Dear saints, we're continuing on in the book of Philippians. If you would turn, please, to Philippians chapter two. Philippians chapter two, we'll be reading just verses one through four. This is the living and inerrant word of the living God. Therefore, if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, Fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Father in heaven. This is your precious and holy word, and we are your people. We long to know what you want us to know. Fill us with your spirit, we pray. May you be glorified in our attentive minds. May you be glorified in our application of this precious part of your word. We love you, and we praise you, and thank you for your goodness to us. In Jesus' name, amen. For those of you who are visiting, Phil and I have been Preaching through the book of Philippians. So we're getting close to halfway there. We've been alternating. And last week in Phil's sermon, he referred to the kind of conduct that is worthy of the gospel. The gospel of the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the gospel. He is the good news. This is conduct worthy of those who proclaim the gospel because they love the gospel and they delight in it. And so they proclaim it. And so the saints together then, Phil was sharing last week, produce what is needed to take a strong, united stand for the Lord Jesus. And even in difficult times, even in persecution. And those people who are standing fast, they're standing fast, which means they're standing firmly together, they're not apart. They're standing fast in one spirit. In other words, one heart together. And with one mind, it says. In other words, they have one way of thinking, primarily. And they do it together. And they're striving together for the faith of the gospel. Even in suffering, and Phil mentioned the three young Ugandans who were martyred. who died joyfully for the sake of the gospel. And they were together. And there's a great awakening through them to end the church. And so, Phil shared at the end of his sermon also that suffering as a body together in faith, by faith, can unify a church. It should. It does, by his grace. And it makes us stronger. In that, we go forward again together, we suffer. And he mentioned it, thinking of it a different way than the world thinks of it. We suffer because it's a gift from God to do so. In his sovereignty, he brings it into our lives. And he's using it to conform us to his image. And so it's a gift, if as we walk humbly together through that suffering. And the saints at Philippi were going through that also, as their dear shepherd was in Rome, in prison. As I was studying this this week, I found something that really caught my eye because it was about Japan. And I lived in Japan for nine years. And so anytime Japan comes up, it gets my attention. And this is about swords. And this is related to this text. This pastor related it to this text. And it's about swords though. So I read that. And I don't know, Katana is the name for a Japanese sword. And they're worth a lot of money generally. And if you have $3,000, you can get a really basic one. But if you have 300,000, you might get one of the better ones. So, and this is just an illustration here. So they make these swords and it takes a long time and they've been making them for generations. And the first ones were strong and they kept a sharp edge, but they're somewhat brittle, you know, they could break it turns out, even though they had a sharp edge. And so they started learning hundreds of years ago, how not to make them so brittle. And what they did was they started laminating Kinds of metal, this hard metal and then soft metal, hard metal, soft metal. And not only did they do it a few times, they did it tens of thousands of laminations. I know, it's hard to believe. So in that, they ended up with a sword, because there's two kinds of metal in there, that was very strong, it would keep its edge, but it was brittle. And it was not brittle, I mean, it was pliable, I guess, and it would not break. In the end result, it was a finely crafted weapon with extreme pliability, strength, and it would retain its honed edge. So all that's to say, this is the point of the illustration. He said this, and I'll just kind of quote. He said, just as Japanese sword makers repeatedly hammered together layers of metal to produce a sword that will be strong, strong enough to withstand breaking, So our God allows trials to hammer metal into the lives of us, of his children. Just as a sword made of hard metal will easily break in battle, so the believer, filled with pride, will also break in adversity. It is in the forging hand of God that humility and dependence on God, in humility, are developed in our lives to create character that will triumph in adversity. This is part of what Phil was sharing last week. The hard steel in our lives is the word of God. The soft steel in our lives is a growing humility and a dependence on God in humility. These are forged together in our lives through trials, fiery trials, and prayer to produce vessels that will give him glory. So we need the hard steel confidence of what we believe the word of God, the almighty word of God, together with his soft steel of humility. And I think that's a good picture of what I'm seeking to tell you this morning. So we are in a battle. We all know this, we pray invocatory Psalms in our battles, but we have individual battles, we have battles with the world, we have battles with the enemy. We have battles. And it has to be through using the sword of the Spirit, which is mighty, almighty. And also, one of my points is, we have to go through this as a body together in humility. Individually humble, certainly as a humble body here. So first of all, it says, therefore, if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, so there's those four ifs. And actually, in the Greek, those ifs aren't really there. So this is a poetic form, and it's meant to emphasize these four blessings from the Lord Jesus. So the therefore is there because of their suffering together, which, again, Phil shared at the end of chapter one. So therefore, then we see what unites them in these four. What unites them in this suffering that they're going through. These four rhetorical ifs, which really are certainties. They're not conditional. They're not technically ifs. They're absolute certainties. It's more like Paul was emphasizing this, something like, so since we have these blessings, and they're all in Jesus Christ, we can go forward. So first of all, consolation in Christ, that basically means encouragement or comfort. We do, praise God, have consolation in him. Hebrews 4.15 tells us that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. He is very compassionate toward our weaknesses and he consoles us. He's the one who primarily comforts and encourages and consoles us. And then 2 Corinthians 1, verse five says, for as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, or when they abound in us, when we are suffering for the sake of his name, so our consolation also abounds through Christ. So your sufferings, you may feel, you're abounding in those right now. But his consolation can abound also. It's a clear promise in 2 Corinthians 2, chapter one, verse five. So abounding comfort is in him. So certainly we have great encouragement by being a part of a body, local body of Christ. It's been such a joy this morning to worship in unity with you. That's the point of the sermon is. There's joyful unity when we're worshiping the Lord together and humbling ourselves to come and worship him. And because of this great encouragement that we have, we can encourage one another. We are called indeed to comfort one another. We can continue to grow in unity as fellow members of the body of Christ. And then in Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians, Paul wrote this. This is 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 16. And it was a blessing of Paul to that church. He said, now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and our God and Father who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work. And he talks about an everlasting consolation here that we have in Jesus Christ. We have everlasting consolation in our Lord himself, it says, and good hope, which comforts our hearts, and then establishes us to speak good words and do good acts for the glory of his name. So the question I would ask just after this point, am I doing all that I can to promote unity by comforting one another, especially in this local body, in your family too, of course, but in this family of families. Ask yourself that, ask the Lord to help you understand that. So second, comfort of love. The love of Christ for us comforts us. when we are faced with conflict. How could we go forth in conflict? How does anybody go forth in conflict without knowing the love of Jesus? I don't know. And so knowing and experiencing his love for us, that enables us to grow then in our love for one another, which we experience here, praise God, which is the foundation of unity, his love for us. And again, that verse in 2 Thessalonians said, our Lord Jesus Christ himself and our God and Father has loved us and given us everlasting consolation. In other words, everlasting comfort. We should never lack for this when we need this consolation and this comfort. He has it and it's because of his love for us. Fellowship of the Spirit, yes, praise God. There is fellowship in the Holy Spirit. the spirit who dwells in us, in his people. And certainly we can rejoice in the fellowship of the saints as we do, as we have been this morning. And we can rejoice in the communion in Christ Jesus that we have with one another here through the spirit. And part of that joyful fellowship being that we can serve one another. In fact, we can practice all those one another's that we looked at several years ago and apply them and bless each other We can go through suffering then, too, and much trial, if need be, together. And then finally, affection and mercy that we have in Jesus. That is basically compassion. It's mercy. It's, in the King James Version, use the word bowels again, which we wouldn't use nowadays, but it means a deep-seated emotion. It's at the gut level, at a very deep level in you. That kind of affection. In fact, it is the affection of Christ Jesus that we saw earlier in Philippians. Then there's a pastor, I'm sorry, before that, I wanted to quote one verse that I always think about when I'm thinking of these things is Ephesians 4.29. And it says, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. There's two one another, there's three probably in there. that we are to apply, and we can apply by His grace. So there is affection and mercy in Christ, and certainly we know that. We know the mercy of the Lord Jesus to us, and so we can be loving and merciful to one another. We can be kind to one another. There's a pastor named Michael Hoodman that I also found. I could have put this anywhere in this sermon, but I chose to put it here. And he said, those who know the love of Christ, do not wrangle for position within the family of God. And I'll make that point just a little bit later. Those who know the love of Christ do not wrangle for position within the family of God. Right, they don't need to. Rather, they recognize the purpose of the body of Christ and live it out. And they're willing to take a lower place in order to serve others. They engage in Christian fellowship with a focus on loving God and loving one another. 1 Thessalonians chapter three, Paul prayed this. May the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all. And Phil and I do pray this. I think he shared that last week. We pray this for this body here, that we would increase. In fact, we would abound in love to one another. And we would stand out as those who love Jesus. And we pray that. And may we increase and abound in love and in humility and so continue to experience the joy of the unity that we are blessed with here. So what are some of the ways that we see that unity? Then we go on to verse two. So since we have those blessings in Christ that we just went through, Paul said, since he's talking to the Philippians, and they are far apart, but he said, since you have all those, fill up my joy. Make me joyful here in prison. Fulfill my joy by, doing these things. Paul wanted the joy, it's kind of like a father and his children, over his children, to see that his children are following the truth together. That gave him great joy, no matter what. And he wanted them to follow in the steps of the Lord Jesus. That gave him joy. And his joy, in fact, depended on the growing unity in the church at Philippi. Now there was some disunity. We'll talk about that a little bit later in chapter four. But he said, this is kind of what it looks like. He said, fulfill my joy by being like-minded. I will really be joyful if you all have basically the same mind as you go forward serving the Lord Jesus. Paul wanted the joy of seeing them be like-minded, to think with the same main goals, the main heart. That is, to glorify God and to enjoy him, according to our catechism. And we can, praise God, be like-minded with each other, because we have the mind of Christ. We have his spirit dwelling in us. Philippians 127, which Phil also concluded with last week, it says, stand fast in one spirit, with one mind, striving together, other versions say side by side, for the faith of the gospel. So you can picture that, we're side by side, we're not separated from each other. We're going forward together. We have one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel. May that be so, even more so here. And we'll see later that we're to be like-minded. So we're to be like-minded and we're to be lowly-minded. Those are two mindsets, right? We're to be like-minded toward the gospel. We're to be lowly-minded toward one another. Actually, and they are related. Like-minded and lowly-minded. In other words, we're to have, all of us are to have a mind to serve each other with humility. where we are learning to humble ourselves, to put to death, to put off foolish pride, to put that to death, to put it off and get rid of selfish pride. And then it goes on and talks about having the same love, to have the same love. In other words, a shared, first of all, primarily, a shared love for the Lord Jesus, a shared love for him, which enables us then to love others. We have the power then because of the love, his love poured out into our hearts. We have that power, the power of the Holy Spirit to love one another, to express our love for one another. And those who don't know the Lord will observe us then maybe and say, we ought to really stand out in that regard. They should say, well, is that what disciples of Jesus look like? I hope that's what they say here. They might say, wow, they really love each other and they serve each other. in a way, that must be what it means when Jesus loves a group of people. It's how they act. And we saw earlier, to live is Christ. Every breath we take that we are taking right now is to, because of our Lord Jesus. To live is Christ, to worship is Christ, to love one another certainly is Christ, to more and more love as he does. Being of one accord, then, of one mind. I always think of my, I've had four accords in my life, but I, you know, I always think of that. But way beyond that, we're supposed to have one mind, in other words, we have to have one mind. Paul wanted the joy of seeing the saints be of one accord, of one mind. In other words, in agreement, basically. Mostly in agreement. Or if they're not in agreement, they still can communicate peacefully about it. In agreement. So they have the same heart to love and to serve. They love doing that. And this is much more, they wanna spend more time, in other words, loving and serving than maybe disagreeing or thinking mostly for themselves or going their own way. Certainly not that. Ephesians chapter four says, Paul said to the church in Ephesus, I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you, in other words, I exhort you, I encourage you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. And this is how he defined some of that. With all lowliness, which means humility, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. We're to endeavor, we're to work at that kind of unity. To walk worthy of our calling means to walk in humility toward one another. I mean, we must walk in humility or that will not, that worthiness of our calling will not be achieved. Martin Lloyd-Jones said this, lowliness or humility is the opposite of self-esteem, self-assertion, and pride. And then he said, humility is one of the chief of all the Christian virtues. It is the hallmark of the child of God. Indeed. And so, dear family, as a body of believers who are learning to grow, we are growing in humility. We see then what we have by God's grace. It's a joyful place to be here, to be here and to worship. because we are at peace with one another. We're walking, yes, we have ways to go, but we're walking in humility, we're growing in our love for one another, and it's evident, and we have the same attitude of heart. Well, then it goes on, verse three, let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, nothing, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself. So Paul begins to speak about humility, here by speaking of ways not to serve or not to act because they are not done with the right heart. He says, let nothing be done through two things, we'll focus on those just for a minute, through selfish ambition or conceit. Some versions say vain conceit. So first of all, selfish ambition, what is that? What can be understood in this way, motivation to elevate oneself or to put one's own interests before another's. Selfish ambition. You're ambitious, but it's for yourself. Now the Greek term here actually has a connotation of being contentious, causing factions. In fact, King James Bible translates this word here as strife, selfish ambition, strife. It does cause strife. And then conceit. Conceit is excessive appreciation of one's own worth or virtue, of what you think you're worth or how virtuous you are. And again, there was some of that going on in Philippi. We'll see that in a few weeks more. So together, together, personal self-focused ambition and conceit or self-centeredness are a blight on a local church body. It is a blight. and may it be and hated for what it is here more and more, it is sin against the Lord of the church and sin against one another also. It divides the church and does not maintain the unity of the spirit that we saw in Ephesians 4, 3. So vain conceit makes it even stronger. Vain conceit is excessive pride or self-esteem that has no foundation in reality. And you're all puffed up, your head's big. It's not reality though. Vain conceit is an elevated and an incorrect sense of self. We should be dying to that. And therefore, it says, doing nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit means not letting our actions be motivated by selfishness or pride or one-upmanship at all. Here, now pride, let's talk about pride for a minute. I won't ask for a raise of hands who has this problem. Pride is competitive by nature. It's competitive. In fact, it causes competitiveness, but it's competitive by nature. It causes people to want to be above other people, and basically to show off, to focus on themselves, bring attention to themselves, rather than on serving others, dying to themselves. And those things cause division. They cause conflict when that occurs. So this kind of thinking, this kind of attitude does not promote the unity or harmony that the Lord Jesus enables us to do in the spirit, or the joy that comes out of that. That's why the sermon title is Joy, has joy in it. All of Philippians talks about joy. But there's great joy when we are not self-focused. We are really other-focused. Well, Jesus first then. But it is not Christ-like, and it is that, those things become the root of relational conflict, many relational conflicts, because we're too focused on self. Now in his prayer for the church, our Lord Jesus prayed, he was praying to his Father in heaven, this is the high priestly prayer in John 17. And he prayed this, he's speaking to his Father, that they, that is the disciples, that they, may be one just as we are one. Think about what he's praying. That they may be one just as we are one. I in them and you in me. That they may become perfectly one. So that the world may know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Incomprehensible but what a joy to know. We are called to this kind of loving unity, dear family, which we see in the Godhead. We see in the relationships of the triune living God in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And you can see on your notes there, I have a quote from Thomas Manton, a Puritan. And he said, I like this because it's fairly comprehensive on what we're talking about today. He said, the unity that Christ desires is no superficial harmony. In other words, it's not peace faking, right? It's not superficial at all. It is a union of hearts knit together by the same spirit under the influence of the same love reflecting the unity of the Godhood. In verses five through 11, I'm not telling Phil here what to preach, but I can kind of know where he's gonna go. He will be giving us a picture of the perfect example of all that we're talking about, about humility. Our Lord Jesus did not serve, of course, with selfish ambition. He acted the opposite, the complete opposite of that. He humbled himself to become a man and he humbled himself to die on a cross for us. He was not conceited. He gave his life as a ransom for many. He demonstrated his love for us. He showed us what agape love is, what true love is. and he died for us. Paul David Tripp, in this book called Lead, I know a number of folks at our church have read this, and the elders and deacons went through this, I don't remember when that was, several years ago. And the whole book, I think, is worth the introduction, actually. I did read the whole book, but this is what he said in the introduction. And this is the foundation of anybody in leadership. So that's why he put it in the beginning of his book. And it was titled Humility. And here's a couple of his thoughts. He said, humility means knowing that as long as sin still lives inside you, you will need to be rescued from you. The sanctification process by the grace of God in our lives. You will need to be rescued from you, from your lack of humility, your pride. Humility means you love serving more than you crave attention for that. And then he said, humility is about being more motivated to serve than to be seen, you know, as a servant. Humility is about firing, I mean, in other words, you're fired. Humility is about firing your inner lawyer, defensive part of you. By the way, I like lawyers. A lot. Especially one. But I like what he says here. Humility is about firing your inner lawyer and opening yourself up to the ongoing power of transforming grace. Maybe so. Here, more and more. And then Paul, the apostle, Paul states in the second half of verse three here, how we are to act in contrast to selfish ambition and conceit. He said, but in lowliness of mind, again, humility, let each esteem others better than himself. In other words, you count yourself, you count others more significant, more important. than yourself. That would be your tendency, not the other way. Matthew Henry said this, and it's also quoted in your notes. We should be severe upon our own faults and charitable in our judgments of others. That does not happen in unregenerate man, by the way. And then he said, be quick in observing our own defects and infirmities, but ready to overlook and make favorable allowances for the defects of others. Certainly we see those in each other, but we give grace. And then he said, we must esteem the good which is in others above that which is in ourselves. For we best know our own unworthiness and imperfections, right? Indeed, in our knowledge of those, even as imperfect, and we try to avoid those, our knowledge of those should humble us. Now Paul, later in chapter two, in verse 20, he was talking about his son in the faith, Timothy. And we'll be studying that, we'll be studying Timothy and Epaphroditus. But Timothy had a mindset of looking out for other people. And he was specifically commended in that passage, which will be in a couple weeks, I believe. And he said, I have no one like-minded, in other words, like Timothy, who will sincerely care for your state, your welfare. For everyone seeks their own, basically, is what he is saying. Everybody else looks after their own interests. But Timothy's worth you know, how as a son with the father, he has served with me in the gospel. Well, there's a good example. Timothy's worth you know. And then, of course, the Lord himself described his heart as gentle and lowly. That's how he described his own heart in Matthew 11, 29. And he calls us to take his yoke then and learn from Him. We learn from humility by walking with Him. Walking with one another here, too, but walking with Him. And then we become more gentle and loving and sympathetic and lowly or humble. It's not in our nature. That's the part we're working to get rid of by the Spirit. So Jesus was and is kind and meek and humble in perfection. So we need to be near Him. So that is the heart of the perfect servant whom we are to imitate. And this is the kind of heart we should each pray to have in the Spirit, for a lowliness of mind that causes us, when we see people, to esteem them. And that brings about then, in a group, a joyful harmony and a joyful unity in the body. And we're to serve others who maybe the world might say are below us. who are hard to esteem, maybe hard to love. And yet, we're called to minister to them, as the Lord, as the Lord does. Romans 5.8 makes it clear. God, it says, demonstrated his love toward us, and that while we were still sinners, in other words, not much to esteem. While we were hard to esteem and love, Christ died for us. So. Also, if you would turn now just for a minute to the back page of your notes. This is a great exercise. I still go through this with some of the men and myself. It's humbling to me. I need that. And it's called the heart God revives. We had this verse in our readings today, Psalm 51, seven, talking about broken people. In that sense, it means humbled. They're humble people. They're broken because they know they're sinners. But praise God, we're also saints in the Lord Jesus. But if you look down to the third one on the left, under proud people. So there's a comparison. There's proud people, and then there's broken people, or humble people. So number three says, proud people are self-righteous. They look down on others. But on the other side, humble, broken people esteem all others better than themselves, is exactly what we're looking at in the scripture. And then if you go down a little bit, about in the middle, there are three desires. Desire to be served, desire to be a success. The third one, desire self-advancement. So proud people. generally desire self-advancement. That's the focus of their life. But broken people desire to promote others. Again, what we're looking at here, they look out for the interests of others. Go down two more. Proud people are wounded when others are promoted and they are overlooked. But broken people are eager for others to get the credit and rejoice when others are lifted up. They esteem others better than themselves. And then finally, the second one from the bottom. Proud people are unapproachable, more defensive when criticized, but broken people, humble people receive criticism with a humble and an open spirit. I would challenge you, yourself, individually. You can do it together with people, but it's most convicting when you go through this yourself and ask the Lord, Lord, where am I in this? And I pray, we pray, that you are more and more on the right side. That is where your heart is at. Moving on, the final verse, we see that unity comes through self-sacrificial Christ-like love for one another. Let each of you, means all of you in the body, Look out not only for your own interests, his own interests, but also for the interests of others. So these verses come right before, again, we see the highest example of them, the highest example of humility and of loving sacrifice in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. We see a humility in Christ that we can seek, praise God, because he's drawn us to himself. He's given us grace. So we should seek after Him. We should seek to become like Him. And we need to keep seeking all the days of our lives. And we are to apply and put into practice this attitude, of course, lowliness of mind that causes us to esteem others more than we do ourselves. Which, given the fact that we are so prideful by nature, it's such a basic part of what sinful man is, It must be a work of the Spirit. It is a work of the Spirit that we can get rid of that. And it's also, though, an action of love for us to keep growing in. Indeed, it's our love for the Lord Jesus, as I just shared, and our love for one another. Now, the way this is worded, it says, look out not only for, you know, your own interests, but also for the interests of others. So, okay, it indicates that we do have legitimate personal needs that we can look out for, we should. God has commanded us to be stewards of these bodies. Yeah, you have to take care of that, it's his. We have to sometimes consider our personal needs, of course. But on the whole, we, by nature, very easily and readily look to what we want, look to our desires. And we do not then think about others above ourselves. I praise God, he's opened our eyes. We are regenerated by the power of his spirit through the gospel. And we can be going in that right direction. This is just an urging us all to keep doing it, doing it even more. Walking in the spirit together. It's a work of the Spirit to sanctify us and to have this kind of care for other people, to think of others above ourselves, to think of the unity of the body here above ourselves. Thinking of others is how also we are meant to train our children. It's a primary task for parents, to train our children to think in this way and to act in this way to deny their own selfish desires. To work. 1 Corinthians 10 verse 24 says, let no one seek his own, but each one the other's well-being. Summarizes what we're talking about. Let no one seek his own, but each one the other's well-being. And then 1 Corinthians 13, you know the chapter, the section on what is love, it says love does not seek its own. And so our eyes should be open to the needs of others. And we should definitely not have eyes or thoughts only on ourselves primarily or our own desires or our own interests exclusively or primarily. You know, marriage does not work that way. Biblical marriage does not work that way. Two extremely self-focused people have to be giving themselves over to serving one another. And then the children should see that. Marriage doesn't work. in that way. Fellowship, true biblical fellowship. The body of Christ does not work that way. If we have selfish ambition, vain conceit. And service, ministry, sharing the gospel, that doesn't work that way either. So we have to have eyes to care about the interests and needs of other people. Certainly compassion on the lost also. So ask the Lord to give you those kinds of eyes. He can. to give you more of a heart to learn about and show concern for the needs of others. Because agape love is sacrificial by definition. It's the love of Christ, the love we know. It is the love of Christ for us, the love of Christ in us, which causes us to really, actually, truly care for other people and to serve them as Christ serves, to have his mind in us. And so then we'll act more as he did. toward sinners and toward saints. And he said this, our Lord Jesus said this, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. That is how we are to love one another. So dear saints, because of all that we have been given in Jesus that we saw in the beginning, we have consolation in Christ, we have comfort of love in Christ, we have fellowship of the Spirit in Christ, and we have affection and mercy in Christ. We, again, have a holy calling to do all that we can to promote the unity of the body of Christ, certainly here, and then rejoice in the joy, the great joy that comes from that kind of unity and harmony and peace in a body. We should rejoice in that kind of family. And we're to be like-minded in the word, we're to grow in his love for one another by casting off selfish ambition and conceit. We have to root it out, we have to hate it. and then by relating with humility and love and respect toward one another. Let's pray. Dear Father in heaven, we do rejoice this morning that our Lord Jesus came as a loving, a humble servant to show us what humble servanthood is. and to make it possible for us to serve one another here and anyone by that same love. Lord, may we be like-minded in this and serve with humility, in unity, with your heart and for your glory. Lord, may this be an even more joyful fellowship here, all for your glory and the blessing of the saints. May we be strong in your word together. with that hard steel strength of what we believe from your word, together with the soft steel of humility as we battle together. Lord, may we increase and abound in love and in service to one another and for one another and in humility. May our unified service in the kingdom of Christ honor and glorify you. And we ask all these things in the name of our gentle and lowly servant King, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.