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Guest (Male): Stuck in your comfort zone? Pastor Thom Keller offers this solution. Pray and ask God to move you out of your comfort zone, to give you the ability to give the comfort of love to others, those you know or don't know. And when you do this, when you force yourself to get outside of yourself and give the comfort of love to others, church stops being about you, and church for you begins to become all about others.

We call ourselves Christians, which means we identify with and follow Christ. But this begs the question: are we exhibiting his character or do we have some growing to do? Today's Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller will help us answer that very telling question. We'll get that help as we continue in Philippians. And now with the lesson from Philippians chapter two, here's Pastor Thom.

Pastor Thom Keller: The story is told of three men who died on Christmas Eve and were met by St. Peter at the pearly gates. In honor of this holy season, St. Peter said, "You must each possess something that symbolizes Christmas to get into heaven." The first man fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a lighter. He flicked it on and said it represents a candle. St. Peter said, "You may pass through the pearly gates."

The second man reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He shook them and said they're bells. St. Peter said, "You may pass through the pearly gates." The third man started searching desperately through his pockets and finally pulled out a pair of his wife's glasses. St. Peter looked at the man with a raised eyebrow and asked, "And just what do those symbolize?" The man replied, "They're Carols." His wife's name was Carol.

If you're listening online, it's a very sparse crowd, which explains the lack of laughter, just so you understand that. In today's lesson, Paul shares some spiritual attributes that represent or are markers of what a Christ-centered life should look like. Let's see how we measure up this morning. Now chapter two, which we're into today, builds upon chapter one.

In chapter one, Paul told us how we are to deal with conflicts outside the church with non-believers. Chapter one, verse 27 and 28: "Above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of the good news about Christ. Then, whether I come and see you again or only hear about you, I will know you are standing together with one spirit and one purpose, fighting together for the faith, which is the good news. Don't be intimidated in any way by your enemies. This will be a sign to them that they are going to be destroyed, but that you are going to be saved even by God himself."

But now in chapter two, Paul transitions into how we are to avoid conflicts inside the church with believers. Verse one and two: "Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose."

The King James verse one says it this way: "Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the spirit, if any affection and mercy." It says if there is any consolation in Christ. The root word of course is console, and in Greek, it means to comfort, solace which affords comfort or refreshment, and as such speaks of the Messianic salvation.

Paul speaks of consolation in several places. It's not a word we use often. Second Corinthians chapter one, verse five, he says, "As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ." Of consolation, the famous preacher Spurgeon said this, "The Holy Spirit consoles, but Christ is the consolation." He said this, "If I may use the figure, the Holy Spirit is the physician, but Christ is the medicine."

Just as Jesus and the Holy Spirit have different roles in our lives, so too the way in which we relate to Jesus and the Holy Spirit is different. Acts chapter nine, verse 31: "So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up, and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied." They walked in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.

And as Spurgeon said, the Holy Spirit, the physician, pumps us full with the medicine that we so desperately need, which is Jesus, being filled to the fullness of Christ. And what does the Holy Spirit impart to us? In verse one we're told: "Therefore, if there's any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love, any fellowship of the spirit, if any affection and mercy." So he gives us the comfort of mercy, the fellowship of the spirit, affection, and mercy.

That's what the Holy Spirit imparts to us as a fellowship. You as a believer: the comfort of love, the fellowship of the spirit, affection, and love. And folks, these are so good for the body life, so good. And yet how many times do we fail to give these out to those that are in need? The dictionary defines comfort as the easing of a person's feelings of grief or distress.

So within this church service this morning, the love that we express to one another, the love that we share one to another with a smile, with a kind word, in better times a hug or a handshake or now even an elbow bump, Paul says eases a person's feeling of grief or distress. Please don't minimize the impact your kind words can have to help ease someone's grief or distress this morning.

Remember the story of a young lonely woman who had determined to commit suicide. And as she was on her way home to kill herself, she said to herself, "If just one person that I cross walking home smiles at me, I won't do it." And the question is: what if you had been one of those people? There was a young woman who brought her children to our church periodically who killed herself two weeks ago. I did her service.

As far as the woman herself, I'm not sure I ever saw her here on a Sunday morning. But had she been here, could we have made a difference by showing her the comfort of love, the easing of her feelings of grief and distress that led to her suicide? If I may encourage you, on Sundays before you come to church, pray and ask God to move you out of your comfort zone Sunday morning so that you can give the comfort of love to others.

Give that comfort to those you know or don't know, knowing that it will help ease their feelings of grief or distress. That's what Paul says. And when you do this, when you force yourself to get outside of yourself and give the comfort of love to others on Sunday mornings, church stops being about you, and church for you begins to become all about others. And that is a very good thing.

Philippians 2:3 and 4: "Don't be selfish. Don't try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don't look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others too." Tom Rainer, in his article entitled "The Main Reason Why People Leave the Church," said this: "All the research studies of which I am aware, including my own, return one major theme to explain the exodus of church members: a sense of some need not being filled."

In other words, these members have ideas about what a local congregation should provide for them, and they leave because those provisions have not been met. But many times a church member leaves a local body because he or she has a sense of entitlement. He says, "In fact, I would suggest that the main reason people leave a church is because they have an entitlement mentality rather than a servant mentality."

As proof, he says, look at some of the direct quotes from exit interviews of people who left local congregations. The first one: "The worship leader refused to listen to me about the songs and music I wanted." Second one: "No one from my church visited me." Number three: "I was not about to support a building program that they wanted." The next one: "I was out two weeks and no one called me."

The next one: "They moved the times of worship services and it messed up my schedule." The last one: "I told my pastor to go visit my cousin and he never did." All those statements are about entitlement. And yet the biblical basis for church membership is clear in the Bible. First Corinthians 12, Paul says that the church body has many different parts, with each individual part being a necessary part to complete the body.

Paul describes church members not by what they should receive in the local church, but by the ministry they should give. Each part of that body serves a body, not itself. The arm doesn't serve the arm, it serves the body, and by serving the body, it serves itself. And when I cease to remember that fact, that I have been engrafted into the body specifically to give, when I forget that, my attendance will devolve into an entitlement mentality.

It becomes a servant mentality with the line of the day being, "What have you done for me lately?" So again, if I may suggest, leave this thinking behind and every Sunday morning, pray and ask God to help you get out of yourself and reach out to others, which is what a truly loving fellowship does. Listen again, verses one to four: "Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love?"

"Any fellowship together in the spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose. Don't be selfish. Don't try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don't look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others too."

This last section is such an important principle: don't be selfish, don't try to impress others, be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don't look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others too. You talk about principles that are practical guidelines for finishing well. And the key to finishing well, the key is surrendering your life and your will to Christ.

This speaks to the difference between you being seated on the throne of your life versus Christ being seated on the throne of your life. Because until you surrender your life to Christ and give him the right to call all the shots in your life, you will remain selfish and self-centered because you are the one calling the shots. You're the center of the universe. And in that place, your primary concern is me.

Verse two on the practical side as we get into that, it says, "Don't live to make a good impression on others." And boy, this one is such a trap for me. I've shared this before when I played soccer and I'd have an assist, and after the goal, they'd go and applaud and congratulate the guy that made the score. I'd be standing there in my heart saying, "What about me? I gave the assist. What about me?" It was a beautiful assist. Didn't anybody see that?

I struggle with this one. So the Bible says don't live to make a good impression on others. And yet we tend to get caught up in this. Yet we understand this when others try to impress us, don't we? Have you ever heard somebody brag about their achievements? "Yeah, I just won the Lebanon County Triathlon." "Yeah, I just graduated Summa Cum Laude." "Yeah, I just did this, I just did that."

And when they brag about their achievements, how does that affect your opinion of that person? You think less of them. They tell you what they're telling you hoping you will think more of them, but in actuality, it causes you to think less of them. Then why do we think it won't work that same way when we try to impress others with our achievements?

But when you find someone who doesn't brag about their achievements or even hides them, you think all the more of them. I have a friend, many of you know him, who played football for the Dallas Cowboys. Would you ever know that from talking with him? No, he would never offer that to you out of nowhere, never. In fact, everything he's ever told me about his football days I had to pull out of him.

And because of that, because of that, I respect him all the more. So the next time you're tempted to tell someone about some achievement of yours, some victory, some award, some shiny object you own, remember this statement. It's crass but it's true: self-praise stinks. It's been said pride is the only disease known to man that makes everyone sick except the person who has it.

That's pretty good, isn't it? Pride is the only disease known to man that makes everyone sick except the person who has it. The solution again, as we said earlier: take yourself off the throne and give Christ his rightful place, submitting your will, giving your identity to him. Oswald Chambers said this: "Nothing is as distasteful to God as self-conceit. This first and fundamental sin in essence aims at enthroning self at the expense of God."

If we are honest, when we measure ourselves by the life of our Lord, who humbled himself even to death on a cross, we cannot but be overwhelmed by the tawdriness, the shabbiness, and even the vileness of our hearts. Going on to verse four, it says, "Don't look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others too." Don't think only about your own interests, but be concerned about the interests of others.

Do you know what every church needs? A few more good listeners. This isn't in my notes, but I remember when my wife first started counseling at the Pregnancy Center in Lebanon. She came home after counseling with a girl who was pregnant and was considering aborting the baby. I forget how long my wife listened to her, for at least an hour. And when the woman was done, she said to my wife, "In all my life, no one has ever listened to me like this."

Do you know how rare good listeners really are? I mean really good listeners, how rare they are. When you are talking with someone, do you do most of the talking or most of the listening? That's your first test. When you're talking with someone, do you do most of the talking or do you do most of the listening? If you're not sure, here's a second test.

Let's say that you meet a stranger or an old friend and for 10 minutes they just talk about themselves. Do you get bored? Do you lose interest? Do you want to walk away? If that's the true, then you're probably not a good listener because that's what a good listener does. He or she listens to the other person, really listens the whole time they're talking. The key to the art of conversation is simply learning to listen. That is the art of conversation, not talking.

How do you do that? You become curious about people. You learn to ask questions and be genuinely and sincerely interested in them as they talk. It's been said a good listener is not only popular everywhere they go, but after a while they learn a thing or two. If you really think about it, if all anybody ever does is just do all the talking, how are they going to learn anything?

They just regurgitate what they already know. What they know is going back in their ears. It's a closed loop. You learn by listening to others. Going on, Philippians 2:5-11: "You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges. He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being."

"When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal's death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."

A powerful set of verses. A lot of those will be examined next week. But oh, how our flesh reacts to this idea of servanthood. The key, however, is to always remember as you read chapter two is that these verses are married to the four preceding verses, verses demanding unity in the church. And so this ties in perfectly to our earlier entitlement mentality versus a servant mentality.

On this matter of church life and your demanding your own way or even just expecting to get your own way, Jesus is our example. Again, verses five to seven. Look at this entitlement mentality: "You must have the same attitude that Jesus Christ had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges. He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being when he appeared in human form."

Here's the point: when you or I get high on our horse and want things our way or expect everyone to see things our way, remember this. When you cop this attitude, you are placing yourself above God because verse six says although Jesus was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights. Not only did Jesus not demand his rights, he made himself nothing. In Greek, that means to empty himself, to deprive himself of force.

And not only did he make himself empty and deprive himself of force, he went even further, taking on the form, the position of a slave among his peers. So how does today's lesson apply to me? The first one involves homework. Purpose to pray Saturday evenings, Sunday mornings, a prayer maybe something like this: "God, I pray that you would help me to move out of my comfort zone Sunday morning so that I can reach out to others in church, giving them the comfort of love to help ease their feelings of grief and distress."

You say, "But I don't know if they need the comfort of love." Surveys continually show that over 50% in a church service of all the people, 50% are hurting over some issue going on in their life today. Listen, we all need to have that grief and distress eased from us. And as a side benefit, a huge side benefit, you will become a giver instead of a taker.

But some of you might say, "But I'm the one who needs the comfort of love. I need someone to ease my feelings of grief and distress." Great, that's wonderful. Because as you press through and pray that prayer and give the comfort of love to others, you will experience a lessening of your own grief and distress. It works that way, doesn't it? That's a biblical principle: we receive by giving, not by taking. Try it. Just try it.

Guest (Male): That's Pastor Thom Keller on Study the Word, and he's in a study of Philippians right now. Would you like to give this a second listen? Either go to our website at ccleb.com or visit our YouTube page. Simply subscribe to our channel at Calvary Chapel Lebanon, and there you can watch our services live or on demand. That includes this series in Philippians.

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