In this partnership between us, God and ‘Team Church’, each person has a vital role to play.

God’s role is great: without Him, we can’t be saved, and He is the One who both begins and completes the good work in each one of us! (Phil 1:6) The Message version translates Phil 2:13 as ‘that energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.’ (Phil 2:13, The Message) We rely ultimately on God’s love for us and strength in us as the Holy Spirit dwells in us.

Our part as individuals is to understand what God has done and who we are in God (accepted, chosen, and unconditionally loved) and to let these truths influence, shape and affect how we live. Just as footballers and cricketers can’t just rest on their laurels or reputations but have to train and work hard to be good team players, so we have to follow God with passion and effort, making every effort (as Peter says) to ‘add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.’ (2 Pet 1:5-7) Paul’s advice to individuals spills over into our relationships with others: to ‘do everything without grumbling or arguing.’ (Phil 2:14) Grumbling and arguing were particular problems for the people of Israel in the wilderness wanderings and they are very human characteristics. All of us can easily fall into grumbling or arguing, and most of the time, we don’t even really see these things as a problem. But if a team is to be effective, it has to work together: ‘united we stand, divided we fall.’

God’s plan is that the church acts as a witness to the world, showing people what God is like. No sports fan enjoys watching a team that looks disjointed and at odds with itself. Similarly, Team Church is not much use to our communities if we are disjointed and at odds with each other. Bickering, party strife, holding grudges and arguing for the sake of it are no recommendations for God. There is enough of that in the world. We can’t expect people to believe what we say about God if we are not loving each other and living together in harmony. John said, ‘Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.’ (1 John 2:9-10) Loving each other is the biggest witness we have.

Paul says to the Galatian church, ‘If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.’ (Gal 5:15) It’s a striking image. We have to let go of disagreements and division and let what we believe shape us and mould us so that we can become blameless and pure, so that we can become who we are called to be: ‘children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation, shining like stars, holding firmly to the world of life.’ (Phil 2:15-16) We have to forgive and learn to bear with each other: ‘Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.’ (Eph 4:31-32) Again, this is something we have to do. God won’t get rid of these things for us; there has to be a co-operation with Him that this old way of life has to go. But if we are living in Him, we will want to get rid of all bitterness, range and anger, brawling, malice and slander. We will want to forgive.  Forgiveness is the outworking of a forgiven heart.

This morning we looked at Philippians 2:12-18 and saw how God’s plan for each one of us is for us to be part of a winning partnership – a partnership involving each individual, God, and ‘Team Church’! Team sports work best when gifted and talented individuals work together (often under the management of a great coach or manager); it’s not enough to have one virtuoso in any team. We need God; we need to do our bit; we need each other. When all these pieces fit together, then we have a winning partnership, but it’s all too easy to get one part of this puzzle out of proportion, which leads to all kinds of problems.

Paul says, ‘continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose.’ (Phil 2:12-13) This is not the ‘working out’ of maths lessons or the ‘work out’ at the gym, but an outworking of what God says is true and a re-alignment of our lives according to His principles. It does involve effort and hard work (see 1 Cor 9:25-27, Eph 4:3, Rom 14:19), but God is also very present doing His part as well! Salvation is all from Him (Eph 2:8-9). Life is meant to be a partnership in the gospel where we can be confident, not in our own strength, but in God’s. God has begun a good work in us, and God will carry on that good work to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. We can have hope and confidence because of God’s character. He’s not a quitter; He never gives up on us.

Paul reminds us, however, that we need each other as well. Living and working together is not easy. It’s not easy for sports people to learn to fit into a team and it’s not easy for us to be part of a team either. But Paul talks about the importance of getting along together in just about every letter he wrote, because he knows this is part of our witness, part of the thing that will show others the reality of God. He has already outlined the way of humility and the way of servanthood in the opening verses of this chapter, and now he reminds us to ‘do everything without grumbling or arguing.’ (Phil 2:14) That way, God’s purpose for His people as a witnessing community may be fulfilled: ‘so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” (Phil 2:15)

Dame Vera Lynn sang the song ‘We’ll meet again’ during the Second World War as an encouragement to all that the suffering and separation wouldn’t last for ever. We too are glad that we’ll be meeting again from Sunday 2nd August. Online services have been a great way of keeping in touch (and we will continue to livestream Sunday services on Facebook Live even when meetings in Market Street resume), but we can’t wait to meet again in person!

Services throughout August will be at 10:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. on Sundays, and we will also hold alternate prayer meetings and Bible studies on Thursday evenings at 7:30 p.m.

We are also holding our ‘Take Back The Streets’ prayer meeting on Saturday 8th August between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. Join us to pray either in the building or walk and pray for Goldthorpe throughout this team. Let’s continue to pray for our community and for God to move in power, in healing and in salvation as we seek God’s face together at last.

Propaganda and rhetoric are powerful tools, especially in the hands of skilled orators. Language can be a powerfully emotive weapon which can be used to persuade, argue and propose all kinds of views. It can be very difficult to sift fact from emotion in speeches and it can be hard not to be swayed by these tools in the hands of skilled debaters. Throughout history we have seen how politicians in particular can use oratory to persuade us to do things which normally we would not even consider or can motivate us to do things we would normally be reluctant to do. As with most things, this can be used both positively and negatively, to inspire or to condemn. We have all seen a little of this in recent times with government announcements about the coronavirus pandemic, many of which seem to have little solid factual foundation but which use emotive language in many ways to persuade us to an agreed point of view which may or may not be the correct one.  The use of statistics can easily be manipulated; as so many have commented, interpretation of these can reach apparently mutually exclusive conclusions, and it’s easy to feel bewildered by the agenda of those making the speeches.

In Acts 16:16-40, we see how Paul and Silas end up being thrown into prison for relatively little: the exorcism of a slave girl means her owners lose access to their means of income (since she is no longer able to earn money by telling fortunes), but they soon resort to emotive language to get their own way. Instead of admitting that they are motivated primarily by the loss of profit, they say, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.” (Acts 16:20-21) They appealed to people’s sense of national identity, made people feel afraid of sedition and fuelled anti-Semitism. Their charges had little basis in law (hence Paul’s comments about being a Roman citizen who had been treated illegally at the end of the chapter, which threw the magistrates into a blue funk.) Nonetheless, they seemed to be getting their own way, with the magistrates not even bothering to check out the accusations before handing out a beating and imprisonment.

We need to be careful about our use of language. Eugene Peterson comments that “we cannot be too careful about the words we use; we start out using them and they end up using us.” (‘Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places’) Words matter, as the Bible makes plain; Jesus is Himself known as the Word (John 1:1-3). We don’t need a veneer of respectability to our words (something Eugene Peterson describes as ‘religious lace’); we need solid truth and we also need our hearts to be in line with our words. Above all, we need to be soaked in the truth of God’s words, for then we will be guided into all truth. It’s far too easy to be led astray by words, but we need ‘words of insight’ to guide us and lead us (Prov 5:1), gracious words to provide instruction and help (Prov 16:21, 24) and the wisdom to discern between deceptive words and truth.

John Stott, writing about the foundation of the church in Philippi (Acts 16:6-40), says ‘it would be hard to imagine a more disparate group than the business woman, the slave girl and the gaoler. Racially, socially and psychologically they were worlds apart. Yet all three were changed by the same gospel and were welcomed into the same church.’ (Commentary on Acts, P 268)

One of the most amazing things about the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it takes disparate groups of people and draws them together into the body of Christ. There is really no reason to assume that the church is made up of one kind of person and definitely no reason to think that the church should be full of one age group, one racial group or one class of people. Diversity and variety should be the hallmark of every church, because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all people. Church needs to reflect the diversity of our society and so should be a multi-generational, multi-racial and multi-faceted group of people. After all, Jesus is declared ‘worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.’ (Rev 5:9) If every tribe, language, people and nation will be purchased for God by the blood of the Lamb, then we have no reason to expect or promote exclusion in any form within our churches.

The gospel ultimately has the power to reach a wide diversity of people and has a unifying effect (it binds together those who may have little else in common as members of God’s family.) We who live in an era of social disintegration need to understand and exhibit the same unifying power of the gospel as experienced by those in the church founded at Philippi.

Prison is not an experience most of us equate with joy. The two things just don’t seem synonymous. Prison implies restrictions, lack of freedom, punishment and deprivation. When injustice is added into the equation – being wrongfully imprisoned – we can’t imagine viewing this as a positive experience!

But Paul and Silas offer us a different perspective on imprisonment. (Acts 16:16-40) They are wrongly arrested, flogged and imprisoned because their actions in delivering a slave woman from an impure spirit led to a loss of income for money-grabbing owners who depended on the woman’s ability to tell fortunes to rake in profit, but we don’t find them timorously cowering in a corner or woefully lamenting the limitations of the justice system. Instead, we find them praying and singing hymns to God! (Acts 16:25)

Repeatedly in the book of Acts, joy is the response to persecution and opposition, including physical harm to individuals.

• The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. (Acts 5:41)

• When facing accusation and death, Stephen’s ‘face was like the face of an angel.’ (Acts 6:15)

• When forced out of town, the response was ‘and the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.’ (Acts 13:52)

This is in direct response to Jesus’s words (Matt 5:10-12) and is a response that runs through the entire New Testament:

• Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. (James 1:2-3)

• But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Pet 4:13)

How can we learn to do this? We do this primarily by focussing on God’s sovereignty, power and purposes which cannot be thwarted. (Job 42:1) No matter what comes against us, we know that God is in control and can work for our good in all circumstances. (Rom 8:28) We learn to see beyond the present troubles to the eternal glory He is working out for us (see 2 Cor 4:16-18, Rom 8:18). Sometimes, deliverance comes quickly (Paul and Silas are released from prison by miraculous means and move on from Philippi); at other times, it may not be so quick and may even end in our death (as ultimately happened to Paul and many other apostles.) But joy is promised to us by Jesus’s constant presence with us and becomes a testimony in itself.