Essentials #5: Jesus (Philippians 2:6-11) | 10/10/2021
Philippians 2:6-11 | 10/10/21 | Will DuVal
We are almost halfway through our fall sermon series “Essentials”, examining the most foundational truths of the Christian faith, and this morning, we will consider together essential #5: JESUS. Jesus, the CHRIST, is of course about as central as it gets for us in Christ-ianity. And since I opened the sermon back in week 2 on “God” this way, I thought I’d begin by asking you:
“What comes into YOUR mind, when YOU think about JESUS?”
We’re so blessed to have Brad & Deb Mashburn with us this morning; they get the joy of introducing people, hundreds of the Wolof and Peul people, in Senegal, to Jesus for the very first time in their lives. Many of them have never even HEARD of him; “Who IS this Jesus, you worship?” How would YOU answer that question?
We know how Ricky Bobby, from Talladega Nights, would; he prays: “Dear Eight Pound, Six Ounce, Newborn Infant Jesus... in your golden fleece diapers…so cuddly, but still omnipotent.” Because as he says, “I like the Christmas Jesus best… When you say grace, you can say it to Grown-up Jesus, or Teenage Jesus, or Bearded Jesus, or whoever you want.'”
Maybe you picture hippy, Anglo-European Jesus. With his pale skin, blue eyes, long, flowing golden locks, and his calm voice; gentle Jesus, meek and mild, who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Or maybe you picture Patriotic Jesus. With an American flag in one hand and a sword in the other, ready to exact justice on everyone who kneels for the Anthem or mandates masks or the vaccine.
A few years ago, a group of NT scholars and archaeologists got together to try and reconstruct a more accurate portrait of Jesus, and here’s what they came up with: short hair (1 Cor 11), short beard (Lev 19:27), dark skin (Middle-Eastern geography). I’m not sure why he looks so SURPRISED; that’s the one expression I CAN’T imagine ever being on Jesus’ face, since he was omniscient.
But in any case, what’s important is not what Jesus LOOKED like, but who he WAS. At the very deepest level, his most core identity, who was Jesus?
Friends, I hope to encourage you this morning, that the most important person ever, for YOU and me to know - JESUS - that we really CAN know him this morning. And we need to know him; John 17:3 urges us: “this is eternal life, that they know… Jesus Christ”.
And specifically, we need to know 3 things about Jesus. There are LOTS of wonderful things we CAN know about him. The NT gospel accounts - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - are full of RICH descriptions of Jesus, ranging from the biographical - that Jesus was a JEW, born in the year 4 BC in Bethlehem, to Mary and Joseph, raised in Nazareth, he learned carpentry, but went into ministry around the age of 30, and spent the last 3 ½ years of his life as an itinerant preacher and miracle-worker before being arrested on charges of blasphemy and insurrection and was therefore crucified on a Roman cross in the year 29 AD. The gospels ALSO offer us some vivid character description as well; heart-level details about who Jesus really WAS at his deepest core: He was “gentle and lowly”, when he interacted with the ‘least of these’. He was stern and reproachful when he interacted with the self-righteous. He was both full of mercy, AND full of justice.
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Jesus was all these things and more. But there are 3 things in particular that you and I NEED to know about Jesus, that EVERYONE needs to know about Jesus, that more than anything else, DEFINE who Jesus was and what Jesus DID. They are the 3 things we must BELIEVE about Jesus, in order to be saved. We all know John 3:16, don’t we? Even unbelievers are familiar with it; they see the guy holding up the sign behind the end zone that says, “John 3:16” and they Google it: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, JESUS, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.” That’s the gospel, the good news; it’s GREAT news! But it leaves us with a question: ‘whosoever believes WHAT about Jesus?’
Believes that he was a real, historical person? No, even the most skeptical scholars today believe that Jesus existed.
Believe that Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah? No, even the DEMONS know that much about Jesus, and they SHUDDER.
No, these are the 3 most important, defining truths about Jesus that we need to know and need to accept by faith, in order to be saved by him.
So would you stand with me… Philippians 2:6-11: I’ll read our passage for this morning, and then I invite YOU to respond, those of you who HAVE trusted in Jesus, to publicly proclaim your faith in Him this morning, by reciting aloud our church’s statement of faith about Jesus, article #7, in response. Hear the word of the Lord:
“[T]hough [Christ Jesus] was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Church: do you BELIEVE in Jesus? We believe: “The eternal Son of God became human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Being fully God and fully man, he was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the virgin Mary, perfectly obeyed his heavenly Father, lived a sinless life, suffered and died on the cross for our sins, was raised bodily from the dead, and ascended into heaven, where he now sits at the right hand of God the Father and from where he will one day return as victorious King, to judge the living and the dead.” (WHC STATEMENT #7) Amen. Let’s pray…
#1 - The first truth you need to know about Jesus, in order to truly KNOW Jesus, is that: Jesus LIVED to be our LORD. Jesus lived to be our Lord.
You ask a lot of Christians who Jesus is, what’s most important to know about Jesus, and they immediately respond: “Jesus died on the cross for my sins…” And that’s true. And it’s REALLY imperative. And we’re getting there. :) But if all Jesus needed to do here on earth was die for sin, he could have gone straight from the manger to the cross. Straight from the golden fleece diapers to the crown of thorns. But there’s a REASON He lived for 33 or so years on this earth. A significant reason. Jesus LIVED, to be our LORD.
Now, what does that MEAN? Because “Lord” is not a term, not a title, that we use very often these days. What does it even MEAN, to call Jesus “Lord”. To CONFESS him, as “Lord”? 2 things (I’m gonna give you two SUB-points, under each of these 3 primary bullet points this morning):
First of all, to say that “Jesus is Lord” is to affirm that Jesus WAS GOD INCARNATE. The word “Lord” was actually the word used in the OLD Testament - “Adonai” - in place of God’s own personal name - Yahweh - because the Jews considered it too holy to even write or speak it. So they said “Lord”, Adonai, instead. And those 2 words - “Lord GOD”, appear together almost 1600 times in the Bible! So to call Jesus “Lord” is to CALL him: GOD. It is to say that when we look at Jesus, we are LOOKING at God. Jesus SAID as much, to his disciple Philip, in John ch14: “Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Because Jesus was, and is, GOD.
This is how the NT unequivocally identifies Jesus. I really don’t understand how these heretical sects that departed from historic, orthodox Christianity - like Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) - can claim to read the same NT we do, as inspired Scripture, but still MISS this. I’ve tried to understand. I had a volleyball buddy, who was a Jehovah’s witness, and a student who I taught at Culver who was Mormon. And I would ASK them, to explain to me, how THEY were interpreting passages like:
John 10:30 - where Jesus claims: “I and the Father are one”; the Jewish leaders around Jesus clearly caught his drift, because 3 verses later, they picked up rocks and said: “we are going to stone you… for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.””
How can you READ a passage like John 1: “The Word was God... and the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us” as JESUS, and not get that Jesus was God.
Or Titus 2:13 “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,”
Or 2 Peter 1:1 “our God and Savior Jesus Christ:”
Or Hebrews 1:8 “of the Son [Jesus], God [the Father] says,
“Your throne, O God, is forever”
God the Father refers to Jesus, his Son as “O God”
Or Colossians 2:9 “in [JESUS], the whole fullness of deity [of GOD-ness] dwells bodily”.
In other words, Jesus WAS and IS… GOD!
Now, why is that so important? 2 reasons. Ready: I’ve got 2 SUB-sub points. If you’re taking good notes, your outline should look like THIS:
Sub-sub point #1: Because Jesus is God, he calls us to OBEDIENCE.
The Greek word for “Lord” - kurios - literally means “Master”. The servants - the doulos - are called to OBEY their kurios, “Lord”, unreservedly.
While Jesus was on earth, he called people to follow him, and they instantly dropped their nets and fell in line. Why? Because when GOD HIMSELF says “jump”, you say, “How high?” When God HIMSELF takes on human flesh and says, “Hey: THIS is what y’all are supposed to be living like… I LOVE you, and I want the very best FOR you, I want life to the FULLEST for you… But y’all have such a hard time actually DOING it, actually LIVING life the way I created you to, the RIGHT way.” So God himself came down from heaven, as a HUMAN, in part, to show us HOW to be fully human. Jesus was fully God AND fully human. You and I are NEITHER. We’re definitely not god, but even as humans, made in God’s image to glorify him, we consistently fail to do so, so Jesus came, in part, to show us HOW. How to live life to the fullest. And he calls us to OBEY him; to live like HE did.
John 14:23 Jesus said: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word”
John 8:31 ““If you continue in My word, then you are truly my followers”
1 John 2:3 “By this we know that we have come to know [Jesus], if we keep His commandments.”
AS God, Jesus calls us to obey Him.
But that ALSO means, secondly, sub-sub point #2: that AS God, Jesus convicts us of SIN.
As much as we look at Jesus and say: “THAT’S how I want to live; that’s how GOD wants me to live”, we ought to equally look at him and realize: “But that’s NOT how I live. I’m NOT like Jesus…” Because Jesus is GOD, he holds a mirror up for you and me; he shines a light on our sin, the various ways each of us falls short of our calling to bring God glory. And thus, Jesus points us to our desperate need for a SAVIOR.
It is the Spirit of JESUS, John 16:8, who “convict[s] the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment”
That’s why Jesus declared in Luke 5:32 that “I [came] to call... sinners to repentance.”
Because Jesus’ godly perfection, convicts us of our own sinful brokenness.
BUT, sub-point #2 now, to pronounce Jesus as Lord is ALSO to profess that AS God, He FULFILLED ALL RIGHTEOUSNESS. That’s what John the Baptist said of Jesus, as he was baptizing him; that Jesus was “fulfilling all righteousness”. What does THAT mean? 3 more SUB-sub points:
First, Jesus fulfilled God’s PRECEPTS. His LAW. We talked last week about “God’s PLAN”, to redeem humanity. How God “called and consecrated a people to be a blessing to ALL peoples”. And how God DID that, specifically, in the Old Testament, by giving his people, Israel, His commandments. His LAW, that they were to FOLLOW, and thereby reflect God’s glory and character to the nations. To be His light to the world. But Israel consistently FAILED to keep the law, to follow God’s commands. And yet, God had declared that His word was ETERNAL; Jesus reiterated in Matthew 5 that “until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass away from the Law.” That leaves US, a bunch of sinful humans, who consistently fail to KEEP His word, in a lot of TROUBLE. UNLESS… JESUS fulfills the law, for us. And that’s exactly what Jesus claimed he did: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Matt 5:17)
There’s a now-famous (IN-famous) Steven Furtick clip, where he tells a hypothetical story about your child getting hurt, and you rushing him to the emergency room, ignoring all the speed limit signs along the way, because “a good parent will break the law for the sake of love”, so Furtick concludes that Jesus “broke the law for you”.
But he’s 180 degrees wrong; actually, Jesus KEPT the law, for you, out of love. Jesus did what you and I COULDN’T do, what we FAILED to do, and he kept God’s law perfectly - 1 Pet 2:22 says “He committed no sin” - and I’m gonna tell you in a minute why that’s so important, that Jesus KEPT the Law, FULFILLED the Law.
But secondly here, Jesus not only fulfilled God’s PRECEPTS, but he also fulfilled God’s PROPHECIES. There are 351 OT prophecies about the coming Messiah, that were uniquely fulfilled by Jesus. Including the prophecy that he would BE ‘God in the flesh’ - Immanuel, “God WITH us” - Isaiah 9.
Lastly, Jesus fulfilled God’s PLAN. God “called and consecrated a people in order to bless ALL peoples through them”; he purifies a people for his redemptive purposes. Jesus accomplished this, in a way that the OT Law was unable to. And once again, we see HOW He did it, here in point #2:
#2 - Jesus DIED to be our SAVIOR. He DIED, to be our SAVIOR.
To say that Jesus “died to be our savior”, is to affirm 2 massively crucial truths about Jesus’ death:
First, that in his death on the cross, Jesus REMOVED OUR SIN. In the OT, God gave the Israelites His Law, but then in His mercy, because God knew they would fall short and fail to keep it, He ALSO gave them the institution of SACRIFICE as a means of atoning for, or covering over, their sin. Basically, God deserves our entire lives, lived in surrender and service to Him. But we give him far LESS than that. The Bible calls this SIN, the gap between what we OWE God, and what we actually GIVE him. And the Bible says that the penalty for sin, against a perfect, holy God, is DEATH. But in His mercy, God allowed the Israelites to pay off their “life-debt” with the blood of an animal instead, because “life is in the blood” (Lev 17:11). And the Book of Leviticus lays out an entire system, an exchange rate, if you will, for how much BLOOD it takes, to atone for which sins; the bigger the sin, the more substantial the sacrifice required.
But the OT also anticipated an END to the sacrificial system. Because the prophet Isaiah (in his famous ch53) predicted a coming Messiah, who would HIMSELF be Israel’s final, once-and-for-all-time sacrifice; one who would:
“[bear] our griefs
and [carry] our sorrows...
[be] smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 [Be] pierced for our transgressions;
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him [will be] the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we [will be] healed. [Because…]
6 the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.”
In other words, instead of a priest transferring our sin to a sheep, or a goat, or a bull for atonement, for the covering of our sin; God Himself would one day lay ALL our sin on His Suffering Servant, who would actually REMOVE our sin. Isaiah portrays him as the “lamb [of God]… led to the slaughter…
[whose] soul makes[h] an offering for guilt…
[He will] make many to be accounted as righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities…
[making] intercession for the transgressors.”
And when Jesus Christ was born some 7 centuries later, the angel instructed his adopted father Joseph “you shall call his name Jesus, [YESHUA, “God saves”] for he will save his people from their sins.”” (Matt 1:21) When he started his public ministry some 30 years later, John the Baptist rightly identified him as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29) Jesus was Israel’s long-awaited Messiah, Isaiah’s sin-bearing Lamb.
The Book of Hebrews declares that Jesus “appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin - to REMOVE it for GOOD! - by the sacrifice of himself.” (9:26) That “it [was] impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (10:4); they could only ever cover OVER sin. “But when Christ[b] had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God… For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” (10:12-14)
1 John 2:2 calls Jesus “the propitiation for our sins”; a propitiation is a sacrifice that appeases God’s wrath. We don’t like to think of God as being WRATHFUL, angry. But He IS - specifically: God HATES sin. Colossians 3:6 says, “On account of [SIN] the wrath of God is coming.” God hates what sin IS, it is first and foremost an offense against HIM (Romans 8:8); God hates what sin does to US, because God loves us (Colossians 3:1-5); and God hates what sin does to our relationship with Him; Isaiah 59:2 says, “your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God”. So God made a way to PUNISH sin, to pour out his righteous wrath against our sin, lest God be found UNJUST, while also sparing US, the sinners. And he DID it, 1 John 3:5, by sending Jesus AS our sacrifice “in order to take away sins”.
1 Peter 1:18-19 declares, “you were ransomed from [your] futile ways… not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” 1 Peter 2:24 “[Jesus] himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin… By his wounds you have been healed.”
Colossians 2:13-14 proclaims that in CHRIST, God “[has now] forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us… This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”
Passage after passage after passage on almost every PAGE of the NT, all glorying in the fact that JESUS, the precious Lamb of God, has now REMOVED all our sin; praise God!
But friends: the good news gets even better than that. Because not ONLY did Jesus REMOVE all our sin and guilt on the cross; at the same time, He actually GAVE us his own righteousness as well. Remember when we said “Jesus fulfilled the Law, for you;” here’s why that’s so important; because in that same passage, from Matthew ch5, where Jesus said that “not one jot or tittle of the Law will pass away”, he went ON to say that “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (5:20) The scribes and Pharisees were professional law-keepers. They weren’t perfect. But everyone thought of them as about as close as you could get to keeping the Law. Not Jesus. He said, “Listen: heaven isn’t for GOOD people; Heaven is for PERFECT people.” That’s why Jesus commanded us, a few verses later, that “You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (5:48)
Raise your hand, West Hills, if you are PERFECT…?
Now raise your hand, if you want to go to HEAVEN…?
You see the problem? So what is God’s SOLUTION?
2 Cor 5:21 “For our sake [God] made him [JESUS] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him WE might BECOME the righteousness of God.”
Jesus IS God. He fulfilled ALL the righteousness of God. And on the CROSS, in his substitutionary death in our PLACE, Jesus not only took our sin, our UN-righteousness on himself, to REMOVE our sin and pay the penalty for sin - DEATH - but he simultaneously transferred TO us - we say he “imputed” or “credited” to us - His OWN righteousness, such that when God the Father now looks at US, He no longer sees us as we ARE - unworthy sinners; God now sees us as being CLOTHED in all the righteousness of His Son JESUS.
1 Pet 3:18 “Christ suffered[b] once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God”.
Rom 3:21-22 “now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” Jesus fulfilled the Law and Prophets, and on the cross, manifested his righteousness TO us, to everyone who would simply trust in him by faith.
So the apostle Paul exclaims in Phil 3:9: I want to be “found in [Christ], not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”
Because Romans 4:5 - “to the one who… believes in [JESUS]... his faith is counted as righteousness”
So friends, I ASK you this morning: have YOU believed, have you trusted in JESUS as YOUR Lord and Savior, so that YOU might be justified before God - declared righteous - simply through your faith in Him? If not, repent of your sins, and believe in the Lord Jesus today, and YOU WILL BE SAVED!
Now, that’s all incredibly GOOD news. And sometimes we get carried away and we want to end the sermon right there. But believe it or not, the good news gets EVEN BETTER than that. Because not only did Jesus live to be our Lord - incarnating God for us and fulfilling God’s righteous DEMANDS of us - and not only did Jesus die to be our Savior - removing all our sin and shame and GRANTING us his righteous good standing before God the Father instead - but…
#3 - and on the third day, Jesus ROSE TO BE OUR KING. And His resurrection did two monumentally significant things, quickly in closing:
First, Jesus’ resurrection CONFIRMED HIS POWER OVER DEATH.
If Jesus claimed to have power over sin and death, if he predicted that he would himself die in order to put death to death, once and for all, and make that final, ultimate payment for our sins, then Jesus’ resurrection is like the receipt proving that his check had cleared; payment: made in FULL; forgiveness: PURCHASED, for us.
Acts 2:24 declares that “God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” Death could not HOLD him, the veil tore BEFORE him! He silenced the boast of sin and grave.
Romans 6:9 “since Christ was raised from the dead… death no longer has mastery over him.”
Hebrews 2:14 “through death [Jesus] destroy[ed] the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil”
1 Corinthians 15 ““Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives US the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (54-57)
And that’s the Second crucial thing Jesus accomplished in his resurrection: He gave US NEW LIFE IN HIM as well.
Romans 6:4-8 “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self[a] was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free[b] from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” Friends: you can receive Jesus’ very own resurrection power not only over DEATH, in the life to come, but over the power of sin in THIS life as well, if you will CRUCIFY your old self, die to yourself, in order to live for Christ, and walk in the newness of life he now offers you.
1 Thess 4:14 “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” (i.e., DIED) Death isn’t a PERIOD anymore; it’s just a comma, before life EVERLASTING.
Because John 11:25 “Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live”.
Don’t you want to live FOREVER? You don’t have to fear death… if you know the One who conquered it and now offers you ETERNAL life.
Friends: THIS is who Jesus is:
*He LIVED to be our LORD - “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,[b] 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,[c] being born in the likeness of men.
*He DIED to be our SAVIOR - “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ”
*And He ROSE to be our KING - “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Amen.