The Book of Philippians - Guest Speaker John Hamon
First B Jackson
2025-10-19

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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For me, it's like I just need a conductor. I just need someone to point me in the right direction and give me something to think about. You know? It's kinda like beauty playing. You know?

It helps me focus on what they're saying and whatnot. And it also reminded me, remember here, folks, who the audience is today. It's not you. It's God. So we need to pay attention and and just take suck it all in and and let it change us, you know.

So I'm gonna introduce John Hammond and his longtime girlfriend, Christie, is sitting over here. And anyway, John leads our men's fellowship Bible study on Thursdays at noon, and I've been going to that. I hadn't been able to go to anything like that for years, you know, when I was working because I worked so far out of town or whatever. I could never go to that kind of stuff. But now that I'm retired, I get to come.

And I if any of you guys, it's just guys, could ever wanna come on Thursdays at noon, I just love to hear John speak. He's got a keen intellect and just makes me, you know, consider things. So John and Christy have been coming here for several years now, and I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say, John. And they're tired of listening to me. So come on.

What an intro. Thank you, Steve.

You bet.

My you got me, Blake? Well, thanks for coming. I'm glad you're here. God's glad you're here. I hope you're glad you're here.

Because it's incredible every day that we get is an incredible day, and Sunday is the day we get to rest in who God is and what he's done for us. Amen? Let's open with a word of prayer. Father in heaven, we come to you with expectation because your word is living and active, and when you speak, you move in our hearts. So Lord, we're here.

Would you open our eyes to see? Would you open our ears to hear? Would you work inside of our hearts to take the good news about what Jesus has done and push it further down into who we are and what we do. Lord, I pray that the words of my mouth would be pleasing to you and would reflect your intention for your people here this morning, Lord. So may I decrease, may you increase in the proclamation of your word.

We pray these things in the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. We're we're a smaller, mightier group here this morning. Second service. You get to hear something that I already talked about, and, hopefully, I'll do better than I did the first time.

Kinda snuck up the joint. But but seriously, we're gonna look at Philippians two five through 11, which I'd like to start by reading, then I'll share some thoughts, and then we'll dive into the text deeply. So let me see. Do I have it, Blake? I'm going to start here, yeah?

So it's Philippians two:five through 11. Now this is a if you open up your Bible, if it's an NIV, it's the ESV, it's a King James version, you won't find exactly this rendering of it, because this is N. T. Wright's rendering for reasons that I'll probably get to later, or not. But I think it's so beautiful, and I want you to hear this with open hearts.

This is how you should think among yourselves, with the mind that you have because you belong to the Messiah Jesus, who though in God's form did not count equality who did not regard equality with God as something he ought to exploit. Instead, he emptied himself and received the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men, of humans. And then having human appearance, he humbled himself and became obedient, even to death. Yes. Yes.

Even death of the cross. And so God has highly exalted him, and to him in his favor has given him the name which is over all names, that now, at the name of Jesus, every knee within heaven shall bow on earth to and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Messiah is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. This is God's word. Chrissy and I, my girlfriend of thirty six years and and going strong, God's grace in my life, I would also add. Best thing that ever happened to me aside from Jesus.

She and I spent five years before we came here. We've spent five years in Manhattan planting a church. Those were definitely the go go days of Manhattan. When it was safe for a woman to go out and walk at 10:00 at night, or you put your teenage kids on the subway to go to music class without you, it was a really special time in Manhattan. But it was a place that was exploding with stuff.

There was more, more, more of everything. My buddy Dan, who was started a small group with me said, and this is kind of early on, I'm just trying to we're trying to find our way around the city he said, you know, in any given week in New York, I miss more chances to do really cool stuff than I'd have in an entire year living in any other place. And at the time, thought, man, that is such a typical New Yorker. It's the center of the universe. There's nothing happening anywhere except for in New York City.

But you know what? He's kind of right. I mean, there's every kind of culture, every kind of opportunity, business, every kind of media was there. All happening in New York City. And the church that we planted was for those people.

It was in Lincoln Square, where all the arts are. And what we were trying to do is, because all these young adults we were ministering to were coming in to become investment bankers, or lawyers, or media moguls, or start up people, or singers, or whatever it was they were trying to do, They kind of came, consumed, took from the city, got what they needed, moved on. That was just kind of the pattern. And what we were trying to encourage them to do is to actually say, Hey, there's more to this city than consuming. There's an opportunity to contribute, to give to the city.

So here in Jackson, we live a different life from New York City. It isn't so crazy. It isn't 6th Avenue at 05:00 in the afternoon with a thousand yellow taxis. It isn't, you know, fast workouts at Equinox. It isn't running around on the subways.

Here in Jackson, our pace is different, but we still have the drive to get more and to take more. And, you know, the way we do it here isn't isn't all that franticness, but it's things like, wow, we crossed Pompeii off our bucket list this year. I think you should go there. Or maybe, New truck is amazing. It pulls that trailer like a dream.

Or, I got 100 ski days last year, and I'm definitely going to do it again this year. You know, because we're all pulled towards something. We want more. We seem to want to get more, take more, just get get our hands over more and more and more. But I think what that pull is is something that God has given to us.

It's a pull towards a longing for glory. We want something. We want more because we sense there is more to life, and yet, in some way, shape, or form, we got it all upside down. We seek glory through achievement and getting stuff, but deep down, I think that greater need is to is to touch God, to encounter God, to know his presence. And I think what this passage shows us is that the true path to glory isn't more and more and getting more, as our world tells us, as our TV ads tell us, but it's the process of giving ourselves away, of emptying ourselves.

And that's the that's the invitation of this hymn. We call it the the Christ hymn. Paul wrote it from a prison in Philip in Rome to the Philippians, and literally, this letter was written where Ray left off last week. So you get to the end of Acts 28, he's in Rome, and he stayed there for two or three years, whatever it says. During that time, Paul wrote this letter.

So it's an interesting God thing that it just happened to be that we got done with Paul, and now we have his his letter here. The letter the reason he wrote the letter was a lot of things. He was thanking them for stuff, but also they were struggling. This church that gave him a lot of joy also was having a problem. There was internal conflict between a couple of women that get mentioned later in the letter, and there was an outside conflict with their the the the pressure of conforming to the world of Rome, which said that Caesar is God, that Caesar is Lord.

And so what Paul does in in trying to encourage them in thinking about their newfound faith in Christ is, it it's not to tell them to do to do better. He says, have this mind among yourselves. And so this is we wanna understand what this mind of Christ is. I wanna take a look at this. I I know you can't read this.

Right? I I'm clear on that. But the reason that I gave this to you is because I wanted to show you something about this, you know? This song, the Christ hymn was probably a song. We don't know if Paul wrote it, or maybe somebody else wrote it, but it was definitely they knew it.

Like, it's a it was like putting How Great Thou Art or something embedding into the text here. It was a song that they probably sang in their worship, and it's a poem. And what I wanted to show here is just something that's going on in this, which is there's a there's an arc to it. There's an arc to it. Our arcs in our lives are to go higher and higher and higher.

Right? And this arc is to go lower and lower and lower. This is a poem in which Jesus starts in eternity with God. He empties himself and goes all the way to the cross, all the way to the bottom. And just when it couldn't get any worse, any darker, God lifts him up and raises him back into eternity.

That's the motion of this poem. And so I just wanted to show that to you. We're gonna look at just kinda three ideas here, which is, first of all, how Christ is placed in eternity, who he is. The second, how he empties himself, which is the motion we see down, and then then how God exalts him, is how he lifts him up. So that's it.

God's eternity Christ's eternity, how he empties himself, and how God exalts him in response. Alright. So back to the text. This is how you should think among yourselves with the mind that you have because you belong to the Messiah Jesus. This is who Christ is, and it's the the hardest part for us to wrap our hearts around, for believers and unbelievers alike, that Christ is and always has been God.

A lot of people say, hey. You know, I love Jesus' teachings. They're just so powerful. But the God thing, I can't go with. Or some people think, like our friends in in in other cults, I'll say it, LDS, for example, say, Jesus is is a guy who became God by becoming get it better and better better.

He leveled up. He was obedient, and he made his way to the top. Or some people kind of put it all together in a salad, and they say, you know what? Jesus was a guru. He was a guy who kind of meditated his way to the enlightenment of of God, which is available to all of us.

But that's not what our faith says, and that's not what the scripture teaches. In John one one, you know this, in the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word was with God. Excuse me. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. There's no room for misunderstanding.

The assertion of the Bible is plain and clear. And and and not only that, in that same gospel, which is what we're studying on Thursdays, John goes further to explain what the relationship between the father and the Son was like in eternity. If you have a New King James or New King James, it says it describes Jesus as this: The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father. Bosom's kind of an old fashioned word. We don't use it much.

But picture it this way. Those of us who are have been parents or grandparents or aunts or uncles, whatever that might be, creating a baby. This seems appropriate right now. Holding a baby on your chest and having that baby swaddled and falling asleep, breath rising, breath falling, beat by beat, connected. Have you had that experience?

It's magic, isn't it? It's the most specialist thing that you get to do, I think. And take that and expand it sort of infinitely, and that's the intimacy between the father and the son. So he is God, he's in this astonishingly intimate relationship with God, and Hebrews goes further and kind of tells us that he's the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. Three things about Jesus.

He's the radiance of the glory of God. He's not a reflector like the moon, or reflector like you and me of glory. He's the glory source. He's the energy source. He's the radiance of the glory of God.

He's the exact imprint of his nature. I'll just tell you without getting long into the weeds here, that exact imprint of his nature, the best way we could probably translate modernly, colloquially, is to say he's a spitting image of his paw. That's who he is. So he's the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. Every blood vessel in your body, every cloud in the sky, the galaxies turning on their on end, it's all because of him, and he's sustaining it.

It's because he wills it to be that it is. So this is who Jesus is. And then at the dawn of creation, where God says, light be, we know Jesus is there. It says in John, all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. So think about that.

This this God who made everything, this eternal son who has this secure equality with God, he doesn't think that he has to hold on to that. The King James version, I don't know if you've ever read King the King James. Do you have King James there, Bob? Yeah. He says he does not consider it robbery to be equal with God.

And I thought about that one for, like, ever. When I first became a Christian, I was like, he does not consider robbery to be equal with God. But here's the big idea. Jesus can leave home because he doesn't feel ripped off, because he's already got the father's love. He already knows who he is, and so he can freely I I need to move here.

I said I'm talking, I'm too busy talking. He's in God's form. He he didn't regard his equality with God as something he ought to exploit. He doesn't need to hang on to it because he's already got it. Sorry I missed the slides there, you guys.

So this is how our God rolls. He lets go freely. How does it work for us? Well, Adam Adam took the opposite. Instead of letting go, Adam grabs hold.

He hears the serpent say, you can have this too. You can be like God. Grasp the asshole, and and you you can be equal to God. He says, you'll be like God. What happens next?

Exile, thorns, thistles, sweat of your brow. Those of us who were out working in the yard yesterday know what that's about. Death. Adam grabbed, and creation was crushed. And, you know, we echo his story.

We behave like him. If we're like a younger son, in prodigal son story, we're always grasping for glory. We're trying to get more likes on social media or making sure we have a good social network of people we know. We're trying to get the best seat in the house. Or we want people to know that we've got merit.

We're building our LinkedIn profiles. That's because we wanna hear that we have worth. We consider it robbery. We're not like Jesus, and so we end up struggling and grabbing and grasping. Where on the other side, you have the older son who is a good boy guy.

He doesn't really believe in his heart that he deserves to be with God. And so he's always working hard to polish his resume. And Paul knows all about this because he was a Pharisee. He was the guy who paid every tithe and said every prayer, kept his nose clean, and did all the good things that a good Christian, or in his case, a good Jew should do. And we know that.

In Philippians three, he talks about it. He says, you wanna you wanna you wanna go there? You wanna talk about being religious? You wanna talk about being somebody suitable for God? Oh, I got you.

Let me show you. I'm a I was a super Jew. Right? And he said, but I count it all as loss. And then he says, it's garbage.

The word is dung, actually. It's a much stronger word than we than we wanna translate it because we're because we're goody two shoe Christians. But it's actually saying, it's manure, dude. Like, all this stuff I thought was such a big deal is manure. And and what the problem for for that is, to be in that position to try to earn our way with God is that we we confuse sweat with sanctification.

And it's kind of like, you know, the older son in the story, he confuses being near his father, having proximity to his father, to having intimacy with his father. So, he's home, he's doing all the things he needs to do, he's grinding the grist, but in his heart he's a million miles away. He's really cut off from his father. And so, that's the trouble that we struggle with. He looks at his younger brother who's made a complete mess of everything, who comes home and says, the father welcomes him and says, We're throwing a party.

And what does the older brother say? Oh, man, I worked hard. Where's mine? Where's my barbecue? What's in it for me?

But it's such a strong contrast to Jesus, who he lets go of his privileges without regret. And when he leaves, he gives his glory away to us. It's a process of multiplication. You remember Jesus with the loaves and the fish in his hands? He handled them, he broke them, he passed them out, as he put them in the people's hands it was multiplied.

That's how glory works. That's how grace works. It comes through the hands of the Master and passes out through us. And so unlike unlike Adam who grabbed, unlike the older son who worked, the younger son who went and threw it all away, we have a different we have a different opportunity in Christ. What Galatians four tells us that through faith, we're adopted as sons and daughters, and there were heirs who can cry out, Abba, daddy.

And so he gives us his glory. We've been seized by his grace, and so we don't have to claw for significance anymore. So Ephesians one tells us we were chosen in love before the world began, and we were predestined for his glorious grace. We are predestined for his glorious grace. We are adopted.

And so what if we allowed this truth to take center stage in our lives? Imagine if we really believed that we are loved because we are loved because we are loved. Well, at work, we would be working to produce, not to be approved. In our families, we'd slow down and stop and actually listen to our spouses or our kids, put the phones away, because every day is precious and we need to spend time with one another. In the church, unity becomes natural, because your win is our win in Christ.

And for the friends of Philippi that that were were fighting, Paul says, look, take this mind of Christ because we belong to him. And he says he says, surrender to the spirit. So God loves us not for performance, but because we're his kids. So let's look at the second part of this. So first of all, he had equality with God in eternity, and he let go of it.

So from there, he empties himself. It says instead he emptied himself and received the form of a slave being born in the likeness of humans. And this is the process of not just Jesus, like, letting go. It's an act of giving away. It's an emptying.

It's he's not divorced from his divinity, but he veils his glory. And he sets aside heaven and the harmony of it to become a slave. To become a slave. Most of your translations would have the word servant in there, I think. But the Greek word dunlos means slave.

So he goes from the form of God, infinite light, infinite holiness, to taking on the form of a slave. And slave, like I said, for a lot of us, it's an ugly, ugly word in America. But slave one third of the people in Philippi were slaves. One third of the people in the Roman Empire were slaves. And the challenge for a slave is absolutely no ability to decide your own life.

You know, you you you don't get to decide where you're going, what you're eating, when to go to sleep, if you get married. Like, your whole life is completely not your own. So this is what Jesus does. It's the ultimate antiflex. Right?

He's the God of all creation, and he takes absolutely the lowest form of all humanity. And you see, like, even in John 13, you remember where they're they're having they're having the last supper, And Jesus gets down and he washes the crudsy feet of these guys. Nobody did that in a household except for a slave. And Jesus is modeling something of a mindset about what it looks like to serve. So, as John one says, He was in the world, and the world was made through him, but the world does not know him.

So this slave comes down, incognito, looks like Jesus, the local kid. And we love this story, this idea of of a hero emptying himself of glory and going down. That's why we love The Prince and the Pauper, or if you've ever seen Undercover Boss, the boss goes and kind of was a line worker for a day to see what life is really like for regular people. It's something that Tolkien explained as being the reason that we love those little stories so much is because they plug into that great story of the the king of glory coming down and and becoming becoming humble. And second Corinthians says it like this, you know, that he though he was rich though he was rich, yet for your sakes, he became poor, so that by his poverty, he could make you rich.

This isn't like, Jesus' work isn't like the undercover CEO, or it isn't like a sorry, I've done this myself, plenty, missionary tourism where we go to bless people for seven days, and then we're back in the comfort of our homes. Not like that at all. Jesus absolutely empties himself on a one way trip to the cross. Can I get to slide eight here? And so he's done those things.

He leaves eternity, he becomes a slave, and then it says, having human appearance, he humbled himself and became obedient even to death. Yes, even the death of the cross. Having a human appearance doesn't mean that he's a God in a man's suit. It doesn't mean that. Isaiah described it like this, that this this who he is.

Isaiah 53, you know this. Right? This the servant song of Isaiah. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us. He was just Yeshua from Nazareth, a laborer, a day laborer, a worker.

His glory, though, wasn't divorced from him. He'd hidden it. And you we know this is true because we see in the transfiguration you remember that story? Jesus takes the three up on the mountain with him, and what happens? For just a brief moment, his glory is unveiled.

And it's evident then that he is the source the light is radiating from him, that this godliness is veiled in human form, and yet he remains he remains God. So he's both fully God and fully man. And this matters a lot. Why does it matter a lot? Because our sin does damage.

Right? We damage God through our disobedience. We damage our spouses, one another, and we damage our own souls with sin. And it's an accumulating debt. We can't We can't put the milk back in the bottle.

It creates a debt that's so huge that it's unpayable for us. And so, God can't pay it because he's not a human. He's God. The form of payment doesn't work because God is light, God is perfect, God is holy, and humans humans will wear flesh and blood. So Jesus becomes a God man.

He enters and lives his perfect sinless life, a perfect life. And that perfect life as a human carries divine merit. It makes him our perfect substitute. So Jesus steps into our lives not as the man upstairs who's up aloof and up there somewhere judging us for our failures. No, he's the incarnate man next door who's lived out our grief.

He's lived out your grief and my grief. The grief of losing somebody that you love, he's lived it. Think of Lazarus. Your deepest wound that no one can see? He's been wounded too.

Your sense of isolation? Well, look at him in the garden. Look at him on the cross where he says, I've borne all your shame. It's not to not to pity you, but to pull you through. Tim Keller said it like this.

He said, Jesus lived the life we should have lived, and he died the death that we should have died. And I would add so that we can have the fullness of life in him. That is, he died he lived the life we should have lived. He lived a life of perfect merit. He died the death we should have died.

He suffered for the sins that we can't repay so that we might have fullness of life in him. That's what the thing of the cross is. And so he knows our struggles. He knows that some of us struggle to to do it our way, to be self made people, and we think that somehow obeying God is gonna reduce our freedom, is somehow going to diminish us. Well, Jesus leans into that call and puts the lie to it because because he's perfectly obedient, and what he shows us is that the cross is a love that's greater than than our wandering.

He can take us back. And and for the dutiful hearts, those of us who are kinda trying to get win God's favor, the deepest suspicion that we have, which is that we're not really worth it. We don't really deserve the love of God. He puts the lie to that too. He demolishes it.

Because he's the true older brother who takes all that we do and he folds it into his grace, And so what we inherit, what we're adopted for, isn't something that we wrestle for, it's something that we already have. And we can come to that dinner feast that the father throws as children, as welcome children. If you think about what it looks like to walk in that truth of what Jesus has done for us, well, it makes it easier for us in our daily lives. We can live differently. In our marriages, we can empty ourselves of our our unmet expectations.

Not stopping asking what I'm getting from you, but what can I give? How can I serve you? And for parenting, we can show that there's joy in obedience because Jesus has shown us the joy of obedience. It's not a chore. And at work, we work to to provide for our families, not to get our approval and our identity.

Or in the church, the divisions that we have amongst us go away because we find our rallying point together in the mind of Christ. Last slide here. And so God has greatly exalted him, and to him in his favor is given the name which is over all names, that now, with the name of Jesus, every knee within heaven shall bow on earth to and under the earth, and every tongue can shall confess that Jesus is Messiah, is Lord, to the glory of God, the Father. So after the deafening silence of the cross, we have the resounding affirmation of the father. This isn't exalting this isn't like he goes down and comes back, and he just gets restored to where he was.

Like, at the end of the story, everything's the way it was. At the end of the story, things are so much better than they ever were before. It's something that in in raising him from the dead, God says, you have made fame and to full. And it's not because you're a good guy, it's because you poured yourself out that the Father raises him in glory. And so now the guy who was the suffering servant is the sovereign over all creation.

And at the heart of this exaltation that God is doing, he gives him the name Kyrios, Lord. Kyrios, Lord, is the name that Caesar claimed for himself. Remember, went through a they pretended that Caesar was eternal, yet somehow all these Caesar immortal. Yet somehow all these Caesars died. They are man gods.

They are men who are pretending to be God. But our God who becomes a man receives the name of true Lord, of a cosmic Lord. And it's a subversive thing, because all these people in Philippi who were of like, yeah, we know. We've got to pretend that Caesar is Lord, Now know that Jesus is Lord. And they bend the knee, you know?

And in bending the knee, what are we doing? It's not a thing that we see commonly in our society now. Right? We say we bend the knee, and we use that as an expression, but we don't see it very much. But in this time, bending your knee before a Lord who has a sword means he can dub you and honor you, or lop off your head.

It's a position of utter vulnerability in acknowledging somebody's complete superiority. And so he's saying that now, all of creation, from heaven to those on earth to those under the earth, are now acknowledging that Jesus is Lord. Jesus Messiah is Lord. And while Caesar pretends that he's a god, he follows that parabola up and down. Jesus is the true Lord who follows that parabola down and back up.

For those of us whose hearts still wander, and they do, this is good news. We're welcomed home to share in the glory of this world, This world of this glory of God, it's a glory that will never fade. And for those of us who are still kinda older son mindset and we're laboring, trying to earn our glory, Hear this. The kingdom is yours. It's already yours, and you're welcomed in.

So you can trade the claim chits of being a good kid for claiming the kinship with Christ, is how I would say that. So to a watching world, we bear witness to a completely different kind of lordship. It's based on service, not subjugation. It's based on invitation, not imposition. And so the the hymn circles back.

The mind we are to share, not as a burden, but as a union we're to enjoy, when we empty ourselves with him, we are already seated in the heavenlies with him. We're citizens of the heavenly kingdom. Let's join that chorus in our hearts. Name him lord and send his grace and allow it to reshape what remains. Paul's prison words carried something special to his beleaguered friends, and they're here for us today too.

Joy endures beyond our circumstances. Joy endures beyond our circumstance. Happiness is what when we want what we have. Happiness is our current circumstances working the way we want it to. Right?

Happiness comes and goes because our circumstances come and go. Remember later in this very letter, Paul will say, I know what it is to abase and abound. I found a secret, because he finds joy. And joy is not having what you want, it's wanting what you have, what God has set before you. And that's the challenge.

That's the message of this hymn, that we've seen how the Son has this unshakable relationship with the Father. And through his solidarity, through his coming down into our frailty, into the world that we live in, he goes to the cross and is exalted back up to the right hand of glory. And we've seen too that whether we're the restless ones who want to go run away from God because we think obedience is hard, or we're the grinding older brothers who think we've got to earn our own glory, these are healed in Christ. We find a turning point, a love that gathers our shattered efforts and declares them complete in him. See, our God given desire for glory isn't through likes or acquisition.

It's entering into his life, the life of Christ, which is offered once freely for all. So I just say, let's take up the mindset of the one who humbled himself, A life marked by general attention to the others, by love that bears quiet fruit, and by bonds that hold us as as one. And I just ask you to if if this is true for you, then speak his name Lord. Make him Lord in your heart today. And if for some reason this is the first time that you've been touched in this way, know that the open arms of Jesus are ready to invite you to to to receive you back.

Let's pray. Father, for your son's deep, deep entry into our shadowed world, to death and to his soaring triumph, we offer our gratitude as a song. Would you loosen our tight hold on what we cannot keep and shape our inner lives to the song that spans the ages? Let him be lifted high among us now and always. Amen.