From Humiliation To Honor!

Open your bibles with me to Philippians chapter 2 verses 5-11! Thank you, you may be seated.

These verses bring us near to the core of the early Christian faith and early Christian preaching… these verses most certainly are distinctive as they relate to the articles of our Christian Creed, the divinity of Christ …his pre-existence… his equality with God the Father…. His incarnation… and his true humanity… his voluntary death on the cross… the certainty of his ultimate triumph over evil… and the permanence of his future reign because Ephesians 2:5-11 is the counterpart to Isaiah chapter 14 where Satan lifts his throne above the throne of God.

In Isaiah chapter 14 the word reads from verse 12 how art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nation's! 13 for thou has said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the Mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north. 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High… but the verse 15 reads… yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

When you read Satan's words in Isaiah 14, he is gradually going up, I will ascend... I will sit on the mountain… I will be like the Most High… but the counterpart of that is Jesus saying: I will come down and be in a body of weakness and corruption, I will come condescend, I will lower myself… whenever you're going up against God, that's satanic … but whenever you're coming down to be a servant… you're humble like Jesus Christ!

Going up against God is devilish but coming down to be a servant is Christ-like! every verb in Isaiah 14 is Satan lifting his fist in God's face… I will, I will, I will, I will be like the Most High… but Jesus in his incarnation says: to come down is to be most like God… so if we are going to serve him… he says let this mind be in you… that was also in Christ Jesus…You can't serve God from up there…. service is down here!

Let me see if I can get that over to us from the NT… when they were on the mountain of Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John saw Jesus transfigured before their eyes… and Moses and Elijah came and spoke with Jesus on the mountain, and it was ethereal, and from the Otherworld, a supernatural encounter, something they had never seen before but that was not where the real mission was… the real mission took place when they came down from the mountain… because this man brought his

son to Jesus disciples who was fallen in the fire and fallen in the water and he said I brought him to your disciples but they could not heal him… and Jesus said bring the boy to me, and Jesus healed him!

His disciple surprised says: how come we couldn't do that? and Jesus said this kind does not come without prayer and fasting… If you're going to do God's work… so, being a president doesn't make your servant! being a chairman doesn't make you a servant… teaching in front of the class doesn't make you a

Servant… if you would be my disciple, you've got to deny yourself take up a cross and follow me and go out there!

In verse number 6, the word translated in (the form of God) is the word morphe from which we get our English word metamorphosis… to change, to become, he morphed, the

essential form… in verse 7 Paul says he “took the form of a slave”… in verse number 6 he is “Morphe Theo” in verse number 7 he is “Morphe doulos” and so Paul puts these two utterances side by side that Jesus is “Morphe Theo” and “Morphy doulos” meaning: he is God and man in essential nature with neither of them changing!

I don't think I got that over to you, I has been preaching for 10 years and I cry before the Lord always for God to give me understanding, and for a new word, or a new revelation…

Last few days in preparing to preach this sermon, I got a new revelation… because I've been preaching this text without paying attention to details… because talking about the Incarnation, my preaching has been that Christ took off his divinity to become humanity…. but that's an inaccurate assessment and teaching of the Incarnation…. because the correct assessment and teaching is that Christ did not remove divinity, he lowers himself by adding humanity!

The self-emptying is not that he takes off divinity, because if he does that then he cannot not be God… but he lowers himself by putting on my poor humanity and limiting himself in a human body like mine and yours!