6th June 2025

6th June 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Philippians 2:1-4 focus v3-4)


Message (Alan Burke)


One of the things that they train wains to do from the time that they are no age is to share. When you think about it though most of us don’t really like sharing the stuff that we have, there is some things that we have which we would never share but if we did like sharing, if we were good at it we would all live in communes and have libraries of things where we can go and borrow what we need and leave it back when we are done. Yet we are taught to share and it is an important lesson in life and it teaches us important lessons about how to get on with each other about the need for compromise and how we don’t always get our own way. Here in what Paul says he tells the church to do nothing out of selfish ambition. Think about that, Paul is not telling us to share our toys but he is telling us to nothing out of self-seeking, selfish ambition, self interest or rivalry for that is what the Greek word coveys. Nor are we to do anything out of vain conceit ie pride and both selfish ambition and pride come from sinful motivations, instead we are to in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 


For all of us think just how impactful it would be for the people of God if we lived like this, if we weren’t so caught up in the here and now and things that have no eternal importance people would see and know that we are Christ’s clearly by how we live but for many of us there is no difference between how we live and how the world lives. This teaching is the polar opposite to how the world works and how we live our lives and what we teach our children either intentionally or simply by our actions. Think of these words of Paul, he is exhorting the believers in the Church in Philippi to live in unity, to put aside selfish ambition, vain conceit, he’s saying don’t have anything to do with these instead you need to live humbly, considering others better than ourselves, looking not to our own interests but to the interests of others. It’s not that there was all out war in the church in Philippi but Paul was speaking so that to prevent what can be so destructive would be knocked on its head so that the work that Paul did among them would not prove to be in vain (2:16). 


Why did Paul want the church to be united? Well, it was so that they would continue on in the mission of the gospel, that the church who were in Christ would live lives reflecting their union with him, that in their union with one another, as they lived humbly that God would work though them. And this isn’t rocket science, no one is going to want to be part of a church that are falling out over the carpet or the curtain tie backs and no one is going to believe that those who fall out over the carpet or the curtain tie backs have anything to offer a world that is perishing when they are so caught up in nonsense looking sight what is eternally of worth and the heavenly hope that they claim to have. May God forgive us for how we have often not looked to him, how even though we are untied with Christ we have lived no differently to the world around us, when we have allowed strife and conceit within us to thrive and may our attitude be that of Christ Jesus who as Paul goes on and we will think about more next week 6 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, 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! (Phil 2:6-8)


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q103 What do we pray for in the third petition?
A. In the third petition, which is, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven,” we pray, that God, by his grace, would make us able and willing to know, obey, and submit to his will in all things, as the angels do in heaven.
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