Today’s key thought is about one-mindedness. I got to witness an amazing display of one-mindedness this week. A couple friends and I were able to go down to the Raptors game this past Tuesday. I’m a Bucks fan, but I have to give credit where credit is due. I figured there would be a couple of hundred of us. Nope. We counted 10. At one point Giannis, the Bucks star, missed a free throw and it got loud, the loudest I’ve ever heard at an event. I left there amazed at the crowd and thought, there is no way the Bucks are winning in Toronto, and after last night I guess I was right.
Paul is as big a fan of the Philippian church as anyone in that stadium. See The raptors may give their fans joy, but Paul says to the Philippian church in verse three that they can complete his joy. He’s found much joy in them, he always prays for them with joy, but now, as he has shared his hopes for them, to go on without him, he tells them how they can fill up his joy, he’s cheering for them.
complete my joy by being of the same mind,
‘I will need no further happiness,’ he says, ‘if only I can hear that you are a united church.’
See last week, we saw that Paul had told the Philippians that he may never see them again, but his one charge to them was that they would go on together living as an outpost of the kingdom of heaven, living as citizens of the heavenly kingdom set apart from the world, standing firm in the teaching, striving together in the gospel and not fearing anything. We noted last week that Paul was speaking to them as a church together, and now he addresses that togetherness, even more directly, for in order for them to continue on as an outpost of the kingdom, they must be united. They must be one-minded. For a kingdom divided cannot stand.
Acts 2 is the moment when the church together is baptized with the Holy Spirit. Now what does that mean? and what does that mean for us?
Some see this moment as repeatable, they speak about the baptism of the Spirit as an experience that is available to us today. I want to be careful and precise in our understanding, which means we have to note that 1) nowhere in the Bible is the phrase “baptized in the Spirit” used except when speaking of this moment in Acts, 2) in not other time in the Bible does the Holy Spirit come upon the church in the same way as it does in Acts 2. There are other fillings of the Spirit both in Acts and elsewhere in the NewTestament, but there is no other fire. So what is the baptism of the spirit and what does it signify? What does it mean for us?
The Spirit directed the author of Hebrews in chapter 13 to say some things regarding our worship. This makes sense because he has argued in the book that the Old Covenant and its outward forms has been fulfilled in Christ and set outside, so how do we worship now? In verses 7-16, we in fact find some words to us regarding our corporate worship.
What transfers? Contentment. The command to find our security and satisfaction in the Lord rather than in our possessions or our pocketbook. We are content with what we have and what can never be taken from us: God's covenantal presence. That’s what carries over from the Old Covenant to the New. Just as God was with his covenant people then, He is with his covenant people now. Just as he promised to be with them in the face of opposition then, he promises to be with us in our pocketbook persecution now.
Why join a church? The Book of Hebrews draws to a close with a description of the New Covenant Community, and a prescription that those who are called by the Lord be in community with one another in local churches.
