14th April 2025

14th April 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Philippians 1:1-2)


Message (Alan Burke) 


I know for some people they will have looked at todays passage and lamented, that might be you because you’re thinking in your head Alan this is Easter, only second in importance in the church “calendar” to “Harvest” and your ruining it, why would I do such a thing!? Obviously, it’s just because I like messing with peoples heads. Actually it’s not really that at all, it is because as you will read on Wednesday in the WSC Q&A59 that; “From the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, God appointed the seventh day of the week to be the weekly Sabbath; and the first day of the week, ever since, to continue to the end of the world, which is the Christian Sabbath”. Every Lord’s day we celebrate the resurrection, we have 52 celebrations of the resurrection each year and in 2028 we get 53.  Those 52 and sometimes 53 Lord’s day’s are the only “holy days” scriptures require us to observe. These two verses in Philippians they speak much of the wonder of what God has done for us through the resurrection and that is what we will focus on this week. 


These two verses are packed with timeless truths for the believer so let’s think of the first of those wonderful truths that are contained in these verses and it comes as Paul opens the letter to the church in Philippi and says “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,”. It might not seem that exciting but there is much crammed into this, think for a start who Paul was, his conversion, how he had been called and used by God and that is just amazing but it’s the word servants that has a wonderful truth for you and I if we know and love the Lord Jesus Christ. A servant to you might not seem that exciting or wonderful and if you don’t think that seems exciting or wonderful you’ll be even less overwhelmed with the actual greek word that the KJV, ESV and NIV translate as servant. It is word that isn’t used because they didn’t want to offend our sensitive and the Greek word is doulos and it means slave. Paul and Timothy write to the church of Philippi as slaves of Jesus Christ. 


To be a servant is one thing but slave is something entirely different isn’t it. To be servant means that you work for your master, you get paid for your work and you go home, but a slave has no pay, no rights, they are not their own. Paul is not saying that Jesus is some tyrannical slave trader, rather it is of the wonderful truth of the gospel of what God has done for us. By our nature we are in slavery to sin, we are slaves to the Devil, we are captivated by him, blinded by him (2 Cor 4:3-4) and under the righteous wrath of God. But Christ Jesus has bought us with a price, redeeming us through what he has done for us, in his life, death and resurrection. In our redemption we now belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, we are his, bought with a price, don’t miss this, for the believer we are his possession. 


Jesus in his life and death showed what it was to be a slave. In the coming weeks we will get to chapter 2:6 and following where we are told; Who, 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 (and it’s the same word doulos, slave), he… being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! The same word, Jesus for us, willingly took upon him the form of a slave, from the womb to the tomb, until his resurrection. He didn’t have to, he chose to do for our redemption. Those who are slaves don’t have a choice in the matter, it is the card that they have been dealt with but Jesus chose to condescend for us to die for our salvation. For you believer you have been redeemed, you are no longer a child of the Devil but belong to Christ, you are his all because of what he has done for you. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q57 Which is the fourth commandment?
A. The fourth commandment is, Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath-day, and hallowed it.
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