“Healthy Church Relationships” – FBC Morning Light (12/13/2024)

Well, a good Friday morning to you. This is Friday the 13th, and you know the pagans and those who are filled with superstition are thinking, oh no, this is Friday the 13th, it's a bad thing. No, it's a good thing.

It's a day that the Lord has given to us, it's a day He's made, and we're going to rejoice in it. And we're going to read today the book of Philippians in our Bible reading plan, and we're getting pretty close to the end of reading through the scriptures in chronological order, and I hope this has been a great blessing to you.

But today, I want to kind of follow up on our conversation yesterday from the book of Ephesians. Remember yesterday, we kind of lamented, I guess, the condition of individualized Christianity within the local church, where too many Christians come to church, they come on Sunday morning, they sit, they listen, they may talk a little bit after church or whatever, but then they leave, and then there's no further real connection with the body of Christ for another seven days, and then another hour and a half together, and then gone.

And that lack of real concern and relationship within the body of Christ isn't really walking worthy of the calling with which we've been called. So we mentioned that yesterday. Now in Philippians chapter 2, Paul really kind of picks up on that same theme, where he gives us some marks of healthy church relationships.

So we ought to be in relationship with one another, and those relationships within the local church ought to be healthy. What does that look like? What does it look like? Well, in these first 11 verses of chapter 2, Paul mentions several things.

He begins by talking about being a gospel-affected church, where we have consolation in Christ, comfort of love, fellowship of the Spirit, affection, and mercy. We've received these things from Christ individually, and those are true of us corporately.

Then he goes on to say, okay, here's how you as a local church ought to interact with each other. Fulfill my joy, he says, by being like-minded. One of the marks of healthy congregational relationships is a like-mindedness.

You don't have a bunch of parties, different parties, in the congregation with their ambitions and their passions and their goals for the church, and they're all competing with one another. No, there's a like-mindedness.

Then he says, you have the same love. First and foremost, a love for Christ, and then a true and genuine love for one another, a love for God's Word, a love for God's people, a love for the lost, a love for what God loves.

Have the same love. Being of one accord. There again, that unified spirit. Not a uniformity where everybody looks the same and all that kind of stuff, but a unified spirit where we say, I'm in this for the sake of the congregation, for the sake of the church, for the moving forward of Christ's kingdom and his work in this local church.

A unified spirit. In verse 3, he says, let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit. So, healthy church relationships. There's not going to be this pompous ego, arrogant stuff where I'm in it for me to vaunt myself and make myself look good, so everybody will praise me.

None of that. Instead, there's lowliness of mind where each esteems others better than himself. In other words, I have a true, true, genuine appreciation for my brothers and sisters in Christ. Even though they may be quite different from me, they may be completely different from me in terms of their ethnic background, maybe their personal tastes, maybe what they're like, and so on and so forth, but I nevertheless must esteem them, I am esteeming them as better than myself.

I don't vaunt myself up above them. A humble appreciation for others. And then, a sincere interest, verse 4, a sincere interest in the in the lives of those within the congregation where I serve, and their objectives.

He says, let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Yeah, I have my interests, I certainly do, but I'm not to have my interests exclusive of those of my brothers and sisters in Christ.

I want to help them achieve what God has for them to achieve. As well as, I want them to help me achieve what God has for me to achieve. There's a mutuality in that. And then finally, verses 5 through 11 really sum it all up by saying, look, we need the sacrificial servant mind of Christ.

Let this mind be in you, he says, which was also in Christ Jesus. And he goes and talks about that mind, who in the form of God, not considered a robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, coming in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

He says, let this mind be in you, that was in Christ Jesus. This is what healthy congregational relationships look like. So on this Friday, before you go to church in a couple of days, ask yourself a couple of questions.

One of them is, how healthy are our church relationships? And then get very personal about it. What am I doing to promote good health in our church congregation? And I trust that the Lord will bless you and speak to you and encourage you to take your part, to play your part in promoting good health in the congregation.

Father in heaven, I pray, help us in this regard that we may have healthy churches, healthy in our relationships with one another, we pray. We ask all this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, listen, make it a priority on the Lord's day.

Get to God's house, assemble with God's people, have a good day of worship and service of the Lord. Have a good weekend. May God bless.