Amen. May it be true that we surrender all. Good morning. It is so good to be with you all here in this place as well as online. And I want to invite you to turn with me in your Bible to Philippians chapter 2 as we're going to continue working our way through this incredible little letter from the Apostle Paul to one of his favorite congregations, one of his favorite churches that he planted, the Church in Philippi. And I'm going to read verses 1 through 11, chapter 2, 1 through 11 here in just a moment. While you are turning there, I'll ask a question for you to ponder for a second. How important is unity? Any time there is some sort of union. So if two things, two people, two groups are united then how important is unity. And as you would imagine, unity among people or groups that are united is actually very important. One author says to prove the point, imagine tying the legs of two chickens together and then throwing them over a closed line. They're united. But are we going to see unity? I don't know. Don't try that. But we're united, you and me. God has united us as a church body through our faith in Christ and through bringing us together. And so where there's union, God wants to see unity. And Paul is going to get us there today. So here now God's holy, true, and life-giving word. Philippians chapter 2 starting in verse 1. So if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. But in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you not only look to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 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. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. So that at the name of Jesus, every nation 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. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together. Our Father and our God, we do thank you and praise you that you speak to us, even now, even today, through your Word and through your Spirit. And most of all, in the person and work of your Son, and as we dwell on what Paul says here, and in particular, about the Son of God coming, humbling himself, would you be at work in us, Lord? Would you open our eyes through your Spirit to the glory and majesty of our Lord Jesus in this passage? And would you use what we see here and learn here today, to transform who we are as individuals, families, community groups, as a church? And would you use this time to equip us and excite us for continuing our mission to make disciples? And we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Kids, if you're looking for a word of the day, you can have two. I'm going to give you two today. Two for. It's Bogo. Unity and humility. Either one of those, if you track in the Word or words of the day. But last week, when we were looking at the previous passage, the Apostle Paul was talking about some of the things outside of the church that can threaten our joy and even our unity. And now, the Apostle Paul turns his attention to threats inside the church. What can happen inside, among us, that can actually erode our relationships and damage our unity. He's talking about those things today. And as we unpack this passage, it is my hope that we can see that really unity is something that we really want to have. But it really only comes through humility. And humility really only comes through Christ. And so it is my hope that you and I can see today at the big point we want to focus on here is that as we pursue more Christ-centered lives together, that will enable us to have more humility, which will produce more unity. The more we, as a church, center our lives on Christ, the more we're going to have humility and then through that unity. And to do that, I want to talk about three things. Unity, humility, and Christ. Can you believe that? Okay, so we're going to talk about unity looking at verses 1 and 2. And humility looking at verses 3 and 4. And then we'll talk about Christ looking at verses 5 through 11. So let's do that. Go ahead and look at verses 1 and 2. Let's talk about unity. Something that Paul is addressing here, not the first time that he's addressed it in this letter. But I want you to see here first that unity is something God wants for us. Unity is something God really wants for a local church. Okay, anytime there's a union, you want to see unity. We are united together, he wants unity for us. And it's important that we say that God wants unity for us, not necessarily from us. In other words, it's not like God is looking at us and saying, you better get some unity or I want to prove of you. Rather, he approves of us fully in Christ and because he loves us so much, he wants us to have unity. Okay, that's why Paul starts talking about it here. Look at verse 1. He says, so if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy. By being of the same mind, having the same love being in full accord and of one mind. And here's what Paul is doing here in those first part of the first verse there. He's really saying, if God has been at work, he talks about encouragement in Christ. He talks about the love, presumably of God. He talks about participation in the spirit. So he's going trinitarian on us here. And in the trinity there's perfect unity. He's saying, if God is at work among you and that is creating sympathy and affection in the Philippians for Paul, which we know is there because he established that in the very first week of the sermon series. Then he's saying, basically, have that same kind of unity and that same type of affection and sympathy for one another. He talks about having the same mind. What he's saying there is, he knows they think like he thinks. So he's saying, as you have the same mind as I do, same thoughts about the gospel, have those thoughts among yourselves. He says, he knows they love him. So he's saying, as you guys love me, as they love Paul, he's saying, have that love for one another. And he knows they're in accord with him. They're in agreement. They have unity with him around the gospel. So he says he's saying, as you guys have unity with me, have unity among one another. And then he says, and one mind, and that word, the Greek word there means understanding. So it's as if he's saying, in the same way you guys share an understanding of the gospel with me, share that understanding of the gospel with one another. And that same, same, same. That's unity language. And so we want to see that what Paul's driving at is he wants them to be experiencing unity and God wants you and I to be blessed by a high level of unity. But unity is not uniformity. That's one thing we have to make clear. Paul is not saying that they should have uniformity here where everybody should look the same, talk the same, think the same, dress the same, breathe the same. And it's, that's, that's uniformity. And he's not calling for uniformity. He's calling for unity. God loves diversity. He invented it. He's not calling for uniformity, but he is calling for unity. And unity centered around Christ. Tony Evans talking about the difference between unity and uniformity. He says this. If, if the football team is united, it does not mean that everyone's playing the same position. But it does mean that everybody's going for the same goal line. Okay, so we'll keep that in mind as the bucks go to the Super Bowl, right. He says think about an orchestra. An orchestra is harmonious. It's not because everybody's playing the same instrument, but it is because they're all playing the same piece. So there's harmony. There's unity. He says think about a choir. If a choir is singing in great harmony, it's not because they're all singing the same part, but rather they're all adding their parts to the same song. So in other words, what he's saying is unity is not sameness, but it has to do the same purpose, the same goals. And Paul has been talking about the goal of knowing Christ as well as making him known. And so he's wanting them to experience unity as a result of their desire to know Christ. And to make him known. And God wants that for us that we would have a lot of unity centered around our desire to both know Christ and to make him known. So we need to recognize that God wants unity for us. He loves us so much. He's united us together as members of a church now he wants us to have unity. How do we get there? Do we just say go unity if only? No, we have to get there through the hardest of roads. And that would be the road of humility. Look at verses three and four. And here Paul is going to show the Philippians. God's going to show us how we arrive at genuine Christ-centered unity. It's through humility. Real unity is the byproduct of genuine humility. So Paul says, do only a few things from selfish ambition or conceit. Look at that's nobody says. If you're not looking at the text, it's what we call a joke. Here's what he really says. I mean, he goes nuclear here. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. But in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. You know what he's saying? He's saying that pride and selfishness prevent unity. Humility and selflessness produce unity. So do we want to be presenters or producers? Well, let's think about how it prevents it. He uses the word selfish ambition. It is a Greek word that literally means to have a party spirit or even partisanship. He's saying, don't do anything that only serves you and a group within the group. And he says, do nothing from conceit. That word literally means groundless self-esteem. When you esteem yourself very highly and there's no grounds for doing so. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. You see, in other words, you could take what he says later and you could look at it by corollary. If humility is considering others more significant than yourself and considering the interests of others not only your own, then pride, selfish ambition, conceit is considering others less significant than yourself. And only looking to your own interests. I hate even saying that because I think it sounds like me far more often than I wanted to. And then it gets worse if you think about it because when you think about pride and pride really being probably the cause of all division in the world, then it really hurts to know how prideful you really are. Andrew Murray in his book on humility, which I totally hate because it just shows how not humble I am, but he talks about how literally all the misery in the world, all the suffering in the world, all the frustration, all the hurt, all the pain, all the wars, all the division in the world. It's really coming right out of our own human pride. And so therefore Paul knows that and pride is going to erode relationships and damage unity and so he says, don't do anything out of pride. It'll prevent unity rather he says in humility. Consider others more significant than yourselves count others more significant than yourself, look to the interests of others. He's calling us to humility. Humility is lowliness humility at literally the word means a deep sense of one's littleness in a deep sense of your littleness. Count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others deep sense of your littleness, you know, just riffing off Andrew Murray a little more. And he actually says humility is actually seeing yourself as nothing. Not that we don't have intrinsic in estimable value and worth because we're made in the image of God and he loves us more than we can ever begin to fab him. But but humility is actually seeing yourself as nothing because you see God as everything. That's really what humility is to say I am nothing. God is everything. And in the same way that pride is really the source of all the sin and ugliness in the world humility is where it begins to heal. In fact, Andrew Murray says this humility is the place of entire dependence on God. It is the first duty of the creature and the root of every good quality. So Andrew Murray is saying that anything we might do that's ever good, that's ever a blessing to others is going to blow out of humility, never out of pride. And then Andrew Murray, that stinker, he makes it worse ready for this. I'm only doing this to you because it was done to me when I read the book. Here's what he says. He says humility before God is nothing, unless it is proven through humility before men. And he elaborates on that he says if you in prayer, if you say God, I am nothing, I am a sinner, I don't deserve anything from you except your judgment, which is all true. I'm nothing, I'm nothing, you're everything, I'm nothing, you're everything, you say that in prayer, and then you go out in public with your friends, with your family, with your co-workers, and you say ostensibly the opposite. Actually, I'm something, I'm going to have my way here, I don't care about your interests, you are not as significant as I am, thank you very much. Then what Andrew Murray is saying is, what that proves is that your humility before God is actually not real. If you can't say amen, then you've got to say ouch. Now bring it back to thinking about in a church, we want to have unity, God wants us to have unity, and it's going to come through humility, seeing ourselves as nothing and God as everything which enables us to count others more significant. You look around the room and say, everybody here is more significant than me, you can look around the room and say, I'm going to look to everybody else as interests, not only my own. That's humility, and here's what he says, our Frank Thielman, one of the commentators I read on this, he says, if selfish ambition and conceit are guaranteed to erode relationships in the church, then the way to be a healthy church is to consider others more significant than yourself and look to the interests of others and not just your own. And he says, and this is especially important for leadership, humility. Martin Luther used to talk about humility like this, he would say that you tell a story. And the story would be that there were two mountain goats walking on a very thin ledge, one coming from one side, one coming from the other, and they meet in the middle. And this ledge is very, very thin, on one side there's a rock wall and on the other side there's a sheer cliff, and these goats, mountain goats are facing each other. And there's no room to back up or turn around. And so Luther would say, how did these mountain goats solve their dilemma? And then he would say, now if they were human beings, if they were like human beings, they would have started budding heads, right? They would start budding heads trying to get their way, and they probably both would have fallen off the cliff to their death. He said, ah, but mountain goats much smarter than humans. Here's how they solved their dilemma. One of the goats lied down, so the other goat could walk across him, and he would say, that's what humility is. The budding heads are instead of budding heads laid out. That doesn't mean he compromised the truth, but involves laying things down. And it's not to say that we should allow people to walk all over us. We have inherent dignity because we're made in the image of God, but it does mean that often there's a requirement of somebody laying something down, somebody humbling themselves. Choosing not to get their own way, considering the other, more significant than themselves, caring about the interests of the other. That's humility. That's what humility is. And it's a good thing Paul can teach us about it. And it's a good thing that God wants us to learn about. Here's another thing. Dietrich Bonhoffer, some of you know that name. He was a pastor in the time of Hitler and died because of his opposition to Hitler. But he wrote a little book called Life Together. And in his book called Life Together, he actually talked about how this stuff impacts our as a church life together. And so in the book Life Together, he gives seven principles for eradicating selfish ambition and conceit. And so I'm going to tell you those seven principles. If you're in a community group, you'll get your community group leader, we'll get a copy of these this week and maybe your group can talk about these things and imagine what our church would be like if we followed these seven principles of humility as well as eradicating selfish ambition and conceit. Here's what he says. Number one, Christians should hold their tongues refusing to speak uncharitably about a Christian brother or sister. How much unity if we knew nobody's talking behind our back about us. Number two, Christians should cultivate humility that comes from understanding that they like Paul are the greatest of sinners and can only live in God's sight by his grace. Pride says, I'm better than you. Humility says, I'm a sinner, I'm worse than you. One of the reasons God wants us to recognize our sin is so that we see that we really are nothing. And so we can see others more insignificant than ourselves. Number three, he says, Christians should this is this one kills me. He says number three, Christians should listen long and patiently so that they will understand their fellow Christians need. When you have a temptation to just be waiting for your turn to talk, this is such a healing corrective. Listen, listen to each other so we know each other's need. Number four, he says, Christians should refuse to consider their time and calling so valuable that they cannot be interrupted to help with unexpected needs no matter how small or meanial. Number five, Christians should bear the burden of their brothers and sisters in the Lord both by preserving their freedom and by forgiving their sinful abuse of that freedom. Number six, Christians should declare God's word to their fellow believers when they need it and when they need to hear it. Number seven, Christians should understand that Christian authority is characterized by service and does not call attention to the person who performed the service. You can talk about those in your community group but there's a lot there and there's a lot about humility and there's an intense challenge of really actually looking at one another and considering everyone else more significant than you and looking to other's interests and not only your own. This is the way to unity. So unity, we get there through humility, humility, we see what that looks like. How do we get there? How are we going to grow in humility? Well, we're going to do so by centering our lives more and more on Christ, humility incarnate. Verses five through 11, let's talk about Christ and what we see here is Paul shows us that Christ exemplifies and enables humility that produces unity. Christ exemplifies and enables us to have the kind of humility that will produce unity. At verse five, let's first talk about the enabling. This is where Paul says he can enable you. You can do this, he says, verse five, have this mind among yourselves. In other words, be humble, treat each other with humility. Have this mind among yourselves. How, Paul, which is yours in Christ Jesus? Okay, so there it is, he's saying you can have this mind among you. You can have a humble mind among you within the congregation if you try to get it in Christ Jesus or through your faith in Christ Jesus by depending on Christ Jesus. So are you ever going to be humble by trying to be humble? No, because if you got more humble by trying to be humble, you'd be proud of how humble you got. No, it's going to be Christ. And a greater dependence on Christ that enables humility that would actually produce unity. Why? Because Christ is humility incarnate. This is what he says, look in verse six, 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. Now let's do a little extra Jesus here so we don't do get into heresy just real quick. When Paul uses the word grasped, he did not count equality a thing to be grasped. He's talking about the pre-existence of Christ, the Son of God who has always existed and is equal in power and glory with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. And what he's saying is the Son of God did not see his divinity as a thing to be grasped and that word literally has the nuance of held onto or retained. So the Son of God who is divine is saying he doesn't see his divinity as something he's going to hang on to and use for his advantage if he's going to use his divinity he's going to use it for someone else's advantage, who's yours. And so what does he do? He empties himself. What does that mean? Well first you have to recognize that Paul uses this exact Greek word several times in the New Testament every single time he uses it, he uses it in the figurative sense. So he's not saying Christ literally emptied his divinity, but he nullified it. Now the Greek word, when it's figuratively used, it's to deprive something of force, it's to render something useless, it's to neutralize, it's to make of none effect. In other words, the Son of God decided not to cling to his divinity, but actually to make it of none effect, not for him, but for us. And so then what? And then he becomes a human being, he incarnates, he becomes one of us, but not just one of us, he becomes the lowest of us. He becomes a slave, he becomes someone who is enslaved and this is really important, notice how he said in the form of God and then he said in the form of a slave. Did you see that? And that's because what he's doing here is when Jesus came and incarnated, when the Son of God became man, he did it to show the world what God is, who God is, what God is like. And so when he comes, he has to come in the form of a servant in the form of a slave, why? Because God is the ultimate servant. Yeah, we say, well God says in the Bible, he wants us to serve him. Yes, secondarily. Primarily, God is the ultimate servant. And it is his delight to serve us, to meet our needs, to care for us, to rescue us, because he's the servant and so when Christ comes, not only does he humble himself and become a servant, or a human being, but he becomes a slave, he becomes a servant so that we see that God is a servant God. And then he keeps going, he's obedient. And he's obedient to God the Father. This is the epitome of humility. Jesus says, I'm nothing, I'm only going to do what the Father has sent me to do. I'm only going to say what the Father has sent me to say. I'm nothing, he's everything, listen to this. Andrew Murray points out, if you read through the gospel of John over and over and over and over and over again, you see Jesus saying, I'm only doing what the Father wants me to do. I'm not here for me. John 5.19, Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. John 5.30, I can do nothing on my own, I seek not my own will, but the will of him who sent me. John 6.38, for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. John 7.16, my teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. John 14.10, the words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his work. And what that means, friends, is that Jesus never did anything for himself. Every single thing he did at every moment of his life was for the glory of God and for the good of the people he came to rescue, the people he humbled himself to rescue. Do you see what he gave up for you? Do you see what he's done for you and then wants to do in you because he was obedient to death and not just death but death on a cross which was the worst kind of death. It's the lowest kind of death. It was the death reserved for the worst of criminals in Greco-Roman society or rebellious slaves. And so he comes to the lowest place, the lowest death, obedient to death, why? Because he counted us more significant than himself because he looked to our interest and not to his interest alone. That is the gospel. Paul is preaching the gospel when he's talking about humility because he's ultimately banking it on who Christ is. You and I in our sin deserving the judgment of God, but no God humbles himself taking the form of a servant and being obedient to death, even death on a cross. But here's the amazing thing. Another amazing thing. You have this, so our forgiveness. Jesus comes and he dies and he pays for our sins on the cross. So if we believe in him, then not by anything we've done or not done, we are reconciled to God through faith alone in Christ. If you're new with us, you have to understand. That's very hard to the gospel. We don't belong here because we behave. We belong here because we want the forgiveness and healing that only Jesus has. And so Jesus dies for us. He pays for our sins and our sins are paid for, but then he is raised from the dead. One to prove that if we have faith in him, we really are forgiven. We really have been declared righteous in this site, but also to show us a pattern. Christ humbled himself and all the way to death and then what? Is that where the story ended? Praise God. No, look at verse 9. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at 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. Now one of the things Paul is doing there is he's teaching us this good, healthy Christology that Christ has been exalted to his rightful place as Lord. He is our God. He is our Savior. But he's also showing us that you and I who believe in him can trust that if we will humble ourselves, we will also be exalted. Nowhere near as high as Christ, but we will not humble ourselves nearly as low. So Christ humbled himself for our forgiveness, but he also rose for our healing. He wants us to learn this pattern that if we will humble ourselves, we will be exalted. In fact, Jesus said that verbatim. In Matthew 23 verse 12, Jesus said whoever exalts himself will be humbled, whoever humbles himself will be exalted, which is what he went and proved in his cross burial and resurrection. His humiliation and his exaltation. So James his brother would write in chapter 4 verse 10, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. So as we think about this, as we think about really humbling ourselves, maybe there are situations in our marriage where we're not going to get back to unity if one of us doesn't humble ourselves and it's going to have to be you. Or maybe it's in a community group, there's some conflict and we're thinking we're not going to have unity again unless somebody humbles herself and it's going to have to be you. Everything in you says don't do it. Everything in us because we're sinful because we're fallen in our nature says go up, go up. It's pride. No, protect yourself. No, don't, don't do it. Don't go down. The way down is the way down. The way up is the way up and here Christ is showing us. No, no, no, no, no. When it comes to healing, the way up is the way down. The way down leads you to the way up. If you humble yourself, then you'll be exalted. It's a faith thing, friends. It's believing if I humble myself here, God will have to lift me up and it's believing that he will. And how can you believe that he will? Not because of Christ. These Christ shows us this pattern. We humble ourselves and then God lifts us up. A man named Ronald Pinkerton, which is a great name if you're a Weezer fan, by the way. Ronald Pinkerton, he writes about an experience that he had and it kind of helped him understand this. He said he was hang gliding. He was soaring above the earth at about 4,200 feet and suddenly out of nowhere he was hit by this really strong blast of air, a down draft as it's called. And he was suddenly and uncontrollably plummeting toward the earth. And he was traveling at such an alarming rate that he was absolutely convinced that he was going to crash and die. He did not get out of this down draft. He was heading absolutely straight down. And so he's thinking he's going to die. And out of the corner of his eye he sees there's something he looks over to his right and there's a red-tailed hawk about six feet off the tip of his right wing of his glider. He can see that this hawk is actually fighting the exact same down draft. And then he looks back at the ground and this point he was falling so fast that he's now he's only about 300 feet off the ground. He says that the pine trees that he was rapidly descending towards were looking like menacing pikes on which he was going to be in trouble. And so he's getting pretty nervous and he looks back at the hawk. And at that moment the hawk banks downwind. And Pinkerton says in his mind he's thinking downwind if there's any if there's right air we need upwind. And he literally thought the hawk might be trying to commit suicide. Now he's at 200 feet. Still cannot control the hang glider. And he says he says that a thought popped in his mind. Follow the hawk. Follow the hawk. He went against everything he knew about flying but he figured everything he knew about flying was kind of useless at that point anyway. At 100 feet. He goes for it. He follows the hawk. He banks downwind and then he says it happened. He could see the hawk had begun to gain altitude. And for a split second he says that he was kind of suspended sort of motionless in air. And then this warm surge of air started pushing his glider upward. He says, quote, I was stunned. Nothing I knew as a pilot could explain what was happening. But it was true. He was rising. What you probably assume since he did tell the story. But he says that from that he realized that it was a moment when everything he said, everything he thought, everything that he was thinking in his mind was, I need to go up. I need to go up. I need to go up if I'm going to survive. But the hawk showed him no, you need to go down. And he followed the hawk and he ended up coming up. Christ is the real hawk. He's the one who has reconciled us to go. So we're forgiven, but he's also healing us. And you know where the healing is? It's not going up. It's going against everything we feel. It's going down. Follow the hawk. And what you can believe, what you can choose to trust is that you follow the hawk down, you follow the king down, you follow the Christ, the down. God will lift you up. God will exalt you. That's the promise. And as we become people who keep following the hawk, we see more unity among one another. And the world actually gets to see what unity is and where it comes from and who it was invented by. So follow the hawk. I'll see you down there. Father, I confess so much pride in me that I don't want to hear. And I thank you that, Lord Jesus, you would come for me. Come for us. And you would humble yourself because I never could. And that you would then exalt us because we never could. Would you give us faith to believe? And would you help us to humble ourselves so that there's more unity in our marriages and our community group in our church, in our city, in our world. Keep our eyes on the hawk. We pray in His name.