Riches to Rags September 20, 2009
Opportunities missed:
There was a very cautious man,
Who never laughed or played.
He never risked, he never tried
He never sang or prayed.
And when one day, he passed away
His insurance was denied.
For since he never really lived,
They claimed he never died.
If we want to ‘really live’, we need to get in touch with the One Who really gives us life. We need to get to know Jesus Christ, the Creator of each and every one of us. And our attitude towards life should be very much like His. In order to find out what is REALLY important in life, the things we should REALLY strive for, we must set our focus on a better example than just another human being who, like very other human being, is flawed by the effect of sin. Instead, we need to look to Jesus, Who lives without sin, and Whose attitude towards life is very different than the world’s attitude. Look with me at Philippians chapter 2, verses 5-11 and let’s read about what our attitudes should be like.
Philippians 2:5-11 (New International Version)
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Humility – riches to rags…by choice. If Jesus humbled Himself so much…shouldn’t we?
Jesus was fully God and fully human. Fully God in power, knowledge, etc.
Knew that Jairus’ daughter, though dead, would live again, He knew He could give her life, but had to physically go there to heal her (Mark 5), as it was with Lazarus (Luke 11). Other times, He simply spoke, and people were healed…like the centurion’s servant (Luke 7)
He went from GOD to nothing (human) but retained His deity the whole time.
Don’t think that Jesus was not fully God, but fully human. If was simply ‘human’, His sacrificial death would not be enough to pay for all of our sin as humankind. To deny that Jesus was God in the flesh is what leads to Gnosticism. That would mean we were still on our own when it comes to salvation, which according to Jesus’ words and the teaching of the NT, is impossible without Christ. He is in very ‘nature’, God. The Greek word is morphe. The closest translation in our English language is ‘form’ or ‘nature’ referring to whom Jesus is. It is that which truly characterizes a person. And what He is, Who He is, is GOD.
We see the use of the word ‘morphe’ used to day to talk about things like changing the look of one picture into another (morphing). Or we may recognize metamorphosis, the process of changing one thing into something different tan it originally was (like a caterpillar into a butterfly). But here, it is simply morphe. The form, or nature of, in this case Christ Himself.
And His form, His nature is God. He is equal in form to God, in other words, Jesus is God. This phrase ‘equality with God’ is one of the most powerful statements in the Bible that Jesus was God, not like God, not part of God, not lower than, but GOD Himself. John writes Jesus’ words in chapter 10, ‘I and the Father are one.’ This is an incredible relationship! Again, in John chapter 14, Jesus tells the disciples if they have seen Him, they’ve seen the Father. How can you see two people and see only one? It’s not twins. This is only possible if they are the SAME, equal in every way. Jesus is equal with God, because He is God.
This is SO critical in understanding Who God is and how we can know Him, because Jesus IS God, and we know Him by His Word. As in John 1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It’s this relationship of being with God, and being God, that for me, solidifies that the Trinity is true. God the Father, God the Son, and the Spirit that Jesus promised when He left this earth and Who came at Pentecost. God is 3, God is one, Jesus is God…no question, no doubt, no other way!
Now here’s the really amazing part! Jesus, God, became a human. How can we really grasp that thought? It’s hard for our heads to wrap around. He came by birth, born a Jew to a young couple in Israel some 2000 years ago; supernaturally conceived though He was, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, grew in the womb of a young girl, cell by cell, part by part, (there’s a miracle in itself!) until the day came for Him to be born a little baby boy.
I remember the incredible feelings I had when I held each on my children for the very first time. These amazing, beautiful, little babies, here in my arms; how awesome! Imagine that feeling for a moment. Can you imagine the feelings of Mary and Joseph as they held the baby Jesus…GOD…in their arms? How cool would that be!?
Have you got a picture of this? Here is God, the One Who sits on the throne of heaven, spoke the universe into existence, Who has absolute power over everything, who knows the number oh hairs on our head, Who will one day judge every person on whether or not we live forever in heaven with Him, humbling Himself as part of His creation, held in the arms of a young couple in the middle of Israel, in the middle of Roman occupation, wrapped in strips of cloth…riches to rags.
There are 3 parts or steps to this ‘humbling of Himself’. First, He emptied himself or gave up all the glory of being God, making himself essentially ‘nothing’. After all, if you take God on one side and humans on the other, what comparison is there? We are so insignificant when compared to God. Some people may act or think that they are god, but that just doesn’t fly (and neither can they – or walk on water, or turn water into wine, or raise the dead). So God becomes nothing…first step.
Then he takes the form of a servant. Same word here (morphe) as in verse 6. His form, His nature is that of a slave (doulos). A slave is one who is obedient to their master’s direction and will. Jesus was obedient to the Father in regard to the need for God to come to earth, in order that His master plan of salvation could be completed. In order for God to stay true to His nature and His word, blood must be shed in order that sins can be forgiven. But whose blood could cover the sin of all mankind? Perfect blood, God’s blood. God became an obedient servant, a slave to His own will.
So thirdly, God, Who is Spirit, had to somehow have blood, so He must be born a human. God…becomes human, third step of humbling Himself. God enters the world as little more than part of His creation. God came to us; the thought of all that is almost incomprehensible. Some people may call it foolishness, and so they have a hard time accepting or believing it. But how else could it be done. God had to come in order that we could be free to be with God. It’s not that God made a mistake in creating us with free will, knowing that we would mess up. It’s that He loves us enough to come and be part of this world that WE messed up with sin, and provided a way that fits within His nature to set us
free from sin.
Now we look at verse 8. Being found in appearance as a man. Here is the humbled Christ, who looks-a-like-man, humbling Himself even further, as if He hasn’t done enough already, and this Humble Servant becomes obedient to death. God..dead? And not just any death, but an horrific, brutal, humiliating death on a Roman cross. Nailed to a tree, lifted high for everyone to see. Amazing love, how can it be, that Thou my God, should die for me!
Jesus has gone all the way…from the highest in heaven to being buried in a cold grave, dead. And He did so, willingly.
And what does this all mean for us reading this passage today you may ask? Look back at the first verse we heard today…Your attitude should be the SAME as that of Christ Jesus.
We are to have the same attitude of HUMILITY. Jesus did not consider it too much to humble Himself. How do we feel about being humbled? He didn’t think that being GOD was too much to give up in order to save us. ‘Nope, I can’t do it. It’s too much to ask. After all, I’m GOD! I have to hang on to this, I can’t give it up, I WON’T give it up…m,mm not me!’
Do you know what would have happened if that was Jesus attitude? Nothing…we would still be trying to appease God by ritual and laws and sacrificing animals, and would have no way of knowing whether we were ‘good enough’ for God to accept…we’d be under law, not grace!
But thank God that we are saved by grace! And if so, If Jesus did all that for us, should we not respond with a similar attitude? I fear that many people think so highly of themselves that they believe that they don’t need God. Or perhaps they think so little of God that they think He is not worthy of their attention. Even Christians can have such a haughty attitude about themselves that there is no room for God in their lives at all, no room for His love and compassion and grace and humility. How do we do that? How do we ‘empty’ ourselves?
Look at this plastic bottle. It’s empty, right? Wrong…it’s full of something; air. How can we get all the air out? We could suck all the air out…but that would destroy the bottle. What we have to do is full it with something else, like water. As the water fills the bottle, all the air is pushed out. If we will allow God to fill us, fill our lives with His character, all the wrong attitudes and sin in our lives will be pushed out. More of God, less of me.
I need to realize that I am truly nothing without God filling my life. I am incomplete, unfulfilled, and always wondering why I’m here. With Jesus as the reason FOR my life, all those questions are answered. My life has purpose…serving God by serving others. I find true fulfillment in being a person that loves people; not for what they’re status in life is, but simply because I see them as God’s creation. And I find that I’m here because God created me, loves me, and wants to spend eternity with me in heaven…WOW!
Now, because Jesus humbled Himself so much, look at verse 9. therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
The human race needs to have some more respect for the name of Jesus. We sadly hear it used as a curse word, we hear and read His Name disrespected in the media and on the big screen. But a day is coming, maybe today, when EVERYONE will bow their knee and have to admit that Jesus is God, and we are not, no one else is. There is no other God, there is no other Way.
Do we respect the Name today ourselves? Do we give Jesus the honour due to His Name? Are we willing to humble ourselves to the point of reaching out in love to a world that is lost without Him? Will you and I do whatever it takes to get the Good News out to the Westshore, the Sooke Hills, the downtown core, the mountains and the hills, the valleys and the pits, wherever God will call us to go. Will we truly give ALL of ourselves to the One who gave everything for us?
