The Humble Servant

Here’s the first of two questions I want to begin with.

What is it that qualifies us to come to Jesus, the Creator, Sustainer, Ruler, and Sovereign, all-powerful King of the universe? And the answer is our need, our struggle, our brokenness, our sin.

Jesus loves us just the way we are and He invites us, though He is so exalted.

And for some of us, it’s harder than others. We have different backgrounds. Because of my background, my dad was a schoolteacher, but before that a Marine and pretty tough guy. And in a good way. But just you had to have your act together. I mean, you got up, your bed was made, you got, you know, four As and a B, “We’re going to talk about that B.”

And I carried that over and I’m sure some of you have. Your family of origin issues where somehow you get thinking God is like that. And so, I always felt like I had to measure up and if I haven’t read my Bible or prayed or if I’m struggling with a sin that somehow God is down on me. Could I just pause?

If there’s one thing I wish I could really communicate to you and it has been, I mean, a forty, fifty-year journey for me to really believe just as you are, right where you are that invitation is to come. You’ll be greeted with love and tenderness and forgiveness.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that, you know, Jesus is sort of like open ended, don’t worry about how you live. Because, in fact, after He says to come, He talks about the yoke.

Biblical faith, the kind of faith where power and grace and life-change occur in you and through you is when Jesus has the same place in your heart, in your life, in your priorities that He holds in the universe.

Now, let’s go back to Colossians 1. What is His role in the universe? Ruler, Sovereign, King, Creator. What is His role in us? He is a part of the re-creation. He purchased us for Himself. And so, He wants the same place in your heart, and in my heart, as He has in the universe. And in Romans 12, he makes it very clear what this looks like. After eleven whole chapters of, “This is who I am, this is what I have done, this is how much I love you, this is what grace looks like, “Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, here’s my command. Offer your body as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God. This is your spiritual service of worship.”

So, here’s what I want you to get. Faith is not simply trying to be a good person, having some religious activity. A faith that says, “No matter what, trusting Jesus,” the faith that builds, that changed the world that you want to have and that I want to have - is not a passive thing. There is a moment in time.

That word in Romans chapter 12 where it says “offer.” It’s in a tense of the verb that means on a certain day at a certain time, by faith you say, “My life, my future, my family, my relationships, my money, all that I am, all that I have.

And, now, that gets fearful, right? Because we just don’t know how things are going to come out. See, faith always involves risk, but the confidence is not what you can conjure up. The confidence is who Jesus is.

And the apostle Paul is going to give us another one of those classic passages, a picture of who Jesus really is, like nowhere else in all the Scripture, about what did He actually do?

But you’ve got to get the context, okay?

I want you to get your mind recalibrated about when I say “faith” and when the Bible says “faith” or “trust in God,” it may be quite different than we are used to, we have this casualness.

He is intimate, but He is exalted and He demands our worship and He is worthy of our worship. And our worship isn’t singing songs alone. It’s not simply giving of our money. It’s this living-sacrifice-life where I trust Him, I have faith no matter what.

And so, in chapter 1 of Philippians, we have Paul writing a letter to a group that he really loves. It’s a thank you letter because they sent some money to support his ministry. When he got writing the letter, he found out there’s some conflict with the church in terms of, you know, interpersonal relationships between really good people, but they’re not seeing things eye-to-eye. A little bit of disunity.

And so, he writes them and he tells them in chapter 1 that, “I’m in prison, I don’t know whether I’m going to live or die,” and then he models for them this kind of faith. In chapter 1 at the end he goes, “I don’t know whether I am going to die or whether I’m going to live.” And then he says this. He says, “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” In other words, “For me, trusting Jesus no matter what. If I die, I die. I’ll be with Him. And I am living with that kind of perspective.”

And then toward the end, he wants them to understand that this isn’t just him. This is for all Christians. There is a gift. We don’t usually think about these two things as a gift. But notice toward the end of chapter 1 what he says. Chapter 1, verses 29 and 30, “For to you,” Philippian church, and to us, “it has been granted for Christ’s sake not only to believe in Him but also to suffer for His sake, experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me and now hear to be in me.”

You know, put a little line if you have your Bible open or in the notes, “…. granted for Christ’s sake.” And then put a circle around the word “believe” and a circle around the word “suffer.”

He is saying, “I am all in. I don’t know if I will live or die. I am going to follow Him.”

And here’s what you need to know. There is a gift. We get our same root word for grace. It has been granted for Christ’s sake that you get to believe, eternal life, trust, faith, and also, you get to suffer. Because it is in suffering in the process of a fallen world that God often creates a dependency and a character development and that’s how He makes us more and more like Jesus.

Candidly, I don’t like it. You probably don’t either. But I can look back and realize some of the deepest things God has done in my life were times when I suffered. Some of it was brought on by myself, sometimes by other people, sometimes a fallen world.

But then he goes on, in Philippians chapter 2, and he is now going to instruct them about unity in their relationships and then we’ll get to the key passage.

He says, “Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by,” one, “being of the same mind,” two, “maintaining the same love,” three, “united in spirit,” and four, “intent on one purpose.”

And that little word “if,” “if,” “if,” grammatically it means: Since you have encouragement, and since there’s consolation of love, and since you have obviously had great fellowship with the Spirit, and since you have experienced affection and compassion from Jesus - here’s what I want you to do. I want you to be united in love and one mind and one spirit so when the world sees these followers of Mine, they realize Jesus really did come and save the world because of how we love one another.

Unity is when people from different backgrounds, with different opinions, and different political persuasions, and different experiences racially come together under the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the CEO of the universe and the Creator and the Sustainer and live in such a way that those things are secondary.

And then in the very next line, he’s going to teach us how to do that. How do you ever pull that off?

Look at the command in verses 3 and 4, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.”

The supreme example of the relational attitude and behavior that God wants us to follow Him in. When He said, “Peter, follow Me,” the apostle Paul says, “This is what it looks like to, ‘Follow Me.’ I want you to follow this example of humility.” We are going to see in this text Jesus literally descends into greatness. And he says, “You know what faith is? You know, biblical faith. Trusting Jesus, no matter what. It’s living like this in our relationships.

Now, let’s walk through the passage, because again, here’s the grace side of it. Never miss this. Don’t get so caught up of the cost and that’s too high and I could never do that. I’ve got news for you. Of course you can’t do it and I can’t do it either. This is when the Spirit of God takes the Word of God and it births grace in us – when? When we sit around and think about it and…

When we obey and take that step, then the grace of God allows us to love people that are hard to love.

Following Jesus into God’s best plan. Jesus had a very specific mindset of humility. Notice what it says in verse 5. “Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus.”

Humility is, it just flies in the face of what I call the Big Five Ps. You know, in our life and in our world, what makes you a somebody is power, possessions, position, prestige, and productivity. And what you’re going to see in this passage that Jesus’ upside down kingdom is going to look at each one of those things differently than the world does and what, the way we tend to do it.

And so, power, okay – let me give you a quick definition – is who and what we can control.

Possessions: what and how much we own.

Position: our rank in the pecking order. You know, what office you have or how much power and who reports to you or who doesn’t.

Prestige is: who and how many look up to us? Or maybe it’s a like or what they post or what they say about us.

And productivity is: what and how much we accomplish.

Those five Ps, by and large, are how, left to ourselves, we say, “I’m a somebody.” And if you looked at your life and your time and your finances and your energy and your relationships and if I look at mine, an awful lot of it we have been brainwashed, brainwashed, brainwashed to say, “You know what? You need to be a somebody, so you need to accomplish this. And you need to be, by this age, you need to have this role. And you need to own so much stuff and it needs to look like this,” right? We are all in this.

And I want you to watch when Jesus said to Peter, “Follow Me,” and when He says to you and me, He is going to cut across those five Ps and show us a different way, a powerful way, a counterintuitive way to become great in God’s eyes. To, by faith, experience the joy and the peace and the power where God changes us. And then to our shock and amazement and joy, actually uses us to change the lives of other people as His grace flows through us.

You see, grace always flows downhill. God is gracious when He sees humility and He’s opposed to the proud. And so, the direct application here is to some women in the church that were having a fight. But the broader application is this is Jesus’ example for all of us. Follow it.

So, follow along if you will.

We follow Jesus when we embrace His mindset toward power and possessions. Now, think of this. Power. He’s the ruler of the universe. And possessions; He owns everything. But what did He do? “Who although He existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.” Key word here is the word “form.” In Greek it’s morphe.

We think of form as, like, an outward exterior or you kind of form up a building. This word morphe means the actual essence or substance. In other words, although He existed in the form, the actual person of God, One with the Father, He didn’t regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.

Literally, the phrase is He didn’t regard it as something that He must not allow to slip out of His hands. It’s a picture of humility. It’s a picture of: I don’t have to be in control. It’s a picture of releasing those things. Trusting that as I trust God, He will work it out. I don’t have to make everything happen. I don’t have to manipulate; I don’t have to do the politicking.

This is where Jesus says, “Possessions - they don’t make you a someone.” How many hours and how much time and how much damage is done as we chase things that, “If I have this kind of car or this kind of house or…” It goes on and on and on. And we are all guilty of it. But He’s saying, “Wherever you are, if you’re going to follow Me, you’re going to have to look at power differently. You have to realize that as you trust My control and you trust Me, that I have a lot more power and I will work things out better than you ever could.”

When we look at possessions, He goes, “I promise you’re always going to have what you need.” But to work crazy hours and to invest your life and somehow think that the more you accumulate is going to bring you happiness, He says, “It’s a lie. Don’t buy it.”

Notice he goes on. Following Jesus, we don’t only embrace His mindset about power and possessions, but we follow Jesus when we embrace His mindset toward position and prestige. Not only did He not think equality with God a thing to be grasped in terms of position, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men.

Put a circle around that word “emptied.” It’s a big theological word. Some of you with Bible study backgrounds, it’s kenosis. It means He veiled His deity. He didn’t lose it, but He veiled His deity and some of His voluntary access for a season so that He could be fully man and fully God. And so, He’s taking this position, instead of all the angels worshipping Him, and the prestige and the honor that has come from time past, He didn’t lose it, but He veiled His deity.

And it says in the likeness of men. We get our word schematic. It’s the external picture.

So, He’s fully God but as He walked upon the earth, His likeness, the externals, He was as fully human as anybody. Perfect humanity.

And then notice, we follow Jesus when we embrace His mindset toward productivity. The text goes on to say, “And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

So, again, he emphasizes the humanity of Jesus, the deity of Jesus, and then when he looks at – what did He do? He humbles Himself and this is how we humble ourselves: obeying God, obeying what the Scripture says.
“Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus.” This attitude of considering others more important.

Humility is, it just flies in the face of what I call the Big Five Ps, power, possessions, position, prestige, and productivity.

And I want you to watch when Jesus said to Peter, “Follow Me,” and when He says to you and me, He is going to cut across those five Ps and show us a different way, a powerful way, a counterintuitive way to become great in God’s eyes.

We follow Jesus when we embrace His mindset toward power and possessions. “Who although He existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.”

It’s a picture of humility. It’s a picture of: I don’t have to be in control. It’s a picture of releasing those things. Trusting that as I trust God, He will work it out.

When we look at possessions, He goes, “I promise you’re always going to have what you need.” But to work crazy hours and to invest your life and somehow think that the more you accumulate is going to bring you happiness, He says, “It’s a lie. Don’t buy it.”

We follow Jesus when we embrace His mindset toward position and prestige. Not only did He not think equality with God a thing to be grasped in terms of position, "but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men."

Put a circle around that word “emptied.” It’s a big theological word. Some of you with Bible study backgrounds, it’s kenosis. It means He veiled His deity. He didn’t lose it, but He veiled His deity and some of His voluntary access for a season so that He could be fully man and fully God.

And then notice, we follow Jesus when we embrace His mindset toward productivity. The text goes on to say, “And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

So, again, he emphasizes the humanity of Jesus, the deity of Jesus, and then when he looks at – what did He do? He humbles Himself and this is how we humble ourselves: obeying God, obeying what the Scripture says.

Forgiving your mate when, in your heart of hearts, you realize it’s ninety percent her fault, ten percent yours. Choosing to obey and say, “Lord, I don’t know how this looks, but I’m going to give the first portion of my income for Your kingdom purposes and I don’t know how it’s all going to work out in terms of paying all my bills.” It’s obedient to the point of death. It’s dying to self and ego and pride.

And He says there’s this amazing kingdom principle, the – give – and that’s just not money, the passage in Luke 6:38, it’s not even a financial passage. “Give, and it will be given unto you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. For in whatever measure,” or size of cup or container that you give, “it will be measured back to you, overflowing.”

Jesus is saying, “I want you to follow Me and there’s a kingdom mindset, there’s a kingdom lifestyle, there’s a counterintuitive way. And it requires faith. You have to believe what He says is true. You have to believe Jesus is the Creator and Sustainer. You have to believe when He makes promises like this, He is going to take care of you.

And my experience is we have a lot of people that intellectually agree with these things and very few who practice them. And, yet, the Early Church, not practicing them wasn’t an option.

I think there’s something that has happened, especially in sort of the Western side and American culture, of our consumer mindset that somehow we have filtered things through in such a way where we hear the commands and this is what you’re supposed to do, but there’s only a special group maybe that could do that. And we feel this freedom to take this one and reject that one. And it’s almost like our spiritual life and the commands of Jesus and the calling to follow Him is like a salad bar and we choose which ones we will accept and which ones we will reject as though we are the authority.

I remember sitting in a café in Amman, Jordan with a young doctor about thirty-two. And I’ll never forget the breakfast. And there was a price on her head in Yemen. There was a network, we partner with a group there. And very few Christians in all of Yemen. And so, as the Christians began to multiply, she was one of the keys. And so, there was a contract out to kill her.

And they were able to get her out of the country and she is super bright and articulate, speaking great English. And her request was, “Can you please help me get someplace where the World Health Organization, a refugee camp somewhere, because I’d like to use my skills to help heal people. I know I’m not going to live very long.

And she said that, like, when I said, “Could I get two eggs over easy? And could I go with the wheat toast?” I mean, it wasn’t like she was making some dramatic statement. It was just, “Following Jesus in my world, at this time means, like many or most of my friends, none of us are going to live very long.”

But underneath of it is, but for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. There was no sense of, “Don’t you feel sorry for me?” Or, “I must be one of those wonderful, wonderful few Christians in all the world.” It was as matter of fact.

And that’s what I long for. We are not following Jesus when it comes to these areas of power and possessions and position, prestige, and productivity.

We have bought into a world system. And here’s the irony: the world system doesn’t deliver. Some of us have really been very successful in some of these things. And there’s an emptiness and there’s a lacking.

I love how the Father rewards the Son.

The final point here is we experience God’s exaltation, His lifting up of us and His blessing when we follow Jesus’ example of servanthood.

Notice it says, “For this reason also God highly exalted Him,” speaking of Christ, “and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name.” Why? “So that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow,” well, of whom? “…of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

You see, in God’s economy as we choose to follow Jesus, the acid test of greatness is love. The road or the path to greatness is humility. And the opportunity for real greatness is servanthood.

And this is a far cry from the Christianity that most of us are being exposed to and most of us are living out. We’re at a pivot point. We’re at a point in history, a point in the Church, a point in culture. God is raising up people that have this kind of mindset here and around the world. And at the same time, there is a culture that is increasingly hostile to our faith and to Jesus.

And this is one of those, like, first century opportunities. We get to be those people who would say, “I am trusting Jesus no matter what.”

As we wrap up our time, I’d like to ask a couple questions and then I would like to follow up with an amazing invitation from Jesus.

Question number one is: How would you describe Jesus in your own words after reflecting on Philippians 2:5 through 11?

This is a little bit different than Jesus is walking through the fields and loves me and wants my life to work out. And don’t get me wrong. I know we don’t think that way all the time. But it’s subtle. How would you describe Jesus to a friend? This is radical. This is a revolutionary. This is a completely counterintuitive way to live one’s life. How would you describe Him?

The second question is: What is Jesus’ motive in calling us to follow Him and His mindset of humility?

I mean, why? I mean, what is His motive? What’s His heart? What’s His passion? You know, we so often focus on the cost. Peter: drops his nets, leaves everything to follow Jesus. And we miss the reward. “And I will,” Jesus said, “make you a fisher of men.”

You know, like you, I have had some successes in my life and I have had some failures and, you know, everything from a little success in sports over here, maybe a little success in ministry or something else over here. And, but I will tell you something. I’ll never forget the first time that the Lord Jesus allowed me to be, I just call it a conduit of his grace, where I didn’t know very much and I didn’t know how to do much but I found myself talking to a fellow on the floor – I was an RA in college – who was really going through a hard time.

And I explained how he could have a relationship with Jesus. And I remember in that little kitchenette bowing our heads together and him praying to receive Christ. And then watching his life change and be transformed the next two or three years.

And then little by little, getting to have that kind of influence on our basketball team in college. And then out of the blue, the Lord kind of tapping me on the shoulder and say, “You know, you love basketball and I love you and you have had this passion and you were injured most of your college career. How would you like to join this team and play all the Olympic teams throughout South America for a couple summers with fellow believers and share your faith?” And it was like, amazing. A game every day and huge crowds and sharing your testimony and literally, at times, leading fifteen or twenty people to Christ each and every day. What could be more fulfilling?

And it’s not always leading someone to Christ. Maybe you’re the person that meets a physical need and you do it privately and there’s a mom with a baby that no one cares about and you pay to take care of her.

Or I remember the first time I sat down with a couple who, I mean, they thought they had this huge marriage problem. They just, they didn’t know that everyone has what they were going through. But we live in a day where if I’m not happy, it’s not working, I’m gone.

And I remember meeting with them, Theresa and I, you know, a number of times and watching them forgive each other and learn to communicate and fall back in love and watch their family come together and watch their three kids not have some divided family of, you know, “I’m with dad on the weekends and mom during the week.” And realizing you’re just a normal, regular human being with all kind of limitations and struggles. And, yet, as we are surrendered to Him and trusting, the payoff, the reward…

It’s this picture in my mind, it’s like the grace of God and we are the PVC pipe. It comes through us and as it gets into the lives of others, it is, I don’t want to be sacrilegious but it’s better than any drug that has ever been created, because it’s what we are made to do.

When the light of God, the love of God, the forgiveness of God, the reconciliation of God, and the power of God flows through your eyes and your arms and your words and your wallet, that transforms the lives of other people, I’ve got news, there’s nothing like it.

I mean, did you ever wonder why some of the most, I mean, richest, richest, richest, richest people, you know, they get to the end or near the end and they’ve got billions and billions of dollars, what do they all end up doing? They start some kind of foundation. Because what they know is getting, getting, getting, getting, getting, it never fills the hole.

And so, they may not be Christians, but they realize, “I’ve got to help people. I’ve got to give back.” And when they do that, there is a joy they don’t fully understand. But what they are doing is they are following kingdom principles.

And lastly, I was, just, I have an invitation. And here is Jesus’ invitation. The One who descended into greatness says, “Follow Me.”

Luke chapter 9, “And Jesus was saying to them all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.’” And here’s the reason, “For what is it profit to a man if he gains the whole world and lose or forfeits himself.” Literally it’s his soul.

And so, Jesus is saying, “By faith, I’m going to make you an invisible promise over against all the physical realities. And if you want to follow Me, it’ll be a step of faith. And you need to deny yourself.” That’s crazy in a consumer world. And then you need to take up a cross so you need to die to your agenda. This is what I’m going to do, this is why, this will make me successful. I call the shots, right? I’ll run my life. You die to that daily.

And then you say to the Lord, “I’m going to follow You. I’m going to follow You in my career, I’m going to follow You day-to-day, I’m going to follow You in my home as a husband or a dad or a single person or a roommate. I’m going to follow You.”

Well, what does that mean? I’m going to consider the needs of others as more important than myself. I’m not going to look only on my stuff but on others. I’m going to look at those five Ps, and I’m going to look at those five Ps the way Jesus did, and I’m going to flip it in a way that is so counterintuitive and just downright scary. And I’m going to follow Jesus and I’m going to trust that when I draw near to God, that what the Scripture says is true. He is going to draw near to me. And that as it says in James 4, when I humble myself, God wants to and will exalt me. That He will not allow any good thing to be held back from me.

In Psalm 31, when I was on my journey of struggling as a first, probably, three or four years as a Christian, and realizing my lack of good theological background and my lack of growing up in a Christian home did one good thing. A little bit like those Muslim believers, I didn’t know anything. So, I thought if it said this it really meant that. And when it came to, “Chip, are you going to be all in? Chip, are you going to lose your life for the gospel and for Me so you can find it?” Well, I struggled, I struggled, I struggled.

I’ll never forget one day reading Psalm 31 and I can’t even remember where in the passage, but it says, “How great is Your goodness that You have stored up for those that fear You, for those who follow You over against the opinions of men.” And this picture came to me of instead of God’s arms crossed and why don’t you get with the program and you don’t quite measure up, that there was this Savior who has demonstrated His love for me by going to the cross, who put His Spirit inside of me and inside of You as a follower, who has sealed me with that Spirit, and no one can snatch me out of His hands, who is currently preparing a place for me and every follower.

And says, “You want in on the greatest movement, not in history, the greatest movement of the Creator of the world. I want to invite you to die to your agenda and say yes to Mine and become a part of the kingdom of God. Lose your life and find it. Be counterintuitive. Walk in humility because here is what I want to do.”

God says, “I want to exalt you. I want to lift you up. I want to fill your heart and fill your desires and your dreams with what My dreams are for you, so that all the things that everyone is looking for over here, I want to give to you in spades, exceedingly, abundantly, beyond what you could ask or think.”

Far from missing out, He says, “There is a life that I have for you that is better and greater and deeper and more wonderful.” But the path is I am going to trust the character of God and the promises of God and they are invisible, while I’m being bombarded by all the world system and many even in the Church who say, “Don’t get too radical.”

God loves you. And I want you to hear that not sort of as a general thought, but as someone who is going to be loyal to you that will help you, strengthen you. But He’s a rewarder to those who believe that He is and who believe He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.