Sunday Morning Meeting - Acts,Chapter 6 - Pastor Gilman

Father we thank thee for your word ,preserved in the scriptures for us. Open our minds and hearts this morning to receive the messages meant for each of us.. Guide us to use our gifts and knowledge with wisdom. Protect those that are vulnerable among us. We ask these things in Jesus’ name,

Amen

     Well, you'll remember from last time that we discovered that God has some incredible mathematics, as the Lord added to the church daily those who should be saved, acts chapter 2 verse 47. The Lord was adding. Then as we continued to read through this book, we saw multitudes coming. So we saw that the Lord not only adds, but he multiplies. We saw that his work was spreading so rapidly that there were multitudes of people in the early church, that was at one time only 120 people. So the Lord adds. The Lord multiplies. But then last week, we discovered the Lord is also sometimes in the business of subtracting. Ananias and Sapphira were eliminated from the church. They were subtracted from the church by the Lord. So the Lord adds. The Lord multiplies. The Lord subtracts. But one thing he never does in his math, he never divides.

That's the devil's work. And he employs people to do it. But we're going to see division here in this chapter. And then we'll see how the Lord corrects that through his newly formed church and then continues to add and continues to multiply and the church continues to grow. But we're in Acts chapter 6, and we have a very interesting case of “church life” and “church leadership” before us…. I know that no church leader is perfect. No church is perfect.

Nobody's perfect. No church is perfect. No leader is perfect. There's only a perfect God with a perfect son who gives perfect salvation to imperfect people, and that's us.

And we discover “The Truth” here in this chapter. We can be very thankful for the book of Acts and to Luke for this very reason. I'm thankful that we have a record, an honest record, of the earliest weeks, months, and years of church history and how it unfolds. This is our model today of what God desires in a church and in his people… And the reason I say I am thankful for Acts is that it doesn't pull any punches. It doesn't gloss over any personalities. It tells you straight up who these people were, where they excelled, and where they failed.

For example, we have already read about the suicide of one of the Apostles. Judas killed himself. That is honestly portrayed in this book. We have already discovered the elimination by God, the judgment of God, on a notable couple in the early church, Ananias and Sapphira, his wife.

Later on, we're going to read about two leaders, Paul and Barnabas, in chapter 15, getting into such an argument that they have to split company and go in two entirely different directions. So it's a very honest rendering of events and people.

This chapter begins with another problem in verse one… The problem is a complaint of one group against another group. And the complaint brings dissension, brings division in the church. We understand where division comes from…And whenever the light of the gospel shines brightly, Satan will send his thugs , and you'll get caught up in a downward spiral. He'll make sure that you do. And if you are preaching the gospel, teaching the word, raising up leaders-- you're going to get attacked. It comes with the territory. So far, we have watched Satan attack the church, first of all by persecution beginning with Peter and John. A law was passed that it's illegal to preach the gospel. Peter and John didn't seem to care. They just said, you know, you're going to have to figure out if it's OK to do that. We're going to obey God, not you. And they kept doing it. They got arrested. An Angel let them out of jail. They went back and did it again.

But persecution against the church was the first tool Satan employed. It didn't work. In fact, it backfired. It grew more. It went from addition to multiplication. So he tried another tactic-- corruption, hypocrisy, Ananias and Sapphira lying to the Holy Spirit, in effect lying to God. That didn't work. God eliminated It was the end of that story. But now he employs another tactic. The Bible says, we are not ignorant of his devices. He will always employ one of these devices. And here we see that division, that dissension in the early church.

Incidentally, Whenever there is a church that is complaining, backbiting, quarreling, disagreeing, arguing, one group against another group, you can bet that the message that they preach is so watered down it is ineffective. The church needs to be purified, cleansed of that. And we'll see how the Lord does that in chapter 6 through organizing by the early church leadership.

I mentioned organization. I just want to say a word about that here because the problem that existed in the early church of chapter 6 was fixed by the Holy Spirit leading the leaders to organize the church in a different format so as to solve the problem.

Why is that important? It's important because sometimes, people think that organization is bad. You hear comments like: “I don't believe in organized religion.” Or “ I'm suspicious at organized religion.. I hear it used in a scornful way-- an organized religion, ooh, that's bad-- as if to imply they would rather have disorganized religion. But some would. Some think that if you organize anything the Holy Spirit is doing, it's wrong. It's of man. It's evil. But as I read my Bible, I discover my God is a very organized God. And he says, let everything be done decently and in order, 1st Corinthians 14. And the more people you have, the more organization is necessary. The church is both an organism and an organization. Now, an organism is something that is life and life-giving. It's living, moving, expanding. But unless you organize an organism, you have a problem. You could have a cancer, or you could have just a blob. So the organism must be organized. And God is organized. That's why we have sunrise and sunset every day, or the revolution of the Earth around the Sun, to be more precise. But we call it a sunrise and a sunset. And we can program that. We know exactly when it's going to happen tomorrow and when it's going to happen in a month because we have observed an orderly, organized universe.

On the other hand, you can organize things too much, like the 613 commandments in the Jewish Torah.. They thought the 10 commandments were not enough so they might help God out a little by adding another 603.. That’s a problem….

There are challenges that demand that organizations change and the first church was not different…The first is growth. In those days, verse 1, "when the number of the disciples was multiplying"-- please note that-- "there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. Then the 12 summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, it is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables." The church at one time had 120 people in an upper room. Life was grand. It was awesome. It was simple. They waited on the Holy Spirit. He moved.

The problem came when it started growing. It was growing so fast, so large. There were so many people that we were finding ourselves not ready. We didn't prepare any infrastructure or organization yet. We were just reacting to the growth. So the number of the disciples that says we're multiplying.

And another problem is there's an expectation that comes along with this that, well, you're a leader. You've got to personally fix this. You yourself have to be the one pastor to fix this. And I love this story because the Apostles fix the problem. They address it head on, but they're really not going to be the ones fixing. They're just going to be the ones ratifying or making it happen.. They saw the problem, formulated their solution and implemented an operation to remedy the problem…

It says:

There arose a complaint, a murmuring, against the Hebrews by the Hellenists because their widows were ,And it's one group of women against another group of women. This is occurring within the women's ministry.

"Then the 12 summoned the multitude of the disciples." Now notice the word "disciples." It's the very first time the word is used in the book of Acts. It's used a couple hundred times in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's used 28 times in the book of Acts. It's used for the first time here.

Organization at the very beginning was very simple. There were apostles, and there were disciples. Now, back in the gospels, the disciples that followed Jesus, there were lots of them, but Jesus chose 12 of them to become his apostles.

So you really have a book of Twelve Apostles, and you have a group of disciples. So this is the first time it is mentioned. It won't be the last time. You'll read about it again and again. But notice that they were complaining because the widows were neglected in the daily distribution. It seems that in addressing the poor in the church, the poverty that was existing in the early church at Jerusalem that we described reasons about last time-- so many of the jobs were temple-related. Many of those early messianic believers lost their employment. So to address the issue of poverty, the early church would give out a daily food distribution.

Well, one group thought another group was getting more than they were. The Hellenists-- I'll describe them in a moment-- thought the Hebrews-- I'll describe them in a moment-- were getting the better end of the stick. They, the Hellenists, were getting less. Now, there were two types of Jews back then in Jerusalem. There were what's called the Hebrews. These were Aramaic-speaking local Jewish men and women. They read the Hebrew scriptures. They spoke some Hebrew in the liturgy of their worship, but they spoke daily Aramaic, the language of Jesus, the language of the Near East at that time. They held tightly to no translation, just the original Hebrew scriptures.

But there was another group called the Hellenists. They were primarily Greek-speaking Jews of a group known as the diaspora. Have you heard of the diaspora? It means the dispersion. The Jews that had been scattered all over the world, that's the diaspora. If you're not living in Israel, you were part of the diaspora. You had been scattered elsewhere. So many of these scattered Jews stayed scattered.

Many of them came back to Jerusalem. When they came back to Jerusalem, they congregated with people like themselves. They spoke Greek. They had a Greek background. It was a different culture. And they congregated together. They had their own synagogues. The Hebrew had their own synagogues. The Hellenists had their own special synagogues. They didn't read from the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament, but from the Greek translation ( called the Septuagint version.) It was their own unique version.

Well, you can just see that there's going to be a conflict because the Hebrews speaking in Hebrew always felt that they were a cut above those who were the Greek-speaking, worldly, from other places even though they were Jewish people. So there was always this tension. They had their own synagogue so they could worship separately. But now they're called together in one church, one fellowship. Both messianic Jews, both believers in Jesus, but both very different backgrounds, now they're put into one church. And whenever you have different people in one group, you're going to have problems. And they had problems stemming from cultural differences…

There was a perceived lack of concern on the part of the Greeks and an expectation that the apostles need to fix this problem .So the 12 summoned the multitude and said, it is not desirable that we the apostles, should leave the word of God-- that is teaching the scriptures. This is what we're called to do. We don't want to leave the word of God and serve tables.

Now, the tables need to be served. The apostles recognized the problem. They're meeting it head on, but they're just saying, we're not going to be the ones to do that personally. Therefore, verse 3, "seek out from among you seven men of good reputation full of the Holy Spirit in wisdom whom we may appoint over this business."

And so they set their priorities. We're not going to leave the word of God and serve tables. We want to give ourselves continually, verse 4, to prayer and to the ministry of the word. They insisted to fulfill their calling, their purpose. They wanted to be prepared, ready…

A seasoned preacher from the UK told me “ if you preach for one hour or teach for one hour to a group of 100 people and you are ill prepared to do so, you've just wasted 100 hours of God's time.

That stuck with me. The Apostles would not be side tracked..

Why did they chose 7 men? It seems that the early church, when it came to organizing things, because they didn't know what to model their organizational structure on, they were organizing the early church based upon the model they saw in Judaism. In Judaism, in any community, all of the public affairs were done by a group of seven elders. Seven men were selected from the town, from the community, who had integrity and were notable and noteworthy. And they were in charge of gathering together and settling disputes and settling issues within the community. So it seems that they were simply modeling

what they knew in Judaism. I can't be sure because we're not told, but that seems to be what they were doing.

They needed to be filled with the Holy Spirit And wisdom, you know what wisdom is. You can be smart and not wise.

You can have a high IQ. You can have a degree. You can have several degrees. But Wisdom is the right application of that knowledge. So all of that is observable. They're wise in their transaction and decisions. "Whom we, the apostles, may appoint over this business,"

And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit. You'll read more about Stephen in the next chapter. And Philip, you'll read more about Philip in the chapter after that. Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, you won't read anything more about them--

And when the Apostles prayed over these 7 men they laid hands on them. ,

"Then the word of God spread." I love that description. "The word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied. There's God at it again. He's been adding, subtracting, multiplying again. They multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. And a great many of the priests, the Jewish priests who served in the temple structure, were obedient to the faith.

Now, something to make a note of with those names, all seven names are Greek names.

So who was complaining? The Greeks, the Hellenists, the Greek-speaking, Septuagint-oriented, Gentile, country-oriented Jewish believers. So what a beautiful way and grace to solve a problem. The Greeks are complaining. All the ones in charge of the problem and distribution will be Greeks. It's like affirmative action, New Testament style. Verses 8 through 15…

8 And Stephen, full of [b]faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. 9 Then there arose some from what is called the Synagogue of the Freedmen (Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and those from Cilicia and Asia), disputing with Stephen. 10 And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke. 11 Then they secretly induced men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” 12 And they stirred up the people, the elders, and the scribes; and they came upon him, seized him, and brought him to the council. 13 They also set up false witnesses who said, “This man does not cease to speak [c]blasphemous words against this holy place and the law; 14 for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs which Moses delivered to us.” 15 And all who sat in the council, looking steadfastly at him, saw his face as the face of an angel.

Remember Moses when he came off the mountain was glowing also.. Stephen had the face of an angel…

Well this is the end of chapter 6 ..More or less.. I think its best if we stop here but we’ll pick up next week and spend a great deal of time on this wonderful human being who is filled with the Holy spirit. Stephen…

Lord,

As we conclude and move to open our meeting today we look for our time together to be filled with your Holy Spirit. We ask that each one of your disciples here today would be so moved as to share and to glorify you in their own way. We are grateful for our modest fellowship , we are ever grateful for your word, your guidance. We ask Lord to touch each and every one of us this morning, in some small way, as to move us closer to a more perfect walk with thee.. We ask for your healing power to touch those of us who are sick and struggling. We ask for your forgiveness for our short comings as we have many.. Forgiveness for our imperfections and for our willful sins. Guide us daily, feed us and speak to our hearts and help us to stay on the narrow path that leads to eternal life..

We ask these things in Jesus’ name.,

Amen