Introduction

Our text this morning is found in the second chapter of the book of Philippians, the first four verses. With this morning’s teaching we are reconvening our series in the Philippian epistle.

I will be taking vacation and gone for the next two Sundays. The church will be honored to hear two dynamic preachers in my absence. Next Sunday, brother Rob Walker will bring the message. Many of you don’t know it, but Rob has completed a very impressive series of degrees in seminary study and other fields, earning a doctorate, and has participated in leadership ministry for several years in other churches. His greatest credential, though, is his love for the Lord, and his commitment to servant leadership. We are thrilled that he and Cookie and their daughters, Charde and Leah, have made Metro their church home. Dr. Robert Walker will be our preacher next Sunday.

Then on October 4, a Timothy of our congregation will come back to preach here. No stranger to the pulpit here at Metro, Shawn Willis will bring the Word in two weeks. I trust you will grant these two men the respect and encouragement they deserve by being in attendance and enthusiastically receiving their teaching.

Philippians 2:1-4 – If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or van conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Years ago an ad in the Lawrence, Kansas, Journal-World, read like this: “We will oil your sewing machine and adjust the tension in your home for only $1.” That’s a truly amazing offer and a great deal! Adjusting the tension among family members, though, is a lot tougher than adjusting the tension in a sewing machine.

There was a certain degree of tension in the Philippian Church, and part of the apostle Paul’s reason for writing was to help them resolve their issues. Aren’t you glad that the Bible was written to real people with real problems? The Word of God doesn’t paper over the problems people face in their relationships, nor do the scriptures offer superficial answers like so many who spout the latest pop psychology. The Bible is our source of wisdom from God—the God who made us, loves us, redeemed us and has our best interest at heart.

The church at Philippi was a good church, but it wasn’t perfect. No church is. If its first three converts were any gauge, this was a motley crew that gathered for worship in Philippi: a sophisticated, wealthy businesswoman; a career Roman military man; and, a former slave girl who had been into the occult. That kind of mix was a built-in formula for conflict, and some tensions were surfacing among the members (4:2).

So Paul gently urges them to work through their differences and he gives some principles for restoring harmony where some of their relationships had been rubbed raw. What we are about to see is the divine counsel of God through Paul on how to get along with others, in the church, in the home, in the work place and school. This direction is not easy, but it is the only cure and motivation for human beings to get along well in relationships. One author summarized it in one sentence:

The key to harmonious relationships is to put self to death and to regard others more highly than myself for Jesus’ sake.

Four Ingredients Necessary for a Life of Humility:

The wording in verse one might lead you to wonder if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from his love, any fellowship with the Spirit or tenderness and compassion, because of the word “if”. If you have any encouragement in Christ…But this wording is what is known as a first-class conditional clause, and is difficult to translate. There is not intended to be any doubt that these four qualities exist. Paul is employing a tool of expression that would be easily understood by the Greek-speaking readers in the first century, though less so for us.

Paul is writing to a Christian congregation, so their having these virtues and blessings from the Lord is really a given. It’s a bit like me saying to you, If you love Jesus, you will want to serve Him. By that expression I’m not really saying you might not love Him; rather, I am assuming you do and am using that assumption to illustrate your motivation for Christian service. Some suggest a better translation might be, Since you have encouragement from being united with Christ… This encouragement is a necessary ingredient to Christian humility.

So what is the Christian’s encouragement from being united with Christ? Only this: we sinners who deserve only the wrath and punishment of God, have been spared that judgment, because none other than the very Son of God condescended to become a man, to suffer on our behalf and to die in our place, so that we could be saved. And he arranged it that we would not need to buy or beg for that salvation; He came to each of us through the preaching of His Word and the gentle voice of His Spirit and He told us He loved us and wanted us to be His. Encouraged? Then you are motivated to serve the Lord gladly in all humility.

The next motivation is closely related: …if any comfort from his love… Mike Brown wrote about a boy who was the apple of his parents' eyes. Tragically, in his mid-teens, the boy's life went awry. He dropped out of school and began associating with the wrong crowd, became involved in drinking.

What distressed them the most was how he distanced himself from them. One night he staggered into his house at 3:00 a.m., completely drunk, and passed out on his bed. His mother slipped out of bed and left her bedroom. The father followed, assuming that his wife would be in the kitchen, perhaps crying. Instead, he found her at her son's bedside, softly stroking his matted hair as he lay passed out drunk on the covers. "What are you doing?" the father asked. The mother answered, "He won't let me love him when he's awake."

The mother stepped into her son's darkness with a love that existed even though he did not yet love her back. So it is with God and us. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

We who have tasted the kindness of the Lord know, don’t we? We know He loved us all along and demonstrated that love for us while we were willfully distant from Him. But His love waited and watched; His love sought us out, found us and revealed to us the glorious truth that if we were the only sinful person in the world, He would have died to win us to himself. 1 John 3:1 – How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

Four-year-old Ashton loved the movie Toy Story 2, particularly the space ranger hero, Buzz Lightyear. In Sunday school the children had a lesson on God's love for all people. At the end of class the teacher reviewed the lesson by asking, "So, how much does God love us?" Ashton replied, "To infinity and beyond!"
The point in this passage is that the subjective comfort we receive from knowing God’s personal, individual love for us is a motivation strong enough to cause us to live selfless lives in service to Him, and to others He asks us to serve.

Thirdly, Paul writes, …if any fellowship with the Spirit… The Holy Spirit is perhaps God’s most precious gift to those who choose to trust Him. When the Christian enters a saved relationship with the Father, the Bible says He places His own Spirit in that believer. What a blessed privilege to house God’s own Spirit in our own lives! It’s almost unbelievable!

And the work of the Holy Spirit, among many others, is to remind us that we are the children of God. As a parent and a grandparent, it is a very strong desire in me that my children and grandchildren understand how much I love them. I daydream of creative ways to express it to them, so they’ll really know, deep in their hearts that they are loved. I suppose the quintessential way of getting that message across would be to have a part of me living in them, reminding them day in and day out that they are loved and valued, if such a thing were possible. Romans 8 and Galatians 5 tell us that he personally, subjectively speaks to our human spirit, reminding us we are God’s beloved kids.

Imagine all that God has done for us! Then see that imagining as your personal motivation for loving God back and serving Him joyfully. Could His encouragement and love and indwelling Spirit be enough motive for you to lose yourself in serving Him?

Lastly, we read these words at the end of verse one: …if any tenderness and compassion… Tenderness and compassion—that’s really what the first three were all about isn’t it? The very things that moved God to seek us, find us and save us when we were rebelling and hiding and resisting. These are the qualities that are born in us when we are born again in Christ. Having received God’s tenderness and compassion, we are inspired—no, we are compelled—to not only love Him, but to demonstrate the same virtues toward others He loves and longs to save.

So it is that our love is to be vertical, responsive to God and horizontal, extended to others in His name and honor. Hear these lines from the book of First John:

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers…Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God…This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love each other, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
(1 John 3:16; 4:7-12)

God’s Directive on How to Live the Life of Humility

There is the teaching; and now the exhortation. God is saying to us through this text, If you know and understand this truth, and since you have encouragement from knowing Christ, comfort from His love, fellowship with his Spirit and God’s own brand of tenderness and compassion, then live like this . . .

In verse two, Paul throws in a dash of personal expectation, …make my joy complete by doing these things… Let me add a quick pastoral perspective here. Don’t do things to please your spiritual leaders. That’s too short-sighted, and it usually ends up being something that looks good but is spiritually smelly.
Do your spiritual service toward God, and you will always make your spiritual leaders happy. I tell you honestly, I have first-hand empathy with Paul as he says when those under my spiritual care do the will of God, it makes my joy complete.

Here are four behaviors that live out the call to humility: First, …be like-minded, having the same love… Before you furrow your brow, understand that being like-minded is not saying that all of us in the church need to think alike. That would stand in contradiction to all the Bible’s teaching on the diversity of the body of Christ. Having the same love. What love is that? The very love we just read about—the love of God that encourages, comforts, and motivates us to serve one another in His name.

Consider what impact a church full of people with a common love like that could have on the community around it! Every one of them serving one another in humility and selfless love. Such is unheard of in the world. By this will all men know . . .

Second, …being one in spirit and purpose… Here again, this is not a command to think just like each other. Rather this is a call to the believers in the church to be devoted to the same cause: the preaching and teaching of God’s Word, and sharing the love of God in practical ways, first, inside the church family, then, just as faithfully outside the walls of the church.

In chapter one, verse 27, Paul urged the Philippians to …conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ… Listen, the preaching of the gospel—the teaching of the Word of God—is all that is of primary importance. Christians should have that priority in common. It’s unity that he’s talking about. Not uniting under one or another person’s opinion, nor even under the majority opinion, but under God’s express purpose for the church. When the church puts God’s agenda first, and obediently stops insisting on personal agendas and goals (which never unifies, but always divides), then and only then is a church doing the will of God.

This is Paul’s point: stop selfishly insisting on your way. Lay it down, look for God’s way and do that—even when it looks like the other guy wins. That’s exactly what the third command is all about: Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit… If you are out to accomplish your ambitions through the church, you not only are involved in flat-out sin, you a gumming up the work of the Lord’s church. He does not take kindly to that! The strongest words of correction and judgment within the house of God are stored up for those who promote disunity among the church family. Such people are more harshly condemned than even false teachers!

Anything in me or you that smacks of self-promotion needs to die. When I push for my personal agenda or my conceited promotion I have left the purposes of God and frustrated His church. If you are called to lead in the church, you are called to serve, to humble yourself, to empty yourself of your own goals, and to seek with all your heart to know God’s purposes and obey them. And if you are not called to lead, the same things apply.

Finally, the end of verse three introduces the fourth directive. …in humility consider others better than yourselves… That is not a popular message in our world where the individual’s esteem and needs are paramount. This is really counter-cultural stuff here! We grow giant steps in spiritual maturity when we finally come to understand IT’S NOT ABOUT ME! Who is it about?

That’s right, it’s about God. But watch out—there’s a barb on that easy answer! If it’s about God, then it’s also about others, because God says, consider others better than yourselves.

Look at verse four in order to fully understand verse three. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. We are not called to totally disregard ourselves, but neither are we to forget the others in the room with us! But pastor, how will I know how much attention to pay my own needs, and how much I should help others with theirs? That’s precisely where the fun starts!

Remember the Spirit of God living in you? One of His other jobs is to lead and guide you, in concert with your study of God’s Word, in the practical matters of selfishness and service—where one leaves off and the other begins. But be sure of this—if all you ever think about is yourself and your needs, you’re out of balance! When you think of HOW exactly you are to serve others in humility, think in terms of emptying yourself of your rights and your egocentrism. That’s what Jesus did, and that’s what the next section of Philippians two is all about.

Listen to a short list of biblical verbs that describe the kinds of attitudes and deeds we are to do for ourselves: deny, humble, prepare, sanctify. Now here is a list of verbs in the Bible that represent what we are to do for others: encourage, bless, forgive, give, honor, submit, help, exhort, correct, love, be kind, serve, pray for, edify, defer, and so on. You decide: are we to live more for ourselves or for others, if we want to please God?

Ten days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a group of citizens in North Platte, Nebraska, heard a rumor that soldiers from their town, part of the Nebraska National Guard, Company D, would be coming through on a troop train on their way to the West Coast. 500 people showed up at the train depot with food, gifts, letters, and love to give the boys.

When the train showed up, it was not the Nebraska National Guard, Company D boys on board; it was the soldiers from the Kansas National Guard, Company D. After a few awkward moments, a woman handed a young man she'd never seen the gifts intended for her own son. Soon, everyone else followed her lead, and there were hugs and prayers and love shared all around. It was a spontaneous act of genuine devotion that touched both the soldiers and the people who came to the depot that day. That alone would have been a beautiful illustration of the willingness to "sacrifice for one another." But the story continues.

A few days later, a 26-year-old woman named Rae Wilson wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper recounting the profound experience they'd shared that night. She then suggested the town organize a canteen, so they could do something similar for every troop train that came through. She offered to lead the effort as a volunteer.

For the next four and a half years, the people of North Platte and the surrounding communities met every troop train that came through their town. Every day, they prepared sandwiches, cookies, cold drinks, and hot coffee. They had baskets of magazines and books to give away to the soldiers, and snacks for the train. There were even birthday cakes for anyone having a special day. And they did this, some days, for as many as 8,000 soldiers and sailors.

The statistics are staggering. By the time the last train arrived on April 1, 1946, six million soldiers had been blessed by the North Platte Canteen. Forty-five thousand volunteers had served faithfully until the war was over and most of the troops had been transported home.

Most of the troops had only 10 minutes to sprint from the train, grab some food, hear the appreciation of those present, and run back before the train left without them. But in those ten minutes, they got more than a meal. They received a dose of unconditional love that they remembered later—during the heat of battle as well as decades after the war was over.

Bob Greene, whose book Once Upon a Town made the North Platte Canteen story known to the world, wrote that, as he interviewed those few surviving soldiers who had experienced the canteen firsthand, there was a universal reaction from the men (who were by that time in their late seventies and eighties): they cried.

What do I owe the others in this room?

Affirm your love or appreciation

Repair anything that’s broken

Bring a word of encouragement

Introduce yourself, your family

Ask for prayer or ministry

Express thankfulness for other

Pray, consider what you might say or do for another believer in this room (either right here and now this morning or later), consciously lay your own rights and privileges down and commit to do it, say it, get it done.

Then go to the communion table with whomever you feel you should accompany.

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