No Half Measures | Philippians 2:5-11

Philippians 2:5-11  |  Cody Hale

Transcript

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Amen. If you have your Bibles, return with me to Philippians chapter 2. Philippians chapter 2. While you're turning there, I just want to say thank you. My wife and I were able to get away. My family and I were able to get away on a trip back home last week for spring break. I just want to tell you, like, it's not lost on me. Um, how fortunate I am to be in a church that cares about me and cares about my family, cares about our well-being. So thank you, church family, for being so gracious and allowing us the time away. And we are just so thankful to be here and to be back with you even this morning. And I'm so thankful for Sam, who did such an excellent job of filling in for us last week. Philippians chapter 2. I'm gonna read verses 1 through 11, but the primary thrust of the sermon will come from verses 5 through 11, but it all fits together, so I'm gonna read it all. Let's read it together. Philippians chapter 2, beginning in verse 1, says, So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Let's pray the Lord together. Heavenly Father, this morning we are gathered together because we recognize that Jesus' name is the one to whom we must submit. His name is the one before whom we must surrender. His name is the one and the only one that is worthy of our lives, worthy of our praise, worthy of our devotion. And his name and his rule as our king is what gives us the hope to be able to sustain us through the brokenness of our lives and the difficulty of our lives. It's what enables us to fully enjoy the sweet moments of our lives. It reminds us that even in the mundane ordinary, it feels like it's of no consequence, matters because it's lived before Him. So, Father, I pray that you would put our gaze on the rule and the reign of Jesus in such a way that causes us to be even in greater love with him and more devoted to him. Do it in such a way that calibrates our faith and calibrates our lives so that we're living now for that which matters most forever. We ask these things now in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. A few years ago in Queens, New York, someone spotted a pressure cooker that was sitting around unattended in public. And a passerby saw it and it immediately made her nervous, and so she called the authorities. Well, the authorities didn't play at all. In a matter of moments, the entire street was shut down. The bomb squad was brought in. They had the dogs, the robots, the detonation devices, everything was brought there to be able to see it. And when they finally examined the pressure cooker, what they realized is there was really no threat at all. There were no wires, there were no detonators, there were no explosives, there was nothing to be concerned with. And from the outside, it seems kind of ridiculous to shut down life, to stop the flow of traffic, to cause so many people so much inconvenience over what is really just a kitchen instrument. It seemed like overkill. Until you remember the context. See, just a couple of months before this pressure cooker was seen in Queens, a pressure cooker was used in the Boston Marathon to maim, to injure, and to murder people that were there just to enjoy a day. And the thing is, is that the response only feels like overkill if we assume that the threat is small. When something has been used before to cause massive destruction, you don't take half measures. You don't send a police officer in with a flashlight to poke it. You take it seriously. Well, Paul looks at division in the church in a similar way. We treat it like it's cookware. Paul treats it like it's a weapon of mass destruction. You'll notice there what it says in verse 5. It says, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. What's the this that he's talking about? The this that he's talking about is what Sam talked about last Sunday. It's what comes just before that. It's counting others more significant than yourselves. It's putting away all conceit. It's living a life that is worthy of the gospel. That Paul is here and he's addressing something that's so common we barely even notice it. We forget it's even existing. Pride, the instinct to put ourselves first, selfishness. We think about that. How do we typically treat it? We gotta shrug it off, don't we? Everybody's got a little pride. Everybody's got a little, because everybody's a little selfish. Every church has a few little arguments here and there. Everybody has their differences. These are sins that in some ways are acceptable to us. Paul doesn't see it that way. Paul doesn't shrug it off. Paul comes in and he detonates what equates to a theological warhead. He comes in to explode away our conceit and to explode away our selfishness and to explode away these differences that we find. What looks like a small church squabble to us, Paul rightly recognizes, carries the same DNA as a cosmic rebellion that began in the Garden of Eden. And so he comes in and he brings what we call the Christ hymn. Most people believe that verses 5 through 11 that the words that we're reading are not original to Paul. Paul's probably quoting them. They're a song that would have been commonly sang in the early church. Think about that. Here we are, we're studying something that was a part of the liturgy of the early church, that was a part of the worship of the early church. And what you'll see is that this hymn really has two primary stanzas or two primary movements. But Paul's making a very specific application, and that's what I want us to do. I want us to take these two primary movements of the hymn to ask two questions that I believe will obliterate the selfishness that is among us. The first question that I want us to ask here is who are you living for? Who are you living for? You know, royalty is really fascinating, isn't it? There's a reason why we have the crown on Netflix, there's a reason why every royal wedding seems to break all the viewer records from the one before it. Is it really fascinating to think that King Charles didn't have to earn any privilege? He didn't have to deserve any privilege. He was simply born into it. That just because he was born to whom he was born and when he was born and where he was born, he gets this life of incredible privilege and incredible influence and incredible affluence. Now I want you to imagine this afternoon when you go home from church, that you turn on Fox News, and this would be everywhere. That when you come home, King Charles has voluntarily and permanently abdicated his throne. And he's voluntarily and permanently abdicated his throne because he wants to do something that will make it society a better place to live. Imagine that what he decides he's going to do is he's gonna liquidate the royal estate. He's gonna auction off what are deemed, I looked it up, they're literally deemed priceless crown jewels. He's going to dissolve the duchy holdings, and he's gonna funnel billions and billions of dollars that are rightfully his into a nonprofit that's going to eradicate poverty in the most impoverished areas on earth. But he says it's not all. Not only is he going to liquidate all of his assets and set up this nonprofit, but he is also himself going to take a vow of poverty. He's gonna go and he's gonna live in the dirt. No palaces, no motorcade, no security, no special guard, no trust to keep him for a rainy day. He's gonna go and he's gonna sleep in the dirt among a group of people that don't know his name, don't know what he's about, and don't know that he even matters, so that he can serve them for their own good. Now, how would we process that? I can tell you how we would process that. All of us would be very skeptical, wouldn't we? All of us would be very skeptical. What we would be wondering is what's actually going on here? You know, like like what's the real story? Why is that? Because no king would do that, would they? No king without coercion, no king without being forced, would willfully lay down all of their privileges and all of their rights and all of their wealth because it's theirs. That's why Paul is bringing us to Philippians chapter 2 to dismantle the selfishness and conceit and and and arrogance and pride in our lives. Because what we see here is that our king enjoyed every to-do. Our king enjoyed every. There's two phrases here that I want to draw out to you in verse 6. The first one is the phrase, he was. Let me get on the right pen here. He was. And this matters because, first of all, the verb matters. It's a to be verb, isn't it? It's a verb that is speaking of existence. So that matters. But but it does not just that the verb matters, it's that the verb tense matters. It's it's in the past tense. So this phrase is here meant to show us, these phrases are here meant to show us that Jesus doesn't just exist now, Jesus doesn't just matter now, didn't Jesus didn't just come into existence. He existed past tense. He pre-existed, he predates what we're seeing here. So Paul isn't saying that Jesus became something, he's saying he was something. He was someone that before Bethlehem, before there's a virgin birth, before there was a world to enter, Christ already existed. That he didn't begin in a manger, he didn't come into being at Christmas, he was. He was. He predates time, he he stands before the creation. He is not part of the universe, the universe is part of his handiwork. That he was because he is. That is, he was always there because he is the great I am. This is the significance of the first phrase. The second phrase that I want you to notice is where it says that he was in the form of God. In the form of God. Now that phrase might make us a little bit nervous. It might make us a little bit nervous. We think, okay, my whole life, I've always been told that Jesus was God. So is Jesus God or is Jesus in the form of God? What does he mean by that? Well, that's confusing to us. It wouldn't have been confusing at all to the church at Philippi. They would have known exactly what he was meaning. The word form there is the Greek word morphe. And it doesn't mean that it's a projection or an imitation. What it means is it means that it's outwardly displaying the inward essence. It's putting in the outer form what is inwardly true of the actual nature. And so Paul is here, and what he's wanting us to see is that Jesus is quite literally in nature and in essence God himself. And he has come and been born into the world so that now in his outer form, he is putting on the full display of who God actually is. That the essence of who he is and the nature of his divinity is putting displayed actually here in his humanity. So he's not here saying that he isn't God, he's actually saying the exact opposite. That he wants us to recognize that Jesus, everything that makes God God, makes Jesus Jesus. That he doesn't resemble deity, he isn't approximate divinity, he is God. He didn't just come in and pretend to be God, he actually is. This is a part of the nature of who Christ is. That is Colossians 1 tells us another hymn that we find in the New Testament, that all things were made by him and through him and for him. That he is the sovereign king of the universe. He upholds the word, the world by the word of his power. Every Adam answers to him, every throne derives authority from him. Every angel has from the moment of its creation sang a song of praise to him. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. That is, as the King of glory from all eternity past, he was enjoying every due worthy and owed to his name, but then he emptied himself of his dignity. He emptied himself of his dignity. You'll notice that the word form appears again in verse 7. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form, there's our word again, of a servant. That is, he was eternally in the form of God, and yet here he took the form of a servant. Now, the word servant doesn't probably convey the impact that Paul intends by this particular word. It probably should be more literally translated as slave or as bond servant. The picture here is a person that literally lives every waking second of their day thinking about obedience to their master. Their purpose of their life is obedience to their master. And so Paul is intending to press in us a contrast that we're supposed to feel. That he is in the form of God, very God of very God, as the council of Nicaea says. And at the same time, he is in the form of a slave, very slave of very slave. How is it that these two can be conjoined in the same one? How is it that the great master and the great Lord can at the same time be the humble servant and the humble slave bent toward obedience? And we have to be careful here. We have to be careful here. You'll notice that it says in verse 7 that he emptied himself. There's been all kinds of heresies that have come up as a result of this word empty. So what what do we mean by empty? Well, we know definitively Jesus did not empty himself of his deity. He did not cease to be what he was. The Son did not, and in fact, could not subtract his godhood. That's not the picture. No, Jesus didn't subtract, he added. Jesus didn't empty his deity, he added to his deity humanity. One commentator puts it like this the question is not what did he empty himself of. The question is better, what did he empty himself into? What did he empty himself into? That is, he emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant. Jesus emptied the fullness of God into the brokenness of humanity. He emptied the invincibility of God into fragile, mortal human flesh. He emptied the eternal, infinite God into the temporal, finite world. He emptied himself of the adoration of angel choirs in exchange for the rejecting cries of men that would say, Crucify him, crucify him. He emptied his command of angel armies to come down and to scrub the mud off the feet of his own betrayer. No, no. Jesus did not empty himself of his deity. Jesus emptied himself of his dignity. You'll notice in verse 6, there's an interesting word. It says, Who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. Grasped. The idea of the word grasped means that I'm holding on to something that I believe is rightfully mine, that I'm clinging to as hard and as tightly gripped as I can to that which I believe I am rightfully owed, that belongs to me. It's meant to bring into our mind the first man, Adam. What did Adam do? Adam tried to reach out as though it was his own entitlement, as though it belonged to him and grasp equality with God, didn't he? He tried to grasp the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. He tried to put himself on an evil, even playing field with the Lord, showing himself to be prideful, showing himself to be conceited, showing himself to be self-absorbed. And what happened? Because he grasped for that which he believed he was owed. Because he grasped for that which he believed he was entitled to. Brokenness enters the world. Curses enter the world. Death enters the world. Sin enters the world. All of the tragedy and travesties that we know as we know them, all of them enter into the world. And it's all the result of this first man, Adam, our father, grasping for that which he believed was his, grasping for equality with God. So what's the picture of Jesus? The picture of Jesus is that these things are actually his. They actually do belong to him. They actually are his right, they are his endowment. He is the king of kings. He is in the form of God. He is very God of very God. And though they were his, he did not consider them something to be grasped. He did not claim his own rights. He did not claim his own dignity. He did not claim his own privilege. He abdicated all of his privileges that we might be able to be held up. The first Adam grasped and he brought ruin. The second Adam released and brought about redemption. Now, Paul's point is starting to come more and more into view for us, isn't it? Paul's point is coming more and more in view. When we grasp and live for ourselves, when we cling to our preferences, what happens? We fracture our families, don't we? We divide our churches. We're living like the first Adam whose decisions brought death and division and curse. But when we start following after the second Adam, when we start following after the one who emptied himself of his rights and of his dignity, the opposite happens. That when we start loosening our grip on what we want or on what we believe that we're owed, what happens is now rather than fracturing our families and dividing our churches, we become instruments of reconciliation. We become peacemakers. We become the means of unity to those that are around us. And so the question is really simple and searching. Who are you living for? Who are you living for? Are you living for yourself or are you living for your king? Because you see, he didn't just empty himself of his dignity, he embraced his dishonor. The Christ hymn reminds us that there are really two primary reasons that Jesus became a man. You know what those are? Jesus became a man, we just saw one of them. Jesus became a man so that he could succeed in every way in which the first man had failed. He came to succeed and obey in every way that Adam failed and disobeyed. He came to accomplish on our behalf the works of righteousness as a man. Do you know what the second reason that Jesus became a man was? Jesus became a man to do what God can't ordinarily do. We gotta be careful here, don't we? That feels like blasphemy. Seems like God should be able to do anything, but do you know what God can't ordinarily do? He can't ordinarily die. He can't ordinarily give up his life. Jesus became a man so that he could lay down his life and pay the wages of sin on our behalf because they are death. Isaiah saw this centuries before it actually came about. In Isaiah chapter 53, we have what we call the suffering servant. It tells us that there's gonna be a lamb that's gonna be brought into slaughter, and on that lamb are gonna be all of our iniquities, and on that lamb are gonna be all of our trespasses. But it says it in a remarkable way. Look, I have it there on your screen, Isaiah 53, 7 says he was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, like a lamb that before it shears is silent. So he opened not his mouth. It's bringing into our mind the idea of a sacrifice. You know, throughout the Old Testament, when we read of sacrifices, what we never read of is a consenting sacrifice. A sacrifice had to be held down, it had to be constrained by the priest and held still by the priest so they could come in and slit its name. The whole time the lamb is there, and the lamb is flailing and resisting and trying to contest so that it could try and save its life, but not the suffering servant. The first consenting sacrifice that we find anywhere in the Bible is a prophetic vision of the person of Christ who will come now and lay down his life. You notice what Paul. Paul says. Paul says that he did not count equality a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself. Let me change the color so you can see it. He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of him. Being found in human form, he humbled himself. He became obedient himself, even to the point of death. The picture here is that we have a king who chose the cross. We have a king who wasn't being coerced, who wasn't being forced, who went of his own accord and laid down his life, not because he was weaker, but because he was willing to be humbled in such a way. A couple weeks ago, Ethan kind of helped me see the picture. Ethan's one of our youth coordinators, a phenomenally gifted teacher of God's word. And Ethan's had the opportunity recently to visit Rome, and he visited the Roman Coliseum. And you know what they would do in the Roman Colosseum is they would bring in, you know, beasts and lions and gladiators, and they would bring them in so that they would be able to put on a show, a spectacle, that people would come in and they would fight these beasts, or they would fight these trained gladiators to the death. And very often the people that they would choose to come in and to fight these beasts were the slaves and the servants. And they would dangle the carrot out there and they would say, if you'll come and you'll fight the lion, or you'll fight the beast, or you'll fight the gladiator. If you win enough times against the beast, against the gladiator, against the lion, then what we'll do is we'll give you your freedom. And so men were eager to go in and they would offer up their very own lives, trying to be able to earn their freedom the best that they can. And very often they're on the edge, and the most prominent seat in the Colosseum would be the Caesar. And the Caesar would be there, and it would come to the end very often. The gladiator would have the sword raised, and there would be the slave or the servant laid down in the dirt. And the and the Caesar's responsibility was to say, condemn or let him live. How different it is? The picture of Jesus is that he's the Caesar, and he's seated upon the throne in the Colosseum. And you are the slave, and you are the servant, trying your darndest to earn your freedom, and you're down in the dirt fighting with the beast, risking your life, certain to face death. And the Caesar comes down from the throne, goes down into the dirt, points you to go and have a seat where he is supposed to be seated, and then he lays down his life so that your freedom is permanently purchased by him. That's the picture of who our king is. That's the picture of what Jesus is saying. This is what Paul is trying to draw out in our hearts that this servant willingly left his throne to receive your death so that you could have your freedom at his expense. And this servant is here this morning, and he's asking all of us, who we live for. Who you live for? I want you to think about how countercultural Jesus' way and Jesus' words are to that which we find in the American culture. In the American culture, what we have is we have Madison Avenue. Madison Avenue is looking at you and it's saying, indulge yourself. Buy yourself whatever you want. You deserve it. You need it. You work hard. Go have as much fun as you can. Get whatever you want. Jesus says, deny yourself. Sexual revolution says, free yourself. Go live out your desires. Live out every fantasy that you can imagine. Indulge every appetite that you have. Don't put a single barrier on a single thing or a single inclination in your life. Go and free yourself. Jesus says, take up your cross. Western self-helpism says, focus on yourself. Focus on your own dreams. Focus on your own ambitions. Focus on your own hopes. Focus on your own comfort. Focus on your own convenience. Focus on your own preference. Make sure that you take care of you. Jesus says, no, no, no, no, no. Forget yourself. Pop psychology says you need to protect yourself. Jesus says you need to lay down your life. Postmodern philosophy says, live your truth, define your truth. You decide what's right. You decide what's wrong. Go whichever way you want to go. Jesus says, no, no, no, no, lose your life. In Orchard Church, the question that's facing every single one of us is who will you listen to? And who will you live for? Your king or yourself? Who will you listen to? And who will you live for? Your king or yourself? See, one of those divides, and one of those reconciles. The first question, who are you living for? The second question, when are you living for? There was a famous Stanford experience experiment done years ago called the marshmallow experiment. And what they would do is they would bring a child into a room, and in that room would be a single chair, a single table with a plate on it, and there would be one marshmallow that was placed in there. And they would come in and they would bring a child in and they would say, Look, if you can wait 15 minutes, if you won't eat that marshmallow for 15 minutes, we're gonna come in here and we're gonna give you a second marshmallow, and you can have both of them, right? And then they would walk out and they would leave the child in the room by themselves with this single marshmallow sitting there, just tantalizing them on the plate. Now, some of them immediately just snatched it up and ate it. I have a kid like that. I don't know if y'all have a kid like that. I have one like that. He immediately just snatched it up and just ate it and just said, you know, I don't care about later. This is what I want right now, right? Others of them would resist for a period of time and said that what they would do is that like some of them would cover their eyes so they wouldn't have to look at it. Others of them would go and they would put their noses in a corner. Some of them would go under and hide under the table to not be tempted, but eventually some of them would give in. But there were a few. There were a few that made it the 15 minutes. But the Holy Spirit experiment really came down to one question. Are you living for now or are you living for later? Are you living for now or are you living for now? One marshmallow now or something better later. And in many ways, y'all, that's the tension of the Christian life, isn't it? That's the tension of the Christian life. When Paul says count others more significant than yourselves, it can sound like Christianity is just loss after loss after loss. Like the Christian life is nothing but sacrifice. Give this up and lay this down and deny this and take up this cross. And honestly, if we're being real, if that's the whole story, it really doesn't sound very appealing, does it? It really doesn't draw you in very much. But that would be to miss how it is that Isaiah introduced the suffering servant. That he introduces him at the end of chapter 52, before we get to the cross, the crucifixion of chapter 53. That before he tells us about the suffering, he begins with a promise. I have it there on your screen. Isaiah 52, 13. He says, Behold, my servant shall act wisely, he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted. That what Isaiah 52 and 53, and this is very much in Paul's mind, he's he's meaning to provoke these images in our mind. What Isaiah 52 and 53 do is they come together to show us the pattern that's being sung here in the Christ hymn. First it's suffering, but then it's glory. First, it's a cross, but then it's a crown. So the second movement of the hymn takes us to the moment of Jesus' coronation when his kingdom is consummated, and we see that he has his name. Paul is now quoting what is one of the most breathtaking passages in the Old Testament. Another Isaiah reference. There's a reason why the Isaiah, the prophecy of Isaiah, is often referred to as the fifth gospel. It's just filled with data about Christ. But he's bringing us now to Isaiah chapter 43. And in that chapter, God is declaring over and over, I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is no other. And then in the chapter at the conclusion of it, God makes a promise. He says, To me, every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear allegiance. And so here is the voice of the creator, and he's actually laying claim to the worship of the entire world. And this is what Paul is doing, but with the person of Christ. He's taking Isaiah chapter 45 and he's bringing it in here in verses 9 through 11 of Philippians chapter 2, and he's applying it, the promises that were exclusive to Yahweh directly to the person of Christ. In fact, what you'll notice there is the way that he mentions it. In verse 9, I have it at the top of your screen, it says, Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. In the first century, Greek-speaking Jews would not say Yahweh out loud. They so revered his name, they believed that it was irreverent. They believed that it was inappropriate. And so what they would do is they would come up with pseudonyms that they would use to refer to Yahweh. And one of the pseudonyms that they would use to refer to Yahweh is they would use name. Except they wouldn't just use name, they would use name with the definite article, the, the name. Not just a name, the name. And so the picture here is that what Paul is doing, and this would have been blasphemous in the eye of any Bible-believing Jew. Blasphemous is he's saying the name that we use to refer to Yahweh, the name that has made every promise, the name that has spoken the world into existence, the name that has come and chosen his holy people, the name, that name belongs to Jesus. That's who Jesus is. That everything that he said, everything that he's done, every one of them belong to Jesus, that the fulfillment of Isaiah 45 is coming into fruition when every knee will bow and every head will, every eye will, every head will bow and every knee will take, will fall down to in the person of Christ Himself. That one day every knee will bow in heaven and on earth, under the earth. Every ruler and every skeptic and every forgotten person, every powerful person, all of them will confess the same thing, the name of Jesus, the name of our King. So think of this. The king who once refused to grasp his own rights will one day receive the worship of the entire world. One day, the human history, human story is gonna pause. Kings and presidents are gonna be rendered speechless. Can you imagine a politician speechless? Billionaires and influencers will have nothing left to say, nothing left to share. Skeptics and atheists will be completely silent with their opinions. Pastors and prisoners will be on their faces together. Every person who ever breathed will stand before a single throne. And when Jesus is revealed, no one will negotiate and no one will argue and no one will remain standing. Every knee of every person of every generation will hit the ground. And y'all, y'all, here's what I want you to get. This is good news for us. This is good news for us. It's good news for us because he's our king. He's our king. The God who humbles all kings and establishes all kingdoms has come to be our king, and his reign will be everlasting, his kingdom will be unstoppable, and it will be for our benefit. Nothing can threaten us, nothing can worry us, nothing can scare us, nothing can stop us, nothing can hurt us. Why? We have our king. We have our king. In Isaiah 45. Everything that seems powerful and precious is dragged into the presence of the throne of the king. Nations and wealth and strength and reputation, all those things that we cling to, all those things that we grasp, all those things that we compete with one another over, all those things that we fight over, all those things we go to war for, all those things that we divide over, they're all brought before the throne. You know what they do in the presence of the throne? They all shrink. That's the point Isaiah makes. And that's the point that Paul is driving home in the hearts with this theological warhead that he is launching at our pride and our selfishness. That when Jesus is revealed in his exalted glory, the illusions of this world are, and all of the things that we're chasing are seen as being broken and shattered. That in his presence, idols collapse, riches evaporate, earthly honor is forgotten, power withers. Everything we spend our lives protecting suddenly, in a single instant, feel completely weightless when our knees hit the ground. Can you imagine that moment, y'all? Can you imagine that moment? You're surrounded by billions and billions of others with their faces in the dirt. You're shielding your perverse eyes from the blazing holiness of his righteous splendor. In that moment, how small do your opinions feel? How petty do your gripes and grumblings appear? How silly do your preferences seem? How ridiculous do the grudges that you're holding on to your life? How ridiculous do all of those feel? That's Paul's point. That's Paul's point. Live now with the same perspective that you're gonna have then. Live today with the eyes for the Lord and the eyes for yourself that you're gonna have that day when your face is in the dirt before the throne of the risen king. Blaise Pascal once made a famous argument for believing in God. He believed that the only rational wager and the only safe bet was belief. And the argument goes something like this that if you believe in God and God turns out to be true, well then you've gained everything. But if you don't believe in, or if you do believe in God and God turns out not to be true, really, like, what have you lost? To be honest with you, I think it's flawed logic. And I say that humbly because I think Blaise Pascal was a much more brilliant man than me. But I don't think it goes far enough. Because you see, the truth is, is we can't afford to be wrong either way, brothers and sisters. That if Jesus is not king, if there is no throne, if there is no day when every knee bows, then you can absolutely not afford to live your life in the way that Paul is calling for you to live your life. You cannot afford to take up your cross and follow after Jesus. You cannot afford to count others more significant than yourself. You cannot afford to give your life away. Because this is all you got. This is all you have. And your time here is so brief. Your time here is so short. You ought to step on every single person that you can step on to enjoy as much as you can enjoy. You ought to indulge everything that you can possibly indulge. You ought to make sure that you squeeze as many experiences into this 60, 70, 80 years that you can possibly squeeze. Because this is gonna be gone in an instant and it's all gonna evaporate, it's all gonna have been proven to be completely and totally pointless for nothing. But if Jesus is king, if Jesus is king, if the servant who went to the cross is now seated on the throne, if there really is a day coming when every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, then y'all, we can't afford to live for right now. We can't afford to live for the here now because this life is too brief and eternity is too long. If Jesus is king, then every act of self-denial is simply an investment in a greater future. If every sacrifice here is a seed sown that's gonna reap a harvest there, every cross that I'm carrying today is gonna be turned into a crown then. In fact, if Jesus has been raised, if Jesus is the king, there is no such thing as a sacrificial Christian life. Just delayed privilege, just delayed reward, delayed glory. So the question is Him forces on every one of us is not just who are you living for, but deeper still, when are you living for? When are you living for? Are you living for right now? Are you living for that day? Because when a church is filled with people living for that day instead of this moment, selfishness loses all of its power. And that's Paul's point. See, Paul launches this theological warhead because he wants us to have a particular dream for our church. He wants us to dream of what it would be like to be a part of a church that refuses to take half measures when it comes to dealing with sin, refuses to take half measures when it comes to offering up our lives for the person of Christ. Can y'all imagine a church like that? Can you imagine a church where everyone knew who they were living for and when they were living for? Can you imagine a church where no one is protecting their status and no one is keeping score and no one is fighting for recognition? When your eyes are on the glory of Christ, high and lifted up, minor disagreements and opinions and preferences in the here and now, man, y'all, they just don't mean very much. My comfort right now, in that context, it just isn't worth very much. I can afford to live for you. You can afford to live for me, and we can afford to live for one another. Because we're not living for right here. And we're not living for right now. We're living for a risen king and a future kingdom. So, y'all, right now, right now is not a time for half measures. Right now is a time for crucifixion. We pray together.