Sermon Transcript

Well, how are we doing Harvest? My name is Ben Hurt, and I have the privilege of being one of the pastors here. I’m so glad that you came. We would like to know who’s here, and we’d also like to know, how can we pray for you? You can help us know that by filling out the Friendship Register, that is located on the far left hand side of your row. So, if you’re sitting on the far left hand side, you can get that started.

Aren’t you grateful for Micah and the worship team? You know, the thing I appreciate most about Micah is not his voice, although God has surely gifted him; it’s not how great the band sounds. It’s the fact that every week we “go vertical.” I’m convinced that Micah loves the Lord and the thing that he cares most about is God’s glory. Amen?

Well, I’ve missed Trent—we’ve all missed Trent, right? But hasn’t he done a great job of filling the pulpit with guys who love the Lord and are bringing us strong messages for us to hear? I’ve been very encouraged! He’s here today, but we’re still giving him another week off, so keep praying for him as seeks the Lord and prays for what is next for us, for Harvest.

Today, we are going to be looking at the book of Philippians, so open your Bible to Philippians chapter 2. I think it’s clear for all of us, as we look at the world around us, there’s disunity everywhere, right? This military coup that happened in Turkey, and all the people in the Middle East who are fleeing away for their lives.

And not only around the world, but also here in our own country. Over the last several weeks, it’s just very clear that racism is still a major issue in our country. Police officers are endangered by protecting the very ones who are killing them. The marriages that are broken, the divorce that is running rampant in our country, the downfall of the family. Has there ever been more disunity in the political realm? Not in my lifetime. So disunity is everywhere, but one place we cannot afford to lose unity is in the church.

I believe God established the church to be the mouthpiece of Christ—for us to go forth and proclaim the good news of Jesus—and we need to be unified. So, this morning, I want to take us to look at a call to unity. So follow along as I read Philippians 2:1-11: “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 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 emptied himself, by 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. 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 Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” [ESV]

So, here’s the big idea that I want to communicate today:

 

Big Idea: Unity happens when we allow the humility of Christ to humble us.

 

If we’re going to stay unified as a church, we need to look at the humility of Christ and let it humble us. So, before we get into the passage this morning, I think it would be helpful to look at the background of Philippians, to have a better understanding of what we’re going at today.

Philippians was written by Paul. Paul was in prison because of the fact that he was proclaiming the gospel. It was written to a Roman colony at Philippi. This was a young church, but a very strong church, and we see, early on, Paul’s deep affection for the believers there. It’s clear that God is working in the life of that church.

Nonetheless, there is concern for unity. One of the things that is threatening unity is fear – as you see Paul wanting to encourage the Philippians who are watching Paul in prison, and they’re afraid. Even the fact that they’re befriending Paul and going to visit him, they’re putting themselves in danger of people coming and trashing their homes, if they identify with Paul. If fear gets in the way, Paul knows that unity is going to be broken. So, we need a call to unity.

As we look at verse 1, Paul gives us reason to be unified: reason for unity. So, go ahead and look at verse 1 again, and we see four things that will motivate us to pursue unity: “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy…”

First off, you see that word “so.” He’s referring back to Philippians 1:27, which says this: “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel…” Paul is concerned, not only with their own personal quality of relationship with God, but he’s concerned with, how are they living that out in community? How are they being unified because of that fact?

So, when look at that statement of, “If these things are true…” it’s not like the if/then statement like we give our kids: “If you eat all of your dinner, then you can have dessert.” Right? The “then” part is dependent on whether or not the first part happens. No, he’s saying these things as if they are true, because he knows for every believer—we’ve experienced these four things.

As we go through these, I want you to recount, even in your own life, how you’ve experienced these, if you are a believer in Christ. The first one we see there: “If there is any encouragement in Christ…” We’ve all experienced that, right? If we are believers in Christ.

Many of you are here because of the fact that somebody invited you here. Somebody shared the good news of Jesus and you responded in faith. We received that encouragement from Christ. In fact, the Greek word for “encouragement” is very similar to the Greek word for “Holy Spirit.” The Spirit comes alongside and encourages us. When we’re down, we go to our brothers and sisters and we’re encouraged.

            “…Any comfort from love…” I don’t know about you guys, but when I look at my life in light of Christ, I’m just unlovable without Him; there’s just nothing to be impressed with. If you were to put my life up on the screen, even from this last week, I would be embarrassed. But God came down in mercy and rescued us despite the fact that we’re sinful. We’ve received comfort from love, because God looks down and says, “It’s not because of your good works that I saved you, it’s because of my mercy for you.” That comforts us.

“…Any participation in the Spirit…” Have you had times where you’re just really struggling, you’re sharing a burden with someone, and they have the perfect thing to say? They pull up the Scripture that just hits your heart right where you’re at. Or, you come to worship and you’re struggling and the lyrics that you’re singing, the songs that you’re singing, are exactly what you need?

I’m reminded a time when we were singing How Firm a Foundation, and were on that verse: “When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, my grace all-sufficient shall be thy supply; The flames shall not hurt thee; I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.” And when we were singing, this particular time, there were a lot of trials in my life, but I began to weep as I began to see the fact that God had used those trials and those hard times in my life to lead me to worship. I was seeing Him refining me, to make me like Himself. We’ve received “participation in the Spirit.”

I could name countless times where I’ve grabbed a devotional—you know, the ones that you haven’t read for six months—and you open it, and the day that you read it, it hits you in a way that you can only point to the Spirit and say, “That was God who led me there!” You see, as we look at these things, it’s really a call to worship, to recall all the ways that God has blessed your life. Paul wants their affections to be stirred, in order to lead them to unity.

The last one there, “affection and sympathy…” So, it’s an interesting picture here, because actually the Greek word for affection is “bowels.” So, when you go to bed tonight, you can lean over and say to your spouse, “I love you from the bottom of my bowels!” What’s he getting after there? He’s getting after the fact that, deep down inside, there are these affections for God that come up in light of His mercy.

We’ve all experienced that as Christians, deep down inside, right? I shared about that hymn that really struck me. Even this morning – I’ve been through the worship two times now, and even the third time, once again, I’m just affected by God’s great love for me. I do want Him to lead me to the end of myself, because there is so much greater in God. So, you see, we have great motive to pursue unity with one another.

But Paul also gives us one more. Take a look there in verse 2. This is the fifth thing that he gives us: “complete my joy.”  Listen, it’s a legit goal to want to bless your leader; it’s a legit goal to pursue that. Take a look at these Scriptures: 1 Thessalonians 5:12 and 13: “We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves.”

Hebrews 13:17 says this, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.” Can I just take a minute to thank you? You guys are an example of this verse! In essence, I feel like I’m “preaching to the choir” right now, because I do have joy serving this church. It is not a burden to come in and serve you guys. So, thank you for your faithfulness.

I’m convinced that our pastors—each of them—would come up and would say the same thing to you. So, thank you for the joy you give us as we serve you. It’s a legit goal to do that. Listen, we love and we delight when we hear of individual lives that are being affected by the gospel, lives that are changing. But do you know what brings us all the more joy? It’s when we see that being lived out in community, when we see unity happen; it’s a whole new level of joy that we experience, when we see that.

It’s why I’m so grateful to be the small group pastor here. I can name story after story of the fact that we’re oftentimes the fifth, sixth, seventh people to hear about when somebody’s in the hospital. And by the time we arrive on the scene, the small group is already there surrounding. Within the last year or so, there was a man in this church who is in Lonnie and Debbie Mullins’ small group—and he had a heart attack at work.

By the time we got there they, as well as the rest of the group, had surrounded them and loved them and were there on the scene. Almost it was the fact of, “Hey, we’re glad you’re here, but we’ve got this!” There’s what? Seven of us, now, on staff? There’s no way we could reach fifteen-hundred people—so thank you! Thank you for the example that you are, for the joy that you are. Let the fact that it’s going to bless us be a motive that will lead you to unity. It’s very clear here: Paul knows these things are true, and he wants to remind them—he wants to motivate them in order to be in unity. If we’re going to grow the kingdom of God, we need to be unified.

So, what exactly does unity look like? Let’s look at the results of unity in Philippians 2:2: “Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” We see four ways unity looks like. The first thing we see there is “having the same mind.” What do we do with our mind? We think. What kind of things do we think about? Do we think about Notre Dame? That’s a good thing to be united about, right? Kidding! Kidding!

Paul tells us, actually, right in this book—Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” That’s why God gave us this book. We don’t have to come up with things in which to be unified. He wants us to be unified in what His Word says. Do you believe—are you convinced—that this is more costly than gold; this is sweeter than honey? He’s given us His Word to dive into together, to wrestle through it. What does this say to us, how can we grow together through this? This unites us; we become united in what God’s Word says.

It’s the reason why we have a mission statement; it’s the reason why we have a doctrinal statement. We look at the Scriptures and say, “These things are non-negotiable. We’re not bending on these things. This is going to help drive what we do here.” It’s why we have membership. Do you think we have membership in order to boost up our numbers, so we can say, “Hah! Look how many members we have!” No! It’s a way for us to bind together and say, “We are together. We are linking arms, and we are going hand-in-hand, walking together in unity.”

If you have some serious bones to deal with the Scriptures and the things that we hold to—you don’t believe the same way we do—let me just encourage you to find a place where you can be united to believers who are like-minded, because we are after the same thing. We are of one mind.

The second thing there—we are called to have “the same love.” When we are thinking the same things, when God’s Word is central in our life, doesn’t love kind of flow from that? If we’re excited, we come together and we’re worshipping God together. We’re unified; we’re loving each other. We have the same love, and love flows out of thinking the same things. This is not about preference or attraction, right? We don’t pick our love based on, “You know, I like you, I just like hanging out with you; you’re a lot of fun. You. Not so much, so I don’t really love you—but I love this guy! Work on you and I’ll love you later!” No! Right? It’s a choice of the will. We choose to love one another. It’s why so many marriages fall apart, because they “fall out of love.” It’s a choice.

Are we going to sin against each other? Yeah, we will. Sadly, if it hasn’t happened already, I’m sure it might happen where you’re going to be offended by one of the pastors on staff. We don’t like that, but what we do is say, “We’re going to be intentional; we’re not going to let inconsequential differences divide us. We’re going to come together and have the same love, and choose to love each other, because we know when we look at Christ we’re humbled by Him, and beautified through that. We’re to be “of one [full] accord,” one soul. This is to live in harmony with fellow believers.

How many of you guys are Olympic fans? Are you guys excited about the Olympics coming up, the beginning of August? Our family loves it! In fact, the U.S trials were on a few weeks ago and we were watching. They had diving and track. My eye caught something very interesting. Have you ever seen synchronized diving?

First of all, I find it amazing that one person can jump and do a bunch of flips and then go vertical into the water. That blows my mind! I can’t even jump straight up and go straight in and make it look good. Hah! So, to do that with somebody else next to you, side-by-side, jumping and doing that—that’s amazing! Isn’t that a great picture of the church, and what we’re called to do?

Or, have you ever seen synchronized swimming? That’s a whole new deal. You’ve got music playing, you’ve got multiple people under the water—there’s no way they can hear the music—and somehow they stay in complete unison.

Now, tell me something. Does that happen after the first practice – the first time they do it? It takes hours and hours and hours of practice, right? Just like, if we’re going to grow and be unified, it’s not just going to take one time together as a small group or coming together on one Sunday out of the month. When we come together, we are in each other’s lives; we’re building up one another. Why? Because we’re called to be of one accord, chasing after the same thing.

It reminds me of my son, playing baseball. He’s seven years old. Have you guys ever watched seven-year-olds play baseball? The catcher’s equipment is twice the size as they are. They never catch the ball. If you’ve watched baseball, you know you’ve got the pitcher. Well, this is a pitching machine, so you know a pitching machine goes straight, right? Always straightway. You watch the catchers, and they have no idea what’s going on.

On our team, we had this one kid, when he would catch—say the ball would come right this way—the catcher would literally stand two steps to the left, and it would go right by him. He’d get it, he’d throw it back, he’d go stand back in the same place—the ball goes right there. So, it’s very entertaining to watch!

But, it’s also fun to watch them learn the game. I don’t know if you know baseball, but it’s a complicated sport. There are so many rules that go on. One thing is true at this time, but then the next play it’s not true anymore. There’s just so much to understand. And to watch my son learn the game, and to watch the guys on the team come together, they were a completely different team at the beginning of the season than they were at the end. In fact, my son’s team made it all the way to the championship.

There were two problems they faced, though. First of all, the tournament was double-elimination, so you lose two games and you’re out. And they had already lost a game, so they had to fight through the loser’s bracket to come to the championship series. The other problem was, the team they were playing was undefeated, so they had to beat them twice. But this team hadn’t lost all year. They were destroying everybody! They beat us by fifteen runs when we played them in the regular season. It was your classic “David vs. Goliath.”

I was just thinking, “You know what, they had a good season, they made it this far. There’s just absolutely no way they’re going to defeat this team.” But wouldn’t you know, the first game they came together and they ended up winning! Whoa! Nonetheless, I was like, “They’re too good.” I mean, these kids threw better than me—they hit the ball farther than I could hit it. I was like, “Okay, they’re going to lose this last game.” But, it was sad to see the other team just kind of unravel. The coaches were yelling at the kids, and the kids were crying. This was the first game this team had lost all year! As you can imagine, my son’s team ended up winning that. Isn’t that a picture of the church? They came together, the same goal. That’s a picture of unity. We’re going after the same thing, to win.

We’re going to encourage each other when we’re down, right? If you make an error, we’re going to encourage each other. It was fun to watch them encourage each other. If they struck out, “good try!” They were coming together. But, would it work if the guy in the outfield decided—when the ball was hit to him—he wanted to play some soccer? So he starts kicking the ball around. Or, the first baseman, when they try to throw out at first, he takes his glove and starts playing tennis and just bats that ball around? Are they going to get anywhere? No, but they stayed focused, they were unified, they were together, they knew what they wanted to achieve. And I think that’s such a great picture of the church.

So, Paul has talked about reasons for unity. These should motivate us to be unified. He’s given us a picture of what it looks like. But we really haven’t asked the most important question, have we? “How? How do we become unified?” So, let’s look at the road to unity—and this starts in verse 3: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”

First of all, it starts with humbling ourselves. What does humility look like? Is it beating myself up and just telling you how pathetic I am, and I can’t do anything right? Is that humility? No, humility isn’t thinking less of yourselves. Rather, humility is thinking of yourselves less. Don’t spend so much time thinking about yourselves. It’s not about bashing yourselves and telling other people how pathetic you are—it’s just about, don’t think of yourselves.

So, I coined this phrase when I got out of high school, in the church I was in, into the college group. There was like nobody in college, but several just out of college. So, I was the young guy. I coined the phrase with them, “I’m the best at being humble.” But, I’m going to share a story with you that’s going to make it very obvious that I’m not “the best at being humble,” as if you needed to be convinced of that!

My wife and I have been blessed with five kids. My oldest daughter, Reese, she’s ten. I can remember the day that she was born—I can remember the excitement that led up to that day – your first child! Of course, there are nerves and excitement. In fact, I was more nervous than my wife, because the doctor asked me if I was okay—not my wife. But, nevertheless, Reese came into the world.

I don’t know about you guys, but I loved that time in the hospital! Just a couple days of just the three of us. I’m not thinking about work, I have no other distractions. I mean, I love my four other kids the same, but it’s different, right? It’s just special! And it was such a sweet time of us just growing to love that baby.

So, it was somewhat bittersweet to go home. But as we got in the car, driving, it was just a new excitement of, “We’re starting our life together!” We were going to our home, where we painted the baby’s room—her crib was all set to go, and we were just ready to welcome that baby into our home. I remember driving up and parking, and getting out and going in from the car, I’m just in awe, like, “Man, what an amazing thing that we have this baby to welcome home!”

But then, I get a phone call—and it’s my wife, whom I had left out in the car with our baby! So, selfish ambition and conceit? It’s about being about your own agenda. I was so consumed with my joy, my happiness in the Lord and what He had done for me, that I left the wife, who had just given birth to a baby, and the baby out in the car. So insensitive of me. So selfish, so not humble—right?

Sadly, there are so many other ways I could express my pride. But, what was I missing? I wasn’t considering them more significant than myself, in humility. I would have thought of helping my wife in. She just had a baby! Guys, we have no understanding what that’s like! I’m glad! But, we’ve got to have compassion. I should have been all over that—helping her in, taking the baby in. But I was consumed with myself, my own agenda; I wanted to do my thing, I wanted to think, “How does this affect me?” I was basking in that glory, rather than looking to serve my family. We’re called to humble ourselves.

Look at verse 4: “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” See, Paul knows that we’re going to be looking out for our own interests—and to a certain extent, that’s not wrong. But what he wants us to do is to put that much energy—that we have for our own interests—into others’ interests. Be pouring it to them; be thinking of my family. We’re called to humble ourselves. But, you know what? Being humble for humility’s sake, without Christ in that picture, is going to lead to failure. We cannot look at humility apart from looking at Christ; that’s why unity happens when allow the humility of Christ to humble us.

I’m not the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” kind of guy. I’m just terrible at that, of depending on myself, which is why I’m so glad Paul didn’t stop here. If he had just stopped here at, “be humble, just think of others,” I would be lost. But he gives us the picture of Christ. Verses 5 and 6 say this, “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…” So, we’re called to be humble. Humility happens when we look at Christ.

Was Jesus, God? He absolutely was—a hundred percent God! But what does Paul say here: “He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped…He humbled himself.” I don’t know about you, but if I get the title “boss,” or “leader” or something like that, I’m tempted to say, “Hey, you better come under my authority!” Right? But Jesus humbled himself and considered himself less than God, even though He was completely equal with God.

But He “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” (verse 7) So, Jesus came to earth. Not only was He fully God, Christ was fully man. Don’t be confused there where it says, “The form of a servant.” No, He came as a servant, but He didn’t come as the Jews thought. What were the Jews waiting for? They were waiting for a king! They wanted somebody to come with a scepter and a sword and they wanted him to wipe out the Romans. But He came as a baby. He came to serve us! The One who deserved to be served and worshipped above all else put Himself under as a servant.

            “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” I want you to think about this: We all, as believers, have kind of a picture of Heaven. We long for it, we see how broken the world is. So, we just have this picture of Heaven; we can’t just wait to get there, because we read in Scripture there are no more tears, no more sorrow, no more pain, no more sickness. And, man, we want to be there! So, imagine if you’re in Heaven—you’re chilling out up there with all the apostles and the angels—and then God calls you up and says, “Yo! It’s time for you to go, alright? Go to earth!” How many of you are going to be signing up for that gig? Not me—and yet that’s what Jesus did, and He knew what He was going to do.

            “…Humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death….” So, even if He would have come, and like John the Baptist—had his head chopped off—wouldn’t we still be affected by that? We would still be humbled by Him doing that, but how did He die? “Even death on a cross.” So, if you know anything about Bible times at that point, crucifixion was the vilest, worst punishment—left for the cruelest and the worst people in that time. And Jesus took that!

When I read that, I can’t help but go back to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John—the gospels—and all the stories that we hear of Jesus and what He went through. It all started in the Garden of Gethsemane. He went out there with some of his disciples to pray and He said, “Hey guys, pray. I’m going off by myself.” And He’s just in anguish; He knows what is coming! He knows what awaits Him. And then He comes back to His disciples, and what are His disciples doing? They’re sleeping. “Wake up! You have no idea what’s going on! If you did, you would be praying like crazy!”

Jesus goes off and prays, and His anguish is so strong that He’s literally sweating drops of blood. Isn’t it true that sometimes anticipation is just as bad as the experience? I can’t imagine the anticipation. And, to make things worse, here comes one of the disciples with a mob of soldiers – a guy that He had spent so much time pouring into—Judas! He loved Judas. And Jesus knew the whole time what he was about to do. And he gives Him a kiss. Not only did Judas abandon Him, but the other disciples fled as well. In fact, we read about Peter denying Him three times. Think about that! All of your friends deserting you. And you know, some of you may be there. Maybe you’re sitting here today and you have no friends. Let me just tell you, Jesus knows exactly how you feel!

So, the soldiers haul Jesus off, and they mock Him and they beat Him, and they take a whip with sharp objects attached to it, and they slap it across His back and then rip it off, as His flesh is torn from His body. They take a crown of thorns and jam it onto His head, piercing His skull. And, as the blood is dripping from His back, they put a robe on Him, and as the blood dries on the robe, they rip it off again—opening those wounds all the more! I can’t imagine the excruciating pain that He went through.

Not only that, but after doing all this, they make Him carry His own cross up to the hill of Golgotha, and they put the cross together. Normally, what they would do, they would tie their arms and their feet—but, no, that wasn’t good enough for Jesus. They took nails and drove them into His hands and into His feet. And as they lift Him up and He drops into the ground, His body shakes and He screams in pain. I can’t imagine!

The soldiers are there, in front of Him, casting lots for His clothes and mocking Him. And Jesus has the nerve to say, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And we get peeved for hours when we somebody cuts us off in traffic, don’t we? It’s crazy what we do! And yet, Jesus did this.

Even despite all of those things: the physical torture; his disciples abandoning Him; the soldiers mocking Him—it doesn’t compare to what comes next. Because, suddenly, Jesus starts feeling something that He had never felt before. You see, up to that point, there was perfect unity between Jesus, the Son, and God, the Father. Perfect unity! That was all gone. I can imagine Jesus began to feel dirty as God placed all the sins of the world onto Him.

I think it’s easy for us to think about that and say, “Yeah, Jesus died for all the sins of the world,” but do we make it personal? Do we? Do we realize our sins that we committed last night were placed on Him? The fact that, the times that I come home from work—and I’m just about my own agenda. I just want to sit down and watch TV, because I’ve earned the right. I’ve served the church well. How arrogant of me to think that! I’m too tired to play with my kids—or the times that I neglect my wife because I’m worried about myself. Just think about the list of sins you have that goes on and on and on. And God is declaring that to be true of Jesus, as if He committed them Himself.

I think John Piper is exactly right when he says this: “We will never stand in awe of being loved by God until we reckon with the seriousness of our sin and the justice of His wrath against us.” So, let me pull us back to the passage, because He didn’t stop there, right? If He had stopped at the cross, brutally beaten and murdered because of our sin, that’s a pretty depressing place to be, right? But, Paul doesn’t just give us this reference of Christ for us to look at Him as an example. Y

You know, the fad of WWJD? “What Would Jesus Do?” Okay, yeah, we should follow what Jesus did. But, if we look at this as just an example to copy—“Okay, I want to do what Jesus did,” and we don’t take the time to ponder what happened on the cross, then we will never stand in awe of Him. Listen, when we ponder the truth of the cross and what led Jesus to die—doesn’t that lead us to humility, humbleness? So, how can we, in light of what Jesus did for us, hold something against a brother or sister? Our sins against Christ are far worse than anybody else’s sins against us, including our spouse’s.

I know, many of you here, you have been sinned against in horrendous ways—and I can’t even imagine what that must be like. But let me just say that Jesus was perfect in every way. He bore the price that was ours. Because of our sin that separated us from God, He came and did that. But Paul doesn’t stop there, right? Is Jesus risen? That’s why we celebrate! We celebrate the cross, but we also celebrate that He is risen! I love this passage, because it’s almost like Paul gets so caught up in what Jesus did that it leads him to worship.

Look at verses 9 through 11: “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 Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” When we allow the humility of Christ to humble us, it brings us to unity, because we all realize that none of us come here with a better resume than anyone else, right? Our resumes are stained with the blood of Christ, amen?

I know these are heavy truths, and surely Paul does not want you to hang out there. He wants you to rejoice. He wants you to look at Christ and realize that He died for your sin—He came because He knew you couldn’t do it by yourself. You couldn’t do it at all. We were all dead, and He made us alive—if we’ve responded in repentance and faith.

So—what’s keeping you from unity this morning? For some of you, you need to repent. You have not been unified with Christ and, therefore, you struggle to have unity with anybody. So, let me invite you, if for the first time—this morning—you see the truth of the gospel and what Jesus did for you, and you’re humbled and crushed by your sins, let me just encourage you to come find freedom in Christ. We would love to help you. The elders and the pastors will be up front afterward.

But there’s hope for you! Jesus came to die because He knows how pathetic you are. And guess what, everybody else here in the room is just pathetic as you! Again, let that lead you to praise, because we don’t have to measure up to anything. There’s nothing to measure up to.

Some of you are believers, but you’ve kind of allowed sin to not be such a big deal. “Aah, you know, it’s not such a big deal! It’s not as bad as so-and-so; it’s not worthy to put me in jail.” But listen, even the smallest sin is enough to put Christ on the cross, so let me encourage you to repent. Turn away from that. Again, the Scripture says, “Confess your sins to one another. . .that you may be healed.” (James 5:16) So, come confess it if you need to do that—but repent.

Some of us need restoration. You know, in light of the humility of Christ that humbles us and leads us to unity, some of us don’t have unity because of the fact that we’re holding sin against somebody else. You need to go and forgive them. Remember, the sins that we have committed against Christ are far worse than any sin anybody’s committed against us. And, remember, forgiveness doesn’t mean it’s okay what they did, right? And it doesn’t mean that relationship is just going to be happy—but it’s a conscious choice that, “I’m not going to use their sin against them.” Why? Because Christ does not use our sins against us, so, how can we do that? That keeps us from being unified.

But then, what we need to do is, we need to rest in the truth of the gospel. So, don’t let the fact that you need to repent lead you to condemnation. What does Romans 8:1 say? “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” None whatsoever! Feel the weight of that! Not “there’s not as much…” No! There’s no condemnation. Rest in that!

Guess what? Martin Luther said the Christian life is a life of repentance. We’re going to be repenting for the rest of our lives. But, guess what, our standing before God is true today, just as it was the day we were saved. The worst days we that have in our lives, filled with the most sin, we are just as justified—just as right with God now—as we were then, when we were saved. And the same is true with our best days! God looks at us the same. When God looks at us, he sees the righteousness of Christ. And that means He sees your brother and your sister and wife and husband the same way. Rest in that!

For all of us, we need to remember—remember these truths, remember the gospel. Jerry Bridges says, “Preach the gospel to yourself every day.” Why do we need that? I don’t know about you, but every day, I forget. I can be in the Word – and I’ve had so many times like this – and I‘m responding in worship—oh! I’m in tears—I’m singing in my car, and somebody cuts me off and it completely throws the rest of the day off. Ha! I need to keep going back. “There’s grace, there’s grace!”

Listen, most mornings, a lot of mornings, I wake up and I’m just thinking about the ways I failed the night before. Or about the thing I have to face, and then anxiety comes because I’m not trusting in the Lord. But then, I just need to remember the gospel—what it says for us. Jesus measured up, so that we don’t have to. He calls us to holiness, but we’re justified in Christ.

And lastly—let’s respond in resounding praise. We have so much to be grateful for as Christians! He came and died for us, apart from our good works. You know, I’ve listened to Christian radio, and sometimes it just drives me crazy—because there’s one song in particular that just kind of about talks about how God saw me and saw potential in me. C’mon! “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way…” (Isaiah 3:6) and He rescued us nonetheless! Don’t carry the weight of your sin. Let it lead you to Christ!

Remember, humility is not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less. Turn your gaze to the cross. Turn your gaze to the fact that He is risen and He lives for us. He paid the price for us! Let it lead you to resounding praise!