Kingdom First
Sermon Notes
Wednesday was a dark day in the history of our country.
Some of you are thinking, “I didn’t come to church to have a conversation about politics.”
I couldn’t agree with you more. I didn’t come to church to have a conversation about politics either.
I have no desire to add to the noise that’s out there.
I actually have no authority or expertise to have—let alone lead—such a conversation.
This is not the place to have such conversations: it’s not our lane.
So then, why am I saying this? Why did I bring it up in the first place? Well, because I feel like we need to talk about it.
But I thought you just said you didn’t want to talk about it.
No, I said, I didn’t want to talk politics. I don’t want to talk about political problems and political solutions.
But, I do want to talk about spiritual problems and supernatural solutions.
You see, that’s the kind of problem that I’m actually most concerned about. Not simply the political problem but the problem in the Church that made it all possible.
I watched in horror on Wednesday as, time and again, the people in our nation’s capitol participating in violence, stoking the flames of division, yelling profanity at people made in God’s image, and promoting hatred and bigotry, did so “in the name of Jesus.” They carried flags with slogans like, “Make America Godly Again,” they knelt in front of crosses, they even sang worship songs.
And, as I watched, it became once again apparent that the American evangelical church, of which we are all a part, was not only complicit in what happened on Wednesday but was integral. In other words, without the evangelical Church and our behavior not just in the past weeks or months but for the past decades, what happened on Wednesday would not have happened.
We have not taken seriously the Lordship of Jesus and our mandate to follow His example.
We, as Dallas Willard said, have accepted a religion based upon believing in Jesus rather than on following Jesus.
I first read that line in one of Willard’s books over a decade ago. At the time, I was leading a church like I am now, and I remember underlining and nodding and amening and thinking, “That’s really good. He’s right. Someone should really do something about that.”
And, then I went on about my church business as usual. All of us did.
And, now, we are reaping the whirlwind of a discipleship-less Christianity, which is, of course, an oxymoron, a fundamental impossibility.
There is a tragic irony in what I’m suggesting.
What I’m saying here is that this failure of discipleship in the American church has caused us to be agents of disunity who actively cause harm to the nation in which we find ourselves…
…when we have been called by our King to be agents of unity who actively work for the good of the place to which He has sent us.
Not only this. Not only has the Church caused damage to the city whose good we are supposed to work for. Far worse, it has caused damage to the reputation of our King whose name we carry. We are Christian.
I sat there Wednesday and thought, “So many people are going to walk away from Jesus because of this.”
Yes, I was disturbed by what was happening in our nation, but I was horrified by what was happening, what has been happening, in the Church.
And, it has to change. We cannot be ok with being a part of this sinking ship that is American evangelicalism. Neither, can we think that the solution will be found in a progressive ideology from the other side of the aisle.
There are political solutions that must be considered, debated, and implemented to bring about a way forward out of this catastrophe. There are pragmatic steps that to be taken to ensure that this never happens again. Please don’t get me wrong: there is much work to do in the world of politics, and we should pray for those involved in that work, we should encourage and empower Christians called to that work, if that’s you, you should engage in that work with all of your heart by the power of the Holy Spirit.
But, in this place, that work is not our primary concern.
It is not our job to build a more perfect union but to participate with Jesus in the work of building His Kingdom. Not to reform the reputation of our republic but to showcase the glory and beauty of our King.
I have no desire to talk politics in this place, but I have ever desire and responsibility to talk about the kind of church we are called to be.
To settle for political conversations in this place would be to aim far too low, because the solutions to the problems facing our nation and world are ultimately not political.
The solution to our problems is clearly not a Church on the right. Neither, are they a Church on the left. What’s more, the solution is not a Church somewhere in the middle. The solution is a Church of a different kind. A supernatural Church that finds itself disentangled and standing apart from the political spectrum and so capable of engaging with the world in a different way, a redemptive way. The solutions to the problems we are facing in the world are found in Jesus and in a community of people who love the fact that He has saved them and, therefore, take seriously His Kingship and model their lives after His Kingdom law and example.
And, that’s what we’re learning here. That’s why the Church exists. That’s why this church exists. We want to learn the Way of Jesus, the Way of our King and His Kingdom. And, not at all coincidentally, that is exactly what the passage that we’re going to be talking about in Philippians is all about. What we’re about to read today is the answer. It is the solution to the problems we are seeing plague our nation and the Church. It is what we most desperately need in this and every moment. So, in response to what happened on Wednesday. In response to the division in our nation. In response to the division in the Church. In response to the fundamental discipleship issue in the Church that I believe underlies it all, hear the Word of the Lord.
Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:1-11)
Philippians 2
If you have any… (we don’t need to spend a lot of time here, but it’s a really important starting point)
If you have any encouragement from being brought into the family of God through Jesus, united with Him, His life working in you and through you, part of His story.
If you have any experience of the His vast limitless love (the love of God poem).
If you have any common sharing in the Spirit.
This doesn’t just mean sharing in the Spirit with one another (that will come in a second)
This is common sharing in the Spirit with Jesus. You share with Jesus the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
If any tenderness and compassion = guts and hands
In other words, if you have experienced any of the lavishness of God…
I wonder sometimes if that’s not part of our problem. I know it’s part of my problem.
I have become so familiar with Him that I treat Him as common.
It is true that I am intimate daily relationship and this means having some familiarity, but God forbid I ever lose sight of the fact that the one who invites me into His familiarity is the King.
This journey begins with wonder, with gratitude, (YOU chose me?!) and that overflows into action.
If you have experienced the life of Jesus, you are now obligated to (invited, yes, but when a King invites, you listen)…
Unity, being “like-minded”
This is to be the hallmark of the Christian life. This is what Jesus asked the Father for before He went to the cross. This is the greatest missional tool Jesus has given our church.
Now, as we talked about briefly, it doesn’t mean that we always agree. Conflict is not a sin to be eradicated but a tool to be embraced, provided we are all building the same thing. That’s what like-minded means, having the same objective, being part of the same story.
And, that is where we are so woefully inadequate the Church.
We have been taught that Jesus is about helping us build our stories, that our story matters, that we are the main characters.
This Western ideology is not Christian, and Paul gives two words for it later in this passage: “selfish ambition and vain conceit”
Selfish ambition is a good translation: everyone doing their own thing, looking out for number one, living their best life. In other words, selfish ambition is the highest ideal in the Western world.
Vain conceit: not as good of a translation. It literally says “empty glory,” or maybe better “glory-emptiness.” A place of striving to be significant (which is the opposite of a biblical story that claims that you are already significant)
The alternative, Paul says, is simple in theory but much more difficult in practice. He says, “In humility, value others above yourselves, looking not to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others.”
And, that sounds about right, doesn’t it? Simple and clear, and if everyone did that one thing, the problems plaguing the nation, the world, the Church would be no more.
The problem is that none of us have any idea how to do it.
It’s not even a virtue for us; it wasn’t for them either.
This word, humility, is used several hundred times in the Bible with the notion of making oneself less or thinking of oneself less, and of those hundreds of times, it is overwhelmingly a positive attribute.
But, this word is also used outside of the Biblical text in Ancient Greek literature hundreds of times (it is a common word), and it is always derogatory. It is used of slaves.
How do we do it? How do people so discipled in the American way of self-interest and your story matters and be your best self learn something that is so foreign and counter-cultural? We learn it from Jesus. Paul says, in your relationships with one another (literally, in you), replace your mind with the mind of Christ.
A process in which we must participate with intentionality.
The Holy Spirit is certainly at work in the process revealing to us the mind of Christ.
But, if you’ve ever tried to live differently you know that changing one’s mind is just as physical as it is spiritual (literally, reprogramming neural pathways through experience)
The mind of Christ
Is glory full: In the case of empty glory, we behave as if empty needing to be filled. In the case of Jesus, He knew He was full and, from the place of fullness, emptied Himself.
The mind of Christ is about a downward trajectory in a world of upward mobility
The mind of Christ is about exercising power to serve
And, herein, lies the solution to the problems in the world. The solution is the church: The solution to division in the world is clearly not a church on the right, nor is it a church on the left, nor even a church right down the middle. It is a church that is passionate about the way of Jesus, that is so filled with His glory, with the privilege of being a part of His story, with the wonder of His love, with the presence and power of the same Spirit by which Jesus did everything He did, the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead (common sharing with Christ), that is overflowing with the tenderness and compassion of Jesus.