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unity

Countdown to Onemindedness

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Countdown to Onemindedness

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.

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One Body, Many Members

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One Body, Many Members

This text is related to a portion of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians in which he is teaching about gifts, supernatural experiences and spiritual manifestations among the believers. Some believers were elevating certain gifs and experiences over others, and so Paul is writing to preserve the unity of the church by laying down some basic principles regarding spiritual gifts and their use. The larger argument goes on for three chapters, and you would do well to study it, understand and apply it , but for today, I just want to focus on a couple of principles.

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The Struggle is Real

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The Struggle is Real

Here in Acts 6, we see the first real internal tension in the Jerusalem church. And we’ll see that the tension arises, before the “bad” Gentile’s come in. Before the “good” Gentiles come in. Before the Samaritans come in. It’s a tension that arises between the Hebrew Jews and the Hellenistic Jews.  Now, we don’t know how identifiable these two groups were in the church - we don’t know if they had separate services for different languages our churches does, but we do know that they were distinct enough that tensions at times did arise between the groups, and here in Acts six we see the heart of the issue is that one group is feeling neglected, not only feeling - they were being neglected - as if they were not fully part of the priorities of the church. 

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