The Bible records many times when Jesus' teaching was received with animosity and resentment. When Jesus finished his sermon there in the synagogue in his hometown, nobody in the synagogue stood up and said, I knew it! I knew you were special!
Ah, there was something about that halo. I knew it from the early days when the animals all bowed down as you walked by. This church tradition said they did.
No, the text says in the very following verse when he finished his sermon, Matthew 13 57, and they took offense at him. In today's world, it's all about protecting your image and fighting for your rights. But what if there was a greater power in giving them up? In this message, you'll hear about a businessman who sued his wife for not telling him the truth about her past, and a man who created his own kingdom in his backyard. Both illustrate something deeper, a world obsessed with the kingdom of me. But what does Jesus teach us about crushing this self-centered kingdom? He didn't cling to his divine rights, but laid them down for others. Stick around and discover how true humility can transform not just your life, but your relationships, your reputation, and your legacy.
Let's get started. One of the ways our Lord enabled the early Christians and us today to crush the kingdom of me mentality was to inspire an early church hymn. In fact, the church has been singing since its inception, and we sang today, and it's one of the reasons we meet. In fact, Paul challenged the church to sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs to each other.
We're about to expound once again on hymns, so if you're not there yet, turn to it. The lyrics are found in Philippians 2, beginning in verse 5, and the hymn runs through verse 11, an early church hymn. Paul quotes it. In fact, some think that perhaps he even composed it.
We're not sure. There are scholars that believe there's good evidence to hold to the fact that the martyr and early deacons, Stephen, composed this hymn. Others believe that Paul is composing it on the spot and stamping it with divine inspiration. Hymn writing has been in effect since the beginning, and it is used by the Lord to sing truth, to sing doctrinal and practical truths that we believe. Well, Paul is effectively doing perhaps the same thing in composing this lyric.
What it does is it rehearses the humility of Christ in his incarnation and these personal rights that we've been talking about that Jesus voluntarily gave up when he came to earth. Now, let's go back here, and you'll look carefully with me and notice that the first two phrases in this hymn, beginning in verse 6, refer to the Lord's essence, his deity. Verse 6, he existed, this is his statement, in the form of God.
That's not a question mark. That's a propositional statement. It's a statement of truth, and the verb we learned, to exist, actually takes you back in time to eternity past. So with that verb, he's actually saying that Jesus preexisted as God the Son in the nature of deity, in the essence of deity, and so we provided in our outline the first right that Jesus Christ gave up in this incarnation. He gave up the right to live like God. In other words, he set aside the glory of his preexistent state, majesty, and descended to earth. Then Paul writes in the next statement, the truth that Jesus, the second statement about his deity, that he has equality with God, equality with God the Father, but he doesn't clutch it.
He doesn't grasp it. He empties his hands of those divine rights, prerogatives, and so we said in our outline that Jesus Christ, secondly, gave up the right to act like God. In other words, he never used the power that he had, the attributes that he had, for his own personal benefit, but for the benefit of others, and only every so often, in fact, we made the comment last Lord's Day that if you study his miracles, you discover that those miracles most often made his own life more miserable, more difficult. Paul adds that Jesus didn't just surrender these rights, these equal rights with the Father, but he goes on in verse 7 to say he emptied himself, taking on the form, the nature of a bondservant. So the one who was supreme and is still today, but supreme from eternity past now comes to earth and becomes a penniless servant. Jesus gave up the right to live like God and to act like God. He will, as a servant, borrow everything, own virtually nothing. He empties his hands of all of those divine rights and divine prerogatives and becomes our servant, shepherd, savior.
He's the only person who ever walked the face of the earth, who had the right to own anything he wanted or desired, who had the right to do anything he wanted, and he didn't clutch those rights. He literally emptied his hands of them for our eternal benefit and salvation. That's why we sing, Jesus saves with great joy. Now what Paul is going to do next, and this brings us up to speed here, is he's going to add to these two statements on Christ's deity by giving us two statements on Christ's humanity. I want to wrap these two statements into one right that Jesus gave up. If you're keeping an outline, he not only gave up the right to live like God and to act like God, but now I want us to see Paul delivering to us the news that Jesus gave up the right to look like God. Look at verse seven.
We rarely think of this, and I want to spend time this morning doing just that. Go to the last line, being made in the likeness of men. You could render this generically to refer to Jesus literally joining mankind. In other words, he becomes, Paul is saying, a member of the human race.
He joins our race. He is found, as it were, in the likeness of men. Now the word Paul uses for likeness is a careful word because he doesn't want to overstate something, and so I want to point out this wonderful word, what it means, this particular word, is that he was made something else, not just in appearance but in reality so that we know Jesus isn't a clone.
He isn't some kind of disguised alien. The word Paul uses means that he had the same flesh and blood that we have. He would experience the same limitations that we do. He would be subject to the same ups and downs emotionally of life that we have. He would be subjected to all of the emotions, in fact, all of the temptations that we are subjected to. What's interesting, however, is that this word for likeness informs us, and again, he's careful to inform us, is that Jesus Christ is like us in that he is similar to us in all of those ways, genuinely human, but uniquely different. One author said, Paul's use of this word here translated likeness is meant to tell his readers that while the Lord's likeness to man was real, it doesn't communicate everything about him.
In other words, there is more than meets the eye. As we've already discussed, he was without a sin nature, so he is unlike us in that. He was tempted like us, but he was sinless, which is unlike us. He was fully a member of the human race, but retained being a member of the eternal Godhead. Depending on the text that you're studying, Jesus will sound like an ordinary, genuine man, which he is, and at other times, he's going to make these audacious claims of being God, which he is. Depending on which text you're studying, you have to be careful to understand he has both a human nature and a divine nature, and the Jewish people and leaders fully understood the audacity of his God word claim. When the Jews on one occasion picked up stones to hurl them at him to kill him, he had been performing miracles and pulling back that veil to show what only God could do or someone God empowered, and they were going to stone him, and Jesus says, because he wants to pull out of them their true motive, of which good works are you wanting to stone me? They said to him, well, the Jews assured him, we are not stoning you for good works, but for blasphemy, John 10, 33 records, because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God.
They caught it. This isn't something the church made up over centuries. They got it here, but they couldn't understand it any more than his own disciples could, any more than we really can, even though we'll spend a few Sundays expounding on this, that he was both God and man, the God-man. Here Jesus is in another text absolutely exhausted. He sleeps through a hurricane. While the boat carrying him and his disciples is going to capsize, seasoned fishermen are fearing for their lives, and Jesus is just sleeping. He's absolutely worn out, and they finally wake him up and say, don't you care, and he wakes up and gathers himself, and then he stands up and he commands the sea and the wind to literally hush, to hush, and immediately, the choppy, turbulent sea is glass-like, and the wind settles down, and the disciples whisper to each other in Mark 4, who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?
Do you know what the problem is? Jesus has given up the right to look like who he is. He looks like an ordinary member of the human race, and then he does something like that. What's an ordinary member of the human race doing, saying hush, to wind and waves, and it obeys?
You can't get one child to hush. He does this to the wind and waves. Part of the problem and challenge to us is that Jesus was made in the likeness of men, being God. Now Paul is going to drive the humanity of Christ home even further with his second descriptive phrase. Notice verse 8, being found in appearance as a man. By the way, being found simply means being recognized, being observed as an authentic man. In other words, when people met him, he wouldn't be like that fictitious character Spock, with pointy ears and no personality and immediately he's from a different planet.
No, that isn't what's happening. When people met Jesus, talked to Jesus, they observed. They found him out to be an ordinary man, a normal human being. Being found in appearance as a man, in appearance. Now Paul uses a different word here.
It's the word schema. It literally reinforces the idea that God the Son is actually a physical man. This is the amazing reality of God the Son. God, the glorious, pre-existent creator, second person of the Godhead becomes Jesus, a Jewish baby boy who grows up to be a normal Jewish man. That just can't be.
It can't be. Paul says, no, no, no. If you followed him around, you would observe he is very real, authentic, genuine. He's human.
The medieval Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, after they split, couldn't stand the threat of Mary being a normal human being, so they exalted her over the centuries. But certainly Jesus, he wouldn't be subjected to the ordinary rigors of humanity, even from his birth. So we typically never think of Jesus as a baby crying or soiling a diaper. Certainly he didn't do that.
Well, he did. The apocryphal writings and legends were raised to sort of clean up and sanctify the whole story and make Jesus anything but normal or human. For instance, one church tradition said that soon after his birth, as Joseph and Mary and the baby are traveling toward Egypt, they sought refuge in a cave overnight, and it was very cold out. There was frost on the ground. They went into the cave to spend the night, and it was so cold.
But fortunately a spider at the entrance of the cave recognized the holy baby and so spun a web so thick that it hung like a curtain, and the cave became warm and cozy. Certainly the family of Jesus and Jesus aren't going to sleep out in the cold. As they traveled, another church tradition said that Jesus commanded the trees to bend over so Joseph could pick the fruit more easily. He will order a spring of water to gush from the roots of a tree because the family's thirsty, so they'll have water. In fact, even one night, one tradition says Mary was having trouble sleeping like any normal mother will, but angels arrived with violins and played music and soothed her to sleep.
Mothers, wouldn't that be wonderful? The angels arrive and drown out the screams of your little pagan in the next room. Church tradition said that as Jesus grew up in Nazareth, the little boys in the neighborhood would throw their cloaks on the ground, and they'd seat Jesus among their cloaks as royalty, and they would put on his head wreaths of flowers.
I could believe that. That really makes a little more sense that immediately everybody knows that he's different. Paul is saying no, that's not what happened. He was an ordinary human being subjected to the human experience. No one in Nazareth knew he was special. In fact, the proof of that is when Jesus began his ministry in Nazareth, he preached in a synagogue in his hometown. When he finished, the people said with amazement, I'm quoting from Matthew 13, who is he?
Who is he? Isn't he the carpenter's son? Is not his mother Mary, and his brothers James, Joseph, lists them, and his sisters? Are they not all with us?
In other words, they've known the entire family all their lives. They knew the names of Jesus' half brothers and half sisters born to Mary and Joseph after Jesus' birth so that Jesus could be virgin born. When Jesus finished his sermon there in the synagogue in his hometown, nobody in the synagogue stood up and said, I knew it. I knew it. I knew you were special. I knew you were different.
There was something about that halo. I knew it from the early days when the animals all bowed down as you walked by, as church tradition said they did. No, the text says in the very following verse when he finished his sermon, Matthew 13 and 57, and they took offense at him.
It's a nicer way of saying, they were saying, who do you think you are? Jesus had given up the right to look like God. Being made in the likeness of men means he joined the human race. Being found in appearance as a man means he chose a human face. He became one of us.
Really? Before his incarnation, Jesus was clothed with the glory of divine splendor that we cannot even begin to imagine, invisible to the human eye as is the Father to this day and the Spirit. That's why Paul will say in Colossians, he embodies deity. When we see God, we will be looking into the face of a Jewish man, the God-man. But now God then has taken on the flesh and blood and we don't think about it, but what does this mean? It means he looks like any human male of Jewish descent.
He looks like a man. I mean, what's so bad about that? What's so humbling about that?
I mean, we look pretty good. But we don't really see anything humbling about choosing to join the human race and take on a human face because we know hardly anything of its pre-existent glory. But every time I come to this text, I want to illustrate it with this. I shared this several years ago. If you were there, you may remember it.
You'll probably enjoy hearing it again, but I think of this. When Marsha and I moved here, we moved into a rented house in West Raleigh. Well, actually, she did, and she was in Atlanta with our boys who were about three months old, the twins, and I came to find a place and found this little house about 900 square feet.
I went to see it. The landlord invited me and the family was going to leave. When I went, arrived, it was actually, I think, three families living in this little house packed in there, and among them, literally, were a dozen plus cats just all in this house. And you know how much I love cats and wanted to immediately rent this place.
Actually, the opposite's true, but it was cheap. The families moved out, so did the cats. I moved in a couple of days beforehand before Marsha would arrive back, and my younger brother came down from Virginia and we painted and cleaned and vacuumed. It was a few weeks after we'd all moved in that Marsha and I began to notice we were just constantly scratching our ankles, little red spots appearing. Then one night, we had our five-month-old, at that point in time, about four or five-month-old boys on their blanket on the carpet in the little dining room area and just watching them, because they're better than TV ever has been. And I reached down to brush away a black speck from the cheek of one of my son's faces, and just as I reached, it jumped. It was a flea. That house was infested with fleas.
Gifts to me from those lovely cats. I called the carpet cleaner. They came out. The fleas enjoyed the bath evidently because they didn't go away. We called the exterminator.
It did nothing. So I decided I had to take matters into my own hands. Somebody told me about these exterminator bombs. So I went to Ace Hardware and bought one.
According to the directions on the box, the size of our house, one bomb would take care of it. I let it off and we took a hike to the park and came back a couple of hours later and they were still alive and well, mocking me from their little caves. So I decided it was time to get tough. A few days later, we were planning to leave for a couple of days and I went back to Ace Hardware and I bought not one, but I bought six.
I put one in every little room, bundled the family up first, and then lit the fuses or whatever it was, lit them all off, ran in the car, drove away and hoped that nobody called the Raleigh Department because I just imagined smoke billowing out of the windows. We got back a couple of days later and they were dead. Now I don't hate fleas. I don't really hate cats. You know that, don't you?
You really don't, do you? Well, I just like poking at you a little bit, but I don't really care if fleas are dead or alive. I just don't want them in my house. Now how could I ever get the message to them that flea bomb day is coming, that they're in danger, they're in great trouble.
They need to be saved from the wrath of the man who owns the house, the wrath of this man. I mean, how could I ever let them know? There's only really one way. I'd have to become a flea. That would be humiliation.
That would be humbling, wouldn't it? Think of the restriction of how we live and what that lifestyle would be. Think of the unrestricted glory of God the Son and now the limitation that he voluntarily accepted as he gave up the right. What did he choose to look like? Well, see, he descends even further than we typically think because the only description we have of him is from the prophet Isaiah who put it this way, he has no stately physique. He has no personal charisma that is majesty that we should look on him, now watch this, nor appearance that we would be attracted to him.
He actually chose to look like an ordinary run-of-the-mill Jewish man. He truly gave up the right to look like God. There's one other right that we're going to deal with and I want to take time just to do that in my next discussion. Jesus will give up the right to be treated like God.
But before we wrap up our study today, we're nearly out of time, let's keep the exposition in context, right? This hymn of the early church was not just a reminder of Christ's incredible sacrifice, it is a command to imitate him. Remember, go back to verse five, that's where it begins, have this attitude in you, yourselves. So don't be tempted to think, you know, he's just so wonderful and I'm glad Jesus did that because I can't. Don't be satisfied to think, well, you know, the Lord can do that and he surely understands why I can't. I got to stand up for my rights and nobody's going to defend my little kingdom of me but me.
I'm not going to be passed over or stepped on, I'm not going to be a pushover, it's a dog-eat-dog world out there, I mean, somebody does me wrong, you just wait, I'm going to vindicate myself. Jesus provides the example of surrendering our desire to vindicate ourselves and defend ourselves and hide behind the walls of our own little kingdom called me and to do something Christ-like, grace-like. As we demonstrate to our world, beloved, and to each other this kind of humility, the laying down of our rights, we actually validate the Gospel and we exalt our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus' humility is our ultimate example of self-sacrifice.
His choice to lay down his rights wasn't weakness, it was true strength. That was Stephen Davey and this is Wisdom for the Heart. This message is called Crushing the Kingdom of Me. You can learn more about our ministry and access all of our resources at wisdomonline.org. We've posted the complete archive of Stephen's teaching ministry to that website. All of his Bible messages are there as audio files that you can listen to as well as his printed manuscripts. Those resources are free of charge and you can access them anytime at wisdomonline.org. They're also available on our smartphone app.
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