Northside Church - Sydney
DNA of the Christian Life – Week 2: Essence
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. The gospel according to Batman, that's where I'm going to go tonight, that's where I'm going. You see in the final scenes of the Dark Knight, one of the great Nolan films, the Joker played by our own Heath Ledger in that haunting role, sets up an intriguing dilemma. He places two groups of people in two different fairies, and he hands the group of people, each a detonator, to the other person's ferry which has been rigged up with kilograms and kilograms worth of explosives. He says they've got a choice. They can hold this in their hand, pull the trigger as fast as they can, blow the other ferry up, knowing that the other ferry also has exactly the same choice, or they can both keep their fingers off the trigger, at which point he's going to set the detonators off himself. And so there is Bruce Wayne, who is Batman. I hope I haven't ruined the surprise for you, but there is Batman watching over the harbor, and the Joker does this in order to demonstrate a point to Batman, that his claim is that all of humanity are simply self-interested animals like him. I want to tell you what happens, I don't want to ruin the movie, but are we? Are we? I mean, look, here's the thing, look at the wars throughout all of history, look at the way that people have fought and squabbled over bits of turf or ideologies, look at politics in this country in the past couple of weeks, weeks. As people go for this mad scramble into attacks on each other's personalities or families of we've seen, as they've seeked and sought to scramble their way to the top. Look at the corporate environments we work in, which are probably just a combination of both the wars and the politics, right? Think about your workplaces. The passage we're going to read two tonight from Philippians really teaches us about the answer to one of the most fundamental problems in the world. Why don't we get along? Why don't we get along? And really it shows us how the essence of the Christian life can fix it. So if you've got your Bibles here tonight, Kindles, or any type of electric device except a Samsung, I'm not a fan of Samsung. So go back to the paper one if you own a Samsung instead of Philippians chapter two, Paul saying the apostle Paul writing to his favorite church. If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort in his love, if any fellowship with 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 purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same of that of Jesus Christ, who being in the very nature of God, didn't consider equality with God something to be grasped, but he made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to death even on a cross. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name. And that at that 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. One of our good mates is a non-Christian, or we're hanging out for dinner once and he said, "You must be so lucky to work in the church." I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "You've got an idea, I work in finance and people are trying to backstab me and they're trying to pull me down and we're at each other's throats the whole time and we're constantly performing. The church just must be a dream and see some people that have worked in the church raising their eyebrows." And look, I'm not going to go into that there, but isn't it really interesting that a non-Christian can look at the church and say, "Surely that must be a wonderful place of unity," right? That's exactly what Paul was getting out when he was writing to his beloved church versus one and two of this passage. If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort in his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded. I mean, the same love being one in spirit and purpose. Look at the words being united, common sharing, like-minded, same love, being one spirit, being one mind. Look, what's he saying? Being be unified isn't a funny Jesus says in John chapter 17. He prays for his disciples and he says, "Father, I pray that they may be one so that, so that the world may know that you sent me." Now, here's the amazing thing. Let's catch this here. Circle John 17, 20, to go back to it or write it down in your notes. Isn't it incredible that Jesus prays that we might be one? In other words, what he's saying here is that the means by which the world A will know there is a God and B, know that there's a guy called Jesus is through the unity of the church. Now, why is that? It doesn't make sense because unity's not natural. It's not natural. Relationships are always trying to tear themselves apart, tear them down, and in the context of human relationships, it's every person from themselves, right? All the trigger, do it first. So here's the thing then, look, what makes us think, and not all of us are blessed enough to be past as working in the church. What makes us think that if we're coming from a culture where everyone's at each other's throats and trying to tear each other down and unity is so hard to achieve, what makes us think that just by stepping in the church on a Sunday, that we're all going to be naturally unified. You won't. We don't. And you've got to remember who Paul's talking to here. He's talking to his favorite church. His best church, I said last week, that the book of Philippians is the only church in which Paul says, where Paul is commending them. There's no, don't do this, don't do that. They're a good church. They're the top shelf church. They're the church you pull out when the parents are coming around. Why is Paul still writing to the good church be unified? And look, I'm Paul saying here, an excuse of phrase, but I want to be deliberate here if anyone's struggled with this, but I want to be deliberate. What Paul is saying is that there is a cancer that lies in remission and will emerge and spark up at any point in time in each and every one of us and it will eat unity alive. And he says, there's a cancer in each and every one of us. This passage, you see its symptoms first and then you see the source of it, verse three. Let's have a look, verse three, here's the symptom, do nothing out of selfish ambition. Selfish ambition. Another way to translate it was do nothing out of a selfish rivalry means a spirit of rivalry means a spirit of competing towards a common objective, but wanting to be the one that's superior. And so he says, do nothing out of selfish ambition. And here's the question, here's what he's asking is, what is the basis of your relationships with people? I was having some drinks with some friends from the church on Friday night, classic example. We're sitting there, waitress comes up, grabs the drink, pours it in the glass really quickly and the thing froths right over the top of the glass. I mean, what would you do in that situation? Like, are you kidding? Where'd you get what you're waitressing license from? Like seriously, go a little bit slowly, like they're all the thoughts, that's what you guys were thinking, right? Good, it's not just me, I said to him, hey, I got a, God really slapped me around the head there, we just had a reality check for a second. And here's what I think he's saying to us tonight, it's, look, are you treating people as souls or servants? Because I in that moment, treating this girl as a potential, wonderful, imago day, someone made in the image of God, serving me this drink as frothy as it might be, right? The very image of God or was she a servant? I mean, what is the basis of your relationships? Just go get my drink and my chips, girly, make it quick, right? Or is this someone in which God could possibly be dwelling? Are you treating people as souls or servants? You see, that's, that's what selfish ambition breaks down, you see, church is to be the sort of place, a community where, well, look, here's what we're trying to, we're trying to out honor each other, we're trying to out serve each other, how can I serve you? How can I submit to you? How can I care for you in that sense? You know, and Paul's being real, what he's saying is that selfish ambition, it even exists in pastors. Funny that, you know, to some degree it's the reason why there's disharmony ready around every corner of doing church, it's why we fight, look, and it's not just in the church, it's universal. But remember, we're coming back to the idea where Paul's saying you must be unified if we're going to show the world that there's a God and look, you're saying, no, I'm principled, I'm a good person, I would, I would never do that and then someone comes up and steps on your toes, gets into your empire, gets into your seat at church and selfish ambition begins to rise and rise again, look, how do I, how do I not look 15 minutes before I had to preach this message to ask Mikey, I snapped at one of my teammates because we didn't get something right, it's ready to rise in each and every one of us. So guys, look, how can you tell if you've got a little bit of selfish ambition beneath the surface there? Look, you want to let us test, look, here's the thing, if you've been sitting here listening to this selfish ambition and you've, and you know, when your eyes start to wander to the other side of the auditorium, you begin to look over that person's head and you're thinking, I know just who needs to hear this right now. If you said that to yourself, busted, if you want to kill the unity of community, eat it up with a bit of selfish ambition, here's the other thing that he says, if that's the symptom, do you want to know the cause, the underlying root of it all, he says it's vain conceit. There's a funny word there, but it goes deeper than selfish ambition, way deeper verse, read, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. The King James translation, I think it's got the best, the King James version has the best translation of this, he says, do nothing out of or one word, weird word, but closest to the Greek you can get, do nothing out of vain glory, do nothing out of self glory, self glorification. What it means is the Bible saying a person inherently is empty and starving for glory. How do I know, I looked it up on a blog, like this, philosophical blog, let's go right. I hear a lot of people today, especially because I'm in university, the place where dreams are made and/or crushed, say that they want to be somebody when they grow up and that they don't want to be a nobody when they grow up and that got me thinking of what defines a nobody or a somebody, do you have to make a scientific discovery that will affect and help humanity as long as humanity exists or is it necessary to be of value to the world but only to a group of people or just being ritual famous automatically make you a somebody or is everyone destined to be a nobody? This question might be unclear since I ask questions using terms that haven't been defined, you can tell you a philosophy blog, but you can either supply the definitions, answer the questions or both, I'm cool, I'm just interested in what you think that it means to be somebody in life and so some of the replies, someone goes I wonder if the idea of being somebody is deeply ingrained in the US culture, it's possible just a reframing of the American dream that sounds less corny, I doubt whether most of the people you hear say that are really thinking in terms of helping humanity but instead of feeling they need to address some deep feeling of insecurity imposed on them by their culture, then nosy chips in, someone goes I don't know what this means, some go, some people are content with being Australia, other people are content with being Tasmania, trust the nosy to weigh you know an American blog like that, anyway finished off like this, someone then says I guess it stems from the common urge to have one's life being meaningful in some way, why we like that, we want to be somebody, you know it, I know it, we want glory, that's what glory is, biblical definition of glory is weightiness and significance and heaviness, it's the inherent character of the God that we worship in this place, glory, we want that, we want that, you know we've had those recurring nightmares, haven't you, you know I've been the last kid picked on the basketball team, you know the terrible nightmare that they're picking Johnny and Gretchen and all the other ones and you know they're picking the two different kids and you're just left there in your school uniform standing out and you're the last person picked to play basketball, well at least I have that recurring nightmare, I'm not sure about you but, you know the nightmare you go to someone's wedding and you get put in the worst place to sit at a wedding, you know where that is, the kids table, yeah thanks Graham, the kids table, we know it see, we're talking about the human condition here, you know or you have that recurring nightmare of the promotion that the promotion you've been working so hard for and all the offices gathered around and that snakey eyed wonderful image of God that you work with gets promoted ahead of you, we've been there because we want significance, you see here's the thing the underlying phobia, the relentless anxiety of the human soul is that we don't matter, that we're small, we're insignificant, that it doesn't matter, that you know we're going to be excluded like the little kid from the basketball team, we want glory and yet we try and make it up ourselves and so if we feel that we've been excluded then we want to make ourselves included, if we feel that we're on the outside then we want to be on the inside, if we feel that we've been overlooked then we want to be approved of because yeah as I was saying here the deepest level right guys we're worried that our lives are fleeting and amissed and worth nothing and Bible saying it's being real here that the humans we're constantly trying to manufacture our glory and success and approval and love and significance, I mean look at the way people are on Facebook for crying out loud, what people saying maybe with the most you know self-interested culture or generation that's ever existed, we think that some digital realm can give us that weightiness and we try and build up weightiness, I don't know the way that we build up weightiness by covering ourselves in fairy floss, it tastes sweet, it looks sweet but it weighs nothing and why we like this look guys, if the cancer of unity is self-interest and vain glory then the carcinogen the very thing that causes it guys is sin and here's the thing sin's not good deeds and bad deeds, I always say this, it's not small lies and big lies, I always write the word sin with s with a big capital I and a small n because sin is all about me and see what happens, we move out, you see sin's robbed us of the glory that would have satisfied that inner phobia in your soul, look let me give you Genesis chapter 3 in about 30 seconds and people think it's just about some lady eating an apple from a tree and a garden of an Eden, nice stuff, Eve takes the apple, that's what Genesis is all about, when the Bible talks about Genesis in the garden we get so caught up in the literal stuff about it all, what it's trying to say is that there was a time in which humanity knew and loved and walked with God in the call of the day and they spoke to him face to face and guess what they had, glory, weightiness, significance and when humanity decided to walk out of that garden, we gave it all up, we gave it all up and so in that sense the Bible is saying to us that we subconsciously crave glory because we lost it and here's the only, look if you dominate your life with self glory, if you're always self talking and self interested and self praising and self focus, have you ever been around people like that and what do they do to you, they turn you right off, how many friends do they have at the end of 12 months, not many and the great irony is that the people that work through the vain glory and the self glory pile off into insignificance, so in that sense here's the catch, the more you become aware of your insignificance the more you try to manufacture it, well that's nice and chipper isn't it, hey how do we fix this as we finish up tonight, how do we rewind from here, how do we get back from here, guys what's the remedy, what's the remedy for this, it's the essence of the Christian life, it's humility, it's humility and look at the example in chapter 2 of Philippians verses 5 to 8, it says your attitude should be the same of that of Jesus Christ who being in the very nature of God so it's saying he was God, did not consider equality with God, something to be grasped or held onto him but he made himself nothing and taking the very nature of a servant and being made in human likeness and being found in appearances a man he humbled himself and he became obedient to death even death on a cross, even death on a cross, look you see humility is not a unique concept across all the major religions of the world, all the major religions talk about humility and Buddhism talks about it as an equivalent concern of how to be liberated from the sufferings of life, Sikhism talks about it as the fruit of humility is intuitive peace and pleasure but can look guys I want to want you to grasp tonight, what I want to be ingrained in your hearts, in your heads tonight is the incredible example of the humility of this God that we talk about in this place and this God that is Jesus Christ, can you see the mindset of Jesus, Jesus got underneath God and he emptied himself of his glory, you know, notice Jesus could have come here as a powerful king, it could have come and pulled out a can of whoop us on everyone, he could have slaughtered the Romans, he could have done all sorts of amazing stuff but he didn't have his way by grasping power, look here's how ugly example, his example is from our hours, how different it is, look here's how the verse would read if it was you and I, though we are not God, we consider equality with God something to be grasped and though not being God we do grasp at it, can't you see the irony, we desperately try to be somebody and yet Jesus found his name by becoming a nobody, the name above all names, look Jesus, George Michael's got it so wrong, hasn't he, he says you've got to get up to get down, got to get up to get down, I'll send you the song link if you need to see it later on but he's got it, he's got up to find it, you know, you've got to get up to get down, no you've got to get down to get up, you've got to get down to get up, that's what we see in the example of Jesus Christ, you're getting the idea, Jesus emptied himself of the ultimate glory, that's what happened to the cross, you know, why did he do it, why would Jesus go through all of that, so you can stop being afraid of the thing that hounds you the most, you worry about being insignificant, they spat on him, they were mocking him, you worried about being rejected, at the cross he experienced that, they were his brothers, you worried about being marginalised, you've been worried about being an outsider, whether it be socially or culturally or racially, he was hung out the dry so you could be bought in, you worried about being an outsider, he became the altar, the one who was at the inside with God goes to the outside, so those on the outside of God could come in on the inside, now can you see the remedy to manufacturing your own glory, Jesus emptied himself of the ultimate glory, but here's the thing, here's the clincher, he empties himself of the ultimate glory so you can have it, so you can have that, so you can be returned to how God intended everything to be, what happens he gets raised up into the highest place, Jesus gives up all his universal paron glory and finds a far more greater one on earth by giving it all away. There it is, that's what it means to be a Christian, George Michael principle, got to get down to get up, but here's why I don't think you and I fully discover it, Christ, but if you're thinking about it tonight, you know, Jesus wasn't just getting under God, he was getting underneath us, he humbled himself so far that he, it says the son of man, the son of God, God himself came not to be served by humanity, but to serve humanity, and so in that way guys, can't you see that Jesus became somebody by first being a nobody and serving something bigger than himself, and that's how you can too by following Jesus, you know following Jesus, he's following someone who's bigger than your social scene and bigger than your clicks and bigger than your job and bigger than your bank account, it's by serving someone bigger than that, if you lost that you said that doesn't make me the somebody, that bigger thing makes me somebody, and some of you might be saying, well why should I do that, I like that stuff, why should I have to give it up, can't you see what's happening at the cross, at the cross he was pressing his own detonator, the joke is game, it only understood this plane of humanity versus humanity, and these guys didn't have the radical example that God himself comes in and blows himself up, explodes himself at the cross so that your life could be safe and saved, that's why you can give it up, that's the dynamic for being a Christian, when you understand that Jesus gave up his life in order to save yours, the foundation, the engine of a life of humility is the example of Jesus, it's so different from all the other religions of the world, it's not something we work to a nice virtue, God himself at the cross pulling the detonator, can't you see that's the remedy there, look what does it mean for us tonight, verse 4, rather in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of other people, here's the thing, the degree to which you get the gospel what Jesus has done will be the degree to which you're able to put other people's interests ahead of your own, the degree to which you get that whole picture will be the degree to which you put others ahead of your own, look if Jesus emptied his glory at the cross so you could have it, then it means there's no need for you to go around sucking glory from everything else, your job, your position, your status, your friendships, and so guys in that way what is selfish ambition and vane glory other than the straws from which we try to suck glory, and what it means for you tonight, if you want to see how this engine, this nuclear fuel rod can work for you in your life this week, what about if you're the person this week that's going to become upset because someone makes you feel small and insignificant, you know what Jesus says to you tonight, I tied for you, I crossed the heavens for you, I went to the cross for you, I did that for you and you're worried that your boss is making you feel small, live big, I became small so you could live a big life, don't you dare go back to that sort of mindset, what about the person who's struggling to let someone have it their way, and we look at the picture of our mighty lord and savior and his hands are stretched out upon the cross and we think, how's that working for you, he didn't have things his way, the garden he says, not my way, but yours be done, if you're treating people like servants, no matter how fast or frothy they pour, you drink, the one who deserved to have his drink poured the right way, the one who was a king came and served you, who were we the lorded over someone else, guys I'll say it to you every now and then, the Bible never shoulds you into doing anything, you can't walk out of here going I should do this and I shouldn't be that and I should be more humble, the Bible never shoulds you into anything, you will only become that radical sort of person when you accept the humility of the glory of God himself dying for you, when you see what he did for you, do you want that, it's what I'm asking, is that logic, will it be alive and well in your life this week, the only way it can be as if that God, not the God of all the other religions but that God on the cross becomes your God, and his glory becomes your glory, if you're not a Christian tonight, I urge you, can I plead with you, the only way that that logic is going to play itself out in your life this week, you can accept him through faith, you can talk to us after the service, ask that king into your life when you see what it is that he did for you, look let me ask you this, is the joker right, are we self-interested animals, not if you're a Christian, the essence of Christianity the essence of the Christian life is humility, and what I want to leave you with is that is this image, each and every one of us leaves this place tonight with a detonator in our hands, and then in relationships you have this week, whether it be with a family member, whether it be with a boss, whether it be with a spouse, every interaction that you're going to have this week, you have the opportunity to quickly pull that trigger first and explode them, their life at the expense, their life, but not a Christian when we come to recognise that Jesus Christ pulled the detonator first, and we can pull our fingers off the trigger and let God do his work to his glory, let's pray him. My father, many of us here tonight, self-included know this has to be one of the hardest issues of the Christian life, so Lord we're going to need your power this week to play this out, we're going to need your love and your grace and we're going to need your forgiveness father, those moments when we slip up and selfish ambition and self-interest and self-glory rise to the surface of our lives and our actions and our lips and our tongues and we're going to need your forgiveness in that, father, we pray tonight by the power of the gospel that we come back, we come back to that incredible story that the king, the ultimate king of the universe made himself small so we can live big, father, if there be anyone in this place tonight that can't unlock that logic in their life, if they don't have that engine, if they don't have that nuclear fuel rod in their life because they don't serve a God who actually serve them in the first place, father, I just pray that through your spirit you're not going to be prompting them to come and ask questions, talk with one of the team right now to come and accept this incredible servant king into their life, for each and every one of us for this special place, your precious community, father, we just want to desperately live out that prayer, that this world, whether it just be crow's nest, like we heard this morning, just an apartment block above us, father, would know that A there is a God and the sky Jesus was God because of the unnatural, the supernatural unity in this place, born by brothers and sisters, all walks alive, all demographics, all races, walking into this place, each and every week saying, how can I serve you? You're probably this now in Jesus' name, amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]