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Philippians 2:1-11 · Providence Baptist Church - Sermons

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Today's text is Philippians chapter 2 verses 1 through 11.
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So if you'll join me there in your copy of God's Word.
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And while you get yourself there, I'll remind you that last week we studied the last four verses of chapter 1,
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where Paul tells us that the gospel demands a consistent conduct and it affords a togetherness.
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He concludes that section by telling Christians that suffering has been given to them and to us as a gift.
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It's been granted to us that we would suffer.
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And so we need to be careful not to lose sight of this as we begin our study of chapter 2.
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Now I also want to say, just as a precursory comment,
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what we often do when we study through books of the Bible together this way,
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is we borrow an outline from someone else.
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So typically a good commentary will find their outline and their breakdown.
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And we decided this time around to do a more condensed outline.
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The scheduling just worked out really, really well for when Easter falls and some things like that.
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I regretted a little bit to cover these 11 verses this morning.
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There's a lot packed into these 11 verses.
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Now I think the commentator that we borrowed this outline from was doing so
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because Paul is driving a primary point.
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And so this needs to be the focus of our time together.
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But as I was working and studying this week,
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I really think I could have done this in three weeks instead of in one week.
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And so if you at any point feel like,
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wow, he really didn't spend much time on that.
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I know, I know.
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I would encourage you to continue to study these verses in the future.
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So Philippians chapter 2, verse 1 through 11.
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Before I read, let me remind you, beloved, that this is God's word to us.
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It was written for his glory and our good.
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So we would all do well to listen to it in order to believe its promises and obey its commands.
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So if there is any encouragement in Christ,
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any comfort from love,
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any participation in the Spirit,
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any affection and sympathy,
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complete my joy by being of the same mind,
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having the same love,
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being in full accord and of one mind.
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Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,
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but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
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Let each of you look not only to his own interests,
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but also to the interests of others.
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Have this mind among yourselves,
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which is yours in Christ Jesus,
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who, though he was in the form of God,
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did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
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but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant,
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being born in the likeness of men.
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And being found in human form,
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he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
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even death on a cross.
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Therefore,
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God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.
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So the name of Jesus,
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every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
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And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God,
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the father.
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Now,
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this morning's sermon will have only two prominent points.
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And of course,
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we'll work them out.
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And there's some sub points to be found,
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but they are number one,
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a call to a lowly life.
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And number two,
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a perfect pattern for a lowly life.
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So we see first a call to a lowly life in the first four verses.
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The lowly life is a humble life.
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Many of your Bibles have likely subtitled this portion,
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Christ's example of humility.
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And we will find the exhortion to humility in verse three.
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Humility is foundational to the Christian faith as in thinking rightly about ourselves.
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It's understanding who we are.
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However,
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the humble person has a proper view of who they are.
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And one can only have a clear vision of who they are when viewed in the light of their creator.
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The creation cannot understand itself apart from a revelation from the creator.
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This is why Jesus says in Matthew chapter five and verse three,
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blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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He's talking there about humility.
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Those who recognize that they have nothing to offer to gain their admittance into the kingdom of heaven.
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It's those people who are given the kingdom of heaven.
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People who recognize that we are created in the image of God.
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We have an intrinsic value in that way,
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but nothing to offer God for the salvation of our souls.
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This is the very beginning of humility,
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rightly understanding ourselves.
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This is why Paul wrote Romans chapter 12,
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the beginning of verse three,
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for by the grace given to me,
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I say to everyone among you,
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not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think,
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but to think with sober or serious judgment,
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to really understand who you are.
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Now the Greeks had no value for a posture of humility,
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none whatsoever.
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They despised the idea of a lowly life to the degree that they had no word for humility.
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The word that we see here in the Greek is not found in other Greek texts.
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Many believe that the word was created by the church and possibly by Paul in the very writing of this text.
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They had to frame it and communicate it in a way,
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and so many think that the church actually made the word up to help us understand this,
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because the Greeks fully and flatly rejected the idea of the type of humility that Christians are called to have.
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Perhaps that is why Paul takes some time to explain what he means by in humility,
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count others more significant than yourselves, right?
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He's bearing out this idea at length.
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Just inserting the word humility didn't quite cover the gamut of what he meant.
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He begins this section saying,
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so if there is any encouragement in Christ,
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any comfort from love,
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any participation in the spirit,
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any affection and sympathy.
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And he is not suggesting that there may or may not be encouragement in Christ,
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or comfort from love,
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or participation in the spirit,
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or affection and sympathy.
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What he is saying is,
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because there is encouragement in Christ,
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because there is comfort from love,
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because there is participation in the spirit,
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because there is affection and sympathy,
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live this way, right?
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This way that he's about to expound for their benefit and for ours.
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But before we get there,
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let's consider for a moment the things that Paul says are ours in Christ.
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For the very part of verse 1,
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he says,
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if there's any encouragement in Christ,
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and I think it's right to say that we can also add that phrase,
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in Christ,
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to the end of any of these things.
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Any comfort from love,
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in Christ.
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Any participation in the spirit,
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in Christ.
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Any affection and sympathy,
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in Christ.
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This is what he's developing and bearing out in the text for us.
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What is it that is ours in Christ?
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Having believed in him,
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and having been positionally moved from an enemy of God to a friend,
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clothed in Jesus' righteousness.
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What is it that's granted to us?
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I don't think that Paul means for this to be an exhaustive list.
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I mean,
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you think about the way we speak to one another all the time.
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We give examples a lot as we're talking.
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I think this is what he's doing.
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These are things that are ours.
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So,
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live this way.
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So,
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because there's encouragement in Christ,
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this word means to come alongside and to help,
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right?
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To prod on toward holiness.
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And we do this by the gift of the spirit,
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right?
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He works in us holiness.
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He moves us in the way that we are to go.
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There's comfort from love,
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right?
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This is a synonym for encouragement.
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It's bearing out this idea a bit more because of the great love that we've been shown
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in Christ.
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We ought to experience great comfort.
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If there is participation in the spirit,
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this word for participation is the word for partnership.
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The spirit is given to us as a gift that we might be empowered by him to do the things that we are meant to do,
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right?
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He's going to specifically tell us some of those things momentarily.
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And then finally,
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affection and sympathy.
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Think here,
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love,
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right?
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Care and compassion.
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This is ours in Christ.
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Jesus has loved us in this way.
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And therefore,
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we are to then turn and love and have compassion in a particular way.
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And we could spend our entire morning considering this first,
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right?
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We could have spent the whole Sunday on this first.
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We're going to spend a life trying to understand all that is ours in Christ.
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And I'd even suggest to you that we're going to spend eternity doing that.
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Just this unfolding of who God is to us in Christ forever,
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right?
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But Paul is driving us to a point.
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There's a point he's making here.
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He goes on in verse two to say,
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complete my joy by being of the same mind,
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having the same love,
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being in full accord and of one mind.
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Paul states that what will complete his joy,
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fill him up with joy is to see these Christians living in unity.
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Let's let that sink in for a moment in our current day.
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Paul would have been so grieved by the Christians of our day,
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at least American Christians,
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our context of our day,
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because these people,
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us having received encouragement,
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comfort from love,
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participation in the spirit and affection and sympathy in Christ,
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we are not united as we should be.
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We are too often divisive.
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We want everyone to know how smart and superior we are.
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We are too often haughty and not humble.
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Paul warned the Galatian believers in Galatians chapter five,
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verse 13 and following,
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for you were called to freedom,
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brothers,
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only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh,
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but through love,
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serve one another for the whole loss of filled in one word.
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You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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But if you bite and devour one another,
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watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
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Yeah,
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you can feel like right now American Christianity is consuming itself.
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Just real.
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I mean,
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I'm just really,
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really worried about the church today.
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I've been worried about the church across the past couple of decades for many,
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many reasons,
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but all the more right now for the way we are so disunified.
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And I really don't want our church to be part of that,
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be part of that problem.
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I want us to be unified and I want us to be working for unification amongst churches,
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people who profess the name of Christ everywhere.
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I think this is the right thing.
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I think this is the proper response to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Paul exhorts the Philippians to be of the same mind,
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having the same love.
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He's referring to this love that Christ has shown being in full accord or agreement and of one mind.
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Like what?
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And how,
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how are we to do this work?
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Right?
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Is he encouraging group think?
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Does he want all of us to come in together and pleated khakis and white polo shirts,
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button to the top?
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I don't think he's asking us to be a cult.
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I don't think this is what he's doing at all here.
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Is he suggesting that there can be no variance in our convictions?
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I don't think so.
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I don't think this is what he's driving at at all.
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But we are really apt to want that.
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We are really apt to want to enter into an echo chamber,
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right?
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Where everything we say and think is agreed upon by everyone we say or think it to.
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And first,
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note that he exhorts us to show one another the same kind of love that has been shown us in Christ.
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Right?
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He's going to elaborate on that.
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The kind of love that Jesus showed us in just a bit in the following verses.
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If we love one another the way that Jesus Christ loves us,
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we will do all that we can to maintain unity in the church.
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You just take a moment and think about your own life.
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Across this past week,
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maybe just this morning,
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you have not agreed with the Lord Jesus Christ on something.
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And yet,
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he loves you.
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He bears with you.
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He helps you to grow up into him.
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We expect things of others that Jesus doesn't expect of us.
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How dare we?
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So last week,
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I kind of skipped a stone off the idea of theological triage.
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I'm going to take a little bit more time this morning to talk about it.
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I hope that you'll find its setting in what we're talking about together.
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But I think this is going to be so important for us to understand together as a church.
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And you may be a visitor this morning and go off elsewhere.
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You may be a member here for a short time and go elsewhere.
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Wherever we go as Christians,
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we're going to have to think clearly about what things should we hang on to with a closed fist.
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Like,
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don't even try to take this out of my hand.
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And the things that we should hold with an open hand,
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and maybe some things we shouldn't hold on to at all.
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Some stuff that just doesn't matter a bit.
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This is not a terribly easy thing.
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So I'm going to explain it to you a bit,
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give you a couple of examples.
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And I'm going to give you,
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I think,
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I'll give you one complication.
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It's a thing that needs to be practiced.
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It's a thing that needs to be exercised.
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Right?
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We ought to be able to do this and do this quickly.
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Now,
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quickly,
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triage,
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I explained it last week.
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If you don't know what triage is,
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just in case,
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if you were a emergency room doctor and a bus had gotten in a terrible accident
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and they were rushing in lots of patients,
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triage would be prioritizing those who need care the most and those who don't need care so much.
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Okay?
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So if you've ever been to an emergency room with a broken arm,
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that's why you sat for hours and hours and hours and hours.
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That's why the urgent care exists in the world.
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Right?
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Because people didn't want to go to the emergency room and sit for hours and hours.
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Right?
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But if you go to the emergency room with a cardiac arrest,
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you get whisked into the back.
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They don't make you fill out forms and wait for that to happen.
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Okay?
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They're doing triage when they do that.
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So theological triage,
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right?
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Theology is the study of God,
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can be broken down into four categories.
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Usually we talk in terms of three and you'll see why in a moment.
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The first are primary doctrines.
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Primary doctrines.
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These doctrines or truths are foundational to the Christian faith.
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Right?
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I'd suggest to you that we ought to think of primary doctrines as those things that if you didn't believe them,
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you could not be a Christian.
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Right?
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Just the basic things,
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the core things that you must believe.
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We talk on Sunday morning,
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and I talk about repenting and believing in the person and work of Christ.
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I'm in a little phrase summing up all those things that you must believe.
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You must believe these things if you're going to be called Christian.
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If you have any hope for the salvation of your soul,
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these are things that you must believe.
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Right?
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These are the things.
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These are the things that we live for and we die for.
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I mean,
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these are the serious,
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serious matters.
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Must be defended.
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Men,
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we talked about courage yesterday.
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I think these are the things we get angry about.
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Rightly,
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appropriately,
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these are the things that we go to war over for the good of people and the glory of God.
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Right?
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So an example.
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We'll talk about it in just a little bit here.
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The hypostatic union of Jesus Christ.
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Right?
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That Jesus is both fully God and fully man.
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Right?
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This would be a thing if somebody claims otherwise that warrants being called heretical.
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Say,
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no,
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no,
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no.
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This wasn't the state of Jesus.
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This is the kinds of things that might bear that label of heresy.
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You'd say to somebody,
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you're a false teacher when they mess with these kinds of doctrines.
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Next,
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secondary doctrines.
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Right?
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These form local church agreement.
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Now,
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these are things that we have,
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quite frankly,
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the luxury of having some division about.
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Right?
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We could be united in Christ and go,
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we believe the church.
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We're baptistic.
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We believe in believers baptism.
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That's a really easy one.
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Right?
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Because you can clearly draw some lines around that.
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That doesn't mean that if I move to a new place,
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or let's say the Lord took me to another country,
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and there's one gospel preaching church,
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like one church that you could actually call a church that holds the primary doctrines,
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those things rightly,
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and they baptize infants,
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that I wouldn't be there.
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I'd have some really uncomfortable moments.
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Right?
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I'd have some kind-hearted conversations with the leadership.
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Like,
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I really think you're confusing everybody.
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Can I,
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can I make the case to you from the scripture?
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Um,
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right?
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So,
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so we have to figure out where,
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where do we,
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you know,
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but where we are,
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if you believe in believers baptism,
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you have the opportunity to go to a church that also believes these things,
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unites us together,
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helps us to function together in the life of a church.
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I'd suggest to you that these are not things worth dying over.
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Right?
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But they are things worth discussing.
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They matter.
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They're important.
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Right?
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How,
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how we do the ordinances matters.
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Then we have tertiary doctrines.
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And these are personal convictions.
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And I think that the,
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the,
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the thing people react to this sometimes because it feels like we're making people's convictions unimportant.
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I'm not saying they're not important.
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An example,
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what could be your conviction concerning alcohol.
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We can make a Bible case.
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You should never be drunk,
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but we really can't make a Bible case that you should not drink.
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But others,
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right?
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Might read some of the texts,
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like some of the proverbs that give warning about strong drink and say,
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yeah,
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I don't think so.
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I don't think that I should drink.
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And I say,
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hold that conviction.
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Right?
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If you believe your conscience will be clean before God by wholly participating or not participating,
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then you should do that.
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You just shouldn't force everyone else to have it as their conviction.
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Right?
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We need to be careful about tertiary doctrines.
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It doesn't mean that it's not a good and God given conviction that you have.
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I think that we should appreciate the differences that we have in tertiary doctrine.
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Right?
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It holds us.
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It gives us tension as we're working out the gray areas of the Bible.
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Right?
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I want to hear your case for X,
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Y,
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Z.
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Another example.
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We,
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by conviction as a family,
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are homeschooling right now.
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But not absolutely.
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We're not like,
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I can't show you the text that says you must keep your children at home with you and teach them.
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But what I can say is,
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look what the Bible says about whose responsibility it is to educate our children.
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And we think that the best way we can do that,
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the most efficient way we can do that,
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is to do it at home.
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But we've also agreed that every year we'd have a conversation about that.
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And reassess and think about,
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is this the best way to pull this off?
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My very good friend Wes Shelnut lives in Utah.
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And his children are in public school.
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And we had a wonderful,
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kind-hearted conversation in which we pushed at each other a little bit.
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Right?
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I said to him,
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Brother,
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how?
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How are you going to help grow your children,
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fear and instruction of the Lord,
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when you send them away most of the day?
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I knew he had already thought about it.
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I knew that he had some conviction about doing this.
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And he gave me a wonderfully winsome answer.
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He didn't try to convince me that I should do the thing that they were doing,
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but he helped me understand.
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And it was a good answer.
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I appreciated it.
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He's doing a good,
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good work there
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with his children.
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And we tugged at each other.
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And it was good for us both
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at the end.
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We ought to appreciate this
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and not run from it.
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So those are tertiary doctrines.
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Right?
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Personal convictions.
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They matter.
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They just aren't the things you should always be convincing everybody else
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that they should be doing.
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And then I learned a word this week.
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If you already knew it,
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congratulations,
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but I'm going to teach it to you now.
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Quaternary doctrines.
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And we just wrote up there,
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non-existent and unimportant.
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And we do this.
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The example that I thought of
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that people ask me from time to time
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is,
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is there life on other planets?
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To,
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to which I would respond kindly,
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but inside I'm going,
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who cares?
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Who cares?
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These aren't things that we need to pick fights over.
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It doesn't really matter.
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Have some thoughts.
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Okay.
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Does the Bible speak to it?
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No.
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I don't think that's much of a problem,
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generally speaking,
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but that does exist out there.
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Basically,
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there are no quaternary doctrines.
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Just don't think about them at all.
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Right?
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So,
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okay.
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So you can clean that off there.
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So it doesn't become distracting.
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So at what level is Paul encouraging agreement?
23:03
What level?
23:04
What is he saying?
23:05
Be united in this way.
23:06
And I would suggest at the primary level,
23:09
right?
23:09
That very highest level.
23:11
That's what Paul is exhorting them to.
23:15
Right?
23:15
And I say that based on Philippians chapter one and verse 27.
23:19
He says,
23:20
only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.
23:24
So that whether I come and see you or I'm absent,
23:26
I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind,
23:33
striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.
23:37
I think this is what he's talking about.
23:39
Like those things that save.
23:42
He's not minimizing the importance of other truth at all.
23:46
But he's saying,
23:47
boy,
23:47
if we can't be united on this,
23:49
we are in trouble and we're not living in a way that is a response to the gospel of Christ.
23:57
So,
23:58
beloved,
23:58
I don't think for our church,
24:01
the work here is to unite on primary doctrines.
24:03
I think,
24:05
I think we're already together on this.
24:07
If you remember here,
24:08
you came,
24:08
you came in under an understanding of a statement of faith,
24:11
right?
24:12
Do we understand these things perfectly?
24:14
No,
24:14
but we're working at it together.
24:16
I don't find that there's disagreement in our congregation on primary doctrines.
24:21
I think that we maintain a very workable unity on secondary doctrines.
24:25
We don't always know quite,
24:27
quite where it fits.
24:28
And is this secondary?
24:30
Is it primary?
24:31
Is it tertiary?
24:31
I don't know.
24:31
But I think a very workable unity on those secondary doctrines.
24:37
I think that we don't busy ourselves with quaternary doctrines.
24:42
In fact,
24:43
I think that that may have been the last time I ever used the word.
24:47
I think it's the thing that we really have to talk about.
24:50
The work for us is to be sure that we don't get distracted by tertiary doctrines.
24:56
That we don't take those tertiary doctrines and move them into places,
25:00
move them up levels where they don't belong,
25:03
which causes division.
25:06
And that's going to come in so many forms.
25:10
It is going to come at us.
25:13
And it's hard to know quite where to put.
25:15
Even some topics fit in multiple places.
25:17
So this is the complicated case I told you I would bring up.
25:20
Music.
25:22
How we do music as a church together.
25:25
I would suggest to you,
25:27
as a primary doctrine,
25:30
the content of our music really, really, really matters.
25:34
Right?
25:34
It must be true.
25:36
Right?
25:36
We must have the gospel taught in our singing together.
25:41
Right?
25:42
I could see myself in a place where I'd go,
25:45
no, no, absolutely not.
25:47
I'm leaving right now.
25:48
Get up.
25:48
I'm going to take my family out of the room.
25:51
A lot of that music floating around in our days.
25:54
Right?
25:54
Troubling.
25:55
Troubling.
25:56
Stuff.
25:57
But the style of the music?
26:02
Probably not even tertiary.
26:05
Right?
26:05
Probably not even really worth talking about.
26:09
I prefer an organ.
26:11
Good for you.
26:11
That's a preference.
26:12
It's wonderful.
26:13
It's neat.
26:16
We sang Jesus Paid It All this morning.
26:19
I don't like the additional chorus.
26:24
I was kind of taking it.
26:25
It's okay.
26:26
It's okay.
26:26
It's just a preference.
26:30
But I was kind of taking the temperature of the room,
26:32
and it seems like a lot of you really like it.
26:35
Great.
26:37
I would prefer like, you know, like seven verses and no chorus
26:41
with lots of words that I have to look up.
26:44
Like, I'm like, whoa.
26:45
I don't even know this word.
26:47
That's kind of my preference and my style
26:50
and not things that are repetitious.
26:52
But that's okay because it was true, right?
26:54
It was good and it was true.
26:55
So there's an issue.
26:57
You can see it kind of spans some of these categories.
27:00
We have to be able to think clearly about this, right?
27:02
We have to know what things we're going to die for, right?
27:07
Things that should divide us.
27:09
Those things exist, right?
27:11
And not things we should be uniting over, right?
27:14
We should just let go.
27:16
There's so very much of that.
27:18
Things that are, in fact, good for us as we get pushed and pulled
27:23
and walk the tightrope of faithfulness to Christ,
27:27
living in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
27:31
So he goes on to elaborate in verses 3 and 4.
27:34
Paul says,
27:35
Do nothing from selfless ambition or conceit,
27:38
but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
27:43
That each of you look not only to his own interests,
27:45
but also to the interests of others.
27:48
Paul gives us this call to live a lowly life,
27:52
a life that puts other people in front of us, right?
27:56
Our Lord came not to be served,
28:01
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
28:06
Why do we think that it's everybody else's job to serve us,
28:09
to serve our whims?
28:11
We want to put ourself in the prominent place in our life
28:14
and everything must revolve around us.
28:17
When Jesus let everything he revolved around,
28:22
he came to serve, right?
28:24
He came to give his life.
28:26
For others.
28:28
I said to you last week,
28:29
If Jesus is your Savior,
28:31
then he is your Lord,
28:32
and you will most gladly follow him wherever he leads.
28:38
And he leads us to put aside our self-interest,
28:42
to be self-denying,
28:44
to not think that we know better than everybody else, right?
28:46
To be humble and count others more significant than us,
28:51
to look toward their interests and serve them.
28:56
And then Paul gives us Jesus as the perfect pattern for a lowly life.
29:00
And again,
29:00
there's so much in here that can be said.
29:02
I just want to unpack it for the next two hours,
29:04
but I won't.
29:05
I promise.
29:06
But remember,
29:07
he's making this point to them.
29:09
This is the way you ought to be living your lives.
29:11
And it feels to me like he goes,
29:13
he goes like Jesus did for you,
29:15
which he's already said up at the beginning of the chapter,
29:18
but it's like he can't help but expounding on it, right?
29:20
He can't help but talking at length about this Jesus
29:25
and the way that he came to love and to serve.
29:30
He says,
29:31
have this mind,
29:32
what he's been referring to,
29:33
among yourselves,
29:35
which is yours in Christ Jesus.
29:39
It's been granted to you.
29:42
If you're in Christ,
29:44
you have the spirit of Christ,
29:46
and therefore you have the mind of Christ.
29:50
Last week,
29:51
again,
29:51
I read to you quite at length,
29:53
a big part of Ephesians chapter four,
29:55
but just the first three verses say,
29:57
I therefore,
29:58
a prisoner for the Lord,
29:59
urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.
30:03
Parallel to here in Philippians chapter one and verse 27.
30:09
He goes on with all humility and gentleness,
30:14
with patience,
30:15
bearing with one another in love,
30:18
eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace,
30:23
right?
30:24
Maintain it.
30:25
It's been given to us.
30:27
Have this mind among yourselves,
30:29
which is yours in Christ Jesus.
30:33
So this unity,
30:35
this type of humility,
30:36
it is a work,
30:37
right?
30:38
It's not a thing that's just going to happen,
30:39
but it is a work that has been purchased and it is empowered.
30:45
We can do the things that are being exhorted to us here.
30:49
So have this mind among yourselves,
30:51
which is yours in Christ Jesus,
30:52
who,
30:54
though he was in the form of God,
30:56
did not count equality with God,
30:58
a thing to be grasped,
31:00
but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant,
31:03
being born in the likeness of men.
31:06
The greatest example of humility that the world has ever or ever will witness is the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
31:15
From eternity past,
31:17
Jesus was fully divine.
31:20
And I know we can't really grasp what that means,
31:24
but Jesus is God from eternity past.
31:30
We view the world through the experience of created.
31:32
It's hard to understand what it is to be the creator.
31:35
This is who Jesus is.
31:37
All of the divine perfections that belong to the father and the spirit also belonged and belong to the son.
31:48
When Jesus came to dwell among us,
31:51
Emmanuel,
31:53
God with us,
31:53
with us,
31:55
he self humiliated.
31:56
He put on human flesh.
32:03
This doctrine,
32:05
the incarnation,
32:06
or the hypostatic union of Christ,
32:08
pages upon pages upon pages upon pages have been written about this.
32:12
There is so much great writing out there on this.
32:16
So I'm going to read you a little bit of it.
32:18
Because when things like this are tough to understand,
32:20
I've discovered it's good to let smarter people explain it.
32:23
So,
32:24
so first,
32:26
Steve Lawson in the commentary,
32:28
it's his,
32:29
it's his outline that is making me do this this morning,
32:31
these 11 verses.
32:33
Said,
32:34
the son of God added to his person a human nature without surrendering any of his divine attributes.
32:40
This was an act of self-renunciation on the part of the son of God,
32:44
by which he voluntarily chose not to exercise all his rights as God
32:49
during the time of his earthly life.
32:52
But at no time did he rid himself of any divine perfections,
32:57
right?
32:57
So he set off voluntarily,
33:00
said,
33:00
I will not function as God in every way,
33:04
yet he remained God.
33:08
John Calvin,
33:08
this is on your bulletin,
33:10
wrote,
33:10
Jesus had been brought down to the level of mankind
33:13
so that there was in appearance nothing that differed from the common condition of man.
33:19
mankind,
33:20
right?
33:21
He walked this earth,
33:23
a hundred percent a man
33:25
and a hundred percent God.
33:30
One of my pet peeves is like a coach that says,
33:32
give me 110%.
33:33
I hate that.
33:34
You can't do that.
33:35
This is the only place that more than a hundred percent is applicable,
33:40
right?
33:41
Jesus,
33:41
God and man,
33:42
two hundred percent,
33:44
two hundred percent.
33:46
An example of this,
33:47
Clay pointed this out to me last week.
33:50
Acts chapter two,
33:51
this is Peter's sermon,
33:52
verse 22 and following.
33:53
He says,
33:53
men of Israel,
33:54
hear these words,
33:55
Jesus of Nazareth,
33:56
a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst.
34:08
Now,
34:08
Peter understood,
34:09
Jesus,
34:10
fully divine,
34:11
fully human,
34:12
that it was the power of God working in him as a man that accomplished all of those mighty works.
34:17
He self-humiliated,
34:20
was a self-renunciation that he didn't use his own power to accomplish these things,
34:24
but the power of God,
34:25
the father working in him.
34:27
And I know that that's a mind trip.
34:29
I know,
34:29
fully aware that it is.
34:31
Our triune God is a difficult thing to grasp.
34:35
And again,
34:36
I think we're going to learn and learn and learn and learn about the nature of God for all of eternity.
34:43
Wayne Grudem in his systematic theology defines the hypostatic union this way.
34:47
Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man in one person and will be so forever.
34:54
And Grudem is helpful in that way,
34:55
giving you a sentence to help you wrap your mind around such a thing.
35:01
John frames,
35:01
contemporary theologian also wrote systematic theology.
35:05
If you ever write a systematic theology,
35:07
maybe some of you will take on that endeavor.
35:08
I think you must title it systematic theology and nothing else.
35:12
There's a lot of them out there.
35:14
He wrote this though.
35:15
How can one person be both divine and human,
35:18
infinite and finite,
35:19
invisible and visible,
35:21
eternal and temporal,
35:22
omnipotent and suffering,
35:23
omniscient and limited,
35:25
in knowledge.
35:27
Try to imagine the psychology,
35:28
the feeling or experience of such a person is baffling.
35:33
The general pattern,
35:34
I think is that while on earth in the state of humiliation,
35:37
Jesus often limited his specially divine attributes.
35:40
For as we have seen,
35:42
the specific purpose of the incarnation
35:44
was that God should live our life
35:47
and feel our sufferings in order to be a perfect substitutionary sacrifice for our sins.
35:56
This is a wonderful,
35:57
wonderful truth.
35:59
And that's what Paul goes on to say in verse eight.
36:00
And being found in human form,
36:03
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
36:07
even death on a cross.
36:10
Right?
36:11
Not only did Jesus humble himself,
36:13
came and served,
36:14
give his life as a ransom for many,
36:16
to become obedient to the point of death,
36:18
but even death on a cross.
36:22
Again,
36:23
we've,
36:24
we've heard things,
36:25
right?
36:25
We,
36:26
we know the facts,
36:27
many of us do about what death on a cross was like.
36:30
We've never witnessed it.
36:31
I don't think anybody's witnessed what this was like.
36:36
Paul,
36:36
Paul knew,
36:37
Paul knew how horrid death on a cross was.
36:42
It's the most horrific form of corporal punishment ever devised by a government.
36:47
It was so terrible that Roman law forbade Roman citizens from being crucified.
36:52
They wouldn't allow their own citizens to be put to death in this way.
36:57
Jesus suffered greatly physically
37:00
as he hung on the cross on the hill called Golgotha.
37:04
We ought not minimize the physical suffering of Christ.
37:07
It was a horrible,
37:08
horrible death.
37:11
But more than that,
37:13
so much more than that,
37:15
beloved,
37:16
he bore God's wrath for all the sins of those who would believe in him.
37:21
This was the much greater suffering,
37:24
what was going on.
37:25
Praise God that if you're in Christ this morning,
37:27
that's a suffering you will never understand.
37:29
You'll never taste the suffering that Jesus suffered.
37:35
That infinite wrath being poured out on him for the sins of those who would believe in him.
37:41
Now,
37:42
Jesus was aware.
37:43
He understood when he became incarnate,
37:46
when he self-humiliated,
37:47
he understood what he had come to do.
37:51
He was aware of all of the Old Testament texts that spoke of God's wrath.
37:56
One example,
37:57
Psalm 75,
37:59
verse 6 and following,
38:00
for not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up,
38:05
but it is God who executes judgment,
38:08
putting down one and lifting up another.
38:11
For in the hand of the Lord,
38:12
there is a cup with foaming wine,
38:15
well mixed,
38:16
and he pours out from it,
38:18
and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.
38:24
Drink all of God's wrath.
38:28
The debt that we owe God for our sin is an infinite debt.
38:34
It's due infinite wrath.
38:39
And that's why it had to be bore by an infinite Savior.
38:44
That's why we needed Jesus Christ to become a man and come and die in our stead,
38:48
to be a propitiation for our sin.
38:52
It was this aspect of the crucifixion that Jesus,
38:56
the man,
38:57
was vexed by in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his murder.
39:01
Let me say this to you with humility.
39:06
If there would be some great benefit to any of your lives
39:09
for me to be crucified physically,
39:13
I would do that for you.
39:15
I would lay my life down for you in that way.
39:19
But the wrath of God of that?
39:22
Forget it.
39:23
Just forget it.
39:24
I love y'all.
39:25
I would not bear the wrath of God for you.
39:28
This is what Jesus came to do.
39:30
And I wouldn't do it because I couldn't.
39:31
Luke chapter 22, verse 39 and following,
39:35
And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives.
39:38
And the disciples followed him.
39:40
And when he came to the place, he said to them,
39:41
Pray that you may not enter into temptation.
39:43
And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying,
39:48
Father, if you are willing,
39:51
Jesus the man, remove this cup from me.
39:55
He knew what was going to do.
39:56
This cup that he's referring to is the cup of God's wrath.
40:00
It's a reference to all those Old Testament texts.
40:03
Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.
40:08
Such stress.
40:25
This great anxiety and agony over what was going to happen just the next day.
40:32
Jesus knew that he was made incarnate.
40:34
God, the Son, indwelling human flesh for this moment.
40:37
So, with me, if you've been here a while, you've heard me do this before,
40:41
but imagine, just for a moment,
40:43
the cup of God's infinite wrath do you
40:46
for your infinite sin
40:48
as a mass of water being held back
40:51
by a dam 1,000 miles wide
40:53
and 1,000 miles high
40:55
and you're standing at the bottom of it.
40:57
Infinite wrath.
40:58
You can't see the ends of it this way
41:00
and you can't see the top of it this way.
41:02
It's a dam that is holding back
41:04
that crushing punishment.
41:09
Suddenly and all at once,
41:11
the dam gives way
41:12
and a wall of water comes rushing towards you, right?
41:16
Certain death.
41:17
A crushing blow.
41:19
It's hurtling towards you
41:20
and just before you're swept away by it,
41:23
a hole opens up at your feet
41:25
and all of this wrath,
41:28
God's infinite wrath for you
41:30
that you justly deserve
41:31
is siphoned into this hole
41:33
and it's swallowed up.
41:36
Into the hole
41:37
and it's swallowed up.
41:40
This is what Jesus accomplished on the cross
41:43
for those who believe in him.
41:45
He drank the cup of God's wrath for you.
41:49
He turned the cup over.
41:50
He slammed it down on the bar
41:52
and he declared,
41:54
it is finished.
41:56
I read this week that the last words of Buddha
42:01
were,
42:02
I exhort you,
42:03
all individual things pass away,
42:05
strive on untiringly.
42:09
The last words of Jesus,
42:11
it is finished.
42:14
He became a man that he might die that death,
42:17
right?
42:18
That we would have full redemption
42:21
declared justified in him.
42:25
This is an astounding truth.
42:29
This is a massive reality.
42:31
And what Paul is saying
42:32
is that it should inform the way we live
42:34
with one another.
42:36
How dare we not love each other
42:39
when we have been loved like this?
42:45
Verse 9 to the end.
42:46
I think Paul just can't help himself
42:48
and I'm so glad he can't.
42:51
He says,
42:51
therefore,
42:52
because of what he has done,
42:53
his death on the cross,
42:55
God has highly exalted him
42:56
and bestowed on him the name
42:58
that is above every name, right?
43:00
Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father,
43:02
the place of honor, right?
43:05
His name is a name that is greater than.
43:07
He is supreme, right?
43:08
He's more excellent.
43:10
He's preeminent over every other name.
43:14
So at the name of Jesus,
43:16
every knee should bow in heaven
43:18
and on earth and under the earth
43:19
and every tongue confess
43:21
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
43:23
like that this will be the end of all things
43:24
when Jesus returns
43:26
to the glory of God the Father.
43:32
We have in Christ a perfect pattern
43:35
for a lowly life.
43:37
So,
43:38
we ought to humble ourselves
43:40
and walk in a manner worthy
43:43
of the gospel of Christ.
43:45
Christ is the reasonable thing
43:48
for us to do.
43:50
Why don't we spend so much time
43:51
trying to make much of ourselves
43:53
in this life
43:54
instead of preparing ourselves
43:55
for the life to come,
43:57
which will last forever.
43:59
It's reasonable.
44:01
God help us all.
44:02
Jesus said in Matthew 23, verse 12,
44:05
whoever exalts himself
44:07
will be humbled
44:08
and whoever humbles himself
44:11
will be exalted.
44:13
Just like Christ was exalted.
44:15
We won't be just like Christ,
44:16
but they'll still be above us.
44:19
But if we will humble ourselves
44:21
and serve one another,
44:22
live the lowly life
44:23
that we've been called to,
44:25
the suffering life
44:26
that we've been granted,
44:28
then for eternity,
44:29
we will be exalted.
44:32
Let's pray together.