Insight for Living

Guest (Male): If someone you loved desperately needed rescue, what would you be willing to give up? Your comfort? Your career? Your freedom? Well, Jesus gave up heaven itself. In Philippians 2, Paul wrote what many scholars call the single greatest passage about Christ. Paul used a word that should stop us cold.

Christ emptied Himself. Not of His deity, but of His privilege, all the way to a cross that was so vile Romans wouldn't even utter the word. Today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll takes us there, to the servant who came and paid it all.

Chuck Swindoll: Let's turn our attention to what is considered by many the single most significant statement in the New Testament letters regarding the person of Jesus Christ. Philippians chapter 2. I'll be reading only four verses from this second chapter as we think today about the servant who came.

Verse 5, Philippians 2: "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 bond-servant, and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

Guest (Male): You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into today's topic on your own, be sure to purchase our Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook called *How Great is Our God*. You can find it at insight.org/offer. Chuck titled today's message "The Servant Who Came."

Chuck Swindoll: There is something life-changing about knowing we are loved when we are, in fact, very unlovely and not feeling very lovely. There's something equally magnificent about knowing that the same one who loved us when we didn't deserve it is willing to reach out and care for us and help us when we can't help and care for ourselves.

The first kind of affection that reaches out is true love, and the second kind of love that reaches down is true grace. If you look at the cross, you will see both. Like two massive arms reaching out horizontally, there is love at work, love on display as Christ took our place on that cross, proving His love to us as He in grace reached down to care for us and rescue us.

I'm about to finish Pat Summerall's autobiography titled simply *Summerall*. You who are sports fans know the name, but you may not know much of his life because until the book was published in 2006, much of it wasn't known by the general public. We only knew him as a celebrity who occupied the same booth alongside John Madden in many of those televised national football broadcasts and games that went across the country and sometimes were done internationally. He was a celebrity.

What you don't know is that Pat Summerall was raised in a small town in Florida, felt abandoned by father and mother, was really reared by a grandmother, and like many who go through abandonment feelings, compensated for it. In his case, he did so through athletics. He became a fine football and basketball and baseball player young in life while he was in high school and was ultimately selected by University of Arkansas to be on their team, and there he played and finally was drafted by the Chicago Cardinals.

You heard me right, Chicago Cardinals. They later moved to St. Louis where they were known as the St. Louis Cardinals and are now in Arizona. But back in those days, he played in the National Football League and ultimately found his way through promotions to the broadcast booth and became as well-known as his partner. I have met Pat. He came to visit with me when I was a part of the leadership at Dallas Seminary and I was so impressed with his humility and grace, and even though I didn't know anything of his life, you rarely find someone that humble.

But there's a reason. You see, not only did he select athletics as his choice, he also selected alcohol and became dreadfully addicted to that drug of choice. He tells it all in his book in a chapter entitled "The Reckoning." He refers to that time he is about to broadcast on the famous golf links of Augusta, Georgia, the Masters. He says, "I awoke in the guest house in Augusta, a serene and beautiful place that is home to my favorite sporting event in the world. But I felt disoriented, queasy, and panicked."

"It was 3:00 AM. Something was terribly wrong with me. I struggled to roll out of bed and staggered into the bathroom. I'd gotten sick from too much drinking before, far too many times to count, but this was different. As I knelt on the bathroom floor, I felt as if my insides were pouring out on waves of the vodka I'd consumed before collapsing into bed. My drinking had increased in recent months, and now the penalties were getting steeper. There was blood in my vomit."

"A few years earlier, I'd had a similar episode. I'd bled so badly that I had to be hospitalized. I was sick for most of the night, coughing up mostly blood. This continued on and off the rest of the night. Doctors found a severe ulcer caused, they said, by many years of heavy drinking. I missed several game broadcasts because of that episode. My bosses at CBS quietly expressed their concern. It should have been a wake-up call for me. It was taking less and less for me to get drunk. Another bad sign."

"I drew deep breaths and tried to compose myself, but I still couldn't fight the waves of nausea. I lowered my dizzy head once more. What was I doing to myself? Finally, I got back on my feet and staggered over to the sink to splash water on my face. As I looked in the mirror, the fluorescent light surrounding the medicine cabinet seemed to grow brighter. They illuminated my pale and haggard face, my bloodshot eyes, and all the protruding veins on my face and my nose. I looked like a monster. I was repulsed at my own image, at once terrified and disgusted."

I'll save the time of reading too much here, but that led to an intervention, as you could imagine. Those who cared the most for him but had often been offended by him, his own adult children and other close friends who had the courage to face him with the truth of his life, finally assisted him in getting to the Betty Ford Clinic for help. He writes of that rather openly. The intervention was a wrenching, heartbreaking, profoundly embarrassing event in my life. I will be forever grateful for it, even though I still deal with all the painful feelings it recalls.

He describes going to the clinic, the stark Spartan room in which he was placed, and there they allowed two books: the book on AA and the other was a Gideon Bible. That was it. No contact with the outside world, only the two books and counseling sessions. He writes this, "I read the AA book a few times and put it aside, but I kept coming back to the Bible. To my surprise, I found it engrossing, like some codebook to a world I'd heard about but never delved into."

I wish I had the time to read you of his conversion. He later declares, "I accepted that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who died for our sins. Now I felt I was truly a part of His family. I felt ecstatic, invigorated, happier, and freer. It felt as though my soul had been washed clean. After my baptism, I found myself often reflecting and identifying with the classic gospel song 'Amazing Grace,' particularly the familiar line that goes, 'How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see.'"

Sherry and I named our home in Southlake, Texas, Amazing Grace, and our black Labrador Retriever, Gracie. Pat's our neighbor. When he was nothing at the bottom, choking on his own vomit and blood, he was led to discover the one who had loved him all along and was pursuing him. In the words of the old poet, the Hound of Heaven were after him. Many of us understand that. He was, in his own words, a worthless human being who people looked at as a celebrity.

And God loved him, looked past all of that. As the old saying goes, the one who knows us the best loves us the most. And like that horizontal beam on the cross, His love reached around him, and then like the vertical beam, it reached down and rescued him. Now why? If you know anything about Jesus, you know that He, as a member of the Trinity, existed in the very presence of the Father and the Spirit. There never was a time He ever had a beginning or will ever have an end.

So enthroned and in that magnificent place of glory, there came the day when the Father declared, "In order for those sinners to be rescued, a sacrifice must be paid, and you must bear the sins of the world." And He left heaven and came, and as we mentioned last time, moved into the neighborhood, became one of us. Why? Why on earth? Why in heaven's name would He do it? At the end of Matthew chapter 11, there is a word used that can describe it all in simple, simple way.

Verse 28, "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden. All who are drunks, whatever your drug of choice, all who are drug addicts, all who cannot conquer their lust, their drive for more and more pornography." If we knew the truth of this audience today, it would be perhaps shocking to some and embarrassing to others to realize how many of you are addicted to that continued curse that plagues this world. Whatever drives you further and further down, you are weary and heavy-laden like Pat Summerall was that night in Augusta.

And He says, "I will give you rest." Doesn't give us a sermon, doesn't bring shame, doesn't point a finger, doesn't expose the awful truth to those around us. He just promises to give us rest. Why? Next verse: "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart." There's the word, humility. Christlikeness in one word: humility. Humility. You shall find rest for your souls. I will give you rest, the end of verse 28. You will find rest, end of verse 29.

Because when I come, whatever journey I take you through, you'll find that My yoke is easy and My burden is light. I'll never add to your guilt. I'll never bring greater shame. Sin does that. But if you listen to the wrong voice, you'll talk yourself out of coming to Christ because after all, how could someone so holy and pure care for someone so broken and dark and depressed? It's called love. It's called grace. What is it? What do we mean when we refer to humility or this whole idea of servanthood?

Let me amplify the word. It's a willingness to give up my will for another's good in order to accomplish what's best. I give up my will for another's good to accomplish what is best for that person. Humility is a desire to serve instead of be served. Mark 10:45: He came not to be served but to serve and to give. I often say to people, if you want to describe the Christian life, you can do it simply in these few words: it's a life of serving and giving. It's a life of serving and giving.

Some of you are still learning that. Many of you are narcissistic. Life revolves around you, your comfort, your satisfaction, your income, your controlling, your will. You know nothing of servanthood, or you know little of it. And the result is you reject one who is modeling that for you. But here in His humility, He comes and refuses to hold on to what is rightfully His, and releasing it rescues us from ourselves. How good is that? And every time you look at a cross, will you remember those arms reaching out represent love and the stake reaching down represent grace?

Love and grace, love and grace. Donald Grey Barnhouse at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia used to say it this way: Love that reaches up is adoration. Love that reaches out is affection. Ah, but love that stoops is grace. It isn't complete till you get to the part where He stoops and picks us up and puts us on our feet. It's with that symbol in mind we turn to Philippians chapter 2 and look at these verses that are truly, as one man wrote, the greatest and most moving passage Paul ever wrote about Jesus.

Greatest and most moving passage Paul ever wrote about Jesus. Our focus for the sake of time and concentration is on four verses, but these verses fall into a context. Let me pass along to all of you who love the Scriptures or just becoming acquainted with the Bible: always integrate the verses you're studying with the context. Always integrate the verse or verses with the context. Otherwise, you'll be led astray because you can prove anything from the Bible, and the cults are a perfect example of that.

Most of them Bible-quoting. They just pull them out of context. You will not make that mistake if you will keep verses you're looking at in their context. Just as a beautiful diamond needs a setting for it to serve a practical purpose, so verses of Scripture need the context, the setting. Now this setting is about thinking along the same lines. See verse 1: "If therefore there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation of love, any fellowship of the spirit, any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind."

If you think together, you'll get along together. If you think about the same things the same way together, you'll have a closeness of fellowship, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. In fact, he goes further, and I can feel that long index finger of the apostle pounding against my sternum as he says, "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than himself."

Let me tell you folks, if we could obey that one verse, we would transform the community in which we live. We would have a church like no other church on the planet. You would have a witness like no other else in your shop or in your office, in your neighborhood. That is Christianity in a nutshell. Those of us who are unselfish and do not are not driven by empty conceit, who possess a humility of mind—God help us all to go there—who regard one another as more important than ourselves.

We don't look out for our own personal interests; we look out for the interests of others. And Paul suddenly thinks, "I need an example. I need an illustration." We say it as a colloquialism of our time, "I need a for instance." For example. And that leads him to the classic illustration of Jesus. Not surprisingly, he shows us Jesus in His condescension from heaven to earth, from the throne room of God to the cross in the verses that follow. Now, this section is magnificent because it covers three facets of a scene that boggles the mind.

In no other scene in Scripture are you able to get into the mind of the Crucified One like here. This is the best section. It describes Him before He came to earth, verse 6. It describes in His coming as a servant, verse 7 and the early part of verse 8, and then it describes His sacrifice on a cross, end of verse 8. Let's go before His incarnation. Referring to Christ Jesus, "who although He existed in the form of God..." You know me, we're not going to rush on. We're going to take time to pore over these words.

I'm a word vulture, so I'm going to vulture on these words right here so that you'll understand them. "Form of God." The Greek term is *morphe*. We have it in the middle of our word metamorphosis. In its original term, it meant the essential form that doesn't change. Keep that in mind. There's another word that is often translated form, and it's *schema*. We get our word "scheme" from it. They're different. *schema* represents a form that changes. We are in form human beings.

We are not less or more than; we are human beings. From conception until death, we are human beings. That's our *morphe*. Our *schema* is changing. Little children grow into young pre-teenagers, and then finally teenagers, and then young adults, and then adults, and then middle adults, and then ordinary adults. You reach a final stage of ordinary where you are growing older. Your *schema* keeps changing, but your *morphe* remains human. Back to the verse: "who although He existed in the unchanging deity, the form of God, He did not regard equality with God something to clutch, something to cling to, but He released that privileged position."

Guest (Male): Chuck Swindoll has given us a lot to think about today. From Pat Summerall's broken night in Augusta to the Greek word *morphe*, the unchanging essence of who Christ has always been, we've seen something remarkable: the eternal Son of God, existing in the fullness of deity, willingly releasing His privileged position to rescue us. If today's message has stirred a hunger to go deeper, well, we have a resource designed to help you do exactly that. Stay with us to hear a closing word from Chuck and learn about a new booklet he's written for you.

Well, if you've been on social media in recent days and seen clips of Chuck's video series called *Living with Insight*, you've noticed that while Chuck is aging, his passion for proclaiming the good news isn't fading. It's actually growing stronger.

Chuck Swindoll: I've never been good at pretending. The calendar doesn't lie. I'm in my nineties now. And so my eyes don't function as they once did. My legs remind me every single day that I've logged a lot of miles. There are mornings when everything in me would rather sit quietly and let somebody younger carry the load. But then something happens. I picture myself standing behind a pulpit, my hands on that sacred lectern, my Bible open in front of me next to my notes, and something stirs.

Deep down where age doesn't reach, and I remember. I remember what this is. I remember what's at stake, and I feel it all over again: the thrill, the privilege, the sheer staggering wonder that God would allow a weathered preacher to open his mouth and declare the most radical news ever to reach human ears: the cross of Jesus Christ. Friend, I look at this world, the chaos, the sorrow, the anger, the pain, and I don't see a world that needs better arguments.

I see a world that needs what we have: the message that God has stepped into our mess and offered redemption to every last soul who will believe. That's not wishful thinking. That's the gospel. And it's just as powerful today as it was 2,000 years ago. My days behind the pulpit, week in, week out, are now behind me. I know that. I'm at peace with it. But we still proclaim the cross. As we close out this fiscal year on June 30th, I want to invite you to link arms with me for whatever miles remain.

Your gift to Insight for Living is your voice in this proclamation through radio, the internet, social media, and resources reaching every corner of this world. You and I together get to tell them. Come with me. Let's boldly tell the world what they're longing to hear.

Guest (Male): Thanks for responding to Chuck Swindoll today. When you do, we'll say thanks by providing a brand-new booklet from Chuck. It's called *The Cross We Proclaim*. Life is hard, and I'm sure there are mornings when you wonder if you have anything left to give. In *The Cross We Proclaim*, you'll be reminded you were never meant to conquer your challenges in your own strength. The key is understanding how to deploy, in practical ways, the power of the cross.

The deadline, June 30th, is one week from today. To send a donation and your request for the booklet in the mail, write to us at Insight for Living, Post Office Box 5000, Frisco, Texas, 75034. You can also call us at 800-772-8888 or give online at insight.org/donate.

Bill Meyer: I'm Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuck Swindoll describes a savior of breathtaking humility tomorrow on Insight for Living.