Prof Donald Macleod: Philippians 2:11

[0:00] We shall turn now to Philippians chapter 2 of the words of verse 11. Philippians 2, verse 11, Every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

[0:22] When I want to focus tonight on these words, Jesus Christ is Lord, and that name especially, that name Lord given to our Savior, Jesus Christ is Lord.

[0:40] And when I ask first of all who gives him this name, and you see it is God himself, God the Father using the name Lord, and in doubt so responds to the Lord's obedience and service, because just before the way back in verse 9, therefore God has highly exalted him.

[1:08] It's a response of God to Jesus obedience and the cross of Calvary, and responds in this way by exalting him and giving him this glorious name.

[1:22] Remember where the story begins, with the glory of Christ in his p. 6th form, when he was there in the form of God.

[1:33] They are adorned with all splendour and possessing every quality of beauty, having the meaning of the whole universe, adorned by angels, this person of majesty and glory and might and beauty.

[1:52] And then he of course, laurs himself, abhages himself, takes us to the form of a servant or a slave.

[2:04] He was in the form of God. He takes the form of a slave and comes down into a human condition, is found then in the likeness of humanity, of human beings.

[2:18] And so we have this great condescension on Jesus' part, first of all in the form of God, then the form of a slave or a servant.

[2:32] And in that point onwards, on a great course of obedience, through a tertiary life, and in Calvary, so of course, on the cross of Calvary, a beating even to the extent of dying.

[2:49] This one was the form of God who was God, this one comes, and he tastes death, he obeys even to the extent of tasting death.

[3:01] Death is a shame to humanity, and yet here is God the immortal, and he is tasting death. And not only death, but death on a cross.

[3:14] The most sadistic and the most cruel and degrading and degraded form of death, the mansion of it. But those execution squads will have to do the work of the only accused or the condemned criminal to do what they wanted with him.

[3:33] And the law is there suffering is death, which was a slave's death, a death of the utmost indignity. And so it's coming of obedience and taking the servant form, and the human form, and this death, and this cursed death, death in its most extreme and most ingrained form he has come and taken, that death.

[3:59] And those who enact this deed, they go home satisfied because they see in that cross, they see God's own verdict on Christ, that he was indeed a blasphemer, an enemy of God, of religion, of estate, and of civil order.

[4:24] And so here in the cross they see God's own verdict, which forcibly with the Lord said to himself, I'm confirming that you love him as a blasphemer, a man who was ungodly and opposed to all that they held dear.

[4:43] And God had shown what he thought of him by lying to die in this degrading and degrading way. And so this was, they thought, God's last word.

[4:58] God had falsified all his claims. God had condemned him, cursed him, rejected him, shown that he was indeed an imposter and an ungodly blasphemer.

[5:10] And there it was, they sailed the tour, and there was God's last word. And then God stirs himself, and God immerses that verdict of the judiciary and the scholars and the theologians on public opinion.

[5:34] And God will tell racism from the dead that may not have indication on God's part. And God exalts him, and God will get highly exalts him, the word here is hyper.

[5:50] There's a hyper exaltation. He had gone so, so low as a slave into this cursed sadistic death.

[6:01] And now all the insignia there of the society reverse. The two men said, what a gnawful man this man was, what a cursed man this was.

[6:12] And then God reversed that whole verdict, and God emanates and God hyper exalts him. And God gives him a glorious human body, that body mangled in the crucifixion process.

[6:30] It had been flogged and pierced and abused in so many ways. And God gave him this glorious body, body of his own glory.

[6:42] And God put him on his own right hand and said to him, sit here, sit here, at my right hand. And God placed him in the very center of his own throne at the heart of the gullible universe, right in the center of his own throne.

[6:59] It's not three thrones, it's one throne, the throne of God and of the Lamb. And the Lamb, not to the right, not to the left, not to the margins of the bedire, at the very heart of God's sovereign gullible, there sits the Lamb, this Lord in our nature, in our human nature, he is there at the heart of the gullible.

[7:27] Weaving bad grubs to the stone, the body goes sad. And as we turn horrible, the Father runs to welcome and says, you know, to get the best robe, but put sand on his feet and so on, the Father wants to, to affirm the Son.

[7:46] And he wants to adore them. And now you see here is the Lord Jesus going home and the Father welcoming him and saying, bring forth the royal digest and crown him Lord of all.

[8:03] And he puts him there in the very center of the throne, elevated, high, and exalted, as high as human nature can go in majesty, in splendor, in the power, identify our nature, the dust of the earth, united in the one person who governs this whole world.

[8:32] And so then God is saying, you look, he said, in the light of this man, I divert it was what a blasted, wasted, awful God is honoring life it was.

[8:48] But he said, I saw, and I see that life of this man Jesus Christ, I see a life of glorious service, of a vivid subreddience, a life of love and loyalty, and a response, God is highly, highly obstructive.

[9:07] It's the dust of the earth, and yet by the creative skill and imagination of God, it's turning to something that is answered possibly beautiful.

[9:20] And it's placed by God with God at the heart of his government, in the center of his own throne. And you know, the adoration of the ancients, and the resurrection of the Father, and the God of Spirit, it's also a blessing to God the Son, and that is to God the Son in our nature.

[9:43] Shall I say that the worshipers of our nature, I will perhaps not go that far, but the one that they worship is in our nature, this glorious form, this visible, tangible material, God's Son in our nature at the heart of that government and of that sovereignty.

[10:09] And then God does this too, God give him a name, God give him the name, the name, above every name.

[10:21] They have called him, our kinds of things, their genius, ours of suffering and torment, and now God gives him this name, the name, Lord.

[10:37] It's in a way, you know, God's profession of faith. This morning, the Lord's table, we saw that in the table, we affirmed Jesus.

[10:50] We come in remembrance of him and profess his name and we can profess that he's a great high priest. And here is God, shall I say, God went forward and God professed, and confessed and affirmed his own Son.

[11:14] And then we're at the baptism, how they had to begin with God had affirmed him and said, this is my Son, the beloved. God saw him always saying then, this is my Son, the Son I love.

[11:29] That's God again, I say, conforming, professing, professing Christ, professing Christ, as his own Son. And here now again, this other name, not now with my Son, but this is the Lord, he says.

[11:48] And it's the Lord, he's the Lord, in the highest possible and the most general sense. You know, Testament, in English and Fibles, we're not Lord, most often they're printed in block and bold, block capitals, because it's the name Jehovah.

[12:09] And this is the name above every other name. No Jew would pronounce this name or speak this name. It was so woley, Jehovah or Yali.

[12:23] And here is God saying, this is the name, the highest name belongs to my Son. It's some ways even higher than the earlier name, this is my Son.

[12:35] But now he's saying, this is my Son, and he is Jehovah, he is Lord, in the fullest highest sense of that word, in all the glory of deity, God the Father, professing Christ as Jehovah.

[12:51] God saying that here is very God, very God. All the qualities of God here, all his powers and the revenues, they are all in this Lord Jesus Christ, he is Lord.

[13:09] Let me give you a picture or two. And we're back in Exodus, the burning bush. Remember, there God shows himself as Jehovah in that bush.

[13:22] And says, no sentom who are you, I am who I am, I shall be who I am, I shall be who I was, this great play of that verb to be, but of all that bush itself, you see, the symbol, the great symbol, the grand symbol of deity, and of Jehovah, and its sexual nature.

[13:46] Because you see, no one sent that bush on fire, it must simply burn. And it burned and burned and burned and burns through this energy, divine energy, that had no beginning, that knows no development, that knows no diminishing, no exhaustion.

[14:09] And that bush simply burns and burns and dies and dies and dies and dies. And that's the heart of this great man for God, the same God, Jehovah, that he is the one who simply is.

[14:23] He's the being one. All the moral of being depends. Whose being had no beginning, and shall have no end, and know no development, doesn't wield, but get tired.

[14:39] That's the Lord is saying, that's the Lord is saying, my son, my son with me, in the same sense as I, he is Jehovah, he is the uncreated, unoriginated energy that was and is that burns.

[14:58] And remember, burns and faithfulness to his own people is a covenant name. God is for us, God was for us, God will be for us, God burns and burns and burns.

[15:11] This is the source of an energy of the divine, Jesus twice in Jehovah, he is Lord. And then in Isaiah 6, remember the prophet there, he sees the Lord high and lifted up again that image which was on yesterday of loftiness, God almost advanced.

[15:35] And Isaiah 6, among us, thrown high exalted, and he is the self in cry, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory.

[15:52] And John tells us still in the Apostles, the Gospel tells us that Isaiah saw his glory, the glory of Jesus. It was Jesus he saw in that temple, high, lifted up, and professed for the seraphim in order to splendor.

[16:10] So Jesus Christ is Lord, that's a great message of this passage. God has placed him there at the heart of the government, and God has affirmed him and professed him as his own son, first of all, but also as the Lord, as the Lord Jehovah.

[16:32] And all the powers that he possesses in that identity are deployed for our salvation, to bring us from darkness to light and to uphold this universe in which we live.

[16:50] Let's go on to explore for a moment what this means for ourselves as a Lord of Jesus. It means first of all that Christ reigns over all cosmos.

[17:07] I don't want to come and come and yesterday, but go back to Eden to paradise. And the mandate that God gives you out in the first man in the garden, he said to subdue the earth at the end of the year.

[17:27] I know that man who's given to the last hour in Jesus Christ and God says to him, you know how it will be, but you know it's not simply this earth that's in you now, to our universe, subdue the earth.

[17:45] But you see here we are told that every means shall be avowed in heaven and on earth and under the earth. The whole, whole world is going to be avowed, is controlled by another regime as the dominion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the cosmos in all its awesome extent is under the dominion of our Savior.

[18:17] In Revelation 5 remember that other picture that moment when the church goes from the throne and there's an angel comes with a scroll with God's prologue for the worst destiny.

[18:38] And in that scroll the whole of this, the whole of God's plan is switched by God. And they can't find anyone in heaven and earth who is worried to open the scroll.

[18:53] But then someone says this, this lioness lamb of the tribe of Judah, he can open the scroll. And it's given to Christ and we're told then that well he is the Lord of history and he turns the pages page by page.

[19:14] He turns it over day by day. He's got the whole world in his hands. But my point is this, that when he takes the scroll in his hand and breaks the seal and opens the scroll, there is an astonishing, adverse of melody and praise and oxology throughout the whole universe.

[19:40] We hear the elders and as they glorify the church and they are seeing worthy Islam. And then the four of the creatures, the animated biosphere, they too joined in and they quite too worthy Islam that was slain.

[20:02] And then the angels could be millions and millions, thousands, millions, trillions and trillions of angels and they are seeing worthy Islam that was slain.

[20:13] But then you see every creature, John says I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea and under the sea.

[20:28] And they were all seeing the whole universe. They were seeing because the Lamb had taken the scroll. It's as if the cosmos is always celebrating the election or invasion of Jesus to his position of governance.

[20:49] And so in me the world is in his hands, this whole universe. It's huge, huge bussinesses which microscopic because it's all of them under the governance of the Lord and Savior.

[21:08] I'll come again to the words of Matthew 28. All authorities lying in heaven and on earth, over the whole of our planet and over all the heaven and all the heavens.

[21:25] And all the powers of heaven, all the angels and all the demons and he has solved the authority in heaven and in earth. And that means this, that Christ could move heaven and earth to save a sinner or progress his kingdom because he has all the authority, all the power in heaven and on earth.

[21:49] Whenever this church goes on mission, Christ is Lord. Doesn't matter where you go, that is part of Christ's will. And if Christ wants to save someone in Philippi like the Jailer, what can he do?

[22:05] He can cause an earthquake because he's the Lord of earthquakes and the Lord of volcanoes and the Lord of interstellar commissions, the Lord of the whole universe, of heaven and earth.

[22:19] And it can prove that heaven and earth for its own purpose and to progress our salvation. So Christ weighs over the whole cosmos.

[22:33] But then we see two of the two rains over every sphere of human life and human and death. God made us in his own image and gave us magnificent intellects and great partial imagination and astonishing technical and valuable skill.

[22:58] We have lost much due to our foreign to sin and yet amid all the wreckage man is still incontruable among all of God's creatures for the glorious plows.

[23:14] And he uses the gifts God has given him in all his various fields, in polities, in art, in religion and in science. God has given us gifts that we deployed in all of these areas.

[23:33] God has given gifts of statesmanship, God has given artistic gifts, God has given scientific gifts in all these legitimate.

[23:44] God has had us to explore the world, it's only us that we showed to explore it, to discover its mystery, to unleash its repulsion resources.

[24:00] And so whenever we see it, God has endowed us with gift of calm grace, sometimes in a genius, sub-responding or in an ability. But nevertheless those gifts are given to us by God who deployed in those areas.

[24:19] And according to what it's doing is this, it is mandating those areas of human and death. It doesn't say to us that all religion matters, no says art matters too, and science and politics, they all matter.

[24:42] And we have given it to him by God for each of these fields and all of these domains. And yet another thing is autonomous or independent of Christ's authority or Christ's soul.

[24:59] They are all subject to him, keep on saying what even Kuiper said, every inch increases.

[25:10] Every inch covered by science, but covered by art or by politics, they are all inches covered by and claimed by the Lord Jesus Christ.

[25:26] And yes I want to authenticate in this thing all things that we might call secular, whatever we mean by that.

[25:38] But all those spheres are agitimate and for them all God has endowed individuals of respite to perform in art, in science and politics.

[25:53] But the all answer to God, the politician with his power, how does he run the state or the country that he governs?

[26:08] Is it simply a business where it matters about the annual accounts, are we insurface or indeficent, is that all that matters?

[26:20] Or is it one for people, for people, for people that we may enjoy quiet, unpeaceable lives in all godliness and in all honor?

[26:33] What that mean I'm not specified here. But what we do to the power, whatever the power is, we answer to God for and the governances always thought people for their benefit, quiet, peace, unenourable lives.

[26:54] And I want to say to you many, don't have that privilege of living another other life, a life with dignity. And that's what politics is for. And so yes, it's another sphere and God gives gifts for it.

[27:14] But how we use those gifts, we answer to God for. Likewise in art, agitimate, that we should paint and compose and perform, sculpture, and literature, whatever.

[27:31] And God gives us those gifts. And those gifts of uncertainty expose what's evil and to command what's good. But again, art lives under God's own judgment and God's own irishine.

[27:49] We are no why to use it to promote racism or inequality or hatred or blasphemy, often entertaining these may be, but yet, you know, if I come back to this.

[28:08] Remember when God made the world and it was all finished on that sixth day and God looked and it was very good.

[28:21] And I wonder how the modern artist feels when confronted by that criteria. What would God think of my painting or of my novel or of my music? Is it truth? Is it beauty? Is it God honoring?

[28:42] Is it for the benefit of the human race? No, they say, no, art is unaccountable. Well, not subject always to moral judgments. This is not to promote good or promote evil.

[29:01] And if subject to theological judgments, this glorifying God, or this is so often a ridicule God, God gave a gift to the artist.

[29:13] What did the artist do? Some of you are artists, musicians and so forth. And I must say, I suppose, this music very good in God's eyes, your painting, your handy work with craftsmanship.

[29:29] That is something we can't ignore because Christ is Lord of all these fears. The right voice in science. God, I think, has said no boundaries to science, the whole world is before us.

[29:45] And God gives us minds that are attuned to the universe so that it is washable and we are washable and the two are called.

[29:56] There is a friendship between ourselves and the world we live in. A cognitive friendship so that it's intelligible and we are intelligent.

[30:08] And so, yes, by God's mandate, we explore the world. But what do we do with our science? I'm not going to be too judgmental here, but I'm just to raise the question of science's own accountability.

[30:28] We have in urban arts huge potential technologically and we have so much of us wondered on computer games.

[30:45] And there's so much need to use it for other purposes to live in many women in other countries and developed to live quiet and peaceful lives in all godliness and all that.

[31:04] But I'm going to tell you the problem of science and weapons of mass destruction. How that must be, by the Father of Heaven.

[31:15] The greatest brains of all are in the scene of being deployed to work on ways of killing huge mass of the population. And so, yes, the lengths of politics than politicians, the lengths of art and arts and science and scientists, but they all live at the foot of the cross and subject to the judgment of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior.

[31:47] The artist can't say, oh, I've got only a certain art and it was only abnormal I was writing. All that we're doing is subject to the judgment of our Lord and Savior, no portion.

[32:01] We may have other spheres, the domestic sphere, community sphere, whatever it is. But whatever the world we live in, the media, I'm going to tell you all of these things and they're not the large retouchment of Jesus Christ.

[32:23] So, He is Lord of the whole universe. He is Lord of all the sphere of human endeavor. I sometimes say, shall I say, my Lord or say, you Lord, of every human individual.

[32:41] And I come back again to this point which stares at how can God ever be aware of me?

[32:53] You know on my own, in our own college in Edinburgh, there are fishes I don't recognize. It's a small community, and I don't know them all.

[33:07] And in all this planet, there are millions of human beings and Jesus Christ knows them all. And He's the Lord of them all. When I say those, I will start with them till they're towards them months ago.

[33:27] Somebody pondering how God could raise a dead and give them bodies adapted to that identity as premortals, pre-death, premortem existence.

[33:42] How could God give them a body which was then, which was then a dead and alive? And the answer was, well, remember this, that God knows the DNA of every human who has ever lived.

[34:00] Christ knows you DNA and that every human who has ever lived. And in the resurrection God gives us a body adapted to that DNA, which may be adapted to the long word, forgive me if it is.

[34:16] But it will be a me body, a my body, because He knows the DNA. I know my sheep. I have Williams and Boonins and Thrills of sheep, as many as the stars in the sky or the rays of sand on the shore.

[34:35] And I know the face and the breed and the form of every single one of my sheep. And I know their precise location and precise needs at any given moment. I know them all. And every one of us is a servant to the Lord Jesus Christ.

[34:57] You find the important Paul, calling his entire term again Paul a servant of Jesus Christ.

[35:08] That's what he wrote. Who are you, a soul of Tartarus, this man with his mighty intellect, with his awesome courage and fearlessness and sense of enterprise.

[35:22] Who are you? I am a slave of Jesus, that's what he said. And you know you'll see too of James and Orr's brother, and you know they should be same home, and the same legal parents, live in the same roof and legal at the same table.

[35:40] And James calls his brother, calls himself and say, I am servant of God and of the Lord Jesus. I am a slave of God.

[35:51] And in the same sense, I am a slave of Jesus now. He really called you some more than the most, I should call the doulos, all my operational mobilization.

[36:05] And that's the word Paul uses, the word, the big word, doulos for a slave. And that's how Paul saw himself and how we see ourselves as Christians, as a doulos or douloi of the Lord Jesus Christ who are you.

[36:23] What is your fundamental identity? I am a slave, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am here to live for him that he may be expected, magnified. I mentioned this word in the Greek word in that context and said, oh the word which of good comes by word mega.

[36:46] I live, I am a slave and my calling is to make my master mega. I see the greatest master the world has ever seen. That's my Christian calling.

[37:01] To do his will, you know, very often we pray for so many other things. We pray for healing, we pray for deliverance, for security, for blessing, for emergency, quite legitimate.

[37:15] But there's a pre-challenge facing your me tonight and all of this, Lord give me grace to do you will, to be a faithful servant of my precious savior Jesus Christ.

[37:32] Other than I hear the voice from the backwards saying to me, ah but I am not a Christian and I am not religious and so is not my Lord.

[37:46] And this is such a pre-challenge to Jesus of quality. People say he's not my Lord because there is no Godship void in my heart.

[38:03] I don't have the spiritual need. I don't have the first. I don't have the sense of sin. I don't need forgiveness. I am not religious. We keep on saying I'm not weird and heavy-weight looking for salvation and so he's not my Lord.

[38:23] I sense largely dependent on how we feel, on how we feel, on how we be religious, aware of our spiritual needs. I sense his largely dependent on that elemental fact.

[38:43] Come back to Pontius Pilate. He had no feelings about Christ or any religious kind at all. He had no longing for salvation.

[38:57] No sense of need or forgiveness or such things. And yet, does that mean that Christ wasn't Pilate's Lord? He was most infatigly. In fact, the power of Pilate had was a power that Christ had given him.

[39:16] My Lord is indomitable and religious. But for the seeker, or for those who feel Godship void in their hearts, I don't want to pitch my appeal on what you feel, on what you think you need.

[39:42] I want to affirm his Lord to tell you he is your Lord. And yet, so why each to your obedience and compliance and service and faith are why to all of these because of the fact.

[39:59] God has put him in a sight of our throne and God gave him the snake. He is the Lord. Ah, but I don't feel anything. I still hear him say Lord.

[40:14] I saw that for every knee bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord, every knee bow. If only I could power all the word to make your knee bow and your tongue confess, your heart submit to the facts.

[40:41] That's what they are, the facts. There is life after death. Christ is risen. Christ hyper-exalted. Christ is Lord. Christ is you Lord.

[40:59] There are no bent and established facts in the whole realm of human knowledge, but the fact of the Lordship of Christ. And that's why every knee must bow.

[41:18] We don't come to him because of what we feel, but we feel because he is Lord. We adore him, we submit to him, deny ourselves, we lose with him because he is Lord.

[41:36] I leave you with two words. The Lord's words to Matthew the public and the tax collector. He said, he had never met this man before, or a Matthew I met him, but he said to him, follow me and he arose and followed him.

[42:05] And then Thomas, Doughty Thomas, the great skeptic, I declare to you crucified and risen Lord and he says to him, my Lord and my God, tonight in one sense or other we have met him.

[42:34] And that too is a fact which is on your record, and which is in the book, and about which one day God will ask to give a hear of one called the Lord Jesus Christ.

[42:56] Having heard, shall we from this side onwards give ourselves to him, and shall we say with him, him writer, now to be thine, you thine alone, O Lamb of God, I come.

[43:18] May God have good soul and a spring.