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Morning Message Text: Philippians 2: 5-11
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming 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 acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Morning Message:
We humans always question everything. God put it in our nature to be inquisitive, so we naturally want to know the why of things. We see this in young children almost as they begin to learn how to talk. Of course they are curious, everything is new to them, so they ask repeatedly why. As adults, we discover that every question does not have an answer. Let’s start here. We know that God loves us, or at least we should know that, but why does God love mankind? We could give the easy answer and say He loves us because He created us and it is only natural to love something that you made. As parents and grandparents that explanation makes sense to us, but that doesn’t fully explain the kind of love that God has for us. We may not know the complete answer to that until we get to heaven.
We may not know why but we do know that God loves us. Psalm 6: 4 says this: “Turn, O Lord, save my life; deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love.” The psalmist makes no claim to be righteous. He knows that God must hold him accountable for his sin. But here he cries to God to turn and look upon him in the midst of his struggle. I think that we instinctively know that God must hold us accountable for our sins, but do we cry out to God when we are struggling and falling short? We usually wait until afterwards, right? We don’t want to call God’s attention to us while we are sinning, but that is exactly the right time to do so.
The psalmist cries for God to save his life and to deliver him. And why should God do that? The psalmist lifts that up as well: “for the sake of your steadfast love.” Not because of who I am or anything that I have accomplished. Not because I am a good Christian and attend church every Sunday. The correct way to approach God with our troubles and needs is not on our own merit, not because of who we are, but because of who He is. He calls on God to act out of His steadfast love. Steadfast means: Fixed in place. Firm in purpose. Unwavering. God doesn’t just simply love us, His love is dependable, unchangeable and constant. His love doesn’t depend on us loving Him.
There is an audacity to faith. There is the boldness that, no matter how bad it gets, we still call upon God to love us. In fact, Christ came to give us that promise of love and mercy. We are even baptized into that promise. Martin Luther, in his greatest hours of turmoil, would cry out, “I am baptized!” “I am a Christian!” Now be careful with that information. I wouldn’t want you to literally go out into the world and proclaim in a loud voice that you are a Christian. I mean, what would your neighbors and friends and family think? If we start letting people know that we are Christians, they might start asking us questions. They might even consider coming to church to see what they are missing. There goes the neighborhood.
We may not be able to completely answer why God loves us, but we get a sense of how much He loves us by the lengths He went to in order to save us. I read this in our Lenten Devotional, and it got my attention. It starts with a statement from C. S. Lewis. “But supposing God became a man—suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person—then that person could help us.” Now when I see a word like amalgamated, a word that I do not commonly see, it gets my attention. To amalgamate means to mix, merge, or unite. You might not find this interesting, but to me, this is good stuff. This is what it means when we say that Jesus is both human and divine, both man and God.
Listen carefully, I know all of you have read this already but lets unpack it together. Divine humility sounds like an oxymoron. And it is. Just like “jumbo shrimp” or “deafening silence.” An oxymoron is two words paired together with opposite meanings that still make sense together. “Divine humility” made possible our redemption. Theologians call this humbling of the Son the state of humiliation, a prelude to Christ’s state of exaltation, marking the steps down from a position of glory with the godhead to birth as a human being and eventually death on a cross.
C. S. Lewis wrote, “But who can duly adore that love which will open the high gates to a prodigal.” Such is divine humility in welcoming the undeserving into the kingdom of God. But long before such welcoming, God himself became a man, setting aside the glory he enjoyed with the Father and the Spirit. The obedient Son of God took our human nature upon himself, lived among us, suffered and died, all for the purpose of paying our debt and suffering what He himself did not need to suffer. Amazing grace! He amalgamated, mixed, merged, united with something that was completely opposite of His nature, but if you think about it, the only way to save us was to become a part of us.
Christ’s love goes to great lengths, and at great cost, to save us and set us free from the depths of our turmoil. All that would separate us from God was amalgamated with His holiness and nailed with Christ to the cross. The promise of love is with us always!
In Christ’s Love and Peace,
Pastor Bob
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