Phillippians 2:2-5, “make my joy complete by being of the same
mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do
nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one
another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for
the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in
Christ Jesus”.
We must have the same love and joy as each other and join our souls
together with the same thinking as one another and not let selfishness be among
us. Let us have the same mind as Jesus. Jesus has a mind that is not selfish. If God was selfish, imagine how hard the
world would be. God made everything for
us, light, oxygen to breath, trees and it doesn’t say that in heaven there is
big garden or moon and suns for Himself but He gave it all for us.
God created everything on this earth perfect and He said, this is
good. He made it perfect for us, He said
it will belong to Tyrone, Bruce, Michelle and Robbie. He wasn’t selfish and said it is good and let
me keep it to myself. He didn’t decide
to give what is a little good and keep the rest. He didn’t keep a bit for himself, no he gave
it 100%. He wasn’t selfish at all and
that is where His humility started.
Every evening God would leave the throne to come down to the Garden of
Eden to see Adam and to ask about his day.
He didn’t leave Adam to chase after God and ask, God where are you? Adam never did that meaning he wasn’t humble
as God because Adam was the one waiting for God to come to him. Adam spent his day doing whatever he wanted
but had no time to seek for his God. Every
evening God would come down to Adam, are you all right, how did day go, did you
enjoy the light today?
God didn’t create rain during the seven days but later He gave us rain.
Every day God was pleasing human beings adding a new thing day after day. God brought the rainbow later. Slowly, slowly God increased to prove to us
that He is not selfish.
When we think about selfishness, what pops in our mind? I cannot give this away, I will keep it for
myself. I don’t want him to have it,
better for me to possess it. When people
have something small, they will say, this is mine, it is not yours, we can’t
share it and I will only share if I want.
As a child, if I had something I liked, I would hide it behind my back
and my mum would say to share but I didn’t want to.
When we think it’s mine, God says, I gave it to you freely and I didn’t
hold any part of it, why can’t you share with others. Selfishness is a big mountain that makes many
Christians collapse. It’s one of the
biggest challenges in the world today.
Many can preach the Word of God but when you ask them for something,
they have to think twice. For God, it is
different, He creates what is perfect and gives it away.
If you want comfort, joy, consolation, compassion, then think about
selfishness. Am I selfish? Yes, in one way or another we are selfish. Once my actions project selfishness, God is
not happy. That is why He tells us to do things the way Jesus did.
In the New Testament, this beautiful woman called Mary became pregnant
who will give birth to Jesus. This poor
lady who had nothing and Jesus chose to sit in her womb, not the womb of a
queen. Jesus chose to be born in a
stable, He didn’t choose a palace so He could become the true king that the world
was expecting. He put that glory aside
and was born in a poor family. Who can
expect a king to come from a family that is not royal? If I said Bruce will become a king, we will
laugh because we won’t believe it will happen but for God that is possible to
show He is not selfish and hasn’t come for only the royal family but for all
humanity.
Jesus who is a king grew up without going to school and started to see
people who were sick and started to give them 100% healing. He healed those who were both physically and
spiritually sick and he healed without money receiving money. Who is that doctor that will heal you for no
money? You are blind, the surgeon heals you
and you don’t have to pay, very few surgeons will say that. What restaurant will feed you for free? Jesus blessed people without asking for
payment. Not even for a dollar.
Jesus started to show us how He could humble himself. He slept with us, carried a human body, He
was among us and He was walking and teaching and talking as a simple man.
Now God is humble and humbles himself and every morning he says, “Annette,
please wake up baby”. “Oh I’m tired, let
me sleep”. “Ok, I give you 5 mins”. When you wake up, God has prepared everything
beautiful for you, the sun shining, birds singing, all prepared for you. How much do you prepare for others? What do you do for others? Maybe the first thing is to have breakfast. Feed myself first because I am selfish.
I have no time to pray for others.
My problem is me first. During
the day God will guide you and He protects you from danger and we take that for
granted to the point that we start to think that God doesn’t exist and we have
what we have because it belongs to us forgetting that my body doesn’t even
belong to me.
I try to prove to everyone I’m better than you, my children are better
than yours, my husband is better than yours, etc and in all of that we don’t
say, God has played a role in this. Because God is humble, He continues to
provide and provide.
One time I had a silly dream and I walked into my house and in that
house, someone said, brother I will come every time here to clean your
toilet. In my dream, that man didn’t
show up and the toilet was messy and I complained, why didn’t he come to do his
job, to do what he was supposed to do?
The next day, I went to the church and the toilet was a mess and I
complained, who was supposed to clean it and in my heart I felt bad because I
should clean it myself.
Sometimes we can’t help at church and pretend not to see so we don’t
have to take part. With food, we want to
serve ourselves first to get the best food.
Every time we don’t humble ourselves.
To humble ourselves is very important in Kingdom of God because God
created man to look like Him. Would you
give that power and capacity to someone you create to be like you. If I make a chair, it is to satisfy my needs,
for me to use it. Everything we do is
for ourselves but God said, let us make human beings to look like us.
He came down, touched the dust.
When was the last time you touched dust to please someone else? Have you touched the dust to help your
neighbour, to clean their garden? Most
of the time we don’t want to work for others.
God visited people. How often do
I visit people, call them, pray for them, pray for myself and problems and how
much do I pray for others? God created
us in His image and wants us to act like him, visit people, speak to them and
when we are ready to supply them with what they need. God wants us to share our power, abilities
and skills with others but we are waiting for people to ask before we
share. Yet for God, He created things
without human beings asking for them. He
looked at Tyrone and knew what he needed and prepared it.
Selfishness is not a good thing.
According to Proverbs 6, there are seven things God hates and on the top
of the list is eyes of pride and God calls them abomination. Someone looks at the child, oh what child is
this. You can see pride coming through
their eyes. We sometimes become like
doctors of pride and judge others, I can’t be like her because she is like this
and we do the diagnosis. Instead of
praising God for others, we criticise. God
is looking at us and says, be simple my child.
How often do we talk about others in a negative way and criticise them,
friends, family, churches, pastors.
Remember after Adam sinned, God didn’t cut off the contact but came
down. God asked Adam, “Where are you?”
and then He covered his nakedness by sacrificing the life of an animal. When someone does something wrong, we are
like journalists and spread the news.
Why can’t we become close like God and say, it’s alright, that was the
past, let us cover it.
One time, someone went to the doctor and shared all his problems
including personal problems. The next
day, the doctor told others. What was a secret, the doctor made it to be like a
news story all over the city. God
teaches us simplicity by sacrificing what He can to protect us. We as human beings focus on one mistake and
forget all the good things. “Because she
did that, she is not a Christian anymore”, or “he is a bad guy”. Why do we focus only on what is wrong. How often do you focus on the good things
too? How often do you think about the good
things others?
In Mark 10: 48, Jesus for the last time is going through Jericho and He
saw Bartimaeus and he couldn’t see. Everybody
here, close your eyes. Tell me what am I
doing? You can’t see what I’m doing but
you can hear me. Open your eyes
now. It makes a difference. With eyes closed you will see darkness, you
might see colours but they are not true colours until you open your eyes.
God did not give this man sight when he was born. Look at the simpleness of God and see how He
brings himself to humility. I am God, I
will make you blind because I am simple and you also can be simple and those
who are well, they can take care of you.
Many think that if you are sick, you must be a sinner but that is 100%
wrong. God didn’t create Adam rich and Jesus
was not born rich. The wealth that Jesus
focuses on is the spiritual wealth, that is the most important because when you
die, you won’t take anything with you, even your clothes will remain. God focuses on what is inside you, not what
is material.
This man heard that Jesus was passing through Jericho. Do you care that John Key the primeminister
of NZ is coming to Hamilton? I don’t have
time to see that. What would I gain? No interest for me or my family so I won’t
go. This man decided to be where Jesus
would pass and the crowd came with Jesus and people were talking and
shouting. By hearing the noise, Bartimaeus
asked, what is happening? “Jesus is here”. So the man shouted Jesus, son of David, Jesus! His voice went over the voices of the crowd
to the point that people tried to quiet him down.
He couldn’t be quiet, he shouted again.
Look how simple that man is.
People told him to be quiet but he knew what he was after, he knew he
needed Jesus and he shouted to the point that Jesus heard him and stopped. How often in your life have you made noise so
that God will stop? Because of those
around us, we prefer to be quiet, “what will people say if I shout, what will
they say, they may judge me” and we are afraid if the judgements. God is not afraid of the judgements, God who
created others with disabilities is not ashamed. God wants to see how much I will be simple to
help others.
Imagine a prince of England travelling in his car being yelled at. He will not leave his car. But because of his humility, Jesus
stopped. Bring him here. Although he has no chance to see, he had legs
and walked without seeing where he was going and by only following only the
voice of Jesus. The bible doesn’t say he
was led by someone. He went by himself
and Jesus waited for him to come.
Simplicity doesn’t mean you have to be silent or that you can’t express
yourself to God. Sometimes we don’t have
time to shout about our problems. We find
it easy to tell God about our material problems but not our spiritual ways, “Lord
I’m selfish with my life, I do what I want”.
Instead, we focus on cash, cars, homes.
The best home we have is our body because it holds the Holy Spirit.
Jesus asked Bartimaeus, what do you want me to do for you? God coming from heaven to earth and asked, “what
do you want me to do?” Solomon wanted
wisdom. What would you ask? Money, gold, diamonds. If I were Solomon, I might think that I don’t
need wisdom since I have a panel of people who can advise me. Imagine your son in front of the queen of
England and the chid asks for intelligence.
You will feel angry, think about material things, I can’t afford for
your studies. We always think about
money, for that reason Jesus said you can’t serve Jesus and money at the same
time because money makes us selfish.
When the offering comes around, we choose the smallest bank note. Some will take the silver coins and leave the
gold ones behind. God who has gave you
everything, how selfish can we be? Offer
God some time to pray, to work for Him but we don’t. Most of us will pray for less than 4 mins and
when we do pray, it’s for ourselves.
This man had other parts that worked and God can use your other parts
to give you healing of the parts that don’t function. If you sit down and wait for God to heal you,
you won’t find healing. We have to make
an effort. We have to walk to the Kingdom
of God. Jesus is the way to the Kingdom
of God so we have to walk through Jesus and if you don’t have legs, how will you
follow that path. Many say, I’m going to
heaven and they sit down thinking that is enough but we have to make our legs
work. We are the ones who have to walk.
Jesus gave Bartimaeus sight and he walked with Jesus. God is humble and because He is, He gives you
everything you have, health, sleep, food, all that you have, hair. If God is simple and you are created in His
image, how can you make yourself image and serve others? When are you ready to do that? We are called to be simple which doesn’t mean
to be silent but it means to shout to God and ask for help and He will ask you what
do you want me to give you? You have to
choose something important not only for you but for the body of Jesus.
Because Bartimaeus accepted sight, he is written in Word of God. Others were blind spiritually and were
telling Bartimaeus to be quiet. How
often do you stop others from going to Kingdom of God? I’m tired, I won’t go to church today. You are spiritually blind.
We will all pray to God to help us to be simple so we can please God and
so we can go to heaven.
