Dennis Tuuri

# Godliness Sermon Transcript
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri | Second Sunday of Advent, December 4, 2011

Now today’s sermon text is primarily Philippians 2:6, but when we began this series last week, we put this in context. And today I’ll read Philippians 2:1-8 as the context, although our focus will be on chapter 2 verse 6. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Philippians 2: Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort or love, if any fellowship of the spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself.

Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation. Taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

Therefore, God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and of those on earth, and of those under the earth and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my absence only, but now much more in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure. Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world holding fast the word of life so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.

Yes. And if I am being poured out as a drink offering of the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. For the same reason, you also be glad and rejoice with me.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for this time of season. We thank you that every Lord’s day is a reminder of the joy of the incarnation, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for sinners, to be raised up for our justification, to ascend to your right hand, bringing humanity to rule and authority over this world once more. We thank you for the second Adam. Bless us, Lord God, as we consider the Lord Jesus Christ now and his work and as we look to him to his mindset to his worldview to his thinking to his attitude as we walk into this season of joy in Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Adam lay eboundon, boundon in a bond, 4,000 winter thought he not too long, and all was for an apple, an apple that he took as clerks find and written in their book.

This 600-year-old carol talks to us of the great period of time that the Lord God waited to bring his Son to effect our redemption. Advent is a time of waiting and anticipation. Advent is a time of patience. And that really is the theme for today’s sermon—patience. Now, I know the title on your outline says godliness. And what I hope to show you today is that godliness is patience. It’s to be like God, to have patience.

Adam lay abound, captive to sin because of his sin of disobeying God. And what we’ll see in today’s text—and we’ll look particularly at verse six—is the reversal of the Adamic sin, a fall and curse with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the second Adam. Wait for it. Christmas season is a time of waiting, particularly for the young ones. “Wait for it. We’ll see.” “Oh, I want that BB gun. I want that as a boy. We’ll see. We’ll see.” The parents say, “We’ll see what Santa brings.”

You know, Santa is of course a reference to St. Nicholas, and there is a sense in which the spirit of Christmas is found in his people, the real St. Nicholas. And there is a sense in which there is this kind of manifestation of the gifts of God to each other at Christmas time. And it’s very much a time of hopefully unselfish giving, of putting others first, as we just read about. But it’s a season of waiting and anticipation.

Advent is the same way. Advent is that period of preparation leading up to the celebration of the incarnation. The same way that Lent first was a series of preparatory days and weeks leading up to Easter and the joy of the resurrection—so Advent was as well. So it’s a period of waiting, anticipation, and it’s we’re not recreating in our minds the reality before he came, but we are saying that Jesus comes in various ways. We recognize his coming in our lives and we recognize that we also point forward to the second coming, and so this season is a season of anticipation and waiting and a meditation upon that.

And today’s text is wonderful for that. Now it’s a time of joy—Christmas—and it follows a time of thanksgiving. So a couple weeks ago, you know, we had Thanksgiving meals in a lot of families. One of my favorite Thanksgiving movies is Avalon. This probably is 10 years old or more. It’s about an immigrant family that comes over from Europe and not Christians, and a solid family to begin with, but they decline over the generations. And it sort of talks about America and what happened. And it traces the arc of the movie—this is a solid, vibrant family who would get together at dinner times and talk and have a great time—and by the end of the movie all that’s diminished. And by the end the eating is now happening individually in solitary fashion, in front of a television with a TV dinner in a little tray they’re sitting at. And that’s the arc of the movie.

And our lives are kind of a life—our life is really about eating and rejoicing and celebration—but they lose that. And what’s interesting about the movie, what makes it a Thanksgiving movie, is the Thanksgiving feast is important for them. It’s a big deal. All the family gets together the first when they see it there. But people are going around saying, “Thanksgiving—it’s an American tradition. They’re new to America. Who do we give thanks to?” We don’t know who we’re giving thanks to. And they really don’t. They’re secular. They’re certainly not Christian.

And to try to have the fruit of thanksgiving without understanding what you’re giving thanks for, it becomes hollow over time. And the basis for your community together in that thanksgiving, if it’s not centered on the Lord God who gave us all these things by his grace, then it deteriorates in the same way our families deteriorate over time. And the movie does an excellent job of showing that deterioration based around Thanksgiving.

And it also shows impatience. Because another significant thing happens at one of their Thanksgiving feasts. Not only do they not know who to give thanks for, but at some point the uncle—one uncle is always late. Most families have one of the kids and their spouses that are always late. I probably shouldn’t discuss that more than I just did, but usually there’s somebody like that, right?

So the uncle and his wife are always late. They say, “We’re not going to wait for him. He’s always late. Forget it.” They get impatient and they begin the Thanksgiving meal. And when the uncle shows up, he and his wife are tremendously offended, and they leave. They storm out. So patience and thanksgiving is what they’re lacking, and what ends up destroying their family.

The family can be just as much an opponent to the state or to the gospel rather as the state can be. Familism apart from the scriptures, apart from God, is no better than the statism that we see today, apart from a reliance upon God and his word.

So joy is what this season is about. Joy for what? Why are we rejoicing? Why are we giving gifts? Why do we like the tree down in Portland? Why do people sing songs? Well, most people really don’t know much anymore. They know it’s related to this Christmas thing, but they don’t really believe it. The center of their joy is no longer that.

Now, I want us to give thanks and to have joy this season based upon the texts that are before us—for very specific things. Very specific things. One, for the deliverance from sin. That’s really the culmination of Jesus’s coming, his service and ministry portrayed for us in Philippians 2:6 through 11. You know, he humbles himself, takes the form of a servant in his incarnate state to the point of death. And really, death is the purpose that’s laid out for us. It’s the specific way Jesus humbles himself I think in the text before us in Philippians 2.

And so the death of the Lord Jesus Christ bringing about our salvation is the great center of the joy. And of course, if you know—if you haven’t become a disciple of Jesus Christ, you don’t have that same center of joy. The joy of the Philippians is found from people who have been brought into a knowledge and a trust and a reliance for their whole life upon the Lord Jesus, whose unity, whose identity, now is not in themselves, right? They’re in Christ. And that’s what he says in these epistles—to the saints in Christ Jesus—who now find their identity in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So the great joy is that God has saved us from the inward thing that man does apart from God and is crumbling and deteriorating interior to himself, by taking us outside of our self to the person of Jesus and having us look to him for salvation and joy and blessing and give him thanks. That’s the great joy.

But there’s a second joy, and that is this joy of imitating, acting like someone else. It’s this joy of knowing that our lives, once we’re disciples of Christ—we don’t just, you know, hang around for the next 40, 50 years here doing nothing. But this text tells us as well how we’re supposed to live our lives. That’s the point of the text is telling the Philippians: this is the way that you’ll end up in a position of not biting and devouring one another, actually exercising community. That’s the great struggle of our times. Can true community and friendship be had anymore? We’re so isolated. We know, you know, the world, but can we have communion?

And Paul says, “You can, but here’s the way.” And this is the way also that you’ll exercise dominion in the world. The reference in Philippians 2:6-11 is humiliation in service, but then exaltation as the ruling Son of God at the right hand of God, bringing humanity into that. And so the epistle certainly says our joy is centered upon the saving work of Jesus on the cross for our sins. But it also says our joy is centered upon the fact that we now can live our lives a different way. We can live our lives the way mankind was created to live them.

All right, now let’s take a look at the overview of the book. Hopefully, you got your handouts right, your outlines. If you don’t, you can go back and get one, because I want to go over those in a little bit of detail. And I think that it would be good for you to keep those for the next couple three weeks, because we’ll be in this section of scripture that long.

So, what we want to do first is look at the particular text in verse six, but look at it in context, right? So, we’re going to look at it by looking at an overview of the book of Philippians. And this overview was, I think, first—this is a chiastic structure of the book of Philippians. And so it has a center to it. That’s kind of the great hinge point. It’s what develops everything else. And that’s what we’re saying: the text that we just read this morning is that text—is the hinge point.

And this outline was developed by John Barach, whom a lot of you know, and then Peter Leithart adapted his outline, just a little bit, making a few changes here and there. And this is in the Omnibus 4 curriculum for those of you who are aware of or might even use Omnibus curriculum for home or private school. This outline by Leithart and Barach is actually in there. And then I added the words in quotes at the end of each section. So for instance, in the A section I added the word “partnership” in bold.

Now, what that is—we got six matching sections, right? And in four of those six sections the same word is used, and it’s the only place that word is used. Okay? So when it’s bolded, what I’m showing you here is that there’s textual evidence that this is the structure. This is the way Paul wrote the epistle—because the word “partnership” is only found in the first and last sections, the A and the A’ section. I’m sorry, the B sections. The word “saints” is found in the A and the A’ section. And those are the only places the word “saints” are found.

So it starts by talking about the saints. Okay? It’s greetings, and then at the end of the letter it’s the same way, but it’s chiastic. So it has this kind of form to it. And that’s what those bolded words are. Those are things I’ve added. And I think I’m right, but you know, I didn’t spend a lot of time at it. And then “partnership” also in the B sections, etc.

Now, a couple of things I wanted to point out here. First of all, again, the book ends of the book—greetings and salutations—and then he ends it. Both include that the book is addressed to saints. Okay? Now, that’s real important, because if a person is not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, if he hasn’t found his identity in union with Christ, for him to take what we’re going to say, him to take patience and try not to be a grabber, a raptor, the way Adam was, that hand grabbing for that apple—for a man to try to do that without a living connection to the Lord Jesus Christ, without believing on him, trusting in him for their well-being would make him a moralist.

And this text is not to be used that way. In other words, we’re to imitate Jesus. We’re to imitate godly men and women. We’re to have mentors. I hope you thought about that this last week based on last week’s text. We’re to have mentors. But the idea is that’s only given to saints who already have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ for their lives, for their well-being, who find their identity in the person of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity.

So it avoids moralism. The great joy of the Christmas season is that indeed Jesus came, and as I said, the text at the center culminates—it’s got a little structure to it as well—but it culminates that Jesus died, and he died on the cross, right? He died paying the price. He became a curse for us who are due cursed because of our disobedience to God. All men and women reject God in their fallen state, in our natural state, apart from Jesus. We’re rebels.

And Jesus—the great joy of Christmas is that he makes saints out of us who are not saints. Saints just means “holy ones”—means those that are committed to Christ and are his. And so, you know, we—it’s very important to recognize that the great joy that we sing of at Christmas is first and foremost that Jesus came to save each of us individually. Now, he’s also come to put the world to rights, and that’s a great source of joy as well. But we don’t want that to crowd out the fact that Jesus wants us to acknowledge that apart from him, all we can do is wrong. And in him, he forgives us our sins and he gives us a new life as we’re disciples of his, and it becomes a great and fruitful and joyous life.

So the great joy of Christmas is that Jesus came. The price for our sins is death. Jesus paid the price for the sins of his people on that cross, and when he was raised up, our sins were forgiven. There was a real atonement—putting at one—his people who were sinners and God the Father. He puts us at one. That really happened on the cross 2,000 years ago. He’s not—in other words, you want to be careful with texts like this one—that Jesus isn’t some moral example only. Now, he is. He is an example to us. We saw all the verses last week about being imitators of Jesus and imitators of those who are imitating Jesus. But that is not what salvation is. We cannot imitate him in dying for sinners. We can’t do that. And so we’ll see, you know, how that works with this text.

But very importantly, this overview reminds us that the book ends—for this instruction to be followers of Jesus, to have his mindset and attitude—the bookends is this sainthood that we all have by following the Lord Jesus Christ. The book ends are also in the D sections. Joy, right? So the D sections both have the word “joy” in them. They’re not the only places. This is an epistle that has a lot of talking about joy in it. But notice that both D sections, the joy is in the midst of afflictions, right?

So as we move to the center, and then as we back out from the center, Paul is saying that he wants you to be joyful, but specifically to be joyful in the context of things not going right. Not of all the great presents you get, not of all the wonderful Christmas concerts you go to. Yeah, be joyous there. But particularly, this text is telling us—the epistle rather—to be joyous in difficult times. They’re going through difficult times, he’s saying. And so at the very center, what do we have? We have the humiliation of Jesus and his exaltation.

That as we suffer with Christ, God will surely raise us up and exalt us as well. So joy is the joy of knowing that we can trust in Jesus in the midst of great difficulties and he’ll see us through it. You know, I know that we have troubles, things that nag us and haunt us and keep us awake at night. God says the answer to that is joy in the midst of afflictions. Don’t deny the reality of them, but understand that he provided for your very salvation. You’re going to spend eternity blessing and praising God in the context of his people and living lives of great joy and fulfillment when Christ returns here on earth. You’re going to do wonderful things.

I fully plan on playing the bass guitar and the piano, any other instrument I don’t know. But it’s going to be a wonderful time. So for the moment we suffer, but know that joy is present because of the work of Jesus. Jesus—joy even in affliction.

And then “salvation” is directly in the context, and again, that’s the only places the word “salvation” is used—is in the F sections. You see that on the outline, bold letters. And what’s right around the center is to conduct yourselves in a way that you can have unity and salvation together. Salvation is seen as correct relationship with the body of Christ. Now, you know, it’s also seen as forgiveness of our sins and eternal life with Christ in heaven and then back on earth when he returns to earth. But salvation is also seen as being reflected in the unity of God’s people.

Now, how do you get that unity? Well, that’s the center text. That’s the one we’re looking at—the center—that we’re to have this “in Christ Jesus” thinking going on. So that’s an overview of the epistle, and it very gives us some important pointers as we look to the middle of the text.

Now I’ve also on that same page a brief overview of a first draft look at the particular section. So verse five: “Have this mind in you which is also in Christ Jesus.” That’s like is setting us up for the very center verses 6-11. But this is what we talked about last week. As we enter into Advent season, we want to engage ourselves in positive imitation in a right way. Humans are made to be imitative of one another, and we’re to imitate the mind of Christ and we’re to imitate God. Amen. We saw that last week. And so, but what is it? What are we supposed to imitate?

Well, then verses 6 to 11 tells us, and the movement of 6 through 11 is humiliation and exaltation. That’s the theme for our Advent season this year. These are our Advent texts. We’ve got red bulbs up, and then as we get to Christmas Sunday, we’ll see gold bulbs up. And the idea is red as a reminder of the passion and suffering of our Savior. Gold is a reminder of his exaltation. And so it is this movement from humiliation to exaltation that goes on here.

And verse six: So then verse six says, “Who though he was in the form of God.” I’ll talk about this—well I probably won’t talk about this later, so I’ll talk about it now. The form of God, and then look down at verse well, “being 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.”

Now what that means is whatever you’re going to do with the form of God, you have to do with the form of a servant. Was Jesus really a servant? Well, yeah, he was the best servant ever, right? “Form” doesn’t mean an imitation. It’s a word that we kind of think of in different ways, but it means the reality of the thing. That’s all it’s saying. It’s actually a stronger word than if he said “the image of God,” because Adam was made in the image of God, but Adam wasn’t God. Jesus exists in the form of God. He is God—is the point of this verse. And he is a servant.

And so by the way, these are the only two places, apart from one reference in the gospel, where this particular Greek word is used. Okay? So you know, it’s a—you have to define it by the text going on here, and you have to understand that whatever you do with “form of God,” you have to do with Jesus as a servant. Was he really a servant? Yeah, of course. Then he is really God, and that’s the point of the verse. He’s not an image in the same way Adam was an image bearer. He is that, but he actually is God. And so that’s what is important there.

So at the beginning, you know, he—the text we’ll deal with here in just a couple of minutes—he doesn’t grasp. He doesn’t. Though he’s equal with God, he doesn’t count—he doesn’t count equality with God a thing to be grasped. But rather he humiliates himself. He empties himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, being found in human form—that really should be “likeness.” It’s not the same word as in “human likeness.” He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death.

Now, a little bit of Greek here. There are three verbs here leading up to “becoming obedient to the point of death,” right? So Jesus empties himself—whatever that means. He takes the form of a servant, right? He humbles himself. Those are the three verbs you see. So he empties himself. He takes the form of a servant. He humbles himself. Now, what do those things mean?

Well, one of the keys to understand what they mean is they’re in a particular aorist tense that means that they’re all related to the—to the last verb, which is “he became obedient to the point of death.” So I think that textually what’s going on here is the articulation, the specific thing that’s being talked about, is Jesus’ obedience to the point of death. And that’s going to give us the key to understanding how he empties himself, how he takes the form of a servant, and what does it mean that he humbled himself. All those things are explained by “he became obedient to the point of death.”

Next week, the reason why the kids’ coloring sheet has Jesus washing the feet of the disciples is this emphasis in the gospels where Jesus serves. He’s a servant. And we’ll also talk about Isaiah 52 and 53, where the servant of Yahweh pours himself out in death. And that’s what’s going on, I think, here in these verses as well. And so we’ll look at that. But I wanted to mention that briefly now.

And then as a result of that humiliation, then we have the exaltation. So today we’re focusing on verse 6. Okay? So we’ve got, you know, mentoring going on from last week, and now we’ve got whatever verse six tells us. Next week we’ll talk about humiliation, okay? And properly humbling ourselves. And then we’ll talk about exaltation, the last part of the text. And that’ll be our four Advent lessons from this particular text. Okay.

Jesus, the Second Adam. Again, on your handouts, there is a comparison form between Jesus and the second Adam. When you meditate on this text and specifically on verse six, what we see here is a comparison and a contrast between Jesus Christ and Adam. And I think this becomes rather obvious when you begin to note the similarity. So we have a chart there for you, right?

So first of all, we’re not told to imitate the mind of Adam, but the text does tell us—anywhere in scripture? But the text does tell us to let the mind of Jesus Christ be our mind. One other thing before we move on, and I mentioned this last week, but again: “Let this mind be in you”—plural. We ought to talk like Southerners here. “Let this mind be in y’all.” We always read the Bible and we think individualistically, but in the Greek there can be singular or plurals. Now, the plural means the singular is involved, right? If y’all are going to do it, that means each and every one of you should do it too. But the point here is that, again, it’s union with Christ. Union with his church, the body of Christ, is the source of this—all the thing that’s going on here. This isn’t just about you and Jesus. In fact, it’s almost never about just you and Jesus. It’s about you and Jesus’s bride, his church. You and Jesus through relationship with other Christians. That’s why you need a mentor. That’s why you need people around you that you can walk—like the way they walk in their positiveness, in their righteousness. Okay?

So: Have this mind in y’all that is Jesus Christ’s mindset or viewpoint. Okay? His choice—he was in the form of God. Now, he was God. Adam was made in the image of God. So there’s a connection there. So, okay, I could say more. But anyway, this becomes even more dramatic if you read the Greek version of the Genesis account. But in any event, Jesus doesn’t regard equality with God as something to be exploited or grabbed at. But Adam regarded “to be like God” as something to be grabbed at.

The serpent says, “Oh, that fruit—oh no, God says, you know, he doesn’t want you to eat it because he’s your rival. But actually, you can be like God if you grab for that fruit and eat it.” Adam grabs for the fruit. He lets Eve grab for the fruit. Jesus doesn’t grab to be equal with God, to be like God.

Now, what does it mean to be like God in this sense? Then think about this. This helps us to avoid some misinterpretations of the text. In this, if we look at this comparison between the second Adam and the first Adam, Adam wouldn’t become God, right? He would become like God in what way? Well, he would be given—he would be able to have the knowledge of good and evil, to rule for God. Adam is immature. God wants him to rule for him. Now, whether Adam would ever eat that fruit or not, I don’t know, but that’s not the point. Adam wanted to get the ability to know how to rule as a king. David is like the angel of the Lord determining good and evil, knowing good and evil. A king has to know the difference between good and evil. That’s a mature thing to know. Little kids don’t know it. Only adults and wiser adults know that stuff.

So I think that, by way of the comparison here, it helps us to understand that the thing that Jesus doesn’t grasp at is being equal with God and his humanity ruling with God at the right hand. He doesn’t grab for that. Instead, he serves. You see, he dies on the cross. Adam wants to grab for that—that thing. He wants that kind of equality, or being like God now. Okay. So I think that’s the proper way, and it works with the Greek used here, of what it means that Jesus didn’t regard equality with God—to be like God—a thing to be grabbed.

You see, and the contrast then is Adam is the raptor. A raptor is, you know, the idea that, you know, the raptors have these claws and they grab. And it’s Latin. It means “plunder” or “pillage.” There’s some heinous websites on the raptor, Jesus. Jesus is not the raptor. That’s the whole point here. It comes from the Latin word “repo,” which means to grab, to violently seize a thing. And Jesus—and it’s in the Greek here—he doesn’t steal this thing. He doesn’t seize this thing. Adam is a raptor. Adam is a raptor. Wow.

So Adam grabs at what God said don’t take just yet—rule, and maybe don’t take just ever—the particular fruit that represented that to him, I don’t know about that. But I do know that Adam is grabbing for what God says he should patiently wait for—to rule in God’s kingdom. Jesus empties himself, takes the form of a servant. But Adam aspired to greatness. He wanted the knowledge of good and evil. You see the difference in contrast between the obedience of Jesus and the disobedience of Adam.

Jesus was born in human likeness, being found in human form. And of course, Adam is seeking to be in the likeness of God, but he’s found in a human form. Jesus humbles himself. Adam exalts himself. Jesus becomes obedient to the point of death. Adam becomes disobedient, seeking life. And as a result, he dies and he’s expelled from the only place of life, the garden.

So Adam is the opposite of Jesus. As a result of these things, Jesus is highly exalted. Adam is condemned by God to suffering, and he’s cast out of the place of exaltation. Jesus is given a name that is above every name. Adam’s name, of course, is a name that’s synonymous with death. Jesus—at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, and at the name of Adam everybody will curse, so to speak. So with Adam curse comes upon the land, and with Jesus blessing is what ends up. And so the comparisons and contrast there.

So I think what the text is doing here is giving us some specific relationship between Jesus and Adam. Okay.

Number three on your outline: Correcting Some Misperceptions. Now, is this text about the event of the incarnation? That’s the way we normally hear it preached. Well, “Jesus was in the form of God. He puts off his godhood. He’s not deity anymore when he comes. What?” Well, wait a minute. What does that mean? Then does he suffer as God or just as a man? What’s going on? You end up with all kinds of problems because that’s not what the text says.

I think the text is not talking about the event of the incarnation but presupposes the earthly incarnation of the second person. And I’ve got reasons here. One: Christ Jesus is the name of the incarnated Son. “Have this mind which was in Christ Jesus,” not which was in “the second person of the Trinity” eternally in the Godhead before he was incarnated. See, that’s not what it says. It says “have this mind which was in Christ Jesus” in the incarnated Son.

First of all—secondly, there can be no higher exaltation of the second person of the Trinity. If it was God who humbles himself, how is he then exalted above what he’s already exalted at? It’s impossible for God to be lacking the amount of glory he should have. God is all glorious, right? So how could he be higher exalted than he is as the second person of the Trinity? And when we start thinking that way, we get into real trouble with our doctrine of who God is, with the reality of God. God then needs to create so that the Son can become more highly exalted. That simply is heresy. God needs nothing. So, you know, how could God get more exalted than he is?

Third, humanity isn’t bad. Implied in this is that Jesus really humbles and humiliates himself by becoming a person—because, you know, how horrible people are. You know, how icky humanity is. But God says humanity is a wondrous thing. God made man in his image. Now, fallen humanity is difficult, of course, but humanness—there’s nothing inherently humiliating or horrible about the second person of the Trinity coming in human flesh, that in and of itself.

And see, this is the source of a lot of wrong thinking about our lives. We walk around continually guilty just because we’re people, when people have been made in the image of God, made a little lower than the angels, and then exalted above them in Jesus. So that’s a bad thing to—fourth, the actions in the following verbs are the actions of the incarnated Son who dies on the cross, the incarnated Jesus. So it’s not talking about the incarnation. I explained earlier those various verbs that we’re going to look at next week in more detail. Those are all anticipatory of the verb that he dies on the cross.

So the actions of the one we’re supposed to look at and imitate are the actions of the incarnated Son, not his action of becoming incarnate. And then finally, how could we imitate the incarnation? How do you do that? You know, I mean, if it was the incarnation of “have this mind in you,” through the, you know, the pre-incarnate second person of the Trinity? How do you do that? That’s not who we are. We’re made in the image of God. But you know, so the point is there’s lots of reasons here why I think this text points to the incarnated person of Jesus.

Conclusion: These texts are about the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. The humiliation is not the incarnation but rather his death on the cross for sinners. The passage presupposes the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is about the incarnated Jesus. It’s about Jesus, a man, God and man, the God-man. It’s about his attitude, his posture, his servant-like activity as the second Adam. And that is lots of fuel for our lives, then, right? To imitate that, to have that mindset in who we are.

And so that’s the mindset. Secondly: “Being,” not “Though.” Humiliation of Jesus Christ. Now, if you look—here’s the way the ESV reads it: “Have this man among you, which is also in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” That’s not what the text says. The plainest interpretation of the verb, which they’ve translated “though he was,” is the word “being.” And that’s what the King James has. That’s what the New King James has.

Jesus Christ, being in the form of God—because he is identical with God. Okay? Because Jesus is the God-man. Therefore, he does X, whatever follows. Now, this is real important. Otherwise, we think that the humiliation, the humbling of himself, the servant attitude, is something other than the way God would act.

Now, when we think that way, we are repeating the sin of Adam. Adam thought God was selfish. That was the lie of the serpent to him. “God’s not like you. He’s never going to serve you. He’s not serving you in this. He’s looking out for his own interests. He’s selfish.” And many Christians think that God is ultimately selfish.

But this text says precisely because Jesus is God—okay, “form of God”—precisely because he is God, he didn’t grab at maturation and rule. He didn’t grab. He, precisely because he was God, he didn’t act like Adam. He acted like Jesus—humbly serving for 30 years and ultimately serving on the cross, giving his life at the age of 33.

Now, that’s a lot of patience on the part of the Lord Jesus Christ, right? And that’s what—that’s what this text says. And it says precisely because he was God, he took the form of a servant. We come to church. The old German word for worship is “the divine service.” And what it meant was when you go to worship, you go to be served by God. Now, I know that sounds weird to you. Well, it probably doesn’t to you in this congregation, but it can sound odd because we’re so used to the wrong way of looking at God—that he is hard to please, right? And he, you just got to come crawling and try to get his—no! You come here so that God can give you gifts. The culmination is that gift—the gift of life at the table.

So we come to be served. It’s not—and you know, opposite to the nature of God to serve others? That is the nature of God. That’s the point of this text. And that’s why this text is so important: precisely because Jesus exists in the form of God, this is the character of God. What we see Jesus doing—and we’ll focus on this next week in his humiliation—that is the character of God. That is the character of God, and that is the character of us who are in union with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Third: Equality with God. And I’ve already talked about this. This doesn’t refer to his ontological—or the essence of his being God—but rather refers to his glory, exaltation attained through humiliation by Jesus Christ. Red to gold. So it refers to that. And I’ve already talked about that.

Now, how do we do it then? What’s the attitude? Well, first in the verse today, it says the right way to imitate Jesus, to be like him, is to put something away. It tells us what not to be like. Okay? And then next week we’ll look at the texts that say what we are to be like.

Now, there’s an implication to the putting off, but what are we to do? We’re to put off Adamic grasping. And as I mentioned, you have that comparison chart. He says, “Is you know—let this mind be in you also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not regard exultation, to rule at God’s right hand, as a thing to be grasped.”

We’re to put off grasping. We’re to put off the Adamic fall, which is to seek things quicker than we’re supposed to get them. We’re to have patience. We’re to put off grasping. That’s what this is talking about.

What are we to do? We’re to put off grasping. What does Adam do? He grasps at the thing. He sees God as a rival. And soon, because he sees God as a rival, he then blames his wife and moves to see her as kind of a rival for his sin as well. And then after that, what happens? That kind of rivalry and grasping sets up a situation where immediately in the text at least, one of their sons kills the other son. And then all heck breaks loose. And by Genesis 6, the world is filled with violence. Men are filled with violence, and God destroys the world with the flood.

Now, all that comes about in rapid succession in the story of the creation, fall, and the flood. All that comes about because Adam grasps at something that he’s not supposed to have. And as I said, I don’t know about the apple or the fruit. But I do know that Adam was going to be given the ability to discern good and evil. Adam wants to discern good and evil autonomously and prematurely. God wants Adam to come to the place where David did, where Hebrews says Christians are supposed to get to—of being able to determine good and evil maturely, based upon submission to God.

Adam is immature. He’s like the little kid. Can’t wait to drive the car. Can’t wait to have, you know, sex with somebody of the opposite sex. Can’t wait to go out there on their own. Can’t wait for this. Can’t wait for that. If they’re godly kids, they can’t wait to, you know, court, and they can’t wait to get engaged, then they can’t wait to get married. Then they can’t wait to have kids. And as a result, they’re never really enjoying the places where they’re at, right?

Grasping. Adam can’t wait. He doesn’t want to take time so that he learns how to determine good and evil in submission to the Father. He doesn’t want to take that time, and he doesn’t want to be dependent upon God. He wants to be—because he now believes that God is his rival, God is his opponent, God is against him—as we say, right?

So that’s what Adam does here. And that’s what Jesus says. If you’re going to be—have good mentors, have mentors who are not characterized by grasping too quickly. You want to look for people that are patient, who want to do things in a proper time in relationship to godly people.

This is what the problem with churches is, right? Either the old guys never want things to change, or the young guys want to change things right now. And those parties have to come together. Remember the text here is telling us how to have unity. How to have unity—not grabbing, right? But slowly anticipating and developing maturity in the context of one’s life.

Jesus is not like Adam. Adam was a raptor. He grabs for what God said he eventually would have, but he doesn’t. He works for his own detriment. He wants it prematurely and autonomously. Not so Jesus. Can you imagine the character of our Savior? The patience. 33 years. 30 years. Three years of ministry. Walking around people like you and me. I mean, there’s nothing wrong being people. There’s a lot wrong with being sinful people, and that’s the way we are. This, you know, Jesus was God. He was perfect. Can you imagine his patience, his longsuffering, his forbearance when they nailed him to the cross? I mean, these are the kind of people that he lived around for 33 years. He’s the model. He puts off grasping.

He’s there not to do his own will. He says in the Gospel of John, “but to do the will of the Father”—to be patient and do what the Father wants him to do. Autonomous man wants to find himself in his own center. Postmodernism says there’s a decentralized self. There is no center to you. And they’re right, ultimately. Christianity says we don’t find ourselves interior to ourselves. We—that’s what Adam tried to do in isolation from God. He was trying to find himself in and be his own man. And in doing that, he inherited death.

God says, “We find ourselves in relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ.” The front of today’s order of worship—Angie came up with a great picture that she found this week on the internet. That really says it all. It’s a hand reaching for fruit. I don’t know. Is there some fear in that hand? It looks like maybe some just some real lustful sort of going after something. I’m not sure what it is. But it’s clear that this hand is a grasping hand for the fruit. And you know, we’re all tempted to do this time after time.

Kids can’t wait for the BB gun. You may not get it this year. You know, patience. You want your presents now. No, don’t. You’ll want them a week before. I—one present. Can I open that a week? No. Some of you, you know, if you’re supposed to open them Christmas morning, the kids can’t—they, well, let’s do one present the night before. This may be the year to tell them no. And blame Pastor Tuuri for it. I’ll be the bad guy. I’ll be the weird guy. But you know, this is a Christmas season that I hope that we really focus upon patience and not grasping, because that’s Adam.

Jesus shows us that the nature of God is patience. Adam sinned against God. First commandment. He sins against his father, the fourth/fifth commandment, right? God’s his Father. He’s the Son of God. We’re told that in the gospels. He sins against him. He steals the apple. The mind of Jesus is revealed in the law of Jesus, right? And so Adam violates that. Adam is shown his impatience.

And later, the reversal of Adam’s impatience will be Abraham, whom the Bible refers to as probably the most patient man ever—in waiting, waiting, waiting to inherit the promises. Adam is shown as the raptor. Abraham is a picture of who Jesus will be—and waiting, waiting patiently, not exalting himself, waiting for God’s good time, the Father’s good time.

So we’re to put that off, and we’re to put on what is the character of God, right?

You remember Ralph Smith was here years ago—and several, maybe four or five years ago—and he preached on 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Listen: “Love is patient. It suffers long. Love is kind.” Now, those are the headers, and then it’s fleshed out. “Love doesn’t envy. It doesn’t parade itself. It’s not puffed up. It does not behave rudely. It does not seek its own. It’s not provoked. It thinks no evil. It does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

That sounds like the life of the Savior, because it is. 1 Corinthians 13—Jesus is patient. Jesus is kind. And when Ralph preached on this text, he showed us that, you know, if you knew your Old Testament and they said to you, “Love is patient and kind,” you’d immediately know it’s not talking about people first and foremost. It’s talking about the nature of God. God is love. And what the text is reminding us of is that God is loving and patient. Patient and loving and kind rather.

Exodus 34—the Lord appears to Moses and he passes before him. He proclaims: “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands.” So God’s very nature is being displayed for us in Jesus—not being a raptor, a grabber, a grasping, impatient person. That’s the nature of God. He’s not like that. God is long-suffering. God is patient and humbles himself. That is the very nature of God.

In Romans 2, this goes throughout the scriptures, but in Romans 2: “Do you not despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” So, how does he describe God? God is long-suffering. He’s patient and he’s kind. He’s forbearing. So the nature of God is to be forbearing and kind. And then he calls us to the same thing. He calls us to the same patience.

So Adam rejected his image-bearing capacity for God by being impatient. And Jesus does it in terms of patience. Remember, now, the ultimate purpose of the passage is how to have joy and community. What’s good for this church? What’s good for this church is if we’re patient with one another, that we don’t grasp and we don’t make ourselves of great reputation. You know, God is not against us, right?

The reason why that hand goes to grab the apple is because Adam and Eve have believed the lie that God is against them, that he’s a hard taskmaster, that he’s not a very good guy, that he’s a—I could use colorful language. And many, many children growing up in the Christian faith today have come to the place where they leave the faith because they think God is a jerk, and they use more colorful language about it. This is common, and part of that’s because we haven’t correctly, I think, preached what this text says—that it is God’s very nature to serve the people that he has created. It’s his very nature to be forbearing and kind, and that’s what leads us to repentance.

The text just told us the character of God is not against us. I don’t know why—because of my, you know, weird counterculture background—but I keep thinking about the Talking Heads song, which one of the most interesting rock videos of all time: “Once in a Lifetime.” One of the lyrics goes this: “Time isn’t holding us. Time isn’t after us. Time isn’t holding us. Time doesn’t hold you back. Time isn’t holding us. Time isn’t after us. Time isn’t holding us.” Then he says, “My God, good God.”

Well, you know, you can take that. I don’t know about David Byrne. I think his dad was a pastor. I don’t know about him, but I—I can completely say, “Yeah, I like that. My God, good God. My God is not the God that Satan wants me to believe he is.” And that so often he’s preached as unable to please him. And you can’t please him apart from Jesus. But in Jesus, he’s so patient and kind and giving to us. My God is a good God. He is not my rival, and the time—my life as I go through time—it isn’t after us. God isn’t after us. God isn’t holding us back. God isn’t against us. That’s the satanic deception.

And when we believe that, we grasp. That’s the satanic deception we have really about each other, too. Somebody does you wrong. Well, are they really doing you wrong, or are they acting out of a disbelief in the sort of God—my God who is a good God? And I tell you that the Bible in a very strange text tells us it’s the latter.

David says, “Against thee, against thee only have I sinned.” Now, he had sex with another man’s wife, and then he put that guy in the forefront of battle so he’d be killed. He did bad things to people. But his ultimate sin is against God. Now, if we take the sins of others as personal affronts to us, you see, and if we don’t recognize that other people in this church, in our families, when they treat us bad, it’s because they have a problem not submitting to God and to his character and quality—if instead we take it personal, the same kind of mimetic rivalry exists in the context of our cultures that Adam did, and we grasp. That we want to force the other person to do us right instead of ministering to them, to help them believe that God is on their side and to help them repent of sin and turn back to being the gracious receiver of the good gifts that God has given to us.

We began Advent season by saying that what’s important for us this particular year, the message we have for the church this year is mentorship first and foremost. We talked about that last week. Now, it doesn’t do any good for me to talk about it and to tell you this is what the Word of God is saying if you don’t do it. Have you tried to think through: Who am I following? Who can I imitate positively in this church, in my family, in my community? If you haven’t done that yet, well, you’re already a week behind.

If you have done that, the second thing the text tells us then is not to be a grasper, but rather to put on patience. Over and over again in the scriptures, God calls us to patience. He calls us to be like Jesus who patiently ministered for 33 years and never struck out in a way he could have, of course, as being God himself. Patience, forbearance, kindness. This is the character of God. This is the mindset that we are to imitate and find men and women to help us imitate by imitating their imitation of Jesus.

This is that mindset that we’re supposed to have in us: a mind that of not grabbing for things too quickly, but rather in patience, trusting the Father that his every thought toward us is good and blessed and giving and lovely toward us. That produces patience. Now, it doesn’t mean you just sit around doing nothing. Paul in the epistle has plans. Plans before the center, plans after the center. We work hard. We have diligence, not sluggishness.

But it’s interesting because in Hebrews it says you’re not like those who are sluggish, but through those who patience inherit the promises. The patience is not doing nothing patience. It’s doing the right thing patiently. Okay? But that’s what we’re called to be. Mentors—not being graspers, but rather having the quality and characteristic of God, which one of the prime heads of it given to us in 1 Corinthians 13 is—in fact, it’s the very first thing mentioned. Love is patient. Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for today. Thank you for the patience of these folks as they listen to me ramble on. But we pray, Lord God, that you would help us to be patient and loving this week. Bless us in this season of Advent—the gift of waiting with anticipation, not sluggishness, not sloth, but patience in doing the right things that you’ve called us to do and counting on you.

Forgive us, Lord God, that so often we’re like Adam, grasping away at the things that you will eventually give to us, not trusting you, but rather seeing you as our opponent, our rival. Thank you for correcting that in the person and work of Jesus. May our lives this week be lives of patience and acknowledging your goodness and patience toward us as well. And may our lives be changed because of this. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.