Humility of Mind with Dr. James White

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Hey, everybody. I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I want to thank you all so much for watching the content right here on Apologia Studios channel.

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So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. Before we look to the word of the

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Lord together, let's begin our time with a word of prayer.

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Father, now we pray that you will quiet our hearts, that you will prepare us for the work of worship, that you will meet with us by your

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Spirit. Lord, I desire to hide behind the cross. May your truth be all that passes over this pulpit, and may your people be strengthened and edified.

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We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Sermon illustrations. I will confess that in Bible college,

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I did have to take the homiletics class. Now, the homiletics class is where, well, that's where you study the art of preaching.

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Now, I was in a Southern Baptist Bible college. And so you had to wear appropriate attire.

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What I'm wearing today even wouldn't have been quite up to snuff back in those days,

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I don't think. Didn't quite meet the appropriate levels. But you had the certain ways that you had to dress, and then there were certain things that you needed to hit in the sermons.

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And so I remember all the practice sermons and everything else that we did in that particular class.

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And I'll be honest with you, that was not my favorite class. And I am not your classical preacher. I do not consider myself much of a preacher at all.

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To be honest with you, I'm much more comfortable teaching and debating, which is a really, they had no classes on that.

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I can assure you of that. That's just a whole other weird thing. But as it may, sermon illustrations, you know, you can buy entire, you can buy subscriptions today to services that will send you sermon illustrations for appropriate texts.

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They didn't have that back in my day. Remember, we didn't have cell phones back in my day. When you were writing your papers on your

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IBM Selectric typewriter, you had to be very careful as the dinosaurs walked by outside. So that's just how things were back then.

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And it made for real character on the part of all of us in those days. But you could buy books even back then of sermon illustrations.

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Now, I'm not big on sermon illustrations. I generally come up with illustrations as I'm just moving along.

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But my father still is a minister. He's still alive. My mom passed away 10 years ago this past January.

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And my mom and my dad is still alive, doesn't live here in the state any longer. But I listened to him do a lot of preaching as a young person.

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I do not remember when he used this particular illustration. I don't know if it's here in Arizona.

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I don't know if it was back in Pennsylvania where we lived until 1974 when we moved out here.

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But I remember very clearly one of the sermon illustrations that my dad used.

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And it was like it was emblazoned on my mind. I think this would be one of the last things that I would ever forget.

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And it struck me so strongly. It was in the context—maybe one of the reasons it struck me so strongly—it was in the context of, really,

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I hate when people say, what's your favorite verse in the Bible? But if I have to put one down, I put down Colossians 3 .3.

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For you have died, your life is hidden together with Christ and God. And I think it was in that context of that particular passage that my dad told a story.

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And he said, when they're refining gold in the old fashion way—this is back before all the computerized ways.

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This is back when you had a goldsmith and was using bellows and fire and a pot and things like this.

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When you're refining gold, he said, you begin to heat it up.

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And as it melts, various levels of impurity that are lighter than the gold float to the surface.

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And so what the goldsmith does is he very carefully skims off those impurities and takes them away.

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But what does he have to do next? He has to turn the heat up more. Because if you cool it down, you're not going to get to the next level of impurities.

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So you have to heat it up even more. And then the next level comes up and you skim those off.

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And it's a continuous process of having to continually raise the heat.

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And so he made the application that in the Christian life, we have in Scripture the refining of our faith as the refining of gold.

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That's the illustration that is used in Scripture itself, that God is refining us as pure gold.

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And so he wants to get all those impurities out. And I feel for anyone who thinks they've already arrived.

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Indeed, my experience as I get older is just, I'm just all the more sensitive to the impurities that are still there.

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And that I've struggled with my entire life. And it makes me wonder why the Lord would be so patient with someone like me.

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But then I think what made the illustration stick in my memory was how he finished it.

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He said, and you know how the goldsmith knows that the gold is pure?

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When he can see his own reflection in the gold. When he can see his own reflection in the gold.

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Now I was maybe a preteen at the time. I certainly knew the

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Lord. But I don't know how deep my contemplation of my own sin or lack of sanctification would have been at that age.

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But something struck me. And I thought to myself, can

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I even see the Lord's reflection in my own life, let alone anyone else? Are there not so many things that would distort that image?

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And so I was struck with the reality by that sermon illustration.

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And I'm sure it was years later when thinking upon it, that I thought about the truth that how many times in the

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Christian life are we praying, Oh Lord, turn the heat down.

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Turn the heat down. Please, Lord, if you love me, turn the heat down.

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What does that tell me? That I don't yet have the right attitude and the right goal in my life.

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My goal should be that I should loathe everything in my thinking and behavior that is reprehensible to my

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Lord. And I should desire that when

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I go through a great trial and there has been a purging and the impurities have been removed, that I don't then ask for a vacation in the

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Bahamas. Lord, I'm ready for the next step. I'm ready for the next uptick in the temperature.

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That's not the normal perspective of much of evangelicalism today.

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Now there was a sermon illustration and it stuck with me.

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And thankfully it was one that is firmly grounded in biblical truth.

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Because I've met people who heard a sermon illustration and they embraced it and they grabbed hold of it.

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Not only was it not really connected to the text that it had been based upon, but it was actually in contradiction to biblical truth.

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And so every illustration has to be one that is examined on the basis of a higher authority, and that is

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Scripture itself. Our text today is Philippians chapter 2, verses 1 through 11. Most of you know this text fairly well.

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And the reason you know it is because verses 5 through 11 are one of the most

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Christologically important passages in all the New Testament. In other words, what we learn about the

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Lord Jesus, His nature, His deity, His relationship to the Father, His exaltation.

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This is one of the most important passages in all of the Scripture on those subjects. Colossians chapter 1,

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Philippians chapter 2, Hebrews chapter 1, John chapter 1. These are some of the most important texts in all of Scripture.

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And we're an apologetically minded church. Our name is apologetics. So you've heard it before.

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You've undoubtedly heard teaching and preaching on this particular subject.

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Because it's extremely important. But here's what you might not have first thing in your mind that you need to have in your mind.

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And this is why I'm going to emphasize a different aspect.

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It's not that we're not going to look at the whole text. We will. But I'm going to be emphasizing a different aspect of things.

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And that is verses 5 through 11 are a sermon illustration.

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They're a sermon illustration. A large, well, all of the misinterpretations and a large number of the true interpretations of the text ignore the fact the beginning in verse 5,

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Paul gives a sermon illustration. And that becomes central to the accurate interpretation of this particular text.

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So let's take a look at it. Let's remind ourselves of the words.

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Philippians chapter 2. Now, most translations will say, if therefore there is any encouragement in Christ, and that is a technically accurate translation, but it is not raising a doubt.

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You know, if there's any consolation in Christ, that's not what it's saying. It's really since there is.

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Since there is consolation in Christ, since there is an encouragement in Christ, consolation of love, since there is fellowship of the spirit, since there is affection and compassion.

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So since these are aspects of God's ministry amongst us in Christ through the gospel by the spirit, then

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Paul says to the Philippians, make my joy full, make my joy complete.

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How? Now Paul's writing to the church. All right, let's just read it first, then we'll dig into it.

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Sorry. Make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintain the same love, united in spirit, intent on one single purpose.

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Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than himself.

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Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

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And then I provided for you in the bulletin a translation of the rest of this that I published, oh,

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I think 21, 22, 23 years ago in the

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CRI journal. If you want to look that up and read a little bit more on this subject,

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I'll give you a little bit more information about that in a moment. But have this mindset, this attitude amongst you, plural amongst the church, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although eternally, that's in brackets, but I'll explain why in a moment, eternally existing in the very form of God, did not consider equality with God, something to be held on to.

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It can also be translated grasped. And I will spend a few minutes explaining how this is important, but it talks about equality with God.

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He doesn't consider it something to be held onto at all costs, but literally emptied himself or made himself of no reputation.

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Notice he made himself of no reputation by taking on the form of a servant or receiving form of a servant and by being made in the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto the point of death.

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And then this isn't the smoothest English in the world, but it is important. Even the cross death, the cross death because of this

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God, the father highly exalted him and granted to him or bestowed upon him the name, which is above every name in order that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of those who are in the heavens and under the earth.

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And, and, and there's this, it's really interesting how this is described in various places, but so you've got heaven, earth, under the earth, in other words, everywhere that's meant to take up all the created, all the created realm.

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So in the heavenly places upon earth, under the earth, and every tongue should confess what?

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Kurios Jesus Christos, Lord Jesus Christ. Every tongue is confessed.

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And then you, it's like you have quotation marks. Jesus Christ is Lord, or it's just simply the title, Lord Jesus Christ unto the glory of God, the father.

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Now let's make sure we have the context because what happens so often is because there's so much controversy about what is being said in verses five through 11, that verses one through four get blown right past.

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What I want to do today is to make sure we don't blow past it. I don't think at the key point of interpretation in verses five through 11, we can ignore the context, but that happens a lot.

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I've seen entire books that missed the point. But for us, what

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I think is important to recognize is that Paul is addressing the church of Philippi. And even though this letter is filled with rejoicing and happiness and joy,

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Paul also knows that every church is filled with a bunch of sinners who are being sanctified.

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And that means when we try to live together with one another, believe it or not, please don't be shocked, but there are going to be problems.

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Yep. If you haven't experienced it yet, you will, but sometimes you get your toes stepped on, your feelings hurt.

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If you've been in the church for more than a year, you know all about it. Since we're sinners, you put us into communion with one another, into a community, and we have to learn to be forgiving toward others.

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And I honestly believe in the first four verses of this chapter, the apostle gives us the perfect three -in -one oil.

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Anyone remember what three -in -one oil was? Do you all still use three -in -one oil? We used to have that little red can, you know, it was in the junk drawer.

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And everybody has a junk drawer, right? I mean, how could you ever do anything in a house without a junk drawer? It's not actually a junk drawer.

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It's not junk in there. It's the stuff you really need to get anything done in the house. It's all in that one drawer.

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And when I grew up, there was a little red can, about yay big, with a little pointy spout on it, three -in -one oil.

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It wasn't WD -40, that could like eat paint off of stuff. But it was what we would use on the chain, on the bike, and any time you had a squeak, you know, when the bathroom door started going in the middle of the night, you get the three -in -one oil out.

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And it would, I mean, that's just, in my day, that just fixed everything. Sort of like duct tape.

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Duct tape and three -in -one oil, that'll pretty much keep anything running. And I think that what we're told in these four verses is the three -in -one oil of successful Christian community.

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Here it is. It's laid out for us. It's not like the Spirit of God's been hiding this from us.

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Paul wants his joy to be made complete, and he may be rejoicing with the Philippians, but he's a realist.

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He understands there are going to be problems. And the danger is that over time, some people are going to start thinking they're more important than others.

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And so he says, by the encouragement of Christ, the consolation of love, the fellowship of the

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Holy Spirit, affection and compassion, by these things, utilizing these things, make the apostles' joy complete.

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Why? How? By being of the same mind. That does not mean that we all have to see everything in the world in the same way.

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But we do have to have the same goal. And we do have to have unity as to what the purpose, intention and goal of the church is.

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Now, we can learn from one another. We have different backgrounds. Some of you come from a completely un -Christian background.

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I can learn from you. But I was saved at an extremely young age, was raised in the church.

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And if you didn't have that experience, you can learn from me. God calls all sorts of different kinds of people.

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He doesn't call us to be cookie cutter cutouts of one another, but we are to be of the same mind.

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We are to have the same goals. No church can long survive when most of its members are pulling different directions on the rope.

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When we are unified in what direction we're going, it's amazing what we can accomplish. Being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

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There's the goal. There's the goal. And only by the spirit of God can a people be brought together from as number of diverse backgrounds and experiences as we have in this room right now.

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And yet, be united together with the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

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And it is the intention of the enemy of our souls to constantly distract us from this very accomplishment.

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He will dangle all sorts of things in front of our eyes to disrupt the unity and harmony of the body.

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It is amazing. I've seen it. I've been in the church for over half a century and I have seen what believers can do when they are united in one purpose, when they have one goal.

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But I know that when that happens, it's because they've put aside their own selfish interests.

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They're willing to serve the other members of the body so as to achieve that goal.

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And that's exactly what verses 3 and 4 tell us about. And verses 3 and 4 are what then prompt the sermon illustration of verses 5 through 11.

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That whole song, and it is a song, it's poetic.

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It's a poem. It's from the first Baptist church hymnal of the church of Jerusalem.

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Do I have to make a funny face to get a chuckle out of that? Or, oh really? Did they find that archaeologically speaking?

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No, but it is an early Christian hymn. And that does tell you that the early church sang about deep theology.

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Deep theology. And so what Paul does is he takes from a hymn, a section of the hymn that illustrates his point, and that's why it's a sermon illustration, that everyone would understand.

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What's the illustrating though? Verses 3 and 4. Verses 3 and 4. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit but with, it's a wonderful word, tapinasafrune.

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Doesn't that sound great? Tapinasafrune. Humility of mind.

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Humility of mind. Let each of you regard when another is more important than himself.

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There's the three -in -one oil. You want to see a church that stays together?

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You want to see a church that lasts and accomplishes something for the kingdom of God? Sermon illustration.

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I think I've told you this story before, but it fits here really well.

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That when I was 18, 19 years of age, I volunteered to run sound at the church

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I was a member of. That church had a 4 ,500 -seat auditorium, a full orchestra, and a 250 -verse choir.

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So that wasn't setting up a few microphones. That was getting there an hour and a half before service started.

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That was being there an hour after service ended, tearing all that stuff down. That was a lot of work.

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It was a commitment. And one thing I discovered in doing that work, sorry brother, but the music people were horrible.

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I mean, if you wanted to see where the problems in the church were going to come from, I'm not talking about here, because this is what would happen.

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The church was televised. It was on regularly on channel five,

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KPHO, channel five. Remember that? Remember when they had just a few channels? Yeah, me too. And it was live.

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And so if you got to sing on a Sunday morning with the orchestra, that was pretty big.

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And it did not take long before the very talented soloists knew they were very talented.

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I'm talking to another brother who knows exactly what I'm talking about. Matt's sitting back there smiling, because he'll back me up on this.

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Those of us who ran sound and ran camera, we had these little headsets, and we could talk to each other on the

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ISO channel. Matt's smiling back there. And there were certain people, there were just certain soloists.

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Now I did more of the sound stuff, and I got into the camera stuff. Matt was in the camera stuff for a long time.

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But you could just tell they wanted to make sure you even got their good side. And we had these speakers down front.

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They're called fullbacks. And they would always be the ones who would say,

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I need more me. I need to hear more of me in the fullbacks. And we're up in the sound booth going, yeah, but we don't want to hear more of you.

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And so I just reached down, and I just touched the fullback thing. I wouldn't move it. But how's that?

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Oh, great, great. Yeah, yeah. You learned how to play these people. You really, really did.

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You had to. Now, the reality was that there were some performance egos that developed as a result of how things were done there.

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And I can tell you, I knew of personal situations there. And I've learned of personal situations in the rest of my life and many, many other places where church splits and horrible situations.

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Where'd they come from? From the music department. And they primarily came because people started thinking that their gift was the most important gift, and everybody needed to hear them sing.

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Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceits, but with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than himself.

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It's hard to do when you're a super talented soloist. And we had some super, we had some

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Hollywood level, Broadway level singers. We really did.

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I got to sing with some of these people. Yeah, believe it or not, I even sang. In fact,

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Kelly and I, she's not here today. She just got back from California. But the night before, the Wednesday night before we got married on a

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Friday, Kelly and I sang a duet at the church. And I managed to track down the tape of that about 10 years ago.

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It still existed. So we've got that. No, I'm not playing it. But I knew a lot of these people.

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And I wish I could tell you that there was specific discussion from the music ministers about this text, but there wasn't.

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Now, I'm not picking on Elliot. I'm not picking on the music people. But you can see what

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I'm saying. When people stand up in front, it's so easy to miss this reality.

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That when you're up front here, you do want to disappear. It shouldn't be you. You may be leading the people of God, but it should be

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His truth. And if you're singing, you should be bringing the people of God to the throne of God. They shouldn't even be thinking about you.

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And so this humility of mind is defined here as not merely looking out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

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So what do we mean when we say that someone is humble?

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What's humility of mind? How is that seen? Once in a blue moon, you will see it in professional sports.

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But unfortunately, these days, it's the guys who are the exact opposite of humble, who are the exact opposite of illustrating humility of mind.

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They're the ones that get paid the biggest checks. I'm the greatest. I'm the best. No one can touch me.

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Once in a while, though, and they're the ones that I remember, you've got the guys that recognize, you know,

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I think about basketball players, man, I'm going to tell you something. You run up and down one of those courts, you're jumping up and down with other guys that are 220 pounds and seven feet tall.

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Do you know what the chances are? Are you coming down wrong and just ripping your knees up forever for the rest of your life and not being able to play ever again?

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I mean, if you're not thanking God after every single rebound, you're a fool.

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And yet so many of those guys, indestructible, never happened to me until it does. We recognize when people are not humble.

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But humility of mind, how do you see that? Well, it's right there.

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Don't look out for your own personal interests, but also the interests of others. Put others before yourself.

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We say, and it's a true statement, the ground is level at foot of the cross, right? There's no one who's more of a

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Christian than somebody else. We don't have priests who are sacramentally superior or anything like that, that are more like Jesus.

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The ground is level at the foot of the cross. We all have peace with God through the same imputed righteousness of the same

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Jesus Christ. None of us get to be better than somebody else in that way.

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So that means we all have equal rights, whatever that's supposed to mean.

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So to be humble is to recognize that you have equality with the others in the body.

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But what do you do? You lay your rights down to serve others, not to get something from God.

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He sees it, the promise. Look at Colossians, you serve Christ and everything you do, Christ will reward you.

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He sees, he should be the only one you're concerned about. In fact, if anybody else sees you doing it, that should concern you.

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Because Jesus said, Hey, if you do what you do to be seen of men, once they see it, you've got your reward. That's it. It's only gonna be in this life.

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So the idea is I have been redeemed and placed in the body.

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And so I'm going to show my love for my savior by serving him by serving my brothers and sisters.

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I'm not going to exalt myself over them. I'm not going to say you all need to be looking at me.

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Instead, I'm going to be sensitive to what their needs are. I'm not going to be constantly talking about my needs.

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I'm going to let the Holy spirit minister to my needs. And one of the ways he's going to do that is by using me to minister to others.

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And so I have certain rights, but I lay those rights aside. And I serve my brothers and my sisters as the mechanism whereby

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I, because Christ dwells in them. So I am serving Christ by serving my brothers and my sisters.

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And when that is a heartfelt pattern of life, it changes everything.

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It changes your contentment because I can guarantee you something folks. If you're going through life as a

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Christian, keeping track of how many times the pastor didn't greet you on a

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Sunday morning, how insensitive somebody was, how many times you were or not invited to this, that, or the other thing, rather than focusing upon your service to Christ and not taking into any consideration being offended, it changes everything.

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A church that is filled with people who have that chip on the shoulder is a church ready to explode and die.

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But a church filled with people who are striving only for contentment and service to Christ is a church that cannot be stopped.

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This is my experience. This is my experience. People who are cultivating the quality of Christian contentment are going to be people that are next to impossible to offend.

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Do people do and say things to me in the body that if I was looking to be offended,

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I could be offended? Of course. I was chattering as sometimes

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Summer and I do on Twitter. For some reason, a lot of people like to follow when Summer and I start talking on Twitter because we're sort of funny.

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And Summer said something, and I reminded her, I said, so who said there are two kinds of people in this kind of world, in this world, those who choose to be happy and those who do not?

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And her sort of sarcastic response was, yeah, like I don't know who that was. That was grandma.

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My mom said that over and over and over again. There are two kinds of people in this world, those who choose to be happy and those who choose not.

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Now, my mom did not have an easy life. She had a rough start. Her mom died just a relationship

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I have anybody on her side because they always have two relationships, a legal one and a blood one.

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And I can never figure out which one's which, but she had a, she had a rough upbringing and she had physical issues her entire life.

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But despite that, she said, you know what? I can either choose to be unhappy and just dwell upon these things, or I can choose to serve

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Christ and to accept from His hand that which

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He has deemed to be proper for me to experience. Changed everything. And it changes everything.

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And so what's my point here? You've probably already gotten it, but I just want to make sure you remember it. What Paul is exhorting the church at Philippi to is to be unified and have the same heart and mind and love.

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And the only way to do that is to serve others and seek your contentment in the approval of God, not in the approval of others.

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And when all you want to do is serve, you are not going to be offended because you're not going to be running around looking for reasons to be offended by everyone around you.

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One of the greatest signs of maturity is when we recognize that we control what will offend us.

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And when you just simply choose, I am much more concerned about investing my time and my effort to be pleasing in the sight of my

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Lord, changes everything. What joy and contentment can come from that.

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So if you are exhorting, delivering an exhortation, humility of mind,

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Philippians, who are you going to use as your illustration? That's what verses 5 through 11 are all about.

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You want to see humility of mind? Well, you can also find someone moving fast.

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Like I said, family integrated church. We do not have an electronic fence.

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So you want an illustration of what humility of mind looks like?

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Paul says, look to Jesus. Look to Jesus. Have this mindset.

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Think this way amongst yourselves. You want to see how this looks? You want to see oneness of purpose?

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Look at the Father, Son, and Spirit. Oneness of purpose, perfect accomplishment.

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That's why you're redeemed, is because Father, Son, and Spirit have absolutely perfect unity with one another. If there was any disagreement between Father, Son, and Spirit and the accomplishment of salvation, we would not be saved.

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Perfect agreement. And then in Jesus, the illustration of absolute humility of mind.

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Let's see how it works. Have this mind in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who though eternally existing in the form of God, the

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Greek participle there is in present tense. And so it's not pointing to a point in time where he began to have this existence.

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That's why I put the term eternal in there. He is eternally existing in the very morphe theou.

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Morphe, we use the term metamorphosis, a changing of shape. The morphe theou, it's a term that refers to what identifies something by its shape.

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And it's used in verse six. It's also used in verse seven when it says he took on the form of a servant or a slave.

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That's morphe as well. And so if he was truly a servant or a slave, then he was truly in the form of God.

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So existing in that form of God, and here is the key interpretive issue between non -orthodoxy and orthodoxy.

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And then within orthodoxy, this is the key interpretive issue as to how you're going to understand this text.

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There are some both outside of and inside orthodoxy that would say that what is being said here is that Jesus, even though he was equal with the father in the sense of existing in the form of God, did not try to become equal with the father by grasping at an improper equality with the father.

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So there are people today, and this is relevant to if you've been following all the eternal subordination of the son, egalitarian, complementarian stuff going on, and there's a lot of stuff going on within evangelicalism, especially over the past about four years.

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What's been going on for long before that? If you follow all of that, then you know that there are orthodox believers who believe in the trinity and the deity of Christ who would say that what this text is saying is that Jesus existed in the form of God, but did not try to take the same station as the father, but instead became flesh.

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The unorthodox say existing in the form of God just meant he existed in a spiritual state, like an angel, and did not try to become equal with God the father.

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That would be their interpretation. Jehovah's Witnesses, people like that. Then you have verse 7, which says, "...but

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emptied himself," and that term to empty is kenao. You may have heard of kenotic theory, or the kenosis theory, the idea of the emptying.

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Let me just mention it, let me just mention right here, let me pause for a second. I wrote an entire,

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I mentioned earlier, the article that I wrote for the CRI Journal. If you go to equip .org, do a search for the Carmen Christie, it'll pop up.

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It's still there if you want a more in -depth, written discussion of the

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Carmen Christie and the various views of people. I interacted with some of these views to a little bit more depth in that article than I will have time to today.

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So you can find that at equip .org. It's the Christian Research Journal, like I said, somewhere in the late 90s.

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Yeah, I think it was 96, 97, because I, yeah, right around that time period, it still should still be online.

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But this term, kenao, to empty, is never used by Paul in literal sense.

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When he talks about his labor becoming empty amongst certain people, he's not talking about it spraying a leak.

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He always uses it metaphorically. He's always referring to the idea of, of becoming either useless, my labor amongst you,

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I don't want to become useless. Or in this sense, he made himself of no reputation. But notice what it says.

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This is what's often missed by people. He made himself, even if you translate literally, he emptied himself.

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Himself is a reflexive pronoun. This is something Jesus did. This is a self act by Jesus.

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This was not something done to him from outside. Notice that in this text,

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Jesus not only has given consideration verse six, he did not consider equality with God, something to be held onto.

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So this means that prior to the incarnation, Jesus is a person giving consideration and verse seven, he is the one who empties himself.

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He is the one who makes himself in the reputation. Why am I emphasizing that? Because there are people in our, in our culture called oneness

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Pentecostals, and they do not believe in the Trinity. And they do not believe that the son eternally existed.

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And they do not believe there are three persons that share the one being that is God. And so this is one of the key texts that you would go to John one, one, and John 17, five, or the other two to refute the teaching of oneness

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Pentecostals. All right. So I'm emphasizing that so we can, you can get, get hold of that, but he emptied himself.

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And then in my translation, I said, by now there is no word by, but I think what you see here is this is the mechanism by which

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Jesus humbled himself. And what's interesting is it's not by getting rid of stuff.

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It's by taking stuff on, but what is that stuff? Here is the amazing assertion that the one who created all things then took on a human nature.

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He didn't cease to be God. He didn't cease to be equal with the father, but he does take on a human nature.

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He takes on the form of a servant. He is made in the likeness of men.

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This is the incarnation. Now there are some, there are some, um, even amongst, especially

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Lutherans who have the odd view that what's in view here is not the incarnation at all.

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It's Jesus's ministry to the disciples on the night of his betrayal. When he washed their feet, I get it.

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I guess I don't have time to go into the full explication of this, especially because amongst

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Lutherans, this involves explaining to you what the ubiquity of the body of Christ means, which is a Lutheran concept that I'm not, not going to go into right now.

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It would take us too far afield, but it's seems very obvious to me that what you do have here is actually a description of the incarnation.

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And it means he took the form of a doulos, a servant, a slave, and was made in the likeness of men and hence being found in the likeness of men.

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Verse eight begins with the very same verb and the very same word group that is used up in verse three about humility of mind.

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He humbled, and then notice again, reflexive pronoun. He humbled himself, not was humbled.

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He humbled himself. He humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even the cross death.

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Now we don't speak that way, but maybe we should, because that's pretty much what's expressed in the original language.

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And what he's saying is it's one thing to become obedient to the point of death. It's another thing to die upon a cross because that was the single worst way to be executed.

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It was considered absolutely reprehensible. It was so bad that a Roman citizen could not be crucified.

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Only non -Romans and slaves could be crucified because it was so humiliating and so painful and so slow.

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And so when it says even the death of the cross, it's emphasizing the horrific humiliation of that act.

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But the point is there is a humility. He humbled himself.

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He humbled himself. So here you have the one who created the entire universe according to Colossians chapter one and John chapter one and Hebrews chapter one.

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He who created the entire universe takes on human flesh, and then he is obedient.

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Perfect unity and harmony between the father and the son in the accomplishment of human redemption.

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He is obedient, but he is also the highest example of humility.

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And this is where the context, I think, determines the interpretation.

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I'll tell you very quickly the story of some Jehovah's Witnesses that I met with.

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They are called pioneer ministers. Pioneer ministers spend at least 30 hours a week going door to door. That was rough back then.

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I can't imagine what it's like now. I wonder how many Jehovah's Witnesses don't even bother ringing a ring doorbell.

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I'm not going to talk to this thing. That's past three houses. All I've got is that thing. Somebody saying, nope, not interested, get out of here.

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Or what would even be worse is they rang my doorbell, you know, and I'm in like South Africa.

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Someone's at my front door. Okay. All right. Oh, Jehovah's Witnesses. Hi. Yeah. I'd love to come to the door right now, but hey, have you read

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Hebrews one recently? Could we look at that real quick? And they're just running down the street. No, not. I have to try it sometime.

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Maybe it's sort of fun. They haven't, they haven't rung my doorbell recently, but I was talking to some Jehovah's Witnesses.

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We were talking about this text and I was trying to I was trying to help them to understand what this text was about.

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And so I said, well, let me see if I can, if I can explain this to you. If Jesus is the example of humility, then what would be humility?

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This was, this was years ago, back when these names were better known than now, I'd have to come up with different names today.

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But I said, it would be like, you're at the, you've got the last three seconds of the

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NBA finals game seven. And the Chicago Bulls are down by a point.

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And you've got Michael Jordan on the floor. Any of you remember Michael Jordan? Those of us from my years are still going goat.

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But anyway, um, got Michael Jordan. And then the water boy for the

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Bulls runs into the huddle and says, send me in coach. I'll take the shot.

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Would you consider that water boy to be acting in humility of mind in seeking to take that shot rather than Michael Jordan?

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He's obviously saying he's better. Because they see what you're telling me,

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Mr. And Mrs. Jehovah's witness is that what this text is saying is that Jesus was

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Michael, the archangel who was created by God. And Michael, the archangel didn't try to become equal to the one who made him.

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Is that humility of mind, or is that simply not committing blasphemy? That's not humility of mind at all, because there is no equality.

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That's just not committing blasphemy. And so I pointed to the text and said, you want to see humility eternally existing in the form of God, possessing equality with God, the father, but not considering it something to be held onto at all costs, but he lays it aside in service to others so as to bring about their redemption through his death on the cross.

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And I remember one of the two ladies was sitting there and she had her new world translation on her lap and she's looking at it and she got it.

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And she literally sat back like her Bible had become a snake in her lap because she saw it.

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Now she couldn't let her friend know she saw it, but she saw it. And that's the wonderful thing about showing

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Jehovah's witnesses something out of their own Bible, because they take it with them. I've never had a

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Jehovah's witness leave their Bible behind just because I had shown them something in it that they were uncomfortable with. Give them a tract and show it to them in their

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Bible. They're going to take it with them. And who knows what the Lord may do in their heart and their mind somewhere down the way.

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So the point in the text that determines the proper interpretation is if this is a sermon illustration and you're illustrating humility of mind, it wouldn't work if you don't interpret the illustration in such a way that it actually is showing true humility in the person of Jesus.

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And that's what's often missed. So what's the result of this? Jesus becomes obedient to the point of death.

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Therefore God, the Father, is specifically who's in mind here, highly exalted him and gave to him the name which is above every name.

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Now, a lot of people want to, well, what about the name Jehovah, the name Jesus? Well, Jesus means

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Jehovah is salvation, the salvation of Jehovah. And certainly the name for which

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Christians suffered in the book of Acts was the name of Jesus. And it specifically says at the name of Jesus.

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So if Jesus isn't Jehovah in human flesh, you've got a contradiction in the Bible, because certainly

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Jehovah's name is highly exalted. But at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow in heaven and earth and under the earth, and every tongue can confess.

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And I think you all know, and hopefully your translations, yes, I noticed in the

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New American Standard here, the 1977 New American Standard, every knee should bow is in all caps.

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So maybe you have italics in your version or whatever else it might be. This is a quotation from Isaiah 45, 23.

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And in Isaiah 45, 23, Jehovah says, Yahweh says, that to him every knee will bow and every tongue will swear allegiance.

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Paul knows that. The early church knew that. Have you ever thought about the song himself?

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Because if this is one of the hymns of the early church, it is actually possible that this was sung before Paul's conversion.

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That would be primitive. That would be early. That'd be apostolic. And they're quoting from the

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Old Testament. Where would they have gotten that idea? Hmm. Book of Luke, after the resurrection, what does

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Jesus do? He opens their mind to understand from Moses through all the prophets, all testified of Jesus.

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Actually, this is one of those passages that Jesus opened up to them. And now it's been included in the song.

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And so bowing at the name of Jesus and confessing him to be

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Kurios, the very word which is used to render the name Yahweh in the Old Testament is connected with the fulfillment of Isaiah 45, 23.

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Every tongue will confess Kurios Jesus Christos. And let me tell you something, folks, that was a politically explosive thing.

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It's explosive thing to say. It was politically explosive.

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Why? Well, because you lived on the Roman empire.

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There was one thing that held the Roman empire together. Kaiser Kurios, Caesar is

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Lord. Kaiser Kurios. That's how you showed your fidelity, your faithfulness, your allegiance to Rome.

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Eventually it was codified. You had to take a little pinch of incense, put it on the altar and it would flame up and you'd smell the sweet smell.

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And when you put the incense upon the altar, you know what you said? Kaiser Kurios. And what does

01:00:07

Paul tell the Philippians? Every knee will bow. That includes

01:00:13

Caesar. And every tongue will confess Jesus Kurios.

01:00:21

Jesus is Lord. That was explosive. That led to imprisonment.

01:00:31

That led Nero to take Christians and wrap them in animal skins, cover them with pitch, tie them to stakes and burn them to illuminate his garden parties at night.

01:00:46

So that his guests would walk amongst the moans and agony of the dying

01:00:55

Christians Christians whose body parts would then fall off amongst the guests.

01:01:00

Yeah. And that was just the beginning. Then they were thrown into the

01:01:05

Roman Colosseum and torn to bits by animals to the rejoicing of the crowds.

01:01:15

Cyprian, whom we'll be hearing from in our voices section in the bulletin before long.

01:01:21

Cyprian had to write a letter to the Christians who were imprisoned in the mines.

01:01:28

And if you think mine safety is bad today, try around 250 AD. Imprisoned in the mines.

01:01:37

Digging in the darkness. He had to write to them about how honored they should be to have the chains upon their feet because they chained

01:01:50

Jesus's hands. The wooden stocks because they nailed him to a tree. The persecution that would come from saying

01:01:58

Jesus is Lord. We may well face persecution in our lives for saying

01:02:08

Jesus is Lord. But we will not be the first. It would help if we know that we're not the first.

01:02:17

We can take a lot of encouragement from realizing that we are not the first. But as always, such beautiful balance in Scripture.

01:02:29

I love how the Scriptures are so balanced because you see every tongue will confess saying,

01:02:41

Lord Jesus Christ. And if it just stopped there, well, what about the

01:02:51

Father who highly exalted him? What about the Father who is the fount of all this grace and this mercy?

01:02:59

Ephesians chapter 1. But it doesn't stop there. It's the glory of God the Father. Just as in John chapter 5.

01:03:09

The Son can do nothing of himself, but you have to honor the Son even as you honor the Father. Perfect unity, equality.

01:03:17

He is making himself equal with God. Yep, he was. But there is perfect unity that exists between Father and Son.

01:03:29

So much so that when you set, you cry out, Lord Jesus Christ.

01:03:36

You cannot do so, but to the glory of God the Father. You aren't separating him off over here someplace and the

01:03:45

Father over here. No. If you've read Calvin at all, you know that he very much appreciated a quote.

01:03:55

I believe it was from Gregory Nazianzus. It could have been Gregory of Nyssa. I'd have to look it up, but it's in the book on the

01:04:03

Trinity. It was a Gregory. And he made the statement,

01:04:10

I cannot contemplate any one of the three without being drawn back to the one.

01:04:17

And I cannot contemplate the one without seeing the glory of the three. And if you allow the

01:04:22

New Testament to be the New Testament, that will be your experience as well. That will be your experience as well.

01:04:32

Do we believe what verse 11 says? Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

01:04:41

Lord. Is that just simply something way down the road?

01:04:47

Or is that something we want to, we pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. What's thy will?

01:04:53

That all tongues say that Jesus Christ is Lord. We want to make this known to every creature.

01:05:01

Trusting that the Holy Spirit of God will make that truth to come alive in the hearts and minds of his elect people. There are some people,

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I'll close with this. There are some people, and by the way, next week, we're going to continue in chapter two with someone else preaching.

01:05:24

And you'll notice Paul goes right back to where he was. The illustration is finished.

01:05:32

He's quoted the hymn. Therefore, right back to speaking to the church at Philippi.

01:05:40

This is how you should live. That's how you can see this is just all one long, beautiful, incredible sermon illustration.

01:05:50

And he picks right back up with his important exhortations to the church in verse 12.

01:05:59

But in these words, there are some people who will recognize that Islam teaches that the

01:06:22

Islamic faith will eventually be established all over the world. Only Muslims go to heaven.

01:06:33

Christians and Jews specifically do not in what's called the Hadith, the sayings and teachings of Muhammad and his companions.

01:06:43

And there are a lot of people who say, I just think it's terrible that Islam teaches that eventually all people will bow to Allah.

01:06:59

And a lot of Christians will say, isn't that terrible? We should kick these people right out of the country. And I just go, well,

01:07:11

I certainly don't believe that Muhammad was right. And he comes after Christ.

01:07:16

He didn't understand Christ. And it has a completely different gospel. And we got to deal with all those things. But as a

01:07:22

Christian, do you really want to be saying that there's something wrong and saying that eventually everyone's going to acknowledge the truth?

01:07:33

Because you and I believe that. You and I believe that every knee will bow.

01:07:38

Every tongue will confess. Now, what brings about that revelation and what brings about today that confession of the part of an individual is completely different, completely different.

01:07:54

And that's the key. You see, the problem is a lot of Christians don't have a good enough theology of what the gospel is to know how to object to when someone doesn't get the gospel right.

01:08:06

Why does anyone say Jesus is Lord? Why does anyone say that Allah is

01:08:12

God? Well, a lot of people do it because they've got a gun stuck to their head. That's not how you say

01:08:18

Jesus is Lord. And when the Inquisition did that, it was wrong and produced false converts because they weren't really converts.

01:08:28

You cannot force that. But God, by raising people from spiritual death and making them new creatures, isn't forcing that any more than saying that when

01:08:43

Jesus said, Lazarus, come forth, that Jesus forced him to come alive.

01:08:50

The term force is meant to communicate something as if Lazarus lying in there could go, no, thank you.

01:08:58

I like it in here. Really cool. That's absurd. Regeneration is the power of God bringing spiritual life to those who are spiritually dead.

01:09:11

There is no concept even close to that within Islam.

01:09:17

None. They don't have a theology of a God who would get his hands that dirty dealing with mankind.

01:09:24

And they don't have a theology of man to where he's dead in sin in the first place. So there's no parallel.

01:09:33

But we need to be careful. We do believe that a day is coming when every single person who has drawn a breath on this planet is going to acknowledge.

01:09:48

Yes, God has done right. And Jesus is Lord. The glory is we get to do it now to our eternal benefit.

01:10:01

That's only by his grace. That's only by his mercy. It's not because you and I are smarter or more insightful than anyone else.

01:10:08

If you're sitting here and you rejoice to say Jesus is Lord. It's all of grace always will be all of grace.

01:10:19

Let's thank him for that grace. Our heavenly father, we do thank you. First of all, for the preservation of your word.

01:10:29

We thank you that that letter that was written by Paul so long ago and sent the church of Philippi that that letter was copied over and over and over again.

01:10:45

And those words have come down to us in beauty and in power.

01:10:52

It was your intention that we would sit here this day in English, praising your name for words that you caused to be written almost two millennia ago.

01:11:09

We thank you for drawing our hearts out in obedience to those words. We thank you for what those words communicate to us.

01:11:18

And now, Lord, as we prepare to live this week in service to Christ, may we do so as even better servants and with confidence, knowing someday every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.

01:11:33

Till then, Father, I pray for this church that you will give us the same mind, the same spirit, the same goal.

01:11:41

Unite us together and teach us how to walk in humility of mind toward one another.

01:11:49

May we not look to our own things. May we look to the things of others. May we lay aside our own rights.

01:11:56

May we serve others. May we be content in what you've given to us. May we not take offense at our brothers and sisters.

01:12:06

May we be filled with mercy and forgiveness. Oh God, protect us from those who would seek to divide us.

01:12:19

We thank you for your spirit who's been with us at this time. We pray these things in Christ's name.