1.EVERY STEP TOWARD GODLINESS AND EVERY STEP TOWARD SIN BEGINS WITH A THOUGHT
2. DISTORTED WORSHIP LEADS TO DISTORTED THINKING WHICH LEADS TO DISTORTED PASSIONS WHICH LEADS TO DISTORTED LIVING.
3. THERE’S A BATTLE THAT TAKES PLACE IN THE MIND AND AS WE BECOME A LIVING SACRIFICE TO GOD, OUR LIVES ARE TRANSFORMED INTO HIS WILL.
PHILIPPIANS 2:1-5
Issue…It is so easy to allow our thinking to put ourselves in the center of the universe where everything revolves around us.
Disunity among Christ-followers and self-centered Thinking is Devastating to the Gospel Message … undermines what the Church is trying to communicate.
JOHN 13:35
2:1— sharing—is the Greek word koinónia—meaning fellowship, association, community, communion, joint participation, contact, common ground
If there is called in Greek, a first condition word or a first-class conditional word. The word if there is not speculative. Means: Since or Because. [Because] you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, … [Because] any comfort from his love, … [Because] any common sharing in the Spirit
2:2— Paul says: if God has given you all these things in Christ, would you also complete my joy, my joy of being like-minded and having the same love and being one in spirit and one in mind?
There is a call in this passage 2xs to be like-minded/one mind –to Think Alike. TRUTH: WE HAVE TO THINK BIBLICALLY TOGETHER.
What is the opposite of this? verse 3 –selfish ambition and vain conceit.
2:3a—conceit in Greek is the word kenodoxia. Doxia [doxology] simply means “glory”; keno [kenosis] means an emptying out, or it is no longer there, it is absent. TRUTH: DO NOTHING OUT OF GLORY HUNGER.
We are hungry for glory. We want to be important, to be recognized, to be consequential. What drives this? Glory Hunger. Conceit. Selfish ambitions. How then are we to think?
2:3b—This is a brand-new paradigm of thinking—learning to think unselfishly, without egotistical conceit is going to require one big thing: Humility
TRUTH: HUMILITY IS THE GREAT OPPOSITE OF A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT. Paul said in ROMANS 1:14 that He owed them.
2:4— interests is used 2X in verse 4. But in Greek, that word is not there. [Re-Read with blank.]
TRUTH: FIND YOUR JOY IN MAKING OTHERS JOYFUL
2:4 is a way of repeating Jesus’ command in Matthew 22:39. It’s easy when others think the same way as you. What is difficult? To put your interests below the interest of others when those others are your enemies, or they think radically different than you.
2:5— How can Christians walk through this life with this humble sense that that we owe others, not that people owe us? The answer is simply this: Jesus loved us and died for us, & forgave us, & accepted us, & justified us, & gave us eternal life, & made us heirs of His Father when He owed us nothing. He treated us as worthy of His service, even though we were not worthy of His service. Christ thought not only of his own interest but if yours.
TRUTH: JESUS COUNTED US AS GREATER THAN HIMSELF –that’s the entire essence of Philippians 2
PHILIPPIANS 2:1-8
We have been freely served by Jesus. Therefore, it is so easy for us to freely serve others.