SPEAKER_01: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: When we come to our study of the Book of Acts, you may not remember, but I said at the beginning when we started it, that occasionally we want to push pause and consider some of the practical aspects, some of the theological aspects that develop out of our text in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: And our passage for this morning is in Acts chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: I encourage you to take your Bible and open to that section, if you would.
SPEAKER_00: In Acts chapter 6, especially the beginning part, gives us an opportunity to pause and consider some of the broader elements that arise out of that kind of a text.
SPEAKER_00: So we will do that the first Sunday of January.
SPEAKER_00: This morning we're just going to kind of dip our toes in the water, get a little bit of a taste of what's going on in Acts chapter 6, and then fill that out when we return after the holiday and jump back into Acts.
SPEAKER_00: For our Christmas theme, if you have not noticed those slides yet on the announcement slides, we're going to be looking at the concept of light, what Scripture has to say about the coming of Christ and light.
SPEAKER_00: And so we'll start that next week.
SPEAKER_00: Acts chapter 6, beginning in verse 1 this morning, is the shortest passage that we have considered in Acts so far.
SPEAKER_00: So it fits well for this morning when we have lots of things taking place in our service.
SPEAKER_00: Acts chapter 6, I'm going to read verses 1 through 7 if you would like to follow along with me.
SPEAKER_00: Luke recounts for us that in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews, because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.
SPEAKER_00: And the twelve, that is the twelve apostles, summoned the full number of disciples and said, It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.
SPEAKER_00: But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.
SPEAKER_00: And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and so they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip and Prochorus and Nicanor and Timon and Parmenas and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch.
SPEAKER_00: These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them, and the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: The critical question here at the beginning of Acts chapter six is what happens when the church needs help?
SPEAKER_00: What happens when the gathering of God's people as a collective unit is the group that needs help?
SPEAKER_00: I want us to look at how Luke answers that question.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll do that by noticing four realities that lead us to the answer to the question, what do we do when we need help?
SPEAKER_00: The first reality is found in verse 1, where we see the words now in these days.
SPEAKER_00: Luke refers to the days of persecution.
SPEAKER_00: Persecution specifically at this point in time by the Jewish religious leaders in the city of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: They run the Jewish religious system, they rule the temple and the Temple Mount.
SPEAKER_00: They govern everything that has to do with Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the system out of which people are becoming believers in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Luke refers to in those days.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the only element that's happening in those days.
SPEAKER_00: There's also this burgeoning, this immense growth, rapid growth, of Christians.
SPEAKER_00: They're multiplying.
SPEAKER_00: Somewhat like the rabbits in my backyard that I can't seem to get rid of.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that's how the Jewish leaders felt.
SPEAKER_00: These Christians are just exploding all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: It's in those days, Luke says, that a complaint arose.
SPEAKER_00: This passage, the first real situation in the life of the church that we have to understand is that this passage speaks to the reality of a growing church.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we, if you're growing up in church and you're familiar with how God's program has worked, sometimes we look at a passage like this and we say, oh, here's the first deacons.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get to that in a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing we have to recognize is this is the reality of a growing church.
SPEAKER_00: And our thinking has to differentiate between church with an uppercase capital letter C and a church with a lowercase C.
SPEAKER_00: Church with an uppercase C is the universal church.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is building his church.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter where it's located, all of God's people together are his universal church.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we mean when we use the capital, the uppercase C.
SPEAKER_00: Lowercase C refers to the local gathering.
SPEAKER_00: Or now in modern days, we have multiple lowercase C's in a community.
SPEAKER_00: So we might have multiple local gatherings.
SPEAKER_00: Much of the New Testament is written directly to local churches like ours who are engaging in local church ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And those portions, like the letters to the church in Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica, those are personal letters from an apostle to a local church engaged in ministry in a particular situation.
SPEAKER_00: But those letters have application and implications to the universal church.
SPEAKER_00: So it says something very specific to a church that is enduring persecution, say, in their context.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we might not be enduring the same level of persecution, but it still applies to us.
SPEAKER_00: So much of the New Testament is written to lowercase churches.
SPEAKER_00: Lowercase, see.
SPEAKER_00: At this point in the book of Acts, they're merged.
SPEAKER_00: The church is just beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And so we think about the universal church, at this point in time, the universal church is largely in one community.
SPEAKER_00: It's in the city of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And that universal church is also the local church in the city of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said the disciples would carry out the Great Commission in Jerusalem first.
SPEAKER_00: So as people come to faith in the Lord Jesus, they're incorporated into the local church in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Luke's already told us.
SPEAKER_00: They're gathering daily all over the place, specifically in some homes and in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: The larger the group, the larger the space they need.
SPEAKER_00: They are all one group together, led by the apostles.
SPEAKER_00: This is an act of God, the Son, building his church.
SPEAKER_00: Thousands, we've been told.
SPEAKER_00: Thousands of people believe in Jesus in Jerusalem and in the surrounding area.
SPEAKER_00: At this point, the people aren't divided into smaller congregations so much.
SPEAKER_00: That kind of structure and organization hadn't happened yet.
SPEAKER_00: So when you think of Acts chapter 6, think about seven to maybe 12,000 people coming to faith in Jesus, brand new Christians, in a city of 100,000 people.
SPEAKER_00: We have 12 men attempting to teach, just for the sake of argument, let's say 10,000 people.
SPEAKER_00: We have 12 men attempting to teach 10,000 new believers in Jesus, while also witnessing to the rest of the people in Jerusalem, while also spending time in jail, debating Jewish leaders, healing the sick, spending time in prayer, and attempting to organize meeting all the needs of this rapidly growing and expanding local church.
SPEAKER_00: Makes me tired just thinking about it.
SPEAKER_00: They can't do it all.
SPEAKER_00: And Luke tells us that a complaint, a grumbling, occurred between two segments of the church population.
SPEAKER_00: The complaint arose because he tells us of an inequality in the support of widows.
SPEAKER_00: And he gives us two kinds of widows: the Hellenists and the Hebrews.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
SPEAKER_00: They're the same people.
SPEAKER_00: They're all Jewish, ethnic Jewish Christians.
SPEAKER_00: They're Jewish people who have come to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The difference is what their heart language is, what their first language is.
SPEAKER_00: Those that are qualified as Hebrews would have their heart language be Aramaic, most likely.
SPEAKER_00: The Hellenists, their heart language would be Greek.
SPEAKER_00: So they're the same ethnicity, but because they've grown up in different regions of Palestine and they're coming together now in Jerusalem, they're not necessarily combining as perfectly as you might think because there's a language difference.
SPEAKER_00: Now, most of them, because they're Jewish, might speak a little Aramaic and a little Greek, but some of them will be stronger in one and stronger in another.
SPEAKER_00: That's the situation that they're enduring.
SPEAKER_00: And the widows were women who had no means of family support or income, and so are utterly dependent.
SPEAKER_00: They're like beggars.
SPEAKER_00: Having come to Christ, their families no longer receive them, their families no longer support them.
SPEAKER_00: They are entirely dependent.
SPEAKER_00: And so the church in Jerusalem adopts them as their own and supports them through daily food.
SPEAKER_00: But there are so many in this growing church.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's why it's important to notice in these days.
SPEAKER_00: What days are these?
SPEAKER_00: The days of the growing church.
SPEAKER_00: So many people are coming to faith in Christ that problems are arising.
SPEAKER_00: As the church grows, its needs, its opportunities, and its ministries are faced with all kinds of new complexities.
SPEAKER_00: And so this Jerusalem church faced two issues: numerical growth and something akin to maybe immigration issues that came with Greek-speaking Jews coming to faith in Christ in the midst of Aramaic-speaking Jews.
SPEAKER_00: That resulted in a ministry deficit.
SPEAKER_00: The Greek-speaking widows were being left out of daily food distribution.
SPEAKER_00: So the church needed to change.
SPEAKER_00: That can be a difficult concept for the people that make up the church.
SPEAKER_00: Change.
SPEAKER_00: We don't like change so much.
SPEAKER_00: Especially, we don't like change if the church's need for change doesn't impact you personally.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we tend to self-identify with our churches, especially the longer that we've been here.
SPEAKER_00: So glad to have the Karner family with us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry for your loss praying for you.
SPEAKER_00: But you identify with Pews 2 and 3, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: That's their lifelong section.
SPEAKER_00: We tend to self-identify, and so after a while, the church becomes my church, our church.
SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, we can have a tendency to resent change.
SPEAKER_00: We can even resent the need to change.
SPEAKER_00: Going further than that, we can even be blind to the need for change.
SPEAKER_00: If it's not an area of church or ministry that I'm a part of, I may not recognize that, wow, there's something happening here that we need to talk about.
SPEAKER_00: So whether it's growth in numbers or changes in the breakdown of ages, and so the need to minister to those ages of people, whether it's ethnic changes or even economic changes, the reality is that a growing church will face circumstances that bring us face to face with falling short in ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And when we're face to face with falling short in ministry, we come face to face with the need to change.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're all getting nervous waiting to hear what's going to change, right?
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you that.
SPEAKER_00: The church leaders are most often the ones who are aware of these challenges first and are often in a position to do something about them.
SPEAKER_00: That means leadership challenges come with a growing church.
SPEAKER_00: So this passage is speaking about what's happening in this community with people coming to faith in Christ, and that reality means things happen.
SPEAKER_00: There are challenges and difficulties and problems of all kinds.
SPEAKER_00: The apostles could not be everywhere at once or deal with every problem.
SPEAKER_00: Like Moses, who was with Israel in the Old Testament, they needed help.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're not told here if the apostles were the ones delivering food to the widows' homes.
SPEAKER_00: You know, were they the meals on wheels?
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know if they merely oversaw the distribution, if they were leading it and sending people out.
SPEAKER_00: We're not told that.
SPEAKER_00: Regardless, the problem came to the apostles and they were faced with discerning priorities.
SPEAKER_00: And the 12 apostles together declared that their priority was preaching, teaching, and prayer.
SPEAKER_00: That's a leadership challenge.
SPEAKER_00: If you're responsible for a large group of people and you have this list of things that you know need to get accomplished, and you decide this is what needs to remain priority, what do you do with all of this?
SPEAKER_00: That's a leadership challenge.
SPEAKER_00: If those priorities remain, what do you do with the remaining ministry needs?
SPEAKER_00: Where do you turn if the local church needs help?
SPEAKER_00: Notice here that the widow's needs were not minimized.
SPEAKER_00: The leadership didn't sweep the problem under the rug, they didn't ignore it, they didn't excommunicate the grumblers.
SPEAKER_00: They dealt with the issue.
SPEAKER_00: They answered the issue by presenting a solution, and that solution involved the congregation while maintaining the priorities that they saw as needing to remain at the top.
SPEAKER_00: All of that presents a complexity of issues that come from a growing church.
SPEAKER_00: Which leads us to our second reality.
SPEAKER_00: This passage speaks to the reality of difficulties within the church.
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you what difficulties we're going to talk about.
SPEAKER_00: Just talking about the text here.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to lay anything out on you that you're not expecting.
SPEAKER_00: Someone will be disappointed when the apostles cannot be everywhere doing everything.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same way today.
SPEAKER_00: Pastor, why weren't you there?
SPEAKER_00: Why don't we where are the elders in this situation?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody's going to be disappointed.
SPEAKER_00: And something's going to be left undone.
SPEAKER_00: In a growing church, in a changing church, something is going to be disappointing.
SPEAKER_00: When you add the inherent differences and distinctions between sinful people groups, you have a situation that's ripe for difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: The grumbling might be sinful, like Israel in the Old Testament, grumbling before Moses.
SPEAKER_00: We don't get that sense here.
SPEAKER_00: This grumbling seems to be legitimate.
SPEAKER_00: Just saying, hey, they're getting food.
SPEAKER_00: We're not getting food.
SPEAKER_00: What's up with that?
SPEAKER_00: You know, we tend to think something is wrong if a church has difficulties.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: If a church has difficulties, what's wrong with them?
SPEAKER_00: What's going on there?
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't we believe otherwise?
SPEAKER_00: If you're falling asleep, I need you to wake up and bear with me here.
SPEAKER_00: Think with me.
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't we believe otherwise?
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't we think something is wrong if a church doesn't have problems?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, stay with me.
SPEAKER_00: People, you and me, we comprise the church, right?
SPEAKER_00: We are all sinners growing in grace.
SPEAKER_00: I can't, no matter how hard I try, I can't leave my sinful nature at home on Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: It's even harder on Monday morning.
SPEAKER_00: I can't do that.
SPEAKER_00: It's part of who I am.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that I'm growing in grace and knowledge and understanding and exercising patience and compassion with everybody else, but we bring our sinfulness with us.
SPEAKER_00: And so people make up the church, and when we have people making up the church, we're bringing our sinful characteristics with us into the church.
SPEAKER_00: That means there will be times of difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: So if there's no difficulties, there's no church.
SPEAKER_00: There's something wrong if problems do not exist in church.
SPEAKER_00: And we can argue in a different direction, too.
SPEAKER_00: A church ought to be growing.
SPEAKER_00: We're all given the commandment to go wherever God sends us to go and make disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Those disciples are to be incorporated into the church.
SPEAKER_00: That's one way a church may grow.
SPEAKER_00: That's what was happening here in Acts chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: But churches may also grow or change in different ways.
SPEAKER_00: We might grow and change demographically.
SPEAKER_00: We might grow in the number of infants.
SPEAKER_00: We might grow in the number of young families.
SPEAKER_00: We might grow in the number of senior saints.
SPEAKER_00: Churches are constantly growing and changing, they're in flux.
SPEAKER_00: At the very least, we know we ought to grow in grace, knowledge, and practice of our faith, right?
SPEAKER_00: So as some of us are growing in grace, practice, and knowledge, some of us might be stuck in our sin.
SPEAKER_00: Growth and change of any kind will bring difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: The early church's numerical growth and demographic growth brought problems.
SPEAKER_00: So this passage challenges our thinking about the local church and its problems.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a few thoughts about this.
SPEAKER_00: First, we should not be surprised when we hear of problems in the church.
SPEAKER_00: We should not be caught off guard when we encounter difficulties.
SPEAKER_00: So if you find yourself thinking, I can't believe that's going on in church, smack yourself and say, no, I should believe it.
SPEAKER_00: I should expect it.
SPEAKER_00: And we ought to ask questions if there are no difficulties.
SPEAKER_00: We ought not to fear challenges and problems in the church.
SPEAKER_00: We ought to fear the absence of problems.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing.
SPEAKER_00: Second thing I want to share with you about this.
SPEAKER_00: We ought to expect a humble response to difficulties.
SPEAKER_00: That might be harder.
SPEAKER_00: Because our first initial reaction is often dealing with the pride that rises up in us.
SPEAKER_00: And we react the way that benefits ourselves first.
SPEAKER_00: So that means that our spirits should not groan when we encounter conflict or difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we should anticipate how the Lord will direct the church to respond.
SPEAKER_00: That's an opportunity to see God's work within the body.
SPEAKER_00: That leads to my third thought here.
SPEAKER_00: We should command our hearts to hope in Christ's sanctifying work.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, problems are hard.
SPEAKER_00: They can be painful.
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to know what the 12 apostles were thinking when they heard this complaint.
SPEAKER_00: Wait a minute, are you blaming us?
SPEAKER_00: We didn't even know about this, and you're blaming us?
SPEAKER_00: We don't hear that.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know if that's what really happened.
SPEAKER_00: But I would hope that over time God's people can work to command their hearts to hope in what Christ is doing in his church.
SPEAKER_00: Now we can trust his work, right?
SPEAKER_00: Please say yes.
SPEAKER_00: We can trust his work because we can trust him.
SPEAKER_00: Now some problems are so serious and so grievous to the Lord that he may respond harshly to those.
SPEAKER_00: He may respond with judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Book of Revelation tells us that there are some churches, early churches, that didn't exist shortly after the book of Revelation because they didn't listen.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what we're talking about here.
SPEAKER_00: These are common difficulties that come through living in a sin-cursed world and bringing our sinful, saved people together to serve the Lord in unity.
SPEAKER_00: And in those situations, we can hope that the Lord will use the difficulties in the church to grow us, to shape us, to build his church.
SPEAKER_00: But that leads to a third reality.
SPEAKER_00: This passage speaks to the reality of the humble flexibility necessary for the church's growth.
SPEAKER_00: So the church here is encountering imprisonment, beatings, and ridicule from the outside during its early days.
SPEAKER_00: From the outside, it's nothing but negativity.
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, they are experiencing an increase of hungry, needy people on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: As we saw with Ananias and Zephira, they're also encountering lying and deception on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: And now we see that they're encountering organizational problems on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: This is all new.
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, it's like a church plants early weeks and months.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as far as we know, Jesus hadn't prepared the apostles for this.
SPEAKER_00: We have no indication that they were given a course in organizational management.
SPEAKER_00: As far as we know, they were never taught by Jesus about interpersonal conflict.
SPEAKER_00: Other than, hey, if your brother has something against you, go and make it right before you come and give your offering.
SPEAKER_00: But we do know that they were given the Spirit of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And God's people display a kind of humility when the Spirit of God leads them.
SPEAKER_00: They display a humility that steadfastly holds to the things of greatest importance while at the same time holding with humble flexibility the things that are not a priority.
SPEAKER_00: That kind of spirit enables a church to adapt to a changing and completely fluctuating environment.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter what kind of growth it is.
SPEAKER_00: Notice how Luke recounts the situation here.
SPEAKER_00: He recounts the apostles' acknowledgement of a deficiency in ministry rather than deflecting it.
SPEAKER_00: It's an easy thing for us to do, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Easy thing to just deflect the problem, but no, they recognize there's a deficiency going on here.
SPEAKER_00: Luke recounts the apostles' willingness to resolve the issue rather than duct their responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: He recounts the apostles leading well rather than lording it over the people.
SPEAKER_00: They humbly involve the people in the decision-making process at one level.
SPEAKER_00: He recounts the apostles being flexible in administration and organization through delegation rather than holding on to their way of distributing food.
SPEAKER_00: If you look at the way the apostles handled this, they are being greatly flexible in this situation, and that flexibility is driven by an underlying humility.
SPEAKER_00: Luke's history of those early days reveals the Lord's work through his apostles to meet the needs of a growing church through humble flexibility.
SPEAKER_00: What a difference that would make in our local churches today.
SPEAKER_00: But we also see the reverse, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: We see pride and arrogance and entrenchment in the we've always done it this way, attitude.
SPEAKER_00: Now Luke tells us that the apostles were unified in their approach.
SPEAKER_00: They, all 12, came together and said, this is what we need to do.
SPEAKER_00: They recognized a problem and a need, and they prioritized their roles in the growing church, and they proposed a solution that required humility and flexibility to solve a practical problem.
SPEAKER_00: At the very least, that shows us that we together collectively ought to be prepared for our church leaders to prioritize their biblical priorities and lead by responsible delegation.
SPEAKER_00: It teaches us that the church steps up to assist when it needs help.
SPEAKER_00: It shows us that growth in the church requires flexibility and change driven by humility.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as we move to our last reality, we need to notice how the church at large handled the situation.
SPEAKER_00: First, the congregation seems to have approved of the apostolic priority of preaching, teaching, and prayer.
SPEAKER_00: They said, yes, that needs to remain priority.
SPEAKER_00: But maintaining that priority didn't negate the need to solve the problem and meet needs.
SPEAKER_00: Maintaining priorities does not mean dismissing the problem.
SPEAKER_00: The congregation was pleased with the solution to delegate responsibility and oversight to wise, spirit-filled men.
SPEAKER_00: That means the congregation took the qualification seriously.
SPEAKER_00: We're not told how long they took.
SPEAKER_00: It may have been right away, it may have been a few days, it may have been a couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_00: We're not told.
SPEAKER_00: And you know who they chose?
SPEAKER_00: Hellenists.
SPEAKER_00: Based on their names, only one of these seven men could potentially be among the Hebrew believers whose first language was Aramaic.
SPEAKER_00: So the entire church, Greek and Aramaic speakers, selected highly respected men, and the chosen men belonged to the language group from whom the complaint originally came.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see what that does?
SPEAKER_00: That ensures that those widows who were missing out could trust we're not going to be left out anymore.
SPEAKER_00: But because the whole congregation already respected this group of seven men, the whole congregation could then know there's not going to be any respecting of persons or of groups among these men.
SPEAKER_00: The spirit is working in this situation to ensure a wise resolution to the problem.
SPEAKER_00: So when the church in Jerusalem needed help, they didn't go to the government or to leadership gurus.
SPEAKER_00: They looked within to find spirit-filled servants.
SPEAKER_00: Men who served like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They organized themselves and they met the need from within.
SPEAKER_00: And so our last reality is that this passage speaks to the reality of ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Not first and foremost, the establishment of offices or even of structures within the church capital.
SPEAKER_00: See.
SPEAKER_00: Peter's not recounting, hey, this is where the deacon office began.
SPEAKER_00: There may be something to that.
SPEAKER_00: He's not telling us, here's how you organize a widow's ministry.
SPEAKER_00: There may be something to that.
SPEAKER_00: He's telling us, here's how the church faces problems.
SPEAKER_00: Not by ducking and running, but by turning to spirit-filled people to meet the needs.
SPEAKER_00: So this is not about ordaining deacons or establishing the deacon office.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't instruct us to establish a support system for widows or to start a soup kitchen for the hungry.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the noun deacon isn't even in this text.
SPEAKER_00: The verb form of the word deacon means ministry or service, serving.
SPEAKER_00: And that is here.
SPEAKER_00: The force of this passage is that a growing church needs serving people.
SPEAKER_00: They need serving people because a growing church needs change.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that there aren't implications for the local churches, deacons, or ministry to widows, or structure systems within the church.
SPEAKER_00: Those things are here.
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about those in a month or so.
SPEAKER_00: The focus is on the difficulties that growth and change bring to a local congregation.
SPEAKER_00: And instead of being things that Luke looks at with disdain and says, this is the worst part of early church ministry, or this is the worst part of local church ministry, he says, look at the opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what the risen and ascended Christ is doing through his people.
SPEAKER_00: The rest of the world will crumble at this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Spirit-filled people will organize with humility and flexibility to meet a need.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens?
SPEAKER_00: What happens?
SPEAKER_00: The word of God continued to increase.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God continued to increase, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
SPEAKER_00: So what's happening?
SPEAKER_00: The early church has problems.
SPEAKER_00: Surprise, surprise.
SPEAKER_00: They faced those problems with humility and flexibility.
SPEAKER_00: They displayed mercy, grace, and attention to those who were in need, and they met those difficulties head on.
SPEAKER_00: This situation could have destroyed the Jerusalem church.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, the word of God increased and disciples multiplied greatly.
SPEAKER_00: So much so that some of the opposing Sadducean priests trusted in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: When's the last time a church, a local church that you are aware of, faced difficulties in its midst, and the result of those difficulties was that unbelievers in the community came to faith in Jesus because they were overwhelmed by what God did in your midst?
SPEAKER_00: What an opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: What an opportunity to show what God does.
SPEAKER_00: So the Jerusalem church wasn't stunted by its difficulties and problems.
SPEAKER_00: They humbly served together so that the word was proclaimed and ministry continued and thrived.
SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters in Christ, that's what we are called to emulate.
SPEAKER_00: The process of meeting problems and difficulties in a wise, spirit-filled way spurred the growth of the church.
SPEAKER_00: How could we not want to be a part of that?
SPEAKER_00: Where the power of Christ generates faith in unbelievers because of how we address problems.
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, work in our midst.
SPEAKER_00: To humble us, to bring us low as our Redeemer was brought low.
SPEAKER_00: To create in us a spirit and a heart that is flexible.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we ask mostly that you would continue to build your church, that you would cause it to increase, that the word would multiply, and that people in our community would see the heart of Christ in us and would respond by saying, I want what you have.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, may you be magnified.
SPEAKER_00: May we as a church arise together to face whatever you bring and do it with humility and flexibility to the praise of your glory.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_01: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.