Philippians 2:5-11 • The Gift of a King
Listen to the audio version of this message with the player below.
Sermon Notes
Transcript
(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let me ask that you would look in your Bibles at Philippians chapter 2. Philippians chapter 2, as we're moving through this Christmas season, we have thought about how Jesus is a gift to us. And one measure of that is as Christ is fulfilling His various roles in our behalf. Last week we talked about how Christ came to us as a prophet and how that's a gift. You can guess maybe where we're going. He is prophet, priest, and king. Today let's look at Jesus as King. How is He blessing us as God's gift, a king, for His people? Let's stand as we honor God's Word, Philippians 2, starting at verse 5 and going through verse 11.
"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours, in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man, and being found in human form. He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
For God has highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name that is 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." Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, we would bow our knees, bend our hearts before You, because You have sent Christ our King. He expresses not only Your rule, but Your heart. And so we would ask that our heart's loyalty would be increased even this day, because we have discerned the wonder of the gift of a king. This we ask in Jesus' name, amen.
Please be seated.
You know, we can bellyache about the polished images of families and individuals that are on Facebook posts or Instagram stories, but all of those modern, polished images actually have a time-worn ancestor known as the Christmas newsletter.
We all love to hate the Christmas newsletters that come to us in the form of humble brag. You know what I'm talking about?
After wrestling through an arduous application process, both twins got into Harvard.
So we took them on a mission trip to Tanzania before dropping them off at college, which allowed James and me only three short weeks in the wine country of southern France, before James had to take a long and wearying flight back to Silicon Valley so that he could start his new position as executive vice president of a multinational technology company. We're just praying that he will stay humble through all of this.
You need to pray harder.
Of course, pastors are not immune to the humble brag of the Christmas newsletter. Our church made the last payment on a multimillion-dollar mortgage in one-third of the planned time.
And we had the largest vacation Bible school in anybody's memory, and we tripled the number of missionaries that we're supporting in foreign lands, and we have determined that our people are 87.3 percent more holy than others in our community.
Now nobody would be so unspiritual as to say it, but we think it.
How different are the Christmas letters of Scripture? Paul has one here. He is talking about the birth of Jesus Christ and says of the King of heaven, "He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, and taking on the form of a servant, He came in human likeness, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross."
And if you will, that's just the cover art for what Paul begins to describe out of his life in the period that he is writing this Christmas letter is more like this.
This past year, I was beaten a few times, thrown out of a few cities, but then things slowed down because I went to prison from which I am now writing you.
But don't worry, because I want you to know through King Jesus and your prayers, all of these things will work out for my deliverance and the advance of the gospel.
That's a different humble brag. That is a different Christmas letter, but it really is following the pattern of the gospel letters that God Himself inspired by His Holy Spirit for us to read at Christmas time. If you would just read it in the sense of a Christmas newsletter, think of what we've already had read to us this day. God says, "I want you to know that my son left the glories of his home in heaven and was born to an unmarried teenager in a stinking stable, in a remote town, in an out-of-the-way nation where the local king wanted to kill him and murdered all the babies of the region in order to get him."
But Merry Christmas, because the one who came in the manger still sits on a throne.
He is king, and because he is king, you can trust the one that came in the manger, not only give yourselves to him, but be loyal to him no matter what you face in life. The king has come, and because of the way in which he came, we recognize Jesus does not need earth's polish to be earth's king.
We trust him because the one who came in swaddling clothes is King Jesus, who by His work enables us to trust him no matter what our circumstances.
It is the message of the Christmas story, the gift of a king in a manger, is the message of a king who rules over all and even overrules all evil.
How do we get that message? God is communicating to us with His Apostle as telling us, "You can trust this king because, first, I'll show you his sonogram."
Oh, you say, "There's not a sonogram in the Bible." I know.
But who was he before he was born?
That is what we are shown. Verse 6, "Though he was in the form of God," some of your translations will say, "by very nature God.
He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man." Likeness of man, but very God of very God. He comes as creator, king of the universe, to his people, even though he is born in a manger. And we must recognize the uniqueness and the power of that message. After all, this time of year, nobody objects to the baby in the manger.
Celebrities, praise Him. I will just tell you, if you do much travel, you can go to an atheistic nation like China and you will see representations of Christmas everywhere.
You can go to an Islamic nation like Senegal, and there are Christmas displays everywhere because no one objects to the infant in a manger.
The concern is when you go the next step. He was by very nature God.
Before he was the child of Mary, he was the son of God. And as such, he is divine. And that is the rub. That's where people begin to struggle. So our pop culture right now has kind of resurrected Jesus Christ, superstar, for another generation. And so what do we hear?
He's just a man.
He's a man. Like any other sung so sweetly and wonderfully, we like to sing along. He's a man.
He's just a man.
And almost nobody objects even to the message I gave last week. He's a great prophet. I mean, even if you're in his Islamic settings, you will hear the praise of Jesus as a prophet. But with this caveat, and you can look it up yourself, on islamicpamphlets.com, the website, saying this, "Some Christians claim that Jesus is God, that He is the incarnation of God on earth and that God took human form. However, according to the Bible," according to this website, "Jesus was born, ate, slept, prayed, all attributes not befitting of God."
If we look at the clear, direct verses of the Bible, we see again and again that Jesus is referred to as an extraordinary human being and nothing more.
"Jesus was an honorable prophet sent by God to call people to worship God alone."
This is evident in the Bible.
Is it really?
Ephesians 9 through 11, "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. The beings of heaven, the beings of life, even those who have died are to name Him Jesus Christ, Lord of all to the glory of God the Father." What after all is the Bible itself so clearly saying? We tell this sweet story of the wise man coming to the place that he lay.
And then we are told, "And they bowed down and did what? They worshiped Him."
That's the concern. That's the thing the world does not want to hear. But we need to hear when the babe came in the manger, the song of the angels, the message of the shepherds, the songs of children even today is, "Behold your king because if he is not king, he cannot help."
And so we say he is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And for that reason we turn to him for aid right now. He is not merely the babe in the manger, but even while in the manger, continue to uphold all things by the word of his power. He did not cease being king. He poured out his heavenly glory and remained the King of heaven and of earth. And if that is not so, what hope do we have? When he was an old man, Martin Luther got a request from the church of his own childhood that they were in crisis, that they needed help. And he recognized it was a pivotal church for the new movement of the gospel that was going across Europe. They needed him to come and bring some help in the crisis. And he later wrote, "I can't come.
I am old.
I am weary. I am worn out and half blind." He had cataracts, one apparently entirely eclipsing the sight of one eye.
But the church persisted in its request, and so he went out in a Christmas winter to make a journey as an old man out of loyalty to King Jesus and his purposes.
The journey required at some point that he cross the river Elba at midwinter, which was choked with ice flows. So when he got to his destination, the dock there had been eroded by the ice jams that had taken away much of the dock. And in trying to get out of the boat, he fell in the water.
An old man now frozen through.
Got to the church, helped with the issue. It recovered.
He did not.
When his wife Katie heard how sick he was, she wrote that she would come through the winter as well, but he wrote back to stop her. He said, "I have a caretaker already who lies in a manger, nurses from his mother,
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty."
He is the king. He is the king of glory. He has come with all of his heavenly angels to accomplish what is best for life and for eternity.
He is the king.
And though earth's crisis and my trials and your trials may be intense, this is what we believe. The one who came to the stable continued to control the universe. Why? Because he never ceased being king, nor does he cease now. And so we rightly sing away in a manger with the sweet lullaby sounds. But at times we need the drumbeat of the proclamation to break through again. He is the king. When I was a child growing up in a large church, at times the prayers got really long and the sermons pretty dense, so much so that my mother's pinch could not keep me awake.
But twice a year the choir would sing, the old song, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and the King of glory shall come in." He is the king. He is the king. He is the king of glory. And that would get my attention.
And I would raise my head and I'd begin to recognize it still has to happen even as an adult. I can get dulled by the Christmas story. I can fall asleep to the goodness and the greatness of God. And so I need to hear it again. Lift up your heads. He is the king of glory. This is Christ the king, whom shepherds laud and angels sing. This is the long expected Jesus, born his people to deliver, born a child and yet a king. He is the king. He is the king. He is the king of glory.
And somehow I ask to break through again.
It does so not nearly, merely by my being shown the sonogram of the Christ child.
But his life's plan.
It begins with a terrible humiliation.
Verse 7, "He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant and being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."
It's a life plan.
It is terrible humiliation.
Our children's catechism asks the question, "What is Christ's estate of humiliation?
How is he humiliated?" And it just begins, "Christ's humiliation consists in his being born and that in a low condition."
The king of creation in amniotic fluid and after birth and an animal stall, being born.
And that in a low condition.
But that wasn't the end of the humiliation. He became obedient, obedient even to death and death worse on a cross.
Maybe we forget what that was.
It wasn't God just saying to Jesus, "Jump," and He says, "How high?"
It was God saying to Jesus, "Descend," and He says, "How low?"
How low we have to recognize was not merely coming as a complaint against God. One of the remarkable things of the Scriptures as it is saying He was by very nature God, equal with God, is He's not simply begrudgingly doing what the Father's telling Him to do. He's God. He is divine by nature, which means His humiliation was willingly received so that later the gospels would say of the same Jesus who was born, "He set His face like a flint to go to Jerusalem." Why? To experience the death of a cross, scorning its shame that He could endure the joy that was set before Him. That this same Jesus isn't just taking orders. He is actually by will and by purpose going to fill a plan for your salvation and mine. And that in itself is one of the causes of our loyalty.
In front of our house is a bus stop for kids, and I've noticed how kids' clothing and patterns have changed as the winter has begun getting closer and upon us. So that the kids who once came in t-shirts now have the heaviest coats, and I actually see fewer and fewer kids at the bus stop because their parents drive them.
So they sit in the warm cars outside our driveway until the bus comes up, and then they get out. Except for one unfortunate girl about two weeks ago when we had a terrible cold snap. It's almost like her parents had not watched the weather report the night before. And so she is walking to the bus stop just bent against the wind that is blowing directly into her face. And at some point she had enough. So out of her backpack she took her raggedy-andy and she put it right in front of her face,
walking against the wind that was coming at her. And I watched her do that, and I recognized if her raggedy-andy is anything like ours, that smile is just so known. He's just got to do it. And he's got to smile through it.
But when Jesus took the winds of the wrath of God in my place and yours, He went willingly
for the joy that was set before Him, believing that His sacrifice would pay a penalty for your sin and mine. He was not merely following orders, though it was the Father's will to crush Him. It was His own will to receive the penalty that we would be set free.
Such a king, not just a prince who became a pauper, but a king who went to a cross and for that reason he deserves our loyalty and our trust. But it's not just because of what happened back there. The life plan is not just about one who came or even a past obedience.
It's a plan of humiliation, obedience, and exaltation.
What's the long-term plan? That's part of the life plan as well. Verse 9, "Therefore God has highly exalted Him, bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and heaven on earth and under the earth every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."
We do not sing, "He was the King."
Nor is it enough simply to say, "He's going to be the King."
We say, "He is the King." He is King Jesus, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I recognize that one day every knee will bow. Those who are alive in heaven and on earth and even those under the earth resurrected to honor the King of glory. But that same King is King now. And when Paul wrote these words from prison, surely anxious about what is going to happen to me even tomorrow, he who recognized that this King Jesus was not only born a king but is a king and is coming as King would write to us, "Therefore don't be anxious about anything.
But by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God, and the God of peace will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."
He is the King.
He is ruling and overruling. He is accomplishing what he must accomplish for our eternal security. Yes, there are trials that in our prayers we see him deliver us from.
But people of deep and profound faith say at times the trials actually deliver me to him.
My heart's need, my heart's dependence. I recognize not just myself but loved ones who have scant understanding of his kingship, Christians that have not yet recognized him in the trials and the difficulties and the crises, the wars and the struggles of this world have to say, "We are not the answer.
We need somebody beyond us to take care of these difficulties." And the Scriptures are saying to us, "He has come and he lives and he's coming again." He is the King. And he comes to make his blessings known as far as the curse is found.
Because he is such a king.
Now I would just say to you, I can preach a better game than I can play sometimes because when my children gather, as they did a couple of weeks ago, at Thanksgiving and we celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving and then we rotate with the in-laws and they get them, you know how that works.
But I look at my kids and my grandchildren and I think of those who have the career changes in the mix and the ones with chronic illness that the doctors have not been able to fix and the ones awaiting another child by adoption if this Lord so blesses and the tensions on them as they wait, what's going to happen and how will it develop. And it's not just my family. It's my church family here as I think of those, some of whom I see even as I look out now, you know whose marriages are a struggle, whose health is a struggle, whose addictions are a struggle.
And I can just get so pressed down that the Christmas songs maybe don't even just wave over me, they almost callous me.
Until with a way and a manger I need not just the sound of the drummer boy, I need the drums of the march of heaven.
He is the king.
He is the king. He is the king of glory and have my heart renewed by understanding the one who came in the manger was not powerless then and he's not powerless now. He is the king.
And what is his kingdom's span? You know that every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that he is Lord. He was God before birth, Savior through life and death. He is the Lord before whom every knee shall bow. And that's not just spanning all earthly and heavenly beings, it's spanning all time.
As though he's saying not a single person escapes my rule, not a single moment escapes my rule. I am Lord over all, King over all.
And when we know that, it changes how we see the world and our place in it. A perennial question among Christians is whether we are living in the worst time ever to be a Christian or the worst time ever in America to be a Christian.
And those become endless debates.
We can certainly cite our concerns, the secularization of our culture, the human sexuality disputes, the corruption and partisanship of our leaders, the scandals of the church, demise of marriage,
the nominal commitment of most Christians that we see.
We can wring our hands and say, "Wow, what a terrible time to be a believer and forget
Christ is on his throne. He is the King, not just to come, but even now." And that changes everything you see, the way you perceive your world, the way you perceive your role in it.
In the very early years of the fledgling church, there was a man named Polycarp. Most of you don't know that name, the Bishop of Smyrna. And even as Christianity was having some ascendancy, the Roman rule began to push back against it. It was the time in which Caesar was to be recognized as God without any rival.
Polycarp became an old man advocating the cause of King Jesus.
And when he was arrested, put on trial, and began to chronicle all that was happening to him in his own mind to record how Jesus was taking care of the circumstances.
But ultimately Polycarp was tied to his stake before being burned and said he could save
Polycarp never finished the chronicle."
How had Jesus ruled over that?
What he could not have perceived is because of his testimony of courage in the midst of the persecution. Not only did his followers rise with greater faith, but more and more people under Roman dominion began to say, "If he has such faith in the midst of such struggle, there is a reality I do not know." And the death of Polycarp led to the re-ignition of Christianity as had not happened for scores of years prior to that. So much so that his followers actually wrote the last lines of Polycarp's chronicle of his arrest and demise. Here's what his disciples and followers wrote, echoing, by the way, the Nativity narrative.
Polycarp was taken prisoner by Herod when Philip the Traleon was high priest and when Stacius Quadratus was proconsul and when Jesus Christ is King forever. To whom be glory, honor, majesty, and an everlasting throne.
Yes, here's trial that we cannot explain, but we have seen Jesus. We know about his coming. We know about his life, and we know about his life to come. He is the King. He is the King. He is the King of glory. And he will use even this to secure the eternity of the people he is calling to himself. We hear it again and say in all of our wringing of hands and concerns about the moment, "Now is not the time to run or give into cynicism. Now is the time for confidence." Why? He is the King.
He's the King of glory. And so we turn to him and trust him, and if we will, even begin to interpret our circumstances in the light of King Jesus. What could we see? Abortion in the United States, by statistic now. Do you know this? The lowest in incidents since 1973.
Teenage birth rate and sexual activity at the lowest level since the Center for Disease Control even began keeping statistics.
Students' use of alcohol at the lowest rates ever recorded. The rate of illegal drug use dropped by a third in the last decade. Horse rates at their lowest rate in 40 years. The Me Too movement, despite all the places from which it comes with all that mixed messaging,
combined with church scandals, has resulted in business and entertainment and church policies more conservative about morality than we could have even imagined only three years ago. As a culture is flipping, what it says is allowable and how we treat women and how we treat children.
Rising generations, if we look at them, with the eyes of those who think gospel and King Jesus, the rising generations are rejecting racism like never before. And bigotry and materialism and neglect of the poor, it's the young people who are leading us to see with the eyes of Christ and the priorities of Christ. Now listen, could you mention a counter-argument for everything I just said?
Of course. Of course you could. You could point, and some of you will know, at the court trials that are lined up from this coming year as we are questioning what will happen to the moral issues about what the church is going to be concerned about. The Salvation Army, for the first time in its history, facing whether its charitable status will be revoked simply because of its religious commitments.
There are hard things, but how do we respond to that?
We say, "Listen, I can't explain it all. I don't know where it's all going, but this I know.
Christ is on His throne.
Jesus is King. He is the King. He is the King. He is the King of glory." And when you know that, when you live that way, it changes your heart, it changes your courage. While we were celebrating Thanksgiving as a church and as a culture two weeks ago, there was a Christian church in the African nation of Burkina Faso in which Islamic extremists broke in and murdered 14 people.
500 have been murdered in the last year in Burkina Faso and 500,000 driven from their homes.
So now the Christians of Burkina Faso have to determine how are we going to live this Christmas? Some of you may know that there's a song in the United Kingdom right now that's immensely popular not because of its hope but because of its irony.
Do the Africans know it's Christmas?
Almost thumbing its nose at the historic Christian faith. But what about the Christians of Africa? What about the Christians of Burkina Faso? What are they doing this Christmas?
They have determined as a nationwide church to share a meal with their neighbors.
Why?
Because Jesus is the King.
Jesus is the King. Jesus is the King of glory. And so we honor Him and we believe that His purposes will be fulfilled. Jesus is on the throne. Therefore we do not lose heart. Though the outward self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day for this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we do not look at the things that are seen but of the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient. But the things that are unseen are eternal.
And our Savior has them in His hand. Why?
Because He is the King. He is the King. He is the King of glory. And it's not just for vast movements.
It's for the struggles of our hearts and families, even in this season.
Kathy and I got word just a few weeks ago about a dear friend who went to a heavenly home early due to a stroke as a young man.
His wife wrote us and others these words as we start singing Christmas hymns. This season my focus has shifted from the what of Christmas that God sent His Son to earth in the form of a baby, to the why of Christmas, to save His people from their sins and to bring them to live with Him in His heavenly kingdom forever.
Bruce's death makes me look forward with renewed anticipation, not only to sing, Bruce, but to sing my heavenly King who has made it possible. In due time, God has given me a heart of jubilation instead of sadness in this season. It is such a beautiful, unanticipated gift as you enter the Christmas season.
May your longing hearts be full of joy for what King Jesus has done, is doing, and will do for you. He is the King. He is the King. He is the King of glory. What does that mean? We look at the nativity event and see it with different eyes. Poet Lillian Cox writes this way, "What do we see? The soft light from a stable door lying on midnight lands.
It is no flickering torch.
It is no wavering fire.
But light that is the life of men, now whatever clouds veil the sky, there is never night again."
Why? Because the King of glory shines.
He is the King. He is the King. He is the King of glory. He has come.
He is.
And He will come again.
He is the King. He is the King of glory.
Praise Him.
Father, so, meld our hearts to the King who loves us by reminding us that the baby of the babe in the manger continued to uphold all things by the power of His Word. And even as He did so, He saw us coming and prepared the way and prepared eternity. And He is still doing the same now. All that is necessary for life and godliness, all that is necessary to secure our eternity,
He is still ruling and overruling where the anxieties tie us in knots, where the doubts
turn us from Him, renewing us the beauty and the power of remembering. He is the King.
He is the King.
He is the King of glory.
And so we pray to you in His name. Amen.