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The Nicene Creed: Jesus Christ (Advent)

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Listen to this week’s sermon, The Nicene Creed: We Believe (Advent) preached by Rev. Benjamin Kandt from Philippians 2:1-11.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Sara Bruner:

Let's pray this prayer of illumination as we ask the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to his word. Promise, Savior, as we remember your first advent and wait for your return, help us to see your glory and love through the reading and preaching of your word through Christ our Savior. We pray. Amen. Today's scripture reading comes from Philippians 2, verses 1 through 11. So if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from his love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourself. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. This is God's word.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

Thanks be to God.

Sara Bruner:

You may be seated.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

So I woke up this morning without uh a voice, um, but it's on the mend, and I used throat coat this morning, which has been helpful, or what I like to call honey from the rock. And so the Lord is sustaining me right now. If you could pray for me as I preach, that would be great. In 2000, there was a research team at Cornell University, and they asked college students to wear a cringy berry manilow shirt to a party. Okay, you'll see an illustration behind me here. And they were to walk into a room with a bunch of other students and people in the room, and then they were to leave, and then they were asked, How many people do you think noticed your berry manilo shirt? That was the question. Now these students replied, at least 50% of the people in the room. Well, then they pulled the people that were in the room, and only 20 to 25% even remembered that person or their berry manilow shirt. Okay, what does this mean? It means that they felt like half of the room was staring at them when less than a quarter of the room actually was. It means that there's something called, social psychologists call the spotlight effect, which is when we believe that we are in the spotlight of our lives, but for everybody else, we're just supporting caste. Because everybody else is in the spotlight of their own life, right? And this has become a real problem, so much so that the experts on social media have their own diagnosis for it called main character syndrome. Now, main character syndrome is essentially this tendency to project myself as the most important person in any encounter, any interaction, and to perceive myself as the central character of my life. This centering of the self is core to our human condition. And I'm not saying self-love or a proper view of self is all bad. You know, uh, there's probably three ways to relate to yourself. Positively, Ephesians 5 says to nourish and cherish your own bodies. That's a good thing. What we might call self-compassion. Neutrally is everybody has instincts in them to protect themselves. Like if some debris is coming towards your eye, you have this instinct to protect your eye, you'll blink. Those are totally fine. The problem with humanity, though, the essence of our evil, the core of our brokenness is an improper self-love, what you could call self-preference. You see, if love is me for you, pride is me before you. And we all struggle with this. This is something that comes up often. This is why in Philippians 2, our text, Paul says it like this do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Look, let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. I was reading back through uh my journal and and I wrote down a journal entry where I took note about how I was sharing chips and guacamole with a friend over lunch, which caveat, in my defense, it was black rooster chips and guacamole, which is the best in all of Orlando, and I'll go to the mat on that, okay? So I'm eating black rooster chips and guac, and I found myself not eating my own tacos because I wanted to make sure I got kind of the lion's share of the chips and guac. And as I'm doing this, I'm not even, I'm kind of aware, but I was cur surely aware after the fact that I journaled about it. Now, some of you are like, what's up with the scrupulosity of your journals, dude? Like, listen, I I get that, but I think in that moment I put my finger on this subtle, just below the surface tendency that we all have. It's the source of our unhappiness, it's the reason why we're so exhausted all the time. And it is this commitment to self. If you could look at my manuscript, self is capital S. Self. It's when we're on the throne, when we're in the center, when we are the main character. And so, if if that's true, what can cut the root of pride? What can deliver us from main character syndrome? What is it that will decenter us from this central place that we play in our own lives? Well, I believe that the only antidote is the cradle, the cross, and the crown of Jesus Christ. And so I want to look at those three things through the Nicene Creed and this great hymn to Christ that we see in Philippians 2. So if you have the worship guide or a Bible or a device, go ahead and get Philippians 2, 1 through 11 in front of you. Let's talk about the cradle of Jesus Christ. With verse 5, it says this. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Christmas assumes the pre-existence of the Son of God. It's so important. Christmas begins with, here's the nice thing creed the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. It's why the cradle is so central to our profession of faith here. But notice what Paul says in verse 6, he says, though he was in the form of God. Now, commentators will debate, you could translate that word though, two different ways. Either as though he was in the form of God, which implies that, yes, Jesus had all the rights and privileges of being the Son of God, but He didn't grasp after them. He didn't he didn't claim them for his own. That's good and true and theologically accurate. There's another reading of this, which is because he was in the form of God. One of the reasons why I like both readings is because it's this kaleidoscopic perspective on the glory of Jesus. It's not that he could grasp after these things but chose not to. It's not only that, it's also that because he was in the very form of God, and God by definition is self-giving love, that Jesus emptied himself. You see, in Jesus Christ, in his act of self-emptying, the one who is in the very form of God, as he pours himself up, he's showing us what God is like. Jesus Christ is the very self-expression of God. Another way to put this is that humility is not, his humility is not despite his deity, but the perfect expression of it. A God who we often don't see because we're looking up to see this grand God, but he's actually at our feet washing them. If you want to find God, you look at the self-emptying God in Jesus Christ. That's who God is, that's what we see in the cradle. Verse 6 goes on and says, This who, though or because Jesus was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. There's a psychologist named Stephen Porgius, who is the founder of something called polyvagal theory, which is a theory of human functioning. And to boil it all down to make it overly simplified, it says this every human being at the level of your nervous system has two modes, two ways of being in the world. You flip them on and off. Here's the two modes connect or self-protect. That's it. That's it. And immediately I think you know this by experience. You know when you're in a mode where you're open and receptive, and there's a willingness to connect with others, and you know when you're jostling to self-protect and self-promote, because that's what pride always does. Those are the two things pride does self-protect and self-promote. And so in Philippians 2, 3, Paul pushes back on this tendency. He says, Do nothing from, and here's the the the translation here, do nothing from empty glory. You see, Christ did not seek empty glory, but he emptied himself. There's a contrast in the text here. When when someone is a proud, we will say that he is full of himself, right? We use that language. But here we see that Jesus emptied himself. Look at verse 7 again. But emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Merry Christmas. That's it, right there. That's what this whole season is about. That this God is the kind of God who's willing to humble himself, empty himself, and be born in the likeness of men. The Nicene Creed says it like this: who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man. Now, Christmas is about the irony here. There's a lot of irony in the fact that God would become a man. G.K. Chesterton said it like this: the child that played with moon and sun is playing with a little hay. Here's my collection of these kind of ironic paradoxical polarities that we see in Jesus Christ. The one whom the heavens cannot contain was laid in a manger because there was no room for him. The ancient of days had a birthday. The arm of the Lord was bundled close in swaddling clothes. The one who changes the seasons had his diapers changed. The one who upholds the universe by the word of his power was upheld on the hip of a teenage girl. The feet before whom all nations will one day bow down were too small to take a single step. The one before whom angels veil their faces was kissed on the forehead by a carpenter. In Jesus Christ, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, all of that infinity was dwindled to infancy. This is the glory of the cradle of Jesus Christ. What kind of God is this that we worship? New city, behold your God. This is who we love and worship. This is the one in whom we are lost in wonder, love, and praise, and rightfully so. And so if God is a self-emptying God, then it's safe for us to empty ourselves. Now, when you're managing yourself or promoting yourself or protecting yourself, it takes so much time and energy, it's exhausting. But Jesus came to set us free from self. The great hymn says this, Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free from our fears and sins, release us. Let us find our rest in thee. What if you didn't have to defend yourself anymore? What if you didn't have to congratulate yourself? What if you didn't have to protect and promote self, but actually could rest from self? Listen, the promise of Christmas is that if we give ourselves to Jesus, he promises to remake us and to give us back to ourselves, made whole and healed. The early church had a saying which was that which is not assumed is not healed. Let me make that plain. Jesus assumed the entirety of our humanity, far as the curse is found. In other words, Jesus had a mind, a will, and emotions just like you do. Jesus had a body and a brain and a nervous system. Jesus knew sickness and sorrows and sore throats. Jesus had a first day of school and he knew the last lap of a foot race. Jesus had acne and anger. Jesus had the joy of jesting with his friends. Jesus had a fully human experience because that which is not assumed is not healed. One theologian put it like this: the incarnation took all that properly belongs to our humanity and delivered it back to us redeemed. All of our inclinations and appetites and capacities and yearnings are purified and gathered up and glorified by Christ. He did not come to thin out human life, he came to set it free. All the dancing and feasting and processing and singing and building and sculpting and baking and merry-making that belong to us that were stolen away into the service of false gods are returned to us in the gospel. This is the good news of Christmas. This is the one for us and for our salvation came down from heaven. Now you can draw a fundamental division between two ways of viewing the world, two philosophies, if you will. Every single religion, every single worldview, every philosophy is about man's ascent. It's about man's ascent, it's about striving, it's about uh survival of the fittest, it's about man's ascent to whatever, whether it's God or heaven or some sort of a mythical land that you might go to, or just success. It's always about man's ascent. You see, because non-Christian systems, they actually think that there's this self-movement toward of man toward God, that this is possible. Whether it's mysticism or moralism or secularism, we believe that if we just had enough education and contemplation, we could, our human spirit could soar to the heights that it really belongs at. But the problem is that this is a self-confident optimism that every worldview, every non-Christian religion shares, and it fails. It fails at this point. It minimizes the gap between God and humanity. It doesn't recognize that there is a gulf between a holy God and sinful man, that if you don't see it and feel it and reckon with it, you will think that you could self-improve in order to cross that gap. But the reality is that only when we've glimpsed the fact that that gulf between us and God is insurmountable by any mere human, only then will we grasp the necessity of the gospel. The reality that our only hope is not the self-movement of man to God, but of God to man. This great descent, this free initiative of grace on God's part, this amazing act of condescension, his willingness to come down. When we stand on the rim of that abyss between us and God, it's only then when we despair of utterly crossing it in any way on our own, it's only then that we find this prerequisite to faith, to looking outside of ourselves in order to be rescued. And so a question for you would be: which direction does your worldview go? Is it man's ascent or is it God's descent? Which one defines and describes you? Because if it's man's ascent, let me just make this practical in the social realm. If it's about man's ascent, then that's not too different from the survival of the fittest. And all other worldviews are either borrowing from Christianity or are more consistent with themselves when they treat the last, the least, and the lonely as marginalized. You see, it's only Christianity that believes that God descended to the lowest place and that elevates the poor. You see, there was a hymn, a Christian hymn banned in Nicaragua by a dictator because its liberation themes were too strong. It said the the first line was like this you are the God of the poor, the God human and simple, the God who sweats in the streets. This is the cradle of Christ right here. It liberates us from self because it shows us a God who's willing to sweat in the streets. That's the cross, that's the cradle of Jesus Christ. But let's look at the cross of Christ in verse 8. Philippians 2, 8. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. It's been said that there's two symbols, great symbols of Jesus' humility: the slave's apron of John 13 and the criminal's cross. Those are the two pictures of what it means to see the humility of Jesus Christ. And so if we trace the arc of God's descent, we go from heaven to Bethlehem to Calvary. This descent is going lower and lower and lower to the point where it bottoms out where it says, even death on a cross. And just to make that plain, Christmas is about the cross. Jesus was born to die. Now, this is look at the look at the Nicene Creed, who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. Notice that. Hey, we spent a lot of ink trying to tell people about that lifetime. And you summarize it, the early church summarizes it with one three-letter word and was made man and was crucified. What's going on here? Why wouldn't the Nicene Creed get into his teaching and his healing and his miracles and his ministry? Why would you just skip over that? Well, because the authors of the Nicene Creed knew that when they're trying to be concise and touch on the very vitals of our faith, the core, the heart is the cradle and the cross. We need this. We need this. The other stuff matters. It absolutely matters. In fact, the the historicity of Jesus Christ matters. That's why, weirdly, Pontius Pilate has been on the lips of Christians for 1700 years, right? Isn't that a little bit strange when you think about that? There's only three human names mentioned in the Nicene Creed. Jesus, who is the point, the subject of the confession, Mary, the means of the incarnation, and Pontius Pilate, the agent of the crucifixion. What's the big deal? Why would he be there? Well, because that name, Pontius Pilate, anchors the gospel in history. See, Christianity is not a religion or a spirituality that is abstract or ethereal. It is public and it is historical and it is political. It is on the earth. It's something that happened really, truly, factually. And this is one of the reasons why Christianity has never been content to be a privatized religion that just remains in home and in heart, despite all of the efforts to push it into this relativized private sphere. No, no, no, no. The gospel is public truth and it belongs in the public square, and it's about the renewal of all things. But there's a way that the gospel teaches us to go about cultural renewal. It's not with a sword, it's with a towel, it's with washing feet, serving the poor, loving our neighbors, even our enemies. And we get that from the picture of Jesus Christ Himself. And so we go low in our pursuit of making the gospel accessible and available to all people. We go low in that because we have this all-encompassing vision of all of creation bowing before the exalted feet of Jesus Christ. And that brings us from cradle through the cross to the crown. Look at verse 9 with me. Therefore, God is highly exalted, Jesus, and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And then the Nicene Creed unpacks that like this. And the third day he rose again according to the scriptures and ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end. A question that this surfaces for us is how will Jesus judge between the living and the dead? What will be the dividing line? What will be the standard by which he judges all of humanity? Every person that's ever existed standing before Jesus, King Jesus, as judge of all the earth, what will be his metric? Well, it's right here in the text. It's that you will either bow now by faith or bend then by force. Every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess. No one is excluded from that. And so the invitation right now is can you bow now? Or are you still too proud to confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord? Augustine of Hippo said it like this: God has humbled himself and yet still man is proud. You see, every knee will bow by force or by faith because Jesus is that great. And in the people that I know who bow now, many, if not most or all in this room, bow now by faith in Jesus. Um they are they have a beauty about them, a beauty of humility because they're decentered, right? They realize that there's this glad acceptance in the fact that this whole grand narrative is not about them. And so the pressure's off. No more main character syndrome. There's also a joy about them because they're set free from having to self-protect and self-promote all the time. And there's also a hopefulness about those who bow now by faith to Jesus as Lord. Let me give you one example. One of my heroes is a woman named Johnny Erickson Tata. And she's lived as she's one of the longest-living quadrupegics on record. And uh she's endured for almost 50 years, she's survived breast cancer, she has a neurological disease now that leaves her with intense chronic pain. And she said these words the first thing I'm gonna do with my resurrected legs is fall down on grateful, glorified knees. Contemplate what that must be like for a quadriplegic to say. Decade after decade after decade in a wheelchair, and the thing that she is just aching for with anticipation is the day when she's got a resurrected body. I'm sure to dance, I'm sure to run, but first to fall down on bended, glorified, grateful knees. This is the beauty of the humility of those who bow now by faith. We see it pictured in a woman like this. And so, as we close, I want to remind us again that Philippians 2 is a hymn, it's a poem, it's a core part of the worship of God. And so that's because the proper response to Christology is doxology. Doxology is simply giving praise to God, giving praise to God that is his due. And so, seek first, which we've been talking about, is not just some hype event, it's the right response to the reality of Christmas. If you're gonna behold your God in the cradle and on the cross and wearing the crown, the right response to reality is unabandoned or abandoned praise. You see, because God dwells in the place of praise because it requires us to empty ourselves in order to be filled with Him when we praise Him. And so there was a theologian in the fourth century named Gregory Abnazianzis. I love this. His title was The Theologian. If that's not definitive enough for you. And he said this. He was talking about Christ's degradation resulting in human exaltation. You see, because God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. If we humble ourselves, he will exalt us, just like he did with Jesus. That's his signature move throughout scripture. And so Gregory of Nazeanza says it like this: Jesus hungered yet fed thousands. He thirsted yet said, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He was tired, yet offers rest to the weary. He prayed, yet hears prayers. He weeps, yet wipes away every tear. He sold for the cheap price of thirty pieces of silver, yet buys back creation at the cost of his precious blood. He's like a sheep that is led to the slaughter, yet shepherds his people to green pastures. He was silent, yet he is the word. He is wounded, yet by his wounds we're healed. He is nailed to the tree as a curse, yet becomes for us a tree of life. He is given sour vinegar to drink, yet turns water into wine. He surrenders his life, yet he has the power to take it up again. He dies, yet by death, destroys death. He is buried, yet he rises again. New city, behold your God in the cradle and the cross and with his crown. Let's pray. Oh Jesus, we exalt you. The exalted one, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, so worthy. The one who emptied himself for us so that we can be confident in giving our whole selves back to you free and without reserve. Spirit of God, would you would you move in this room? Would you nudge our hearts? I know some of us in this room are on we feel like we may be on the precipice of emptying ourselves before Jesus. Would you lift up Jesus? Show us Jesus in his exalted form. Show us how he is worthy of all of us. In Jesus, we love you. And it's for your beautiful name we pray. Amen.