11th June 2025

11th June 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Philippians 2:5-11 focus v6-7)


Message (Alan Burke)


Let me as you this, would you be willing to give up your home for a family of refugees to live in and move out to the garage or the shed? Now that could be a fairly spicy question in some quarters especially since I’ve seen stickers in Crossgar with an Irish tricolour and the words “Ireland is Full” on it. But back in 2022 people welcomed Ukrainian refugees into their home and got paid for it by the government. So would you be willing to give up your home for a family of refugees after all most of us live in houses that are too big for us but for some reason we still need all the bedrooms and will never downsize and when we realise we should have done it, it is then too late and our homes our prisons. Would you leave your home? Yes/No? Maybe it would help if you knew a bit about the family, actually it’s best if you don’t know about the family because they are the worst kind of people and there isn’t one of them who are good. So how about it?


I can’t guarantee what your response was but if I was going to take a guess it would be that you wouldn’t be willing to give up your home and it wouldn’t matter if it was for refugees or the next door neighbour or even some of the family. Yet lets think to what Christ has done, who… v6 …being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.


The one through whom all things were made, he entered the world he was humiliated, he humbled himself in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine the depth or the breath of, the sheer gravity of what has taken place for us. Jesus Christ for our sakes, made himself nothing, emptied himself of his glory, took upon him the form of a servant. He voluntary took upon himself our humanity, humbling himself in the incarnation in every part. The one whom all things were made, who rightly rules over the heaven and the earth, who is King of kings and Lord of lords, came, giving up the highest pinnacle of glory to take on our humanity, instead of exalting himself he humbled himself. Think on Christ, think on what he has done, the example he has set of how he left the privileges that were rightly his as king of the universe, gave them up to become a baby bound for the cross. Though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that we by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). The “emptying” consisted of his becoming human, not of his giving up any part of his true deity.


He made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant in his condescending he voluntary submitting to the will of the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit. He willingly came as one of us to do all that was required of us, in his life, death and after his death until his resurrection. He didn’t have to any of this, he willingly did for our redemption. Jesus chose to condescend for us to die for our salvation. Think to Christ when your tempted to do thinks out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, when the grumpy old fart rubs you up the wrong way, when you don’t get your preference in the new church sign, think to Christ and remember what he has done for you and how that should impact everything you do and say. 


Do you understand the wonder of what Christ has done for you, Paul wants us to think upon Christ and what he has done, so that we who by our nature are his enemies, who are filthy sinners so that we could know forgiveness. Christ the Son of God became man, by taking to himself a true body, and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of her substance, and born of her, yet without sin, and sinner, he did this for you. This should impact how you live in every way as a believer. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q107 What doth the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer teach us?
A. The conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer, which is, For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen,” teacheth us to take our encouragement in prayer from God only, and in our prayers to praise him, ascribing kingdom, power, and glory to him; and in testimony of our desire and assurance to be heard, we say, Amen.
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