Introduction:
4 Things the Incarnation Teaches Us About Selflessness (Philippians 2:5-11):
- Selflessness starts in the Mind . (Phil 2:6)
- Selflessness is a matter of Identity . (Phil 2:7)
- Selflessness shows up in Action . (Phil 2:8)
- Selflessness leads to Glory . (Phil 2:9-11)
Matthew 23:12 - Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
Luke 14:11 - For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
Luke 18:14 - For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
1 Peter 5:6 - Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you,
James 4:10 - Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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Open up your Bibles with me, please, to Philippians chapter 2.
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And if you don't have a Bible with you, you can use one in the seat back.
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If you don't have a Bible at home, you can keep that one.
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And if the print's too small in that one, which I think it is, we have larger print Bibles on that shelf in the back.
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You can have one of those, consider that our present to you.
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Romans chapter 2.
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It is Christmas time.
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It's a magical time of year, isn't it?
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It's a time when we really, maybe more than any other time in the year, we think of others over ourselves, right?
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Don't we do that at Christmas especially?
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We think of others over ourselves?
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I mean, except when you're like at the mall and you're about to pull into that parking spot, right?
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And that jerk pulls in ahead of you, you know what I'm talking about?
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And you're like, I was sitting here with my turn signal on.
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You didn't see me, but you went right in there.
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Other than that, we're pretty good about being selfless, aren't we?
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I mean, except when the church doesn't play the right songs that we think they should.
01:45-01:59
I have a pastor friend who served at a church up in Canada that every year for generations, they closed their service with that song, Feliz Navidad.
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You know the one I'm talking about?
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You know that horrible, horrible, horrible song?
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♪ I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas ♪ You know that song?
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Well, one year the pastor was like, you know what, let's do something a little different so we don't get stuck in like some traditional rite.
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There was like rioting in the aisles and there were tears and sackcloth and ashes and threats and like really over that song?
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But I mean, other than that, we're pretty selfless this time of year, right?
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Well, except when we give somebody a gift and we don't quite get the thank you that we were expecting.
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Has that happened to anybody else?
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You make this big presentation, you wrapped it all nice, and you're expecting, it doesn't have to be a ticker tape parade, but come on, something, and you give the gift and they just kind of take it and they're like, oh, thanks, that's nice.
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You're like, no, it's more than nice.
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But I mean, other than that, we're pretty selfless and we think of others over ourselves, right?
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Well, I guess also, except for when we put the decorations away, for some of us, it'll be tomorrow we put them away.
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And for some of us, it'll be June when you get your Christmas decorations away And you feel like, well, maybe Christmas wasn't what I wanted it to be.
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Maybe it was a bit of a letdown.
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And I think if we're all going to be honest with ourselves, we should confess that really, by nature, even this time a year, we still get stuck being pretty self-centered.
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my way, my rights.
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Or as we had one adopted grandma, her saying was always, I don't prefer that.
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Or we say that offends me, right?
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Well, self-centeredness is a miserable way to live.
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in the home, it's miserable in the workplace.
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And self-centeredness causes all kinds of problems in the church.
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We talked about that, we're going through the book of James and we saw this in James chapter four.
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There's fights, there's quarrels, there's even murder that takes place because people are selfish and insist on getting what they want, how they want it, when they want it.
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They're like, "Well, how do I fix that?
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How can I stop being so self-absorbed?" Well, look at Philippians chapter two.
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Looking at, we'll pick up in verse two.
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He says, "Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord, excuse me, and of one mind." Here it is, verse three, he says, "Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
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Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." There's your solution.
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If you struggle sometimes as I do with being self-centered, there's your answer right there.
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What you need to do is just simply consider other people as being more important than you.
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That's it.
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That's a sermon, you can go.
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Merry Christmas.
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If you're like, "Hang on, hang on, hang on." That's a nice thought.
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But how in the world do I live that out?
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How can I, it's easier said than done.
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You know, I've tried that and it lasts like, you know, 15 seconds.
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How do I consider other people more important than me?
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How can I truly live a selfless lifestyle?
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Well, you know, the very next thing that Paul talks about here is the incarnation.
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He talks about the truth that God Almighty became a man.
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And in our vernacular today, we would say that Paul goes right into the Christmas story.
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You see, it's a story of promise.
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The Christmas story is a story of miracle.
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It's a story of hope.
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Ultimately, as Pastor Taylor preached last week, it's a story of salvation.
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But this Christmas, I want you to see that there's something more for us.
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That the story of Christmas, the story of God becoming a man, is also the example of selflessness.
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Look at verse five.
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He says, "Have this mind among yourselves." This mind, we're like, what mind?
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We already talked about that, considering others more important than yourselves, looking over the interests of others.
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You're like, man, where do I get that mind?
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Where do I get that mindset?
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Well, look at verse five.
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He says, "Which is yours in Christ Jesus." If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, if you are a born again believer, I have great news for you.
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You already have this mind.
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You have the mind of Christ because you have the Holy Spirit.
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And Paul here is calling us to imitate the selflessness of Christ that was on display in the incarnation.
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So if you're taking notes, which I always encourage you to do, four things the incarnation teaches us about selflessness.
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I was originally gonna call this, have yourself a selfless little Christmas.
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And I'm like, they're never gonna go for that.
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Gonna be dignified.
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So we're going to say, four things the incarnation teaches us about selflessness.
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Number one, write this down.
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You wanna be selfless like Jesus?
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Selflessness starts in the mind.
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I want you to look at this verse six.
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He says, talking about Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
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Stop there.
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It says he was in the form of God.
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That's not something lesser.
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That's not saying that Jesus resembled God.
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The literal Greek here means that Jesus had the very essence of God.
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Jesus is by nature God.
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That's what the original language means.
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And this speaks to from where Jesus' humiliation began as God.
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You see, Jesus being God went from the throne of heaven to baby in a manger.
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And I'm not sure we can fully wrap our brains around that experience.
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I was trying to think of some examples to illustrate this.
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And to be honest with you, I really, I couldn't think of anything of this magnitude.
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I thought, well, like for ladies, what if you're like the queen of England and then you become a street urchin?
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I'm sorry, that doesn't offend anybody, does it?
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Like, Pastor Jeff, my aunt is a street urchin and quite frankly, she doesn't prefer that term.
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Or like, okay, that didn't work.
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Or I was thinking like for guys, like what if you went from starting pitcher for the New York Yankees to third string pitching coach for the Pine Richland Little League Peewee team.
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And I just couldn't think of a good example to really embrace this concept that God Almighty became a baby.
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And then I started thinking, how could he be okay with this?
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To go from such an exalted position, such a lofty position to being a baby.
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How could he be okay with that?
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Well, here we have our answer.
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It started in his mind.
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Notice it says, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
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You see, Jesus would have had every right to demand that people treat Him as God, because He is.
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But Jesus said, "You know, if letting go of that privilege is going to help people, And that's not something that I need to hold on to.
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In Jesus' mind, he didn't feel the need to tightly cling to all of the privileges that come with being God.
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And my friends, if you're going to humble yourself, if you're truly going to be selfless like you want to think you are, like Jesus, it has to start in your mind.
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You have to get to the place where you have made up in your mind that you do not have to insist on your rights.
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You have to get to the place in your mind like Jesus that you're not too important to stoop down and help somebody in need.
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And that's so counter to our flesh where we're constantly worried about my rights and what do I deserve?
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And I can't believe you asked me to do that.
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You asked me to scrub the bathroom here?
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Do you realize who I am?
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I'm the pastor of the church.
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And you know who I am?
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That mindset needs to change.
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To, well, you know, if God was willing to become a man there's no title that I could ever have that puts me above helping people, right?
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So selflessness starts in the mind.
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You gotta reconsider some things.
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Number two, selflessness is a matter of identity.
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Look at verse seven.
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Again, you can barely wrap your brain around this.
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It says, "But Jesus God made himself nothing, "taking the form of a servant, "being born in the likeness of men." So you see this train of thought here.
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The way Jesus thought determined the way Jesus saw himself.
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You see that?
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It says he made himself nothing or he emptied himself.
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That's not subtraction, okay?
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It's not like Jesus stopped being God for a while.
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That's not what that means.
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It does mean that he saw himself in a new identity.
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Notice it says, "Taking the form of a servant or a slave." You see the change of identity?
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Jesus said, "I am the King of heaven." And in the incarnation, he says, "I am a servant." Like, well, how far did he take that?
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It says he was born in the likeness of men.
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Jesus Christ in the incarnation totally identified with us as human beings.
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People thought of Jesus in form no different than a regular man.
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And see, that's the mystery of Christmas.
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That somehow Jesus is fully God and fully man at the same time.
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That God emptied himself of his glory to be confined to a human body.
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So you see the way Jesus thought determined the way Jesus saw himself.
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First a negative and then a positive.
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He says, "I don't need to demand my rights and privileges.
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I do see myself as a slave." And again, the point in writing this is an example for us, that we need to see ourselves as servants.
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You know, it's a tough sell to the world because the way the kingdom works, the way God works is always opposite of the way the world works.
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It's always opposite.
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Like if I said to you, like who's the, like who has the most glory on earth?
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Who is the most important person on earth?
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Who's the greatest person on earth?
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Well, the world would start to think in terms of who has the most people serving him, right?
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Who has the biggest payroll, the biggest staff employees, like who is that?
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And that's how we determine greatness.
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But Jesus said, "The greatest among you, will be the servant of all.
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And I heard one preacher say this, and I love this.
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He said, "You won't know if you're a servant "until you're treated like one." And I thought about that this week, and I thought, you know, what if we had our ushers, our hospitality team, what if that we gave them a stack of those stickers that say, hello, my name is, and what if they took one of them stickers and just wrote slave on it?
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Hello, I'm a slave.
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And when you came in here, they lovingly and good Christian love, they slapped that sticker on your chest and you walked around indicating to everybody that you are a slave.
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And then people started treating you that way.
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They see your name tag.
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Oh, okay, hey, would you give me some coffee?
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Oh, hey, I left something in the car.
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Here, go fetch it for me.
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And then have her washed and waxed.
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How would you feel if somebody was treating you like a slave?
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And you see there's something in us that's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no, no.
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I'm not a slave, I'm nobody's slave.
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That's beneath me.
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And here we see in this passage that that wasn't how Jesus saw himself.
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Jesus saw himself as, you know, I'm going to step off the throne of heaven to wash the feet of my disciples.
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And if Jesus was so willing, what job is beneath you?
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What job is beneath me?
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because a servant only thinks about one thing, and that's serving the master.
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Do you see yourself as a servant of God?
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Four things the incarnation teaches us about selflessness.
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Number three, selflessness shows up in action.
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Look at verse eight.
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It says, "The being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient point of death, even death on a cross.
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Again, follow this way of thinking because we're told to model that, we're told to follow this example that Jesus modeled for us rather.
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But you see this line of thinking, Jesus' way of thinking determined the way Jesus saw himself and that determined what Jesus actually did.
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Did you see that? He humbled himself and did what? He became obedient to the Father. Well, how far did he take that? All the way to death. Oh, and by the way, it's not just death. We're reminded here that He died the worst possible way to die. That's death on a cross. That's what Jesus humbled Himself and was willing to do.
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You see, the cross was designed for execution, yes, but it was also designed to prolong the torture for as long as possible.
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And it was also designed to humiliate the people who were crucified.
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That's the death that Jesus was willing to endure.
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See, Jesus went all the way, and he did everything else along the way, all the way.
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Everything Jesus did was to obey the Father and selflessly serve others.
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It's astounding.
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This is God that we're talking about.
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And read your Bibles.
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And I challenge you to find me anything that Jesus did for himself.
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I don't see that.
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I never see Jesus saying, "Hey, I've been preaching for like a month.
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"I'm taking three weeks off." Or, "Enough of the miracles for a while.
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"I just need a break." Over and over and over, Jesus' whole life was about giving and pouring himself out.
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And you see, church, we've been talking about changing your thinking and changing the way that you see yourself.
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That doesn't mean anything if it doesn't change the way we act.
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And when we look at Jesus' example in the incarnation, I have to ask myself, and I have to ask you, how far are you willing to take your service to God and to others?
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Or let me ask you, how much is too much?
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You know, if you're like, all right, all right, Jeff, all right, fine.
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I'll help out in the church, but only once a month.
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And even then, only when it's convenient for me.
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I would say, well, that's not really thinking like a servant, right?
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Or if you're like, okay, I'll give.
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Oh, you, okay, we're supposed to give money.
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Okay, all right, look, I'll give, but I'm only gonna give a little.
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You know, like when you tip the waiter at Cracker Barrel, some people view giving to God as that.
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Just gonna, here's a tip.
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That's not biblical giving.
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If you're like, "I'll give, but only what I won't miss." I would say, "Well, that's not thinking like a servant." And if that describes you, if you're like reluctant to serve and reluctant to give, if that describes you, then you haven't changed your thinking, you're still holding onto your rights.
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You haven't changed how you see yourself because you're not seeing yourself as a servant, And you certainly haven't followed Christ's example because you're not willing to give all that you got.
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So how far are you willing to go to serve God and to serve others?
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We see that God in the flesh was willing to be selfless all the way to the cross.
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And finally, number four, selflessness leads to glory.
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Look at verses nine through 11.
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It says, "Therefore," okay, he was obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
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"Therefore God has highly exalted him "and bestowed on him the name that is above every name "so that at the name of Jesus, "every knee should bow in heaven and on earth "and under the earth and every tongue confess Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
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And now here you're expecting me to say, "Okay, listen, you need to make Jesus Lord.
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"You need to make Jesus Lord." And I'm certainly not gonna say that.
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Jesus is Lord.
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You're not making him anything.
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And whether you acknowledge him or you don't acknowledge him, He is still the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
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You can bow now, or you can bow later, but someday you are going to bow.
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But there's a difference.
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Right now you have a choice.
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But if you need more motivation for selflessness, we have several already, right?
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we have several motives to be selfless.
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I can say you need to be selfless because then you're like Jesus.
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Or I can say you need to be selfless because then you'll be used of God.
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Or you need to be selfless so that there's unity in the church like we talked about a couple of weeks ago.
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Here's another reason to be selfless.
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It's exaltation.
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It's glory.
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See that first word in the verse, verse nine.
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Therefore, therefore, what he's saying is because Jesus Christ faced the ultimate humiliation, he experienced the ultimate exaltation.
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Like, well, how did Jesus get there?
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Well, it certainly wasn't through manipulating people, using people, stepping on the little guy, stepping over the little guy.
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Jesus took the path that, quite frankly, does not make human sense.
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He emptied himself.
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He saw himself as a servant, and he was obedient to God, putting everybody else's needs ahead of his own.
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Like, well, why would Paul, in talking about the example of selflessness, why would he mention this exaltation of Christ?
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You know, what's his point?
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Well, we're gonna play a quick game.
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You wanna play a game?
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It's an easy one.
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We're gonna play, see if you can find the theme.
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We're gonna put some verses on the screen.
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Do we have those verses ready?
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We're gonna put some verses on the screen and I want you to see if you can find the theme.
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You ready?
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Let me go through these quickly.
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Matthew 23, 12.
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Whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
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Luke 14, 11, "For everyone who exalts himself "will be humbled and he who humbles himself "will be exalted." Luke 18, 14, "For everyone who exalts himself "will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself "will be exalted." First Peter 5, 6, "Humble yourselves therefore "under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time "he may exalt you." James 4, 10, "Humble yourselves before the Lord "and he will exalt you." Do you see a theme?
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I can do it again.
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Actually, I probably can't.
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I'm a little winded from that.
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Well, here's motivation to follow the selfless example of Jesus Christ.
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Because the Bible says, "If you're willing to humble yourself before God now, "the day's going to come when God will exalt you." You know, Our worship team would make their way forward and our ushers.
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We're going to be closing in worship here in a minute and having candlelight.
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But you know, every Christmas, amidst all the festivities and traditions and all of that, I think even in our culture, you hear a lot of sentiment around, don't forget Jesus.
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You know what I mean?
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Like don't forget Jesus is the reason for the season and it's more than about the tree.
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And I think in the church, we get that, right?
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Like we don't wanna forget about Jesus on his birthday.
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Right?
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And then we see the nativity scenes, right?
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Maybe you have one of these in your house.
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You certainly see them as you drive around.
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But I think sometimes, look, even in the church, I think sometimes we reduce the nativity scene to some Hallmark movie.
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You know what I'm talking about?
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That we look at this scene and we conjure up this, This is what Christmas is about.
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Oh, poor pregnant lady had to give birth in the stable.
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And then they were like angels singing.
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And it's like this, it's this story of overcoming adversity and bless their triumphant Rocky Balboa hearts.
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They made it and they had the baby.
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And that's sort of what we reduce that to.
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But I want you to look again and see that this is so much more than that.
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It's the astonishing beginning of the story of how God put our needs first in the ultimate display of selflessness.
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Yeah, Jesus was born to an obscure woman.
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He was laid in a manger, that's a feeding trough.
31:36-31:40
And he was born in a relatively obscure town.
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He was raised in another obscure town.
31:48-31:54
And Jesus said when he was an adult, that he has no place to lay his head.
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He also said that he came as one who serves, and he was willing to die a painful and humiliating death, not for anything that he did, but for the sins that you and I committed.
32:21-32:28
So when you see the nativity scene, here's really how you need to think about it.
32:28-32:38
You need to say, if God so humbled himself, what kind of example is that for me?
32:40-32:40
Let's pray.
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Father in heaven.
32:46-33:00
I can't, if I had an infinite amount of time, I don't think I could explain this to the degree that would bring us to the place of awe where maybe we should be.
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But to consider the creator of everything became a servant.
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to live among us, to die for our sins.
33:18-33:22
Father, your word tells us that we're to have the same mindset that Jesus had.
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And it's so lacking in the church across the board today.
33:27-33:54
My God, I pray the gift that we all open and receive this year is the gift of truly embracing this concept of humbling ourselves and being the servant of all in the way that Jesus modeled for us.
33:56-34:04
We pray these things, Father, in his glorious and incomparable name, the name above all names.
34:06-34:06
Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Philippians 2:5-11
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
Have you ever felt like some job at the church was “beneath you”? What does God becoming man teach you about how we view any job at the church?
Have you ever felt like you have served too much or given too much? What does the incarnation teach us about how far we should be willing to serve and give?
Breakout
Pray for one another.