Dennis Tuuri

Today is our ninth in a series of nine sermons on collections of the one-anothers into basic community-building practices for the church. We did three on affirm, three on share, and three on serve. This is our last of the three on serving. And today our topic will be serving one another through serving others’ interests. And the sermon text is Philippians 2:1-4. We’ll have one final sermon on community, its need and its enemies next week to kind of wrap up this series. Then we’ll move on to Colossians in two weeks. But today, Philippians 2:1-4—please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Therefore, if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, 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’s pray. Father, we thank you for your scriptures. We pray that you would bless us now as we seek to think about these verses, that your Holy Spirit would write them upon our hearts, transform us by them, Lord God, that joy may abound. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

A number of years ago at one of our family camps, James B. Jordan played a movie called Solaris. There’s a more modern version with George Clooney, but the version that Jim showed us was done by a Russian director. In preparation for his showing us that movie and lecturing us or talking about the movie as he went through it, I watched it several times myself and got quite fascinated with it, and I watched it a number of times after that. I don’t watch it anymore because my wife really doesn’t like it. It’s a troubling sort of movie.

So, you know, the basic idea is it’s a science fiction movie. There’s a planet. Astronauts are in orbit over it, and the planet—things come up out of it like a giant boy will appear to pilots who are flying around it, or things—people will manifest themselves on the spaceship. You know, not quite sure of the connection. It’s weird. It’s strange. And the planet is manifesting things that have connection to the astronauts. If they think about it, and actually sort of things seem to be being worked out in their lives somehow through this, but it’s quite spooky.

Well, I’ve thought about Solaris the last few weeks in terms of current events. There are such strange things that are kind of bubbling up from our world right now. It seems so anomalous, and yet obviously we believe in God and scriptures, but plus our spirits sort of understand that big things are happening. We don’t quite understand what, where it’s going and all that, but there are these things that are kind of being formed up, you know, and I’m talking about things like the Obergefell decision on same-sex marriage. Odd, very odd. It just sort of comes out, you know, the appearance of ISIS—a more radical form than even the terrorists we fought and remembered this last September 11th. The immigration surge into Europe, and you know, kind of this one all of a sudden appeared with a photo of a child that is of interesting background. Won’t get into that, but what is going on?

Should we praise like we have the Christianization of some of these immigrants? Do we see it as totally a result of compassion on part of people? Do we see any danger to a growing Islamization of Europe—of old Europe as Christianity continues to die and being replaced now by hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of primarily, almost totally Muslim immigrants? These are strange days to live in. These things are sort of popping up. And then in our own church life, and we’ve had strange occurrences last week. Difficult announcement, right, to those of you who are members or regular congregants here.

So there’s these kind of strange things that are sort of manifesting in our world. And I, you sort of sit back and you sort of just are like, “Wow, that’s really very interesting.” The Iranian treaty that President Obama signed and how that was handled or not handled and what it means. And it seems like another part of this growing real shift in the emergence of Iran, whose leadership—not the radical right there as your president would want you to think—whose leadership lead the chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” These are strange times when an entire party somehow just walks in lockstep in relation.

I don’t want to get into politics too much, but these are difficult times. They’re strange times, and they’re times that sort of make you wonder what is happening. It can kind of have a little bit of effect, almost of shaking your worldview. And in light of that, I think to myself, “And what am I preaching on? Looking out for the interests of others? How to have a good church life?” And it seems so disjointed from all of that, doesn’t it? Maybe it seems that way to you. “Why is Pastor just whining on about that stuff? Why doesn’t he give us something about political interests and how we’re supposed to survive now?”

Well, really, I am doing that, and today’s text is an example. I chose the text because of the emphasis in verse four on serving others’ interests, right? That’s a big, huge deal. And I put it in context with verses one to four. And by the way, we’re going to go through those verses backwards today. I’ve never tried this, but I’m going to try it. And so we’re going to go with verse four, verse three, verse two, verse one. So we’ll go in reverse order because I’m really focusing on the end—the serving other interests—and then what leads up to that in verses one to three.

But I’m doing this, and actually this is germane to our modern version of Solaris and the difficulties and trials—whether very individual. Right? We’ve got a young man in our church that there is spiritual warfare going on relative to him. There probably isn’t with many people in our church we know of—one particular case—and we are trying desperately to, you know, to fight off forces of spiritual darkness. We’re involved in those sorts of struggles. And then on an international scale, the issues that I’ve talked about already—big problems, big difficulty.

But it was always this way. Philippians 1:27-30 provides the context for this community-building practice of serving others’ interests. Why are we supposed to be doing it? And in part we see the reason by the buildup to it in verses 27 to 30 of chapter 1, which I will read.

Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs that you stand fast in one spirit. One of the things we need in light of whatever these difficulties are we’ve talked about, whatever Solaris is bringing to bear in our lives, is to stand fast and be firm. I am astonished—not just by the Obergefell decision, but by the inability, the lack of desire of pastors to say something about it. They don’t do it. I guarantee you we will get far less than half of the pastors in the churches in Oregon City. Okay? Astonishing.

An issue that is absolutely crystal clear from the scriptures, and yet we can’t figure it out, or we get confused, or we’re worried about the perception. Whatever it is, the church can’t speak the truth or won’t speak the truth into the public arena. It’s astonishing. And we are called, in light of difficulties, as the Philippians were, to stand fast in one spirit with one mind—the same phrases that showed up in chapter 2, which we just read—striving together so decidedly, striving together to meet these challenges of our day for the faith of the gospel and not in any way terrified by your adversaries.

How do you avoid the fearfulness and the terror of the adversaries to Christianity that are emerging over the world—whether it’s here in America, same-sex marriage, or ISIS overseas, or whatever it is, right? How do you avoid being really depressed about this stuff or even terrified? Well, he’s saying they were likewise in danger of being terrified by their adversaries. And he writes to them, Philippians 2:1-4, to look out for other interests as the way to avoid being terrified by your adversaries.

Do you see? It looks like simple stuff, unconnected to the difficulties of our day and age. But it’s not unconnected, brothers and sisters. It’s what Paul sent to the Philippians so that they would not be terrified by their adversaries, which is to them a proof of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that from God. For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him but also to suffer for his sake, having the same conflict which you saw in me and now here is in me.

So the way we work this stuff through in light of the suffering we’re called to do, how we have to stand firm, how we can’t be terrified by our adversaries, how we win—okay? Jesus came to transform the world, and the existence of enemies is no barrier to that. How do we fight it? Well, there’s lots of things we do. Of course, there are all kinds of things that we do, but today we want to talk about fighting it through unity, Christian unity, through serving one another by seeking others’ interests on top of your own or before yourself.

So let’s look at the text now. And on your handout—nothing for the young kids today, sorry. First of all, there’s something to do.

Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

So we’re going backwards. We’re starting at verse four. We’ll go back up to verse one. And so we’re giving something to do. This is pretty simple stuff. Let me just say this, by the way. I’m involved, as we always are, in various difficulties in people’s lives. Some people, you know, at any given time in a church’s life are having tremendous difficulties—whether it’s with their spouses, with their own personal walk, with neighbors, with their boss at work, with other Christians, whatever it is. There are times at which each of us goes through very great difficulties.

I am convinced that if we just did this text, if we simply did this verse, so much of that stuff would clear up. Warring spouses, warring neighbors, warring church members. If everybody just stopped for a minute and took this verse and said, “I’m going to commit to Jesus Christ to do this because Paul says that’s the way I’m going to stand firm. That’s the way it’s going to work. I’m going to do this thing. I’m going to put others’ interests in front of my own,” I think that most of these problems would be eliminated. They would be cleared up, and we would be a strengthened people more able to resist the kind of, you know, evil that is now at play in our world. We’d be able to do that.

Now, this is a restatement by Paul of the basic Christian life. And on your outlines, I’ve got—I could use Matthew, Mark, Luke, where Jesus says, “The second great commandment is to serve your neighbor, right? To love your neighbor as yourself.” But I chose to use Leviticus 19:18. And you know why I did? Part of our problem is a short Bible—29 chapters instead of 29 books instead of 66. And it messes us up into this law-grace distinction that doesn’t exist in the scriptures, okay?

Leviticus 19, the heart of the Pentateuch, the heart of the book of Leviticus tells us this truth, where God tells us in Leviticus that we’re to love our neighbors as ourselves. That’s all Paul really is saying, right? How do we love our neighbor as ourselves? You look out for their interests before your own, right? You’re going to have interests, of course, but you look out for their interests. This is the basic Christian life. And we’re told this in various scriptures and various ways. Let me read a couple of verses.

So Leviticus 19—I’ve referenced Hebrews 10:24: Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. We’re supposed to be thinking about each other, our interests of the other person, so that we can administer to them and stir up love and good works, make them more mature, more established, more firm. And they’re supposed to be doing the same thing with us. It’s one of these one-anothers—reciprocal responsibility that we have.

Romans 15:1-2: We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak and not to please ourselves, not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification. Now that’s the same thing. Don’t please yourself; please your neighbor. Please your wife. Please your husband. Please your actual neighbor in your neighborhood you might be having some kind of dispute with. Please the boss that you’re having trouble with. Please the employee who’s struggling, right? Or not doing things correctly. That’s what we’re supposed to do.

Now, it’s not some kind of just pusillanimous pleasing of other people because that text goes on to say leading to edification. We do this to build each other up. These texts are primarily issued in the context of the church of Jesus Christ, the body of Christ. They have application outside, but this is what we’re supposed to do. So we don’t just put up with each other and please each other in their sin. We please each other to the end that they would be built up and edified. But pleasing each other, not pleasing ourselves, is absolutely critical.

And if we just started doing that, folks, in all the places of conflict we’d have, things would begin to clear up.

Galatians 5:13: For you, brethren, have been called to liberty. Only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. What’s love? Serving one another. Building each other up for the edification, putting others’ interests in front of our own.

So this command—this central truth that I want you to take away from today’s sermon—to make a list of other people’s interests. Your interests, too, but put those interests at the top of your list. Think about them, consider them. You have a problem, you have a relationship, you got somebody in community group that needs you to do this—look to their interests, discern what they are, make a list, be intentional about it. Okay? This is really just basic Christian living 101. And yet it’s the simple stuff that in times of stress and difficulty and exile, these things become hard to accomplish. So we need to hear about them over and over again.

So this is just basic Christian living, right? Secondly, notice the universality of this command, right? So he doesn’t just say this is something that you’re supposed to do. He says in verse four, Let each of you, right? So we’ve got that on your outline. Each of you do this. Okay? Everybody do it. Some people will not do it well. Some people won’t do it at all. But if we each do it, things will start to change. Okay? So there’s a universality to the command. Let each one of you do this thing.

There is an intentionality to it. Look out. Look out. That word, as I said earlier, means to scope out, right? A scope. You’re looking at something. You’re observing something. You’re looking out for something—in this case, the interests of the others. But there’s an intentionality to it. You’re looking at each other, not to be critical of each other, but to see how you can serve that person’s interests. But it requires a looking out. In other words, you don’t just sit around waiting for the interests to manifest themselves. There’s an intentionality to it.

And particularly when we’re in conflicts or difficult circumstances, this is a high priority that God wants us to do—to look at the thing, look at the other person, have intentionality about attending to their interests. And then there’s discovery. So you’re looking out for the interests of others. “Look out” means—so if we look out with an interest to discern the interests of others. Basically this means to secure somebody else’s advantage, okay? That’s what the connotation of the phrase there is.

And so there’s a discovery. We look to see what’s going on, and then we try to discern. We discover what the interests of the other person are. Those are not at all obvious frequently, particularly in times of conflict. And you’re going to—there’ll be a process of communication as you go about applying this truth in relationships, particularly when conflicts are occurring, okay? But there’s an intentionality that’s required. And then there’s a follow-through.

Great. You’ve made the list of their interests. You made a list of your interests. If you’re involved in negotiation, or you made a list of the interests of somebody in the community group. And now there’s follow-through, you know? Men just want to make the plan, and it’s all taken care of. Women know that plans have to be followed through. And so we all have to learn that lesson. Intentionality is a great start. Discovering other people’s interests—following through on this great truth that’ll produce the kind of stiffness and ability to withstand and not be terrified of the adversaries we have in our culture, world, and in our community.

This is a required community-building practice—intentionality, discovery, universality of this command. But then finally, follow-through. You got to actually do it. Not enough to think about it. Not enough to go home today and say, “That was good,” and then never do a dang thing about it. I speak to you, and I speak to me. I preach to you. I preach to myself. This is who we are. We tend to look at the mirror of scripture, walk away, forget what we saw. So there has to be follow-through.

Now, on your outlines, I’ve got this PAUSE Principle of Negotiation. This is from Ken Sande’s Peacemaker book. I, you know, I don’t know—some churches take a book a year or a book a month or a book every six months, and they try to get everybody to read it, and the church might buy copies for everybody. This is probably a book we ought to do that with. There’s so much good stuff in Ken Sande’s book. I was listening to it again this last week on Audible, but it’s really an excellent book. We have copies in the library, of course, and in one of the chapters he talks about this PAUSE principle of negotiation.

And really it’s an application of this Philippians 2:4 to how we go about achieving peace, right? The purpose of the book is how to make peace—not absence of conflict, but peace, the presence of God and God’s order. And so what is the PAUSE? P-A-U-S-E.

The first is P. That’s Prepare. So you’re involved in a difficulty with your spouse or with another member at church or in your community group or maybe it’s a boss, maybe it’s an employee. Whatever it is, these principles, these truths of scripture are what you should be focusing on. The first is Prepare. Pray, get the facts of a situation, seek godly counsel, develop options. He uses an example in his book of two neighbors who live on a couple of acres each, but their houses are right close to each other on the back corner of their various properties. And one neighbor raises dogs or trains dogs, and they’ve got a new dog, Molly, and Molly barks all night, keeping the kids awake—problem.

So they’ve got a conflict. So he uses that example as a way to go about fixing this thing. So the Christian couple that are having trouble with hearing the dog bark all the time, they want to do something about it. And so they investigate what are the laws, they pray about it, they get ready to talk to the neighbors, right? There’s preparation involved, right? And part of that preparation is getting ready to understand what the neighbors’ interests are in the discussion.

The A is to Affirm relationships. Show genuine concern and respect for others. This was the first three sermons—Affirmation, right? How do you build community, a community that’s godly? You affirm one another, okay? So affirmation of relationships. You know, when you get into a conflict, people think number one it’s a zero-sum game. Somebody’s going to win, somebody’s going to lose. But that’s not how God sees it in the context of the Christian church. Conflicts always are a win-win situation when approached biblically. And we’re not approached biblically—they’re kind of a lose-lose situation. But it’s not a zero-sum game in these things. You don’t want a winner and a loser. You want to reach mutual decisions to move the thing forward.

So there’s an A, and the other problem in difficulties is the relationships can start to feel quite unimportant to you. The big issue is that dang dog is barking, okay? The big issue is the wife is doing this or the husband’s doing this or the neighbor’s doing this or my boss is doing this. That’s the issue that needs to get taken care of. But affirming relationships is a reminder to you that relationships are probably the most important part of what you’re involved with another person. Relationships kind of have an eternality to them, right?

So we, but we tend to, you know, when there’s problems, we tend to sidestep the idea of relationship building. But it really should come to the fore in our mind based on Philippians 2:1-4. That person that you’re talking to, that you’re trying to put their interest above yours, that you’re trying to esteem as better than you—that relationship is what God wants you to focus on to achieve the kind of peace and order that he desires. So, affirm. You understand interest.

This is the center of the PAUSE principle of negotiation, and it’s Philippians 2:4 with all the verses that lead up to it. Try to understand other people’s interests. That’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s a difficult thing. It’s difficult just to understand your own interests. If you begin in one of these situations by trying to articulate your own interests, that’ll be revelatory to you. You’ll see some of those interests are sinful or beside the point, and other interests are interests of the kingdom, right? They’re part of you being on mission for God. And some of those are quite important.

Interests are things that motivate you, things that you get worked up about, things you really want to fight for, right? Or in this case, talk about and resolve. So getting your own interests on the table is difficult enough, and trying to understand the other party’s interests can be hard too. You need counsel from people. You need prayer, and you need to think it through and begin to make a list. Writing things down is important. What are the—if Paul says the way to avoid terror from the terrorists is to put others’ interests above your own, to serve others by serving their interests, you got to know what they are. And so you have to spend some time trying to figure out what their interests are.

In the case of the dog owners, for instance, part of the understanding of this was to, you know, they began trying to make a list of the interests of the dog owners. And they, as best as they could tell, then they would have conversations. And when they would have conversations, they would affirm the relationship, right? They wouldn’t just sit down and say, “Well, here’s the problem.” No. “Well, we know you care a lot about your dogs. That’s great. It’s good. We love to have you as our neighbors.” You know, they try to affirm the relationship. And then they start to try to discern—”Well, this is what it seems to us. I think maybe this is what you’re trying to accomplish by having this dog that barks all night.”

And you try to articulate their interest, and hear them respond to that and discern for them and try to draw out for them what their interests are. You know, sometimes this is a difficult thing for wives specifically to do from husbands, because husbands don’t want to feel powerless. They don’t want to feel shamed. So they’re not—they’re not necessarily the first to tell you how they feel about things and what their interests are in a particular conflict going on in the marriage. They just aren’t. And so you’re going to have to work at that. Wives and husbands of wives as well. But the point is, if we’re going to actually serve others’ interests, you got to figure out what they are. And you got to put some work in.

It’s intentionality again, right? So to understand their interests, you have to try to identify your own interests, your concerns, your desires, and then their interests or concerns or desires. And part of understanding the interests of the others involves knowing what things they fear, right? There’s certain things they fear. When you fear something, what you’re really revealing is an interest you have that you don’t want taken away. And so sometimes it’s really good to kind of think about what people fear as indicating an interest of theirs.

So the point is, you’ve got to work at this. You got to understand the other’s interests. And affirmation will help get you halfway there. Once you’ve gotten to understand—you’ve scoped out the other person’s interests in marriage, community group, church relationships, whatever—then you can start to move to meet those interests, right? I mean, the verse isn’t just about knowing what other people’s interests are. The verse is about serving people by helping them attain their interests.

And so what you want to do then is—you’ve got a list of kingdom interests. You’ve understood their interests, right? Maybe it’s a short list, maybe it’s a long list. You’ve had conversations. You’ve given the benefit of the doubt to their expressions to you. You’ve changed your list of what you think their interests are to match up with what they think. You know, your enemy should always be able to identify themselves in your characterization of them. And if it’s totally off, you probably got their interest wrong.

So you’ve done that process of discussion, affirmation of relationship, trying to understand interests, and you finally come up with a list that everybody agrees—”Yeah, these are our interests in the issue.” Then you start to try to find a solution. Now you can find a solution that will meet everybody’s interests. What we normally do is we just try to serve our own interests. And so we push and push for our side of things, and that creates conflict and difficulties. To lay down our lives to seek the interests of the other is what Christ calls us to do.

And we then begin to search out alternative solutions to a problem—brainstorming, whatever—trying to come up with it. You know, we, Chris W., Doug H., and I, we teach this under a different name in premarital counseling. It’s the ten-step thing that most of you that have been counseled here have been trained in. I’ll bet you almost never use it. That’s okay. But maybe the PAUSE thing, being five steps, is a little easier. But it’s the same kind of thing, right? You try to set up a proper time and place to talk about things, to try to discern interests. What did each of us bring to the problem? Blah, blah. And then you try to come up with solutions, okay?

So the neighbors, for instance, say, “Well, we’ve noticed in preparation they kept a log when the dog barked.” And they noticed that the dog would frequently bark when people were walking by the road that the houses were on. And so they brought this up, and the guy who owns the dog says, “Well, it’d just be too much work moving this kennel.” So one of the solutions from the neighbors who were being bothered by the dog was, “Hey, we’ll take care of that. We’ll come over. I think we could probably move it in a couple hours.”

So, see, preparation shows how you can meet the interests of the people to have this dog trained in a kennel and yet to move it in such a way as to where the barking starts to stop. The people offered their daughter to come over. They also—the dog would bark when they weren’t there. And people offered their daughter come over to exercise the dog when the neighbors were gone. “Well, no, we don’t trust her with the dogs.” So create a solution. “Let’s have her stay with you, maybe for a week. We’ll come over every week, every day—for during a week, every day that week. Spend an hour or two with the dogs. You can evaluate. Maybe you’re right. Maybe she can’t handle the dogs. Let’s see. Would you be willing to have her, you know, take care of the dogs an hour or two a day for a week, and then we could figure out whether she’d be able to care for your dog in your absence, which would stop the barking.”

So creative solutions, right? Brainstorming, coming up with solutions. And then the E, of course, is Evaluating the options objectively, reasonably, and in terms of those interests of the other person.

So Philippians tells us that this important community-building practice of serving one another by serving their interests involves several issues that we’ve just talked about. It involves a commitment to it. It involves an observation to scope out other people, to discern what their interests are, to affirm the relationship while we’re doing this kind of thing, right? In building community, whether it’s in our family or the church or our community groups. So these things all are—they have a series of steps which require plans, and frequently it’s really good to document what you’re trying to do. And when you reach creative solutions, particularly in an adversarial relationship, to document what you’ve decided you both are going to try to do to fix the problem and serve their needs in that particular way. Okay?

So that’s what we’re supposed to do. That’s the thing we’re supposed to do. And the rest of the verses really are kind of supportive or lead up to this, beginning with the next verse.

The way to do it. Okay? So Paul tells them that they’re to be like-minded, having one love, being of one accord, and of one mind. And on your handout there, there are four, two, one—hard to say if these are one kind of general characteristics. You know, sometimes when we have lists like this, they’re facets on a diamond, right? And that’s the way this can be. But in any event, so that’s what verse—the verse tells us in preparation for this. He says that he wants them to do this thing, these four things by being like-minded and also being of one mind.

Now, that doesn’t mean that you’re supposed to think the same thing in terms of specific ideas. The idea here is not to say, “What do you think?” And then take that opinion, and then that person, you know, thinks what you think, and then they look to the next person, “Well, what do you think?” and they adopt that person’s thought. That is not like-mindedness. That’s some kind of strange party game that becomes just a mess.

What it means is you’re minded on one thing. So that in our relationships with each other, we’re minded on one thing. That’s what it’s talking about. And of course, the one thing that we’re minded on is Christ and his kingdom. So the only way to achieve like-mindedness that Paul is describing here is to be minded about the one thing, the main thing, the same thing—and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And this creates a love and a unity of spirit, or soul really. This phrase—”having the same love”—again, you know, when we read about love in the scriptures, it’s easy to substitute emotion, sentimentality, whatever it is. But the love that’s being defined in these verses is, of course, Christian love. It’s the sort of love that’s characterized by the rest of the scriptures.

And earlier in Philippians, Paul had told them that their love was to be knowledgeable, and it was to be to a particular end or purpose. So we’re to have the same love. In other words, not different kinds of love—not a love for the world or a love for ourselves—but a love, again, that is defined by Christ and his kingdom. And we’re to be of one accord, which really means joined in soul. It’s one word—joined in soul. So we’re to be soul-to-soul.

What does that mean? Well, again, none of this really makes any sense apart from the overriding idea of everything we’ve said for nine weeks—that we’re one in Christ. That there’s a unity to us in Christ. And that unity is what Paul is calling us to have emerge in our relationships more and more. We’re to have a singularity of soul because our souls are now motivated by the one thing, which is Jesus Christ. We have a singularity of mindedness because the one thing we’re attempting to do is to be minded about the one thing. And we’re to have a unity then that develops in the context of love one for the other.

So these are part of what happens. This is describing the inner life of unity that is accomplished and necessary for seeking out and serving the interests of other people. Bring your thinking, in other words, into mind with each other as we all think about the Lord Jesus Christ and his kingdom. That’s kind of the point here.

So, you know, unity is not the issue. Unity of thought is not the issue. Unity of desire is not the issue. We’ve seen that kind of unity in our world. Think of the Nazis. There was an amazing unity. There was an amazing working together of a very dynamic military machine and social realities that were being played out. And that kind of unity, that kind of misdirected love, that kind of singularity of soul to serve the Führer produced one of the worst holocausts in human history.

So unity is not the deal. Unity of mind or thinking is not the deal. Unity of some form of love is not the deal in and of itself. Being one soul is not the deal. All of those things were contingent upon the mindedness of Jesus, upon the love defined by the scriptures, upon the soul that’s motivated by a desire for the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. That kind of singularity that Paul calls us to in our community groups and in the church is a singularity of service to the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s at the center of our thoughts. He produces a unity of his kingdom.

The answer is to focus on something. The something is not anything other than focusing upon the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s move on to the next point. There’s a put off, put on that’s to go on too.

Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit. That’s where you put off, and then instead, with lowliness of mind, serve one another.

So we’ve talked about this dynamic. It’s Adam and Christ. Christ is the new man. Our Adamic nature is the old man. Let me explain this phrase just a little bit. “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit.”

Selfish ambition—Keller refers to this literally as hyperfighting. Hyperfighting. Selfish ambition doesn’t quite get it. It means you’re always trying to prove that you’re in the right. You’re always defending your position. Plato used this word—this term is derived from—to talk about people that were always campaigning in terms of political position or office. A perpetual hyperfighting for a partisan purpose. This is one of the great difficulties of political parties—it leads to this kind of stuff. And when we get more and more votes, or everybody is polarized, this is the sort of thing that’s happening. But it happens in our own lives, right?

He’s not talking about overarching political structures. He’s talking about you and me. And by the way, he’s talking to a church that was one of the best around. If you look at all of Paul’s epistles, the one to the Philippians has few errors that he’s really trying to correct. They seem to be a really good church. And yet they had people in that church, and all of them needed to examine themselves to see if they were involved in hyperfighting all the time.

“I think this, I think this, I think this. I’m right. Whenever you say something different, it must be an attack upon me, because I’m at the center of the thing.” And so I have this continual adversarial relationship that’s being built up, and it’s really part of what I’m doing. That’s who we are in Adam. We’re hyperfighters, okay? And hyperfighting is based upon this conceit.

Now, it says conceit, I think, in the New King James. The King James refers to it as vain glory. Vain glory is the better translation, because that’s what the word is actually made up of: kenos—nothingness—and doxa—glory, okay? So the thing that drives the self-centeredness is empty glory. What do I mean by that?

We all want to be somebody, right? I want to be important in life. The older you get, the more you think about this. “What am I doing? Why am I? And you think I really need glory.” I’m created in the image of God. That’s—we don’t know it. I mean, secularists don’t know it, but that’s what’s going on. They really desire glory. And rather than get mediated glory through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, through God’s gift of glory to us, we’re all seeking our own glory. And this term tells us that seeking our own glory, this great desire to have meaning, significance, weightiness to our lives, it never works, because it’s vain glory. There’s nothing to it.

In light of how God measures glory, there’s nothing there. So what happens? We seek it more and more. We grasp after it. We try to get it. “We’re important. We’re somebody.” And as a result, we end up hyperfighting. So these two things go together. The opponent of serving other people’s interests is a kind of hyperfighting that results from trying to achieve glory and significance and meaning to our life apart from the Lord Jesus Christ and his kingdom. Even for Christians who acknowledge intellectually that our glory comes from the gift of God and the reflected glory of the Savior, even here we have desires to make something of ourselves better, right?

On your handouts, I’ve got Madonna, Letterman, Tuuri. So, you know, the idea is—whether you’re somebody very significant in the world or somebody who’s insignificant, we all desire the same thing. We all feel driven by a knowledge that really we have vain glory. There’s nothing to it. And so we work harder and harder and harder. Madonna and Letterman—they both say, “Well, we kept thinking people would wake up and realize there’s nothing to us. There’s nothing there.” And we’d be fired, canned, we’d lose popularity. And because of that fear, we’re driven more and more to insist that there is something there.

“No, I’m really good. I’m doing a good job. It’s all about me. If you don’t like it, then you’re attacking me, and that’s not good.” And so I’m going to fight with you. See? And no matter if you’re a big celebrity or the average person in the world like me, the same thing motivates us. We have a deep fear of a radical insignificance to our lives.

Ask yourself—do you have that fear in there? We all have it, because we’re all descendants of Adam. Now, God is reducing that in us. He’s replacing that vain glory with the real glory of serving Christ in his kingdom. Praise God. And that’s what Paul is saying—that even to the best of churches, we have to be reminded that we can’t do this thing if we maintain a spirit of hyperfighting—all about me, I’ve got to win the argument every time, and I’ve got to do that because I’m trying to achieve some weightiness or significance to my life that it will never produce.

That’s the situation that the old man is in. That’s the situation we’re in that keeps us from doing the obvious, easy thing of discerning and trying to meet the interests of other people, putting them at the top of our list rather than ourselves at the top of our list.

“So I am somebody,” right? Well, there’s truth to that in Christ. And apart from Christ, you’re never going to be somebody. And you know that. You sense it. And you’re going to try all the harder, and your trying is going to be all about hyperfighting and all centered upon yourself and your world. When people talk about themselves all the time, this is an obvious reality that they’re going to have a very hard time discerning, even caring, to discern and then following up with serving the interests of others.

So that’s what Paul says has to be put off. And what is put on?

In lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself.

Lowliness here—humility. You know, the Greeks thought this humility stuff was really a bad deal. And they were right. The Greeks were right. “How foolish to want to be humble, to become a servant to another person, a slave—a doulos, to use Paul’s term.” And in—well, in the Greek system, if what you’re trying to accomplish is to accomplish things by force, by subjugating people, by bullying people, by pressuring people—if that’s the kind of world you have—well, what a stupid thing to become somebody’s servant.

And this word that’s used throughout the New Testament of humility—it’s the word that the Greeks just despised, okay? And they were right to despise it outside of the kingdom. It’s a stupid thing to do. Within the kingdom, it’s the only thing to do. It is the absolute height of all virtues to be humble before God as opposed to being prideful—not centered upon ourselves except to recognize that we’re base sinners, and that the only way we have anything in life, the only way we are somebody, is through the forgiveness that the Lord Jesus Christ came to make possible for us and to give us graciously by his free gift.

So apart from that, you know, it does make it seem it is really stupid to be humble. But within the kingdom—which is to say within reality, which is to say within the way humans are supposed to behave, were designed to behave, created to behave—within that reality of the new world that Jesus Christ has brought to pass, within that reality, humility, as opposed to being self-exalted, is of an absolutely critical virtue.

So you put off vain glory. You put off the resulting hyperfighting, and you put on humility of mind. Now this word humility is often linked to another word: meek. Humble and meek. And we’ve talked about that. What is meek? Meek is strength. It’s strength harnessed to the rider. It’s the horse that’s been trained not to become weak but to be strong under the control of a rider, and as a result more powerful than he was before.

So the humility that we have before God in Christ is always accompanied with this idea that in that humility, we become more than conquerors through Christ who has loved us. Okay? We actually become incredibly powerful people. We’re able to withstand—again, what the Philippians were trying to withstand—terror, not being terrified by our adversaries. The adversaries are real. But the humility that we have before God, knowing that we’re debased sinners and that we can’t exalt ourselves—we’re to put off all of that and to put on a mind of humility of our actual status in Christ that makes us meek, strong, able to do the job that God has called the church to do, which is essentially to continue to manifest and affect the new creation that Jesus came to bring to pass.

So it may seem the way you defeat some of the things that Solaris seems to be summoning up is to be humble of mind and not to be seeking vain glory. But in humility of mind and lowliness of mind, then we esteem others better than ourselves. So you’ve got a list. Who’s the most important on this list? And you put yourself at the bottom. To esteem other people, to reckon them, to count them, to evaluate them, and recognize that God wants you to serve others, not yourself. And to because of that, put the other at the top of the list.

N.T. Wright talks about a lunch party he went to, and there were 30, 35 people—some of them very important people. You would recognize their names, he says—and so they went to lunch. And as the man who had gathered them together, a very important person, he prayed at the start of the meal and then he said, “Remember, the most important person in this room is the person next to you.” You see? And that’s kind of what Paul is getting at here, right? The most important person to you is the person next to you in the pew, next to you when you have dinner tomorrow. Which is to say that we’re supposed to prioritize everybody above ourselves, and not the people that are popular, that have the great gifts, abilities, people we’re naturally drawn to. No, we’re to serve the interests of others. We’re to put other people, even those that we don’t jive with, at the top of our list.

You see, God wants this. In order to serve the interests of others, you’ve got to put off, and you have to put on the mind of Christ—humility—and putting others before themselves, okay?

Moving on. You know, by the way, these fire pits out at Con’s house—we missed Friday night, not feeling that good. We’ve been to several of them. And you know, it’s always fascinating to sit around a group and to have a couple, which is what the Cones have done at these fire pits—is one couple talks about their life. Last Friday was the Bernards. I assume that happened. The Rungies were before, and the Cones. And it’s always amazing to hear how God has worked in people’s lives. I don’t care who it is you pick to be that center couple. You’re going to have an interesting story, because we’re interesting people the way that God has put us together and used us.

And you see, it’s easy—when you start to actually stop, slow down, hear people’s story—it’s a little easier to put them at the top of your list, to see what God is doing with them, okay? To put their interests in front of your own.

All right, let’s see. Moving on quickly. I know it’s late.

The motivation to do it. This is interesting. So as we’re going back up the verse, right? He says in verse two, he says that he wants them to make his joy full. Now, this is really, from one perspective, in the Greek, this is the only command. Verse two: “Fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord and of one mind.” So we’ve talked about that. And now moving up further is Paul’s command to fulfill my joy.

Why does he want him to do this? What’s the purpose? What’s the goal of it? Joy. His joy. Which seems weird. “Make me happy,” Paul says. But if we remember that Paul is writing here, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he’s the voice of Jesus and the voice of the Father and the voice of the Holy Spirit. Philippians—in other words, Paul’s joy is God’s joy. I think that’s right.

And what Paul is saying is if you do these things—if you serve others’ interests through the mechanisms we’ve talked about, seek them out, serve them, humble yourselves, get rid of the vain glory, the empty glory, put on the glory of Christ, rather, put others in front of yourself. If you do this, it makes God joyous. He sings over us, right? The Bible says God sings over us, and he sings loudly if you do this thing. And you’ll be more joyful, and I’ll be more joyful, and we’ll all become more joyful, because Paul is saying that if his joy is full, and the Philippians’ joy will be full as well.

So the purpose of all this, the motivation to us to actually do it, is ultimately joy. At least that’s a significant part. And then secondly, the motivation to this is the blessed condition that’s laid out in verse one.

Don’t misunderstand the translation. Greek is different than English. It doesn’t mean “if.” In other words, there may not be any consolation in Christ. “If any comfort, well, if you have any comfort, then do it.” No, it really is “Because there is consolation in Christ.”

Consolation in Christ. That means to call to someone, call alongside, call someone to be alongside you or to call to them, okay? Now this can be in comfort. This can be an encouragement. This can be a warning. Parakaleo means to call alongside of. It can be all those things. But the kind of edification or encouragement or consolation that Paul is talking about—and I don’t think we can quite be sure in the text. I know some people think it can. I’m not quite so sure. But the important thing is that it’s in Christ, okay? So the consolation that God has given us is in Christ. He calls us, and we call each other, to recognize our identity is in Christ.

So this is the reality. Because you have received encouragement, comfort, whatever it is, in Christ. Because you have the comfort of love. This word is to whisper to somebody or to speak to them right next to them. And this has the connotation more of comfort or consolation, being kind to people, as opposed to necessarily encouraging them. But they’re related terms, right? To talk about a closeness to one another. And he says that if there’s any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, that this comfort comes because of the love that God has called us to have, okay?

So again, we have the idea of Christ’s love as the motivating factor to this and the love that we’re supposed to have to other people. He says if there is—this sense is—there is, rather. Since you’ve got edification or encouragement in Christ, that you have comfort, and this comfort has come because of the love of God and the love of other people for you, because you have a fellowship of spirits. It’s not necessarily the Holy Spirit here. There’s no definite article, but there’s a fellowship, and you’re all spiritually minded together, motivated, of course, and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Since you have this, and since there is affection and mercy, since there are bowels of concern one to another—that’s what affection is. It’s the viscera. It like comes from the center of your being. You have affection for other people. And as a result of that, you’ve got mercy. You care about them. You, you know, you hurt when they hurt. You have compassion for them. Paul says you’ve got all of these things going on.

These aren’t “if” clauses. There’s a sense—these things are true. And they’re all focused on the work of Jesus Christ. From one perspective, this is a 7+1—in Christ is the basis for everything here. Consolation, comfort, love, fellowship, spiritual realities, affection, and mercy. All those seven elements are found in Christ. Because we are in Christ, we have this great life that God has given to us in Christ. And because of that, Paul says, “I appeal to you. Make my joy complete. Put aside selfishness. Put on humility. Serve the interests of others rather than yourself.”

You see, really, the motivation is listed first. And that’s why I wanted to do this backwards. The command at the end is what we want to focus on. But you get there through these other clauses that build up, beginning with an understanding of what we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is who we are. This is what we have. This is the life that God has given us to do. And when we recognize that, then we are empowered to serve others, to put their interests in front of our own.

Ultimately, of course, this section—one to four—goes on to verse five, and verses five to eleven is the great declaration of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The engine to do this begins in verse five and six. “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.”

The engine that drives the whole thing is what he moves to next in this epistle. And the only way you can do it is if you’re in Christ, like he said at the beginning of this section. And at the end, this is who Christ is that you’re in. And when you have that, then you have the tools, the motivation, the equipping, the understanding to put others’ interests in front of your own and to serve the community of Jesus Christ in that way.

May the Lord God grant us each in our particular stations in life this week to apply this. It’s like I said earlier, there are tremendous problems that always go on in the life of a group of people such as at RCC. These problems are completely solvable by applying the basic truths of the Christian life—to love your neighbor as yourself, to serve their interests rather than your own.

Let’s pray that the Spirit would empower us to do that.

Lord God, we do pray that we would take this truth into our week. Help us, Lord God, to make lists. Help us to prioritize others above our own selves. Help us to think of people that we can be operative in serving their interests, particularly those people that we might have a conflict with. Help us, Lord God, to remove those conflicts, to use them as holy providential opportunities to grow in grace and in the ability to serve one another.

We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ serving us. Bless us, Lord God, that we might serve others. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.