This really is a a great text uh for Advent. It pokes its head out of the Bible in a very unlikely place. It’s not in the usual birth narratives of Matthew and Luke. Uh it’s written in a letter uh from Paul to the uh Christians at Philippi, northeastern Greece. And it’s sprung us, it’s sprung on us in a context where Paul’s not even really talking about the incarnation or about Christ’s coming. That’s not his main point. He’s t giving some general comments about how Christians are to get along with one another. Then suddenly out of the blue, the snow starts falling and the tree lights twinkle and we get that Narniaike enchantment of Christmas. And another really unusual thing about Philippians chapter 2 that we’re looking at this morning is that the incarnation, the arrival of Christ on earth is not viewed from the outside. It’s not explained to us by a narrator such as in Matthew and Luke. Rather, we get the perspective of Jesus himself. We enter the hallowed mind of God and we see how Jesus himself processed and thought about his coming down to earth. You know, I once read a little parable about Christmas. I read it so long ago, I forgot who wrote it. Uh it’s not original, but it goes like this. Says, “Once there was a land uh ruled by a wicked prince, and he’d come from a foreign country. He’d enslaved all the people of the land. He’d made them miserable with work in his coal mines and he’d built a fortified wall to keep the people from escaping the land. Wall was high and broad and heavily guarded. Two men were still free in that kingdom, one old and another young, and they lived on an inaccessible cliff overlooking the land and the great wall. They hated the wall. They loved the people who were trapped inside. At last, they resolved together to blow up the wall and destroy the labor of the enemy prince and set the people free. So they planned and reminded themselves that no matter what happened, heaven and eternity was all that really mattered. The night came when the deed would be done. It was a hard plan. It wouldn’t be possible to get near the wall without being detected by the guards. So the only way was for the person carrying the explosives to run toward the wall in full view of the enemy, drawing enemy fire against them. all the way to make certain that the wall blew up. The two men agreed that the young men would detonate the explosives by hand. But they believed in heaven. They loved the people of the land. So the honor of the sacrifice made their hearts leap with joy. The hour came and they folded up the map of their strategy. Stood back from the table. They embraced one another. When the young man with the explosives in his hand got to the door, he turned back and looked at his father. Said, “I love you, father.” And the older men took a deep breath mixed with sadness, but also a breath of joy and said, “I love you, too, son.” The young man stepped out into the darkness and disappeared. Now, I I don’t know if such a scene ever played out in heaven during the months before Jesus was born on earth. I don’t know if time in heaven has any measure at all. In CS Lewis’s book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, written for children, but greatly inspiring if you have a peek at it as an adult. In the book, the child Lucy has one of her passing meetings with Alen the lion representing Christ. Alen must go and he says to Lucy, “Don’t look so sad. We shall we shall meet soon again.” “Please, Alen,” said Lucy, what do you call soon? “I call all times soon,” said Alen. And instantly he was vanished away. So whatever transpired in heaven prior to the first Christmas, certainly the father knew that in sending his son to earth, he was sending him to die. And the son knew that the mission could not be accomplished without his death. But the people on earth were lost and enslaved. And the father and son loved those people. The world was dark and it was hard. The enemy, the taskmaster, Satan, was doing all he could to reduce people to hardened, isolated shells of what they were meant to be. people far removed from the image of God in which they were made. So the enemy’s triumph, his goal was to make everyone’s lives suspicious and territorial and short and brutal and miserable. To make a place where relationships dissolve with anger, where families pull apart and never get mended again. Fathers turn away from their children, children turn away from their fathers. Yet the father and son stood over the earth looking at that little tennis ball of rebellion in space and the father and son together determined to conduct their daring rescue mission. The son would go down to earth disguised as a mortal human being. He would infiltrate human society, begin to spread the ideas of heaven. Always going to be a suicide mission. Son would have to die to pay the penalty for the sin and rebellion of those on the planet. There was no turning back. There were no second thoughts. the night Jesus was born. Even though the same people who needed rescuing may have hardly given God a thought, their lives were naturally hardened against faith and hardened against hope, hardened against love. There wasn’t a lot of joy in their hearts. Certainly not the level of joy that God had intended for them when he created them. Father and son knew the joy of heaven. Deeply desired to share that joy with us. So for nine months, the father knit the rescuer, our deliverer, together in the womb of Mary. From a microscopic embryo the size of a pin head to a group of living cells to a fully formed baby, the father knit, the time came, the baby was born, and heaven rejoiced. Now, however that planning in heaven occurred, and really it was a plan that originated as early as Genesis chapter 3 in the Bible when we see the fall of of Adam and Eve. When we come to Philippians 2, we cautiously and we with great reverence we enter the mind of Christ. Author Sincler Ferguson helpfully points out that there are actually three mindsets found in our passage. And we’ll look at all three, beginning first with the mindset of Jesus himself in verse 6 where we read, “Who being in the very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, became obedient to death, even death on a cross. If you follow those verbs, Jesus didn’t grasp for position. He made himself nothing. He took on the nature of a servant or a slave. He humbled himself and he became obedient to death. There’s a lot there, but in there, the beating heart of that just has to do with humility. When it says that Jesus was in the very nature God, the Greek word morphe means that Jesus eternally exists as he possesses the very status of God. When he came to earth, he remained in the very nature God, but he released his recognizable status as God. He didn’t consider equality with God something to be grasped. Meaning, he didn’t insist on his right to be recognized and revered as God. He didn’t appeal to his god status to make himself immensely exceptional to anyone else on earth. He didn’t insist on receiving the dignity commensurate with his identity. Now, as an aside, you know, if we think of our original sin, the original sin of mankind in Genesis 3 was that we cons we considered equality with God something to be grasped. God possessed the knowledge of good and evil and by craving and taking the forbidden fruit it says we became like God in that sense and that that was our tragic rebellion considering equality with God something to be grasped that’s what enslaved us in our sin made our whole rescue necessary so to be clear Jesus did not cease to be God in his 33 years on earth prior to his death and resurrection he didn’t give up his divine nature for three odd decades to make himself nothing to empty himself doesn’t mean that he ceased to be who he was didn’t stop being God but he became human along with being God the incarnation was not a case of subtraction but addition God became the God man in emptying self he didn’t cease to be who he was he revealed the deepest truth about who he was he was and is a willing servant to human beings like us his morphe his nature is that he is eternal et ally God. Now a different Greek word is used where it says being found in appearance as a man. That Greek word schema refers to the outward appearance not the inner morphe or the inner identity. Jesus schema as a man was a temporary appearance. So with the incarnation Jesus looked, moved, acted as a mortal man. He adopted and he accepted some of the same restrictions that we all have while all this time remaining God. CS Lewis put it this way. He said, “The eternal being who knows everything and who created the whole universe became not only a man but before that a baby and before that a fetus inside a woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.” When Jesus, what Jesus laid aside when he came down to earth was his independent access to his divine attributes. He set up something like a two-factor authentification to do divine things. He limited himself to doing what what he said what he saw the father doing. He could only do what he saw the father doing. So the father’s activity became the cue for Jesus’ activity. Nothing compelled Jesus to humble himself or to taste humiliation at the hand of humans other than his great love, his deep desire to serve us and to rescue us. So he didn’t grasp or close his fist around his divine prerogatives as the Lord of glory. The incarnate Christ didn’t stand on his rights. He was willing to go all the way to the bottom, not only to exist as a man, but then to endure the worst that a man could ever endure. misunderstanding, mocking, desertion, betrayal, torture, and death. And yet, we read this passage, we can almost hear the gasp of the Apostle Paul as he writes these words. He humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Historian Tom Holland writes how three or four decades before Christ, the city of Rome went to work on its first heated swimming pool. It was built on the Escaline Hill just outside the city’s ancient walls. Prime real estate. It would include luxury parks, villas, flower beds, marble fittings. This was a showcase community for some of the wealthiest people in the world. And the reason this prime property hadn’t been developed earlier was because for many centuries, from the earliest days of Rome, this had been the place of the dead. But as the city continued to gentrify and excavating uh the swimming pool was underway, a corpse-like stench hung in the air. It was caused by the carcasses of all those who were too poor to have been laid to rest in tombs. Dead slaves particularly, and the vultures circling overhead were known as the birds of Esqualene. One area called the Cesorium was the place set aside for the execution of slaves by crucifixion. That was a fate that Roman intellectuals deemed the worst imaginable. Victims would often linger for days, and they’d be unable to fend off the birds, and they’d be gasping for breath. And at times, various failed revolts against Rome would lead to the sight of hundreds upon hundreds of corpse-laden crosses lining a highway or masked in front of a rebellious city, and all the trees in the area would be stripped bare for the executions. Now despite the regularity of such crucifixions, the Romans didn’t think or write about them very much. They were grotesque, but they were considered a completely ordinary, unremarkable aspect of their culture. Most detailed account we have is some 60 or 70 years after the heated swimming pool in Rome was built. The one we know that took place outside of Jerusalem in about the year AD.33, the crucifixion of Christ. And later, as Christianity bloomed and spread across the Roman Empire, the cross was oddly considered to be a triumph, not a tragedy, still considered too shocking to be depicted in visual form. Christian artists addressed it very tentatively, because it was like depicting as the center of your religion a hangman’s noose or a gas chamber or an electric chair. So at first some of the scribes in the gospels drew just little small pictograms above the Greek word cross just hinting at the portrayal of the crucified Christ. By the year 400 AD when even the Roman emperor had bowed his knee to Christ there was a little less squeamishness about depicting this artistically. They might see an ivory carving representing Christ on the cross. And he was muscled like an athlete and he looked serene and triumphant as he defeated his enemies of sin and evil clearly portraying him as Lord of the universe. Centuries passed and more of the horror of the actual event came to be depicted in the art. By medieval times, Jesus was portrayed as twisted and bloody and dying much as his original executioners would have seen him. no longer looking serene or in control or victorious. What we see in the art of the church history is a very gradual embrace of what Christians had always believed that Christ had suffered and died on the cross on our behalf in our place for the forgiveness of our sins. He was weak and vulnerable. But the cross wasn’t a sign of embarrassing defeat. It signified tremendous love, compassion, substitution, ultimate spiritual triumph, greatest power in the universe exposed in weakness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Now, we can only imagine what it felt like for Christ, the Lord of the universe, to be inside the confines of a human body. Sincler Ferguson writes that when he was a 17-year-old university student, he had the privilege of hearing the most distinguished Anglican preacher of the era, John Sto. And he was expounding on these words in Philippians chapter 2. John Sto was the son of a very famous London physician. And John’s life was one of rapid achievement. He was the senior student leader at the famous rugby boarding school in England. And then he graduated from Cambridge with a degree in modern languages, outstanding academic record. He was a highly published author, internationally famous preacher, a chaplain to the queen, a man who spoke in the distinctive manner of Cambridge graduates. Sincler Ferguson writes, “I, in mar contrast, was the son of parents whose formal education had ended around the age 14. I knew nobody in my family tree who had ever gone to a university. I was in the first few weeks of my university degree when I met John Stodd. He began his address by asking us a question and pausing for answers and my native shyness accelerated into top paralytic gear. There was no likelihood of me calling out an answer. Six years later, now a young Presbyterian minister, I served as John Sto’s minder for three days when he came to speak at a minister’s conference in our church, driving him around Glasgow in a little white Austin Mini. 11 years further on, having had no contact with him in the intervening period, I unexpectedly received a warm and gracious letter from John Sto. He still remembered my wife’s name. He’d been praying for us throughout these years. That was the measure of the man. I suspect almost everyone who ever heard John Sto preach, certainly every minister, imagined that he never missed a beat in preaching, never stuttered, never used the wrong word, never packed a paragraph with s and ums, never lost his place, never lost his crystal clearar clarity. His mind seemed to be kept in a perpetually springcleaned condition. Thereafter, our lives occasionally intervened. Then in the 1990s, John Sto was now well into his 80s. He’d experienced some ill health. And each occasion I heard him preach. Then he seemed to experience a TIA, popularly known as a mini stroke. For a few minutes, the sentences would simply cease flowing. He’d pause and with good humor reassure that he would be able to continue, and then must have seemed like an eternity to him, standing exposed to the gaze of as many as a thousand preachers who had formerly all admired his clarity. the mental engine would restart and the words would flow again. Sincler Ferguson says, “I wondered what that felt like him.” Felt like for him on the inside. This was a world to which he had seemed to have been a lifelong stranger. Here was eloquent, silenced, power weakened, humility humiliated. If that kind of humbling was experienced by John Sto, a mortal man just as his abilities diminished with age, what if Jesus, the king of heaven, as he comes inside the confines of a human body, who made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, humbling himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. The mindset of Christ was to not consider his natural equality with God something he needed to grasp or hang on to. The baby in the manger didn’t seem to grasp or hang on to anything except maybe the finger of his mom or his dad. That’s the mindset of the son. What of the mindset of the father? That comes next. Because after saying that Jesus humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross, we read, “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place, gave him the name that’s above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” Seeing his son successfully complete their mission to rescue humanity, the father immediately ended the humiliation, exalted. Actually a better translation of the Greek is he super exalted. The father super exalted his son to the very highest position of honor. bestowing on his son the name that is above every name, Jesus the Lord, and decreed that at that name every knee should bow, every knee in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. Every tongue would confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. So everyone, whether angels or the departed saints in heaven or people still living on earth or the satanic uh hosts and lost humanity in hell under the earth, no one will ever be ignorant of or avoid or escape the responsibility of bowing down before Jesus and confessing that he truly is the rightful Lord of everyone and everything. Of course, this is already happening. Many millions of people around the globe this morning will instinctively kneel before the Lord. We in this room, we might not do it physically. Not nothing to stop us really. We could physically join the bone crunching, knee popping, bowing down on the hard planks of Knox Church floor along with millions of our brothers and sisters all over the world. Certainly this morning we joyfully and heart hearthe heartily use our tongues to declare that Jesus Christ is the Lord and he’s our Lord. The mindset of the father is so pleased with the rescue mission of the son. No higher honor could be bestowed on Jesus than what has been done. So for Christmas to happen the mindset of the son was to empty himself and go really low. We sang about that this morning. The mindset of the father was to super exalt the son once the mission was completed. But the real reason why Paul talks about any of this in the first place is to help us get our minds screwed on straight. Because before talking about either the son or the father, our passage begins with these words. If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if you have any comfort from his love, if you have any fellowship with the spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus. And then it goes on who being in the very nature of God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. So what is the the mind or the mindset that we’re to display? What’s the mindset that uh talking about the son and the father is meant to reinforce in us? We’re told to work out the humility displayed in Christ in our own character as we live and serve and support one another as a church. We’re called to leave behind selfish ambition and vain conceit. Paul really is he’s warning us about being gloryhungry, feeling so empty inside that we hunger for glory and honor and recognition and respect and assurance from others. As theologian Lewis Sme summarizes, Paul warns us against every time we meet someone new, wondering to ourselves, how can this person contribute to my need to prove that I count? We walk into a room thinking, “Here I am, and Jesus walked onto our planet and said, ah, there you are. I’ve been longing for eternity to be with you. You are so worth saving.” Ray Ortland comments, “God is not too great to notice you. God is too great to overlook you. Christmas means we’re not overlooked. The mind of Christ and Christmas is God’s response and antidote to our pride. Paul’s not really giving us a lecture here. He’s just calling us to think about the mind of Christ and to allow our minds to align with his. Then we can begin living lives of humility and caring for others as well. meditating on the mind of Christ, what Jesus did for us. It should excite the molecules inside our own soul’s chemistry with the result that we start not just thinking about our own interests, but the interests of everyone else in this room this morning to the point where we even begin to consider others better than ourselves. Somewhat ironic that we can we can look around uh the world and we can always find people that we consider better than ourselves in a lot of different areas. If you’ve ever met one of your heroes, an artist, a musician, a scholar, an author, an actor, a great chef, or a gardener or hockey player, we naturally feel humbled by people that we’re in awe of. People we feel are better or more important than we are. Humility comes rather easily to us then. But that’s not what Paul is calling us to here. Sincler Ferguson observes that there was nobody that Jesus could count more important than himself in terms of achievement or intellect or celebrity. Jesus counted supremely important to himself, people who were infinitely less important than he was. So his model encourages us to look for the least important, the least honored folks in our church and honestly and sincerely consider them more important than we are. to humble ourselves, to go out of our way to look out for their interests. Pastor John Piper says he considers Philippians 2 his favorite Christmas passage, noting that Jesus wasn’t humble for the same reasons we are or should be. Our humility, if there’s any in us at all, is based on our finitness, our fallibility, our sinfulness. But the eternal son of God was not finite. He was not fallible. He was not sinful. So unlike our humility, Jesus humili humility uh originated some other way. Jesus’ humility was not a heart disposition of being finite or fallible or sinful. It was a heart of infinite perfection, infallible truthfulness, freedom from all sin, which for that reason did not need to be served. He was free and full to overflow in serving. So following Christ’s example, we can’t very well celebrate Christmas if we’re bearing a grudge against someone else. That would be incompatible with Jesus coming to earth. That’s why Paul urges us to be united and like-minded and tender and compassionate and loving, just plain humble in our dealings with one another. To look around this room and say, “That person and that person and that person, that person is a VIP. They’re very important. I’m going to consider that person better than I am. I’m going to try to think of their interests as every bit equal to my own. So our application is just to learn the mind of Christ in these matters. Let the mind of Christ come and electrify our own minds. Dwell on how Christ through coming for Christmas, arriving on this planet, came to rescue us at the cost of his own life. And as we dwell on the mind of Christ, it frees us up to serve one another with real joy and sincerity and with delight. So there are some things obviously in application that we can pray from this passage this morning. And I’m just going to ask you to take some time. This is just between you and God. This is your personal and private time with the Lord this morning and with the Holy Spirit. You might want to thank Jesus for his willingness to empty himself for you. Thank God that he’s too great to overlook you and he hasn’t overlooked you. And pray that you would have the mind of Christ to diligently look after the interests of others. This is just a personal time of prayer and then I’ll close us off. So take a few moments.