How to Be Humble | The Book Of Philippians Week 2

00:00:01

Today is all about how joy is possible,

00:00:03

even when it feels like it's not.

00:00:05

All types of things are going to get in the way

00:00:07

of your joy and my joy,

00:00:08

situations at home, at work, your relationships.

00:00:11

But the thing I want to address today

00:00:14

is the thing that you can control,

00:00:16

that is your grumbling.

00:00:22

Life is like a never ending pursuit of happiness.

00:00:26

We're always looking for something

00:00:27

better than what we have.

00:00:29

The problems, trouble, pain,

00:00:35

life, death all get in the way.

00:00:36

Just when we think we're almost there,

00:00:38

we get knocked back down.

00:00:40

What if joy didn't mean what you thought it meant?

00:00:43

What if you could have joy

00:00:45

no matter what circumstances you're facing or will face?

00:00:50

In this series of videos we're exploring

00:00:52

five keys to chasing joy.

00:00:55

Today, we're going to own the truth that

00:00:58

the humble don't grumble.

00:01:09

I'll tell you what I like grumbling about

00:01:12

this birdfeeder right here.

00:01:17

My wife has this bird feeder hanging over our porch

00:01:22

and there's a little couch, outdoor furniture underneath it.

00:01:25

And she just loves looking at the birds come up.

00:01:27

There's birds come up.

00:01:29

It's not just birds, it's squirrels come up.

00:01:31

You can see them gnawing all over this

00:01:33

and they come up and they spew seed all over the place.

00:01:36

Because why not?

00:01:37

You're giving the entire neighborhood a free buffet.

00:01:40

Hey, I'm buying you food.

00:01:42

Come over here

00:01:43

and spray your food all over the furniture.

00:01:46

And while you're there, just poop all over the place too.

00:01:49

Just -- just poop down.

00:01:50

And we're back and forth.

00:01:51

She loves seeing the critters.

00:01:54

Critters are fine by me,

00:01:55

but I don't like their leave behind.

00:01:56

And it's been this thing back and forth, back and forth.

00:02:00

And the problem is me, because I'm grumbling about this.

00:02:04

I can't control what she wants to do with critters.

00:02:08

And I guess I could just try to power up

00:02:10

and just take it and steal it.

00:02:12

I actually might just leave this in my garage.

00:02:14

Hopefully she'll forget about it.

00:02:15

But I can't. I can't control that.

00:02:18

But I can control my attitude

00:02:21

and not having a grumbling spirit where I'm grumbling.

00:02:24

Today we're going to start with the end in mind.

00:02:26

We're looking at a section out of

00:02:28

the book of Philippians.

00:02:29

And the end of the section that we're going to see today

00:02:31

is Philippians 2:14. Here's what it says:

00:02:52

Who wants to be blameless and innocent?

00:02:54

Who wants to be? I do.

00:02:56

Who wants to be a child of God without blemish?

00:02:58

I want to be.

00:02:59

I want to be a child of God without blemish.

00:03:01

Who wants to be crooked and twisted?

00:03:03

Who wants to be?

00:03:05

Hopefully, none of us are raising our hands,

00:03:07

although that does sound like an amazing new 8% beer

00:03:10

that some microbrewery somewhere should come out with.

00:03:14

Crooked and Twisted.

00:03:15

Yeah, I'm gonna have me a Crooked and Twisted.

00:03:17

What separates crooked and twisted people

00:03:21

from blameless and innocent people?

00:03:24

What separates crooked and twisted people

00:03:26

from children of God who don't have blemish?

00:03:31

One word, humility.

00:03:33

How do you know someone who isn't humble?

00:03:38

They grumble. They are in disputes.

00:03:42

That's what it means to not have humility.

00:03:46

You're grumbling.

00:03:48

Humility isn't thinking --

00:03:51

having low self esteem about yourself.

00:03:53

It's just thinking about yourself less.

00:03:58

A few years ago, our board went through an exercise

00:04:01

in the scriptures, just meditating and talking about

00:04:04

the concept of humility.

00:04:06

It's how we opened up every meeting for about six months.

00:04:10

And one board member thought this was

00:04:11

a really great idea, Jim Bechtold,

00:04:13

great, great man of God.

00:04:15

And to be quite honest with you, about month four,

00:04:19

where I felt we were spinning our wheels,

00:04:21

I wasn't sure what this exercise was doing.

00:04:23

Was anybody learning anything about humility?

00:04:25

What are we seeing? What are we feeling?

00:04:26

What are we thinking?

00:04:27

And finally, I think

00:04:28

I said something one meeting, it's like,

00:04:30

"I'm not I'm not sure where we're going with this."

00:04:32

And then we we stopped after like a half a year

00:04:37

looking at that intensely.

00:04:39

Now, I know looking back at it,

00:04:41

now I know that Jim was hearing from God

00:04:43

because humility is the exact thing

00:04:46

that we have needed over this last couple of years.

00:04:50

The exact thing.

00:04:52

I'll tell you this right now, next time,

00:04:55

next time we have a global pandemic

00:04:57

sandwiched with a contentious presidential election,

00:05:00

followed by a run on the Capitol,

00:05:02

followed by social unrest on every social issue,

00:05:05

ending with inflation and recession,

00:05:07

next time all that happens, we're going to be ready.

00:05:09

We're going to nail it. We got we got it.

00:05:11

We've got you covered because we did a lot,

00:05:14

a lot of things wrong over the last couple of years.

00:05:17

And I can just -- I have enough humility

00:05:19

to be able to recognize that.

00:05:21

And sometimes we make mistakes because

00:05:23

we don't have the humility to admit

00:05:25

that I don't have all the answers.

00:05:28

The Apostle Paul is writing this letter,

00:05:31

the letter of Philippians from a prison cell.

00:05:33

His teaching is that

00:05:35

we should have the same attitude of Jesus.

00:05:37

And what was that attitude? It was one of humility.

00:05:41

Paul's literally practicing what he preached here.

00:05:44

He's in prison for following Jesus,

00:05:46

and he had every reason to grumble.

00:05:49

But instead he chose humility,

00:05:51

because the humble don't grumble

00:05:54

and because that was his choice.

00:05:58

He was choosing that and therefore he experienced joy.

00:06:02

Lib and I, we got married 33 years ago or so,

00:06:07

something like that.

00:06:09

We had a banner in our wedding

00:06:11

and we chose the heading and the theme of joy

00:06:16

and said, "Choose joy."

00:06:18

Joy is a choice.

00:06:20

Happiness is what happens to you

00:06:23

when everything happens that you want to have happened.

00:06:26

It's all happening the way I want it to happen,

00:06:28

therefore, I can be happy.

00:06:30

But joy is a choice. You choose. You choose that.

00:06:35

And you can choose it because you're choosing humility.

00:06:38

Humility isn't thinking less of yourself,

00:06:41

it's thinking about yourself less.

00:06:43

You don't think about yourself as a loser.

00:06:46

It's not a thing of low self esteem.

00:06:48

You just spend less time thinking about yourself

00:06:50

because you want to spend more time thinking about God.

00:06:52

The more you think about yourself,

00:06:54

the less you could think about God.

00:06:55

The more you think about yourself,

00:06:56

the less you can think about others.

00:06:58

Humble people think more about God

00:07:00

and more about others.

00:07:02

And when we think about others, we're less prone

00:07:05

to fight with others and grumble with others.

00:07:08

Let's keep going in Philippians chapter two,

00:07:11

the very beginning, verse one, it says this:

00:07:44

The Bible tells us we're supposed

00:07:46

to look after our own interests.

00:07:47

It's not bad looking after your own interest.

00:07:49

You've got to look -- You've got to look after

00:07:51

your own physical interest.

00:07:52

"Am I healthy and my eating right?"

00:07:54

You have to look after your own interests and say,

00:07:56

"Am I saving and making enough money, saving enough money?"

00:07:59

It's good to look after your own interests.

00:08:01

You need to do that.

00:08:02

But the Scriptures teach us to not only do that,

00:08:05

that's a no-brainer thing everybody does.

00:08:07

Even crooked and twisted people

00:08:09

look after their own interests.

00:08:12

But it says look after the interests of others.

00:08:16

I think we do a pretty good job with that as a church.

00:08:18

And our last data point with that was our response

00:08:23

and is our response still right now to the flooding

00:08:27

that's happening in eastern Kentucky.

00:08:30

Man, rough, rough, rough stuff.

00:08:33

And here's a little piece of us, how we as a church

00:08:37

are looking after the interest of others.

00:08:48

- Hi, I'm Darin Kroger. I'm with Crossroads Church.

00:08:50

We're down here with our disaster cleanup teams

00:08:53

in Hazard, Kentucky.

00:08:54

We're responding to the flooding event

00:08:56

that happened last week.

00:08:57

And we are down here trying to help people

00:09:01

clean up their homes, dry out their homes

00:09:02

so they can save their homes.

00:09:04

- It's so traumatic to walk or drive down that road

00:09:08

and see what used to be a home,

00:09:10

to see somebody's Social Security card, literally,

00:09:13

like see an identity of a person

00:09:15

who you don't know where they are and where they've gone.

00:09:18

- When you think about flood, you don't think about --

00:09:20

you think about, " Oh, there's water in my basement."

00:09:22

This was so destructive, so unbelievably destructive.

00:09:26

And it happened so quickly that people just

00:09:29

did not have a chance to get out of its way.

00:09:31

Once you have areas that are flooded,

00:09:33

you can't get in a car and drive out, you know?

00:09:36

Or you're going to be trapped in your vehicle and drown.

00:09:39

It just blows your mind.

00:09:41

- Never in my life have I seen

00:09:42

such a vast opportunity to come together,

00:09:45

where there is county's wide need for people.

00:09:50

- I see God in the face of every one of those volunteers.

00:09:53

Every time they pick up something,

00:09:54

every time they pick up a piece of wet carpet

00:09:56

or pull out a cabinet or throw a door on a burn pile

00:10:00

or whatever it is, all the little acts of service

00:10:02

that they do, that's where I see --

00:10:04

that's where I see God, where I see Jesus.

00:10:06

- Being the hands and feet of Jesus

00:10:08

is cleaning out people's homes.

00:10:09

It is serving meals.

00:10:11

But it's so much more than that.

00:10:14

It's welcoming people into your heart,

00:10:16

it is having compassion.

00:10:18

- So many of you gave

00:10:21

and so many of you have volunteered your time

00:10:23

and you are making a difference.

00:10:26

You might not be here and you're watching this video

00:10:28

and you might not be able to be in Hazard,

00:10:30

but your entire church is bringing hope.

00:10:33

So on behalf of all of Eastern Kentucky,

00:10:35

I just want to say thank you to Crossroads.

00:10:39

- That is heart wrenching,

00:10:42

while at the same time being heart warming.

00:10:45

Looking after the needs of others in humility

00:10:48

is an incredibly godly characteristic.

00:10:52

Jesus did this.

00:10:53

This was His entire life.

00:10:55

And in this passage,

00:10:57

we see some of the signs of humility that He had

00:10:59

that we are told to have.

00:11:02

You know you are experiencing humility

00:11:05

when there's a couple of things.

00:11:06

One, when there is oneness.

00:11:10

That's what it said, he is being one with God

00:11:14

and we are to be one with one another.

00:11:16

Paul encourages the people in Philippi

00:11:18

to have the same mindset and love, the same thing.

00:11:22

If there's any, if there's any,

00:11:23

then make my joy complete by doing this.

00:11:27

God is Jesus, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

00:11:32

There are one. There are one in the same.

00:11:34

And this oneness enables them

00:11:36

to interact with humility with one another.

00:11:40

We have so much grumbling and so much anger

00:11:43

that's happening in our culture because

00:11:45

we don't have any oneness.

00:11:47

If America ever changes its constitution

00:11:50

and we become an autocracy, I want to be king,

00:11:53

at least just for one day. Just one day.

00:11:55

If I was king of America for one day, one day,

00:11:58

I'll tell you exactly what I would do.

00:12:00

I would do something that would give

00:12:02

every American a common experience.

00:12:04

I would do something where everybody had to be one.

00:12:08

Coming out of high school, everybody, pick your poison.

00:12:11

You're either got to go to the military for 2 years

00:12:13

or you've got to go to the Peace Corps for 2 years.

00:12:15

And that 2 years,

00:12:16

you're going have to dress like other people.

00:12:18

You're going have to have your head shaved like other people.

00:12:20

You're going to be like other people for 2 years.

00:12:22

You're going to interact with people

00:12:24

who have more money than you, less money than you,

00:12:26

who have different political opinions than you.

00:12:28

There's not a common experience in America anymore.

00:12:30

It's why we're always fighting all the time,

00:12:32

because we're not humble,

00:12:34

because we can't serve other people,

00:12:36

because we can't understand other people.

00:12:38

And why aren't we doing these things?

00:12:41

Because we're not humble.

00:12:44

Grumblers, and we are a nation of grumblers,

00:12:46

will always have a hard time with oneness and unity,

00:12:49

because humility is a prerequisite

00:12:52

for oneness and unity.

00:12:54

Verse five says:

00:13:01

Have this mind, this mind of oneness.

00:13:05

And then verse six:

00:13:47

Oneness.

00:13:52

Oneness is critical for humanity.

00:13:54

The other thing that's critical is obedience. Obedience.

00:14:00

How many people would say,

00:14:01

"I want to be an obedient person?

00:14:04

Obedience is great. It's great to obey."

00:14:07

Oh, my goodness.

00:14:09

Obey is the worst four letter word in our language.

00:14:12

It's the thing that nobody wants to do.

00:14:14

Maybe that's why very few people are actually like God,

00:14:18

because Jesus obeys, He obeyed God even to death.

00:14:23

This means that there's going to be things in your life,

00:14:26

in my life that we're going to have to do

00:14:29

that we don't want to do,

00:14:32

even maybe to the point of death.

00:14:34

When you find a life that's willing to lay its life down,

00:14:38

out of obedience, out of honoring God,

00:14:40

you're going to find a person who's humble

00:14:42

and on the way to a great life.

00:14:47

- Hey, I'm Hannah. - And I'm Andy.

00:14:49

- And we're in the Book of Philippians today

00:14:51

talking about joy.

00:14:52

And, you know, here around Crossroads,

00:14:54

we believe that giving can actually be a joy.

00:14:56

- Yeah, we believe that giving allows us to show our hearts

00:14:59

and can help us continue to stumble towards God together.

00:15:02

- That's right.

00:15:03

And if you want to give right now,

00:15:04

you can go to Crossroads.net/gift.

00:15:07

Now let's get back to the message.

00:15:14

- Philippians 2:6 says:

00:15:39

It says Jesus there,

00:15:40

His way of humility was to empty himself.

00:15:44

Jesus existed before the earth was created.

00:15:47

He existed before Christmas took place.

00:15:50

And He comes down to this earth to live a sinless life

00:15:53

that you and I can't live,

00:15:54

to die a brutal death that you and I deserve.

00:15:56

He does that out of humility.

00:15:58

And it says he doesn't grasp onto it,

00:16:00

meaning He had interests and perks up in heaven,

00:16:03

whatever those are, we don't know.

00:16:05

Whatever angels were fanning Him and feeding Him grapes,

00:16:07

the life He had there.

00:16:08

And He came down and led a difficult life

00:16:11

and He had splinters in His hands

00:16:13

and other difficult things.

00:16:14

But He didn't cling to all those things.

00:16:17

He released them.

00:16:18

He didn't cling to His interests.

00:16:20

He didn't cling to His preferences.

00:16:22

He didn't cling to His wants, His desires.

00:16:25

He released them out of humility.

00:16:28

It's the core to who He was and what He did.

00:16:32

He was lucid about His mission and who He really was.

00:16:36

I've started taking up golf again.

00:16:39

I haven't really golfed consistently since,

00:16:43

you know, a long, long time ago.

00:16:45

I stopped golfing for the most part when I got married.

00:16:48

I had my first weekend after our honeymoon,

00:16:52

I went golfing with my buddies.

00:16:53

I told Lib, "Hey, I'm going golfing."

00:16:55

And she said, "Okay, great, that's fine, hun."

00:16:57

The problem was her dad didn't golf

00:16:59

and she'd never date anybody who golfed,

00:17:00

so she didn't have any perspective for it,

00:17:02

how long it took.

00:17:03

So after nine holes at the turn, I give her a call,

00:17:06

my new bride to call and say, "How's it going?

00:17:08

I'll be home in a couple of hours." Whatever.

00:17:10

And she says, "Where are you?"

00:17:12

I said, "I'm golfing." "You're golfing?"

00:17:17

She had no idea it'd take, like,

00:17:19

four and a half hours the whole thing. Right?

00:17:21

My friends talk about how that back nine

00:17:24

how I would hit my ball and run to my ball.

00:17:26

Run and run and run.

00:17:28

And I just stopped golfing after that.

00:17:29

It wasn't because she told me not to.

00:17:31

It was just time and money didn't make sense.

00:17:34

I recently just this last summer

00:17:35

I've golfed more in the last summer

00:17:37

than I have in the last ten years,

00:17:38

probably four or five times this last summer.

00:17:40

And I was golfing with my son.

00:17:42

My son said, "Man, when were you at your best, dad?"

00:17:45

And I said, "22. I was pretty good back then."

00:17:49

And then when I said that I thought 22,

00:17:52

it dawned on me, that was 34 years ago.

00:17:55

Now other than thinner gray hair,

00:17:57

I'm exactly the same as I was physically at 22.

00:18:01

My measurements are the same.

00:18:03

My endurance is the same. All that's the same.

00:18:07

But I haven't been golfing, so no wonder

00:18:10

every time I go out in golf, I get frustrated

00:18:12

because I can't hit 250 yard straight drives consistently.

00:18:17

My identity is one that I am a golfer,

00:18:20

even though I'm not.

00:18:22

I haven't been for 34 years.

00:18:24

And I get frustrated because I keep thinking

00:18:26

I'm a golfer, but I'm not.

00:18:29

See, a lot of us think that we're humble, but you're not.

00:18:33

You have the identity, but you're not.

00:18:37

Like, when did you not do something you wanted to do

00:18:41

and voluntarily look out for somebody else?

00:18:43

When was -- when would that have been?

00:18:45

Many of us identify as a Christian.

00:18:48

That was a long time ago.

00:18:50

A long time ago that you got baptized,

00:18:51

a long time ago you read the Bible on a daily basis.

00:18:54

A long time ago you would actually have prayer requests

00:18:56

and you would actually pray.

00:18:58

A long time ago when you would tell somebody

00:19:00

about who Christ was.

00:19:01

That was a long, long time ago.

00:19:03

Yet we say I'm a Christian.

00:19:04

I'm not saying you're going to heaven or not.

00:19:06

I'm just saying, "Hey, man,

00:19:07

if your game isn't one of Jesus,

00:19:10

stop calling yourself that."

00:19:12

You may identify with Jesus,

00:19:14

but unless you're living the way He lived,

00:19:16

which we're seeing here in Philippians 2, you're not.

00:19:19

We can't get upset about it.

00:19:20

I've got to take an accurate assessment of where I am.

00:19:22

"Okay, this is where I am right now.

00:19:24

So let's build from there."

00:19:25

I'm a crappy golfer now. Let's built from there.

00:19:27

I'm a selfish, prideful person who grumbles. Good.

00:19:30

Look where we are there, and now let's let's build from there.

00:19:34

I might have just hurt your feelings with what I said.

00:19:38

I don't know why.

00:19:39

Why would what I just said hurt your feelings?

00:19:41

It's really weird, like I could say.

00:19:43

How does somebody else

00:19:44

say something that hurts our feelings?

00:19:46

Feelings don't have feelings.

00:19:48

Our feelings are never hurt.

00:19:50

Feelings just express what our ego is feeling.

00:19:53

It's my pride that's hurt. It's my ego that's hurt.

00:19:57

People aren't ignoring or intentionally dissing us

00:20:00

or saying things to offend us, but we feel that

00:20:03

because we're exalting ourselves,

00:20:05

we're looking out after our interests,

00:20:07

our views, our opinions.

00:20:09

They're just living their life, not thinking about us,

00:20:11

just like we live our lives

00:20:12

and don't think about other people.

00:20:13

And when we say things like,

00:20:15

"You made me feel like a piece of garbage,"

00:20:17

that's really not true.

00:20:18

No one can make us feel like a piece of garbage.

00:20:21

We're making ourself feel like a piece of garbage

00:20:25

because we have too much pride and too much ego.

00:20:28

They don't have power over our emotions,

00:20:32

our ego does, our pride does.

00:20:34

There's something wrong with me,

00:20:37

and therefore we grumble

00:20:39

and we become a nation of grumblers.

00:20:42

Paul Tripp says this:

00:20:55

One of the greatest words

00:20:56

in the English language, onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia.

00:20:59

It does, grumble, the word grumble is what it is.

00:21:02

Grumble, grumble.

00:21:03

If you're with anybody right now,

00:21:05

let's do a little exercise.

00:21:06

Let's in 3 seconds, let's all say

00:21:09

the word grumble three times together. Okay?

00:21:12

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

00:21:14

Let's do it again.

00:21:15

Grumble, grumble, grumble,

00:21:17

grumble, grumble, grumble,

00:21:18

grumble, grumble, grumble.

00:21:20

You're hear that murmur?

00:21:21

That's what the normal American population is like.

00:21:26

It's a bunch of prideful grumblers

00:21:28

who don't get their way

00:21:30

and just want to spew and spout wherever.

00:21:32

And even if we're not saying it, we're feeling it,

00:21:35

and internally there's just no joy, there's no life.

00:21:39

We're bearing it.

00:21:40

We're grumbling internally

00:21:41

because we're only looking after our own interests.

00:21:44

I think as a church we have

00:21:46

signs of doing pretty good with this.

00:21:48

We have campuses that celebrate when other campuses

00:21:52

get a new building or get some upgrades.

00:21:54

Instead of just saying, "How come we're not getting it?"

00:21:57

We celebrate one another's victories

00:22:00

because we are one as a church one.

00:22:03

No matter what state we're in or where we're going,

00:22:05

we are one.

00:22:07

Therefore, we're celebrating with Dayton right now,

00:22:09

our Dayton community that's been in rented facilities

00:22:12

and has been helping other people get buildings.

00:22:15

Our Dayton community has just gotten its own building,

00:22:17

an old Sears up in Dayton.

00:22:19

It's awesome.

00:22:20

I think it was 3.1 something million dollars.

00:22:23

Great. We're celebrating with that.

00:22:26

We are looking out after

00:22:27

the interests of our Dayton community.

00:22:29

It's amazing. We're excited for you, Dayton.

00:22:31

Now, we have no idea how we're going to find

00:22:34

the millions and millions of dollars

00:22:35

of construction costs that are going to go into that.

00:22:37

That's another problem for another day.

00:22:39

But right now we're just celebrating

00:22:41

and we are excited for Dayton because we are one.

00:22:47

Some of us have evolved our grumbling

00:22:51

into what's known as the humblebrag.

00:22:53

And there's different versions of the humblebrag.

00:22:55

I'm looking like I'm humble,

00:22:57

but really I'm just bragging. I'm building up my ego.

00:22:59

Like Biggie. Biggie was right.

00:23:00

He said, "Hey, just filed my taxes.

00:23:02

Mo money, mo problems."

00:23:05

Kind of a humblebrag, or maybe not.

00:23:07

Mo money, mo problems.

00:23:08

Or you ever hear this one?

00:23:09

"I hate when I go into a store to get something to eat

00:23:12

and the staff are too busy hitting on me

00:23:14

to get my order right. So annoying."

00:23:17

Yeah. You're so attractive, aren't you?

00:23:19

Those are humble brags.

00:23:21

It's just a new school version of false humility.

00:23:26

Tim Keller said on Twitter:

00:23:38

Stop spending time on my interests, on my desires.

00:23:42

I spend time on Jesus, His interests, His desires,

00:23:46

which is other people;

00:23:48

His lifestyle,

00:23:49

which is about foregoing His own interests many times,

00:23:53

which is about taking a road of sacrifice,

00:23:56

of default difficulty.

00:23:57

And when He doesn't get His way, He doesn't grumble.

00:23:59

It's one thing we never see Jesus do,

00:24:00

we never see Him grumble, even though He had

00:24:02

more than enough opportunity to grumble.

00:24:04

When people who were close to Him were letting Him down,

00:24:06

He didn't grumble.

00:24:07

Now, here's the good news here.

00:24:10

This life of humility, this life that brings us joy

00:24:16

isn't a life where all our life

00:24:19

we get the short end of the stick.

00:24:21

It actually is the path for God to reward us

00:24:23

and God to honor us, for God to do that.

00:24:27

The next little section of Philippians, verse 9 says this:

00:24:52

Jesus, the name of Jesus is recognized

00:24:55

as all supreme here in this earth,

00:24:57

here above the earth, which is heaven,

00:24:58

and even below the earth, which is hell.

00:25:01

That's what's represented there.

00:25:02

God has hyper exalted him, that's what's meant there.

00:25:06

Hooper -- Hyper, hyper exalted Him.

00:25:08

He's elevated him.

00:25:09

When's the last time you heard someone say, "Buddha"?

00:25:14

You might've heard someone talk about Buddha.

00:25:16

Have you ever heard someone use Buddha as a swear word

00:25:20

or an expression?

00:25:21

Ever hear somebody say, "Gandhi"?

00:25:25

No. You never.

00:25:27

You ever heard someone say, "Richard Dawkins"?

00:25:31

You haven't heard that because

00:25:33

Buddha, Ghandi and Richard Dawkins don't have

00:25:35

a highly exalted name that means much,

00:25:37

at least not as much as the name Jesus.

00:25:41

No one's going to say Richard Dawkins' name

00:25:44

in ten years or 100 years.

00:25:46

He'll be long forgotten.

00:25:49

It'll never be an expression that people use

00:25:51

for millennia afterward,

00:25:52

because there's no power to that name.

00:25:55

But there is power to the name of Jesus

00:25:58

because the humble people who find joy in the path

00:26:04

of looking out after the interests of others,

00:26:07

of being humble and pure instead of crooked and twisted,

00:26:11

will eventually be exalted.

00:26:13

Maybe in your next job interview it will be.

00:26:16

Maybe it'll be next year, maybe next decade,

00:26:18

for sure, in the next life.

00:26:21

Jesus says this in Matthew 23:12:

00:26:28

So if we want to elevate our interest,

00:26:30

elevate our desires, elevate our opinions,

00:26:32

elevate ourselves, always think of myself,

00:26:34

we want to elevate, eventually God goes,

00:26:36

"Huh? I'm going to need to bring you down.

00:26:39

You will be humbled. You will be brought low."

00:26:41

Maybe America is having the problems we're having right now

00:26:44

because we've been too prideful

00:26:45

and God's brought us down.

00:26:47

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled.

00:26:49

But here's a cool thing, and whoever humbles himself,

00:26:51

whoever chooses the low place,

00:26:53

whoever chooses to look out after the interests of others

00:26:57

and to serve others as Jesus served us,

00:26:59

and do not insist on always getting their way,

00:27:02

getting their opinion, their views out across,

00:27:05

whoever humbles themselves will be exalted.

00:27:08

God says, "That's a life I can work with.

00:27:12

That's a life I want to build upon.

00:27:14

That's a life that can take more responsibility.

00:27:17

That's a life that can take more perks.

00:27:18

That's a life that can take more rewards.

00:27:20

That's a life that can take more blessings."

00:27:22

And He elevates us.

00:27:25

You make the choice, friends.

00:27:26

You want to exalt yourself

00:27:27

and grumble about everything else that isn't right

00:27:29

according to your own interests and views and desires,

00:27:33

and then watch how your life

00:27:34

actually goes on a downward trajectory?

00:27:37

Or do you want to humble yourself to the place of Jesus

00:27:41

and watch and wait for Him to exalt you and elevate you?

00:27:46

When you get this right,

00:27:48

there is a joy that permeates your life,

00:27:51

that transcends circumstances.

00:27:53

It's a beautiful thing. It's a great thing.

00:27:55

Go get that this week.

00:27:59

- Hey, we hope you enjoyed the message today

00:28:01

and you were able to get a clear picture

00:28:02

of chasing joy through the Book of Philippians.

00:28:04

- That's right.

00:28:05

This series is tied to an entire church initiative

00:28:08

called the Bible Challenge,

00:28:10

and we've been doing that throughout the past year.

00:28:12

-Yes, we as a community

00:28:14

are in the Crossroads app all through the week,

00:28:16

reading and diving deeper into scripture.

00:28:18

- And you know what?

00:28:19

Maybe you've made it this far in the Crossroads App.

00:28:21

You've been with us all year, but if you haven't,

00:28:23

you can join right now.

00:28:24

All you have to do is download the app and you are set.

00:28:28

- Hey, that's all we got today.

00:28:29

We'll see you next time on Crossroads.

00:28:32

- What do Jolly Ranchers, diamonds,

00:28:34

plants and people have in common?

00:28:37

Well, at first glance, maybe nothing.

00:28:39

But at second glance we see that all of those things

00:28:42

go through a little thing I like to call process.

00:28:45

Today on Crossroads, we're talking about

00:28:46

how process might just be the link

00:28:48

to the joy that we've been missing.

00:28:51

We're going to look at Philippians 3

00:28:52

to see what a man named Paul has to say

00:28:54

about pressing, process, and poop,

00:28:58

you know, alliteration.

	What You Can Control	0:00
	The Humble Don't Grumble	1:03
	Blameless & Innocent	2:52
	Looking After Yourself	7:45
	Looking After Others	8:41
	Oneness	11:10
	Obedience	13:56
	The way of humility	15:15
	A nation of grumblers	20:40
	Gospel humility	23:24
	Connect With Us	27:59

Recent Series