Following His Example

Series: Preacher: Date: November 5, 2000 Scripture Reference: Philippians 2:1-11

1 – If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion,

2 – then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

3 – Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

4 – Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others.

5 – Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

6 – Who, being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

7 – but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

8 – And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death-even death on a cross!

9 – Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name,

10 – that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11 – and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

In his book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted, John Ortberg shares the story of Leon, Joseph, and Clyde-three psychiatric patients in a hospital in Ypslilanti, Michigan who suffered from a messiah complex. Now, their problem wasn’t just a touch of narcissism. I mean, they weren’t simply conceited. To use a common expression, these men didn’t think they were, “all that.” No, all three of these guys were diagnosed with an extreme case of psychotic delusional disorder, manifested by the fact that each one of them believed that he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. In other words, they had a LITERAL “messiah complex.”

Leon, Joseph, and Clyde each actually thought that he was the central figure around whom the world revolves. Psychologist Milton Rokeach wrote a book entitled, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti which dealt with his attempts to guide these men back to reality. He tried all conventional treatments for their mental disorder but nothing worked so, with little to lose, he decided to try an experiment. He put the three men into the SAME small group. So, for two years the three delusional messiahs were assigned adjacent beds; they ate every meal together; they worked together at the same job; they even met daily for group discussions. Rokeach wanted to see if rubbing up against OTHER would-be messiahs might diminish each man’s delusion. He thought that seeing other men who claimed to be Jesus Christ might help each of them to realize that they weren’t actually the Son of God…I mean EVERYONE can’t be Jesus so he set up a kind of “messianic twelve-step recovery group.”

Well, unfortunately the experiment didn’t work but it did lead to some interesting conversations.

One of the men would claim, “I’m the messiah, the Son of God. I am on a mission. I was sent here to save the earth.” “How do you know this?” Rokeach would ask. “God told me.” would be the reply. But then one of the other two patients would counter, “I never told you any such thing!”

We chuckle but you know there is a real sense in which each of us here this morning suffer from a bit of a “messiah complex.” I don’t think our dementia is serious enough to merit our being committed to an institution like Ypsilanti but in its own way our mental state is just as irrational as that of Leon, Joseph, and Clyde. Now our condition wouldn’t be referred to as “psychotic delusional disorder.” No, we’d simply call it – PRIDE. And all people have suffered from this mental deficiency literally since time began. The book of Genesis in fact records that it was through PRIDE that the serpent was able to tempt the first human female, Eve, to eat the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Do you remember what he said to her? His exact words were, “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and…YOU WILL BE LIKE GOD.”(Genesis 3:5 )

And we all, in our own way, have pridefully been trying to be like God…to take His rightful place in our lives…ever since. Each of us have been “inmates in the same asylum” so to speak. In his book, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis refers to PRIDE as the “one vice of which no man in the world is free, which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly anyone except Christians ever imagine that they are guilty of themselves.”

He also rightly says that pride is the UTMOST EVIL. Anger, greed, drunkenness and all other sins are mere, “fleabites in comparison…It WAS through pride that the devil became the devil. And it IS through pride that every other sin comes. Pride is a spiritual cancer. It eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.” And, pride IS a horrible thing for it is a completely anti-God state of mind. You see, pride puts us on the throne of our daily existence…instead of God. It is the ultimate “Messiah complex.” Well, how do we recognize PRIDE in ourselves? I mean, how can we spot this mental illness in order to treat it? First of all we must realize that PRIDE can take several forms.

The first form of pride is simple VANITY.And vanity basically involves an unhealthy preoccupation with our appearance or image. In my “humble” opinion if we exercise in Spandex there’s a good chance we are a little too vain. If we work out at a gym where there are mirrors on the wall and we watch our reflection as we work out…that could be a symptom of this problem as well. Another indication of this version of pride is seen when we get new photographs developed and we pretend we’re looking at the other people in the picture..while secretly looking only at our selves. Vanity IS a subtle form of pride. I read a story this week about a young woman who went to confession at the Catholic church. She told the priest, “I want to confess my sin.” The priest asked, “What is your sin, my child?” She replied, “It is the sin of pride. Every morning I look at myself in the mirror and realize how beautiful I am.” The priest responded, “That’s not pride. That’s a mistake.” Well, it IS a mistake to be that preoccupied with our appearance. Vanity is the most common form of pride. It can be irritating and silly, but it fortunately is not the most dangerous.

A more serious form of pride is STUBBORNNESS. Stubbornness is that variety of pride that causes us to shun correction. It renders us unable to stop defending ourselves because we delude ourselves into thinking that we are incapable of error…we are above wrong. When someone points out one of our flaws, we evade or deny or blame someone else. Proverbs 29:1 refers to this form of pride when it says, “One who is often reproved, yet remains STUBBORN will suddenly be broken beyond healing.” And as this text infers, stubbornness is a mental disorder that is particularly difficult to treat because you can’t be cured of a problem unless you are humble enough to be able to see your own faults. And stubborn people “stubbornly” believe they have no faults. They think they are above reproach and get defensive when people try to correct them.

A third form of PRIDE is what we might call COMPARISON. And this is where we can see a difference between the sin of greed and the sin of pride. You see greedy people get pleasure out of HAVING things whereas prideful people don’t care how much they have…just so long as they have MORE than other people. C. S. Lewis writes, “..they are not proud of being rich or clever or good looking. They are proud of being richER or cleverER or better-looking than others.”

This reminds me of a story about three dogs. Two pure-bred dogs were walking daintily along the street with their noses held high in the air. Along came a big alley dog of the Heinz 57 type. Embarrassed at being in the company of such a no-account dog, one of the pure-breds said, “We must go. My name is Miji, spelled M-I-J-I.” The other blue blood said, “My name is Miki, spelled M-I-K-I.” The low-class alley dog then put his nose up in the air and said, “Well, my name is Fido-spelled P-H-Y-D-E-A-U-X” Jesus referred to this version of pride when He told a story about two men at prayer: a tax collector and a Pharisee. The sins of the tax collector were obvious to all: greed, dishonesty, corruption. And, the Pharisee thanked God that he was in a different category-he saw himself as BETTER than the tax collector next to him. Remember his pridefully comparative prayer in Luke 18 ? “I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of all my income.” In his demented condition, he didn’t care about his own sinful state…just that, by comparison, he was less sinful than the tax collector. People who suffer from this form of pride spend all their time pointing the finger of blame at others…thinking that it somehow makes them look better to God.. if they can find people who are more sinful than they are. They mistakenly believe that God grades on the curve-when you and I know He grades on the cross.

And this leads to the fourth and most serious form of pride which is EXCLUSION. You see, at the deepest level, pride is the choice to exclude both God and other people from their rightful place in our hearts. Jesus said that the essence of a Godly lifestyle is to love God and to love people-and extreme pride destroys our capacity to love either. Pride leads us to love only self. The greedy and the gluttonous may still be capable of at least a certain kind of love, but pride is a form of anti-love because it moves us to exclude instead of to embrace. It leads us to judge rather than to serve…to bow down before a mirror rather than before God. Lewis writes, “A proud person is always looking down on things and people: and of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see Something that is above you.”

Now, do you see how serious pride can be-how much a messiah complex can harm us and others? No wonder Isaac Watts wrote the lyrics to his famous hymn and said, “When I survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of glory died. My richest gain I count but loss, and pour CONTEMPT on all my PRIDE.”

The sad thing is that in today’s culture instead of holding pride IN CONTEMPT we tend to celebrate it. According to Christopher Lasch our society is “the culture of narcissism.” And he is right for we live in a “ME-FIRST” society. These days it’s very difficult to make people understand, much less embrace, the mind set of Jesus’ words in Luke 9:23 where He said, “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up His cross daily….”

You and I are more interested in SAVING our life than losing it…getting our own needs met rather than giving to help others. We live in the day of SELF-promotion, defending our OWN rights, taking care of ourSELVES first, winning by intimidation, pushing for first place and a dozen other SELF-serving agendas.

Even Christians-especially those who strive to grow spiritually-struggle with pride. For, the more we attempt to be like Jesus, the more easily it is for us to be critical of those who don’t make the attempt. It’s like going on a diet. I don’t know about you but when I’m on one…when I’m trying to eat healthily…I find certain thoughts involuntarily running through my mind.

In restaurants I look at the plates of others, piled high with fat, fried fat, and gravy-covered fat and I wonder, “How can people eat that stuff? Don’t they know that junk is lethal? Have they no discipline…no self restraint? Are these the people Paul was speaking of in Philippians 3:19 when he wrote, ‘Their end is destruction; their god is the belly?'” Now, I THINK this way because these people are eating the same things I ate before my diet began and will probably be eating again next week, when I give up on my diet. You see the problem is, when I try to do something good, I am very aware of it. And at the same time, I tend to be very aware of other people who aren’t putting forth the same effort. I tend to think they should. I start to compare my effort with their sloth. And the result is pride-judgmentalism-and a lack of love on my part.

As Ortberg writes, “One of the hardest things in the world is to stop being the prodigal son without turning into the elder brother.”

And this is a problem that apparently plagued the Christians at Philippi as well, for PRIDE was threatening to destroy their unity. Epaphroditus, one of Paul’s fellow workers and a member of the church at Philippi, had brought word that the sweet fellowship of the church was being threatened. by the proud, self-centered spirit of some of the Philippian believers. In chapter 4, verse 3 Paul specifically addresses this situation by writing and pleading with Euodia and Syntyche to get down off their high horses and get along.

And, in verses 1-4 of today’s text Paul appeals to ALL the members of this little church to work together to solve this problem. Look at these verses with me. Note that he repeatedly uses the phrase “If there is…” such and such and such but the context shows us that what he really means is, “SINCE…there is such and such and such…SINCE there IS comfort from Christ’s love…SINCE there IS fellowship with the Spirit, SINCE there IS tenderness and compassion then [I beg you] make my joy complete by being ONE in spirit and purpose.”

And to me, it’s almost as if Paul is saying, “You guys have a mental problem here! Get some treatment…see a counselor…because you aren’t thinking like a SANE Christian should think!” In fact he goes on to actually prescribe some treatment for pride by reminded the deluded Philippians of the antidote which is the opposite of pride-HUMILITY…and then he points to the universe’s best example of humility…our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He says, “This is the way your mind should operate.” Some versions actually translate verse 5 to say, “Let this mind be in you.” So in essence Paul is saying, “Follow Jesus’ example. Think like He does!”

And Jesus IS the best example of humility. In Matthew 11:28-30 our Lord used this mind set to describe Himself when He said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and HUMBLE in heart…” Well, Paul goes on to cite three characteristics of a humble person…and he follows that up by reminding the Philippians and us, that Jesus embraced each of these qualities. Let’s look at them briefly together. First of all Paul reminds us that a humble person is someone…

1. …who thinks of others before he thinks of himself.

Look at verse 3, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves…” In other words, “be selfLESS rather than selfISH in your way of thinking.” I believe it was Andrew Murray who said, “The humble person is not one who thinks meanly of himself; he simply does not think of himself at all.” This is not to say that a humble person is someone who does not have a healthy self-esteem. No, humility is not about convincing ourselves or others that we are unattractive or incompetent. It’s not about “beating ourselves up” or trying to make ourselves nothing. Humility has to do with a submitted willingness — a HEALTHY forgetfulness. Paul is saying that our goal should be to become so interested in others and in helping them reach their highest good that we become SELF-forgetful in the process.

So,if we are humble individuals then, when we are with others we are truly WITH THEM not wondering how they can be of benefit to us. When a husband is humble, he subjugates his own wants and desires to meet the needs of his wife and family. When a mother is humble, she isn’t irked by having to give up her agenda or plans for the sake of her children. When an athlete is humble, it is the team that matters, not winning the top honors personally. When the Christian is humble, he or she thinks of others before self. And so pride is given no place to operate. In short, a humble person is someone who is in no way conceited-someone who thinks more of others than he does of self.

President Ulysses S. Grant was once on the way to a reception in his honor, in the days before television allowed everyone near-instant recognition of the presidential face. He was caught in a rain shower and ended up sharing his umbrella with a stranger who was going to the reception as well. The stranger said to Grant, “I have never seen President Grant and I merely go to satisfy a personal curiosity. Between you and me…I have always thought that Grant was a very much OVERRATED man.” Grant replied, “That’s my view also.” And., his same view should characterize the life of every Christian. For, thinking less of ourselves and more of Christ and others is the essence of humility.

In our text Paul reminds us that Jesus is the perfect example of this characteristic of humility. Look at verses 6-7. Referring to Jesus, Paul writes, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider [think of] equality with God as something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant…” Do you see? Jesus self-LESSly left the halls of heaven to come here because He knew that doing so would benefit us. The Son of God rated you and me and all humanity higher than He did Himself. And Paul reminds us here that humble people follow Jesus’ example. They think of the needs of others more than they think of their own. So, as Lewis writes, “Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good-above all, that we are better than someone else-I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil.”

2. Well, the second characteristic of a humble person is sacrificial servanthood.

In other words, a humble person doesn’t just “consider” others better than himself. He puts his way of thinking into action. This is what Paul was referring to in verse 4 when he said, “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” As it says in Galatians 6:2-3, we are to “Carry each other’s burdens and in this way fulfill the law of Christ.”

When we live in this way we are again following the example of Christ. For, throughout His life, God in the flesh served others instead of the other way around. He healed the sick…fed the hungry…washed the dirty feet of His followers…and then as verse 8 says, “humbled Himself and became obedient to death-even death on the cross.” Now I want you to look closely in verse 6 at the word, “being.” Many Bible versions translate it as a concessive-wording it like this:

“Who although-or in spite of-the fact that He was in nature God…poured Himself out taking the form of a servant.”

And from a human standpoint this wording makes perfect sense. Jesus became a sacrificial servant IN SPITE OF the fact that He was God. But translating it this way misses the essential point that Paul is making here. A proper understanding of the Greek translates this little verb as the CAUSE of Christ’s action and should be worded this way, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, Who-PRECISELY BECAUSE HE WAS IN NATURE GOD-did not consider equality with God to be grounds for grasping, but poured Himself out, taking the very nature of a servant.” You see, Jesus did not take on the OUTWARD form of a servant. He was not DISGUISING Who God is. In coming to earth to live and die for you and me…He was REVEALING Who God is. He was showing us that it is God’s nature to act in love toward mankind. Jesus did not come as a servant in spite of the fact that He is God. He came precisely because of the fact that He is God. You see God is a self-sacrificing Being. And, if we are Christians with a healthy mind set we will follow His example and humbly give of ourselves to meet the needs of others…no matter how costly it is to do so.

In the early 1700s there existed in Europe a missionary community-the Moravians-under the direction of Count Zinzendorf. They were a very missions-minded group of believers. One day there came to that colony two men by the name of Dober and Nitschmann. They had heard Zinzendorf tell of the island of St. John in the West Indies where black men and women and children were treated as animals. They were worked, beaten, and then left to die in the cane fields.

As a result they felt called by God to go and minister to these people. So under Zinzendorf’s leading they found a ship headed for the West Indies and worked to pay their passage. When they arrived on the island of St. John they asked the Dutch slave masters if they could go into the cane fields and preach to the slaves. The masters replied, “It is no use. These men are not humans. They do not have souls.” Dober and Nitschmann insisted, but their pleas were to no avail and they were ordered out. They went down to the beach, sat down on the sand, and wept, and prayed. “Lord, You sent us here, and now we cannot go into the fields to preach. Lord what shall we do?” That night the Lord spoke to them. Early the next morning they went back to the Dutch Masters and said, “We want to sell ourselves into slavery.” The masters were astounded. “What? You want to sell yourselves into slavery?!” And Dober and Nitschmann answered,

“Yes, God called us to preach and we will become one of them and preach to them while we work.” So they did. In a few months other missionaries from the Moravian Colony in Europe arrived on the island of St. John. They found there two freshly dug graves. Dober and Nitschmann had died from the heat and the deplorable working conditions. But on the island they also found 30,000 slaves who had become Christians as a result of Dober and Nitschmann’s witness. Such is the result of two humble men who followed Jesus’ example of sacrificial servant hood.

3. And then, the third characteristic of a humble person that Paul mentions here is their desire to glorify God instead of self.

In this text he reminds the Philippians that everything Jesus did was for God’s glory. Verses 9-11 say that the reason Jesus took on human flesh and was nailed to the cross, raised from the dead, exalted to the Father’s right hand, and given the name above every name…was for, “the glory of God the Father.”

So when a Godly individual serves others…they do so….not so that men will glorify them, but so men will glorify God. And, Jesus told us that we should think and live in this way. Do you remember His command in Matthew 5:16 ? He said, “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and praise…YOUR FATHER in heaven.” So, as Paul wrote in I Corinthians 10:31, “…whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we must do it all [not for the glory of self but] for the GLORY OF GOD.”

Jonathon Edwards once wrote in his journal, “Resolved: that all men should live for the glory of God. Resolved second: That whether others do or not, I will.” That is humility…resolving to live every moment of every day in such a way that God is praised. Last year I spoke at the Derwood Community Thanksgiving service at Mill Creek United Methodist Church. And I told those who attended about our mission trip to Matamoros, Mexico of how we built homes for the poor people there…men, women, and children who often lived in nothing more than a cardboard box. Well the next week a woman came by our church office and left an envelope with the secretaries. She was not a member of our church. I’m not sure which church in our area she attended. But she had heard my message and said she wanted the money inside the envelope to go to help build more homes for the needy in Matamoros, Mexico. The secretaries asked if she would like to leave her name and address and she said no. When she left they called me down and together we opened the envelope. Inside there was no check…just ten one hundred dollar bills. She apparently didn’t care about a substantial tax deduction…not even wanting the government to give her credit for her sacrificial act. All she wanted to do was help…and I think it was because her desire was for God and not self to be glorified by her gift. She didn’t care that others would not SEE her generosity.

Her act reminds me of the poem by Ruth Harms Calkin entitled, “I Wonder.” It goes like this…

“You know, Lord, how I serve You with great emotional fervor in the limelight.You know how eagerly I speak for You at a woman’s club.You know how I effervesce when I promote a fellowship group.You know my genuine enthusiasm at a Bible study.But how would I react, I WONDER…if you pointed to a basin of waterAnd asked me to wash the calloused feet of a bent and wrinkled old womanDay after day, month after month, In a room where nobody saw and nobody knew.”

Humble people – truly humble people – prefer to give and serve anonymously. They are embarrassed when their names are put up in lights. Their sole desire is to glorify God.

Now, I don’t know about you but after studying this text I feel kind of guilty. This has helped me to see my own “mental deficiencies.” God has used these verses to clear my mind so that I can understand that there have been many times that I have been pridefully “me-first” in my thinking-times that I cared too much what other people thought and too little what God thought. And if you feel that way as well. I mean, if you have been humbled this morning then that’s good, because you have to be humbled to see your need for God. You may need to respond by praying the words of verse 5 and say, “God help YOUR MIND to be in me…help me to think like YOU think.” If any of you feel led this morning to join this church…to become a part of this body of believers as we work to bring Glory to God in this place. We would love to have you! Come and join us! You may be here this morning though and have never made the commitment that we symbolized in baptism today. You have never asked Jesus to be the Savior and Lord of your life. Well, this text says that it’s not a matter of IF you call Him Lord…it’s a matter of WHEN…and earlier is much better than later. So I urge you to “confess with your mouth ‘JESUS IS LORD’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead…” so that you can experience salvation now-today. Whatever decision you have to make, we encourage you to do so now…by walking an aisle and coming to the front to share that decision with me or Steve…as we stand together now and sing.

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