Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 1, 2019 | Love Came Down - Because That's What Love Does

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December 1, 2019 | Love Came Down - Because That's What Love Does · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: So it's Christmas at Topeka Bible Church.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: We love Christmas here.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: This is the first of our Christmas Sundays, and our theme this month is Love Came Down.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, there are no two words in the English language more opposite from each other than the words down and up.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Jerry Seinfeld had this, proved it with a short comedy sketch sometime back, which went something like this.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: Wait up, he said.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: That's what kids say.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: They don't say wait, they say, wait up, hey, wait up.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Because when you're little, your whole life is up.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: Your future is up.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: Everything you want is up.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: Wait up, hold up, shut up.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: Mom, I'll clean up.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: Let me stay up.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: Parents, he said, of course, just the opposite.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Everything is down.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Just calm down, slow down, come down here, sit down, put that down.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: So I love Seinfeld.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: But of course, it's broader than broader than just parents and children, isn't it?
1:05
SPEAKER_00: And all of life, down is a down word, which we use when we're talking about losers and about failures and about sad sacks.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: We say, you know, the market is down, or business is down, or our football team is going down, and when it loses, then it's down and out, and we're downhearted, and we're cast down at its downfall.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: But up is an upward.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Up is a word for successes and winners and stars and bull markets and up-and-comers who are upwardly mobile on an upward trajectory and eventually are going to be in the upper class.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: In our upwardly mobile society, the pull upward, it seems to me, is incessant and it's powerful on all of us.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: And I think the tug, in my view, is comes from a couple of demons, pride and self, always tugging on us powerfully to get us to clamber over other people to get to the top of the mountain.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: For thousands of dollars, in fact, you can go to seminars that'll tell you how to get up to the top and have power and preeminence.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: Just to save you some money.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you their tips on how to radiate power and preeminence when you go out to eat.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: Alright, here you go.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: When you go out to eat, never ever stare at the menu as though it really matters what you buy.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: No.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Instead, tell the waiter what you want to eat and let them adjust to the amenia to fit you because you're powerful.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
3:06
SPEAKER_00: And never do non-powerful, dorky things like mashing your food or stirring your food or tucking your napkin into your collar or leaving your collar unbuttoned.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Or um or whatever.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: You're not there to eat anyway.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: You're there to radiate power.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: And never ever haggle over the bill.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: That's beneath you.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: And if you know the waiter comes by and it's kind of hard for them to get your plate, don't even think about lifting up your plate and handing it to the waiter.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: And if your elbow should nudge the fork or knife onto the floor, never ever stoop down to pick up that fork or knife.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: That's the servant's job.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: In fact, of course, the primary rule of thumb in an upward society in our quest for power is never to stoop down for anything.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: Never stoop to admit you made a mistake.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: Never stoop to help someone who can't help your career.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: Never stoop to a lower rung on the ladder.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: After all, you're playing King of the Mountain, you're not gonna go down when you're trying to become the king.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: And the problem is that this incredible tug in our societies is felt just as much, I suspect, in the church as it is outside the church.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: And so we're a little surprised when we open our Bibles to find statements that seem to be contrarian, like, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are those who poor in heart, for they shall uh, you know, poor in spirit, for there's the kingdom of heaven.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: Or Jesus saying, I tell you, humble yourself, be like one of these little children, or you won't even enter the kingdom of heaven.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: Or James saying, humble yourself before the Lord and he'll lift you up.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: So we're a little surprised, but then when we step back, we see as we look at the whole panoply of scripture, we see that God has incorporated both up and down in the kingdom of God and in the gospel, the good news, because the Bible says what?
5:14
SPEAKER_00: Says that Jesus came down, down, down to the earth, but then was lifted up on the cross, went down into the grave, but then was raised up, and then ascended up into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of God, so that you and I, who are down, down, down on the earth, can be lifted up and raised up to live up in heaven forever.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: But notice the order, by the way.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: It's down now or down first, right?
5:48
SPEAKER_00: And up later.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, our Christmas 2019 series entitled Love Came Down, is going to answer the question repeatedly over and over, try to give you reasons why.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Why did love come down?
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Today, the first and most basic answer to that question: love came down because that's what love does.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: That's what love does.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Love doesn't go up.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: Love always seems to come or go down.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: Going down is what love does.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Now, the single most significant, by far, down and up passage in the Bible is the second chapter of the book of Philippians.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, you may want to turn there, turn to it on your cell phone, or just stare up here as you're doing now.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Philippians chapter 2.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: So we're in Philippians 2.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: This has seemed up till now to be the ideal church.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: Philippi, the incredible church.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of Topeka Bible church.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: It's generous, even people who don't have money, Paul says there in Philippi, you guys are so generous, your church is full of joy, your church is hardworking, you are evangelistic, you are loving.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: But now we begin to find out there is one little problem that is plaguing this ideal church, threatening to unravel it entirely, and that is that it has a bunch of up people there.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: People who are critical of other people, people who are clambering over other people, people who want honor, who want respect, who want to be listened to, who want things their own way, who want preeminence.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: They want to be up, and they want to be up now.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: So Paul goes right at them here in verses 3 and 4, Christian Standard Bible, here, when he says, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Notice the opposite words here, opposite, selfish ambition, self is the opposite of humility.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: Consider others, this is a thought word, mind word, mindset.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: Think about others as more important than yourselves.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: In fact, um, Paul's 2,000 years old Jewish rabbi, you could say, there's a more modern Jewish rabbi that I like to read occasionally, and he says something, he said something I really appreciate.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: He said, um, and just giving advice to Jewish Orthodox people, he said, whenever you're around people that you tend to want to look down on, keep in mind that no matter how low they are, there is at least one thing about them that is superior to you.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: There's at least one thing they do, one aspect of their lives that is better than yours.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: Keep that in mind.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: Now, Paul's actually talking more generally, but it's similar, isn't it?
8:28
SPEAKER_00: They're more important than you are.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Someone asked me a question just two weeks ago.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: They were talking about people that are get on your nerves, let's just say.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: And said, How do you handle that?
8:43
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, my technique for years has been, as I'm talking with them, I keep in mind that they may be ahead of me in line in heaven, that God's way of judging is not my way of judging.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: And so I need to realize that they may be stars in heaven while I'm at the back of the line.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, do whatever you need to do, but uh Paul says humility is starting with a certain mindset as you're talking and dealing with people.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: This Christmas season, people you don't often see, people in your family that you love so much.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: So consider them as more important than yourselves.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: Then he says everyone should look not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Following, he says, the example of Jesus.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: So this is where we have the door, Philippians 2, 5, adopt the same attitude, mindset, as that of Christ Jesus.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: And now this is the doorway into one of the most theological passages in the entire Bible.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: A passage that includes like six or seven major doctrines, like the pre-existence of Christ and the deity of Christ, and the equality of Christ with God, and the full humanity of Christ, and the voluntary death of Christ, and the final victory of Christ.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: All of these in here, so much so that this passage, one of the most famous passages in the Bible, uh, was used, we believe, as a liturgical hymn by the early church.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: It seems to be, in a poetic sense, a hymn, even when Paul wrote it.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: And it's gonna fall into a first down and then up.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: Verses six through eight are gonna go down.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: Those are the only verses we have time to look at.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: And then Christ is gonna go up.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna come down, Christ came down, love came down, and then he's gonna go up.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: Just showing you that you descend into greatness, that the way up is down, and so forth.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: All right, so let's talk about love came down.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: Verses 6, 7, and 8.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: It starts with Christ being up high.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it says this who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Exploited is the Christian standard Bible uh word there.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: So uh the problem with the existing form of God is it sounds like he's not really God.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: It sounds like he has the form of God, but he's just the form of God.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: But that's that would be to mistake the Greek word here.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: It actually, as the NIV correctly translates, into existing is the very nature of God.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: It's morphe means he is the exact, identical, has the attributes and the essence of God.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing it's telling us is that in heaven, Christ was deity.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: He's as high as you can get in heaven.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: Ten thousands and thousands of angels have been adoring him and falling at his feet for, shall we say, millions of years, even though there weren't years back then.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: So Christ is up high, right?
11:35
SPEAKER_00: And the second thing it's gonna say is that he didn't consider equality with God as something to be exploited.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: And again, it's not precisely what we want to say, but it's close.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: What it's the word equality really means, it's talking about he didn't he had the prerogatives, the rights and the honors and the glories of being king of kings and lord of lords, but he didn't grasp them, he didn't clutch them.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: So we say he did not clutch his divine rights and honors.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: So what did he do?
12:07
SPEAKER_00: This is all an example to the Philippian church where there are people who are clutching their rights and honors.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: They're saying, you may have, you know, uh one time years ago, in a very shameful moment, in a conflict in our church, and I didn't plan to say this, but it's years ago, and those people are no longer here, uh one leading character in this church said to another one, I've been to seminary and you haven't.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: It's time for you to be quiet.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: So that's when you that's an exploitation of your rights and honors.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, that was a weak moment by a wonderful man at that point.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: So I don't think I'll ever say that again.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, it just struck me, and and so this is Jesus.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: That's verse 6.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: Now we move to verse 7 where Christ came down low.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: It's talking about the coming down from heaven to earth, not what he did on earth, but this transition from heaven to earth.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: He came, it's talking about what happened on Christmas.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: And we read this instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing that he's saying here, he's saying three things in three lines.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: It's like he comes down, then he comes down further, then he comes down even further from heaven to earth.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: Sort of three steps.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: And the first thing it's gonna say is he emptied himself.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: He came D D down, three downs.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay, here's the first one.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: He poured himself out.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh down through the centuries, people have argued, theologians have argued.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: They said, it says he emptied himself.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Of what did he empty himself?
13:46
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, these huge arguments.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: My dad was a theologian, taught theology at a Bible school.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: This was one of his main arguing points with another professor at the school.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: That other professor said, Well, I think he emptied himself of almost everything, including some of his attributes, omnipotence, omnipresence.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: And down through the years, some good Christians have said that, but of course that can't be, because then Christ would stop being deity, stop being God.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: So uh better, I think, instead of quibbling over what he emptied himself of, which we know were his rights and honors and glories, to take it the way it's used elsewhere as a figure of speech, that he poured himself out, that he became nothing so that we might become everything.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: He became poor so that we might become rich.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to get specific, he pours himself out into a human body, which veils his Godhead, but he pours himself out.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we read that he became a slave.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: It says he assumed the form of a servant.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: But again, form means more than just the appearance of a servant or a dulos, a slave.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: It means he actually became a slave, meaning he had no rights, a slave in the Roman Empire, could be bought, could be sold, he had no personal rights, and that's what Christ did when he came down to earth.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: He became, in essence, a slave who had no personal rights, who could be mistreated, who could be whipped, who could even be killed.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: He became a slave.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: This Christ, can you believe this?
15:22
SPEAKER_00: This Christ, who had been touted and admired and adored and sung to for millennia in heaven, gives that up, pours himself out, comes down, and becomes a slave.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the best picture of this is the one in John 13.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how well he can say this, but it's the story of uh of the Last Supper.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: It's the story of when the disciples go to the upper room.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's it's it's it's the greatest week, you know, in Jewish uh uh on the Jewish calendar, and so there's a lot of feasting, and if if there hadn't been so many of them, they probably would have been invited to someone's house.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: And if they'd gone to someone's house, there would have been a slave at the door, dressed like a slave, towel around the waist, and with a basin of water, and one by one Jesus and the disciples would have had their feet washed from the smelliness and the dirt because they're wearing sandals and the tiredness of their feet.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: But in John 13, there is no slave, so Jesus does that.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: He takes on the form of a slave, takes off his robe, wraps himself with a towel, you know, and with a basin of water, starts washing their feet, and they freak out.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: They go, and you know, as you know, Peter, just don't do this, I'm not gonna let you, and Jesus slaps him down and so forth.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: It's this picture of what Jesus, uh what Paul is saying, Philippians 2.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: This is what you need to do, Church of Philippi.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: You need to clamber over each other so you can get to the bottom, so you can wash each other's feet.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus took on the form of a slave a couple months ago.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: Terry Thompson, you know, our wonderful missionary in Cambodia.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't know if you don't get her email, they're just wonderful, she's a terrific writer, and you get these wonderful pictures.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the things she does is she has loads of neighborhood kids in.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: They just flock to her house and they love to color, so she got on the floor with the coloring books and so forth.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: But she also then tells them a Bible story.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: And a couple months ago, uh, she decided to tell them the story of John 13, of Jesus washing, of the teacher washing the rabbi, washing his followers' feet.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I need, she writes so well.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: I need to write, I need to read exactly her words.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: It's so cool.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: She says, 17, that's how many kids came in, 17 puzzled looks were directed at me incredulously, as I told them about how the teacher washed the students' feet.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: And after the story, I asked the kids questions about what had happened in the story, and like good students, they could recall little bits and pieces.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: And then I had them pair off, she says, and I gave them all wet wipes to practice washing each other's feet.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: There was an odd number of them, so I turned to the little guy that did not have a partner, and I bent down and I began to wash his little grubby feet.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: At which point I was startled by the sound of a sharp intake of breath.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: It was coming from his older sister.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: She was looking on in horror and she spat out in an attempt to shame him.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: How can you let teacher wash your feet?
18:46
SPEAKER_00: A hush fell over the group.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: So I reiterated the story and the point, and then they all turned slowly again to their partners.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great?
18:58
SPEAKER_00: That just a reminder that it that story is still shocking when you hear it for the first time today.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: Now, just out of full disclosure, I should go on to read the next couple sentences she writes.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Some of them got it and said about their work merrily, others scrubbed feet in obvious distaste, while others completely missed the point and began working on their own feet.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: So love that story.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: So uh so that's the picture of what Jesus did.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: He became a slave, and down, down the third down is he became like us humans.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: Now, here what it's saying is you know, saying, hold it, I thought he became human.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is yes, but Paul's point is this is that he was up.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: He was deity, and he became like us sinful humans.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't completely like us because he was sinless, he was righteous, he was not fallen, but he took on the likeness of humanity.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: There's a story 1800 years after this when a famous story written in the 1800s by Mark Twain, stories called The Prince and the Pauper, that illustrates this just wonderfully, though Mark Twain was an atheist.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: His storyline comes, as you'll be able to tell, from the New Testament.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: And in this story, you have a pauper, a little boy growing up in terrible circumstances in London in 1537, when the story starts.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: And his dad is an alcoholic, his dad is a thief, his dad comes home every night and beats him so that his mother and his sister are always pulling him away from his dad.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: And he lives a horrible life, the pauper does, the little Tom Canty.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: But Tom has always wanted to see the prince of England, the prince whose name is Edward of the Tudor House.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: Edward Tudor, partly because he has learned that Edward and he have precisely the same birthday.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: And one day, after a particularly rough beating the night before, he wanders completely across London to the Westminster Palace so that he can perhaps catch a quick glimpse of the little prince who is his age.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: And he goes up to the gate and he's looking, and the guard says, Move along, move along.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: And he stays there, and the guard gets angry.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: But at that point he has seen the door open, and out is coming none other than the little Prince Edward.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: And so he runs up to take a close look at him, uh Edward from far away, and the guard wheels back and cuffs him really hard, hits him across the face.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: And he sprawls, and Edward sees that, and Edward, feeling compassion for this boy, comes over and and and and helps Edward and helps Tom up and says, Come here, come on, come on, and takes him back in.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: The palace, they go to his quarters and he orders food for him and starts talking.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: They start talking with each other, these two boys.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: It's just really cool.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: And each boy is shocked at the life that the other one lives, at this incredibly privileged and royal life with all these beauties and glories and honors and food, fancy food and fancy clothing, you know, that that Edward has.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: And Edward's just as shocked at the fact that Tom owns only one piece of clothing, and there it is, and it's got holes in it and everything, and so forth.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: But but Edward is secretly a little envious at the freedom of life and the independence for much of the day.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: The fact he can walk the streets that Tom Canty has.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: And so he comes up with this bright idea that they should change clothes since they're the same age and they look a little bit like each other.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: And so, sure enough, they change clothes after Tom washes up a little bit.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, they are shocked at how much alike they look, the prince and the pauper.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, with his face washed, Edward sees that Tom, when he got hit by the guard, has this purple bruise and he's so angry, he says, I'm gonna go tell that guard off.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: And he runs out and he goes out to the gate and he starts chewing out the guard for hitting the pauper, hitting Tom so hard that left a bruise.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: But the guard all he sees is a pauper.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: And so he blasts the prince in a pauper clothing, blasts him across the face, he sprawls in the dust, a crowd comes around, the guard shouts out, You crazy trash, get out of here.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: And the crowd's making fun of them, fun of him, and they they hustle him away.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: And now he's outside the palace, which he was wanting to be earlier, but now he sees it won't be that easy because everybody he tells that he's really the prince laughs at him and mocks him and hits him and throws things at him.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: And this lasts not just for a day, not just for a week, this lasts for years in this story, the prince and the pauper.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, in the palace, Tom Candy the Pauper, now dressed in royal clothes, whenever he says, but you know what, where where's the real prince?
24:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm not the real prince, they put him to bed, put a hot cloth on his head because they think he's crazy, because he looks just like him.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: And the resolution of this story, how it works out, is wonderful.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: You have to read the book for that, but as you can see, Mark Twain has stolen the plot, and by the way, it it works out well.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: But Mark Twain has stolen the plot from a storyline 1800 years earlier because Edward and Jesus have so much in common, right?
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Both of them legitimate royalty, both of them real princes, both of them voluntarily doffing the robes of glory and donning the robes of pauperhood, becoming a pauper, becoming a slave.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, and it happened for years, not just overnight.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: Great differences, of course, is that eventually Jesus willingly goes to death and a horrible, brutal, humiliating death on the cross now on earth.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: In verse 8, we find that Christ did come three down, now even on earth.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: He comes down in three different ways.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: When he had come as a man, first of all, he humbled himself.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: And it seems to me that we're being told that he humbled himself even when it's most natural not to, and that is when you're a child.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: And I get this picture of Jesus as a boy.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: When you have siblings, you know, you get in an argument and they're fighting you or they're saying, give me that, or mine, or whatever, every time Jesus gave up what it was they wanted.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: Every time they interrupted him, he stopped.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Every time, you know, and he never he wouldn't interrupt them.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: And when his daddy or mommy said, Do this and do it now, even though he really enjoyed what he was doing, Jesus always, we're being told, humbled himself and stopped doing it.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: And I can't help remembering again, I know I've told you the story sometime of the of the woman in our church.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: The mother in our church were the three-year-old and the five-year-old boys, and she decided to make them pancakes on Saturday morning.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: And they began arguing, even before the first pancake was off of the pan, arguing over which one would get the first pancake.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: And seeing an opportunity to teach a spiritual lesson, the mother was talking to him about Jesus, how Jesus came down, how Jesus humbled himself, how Jesus put others first.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, how Jesus would have let his brothers have the first pancake.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: And the five-year-old said to the three-year-old, Ryan, you can be Jesus today.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: And that's the way we are, you know, we have a hard time humbling ourselves.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, uh, we read that in obedience he died.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's important to say because clearly Jesus didn't have to die, right?
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Because he was like Adam in the garden before he sinned.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: That is, death was not part of him for the wages of sin is death.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: And if death is the is what you get paid for sinning and Jesus was sinless, he didn't have to die.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: But I'm sure what happened, we're being told, is that one morning as Jesus was praying to his father, as we know he did, his father reminded him, said, Jesus, remember, I need to remind you that you're here to die.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: You're not here to live, you are here to die and to go to the cross.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: And in obedience, he became obedient.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: To whom?
27:37
SPEAKER_00: To God.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: To what extent?
27:39
SPEAKER_00: To the point of death.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: It's been a few years ago now, but Roger Rosenblatt, the well-known writer of Time magazine, told in a beautiful way the gripping story of the man in his 50s who was a part of that Air Florida 90 flight that that went down into the Potomac River.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: And they had rescued nearly everybody.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: And here it was sub-zero weather, and it was freezing cold, and there are five of them and this man holding onto the tail of the plane and a helicopter and the buffeting winds and the freezing cold, putting down the line, and every time the man grabbed the line, he gave it to someone else, and he must have known that he would not live if he kept doing that.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: But he put the line in the hand of the last person other than him, and then he died.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: Our nation was gripped by that story, the kind of sacrifice, even to the point of death, that a person might do out of affection, out of charity, out of kindness to others.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Jesus Christ did.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: Except that he went even further.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: And now we get to the lowest rung of all on the ladder.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: He died in brutal humiliation, even to death on a cross.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: The most brutal, public, humiliating death that man had been able to devise up to that point.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Death on a cross.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: So shameful, so brutal, so torturous, so humiliating.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: And that's the lesson of this passage.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus came down, down, down to earth, and then down, down, down afterwards.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: Connor was and I were chatting about this this week, and he said, Have you ever seen the show Dirty Jobs?
29:21
SPEAKER_00: He's done the Discovery Channel, where it lists these the worst jobs in America and even the worst jobs around the world, cleaning out, you know, sewers and uh garbage collectors and coal miners and oil rig, you know, workers, and these filthy, these awful, these dirty jobs.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: And and and I I get that picture of Christ, except that I'm I moved my mind to to what I know is happening now because it's been revealed this year, that Christians in Muslim countries, that that that though there are only one percent of the population in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, but and even in India, the menial jobs, the cleaning out sewers is required of Christians that that almost all of the sewer cleaning jobs and the worst jobs in the country, though they are low-paying, are it is required that Christians do those jobs.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Here's a picture of a Christian man in Pakistan having to dive down and holding his breath, swim through a tunnel so that he can remove an obstruction that is blocking the city's sewer.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: And we find these stories of how six, seven, eight, nine Christians die every year because of the poisonous fumes and the toxic waste that gets in their system.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: And that's when I think, oh, that's Jesus Christ.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: These men stay there because there's a family they're trying to raise that are Christians and they can't leave.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: There's a church that they're trying to help lead.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: This is a minimum wage job, and they do it.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: They go down, down, down to the filth and nearly to death at times.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: And that's what our Lord Jesus Christ did.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: He did it out of love because that's what love does at Christmas.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Love comes down.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: That's just what love does.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: And I can't help thinking of TBCers that I have known throughout the years who in love have come down.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: I think of a seven-year-old who I used to visit out on her Indian reservation, a seven-year-old, really a former teacher, a woman who had given most of her life to serving on an Indian reservation, a group of alcoholic families, and so forth.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: I think of her.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: I think of I think of the medical doctor who has invested his life in a third-world country helping people who can never help his career or help him back.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: I think of a college graduate girl in Honduras who had a job after college but left her good job when her dad left the ministry of the A School, the Trash Mountain School, left her job to help her mother continue to run a school to save the lives of 200 kids who are being rescued from that Trash Mountain.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: I think of the couple, the man, a college graduate here from here in America, a couple down in Haiti, and he pastors a church and his wife runs an orphanage, and they have this ministry that's constantly trying to save these kids and build new churches.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: I think of people like that who could work any job, who could even perhaps leave the country, a country that's broken, but they stay there because of love, because that's what love does at Christmas.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: Love comes down.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: And I think of people like you, and I think of people like me.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: And I think that at this Christmas we'll see love come down as we look at people behind the scenes helping tonight with LOL, or helping next week with a light show, or helping in the in the ministry to children this month.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you'll see it happen in your home as you have guests come in and you'll watch.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: And you'll maybe you'll have this opportunity if you're a wife and your husband says something totally stupid in front of everybody, or totally inaccurate, but you hold your tongue and you don't embarrass him in front of everybody because love comes down and you hold your tongue.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe Aunt Maud just roams on and on and on forever, and you'd like to interrupt, but love comes down and you hold your tongue, right?
33:28
SPEAKER_00: Does this sound familiar?
33:30
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe love comes down and you help clean the dishes after the huge meal, or maybe you help wash the dishes, or maybe you do something else because love comes down.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: Love is humble, and love is humble at Christmas.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And that's the message of this passage.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, it's the message of that youth song that goes, He came from heaven to earth to show the way.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: Really?
33:56
SPEAKER_00: What way?
33:57
SPEAKER_00: The way of love, the way of humility.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: Came from heaven to earth to show the way, came from earth to the cross.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: He went from the earth to the cross, my debt to pay, from the cross to the grave, and now up from the grave to the sky.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we lift your name.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: What?
34:13
SPEAKER_00: On high.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're gonna get to do right now with the Lord's table.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna pray as the men will come forward.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna pray, and they're gonna pass the bread and the cup, and I want you to watch as the Lord Jesus Christ comes all the way down to the cross.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: And yet John says he was lifted up on the cross.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: See him there, up, because the way up is down.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you for this wonderful story that you gave us.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: It's a story that no one could make up.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: It's a story of down and up and of your son Jesus Christ and his incredible humility and the call for us at this Christmas season to be humble like Jesus.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: Because that's just what love does.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: Love comes down.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: In his name we pray.