Alright, we're going to start in a little bit. Just a quick apology for those of you guys who messaged me asking specific questions. Sometimes I answer, sometimes I don't. Apologize. If you do ever message me for questions specific to the passage, I'll try to take a look and try to answer to the best of my ability.

Let's take a moment to pray as we jump into our study tonight. Alright, God, we want to thank you so much. Lord, you give to us such a high calling in scripture as you command us to not simply to do, but also to think, to believe, and to be.

And we realize, God, that all of that, not just part of that, but every single aspect of that high calling is impossible by our flesh. We really do pray for the work of your spirit, the work of your spirit working through the power of your word and your presence in our lives.

We ask, God, that we would all the more reflect Christ, truly proclaim him with everything that we believe, everything we say and do. We really do pray for a fruitful time of Bible study tonight. It's in Christ. It's in Christ. Amen. Okay. So, let's begin with just reading our passage.

I know you guys just spent 30 minutes walking over it and things like that, but it's really good to just review, review, review, because the whole process of observation requires that we repeat, repeat, repeat. So I read for us here, it says, "Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men.

Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, for the glory of God the Father." Okay, what an amazing passage.

There's just so much to ask and glean from it. One of the very first things that we typically do with Bible study is try to outline the passage by flow of thought. It's so important to not get lost in the details, but to really appreciate the flow of thought that Apostle Paul and the Word of God is teaching us.

So the way I've phrased it is verse one, it clearly shows condition. Condition meaning if this, then that. If and then, right? Those are conditional statements. If A, then B. And that's pretty much how verse one reads. "Therefore if, if there is this and if there's any of that," and so that's why I say verse one is a condition or a basis or a foundation.

Verse two through five is very clearly the exhortation and command. "Make my joy complete by being humbly united. Same mind, same love, same spirit, one purpose," right? And that's why I sectioned off verse two through five because as he gave the condition, then the command came. And then verse six through 11, it's the prime case, meaning the highest example we could have, which is Jesus Christ.

As he gives us the command, you have this attitude in Jesus who, although he existed in the form of God, dot, dot, dot. That is the example for us. That's the inspiration. That is the case that we're supposed to follow. So that's the flow of thought that we find.

Now let's get into some of the details then and look at verse one. Paul says, "Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion." As we take a look at that, I do want to first start off with the "therefore." Now that's pretty, you know, specific.

We're just looking at the very first word. But it's important because it is important to know how does this awesome section where clearly he's giving you the foundation, the command, and the example, where did that come from? How does it connect with the previous passage, previous section that we read?

And that's something you should think about. Hmm, what did he say before? And recall that Apostle Paul was giving this grand explanation of his worldview. He was giving a grand explanation of how he saw it. You guys might think that I'm imprisoned and all these other creatures and so-called individuals and they're just taking this opportunity to be all self-willed, arrogant and stuff.

Oh my goodness, what are we supposed to do? And Paul says, "Well, let me explain my worldview. This is joyous." Why? Because regardless of the circumstance, Christ is proclaimed. And whether life or death, Christ is exalted. If that's the case, in this I rejoice. Right? That's what he was saying.

And what he was teaching us was that his proper perspective in the faith and his devotion to Christ, then his whole operating principle is that to live is Christ and to die is gain. Right? And then the way that he ended chapter one was to say, "And you, you do realize you've been given this incredible privilege, that you've been given the grace, granted, right?

Charisma, granted this incredible privilege to not only just to believe, but to suffer for his sake." Right? So that's an incredible calling. That's an incredible perspective. And essentially Apostle Paul is saying, "You too." Right? Me, my perspective. You, same thing. Same high calling. And then so if you recall back, one of the passages that we read that was important was in chapter one, verse 27, Apostle Paul said, "Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I'll hear of you that you are standing firm, one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel." And so as just a quick summary of all that we just said right there, we realize that there is a connection and a flow of thought that Apostle Paul is thinking.

There is a same spirit, same mind, same faith, not only just amongst yourselves, but all of us in the gospel, including who? Apostle Paul. Right? There is this connection as he's explaining his worldview of the joy that Christ has exalted in me, in my life, in my body, and even my death.

You've got the same thing. The same spirit, same mind, same faith. Okay? And so therefore, he starts to ask all these conditional, not ask, but state these conditional phrases. Now remember that whenever we do Bible study observation, if you see a list, if you see some repetitive thought, it's very important for you to think like, "Okay, clearly he's taking one thought and then he's putting all these different statements to support that, or at least examples of it, or at least the nuances of it." Well, what's really interesting is he says, "If there is any this, and if there is any that, and if there is any of this, and if there is any of that." Right?

And clearly when you see that, what you should be thinking is, "Hmm. When I think of the if this, then that, he is laying just a simple basis and foundation. This should be kind of like a prerequisite. This should be kind of like the condition upon which we operate." That's the kind of thought that comes to mind.

The way I'd like to put it is this is the common powerful condition for all of us. Right? This is the powerful foundation on which he's going to give the exhortation. And so one of the questions that I have for you there in the observation is that we should be asking was, "Okay, I do see the statements that are repetitive.

What's the similarity?" Okay? And I hope you guys got to kind of think through that a little bit. Is there a common factor? Sometimes there isn't. Sometimes it's just like a litany of commands like, "Do this, do that, do this, do this." You know? But here, is there a common sentiment?

Now one of the things kind of interestingly is this. If you're about to give some really heavy commandments about, you know, there's so many commandments in there about not being prideful, like empty conceit, not being selfish, not being so self-interested and looking out for yourself, that kind of stuff, you know, you would think like maybe he was saying, "You know, we committed to this.

We're all in the same army." You know, like, but actually the kind of terms that we see here are a little bit more, I guess, encouraging. It's a bit more, there's a sense of emotive kind of sentiment to all this. Because look, he says, "If there is encouragement, if there is consolation," or, you know, in other translations, "comfort, fellowship of the Spirit, affection, and compassion." Right?

So as you guys thought through, what are some of the similarities in this? You know, take a moment to think about that even further. Hmm, that's true. If you're about to exhort people to, you know, "Let's do this," right? Is this the way that you would frame it? So as we think about this, we do recognize, we recall back that the Philippians' church, many of them, clearly Apostle Paul said, "I'm proud of you because you are experiencing the same stuff." Are they experiencing different kind of persecution and suffering?

Absolutely. So here and now, we start thinking, okay, for the believer, for the people who have if this is true of you, one of the defining marks of a Christian is that even in the midst of those sufferings, you know what? In life, I got all my stuff that I was working for taken away.

Or maybe you feel like, you know what? I actually tried and tried and in the end, everybody thinks I'm just like pitiful. My life isn't really winning at anything. For the Christian, you should be able to have your mind and heart still yet be encouraged, right? If you come to a point where you look at your life and you realize, like, "I'm not where I ought to be.

I'm not where everybody else is," and your mind can't get to, "Well, if I have Christ, I have consolation. I have comfort. I have encouragement. I have hope." If your heart and your mind can't get there, then there should be a question like, "How can you say then you actually have faith in Christ?" Right?

So although that might be a little bit, maybe some people might think a little bit insensitive, we do, again, live in a generation where people are looking at their lives and feeling incredibly unsatisfied, incredibly disappointed, and very, very jaded. But if we as Christians buy into that narrative, we're, "Oh, goodness.

Everything is horrible. It's just going down the drain and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," without a sentiment of hope and joy that I can pull out, not because a circumstance has anything, but because my heart has Christ. That is the genuine kind of blessing, the powerful basis, and the condition that we have as believers.

Right? Okay. So then, in summary of that, I'd like to say there is this common powerful condition, and what's more, we then have a genuine Christian affection. We have the commonality of the comfort of Christ to those who do live in a broken world. Okay? All right. So then, from that, I do want to make a quick, quick challenge, a quick, quick kind of perspective.

I think that one of our common tendencies is to naively think that certain things can be accomplished without just simply some of these, like, personal affection experiences in Christ. What do I mean by that? Okay? In my mind, as an executive pastor, there are a lot of times where people send me articles about how to do church, what church should be like, and people have lots of opinions.

I appreciate that because I want to regularly be thinking about how to improve our community. Okay. Now, as I set that up, sometimes, however, people have all these advice of how to organize people groups, how to make sure that, you know, the like affinity are held together, how people get an opportunity to talk.

All that stuff is actually pretty good stuff. But I do want you to remember that not just church, but even your work, even your club sports, even your social clubs, even – like, whatever it is you're involved with. My personal belief is without the affection of Jesus Christ, without the power of Christ's comfort in your heart and the eternal hope that he's giving you, not just church, none of it's possible.

Every single one of you, if you do not have that kind of comfort, encouragement, consolation of love, fellowship of the spirit, and affection in your heart, you're not able to do anything. After the honeymoon – I mean, for those of you guys who have been in work for a really long time, you guys know, all it takes, even at work, if – let's say you found the greatest job that fulfills your sense of like, this is my skill and trade, like, I get to flourish in this.

Maybe you are working super hard to get to a certain position. All it takes is like one jerk co-worker to ruin it all, okay? All it takes is one moment where you fail, you mess up. It just – it doesn't take much for a group to just unravel. Even social clubs that are based on commonalities, whether it be sports, like I'm in part of basketball club, I'm in part of like, I don't know, recently there's a ping pong club, right?

You can come together on one common purpose or whatever it may be, and everyone feels like I have ownership in this, I'm responsible, I have a title, I have this and that. All of those are good, good things. But without this affection for Christ, not just church, any organization, it's impossible to stay united.

Why? Because soon even within sports clubs, you realize that guy is not in the community, he's my competition. Soon you'll realize the commonality that you have in work, everyone's trying to accomplish their own goal. Those of you who have been in work, you see it. You see it. People have their own agendas, they have their own ambitions.

Only when there is a powerful work of Christ that is a supernatural embedded hope in your heart is any of that possible. And that's why I think when Apostle Paul is ready to give the command, "I want you to be united and sane in mind, spirit," he doesn't base it off of, "You know, it's so glad that you guys are in close proximity, and I'm so glad you guys have satellite sites." You know, like satellite locations where you guys can come together.

You know what I'm talking about? I get all this advice about how to structure everything, but in the end it comes back to this. The ground basis of our Christianity in my affection for Jesus. All the other advice, great, it's good advice. It does not compare to the powerful commonality we have in Christ, amen?

All right. Okay, then we can move on to the command section. Okay, then we can move on to the command section. Apostle Paul says, "Make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose." Now what's really interesting about this is, again, you're like, "Oh gosh, I want to challenge you.

I can't go through every single one of these things." As a matter of fact, even in verse one, I want to encourage you guys, sit there and ask, "What is the encouragement of Christ? What is the consolation of love?" Is it just a small little consolation prize? Is it more than that?

You should be asking these questions. What is this? For every single element, but we just don't have time for that. Here and now too, we don't have time to go over every single element, but we clearly see perhaps, perhaps a unified theme. And the way that I would like to describe it is a little bit, it takes a little bit of work on the word study.

What I mean by that is this. Apostle Paul uses this interesting phrase, which is called phreno. When Apostle Paul says, "Be same minded," be like minded, that is the command. He's saying, "Make my joy complete," that's the more explicit command, and every single phrase after that is just a participle supporting that, but the commonality is trying to encourage you, "I want you to have the same perspective and worldview.

I want you to be like minded." And that word is phreno. What's really interesting about this is within this passage, Apostle Paul uses it in nuanced ways multiple times. For example, this word here, "one purpose," this one purpose right here, that's actually the same word. And so, in some of your ESV translations, it'll actually say that, "I want you actually to be really in accord with each other in one mind," right?

Like fully. Why? Well, here I want to share with you just the definition of it from one of the lexicons, the dictionaries, and it says, "This idea has the concept of thoughtful planning, to employ your faculty for thoughtful planning with emphasis upon underlining disposition or attitude, to have this attitude, to think in a particular manner." And so, even later on when the command comes in verse five, "The attitude you should have is the one that Jesus Christ has," meaning you need to think like Jesus, right?

That's the mentality. Okay. So, what I am trying to actually try to communicate to you guys is, Apostle Paul's command here to be unified, one may think, it's like, "Oh yeah, we need to be really united. What a beautiful thing that everyone's here together." He goes deeper than that in his expectations for us.

He wants us to work together to have actually the same interpretation of the circumstances. He wants us to have the same understanding of how God is working these scenarios. He wants us to have the same perspective of what's going on, our role, our purpose. He wants us to think in like-mindedness.

Does that make sense? Okay. Now, that's the part there in verse two. The other parts of the command come in negative and positive form. The command I think I'd like to summarize as regard one another, but here, let's focus on what we see in verse three and four. Apostle Paul says, "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit." Ooh, you know, we got to take a moment.

There's nothing necessarily like nuanced and confusing about it. It's just explicit, like, "Don't be selfish, man." You know? And I'm like, "Okay." And he says, "Do not merely look out for your own personal interest." You know, as I think about that, I just took a moment to reflect, and I asked a question like, "Hmm, those things too I know kind of go together as a package." Meaning, when we think about our struggles with sin, when we think about our own struggles with conflict, where there's disunity, typically selfishness and pride go together hand in hand, right?

So for example, you know, the way that selfishness goes hand in hand is that if I were to define selfishness, like, what is selfishness? I'd like to summarize it with a statement. Whenever you catch yourself say, "What about me?" That's selfishness, right? What about me? So for example, if you're on a team, how come that guy gets to shoot?

What about me? That's selfish. Even though maybe you think in your interpretation, it's like, "No, I have proof. He shot 30 times. I shot twice. What about me?" I'm saying that's selfishness. When you're on a board meeting, and you have like a, you know, you're at your work, and everybody's chiming in, and you start saying, "Hey, you guys have all these ideas, and you guys get to speak.

How come no one listens to my ideas? What about me? Did you listen to me? Did you consider what I had to say?" The "what about me" is selfishness. Maybe in a family, you start thinking like, "How come that guy gets to decide where we go to eat?" And then in your family, "How come that person gets to da-da-da-da-da?" The moment you start saying, "What about me?" You are in danger of selfishness.

Why? Because someone can ask you, "What about you?" Why do you get to start sitting there thinking like that you deserve the opportunity to shoot? Like are you Kobe? Are you LeBron? Why is it that everybody asks me to listen to you in the board meeting? Like are you the CEO?

Why is it that in the family, everybody has to eat what you say you have to eat, like that you want to eat? Are you the king of the family? You're like the head honcho? Now you're going to reply, "No, no, I never said that. I didn't say I was Kobe.

I didn't say I was a CEO. I didn't say I was the king of this family." But clearly you think, "But I don't deserve this." Right? Clearly you think, "I deserve more than this though." See, I think the reason why pride and selfishness go together is because there is clearly an interpretation in the mind.

Someone could look at you and say, "But seriously, who do you think you are?" And you say, "What about me?" They'll reply to you, "What about you? Who are you?" And then the Christian, mature Christian, will look at you and say, "But didn't God challenge you to be a slave?

Didn't God tell you to be last? Didn't Christ tell you that you'd be blessed when you place others before you?" What a challenge, right? What an incredible challenge. And so here I think it absolutely makes sense that in contrast to selfishness and then conceit, like pride, Apostle Paul gives the command in a positive form, "You have to do this with humility, regarding one another as more important than yourselves.

And you have to not merely look out for your own interest, but look out for the interest of others." And the exhortation has its full form in have this attitude that is Christ, that is in the Lord. And here I want to highlight something for you. You see this word attitude?

Remember how we gave that definition? That attitude, I mean the word phroneo actually has this mentality of disposition or attitude. That term in attitude is the same word. So earlier I mentioned to you that phroneo is used multiple times. Apostle Paul employs it to kind of encapsulate his exhortation.

A lot of people think this passage, it's the passage on unity. I would like to say actually it's the passage on a united mentality that's like Christ. Apostle Paul is challenging you to think, to have a posture like Jesus. The command is not, "Hey, just put your differences aside.

Hey, let's try to get together. Can we just get along?" No, no, no. There is something deeper than that where the prerequisite for you to come together is that every single one of us would die to our arrogance and conceit, would die to our selfish interests and have the heart of Christ.

For us to be united, it requires an incredible level of sanctification. It requires an incredible level of putting our own self aside at the back burner so that we put the interest of others first. And so I want to challenge us that when it comes to even the hopes of unity, when it comes to the hopes of having a united church, I hope you realize there is an incredible burden on you personally.

I put in there that there has to be a renewing of the mind. You guys remember in Romans chapter 12 where it talks about our acceptable sacrifice unto God, right, that there should be a constant renewing of our mind? I want you to understand if ever you've complained about, let's say, superficiality of the church fellowship, if ever you complained about how there's cliques in this church, if ever you've complained about how people or there's this weird hierarchy, maybe it's because, you know, I don't know, like people just love that stuff or whatever it may be, I want you to understand that no just simple twist of the structure, no simple like, "You know what I'm going to do today?

I'm going to mix you all up and put you in different small groups," right? None of that kind of small tweak in the church is going to fix a renewing of the mind that needs to take place. It requires for every single one of us a constant sanctification where we put aside our selfishness and continue to put on the attitude of Christ, amen?

That's a burden for every single one of us. So as we think about that, I definitely want you guys, one of the application questions for all you all is simply the question, how is this applied? Because man, this is such a huge broad calling, it's a huge broad command and challenge for you.

And again, we don't have the time to go over every single one of these things. When we think about the word, command, regard others, I want you guys to start thinking, "Okay, in this specific scenario, how do I apply that?" Whether it be in your work, do you currently have some conflict at work and you're sitting there thinking, "You know what I would like to do?

Get a new job." You know, if you're starting to think like that, perhaps God might open the doors for you, fine. But did you start thinking of how do I exercise though a humility and a regarding of other individuals more important than me? If it's in your family, if it's in your husband and wife relationships, if it's in your friendship, how do you have this attitude of Jesus?

Does it mean that all of a sudden I just like, "You know what? I'm just going to die. You can just do whatever you want. I have no opinions." Like, does that look genuine to you? No. There can be an extreme of that. There can be such an extreme where now all of a sudden you're not a slave of Christ, you're just a slave of everybody, right?

You have no backbone. We're not talking about that kind of extreme when we say the negative and positive here. So I have to ask you, what is a tangible scenario of how this is applied, right? Okay, with that being said, here again, I want to emphasize this idea that Apostle Paul uses these various terms with the same Greek word to challenge every one of you.

For those of you who are frustrated in a current circumstance, remember, the solution is not the whole greener on the other side. Remember, it's not always the fault of the circumstance. Remember God desires to strengthen you in the inner man by strengthening your perspective and mind, okay? Then we go on.

We go on to the last portion, moving from the commandment, Apostle Paul gives us the great example. And I have two questions to separate the two parts that I see, which is this. What did you think, Jesus? And what did you do? And this part, you guys, I feel so bad because I'm going to have to go over pretty quickly just for the sake of time and that you guys can discuss, but I'm confident that you guys are going to have a lot of fruitful conversation in this because there's so much.

What do I mean that there is a what do you think and what do you do, right? Because as we look at Jesus, we first look at what he thought. If Apostle Paul's commandment was for us to think differently, believe in our minds, and have a renewal of how we interpret the world, think about how Jesus thought.

Take a look at this, okay? This little box should be over regard, okay? Who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. Okay? I want you to think about that because a lot of people think like, "Oh, yeah, you know, I get it.

Jesus really came down. Incarnation happened. It was amazing." Okay? What I'd like you to do is think, "How do I appreciate the massive contrast Apostle Paul is painting for us here? How do I appreciate the degree, okay, the incredible degree that God is trying to reveal to us?" Because clearly, Apostle Paul, through this passage, is highlighting and contrasting the form.

The form of God that he had. He existed in the form of God. There was an equality with God that he had. But then he took on the form of a bond servant. He was in the likeness of man. He was in the appearance of man. And he humbled himself, right?

Massive contrast. Okay. I want you to think about everything we've been talking about tonight about the perspective, the mind. What kind of crazy, transformative thinking, powerful thinking did Jesus exercise to show to us his humility? Okay? Notice how he says, "Christ did not regard the equality that he had with God as something to be grasped." It means forcefully hold onto.

If you guys look at your translations, like your Bible has that little letter you click on and it says, "Something to be asserted." Jesus did not think in his mind that it was good for him in that moment to hold onto his right, to hold onto his equality, and to exercise that equality.

Think about that. If you guys have ever, ever been offended by somebody a lot younger than you, let's say 10 years younger, if you've ever been talked down to and diminished and confronted and just, you know, attacked by someone way younger than you, you know what that feels like.

Where you start feeling like, "Who are you?" Right? And then there's that moment when you, you know, we don't never, ever say this, but sometimes you have those moments like, "Do you know who I am?" And that's why those like, dramas that we see where these individuals like undercover boss or people have this crazy conflict and all of a sudden they reveal like, "I'm the owner!" You know, like those moments are really like dramatic and it's fun to watch because we sometimes fantasize about that.

To be able to just own somebody, "Do you know who I am?" They're like, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize." You know? But you realize like what this passage is talking about. Jesus did not regard the quality of God as something to be used and preserved and held onto. That's crazy.

And so when I think about the degree to which we should appreciate the model, the example of His humility, I'm almost not able to even describe it right now. You know, like I don't know how to put that into words. And then we start thinking about the actual action.

That not only would He empty Himself, I mean, some of us are really proud, it's like, "I humble myself today. I bit my lip and didn't say a word to that fool that, you know, he thought he knew better than me at work. I held my tongue. Yeah." You're all proud of your little humble accomplishment.

But man, He says He emptied Himself. He took on the form of a man, appearance of this flesh and then He became obedient to the point of death, even unto the cross. Most shameful statement of the criminals who would be deserving of such shame, right? I mean, just think about the degree and the chasm that we're supposed to appreciate in this.

And so for us, when we think about the example of humility, I mean, understand that the heart of appreciation for this is going to have the sufficient power to humble ourselves. And what's more, Apostle Paul says, oh, I'm sorry, I just went over all that stuff. In verse 9, "For this reason then, to what Christ has thought and did, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." And I ask you this interesting question on the observation part of the beginning portion.

Is this still an example for us? Clearly, Apostle Paul said this is the condition and the basis of the command I'm giving. This is the command. You better have the attitude of Jesus, this humble, sacrificial, emptying heart of Jesus, right? And then he says, "And this, to this, therefore God is exalted." And the answer to that is, of course.

The only way you are going to empty yourself is for you to have the same thought of Christ. Let me ask you, did Jesus Christ know that God was going to exalt Him? Yes. Do you guys remember the Hebrews chapter 1 portion? Did Jesus Christ entrust Himself to God every time He was being persecuted, whipped, and beaten?

Yes. Scripture actually explicitly says Jesus Christ did not reply in vengeance. He didn't respond to the accusations. Why? Because He kept entrusting Himself to the Father. Likewise for every single one of us, the only way we're going to be able to humble ourselves to that degree, do you trust this?

Do you trust that when you empty yourself, that in the heart of God, what God desires to see, what He honors, is this kind of noble humility? The kind of humility He sees in His own Son, Jesus Christ. As a reference for you, I want to turn to 1 Peter chapter 5.

Scripture says, Apostle Peter says, "And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. You younger men likewise be subject to your elders, and all of you clothe yourself with humility toward one another." How are we going to do that? How are we going to do that when that guy is incompetent?

How are we going to do that when he acts like he knows more than me when clearly I know more? How are we going to do that when that guy has malicious intent and here I am just receiving the brunt end of this? How am I going to do that when all this stuff is going wrong?

How am I going to do that in that scenario? How am I going to do that in this scenario? Well, he says, "God, God is opposed to the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you at the proper time.

Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you." The challenge today was for you to exercise the mentality and the attitude of Jesus Christ. It is incredible that Christ would humble Himself to such a degree where Christ Himself depended and trusted on His Father to this level.

And that's the exact same path and example we should follow as well. Amen? Let's take a moment to pray. Lord God, we want to thank You so much. God, Lord, words cannot express because truthfully speaking, our limited minds cannot comprehend the incredible degree to which You humbled Yourself, the incredible degree to which You purposely intentionally loved, and how You volitionally sacrificed and emptied Yourself.

But God, we see in part, we want to see in full, but we see in part, and we thank You so much that You show us. And we know, Father God, that You call us, that You desire and command for us to have the same attitude. And Lord, we want to respond with, "Yes, Lord, we want to." We pray, Father God, that by Your Spirit and by Your Word, You would help us.

And Lord, we pray that through that, through the sanctification of our hearts, God, that You would continue to build this church to be a powerful proclamation of Christ because of the wonderful unity born out of a fruit of humble hearts. We thank You, Lord Jesus Christ. In Your name we pray.