2023 Worship Guide LINCOLN DAILY NEWS December 2023 Page 19 like a servant; He really became one. His being even as God was to be a servant. At the moment He divested Himself of the robes of majesty, at the moment He set His crown down and walked out of the throne room, He put on the apron of a servant. He is a servant, according to Isaiah 52:13-14; He is a suffering servant. If anyone was ever a servant, He was a servant. He took upon the inner essence, the very being of a servant. He, the sovereign Master of the universe, became a true servant of God. As truly as He was God, so truly was He a servant of God. Thirdly, He not only abandoned the sovereign position, accepted a servant’s place, He approached a sinful people. This too, is part of His condescension. You could understand that an infinitely holy God would have no desire whatsoever to associate with a sinful people. But having divested Himself of His majesty, having taken on the role of a servant and, more than that, literally having become a servant, His service to the Father was rendered by coming to this sin-cursed planet, approaching a sinful people. That’s what He did. Number four – He adopted a selfless posture. Once He got here, as a man, He could have taken on a number of possible postures in life. He could have chosen any level of society; He could have put Himself in any situation. He could have been born into the families of the highest and best, the greatest and noblest, but He adopted a selfless posture. Verse 8 says, “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself.” He ends up in a little carpenter shop, working alongside His father, Joseph, making a yoke for the oxen of a farmer. And He was the One who made the universe. We find Him washing the feet of the twelve disciples, and yet He commands the hosts of two thousand times ten thousand, and thousands and thousands of angels. He adopted a selfless posture. Finally, number five. He humbled Himself. How far down did He go? All the way down to becoming obedient unto death. That was the Father’s will, that He come into the world, and die in the place of sinners. He came down to become shamed, to become cursed. He was made a curse for us it says in Galatians. He received the full fury of the judgment of God upon Him. He came all the way down – all the way down to death. And not just humbled, and not just to death, but look at this – even death on a cross. The apostle Paul, in writing this, descends one more level because nothing was more horrifying, nothing was more ignominious, nothing was more cruel than to be executed Continued --
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