[SPEAKER_01]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com Good morning If you have a Bible turned to Philippians chapter 2 And we'll be in the passages that Miss Lindsay just read for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are new to Citizens, welcome My name is Jayman, I'm one of the pastors here, and we're honored that you're worshiping with us
[SPEAKER_01]: If you call citizens home, it's good to see you.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Advent, we've been looking at Luke chapter 2, verses 10 and 11, the angels come to the shepherds in the field and they make this gospel announcement.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fear not, unto you is born this day in the city of David.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you get three titles about Jesus, a Savior who has Christ the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we've been walking through each of those titles.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this morning we'll give all of our time
[SPEAKER_01]: gospel truth that Jesus is Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a bit of a problem we face in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: C.S.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lewis famously put words to it in his book, mere Christianity, he says this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him being Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the one thing we must not say, a man who is merely a man and said the sorts of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would either be a lunatic on the level with the man who says he's a poached egg or L.T.B.
[SPEAKER_01]: the Devil of Hell.
[SPEAKER_01]: You must make your choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Either this man was and is the Son of God or else a madman or something worse.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can follow this feet and call him Lord and God.
[SPEAKER_01]: But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has not left that open to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: He did not intend to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because of what the Bible says about Jesus, because of what Jesus says about himself, you can't have a neutral opinion about him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or if I do have a neutral opinion about him, it just means I don't understand what he claim to be, who he claims to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: If someone comes to you at your job, if you work at a big office or something, comes to you at your job and says, hi, I'm the new CEO of the company.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd like to see you in my office.
[SPEAKER_01]: Either they're lying and you can ignore them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're crazy and you call security or they're the CEO and you get up and you go to their office What you don't do is you don't say hey, you seem you seem like a nice guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't just gonna stay right here We don't do is you don't say actually you come to my office and bring me a cup of coffee, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not an option if they're telling the truth
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not an option.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the claim I'm the new CEO does not just say something about them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says something about you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Someone other than me is in charge and calls the shots.
[SPEAKER_01]: For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lord of what?
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: So at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father, who will one day confess that Jesus is Lord?
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every knee about, every mouth confessed, Jesus is Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can't understand that beloved and have a middle of the road response.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus can't just be a role model or a good teacher or a good moral example.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not if he claimed to be what only God is, Lord of heaven and earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can have a hostile response.
[SPEAKER_01]: As Lewis said, you can shut him up or spit it him, or you can have a surrendered response.
[SPEAKER_01]: Follow this fee and call him Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no middle ground option.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's either lying and we can ignore him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's crazy and we can dismiss him, or he's Lord, and we listen to and obey as every word.
[SPEAKER_01]: John Piper comments on this Lewis quote.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is a quote about a quote.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like inception.
[SPEAKER_01]: In other words, Jesus will not be domesticated.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus will not be domesticated, but people still try.
[SPEAKER_01]: There seems to be something about this man for everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we pick and choose in a way that shows he's on our side, but not the original undemisticated, unadjusted Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just the revised Jesus who fits our religion, our political platform, or our lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_01]: So every generation that has come after Jesus has had their own way of trying to domesticate Him and revise Him, adjust His commands to make Him more palatable, diminishes authority to make Him less confrontational.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe there's a unique risk of that in the Christmas season.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because there's so much sentimentality around Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: My friend, Jared Vester, he was talking about this, and he's a pastor in DFW, and he observed how many popular mainstream, non-Christian artists release Christmas albums every year.
[SPEAKER_01]: with explicitly Christian songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they release albums with Silent Night and Holy Night and Joy to the World.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even though all of their other music that they release are about things that are explicitly non-Christian, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But around Christmas, they sing, you know, Christ is the Lord and all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we'll be in the car and a song will come on a Christmas playlist and it's an artist that doesn't typically sing about Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of my kids will be like, wow, I didn't know they were a Christian.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, I didn't know that either.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know that either.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not trying to knock that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not trying to sound judgmental and really not.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of times those are the best versions of the songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it is emblematic in this season of how many of us treat Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: His claim to be Lord is simply a lyric in a song.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a surrendered life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or even for us, even here in a room like this, there's a lot of conversation this time of year around not losing the meaning of Christmas and Christians fight culture to keep Christ in Christmas and I get that, I'm not picking on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as I heard another pastor say, the greatest threat to the meaning of Christmas is not from the culture, but from Christians who are bored with their own story and apathetic toward their own Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: If Jesus is Lord, he deserves more than Luke warm affection,
[SPEAKER_01]: afterthought attention and half-hearted obedience from his people.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has not left that open to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: He did not intend to.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one born in a manger eternally existed as the once you're gone, and the one born in a manger now sits on the throne as Lord of heaven and earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: He will one day return all will confess that he's Lord and all of our life is rightfully his.
[SPEAKER_01]: So look with me at Philippians 2.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a mountaintop passage in the New Testament about the Lordship of Jesus, the kind of Lord He is, how He exercises His authority as Lord it traces His life from before creation all the way through to new creation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to walk through it together, and here's my hope.
[SPEAKER_01]: My hope is that a fresh look at the Lordship of Jesus would move us to humility and worship.
[SPEAKER_01]: So would you pause for a moment and just ask for that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you pause and pray?
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you say, Lord, use this passage to humble me and to stir worship and obedience in my heart?
[SPEAKER_01]: So if there's 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.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do nothing from selfish, ambition, or conceit.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in humility, count others more significant than yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let each of you look not only to your own interest, but also to the interest of others.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our first week of Advent, we talked about how Advent is the true story of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the story that Advent tells is the true story of Christ who has come and will come again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we live in that scene of the story in between the Advent of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, if Christ is Lord, it means that we are not the main character of that story.
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw a video the other day of a fan running onto the field in the middle of a football game.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they jumped the wall and they were running around shirtless on the field and in the players have to stop and the game has to stop.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then some security guy who's been dreaming about this moment is entire life lays this guy out, like perfect form.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the caption under the video said this, this guy has a bad case of main character syndrome.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I didn't know what that meant.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've never heard that phrase.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I googled it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not an official diagnosis.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like cultural vernacular.
[SPEAKER_01]: Main character syndrome describes an excessive self-focused mindset where a person acts as if their life is a movie, viewing others as supporting cast, often leading to a lack of empathy, entitlement, and attention-seeking behavior.
[SPEAKER_01]: Main character syndrome.
[SPEAKER_01]: So someone is not content to just watch the game from the stands, they're not content to be a fan, they have to be the main character.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they try to steal the attention, even if it's just for a few minutes, they run around and they have their moment of glory and that's over.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there are so many versions of this that don't go viral, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Someone's not content for a conversation to be about other people, so they have a way of turning every conversation to themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Someone is so attention hungry, they feel easily overlooked, and they wear their offense on their sleeve, and so they make family time during the holidays unbearable for their family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Main character syndrome.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a new way to describe an old problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we all have, we all have it in us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We all have it in us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Paul uses a different phrase to describe the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really important word because it shows up again later in a few verses conceit.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's two Greek words, put together.
[SPEAKER_01]: and the Greek word for glory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so your translation, if it's not the ESV, it might say something like empty conceit.
[SPEAKER_01]: The King James version translates it this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vane glory.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's Tim Keller on this word.
[SPEAKER_01]: It means to be glory empty.
[SPEAKER_01]: to be hungry for honor, hungry for respect, hungry for the kind of assurance, because you don't feel like you are a person of importance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And glory empty is the state of every human heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's why we were made, we were made.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were made for uninterrupted, uninhabited joy in the presence of God, where we behold His glory,
[SPEAKER_01]: in a world that is untainted by sin and unthreatened by death.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were made for that world.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what your heart longs for.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we don't live in that world yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we feel the absence of that glory.
[SPEAKER_01]: But instead of responding to the absence of that glory by pursuing and beholding God, we respond in a few different ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: So some of us are glory empty and we think too highly of ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: We make these lofty claims about us that we try to prove.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, in the movie,
[SPEAKER_01]: He's taken his girlfriend around the city, showing her all these different things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jovi is her name.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he takes her to a coffee shop, and she takes the coffee.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like very excited about her reaction.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she says, what do you think?
[SPEAKER_01]: And she says, this is a bad cup of coffee.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he says, no, no, no, it's the world's best cup of coffee.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the sign in the window says world's best cup of coffee.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the reality is, it's a crummy cup of coffee.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was probably some bland dark roast that was brewed with unfiltered water the night before, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So the sign world's best cup of coffee, that's empty glory.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's empty glory.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a claim to be something that it's not.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a claim to be better than it actually is.
[SPEAKER_01]: And many of us have that kind of reaction to our glorious soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: We try to.
[SPEAKER_01]: live in light of these claims that we put on the windows of our life, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I, and try to live up to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a better husband than I actually am, a better dad than I actually am, a better pastor than I actually am, and I haven't more together than I actually do, and we know that sometimes all that is actually just a crummy cup of coffee, but we have to keep the act up.
[SPEAKER_01]: We live this main character life with this inflated view of ourselves and demand that those around us live in our story and treat us like they're living in our story.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what's underneath so much of our entitlement and so much of our relational conflict and so much of our disappointment in life because we think the problem is that we need more glory than what others are giving us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Others, though, and actually most of us do both of these.
[SPEAKER_01]: But others don't think too highly of ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: We think too critically of ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can never do anything right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not who I should be.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not as good at relationships.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not as good at being a dad or being a mom or being a friend.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not as good as being a Christian as others.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of us, some of us despise ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if someone else talked to us, the way we talk to ourselves, we would never choose to be around that person.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we can't get away from us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen, and if we were talking about this, if this is you and we were talking about this, like one-on-one, there would be a lot to say.
[SPEAKER_01]: We would talk about how precious you are to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything Mike said last week, the chosen one chooses you because he loves you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have gifts that God has given you, that he wants to use.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your life is not a mistake, and you're probably doing way better than you think you are actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that we need to be said is that you're thinking of yourself too much.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't think too highly of yourself, but you do think too often of yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because self-conceit and self-condemnation are both forms of pride.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because both kinds of thoughts are self-centered.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are self-focused ways of responding to a glory empty soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what we all need to hear is you are a beloved character of the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are.
[SPEAKER_01]: We all matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: We all have a role to play.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are a beloved character of the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are not the main character of the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: That belongs to our Savior who is Christ the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's what I believe, we can only be delivered from self-conceit and self-critique by turning our eyes off of self-taughts our Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so look with me at this passage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have this mind among yourselves, Verch, for first five.
[SPEAKER_01]: which is yours in Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a stunning passage of Scripture.
[SPEAKER_01]: Paul invites us to know the very thoughts of Christ in his incarnation, humiliation, and vindication.
[SPEAKER_01]: It highlights why Jesus, as Lord, is such good news because He does not exercise His authority and power in a way that brings oppression, but in a way that brings freedom.
[SPEAKER_01]: He does not enslave He serves.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's easy to think that something in God was obligated to do all this, like maybe Jesus begrudgingly obeyed the Father, He had to, but He didn't want to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the only way we could disprove that is if we could know His thoughts and read His mind, well, this is that, here are the thoughts of Christ, for six, we'll walk through each verse.
[SPEAKER_01]: did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, who has always existed, has always been God.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's at home in heaven for all of eternity completely loved by the Father and by the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before there is anything at all, the Son was there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Always has been, always will be, and he is the one.
[SPEAKER_01]: through whom all creation came into being.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love this quote from Augusta and I read it every year around this time.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's talking about Jesus' birth.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says this, he was created of a mother whom he created.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was carried by hands that he formed.
[SPEAKER_01]: He cried in the manger and wordless infancy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He, the word without whom all human eloquences mute.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one who's in the form of God,
[SPEAKER_01]: made the hands who carried him, made the mother who birthed him, and when all he could do was cry, the words spoken over him were only speakable because of him.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the power he has.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he did not count that kind of power as something to be grasped.
[SPEAKER_01]: That word grasped means he never exploited his power.
[SPEAKER_01]: He never exploited his deity.
[SPEAKER_01]: One summer in college, I worked for a door to door sales company.
[SPEAKER_01]: Worst job I ever had, it's another story.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was the assistant team leader, like Dwight Schrupp.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I used that title every chance I could get to get out of tasks that I didn't want to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the underlings, the non-assistants, could do all the boring stuff, but I'm the assistant to the team leader.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I used that made up authority to get out of things that I thought were beneath me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus had actual title and actual authority and actual power.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jesus never uses His deity to avoid what is beneath Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is actually beneath Him?
[SPEAKER_01]: He descends to the most common unadorned places, and He gives His life in sacrificial service.
[SPEAKER_01]: He never plays the God card.
[SPEAKER_01]: He does not cling to His power for self-preservation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse 7.
[SPEAKER_01]: He emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant.
[SPEAKER_01]: and being born in the likeness of men, emptied himself, we saw this word in verse three.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where we are glory empty, trying to fill the void, Jesus' full of glory and pours out his life in humble service.
[SPEAKER_01]: He could have come in the form of a tyrant.
[SPEAKER_01]: He could have come in the form of a judge.
[SPEAKER_01]: Full of glory, he comes to a glory empty people in the form of a servant.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is the main character, but he comes as an outcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse 8, in being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, which you think would be about what it meant for God to become human.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one who had no beginning is born as an infant completely dependent on his teenage mom and his blue-collar dad.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one who thundered creation into existence by the word of his power had to learn how to talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one who set the very foundations of the universe had to learn how to walk.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one who knew the security of eternity feels the fear of being hunted by men.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one who holds all things together doesn't have a place to lay his head.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one who is worshiped by angels is made fun of by his neighbors.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one who knows the joy of heaven cries the tears of earth, and that's just his life before death.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's this moment in the garden of Gassimini, when they come to arrest Him, and we get just this small glimpse of what Jesus could have done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Righteously, could have done.
[SPEAKER_01]: The way He could have used His power, the kind of Lord He could have been.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's John 18, four through six.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to Him, came forward and said to them, who do you seek?
[SPEAKER_01]: They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus said to them, I am he, Judas who betrayed him with standing with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: When Jesus said to them, I am he, they drew back and fell to the ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: An army of soldiers.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you know your Old Testament, you know I am is the holy name of the one to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus speaks his divine name and it floors them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's this picture in the garden of what Philippians says will happen at the end of creation at the name of Jesus every knee will bow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone will lower themselves in worship.
[SPEAKER_01]: But listen, if he can floor the army by speaking his name, he does not have to say yes to the cross.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not powerless in this moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't overtake him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's in complete control.
[SPEAKER_01]: He does not need the cross for every need to bow.
[SPEAKER_01]: He can speak us into submission, but he did not come to exploit his strength.
[SPEAKER_01]: He came to save his people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he allows himself to be taken.
[SPEAKER_01]: He became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why it's really good news.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why it's really good news that He is Lord and we are not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because as much as we might think of ourselves, we don't have the power or the character to have made the same choice that He made.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is AW-Toser.
[SPEAKER_01]: If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict.
[SPEAKER_01]: In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus' fist,
[SPEAKER_01]: Not by muscle but by love, not by vengeance but by forgiveness, not by force but by sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that He might win.
[SPEAKER_01]: He destroyed His enemies, by dying for them, and conquered death by allowing death to conquer Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: This passage says His death was not a surprise to Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: have this mind in you which was also in Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: He chose this.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Son of God takes on flesh knowing what it would mean to be obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knew his friends would abandon him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knew he'd be beaten the face of God with black eyes and a bloody lip.
[SPEAKER_01]: The back of God with torn flesh and exposed bone.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knew he'd be mocked.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thorns and spit would crown the head of God's annoyance.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knew he'd be humiliated.
[SPEAKER_01]: the one who never entertained in a moral thought, a stripped naked for the entertainment of his enemies.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knew he would see his mom mourned her son, and he knew he would feel forsaken by his heavenly father, and he knew the very source of life knew he would give up his spirit and death, and when he had all the power to say no to all of that, instead of using his power to protect himself, he lays down his life as obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross because he loves.
[SPEAKER_01]: He loves you in yourself, conceit, and he loves you in yourself, condemnation, and he loves you, and your main character pride, and he loves you even when your love for him is Luke warm and half-hearted.
[SPEAKER_01]: In our glory, empty state, we were not looking for him, so he comes to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Theologian R. G. Lee says it this way, what deep dissent?
[SPEAKER_01]: from the heights of glory to the depths of shame, from the wonders of heaven to the wickedness of earth, from the throne to the tree, from dignity to debasement, from the halls of heaven to the nails of earth, but in his descent was the dawn of mercy.
[SPEAKER_01]: because he cannot, because we cannot ascend to him, he descends to us, and because he loves like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And because he suffered like that, and because he was obedient and courageous and faithful like that, God has highly exalted him, and given him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father.
[SPEAKER_01]: is this who He is to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: When Jesus returns again, everyone will know He's Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: In His second advent, no one will call Him a liar or lunatic.
[SPEAKER_01]: No one will treat Him simply as a good moral teacher.
[SPEAKER_01]: He will not just be a lyric in a song.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone will confess that He is Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all who denied that in their life will confess it then to their judgment.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Christian is the one who confesses now what all will confess them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we confess it in our joy, in our affection, in our obedience.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Savior born in the city of David is Jesus Christ my Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you pray with me?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not done, I just think what's left to do is best done in prayer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Beloved, would you, not from a place of condemnation, but from a place of invitation, would you take a moment to repent of your pride?
[SPEAKER_01]: I have been and will continue to repent of mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: In whichever side of the main character, pendulum you fall on, whether you think too highly of yourself, you have an inflated view of self, or if there's this, just inner, insessent, critique of self.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you just repent and say God, would you just help me get my eyes off of myself?
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to behold you, Lord of Lords.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then could we just confess, could we do now together?
[SPEAKER_01]: What all will do then, and confess Jesus you are Lord?
[SPEAKER_01]: I am loved, I am not the point.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in saying Jesus, you are Lord, we don't mean that in a sentimental way, we mean it in a surrendered way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so with that confession, there's obedience, he's calling us into that we can't ignore.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's worship, he demands that we can't withhold.
[SPEAKER_01]: in our fickle hearts are just a mess and there's so much work needed, but just this morning in this moment, in the sea, in our hands are open, our knees are bowed, our mouths are confessing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus, you are Lord, you are Lord, I am not.
[SPEAKER_01]: We thank you that you are the kind of God when we could not ascend to you, you descend to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Praise God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bless your name, Lord Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: And help us be a humble people who are obsessed with you Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: A humble people who do not have to
[SPEAKER_01]: Try to manufacture affection for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.