Hell on Earth: part 1

1. What man has done: the utter silliness of idolatry—Rom 1:22-23 25

a. The Idiot World—

(1) Wisdom èfoolishness
(a) Worldly Wisdom—Prov 26:12, Is 29:14, Is 47:10, Jer 4:22, Je 8:9, Je 18:18, Eze 28:4, 1 Cor 1:19-20, 1 Cor 2:6, 3:19-20, James 3:15, 2 Cor 1:12
(b) Worldly Folly—Ps 53:1, 74:18, Pr 10:18, 14:9, 15:5, 18:6, 20:3, Mt 7:26, Lk 12:20, Ep 5:15,
(2) Profession of faith in nothing—“The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God…”

b. “changed…” incorruption for corruption—They did not change God, nor did they diminish Him, they only condemned and diminished themselves by casting away the real Glory of the real God for the silly and empty things of idolatry.

(1) Glory—The glory of God is the outward manifestation of His attributes, the expression of Himself, in any of several ways that He chooses to reveal Himself.
(a) Creation—Ps 19
(b) Love—John 3:16
(c) Spiritual and Moral purity—Is 6:1ff
(d) Wisdom—Romans 11:36
(e) Power—Job 42:1ff
(f) Wrath—Rom 1:18
(g) It is God’s nature (morphe) to reveal Himself in this way—it was what Christ gave up (the outward expression of the inward reality of His Godhood) when He came to live amongst us—yet even then, glory was revealed through His ministry—John 1:14
(h) These people here gave up glorifying God for his creation, love, purity, truth, wisdom, power, grace, etc., and they changed that worship into something bizarre and evil.

(2) Incorruptible exchanged for the corruptible—how deranged, how crazy, can people be? To see the universe that cries out “There is an almighty God!”, and to say that an idol (a likeness of something less than God) has created all things—this is insane!
(a) These words here (corruptible and incorruptible) are often contrasted, and they are always totally opposite—incorruptible is always absolute, as is corruptible.
(b) 1 Cor 15:53-54, 1 Pet 1:23

(3) The absolute low of spiritual depravity—
(a) First, that a stone or wooden image which man has made himself can do or be anything—Ex 20:3-5—
(i) God often speaks of these things in the most disparaging and sarcastic way—
(ii) there are many such references in the Bible, perhaps none more jolting than the sarcastic examination of idolatry in Is 44:15-20

(b) Then, in the depth of depravity, not only an image of man (God’s highest creation) is made into a “god,” but also images of birds, beasts, and “creeping things!”

“These people had already wilfully deserted God who merely left them to their own self-determination and self-destruction, part of the price of man’s moral freedom….Three times Paul uses paredoôken here (verses 24, 26, 28), not three stages in the giving over, but a repetition of the same withdrawal. The words sound to us like clods on the coffin as God leaves men to work their own wicked will.” (AT Robertson)

c. Changed truth for lies

(1) The Truth is, that an almighty God has created everything and He rules everything, and He is worthy of all of our worship and service.
(2) The Truth is, that we should always and only seek to please Him and glorify Him
(3) The Truth is, that our human wisdom is of no value, and His infinite wisdom and understanding is of infinite value
(4) And the practice of idolatry is one of the chief evidences of this silliness
(5) The thing today is this: many have gone beyond this.
(a) Some, in the “New Age” movement believe that Man is God, and that each human being is God.
(b) Mormonism teaches that “god” was once a man, and men and women can be “gods”
(c) And in the supreme grip of insanity, many educated people deny that there is a God, which shows that in these matters, they don’t even know where to start—Prov 1:7
(6) Remember, there are only three “evangelistic” religions in the world (religions that seek actively to gain converts) —Biblical Christianity, Islam, and Atheism. For us in the US, atheism has gained a following that is small in number but huge in influence, and they have taken over and banned discussion of matters of religion in many schools and most universities.

d. Worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator—The bottom line again. God is worthy of all worship and He is due our service—whenever we worship and serve anyone else or anything else, we are committing idolatry.

2. What God Did—1:24, 26, 28

a. These are not three stages in decline, they are three different expressions of the same judgment of god against the unrighteousness and ungodliness of man—this IS the wrath of God revealed (1:18), to allow man’s own consequences to come home to roost

b. The same word is used as the key word in all three verses.

(1) First, the word “gave them over,” is a common word, used over 100 times in the New Testament, which means “handed over to an authority.”
(2) The word is an aorist, indicating a snapshot—God gave them over, period. It was a judgment of His at a point in time.

c. Gave them over to what? Impurity (uncleanness), vile passions, and a debased mind.

3. The judgment of God and its effects

a. Uncleanness, dishonoring the body (1:24)
(1) The sins that God gave them over to are the result, first of all, of this.
(2) We were created in God’s image, and He had assigned an honor, a glory, to all things human, before we ruined this arrangement by our sins—
(a) 1 Th 4:3-4
(b) Heb 13:4
(3) Dishonoring the body through sin degrades us and our society and our entire race (the human race)

b. Vile passions 1:26-27

(1) These are sin, period
(2) These are part of dishonoring God’s creation
(3) These are part of God’s judgment
(4) The Positive Teaching on human sexuality:. Gen 1:27-8, Gen 2:18-25, Mat 19:4-6, Eph 522-33—Every teaching on sexual union in the Bible—EVERY SINGLE TEACHING—reinforces the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, and of heterosexual marriage ONLY! Every Biblical reference to homosexuality is negative
(5) The negative teaching on sexuality—Any sexual activity of any kind outside the bounds of heterosexual marriage is immoral and sinful (1 Cor 6:12-20).
(a) Fornication—Sex where neither partner is married, including pre-marital sex, is a sin, on the same level as homosexuality. 1 Tim 1:9-10.
(b) Adultery, or sex where one or both of the partners is married to somebody else, is likewise sinful (Heb 13:4).
(c) Homosexuality of any kind is also forbidden. (Lev 18:22, 20:13, Deut 23:17).
(d) The good kings of Judah banished homosexuals from the land (1 Kings 14:24, 15:12, 22:46, 2 Ki 23:7).
(e) What does the New Testament say? The New Testament agrees totally with the Old! Rom 1:18-32, 1 Cor 6:9-11
(f) The Bottom line--Homosexuality is a sin. It was a sin in the OT, it is a sin in the NT, it is a sin now, and it will always be a sin. The homosexuality issue is becoming a leading issue in the churches. Homosexuals have money, education, and influence, and they are determined to force their way and to punish any preacher or church who insists on Biblical standards.

The Hymn of Christ, verse 1

Context: Phil 2:1-4, and 12-18!

1. The Doctrinal Context: The Trinity

a. Mat 3:16-17

b. There is One God and One Mediator between God and Men, the Man Christ Jesus—1 Tim 2:5

c. Because God is a Trinity:
(1) He is a God of relationship
(2) We have representation
(3) We have reconciliation and redemption

d. A solitary God, One who is alone, like the false “god” of Islam, can have no relationship, there can be no representation, there can be no reconciliation, no redemption

2. The Point of the Passage—2:5
a. This is thought by many scholars to be an ancient hymn of the Faith that Paul quoted to them. The first “verse” is 2:6-8, and the second verse is 2:9-11
b. But this whole passage looks back to 2:1-4.
(1) What we have here is the supreme example of the self-denial and humility that is to be the hallmark of true believers everywhere.
(2) We are to have the mind of Chist (1 Cor 2:16), we are to think like Jesus
c. One
(1) Love
(2) Accord
(3) Mind

d. In lowliness of mind
(1) No selfish ambition
(2) No conceit—and if anyone had a right to be conceited, it was Him

e. No self interest, thinking only of others

f. This is how the Triune God acts within Himself.

(1) The internal relationships within the Triune God are the standard of cooperation and one-anothering that we should be doing.
(2) There is no Jealous ambition—The Father glorifies the Son—Mat 17:5
(a) The Father and Son Work together—John 5,
(b) The Spirit exalts the Son—Jn 15:26, 16:7-15. The Son speaks highly of the Spirit—
(3) The Father is eternal—John 1:1, The Son is eternal—Jn 1:1-3, Micah 5:2, The Spirit is eternal—Heb 9:14

3. Jesus is God, but He does not have an attitude about it—Phil 2:6

a. If we are anything at all, we have an attitude about it. Some folks have no justification at all for having an attitude, but we have one anyway.
b. “Who” It really is about Him
c. “Being”— huparchon—
(1) a present active participle, continuous
(2) Combined with the next word, this is a clear statement of the eternality and deity of Christ
b. “In the form of God”
(1) This does not refer to Christ as merely an image of God—
(2) This does not refer to His appearance
(3) This is the word morfh--morphe, which means “the outward expression of an inward reality.” We will see this again in the next verse.
(4) This outward expression of an inward reality refers to His eternal manifestation of Glory, the Glory due His Name, the glory that Isaiah saw in the temple—Jn 12:39-41
(a) The only thing Christ asked to be returned to Him was His glory—Jn 17:5
(b) The form of God, therefore, is God’s essential nature manifested, worshiped and glorified, as in Rev 4 and 5

c. “Did not consider it robbery to be equal with God…”
(1) The Attitude of Attitudes of the King of Kings
(2) Christ did not consider this exalted position of honor WHICH WAS AND IS HIS RIGHTFUL POSSESSION, to be something that He must grasp and hold onto.
(3) How unlike us this is—we grasp and hold on to any human position and honor as if our very lives depended upon its retention! These human honors and positions are, at best, vapors that are here today and gone tomorrow, and sometimes the things we hold onto are base and not God-glorifying anyway. And, sometimes, we don’t need to have them anyway. We may not be truly the right person for a position, or we might not really be qualified or capable. What Christ was sacrificing, however, was the glory of Heaven itself, a glory He is worthy of, qualified for, and entitled to! But He did not hold on to it, so that He might save us!

4. Jesus Humbled Himself to save us—2:7-8

a. Most of us could use some humbling, and we react with great displeasure when put in our place, but Jesus humbled Himself, and not just once, but often, and continually, for over 30 years
b. He emptied Himself by taking on Himself the morphe of a servant—(all verbs aorist),
(1) Emptied
(a) Not of Deity
(b) Not of Attributes, for He often demonstrated every attribute, even omnipresence—Mat 18:20
(2) He emptied Himself in two ways
(3) By what He gave up (MacArthur)
(a) Glory, and the worship of Heaven
(b) The Riches of Heaven
(c) Independence
(d) Full exercise of His attributes, though He retained all of them, He did not always use them
(e) Face to face communion with the Father—Jn 1:1-2, Mat 27:46

(4) By what He took on—the form of a servant—He took on…us. He took on the form (morphe again) of a servant
(a) The Eternal has taken on servanthood (doulos, the lowest form of a servant)
(b) A servant for life until His death or the death of His master!

(5) When did He empty Himself by taking on the morphe of a servant?
(a) At His conception in the womb of the virgin Mary, when He literally became flesh.
(b) John 1:14 "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."
c. He came “in the likeness of men,” in other words, really a man—1 John 2:18-23, 4:1-3
(1) He came—genomenos—aorist participle. There was a definite time when He came—
(a) In John 1:1-2, the Word already was, in Ph 2:6, Jesus huparchon, he existed continually as God.
(b) In John 1:14, the Word became flesh—egeneto, the aorist verb of the same root as “came” in this verse.

d. And “being found in appearance” (schemata) as a man 2:8a—in other words, really a man, not an imitation—

e. Six stages in the Self Humiliation of Christ

(1) He was, is, and never ceased to be God forever
(2) He became a servant at a point in time
(3) He came as a man at a point in time
(4) He was found in appearance as a man—
(a) at a point in time they “found” him, and His manhood was all they could see of Him.
(b) He showed them a glimpse of His true self when He flattened the whole crew in the garden—Jn 18:6
(c) But He allowed them to take Him anyway, and then they crucified Him
(5) “He humbled Himself”— again, aorist tense and active mood—He was the actor, not a victim, He self-humbled again, to die for us—John 10:17-18
(6) “And became obedient”—aorist—Heb 5:8 "though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered."
(a) obedient—old word which means “gave an ear to.” He heard the voice of His Father, He said, “not my will but thine…”
(b) To death, even the death of the Cross—“The bottom rung in the ladder from the Throne of God. Jesus came all the way down to the most despised death of all, a condemned criminal on the accursed cross…” A.T. Robertson
(c) It was not the nails He feared
(d) It was not even the curse
(e) It was becoming sin for us that drove Him to sweat great drops of blood in the Garden.
(f) It was the certain trial of trials that He knew He would face, to be cut off from the Father’s love for us.

f. He left the love of His Father, the comforts of Heaven, the indescribable glory of worship that He received continually (John 17:5,24)—He left this behind for our salvation.
(a) He could hold on to the glory of heaven
(b) He could hold on to the adulation and worship of the Angels in Heaven’s court
(c) He could hold on to riches beyond our comprehension.
(d) He could hold on to the intimate closeness He had with the Father and Spirit in Glory, the Love experienced between He and the Father from before the world was made
(e) Or, He could come to seek and to save us:
(f) but He could not do both.

In the light of all this, we return to Phil 2:1-4—How can we act as grasping, self-important, self-glorifying, fussing children, in the light of this humiliation?
The first verse of the hymn of Christ is sung, but, it doesn’t stop here—because He did not stay on the Cross, and He did not stay in the tomb.