Philippians 2:5-11, Carmen Christi (The Song of Christ), Dr. John B. Carpenter

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Philippians 2:5-11 Carmen Christi (The Song of Christ)

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Philippians chapter 2, beginning from verses 5 to 11, hear the word of the Lord. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
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Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is
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Lord, to the glory of God the Father. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word.
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Well, what did Jesus do and what was done to him?
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If he was just a martyr, all he did was tell the truth and then suffer for it.
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He might impress us with his bravery, but he doesn't do anything for us. He was just a victim then.
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If he was just a teacher, all he did was teach. Whether he does anything for us depends completely on whether we choose to learn from him.
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If he was just a good example, all he did was model for us how we ought to live. It's totally up to us to follow his example or not.
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What did Jesus do? Well, that depends on who he was. If he was just another human being who came to exist when he was conceived and born, like us, then he's very remarkable for rising from obscurity as a craftsman from a backwards town in a remote province of the
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Roman Empire to being the most respected teacher in history.
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Maybe he proved his genius or his enlightenment, but still, it would be what was done to him.
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That's the big news, that he was betrayed and crucified. So what did he do?
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Well, again, that depends on who he was. You can't understand what he did without understanding who he was, and that we're told here in what may be the most studied passage in the entire
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Bible. The passage is poetic, and so as you can see, even reading it in English, kind of staccato phrases, which is unusual for Paul.
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So this is probably originally a song, a hymn. In Latin, this particular passage is called the
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Carmen Christi, the song of Christ, the hymn of Christ. Paul is challenging the
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Christians to think like Jesus thought in verse 5, have this mind, in other words, think like this among yourselves, church, talking to the church, which is yours in Christ Jesus.
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And then Paul begins, apparently, to quote a song, probably a familiar hymn to them.
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Like I sometimes quote familiar hymns to prove a point, we know from 1 Corinthians chapter 14, verse 26, which is each of you has a hymn, that they had hymns and spiritual songs, which are different than the psalms that they also sang.
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And this was likely one of them, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, then cue the song.
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The song tells us how Jesus thought, tells us his mind, and what Jesus did, and what was done to him.
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By beginning with who he is, it begins in the form of God, which is qualifying the main verb.
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The main verb is considered or translated counted in the ESV. There's actually no was there in that opening phrase in the original
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Greek. So it's in the form of God, he counted, telling us what was the condition when he counted.
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He was in the form of God. Form is a Greek word, you know, you didn't know you knew some Greek, but you do. It's morphe or morph.
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It means the concrete form, the attributes, the manifestation, what's revealed about someone.
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Something morphs when it retains the same essence, but changes appearances.
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Like a caterpillar morphing into a butterfly, but still the same species. That's an imperfect analogy.
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Notice that he didn't become God at one point. It doesn't say he became in the form of God, he was.
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He was in the form of God already. The song is saying that Jesus had God's form, his glory, his essence from eternity past.
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It's like Hebrews 1, verse 3, where it says the son has the exact imprint of God's nature.
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Now, the only one who can have God's form and the exact imprint of his nature is
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God himself. Then he counted. This is now the main verb, past tense, in the past.
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That means he acted. This is an active verb. He's the active one.
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He's not just passive. He's not a victim. He's not a piece on a chessboard being moved by someone else. He counted.
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That is, he existed in the nature of God, and as such, he actually says he did not count.
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So his counting was something he didn't do. He chose actively not to do something, not to count.
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He was in the form of God, and he chose not to count something, and that was to not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
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The word grasp literally means robbery. He didn't count while he was in the form of God.
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Robbery, he didn't count it as stealing, as illegitimate, as wrong, as though it's taking something that's not his, what you have no right to.
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That's robbery. You don't count it robbery after the service is over to go out and drive away in your own car because it's yours.
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It's not robbery. He didn't count it robbery. He didn't consider it to be wrong to claim equality with God.
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Why? Because he had equality with God. It wasn't robbery because he was
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God. It's like a judge not counting it robbery, not counting it inappropriate to sit in the judge's seat.
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He has a right to do it. Jesus wasn't wrong to count himself equal with God because he was
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God. What did Jesus do? Now, if he was God, that changes everything.
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Notice, by the way, that there are at least two persons here who are God. You know, to be equal, I'm saying so -and -so is equal to someone else or one team is equal to another or this food is equal to that, it requires at least two, right?
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At least two things or two people, two persons. We never talk about someone being equal to himself. So there's got to be at least two.
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Jesus is equal with God, which means that the God he is equal to is not himself.
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It's not the same person. It's another person. But there's only one God. You have one
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God and then Jesus, the son, who does not consider robbery to be equal with God, and so is
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God too. And understand that Jesus does not consider robbery to be equal with God means that there is another person who is also
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God, and yet there is only one God. One God, two persons who are
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God, add the Holy Spirit, and you have three persons, one God, the
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Trinity. So Jesus is God, and that throws light on what he did. What did he do after not counting equality with God?
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Robbery. You notice verse 7 begins with but, a strong contrast.
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In other words, this is surprising. This is not what we would expect someone who is equal with God, who is in the form of God, to do.
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Despite being God, Jesus did something that is not what we would think he would do. What did
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Jesus do? In verse 7, he descended, or one of the songs we just sang, he condescended.
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He came down. In the ESV, he made himself nothing. Literally, he emptied himself, what the verb means.
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Look at the core of that sentence in verse 7. You take it apart, piece by piece, the subject, the verb, the object.
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The subject, the one doing the action, is he, Jesus. He wasn't emptied by someone else.
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He wasn't made nothing by some outside force that's kind of outside his control. He wasn't brought down as if he's passive, like someone who's falling off a cliff, not intending to, took a wrong step and gravity took over.
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No. Or someone else taking him down against his will, like in football, a tackler taking down a runner.
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No. It doesn't say he was humbled by someone else as though he is the object.
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No. He is the subject. He's the active one. He humbled himself.
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Next, the verb, the word describing the action, the action here is emptied.
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It's like a cup being poured out. Empty it. Some people have played with this, taking it to mean that he literally emptied himself of his divinity, when he became human, that he stopped being
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God. He became a former God, an ex -God. Well, first, that's impossible.
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God, by definition, is the perfect being and the perfect being can't become greater, because there's nothing greater than him to become, and he can't become lesser.
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He can't decline, because having a weakness to decline is an imperfection, and the perfect being doesn't have any imperfections.
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But also, second, that's not what the verb means. Now, sure, literally, like applied to maybe a cup or a bottle or something like that, it can mean pour out, like emptying a bottle, but it also has a metaphorical meaning.
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It was an idiom, a figure of speech, for to make low, to bring down. VSV is right to translate it as made himself nothing.
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Here, he made himself low, not by becoming an ex -God, but by taking the form of a servant, morphing into a servant, but still the same species as God.
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Well, finally, the object, that's the one receiving the action, himself. Himself is a reflexive pronoun here, the object of the action.
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He didn't empty someone else in his place, like the old sacrifices in the temple where worshippers offered animals in place of themselves.
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No, he emptied himself so that he could be our substitute.
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That's why the ultimate answer to the question, who killed Jesus? Who killed Christ? The Romans?
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The Jews? The Pontius Pilate? Is it our sin holding him there? The ultimate answer is he did.
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He was in control of all the events of the betrayal, the arrest, the trial, the scourging, the crucifixion.
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He emptied himself. Again, empty does not mean he gave up being
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God. When he prayed and reciting Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
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He was expressing the truth, some kind of alienation from the Father, but he was still
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God, and God was still one, undivided. And if you ask, how can that be?
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I don't know. It's a wondrous mystery. Remember, this is a poem or a song, and it's using vivid imagery, metaphorical language like rock of ages.
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You know, we don't sing that and think Christ is literally a rock. We understand what he portrays, and here he's portraying that mystery of his condescending when he emptied himself.
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Here he emptied himself not by giving up godhood, but by taking on servanthood.
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Then another line of poetry at the end of verse 8 describing the same thing Jesus did, being born in the likeness of men.
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His form was in the likeness of men. He still had the form, the nature of God, but now in the incarnation, that is when he became flesh, when he became human, he also had the form of being a human being.
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Then another line amplifying the same theme at the beginning of verse 8 and being found by other people.
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When other people encountered him, they found him in human form in the SV, but they should have chosen another word.
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The translator should have chosen another word for form because the Greek word here is different than the earlier form.
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It's also a word you know or like a word you know. It's schemati in Greek. It's like scheme or schematics where we get that from, meaning here the exterior shape, the appearance.
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We now use it for plans or blueprints that show the appearance of something, how it works.
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He's the form of a servant taking that on, born like any other human being. He's incarnate and he has the appearance of a man since he was one.
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He was found by other people to be another human being because he took on that scheme.
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Veiled in flesh, the godhead see. Hail the incarnate deity, to quote another song.
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All this he did to himself. He descended by becoming a servant. He put on both the nature of a human being and the appearance, the scheme of one.
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What did Jesus do? He became fully human and made himself appear normal even though he was
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God. He didn't stop his descent from the glory of God, which was rightfully his.
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He didn't stop just by being a normal human being with all the limitations that we suffer.
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You know, being hungry and thirsty and tired and questioned and criticized and disappointed. Just becoming a human being of any kind would have been a descent for him.
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Even if he became a king in a palace, you know, weighted on hand and foot, he still would have condescended even just to that.
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But he went even further. It was humbling for him growing up versus the son of a craftsman, then a craftsman himself, a carpenter having to put up with unreasonable customers, complaining about things.
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Some of y 'all know what that's like. He probably made a perfect chair and someone would come in and complain about something about it.
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It's the way people are. Had to put up with that, doing chores. Mother would say, go get some water or whatever.
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You'd have to do it. Going to the synagogue and hearing boring lectures on the scriptures that he inspired and he's sitting there listening to it.
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Condescended to that, keeping the law, actively obeying every commandment. But he didn't stop just there.
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He became obedient until death.
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He didn't stop his undercover boss mission when it started to get really, really hard when he was arrested in the garden.
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Now, there were flashes of his glory there, but he put back on the veil the schematics of man.
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Like in John 18 where they come to arrest him. Remember the story? And Jesus asked, whom do you seek?
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And they say, Jesus of Nazareth. And he says, I am he. Literally just I am like he's the
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I am who I am. And for a flash, they get a glimpse of something or they sense something like his glory, like the veil is pulled back just an inch for a half a second and they fall backwards overwhelmed.
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But then the veil, the schematics are put back on and they arrest him.
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They found him in the garden of Gethsemane to be a man and arrested him like he was a criminal.
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He descended to that and he did it. It wasn't just done to him.
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All the soldiers and the guards probably thought they were in control. They roughed him up. They tied him up. They let him off.
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But they were only doing what they were allowed to do. He even told Pontius Pilate, you would have no authority over me unless it had been given you from above.
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And Pilate probably thought he was referring to Caesar, not realizing that Jesus was referring to himself.
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He was in control. He was descending, going down.
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Not only to being human, living the perfect life, we didn't, the active obedience of Christ, but now descending even to take the punishment our active disobedience had earned.
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He humbled himself in verse eight. Again, he did it.
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He wasn't just humbled by others. He did the humbling himself. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to literally until death.
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His descent doesn't stop with just becoming human. It goes so far as to include dying.
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Notice he had to become obedient to death. He wasn't born subject to death like we are.
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All sons and daughters of Adam are subjugated by death. They're born that way. But Jesus was born of a virgin.
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He was not a son of Adam. And he hadn't earned the wages of sin, which is death because he never sinned.
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He was free of death. Yet he chose to submit to it. He chose to obey death.
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When it told him to die, he did. His descent still doesn't stop.
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He's actively going even lower to become human, taking the form of a servant, further down to the coldness of death.
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And then not just any death, not a humane, painless, quick, like, beheading, like Paul was seeing that could be in his near future.
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Jesus' death was the most horrendous death. Verse eight ends, even, like even as they're like, can you believe it?
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Not just any death, this death, death on a cross, literally even, this low, a cross death.
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Crucifixion was so cruel and barbaric, the Romans banned it for Roman citizens.
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It was reserved for slaves or pirates or foreign rebels. Cicero, the
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Roman poet, said crucifixion was the most cruel and disgusting penalty.
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He said, let, quote, the very word cross be far removed, not only from the bodies of Roman citizens, but from their thoughts and their eyes and their ears.
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In other words, don't talk about the cross. Don't think about it. Don't look at it.
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It's just too low. Jesus, in the form of God, equal with God, looked at it and said,
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I will descend even to that. That's what
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Jesus did. Now, what was done to him?
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He's been descending by his own actions to the end of verse eight. Now, in verse nine, he begins his ascent.
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He ascends by God the Father's acts, two of them.
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First, God highly exalted him. You know, it says, therefore, beginning of verse nine, because he descended to take on the form of a servant to submit to death, even to death on a cross,
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God, who is now the active one, now God the Father's the one doing the action. He did something to Jesus.
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He exalted him. Actually, God didn't just exalt Jesus. Literally, he super exalted him.
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He did this in the resurrection by making Jesus the first fruits from the dead, the first one to be resurrected. Now, sure, other people before had been resuscitated, like Lazarus, but they were still subject to death and they eventually died again.
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They weren't made immortal, but Jesus is the first one to be glorified, to belong to the new era, a new heaven and a new earth that is coming.
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And with Jesus, it came for the first time when he was resurrected, incorruptible, immortal, not subject to death any longer.
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So he rose and he declared in Matthew 28, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given by God to me.
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What was done to him at the resurrection was that the Father gave him all rights and power to rule, not just in heaven, spiritual realm where God lives, but here on earth too.
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In Psalm 110, the Lord, Yahweh, said to our Lord, our
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Master, our King, Jesus, he said to him, sit at my right hand, sit because your work is over, my right hand, the place of favor, the place of the highly exalted one.
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So resurrected in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 25, he must reign.
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He definitely is reigning. He will reign. He is now reigning. He reigns now until he will continue to reign from his resurrection begun then until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
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Or in Psalm 110, until God says, God the Father, until I make your enemies, your enemies,
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Jesus the Son, I make your enemies your footstool. That's what he's doing now.
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Jesus ruling, super exalted as King and putting his feet on the rebellion against his rule.
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And the last enemy to be trampled on and crushed is death.
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Second, God the Father gave him something, literally graciously gave.
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Granted, it's the same word we looked at in chapter 1, verse 29, where God graciously gives us not only faith, but to suffer for Jesus.
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Here, God graciously gave Jesus, to Jesus, the name that is above every name.
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This is an astounding claim in the Bible. Maybe if you don't know, if you're not saturated in the
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Bible, in our culture, that doesn't seem to mean much. But in the Bible, that's an astounding claim.
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By itself, it proves the divinity of Christ. The name of Jesus now is the name that's above every name?
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Are you serious? Every name? Now, think about the importance of the name in the Bible. You know, there's a commandment from the
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Ten Commandments, the third commandment. You do not take the name of the Lord, Yahweh, in vain.
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It's that important. It's one of the commandments. Psalm 8 celebrates, O Lord, our
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Lord, or, O Yahweh, is the name, our master, our sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
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The name was so holy. After a while, the Jews were so fearful of misusing the holy name that they stopped using it at all, and they replaced it with Lord.
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Here, Paul, a Jew, saturated in that culture, raised to understand that Yahweh was that holy name, not to be taken in vain.
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In fact, you just don't use it at all to avoid that. He is the one here saying that now
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God the Father has given to Jesus, granted to him the name that's above every name, even above Yahweh.
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And that name, in verse 10, is Jesus. God gave him that name so that, in order that, and this is the purpose that he did that, explaining what was done by Jesus, by giving him the highest name, and it does two things.
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First, at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow. Those in heaven who already bowed, they'll gladly do it again.
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Those on earth, alive with us now, even the disobedient, the stiff -kneed rebels who insist that they will never bow to anyone, or those who prostrate to other gods, who come with their jaw sticks and kneel before their ancestors, or Buddha, or face toward Mecca and say, another prophet came after Jesus, all such people will be so overwhelmed, they will bow.
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And even those below the earth, figuratively speaking of those in hell, no matter how prideful, how resistant they were, they will bow.
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It's better to do it now. Well, the second thing that was done to Jesus by giving him the highest name was, in verse 11, every tongue of every race, every language, like before, those in heaven have already confessed
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Jesus. Those on earth, including the scoffers who now insult God as a tyrant, who deny that Jesus was raised, who call it a myth, or those who say that all this religion stuff, it's an opiate of the masses, it's a drug to help people cope with life, but they say they don't need it.
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The doubters who say they don't believe in Jesus, or the followers of other religions who claim that their gods, their superstitions about Buddha or their ancestors are superior, they bring good luck.
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They make them successful, they say. They say they don't need Jesus. All the tongues of such people will confess.
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It means to agree. They will finally say that Jesus is
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Lord. All the arguments, the denials, the contrary claims are silenced.
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All the boasts that Buddha gives better luck than Jesus, or that materialism and science has the answers, they will all be over.
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There will be no denying that Jesus is Lord, that he is all authority, is super exalted, and has the highest name.
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What did Jesus do? Well, that's why we're here. The church is the gathering of those who bow to Jesus now, those who confess now on earth that Jesus is
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Lord, who see what he did, he humbled himself, and what was done to him.
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He was raised, super exalted. He wasn't just a martyr or a victim. He took action, and he did it himself, because we needed someone to perfectly live for us and to take the punishment that our sin deserved.
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Because he did that, the Father exalted him, super exalted him, so everyone bows to him now.
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The Father gave him the only name by which we could be saved, if we confess it.
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We gather today, and the first day of every week, the day when
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Jesus rose because of what Jesus did and what
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God did to him. So we bow and agree again that Jesus is
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Lord. If you've not yet gladly done that, do it now.