Philippians 2:12-16; Acts 6:1-7, Murmuring.

There is another command in this section of Philippians: Do all things without complaining and disputing.  I like the AV word murmuring.  It’s one of those words that sounds like what it means.  We have two sins here.  The first means expressing dissatisfaction with one’s circumstances.  It was what the Children of Israel did in the wilderness years, time and again.  The second refers to verbal combat over an insignificant subject, using unloving methods.

It sounds as if Paul is dealing with a “church fight” of some sort here.  I would like to suggest that we not be surprised at this.  Have you read the book of the early Church, the Acts of the Apostles lately?  How often were they at odds with each other?

·        Acts 1: choosing Judas’ replacement

·        Acts 6: feeding the widows

·        Acts 8: accepting the Samaritans

·        Acts 11: Peter at Cornelius’ house

·        Acts 12: accepting Gentiles

·        Acts 15: accepting Gentiles without reservation

·        Acts 15: whether to take John Mark

Furthermore, coming to our current context in Philippi, you also see Christians at odds.  There was the reaction to Paul’s imprisonment (1:16).  In Ch. 3:2 Paul warned them about dogs, evil workers and the mutilation, some attack on the sound doctrine of the church.  And in 4:2 two women were having an argument of some sort.


The point is that we need to face up to the realities.  We have these kinds of situations in our church; they are normal.  The issue is: will we handle them properly?  That is what Paul is seeking to address here, from 1:27-2:30.  In this particular paragraph we can learn two reasons as to why murmuring and arguing are sinful: we know it by Paul’s command in v14 and by the consequences in v15-16.  In other words, they were having some issues that were causing some division and they weren’t always handling them well.


Let us not be surprised by these contentious situations that arise.  Rather let us seek to handle them without murmuring and arguing.  Let us rather stick to the basic command we have in the Body of Christ which is to do all things for edification, for building up that Body!  We will seek to be much more specific in the next couple of days.