substitute who was fully human and could therefore take my place and yours and fully divine with an infinite capacity to pay for all of the sins of all of those who would repent and believe in him, behold the man upon a cross, my sin upon his shoulders. Now all of that is what Paul wants us to take into our minds when he says in verse five, have this mind among yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus. I was thinking last night, we should read that and just weep for how vain and how petty you and I have often been towards each other. How often we have bristled at how we perceive ourselves to have been treated, a short answer, a cold shoulder. Once offended, we have often been expert at withholding love from a brother or sister, but not so the Savior, friends. Beloved, have this mind among yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus. How could we, who have been so well loved by so humble a savior, not count others as more significant than ourselves? How could we not look to the interests of others? Now, I think Paul could have ended there. The pattern of humble service is laid out clear before us, as well as the power in Christ by the Spirit to pursue it. But that isn't how he ends. Look there at verse nine. Therefore, God has exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, what did the Father do? Because Jesus laid aside his glory and humbled himself in obedience to the Father, therefore, he has highly exalted him. Both through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and his ascension to heaven where he sits at the right hand of the Father, he is now exalted. And we're told that his name is now above every name. Name, I think, means both his identity and his authority. So this is similar to what Jesus says about himself in Matthew 28. All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me. Because this is true, at the end of all things, when the Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory, every knee will indeed bow to him. Those in heaven, probably refers to angelic beings here, He says, on earth, that's probably those alive at the time of his return, and those under the earth is probably referring to the dead, all will bow, all will confess that he is the Lord to the glory of the Father. This doesn't mean that all will be saved, but that all will acknowledge the fact that he is indeed Lord. So why is this here? Why include this? Well, you and I are not Jesus, but just as his condescension is used to motivate our service, so his vindication is used here to remind us that our humble service to others will one day be worth it. I remember when I became a Christian in college, my dad came to pick me up. for a holiday break, I think it was. And I told him that I had become a Christian and I started to talk to him about some of the things that I'd been learning. I think we were talking about the Sermon on the Mount. I had mentioned Jesus' teaching about turning the other cheek. And something about the conversation kind of set my dad off. And he said, son, I don't want you to become one of those people that is kind of gullible and easy to take advantage of. He was really worried about me. He was basically saying, just don't take this religion stuff too far. Because he recognized, and the way he would say it, it's a hard world out there, son. And you're gonna have to be tough to make it through. I think it's interesting that my dad could immediately recognize the danger that we feel here. I mean, we're being asked to sink our time and our energy and our effort into a group of people who may let us down. Or maybe we should say in many ways, small and large, they will let us down. If I count you more important than myself, I can't at the same time protect myself from all the ways you might hurt me, right? There's no way I can look mainly to your interests and keep my interests safe and secure. So I've got to know this before I begin, is it worth it? Well, Paul's triumphant closing here reminds us that none of God's promises fall to the ground. The one who lays down his life in Christ-like service to others will be vindicated in the end, just as surely as Jesus was vindicated in the end. So friends, the exhortation of this text is to unity in the church. We may ask ourselves this morning, what do I need to do to become a person who is counting others as more significant than myself? How is it very practically, even just today, even just in the next week, that I can try to be looking out for the interests of others? But as I do that, beloved, remember that the motivation is Jesus Christ. and the power flows from him as well. Unity in the church comes from a Christ-like humility that serves. Brothers and sisters, we can be sure that it's worth it. Let's pray. Our Father, we do pray that you would help us to love each other as you have loved us. We're so thankful that you sent Jesus to die for us. We pray in his name. Amen.