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Acts 6:1-7
6:1 Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists1 arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. 2 And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. 3 Therefore, brothers,2 pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. 4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 5 And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. 6 These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.
7 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.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
If you have a bible, I invite you in this time to open up to Acts chapter 6. Acts chapter 6. We're going to look at the first real large scale threat to the church. The first real large scale threat to the church. Acts chapter 6, we'll begin reading in verse 1.
Joel Brooks:Now in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the 12 summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up the preaching of the preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you 7 men of good repute, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. And what they said pleased the whole gathering and 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.
Joel Brooks: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 disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. And a great meeting of the priest became obedient to the faith. This is the Word of the Lord. You would pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Father, even now begin writing your words onto our hearts by your spirit. Lord, we need to hear life in this place, and that comes from you. So I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away, and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen. I grew up in a church, that I would call chronically in conflict. Some of my earliest memories of church was always some kind of dispute or some kind of grumbling, which resulted in a called conference. And the called conference, I remember as a child, even just seeing people who I had not seen in many, many years. But it would be the largest service we ever had, as all the old members would come in, wanting to vote.
Joel Brooks:And it was always, you know, it it didn't really matter what the issue was actually. It was different issues yet the same. Always some displeasure with the pastor. Maybe the pastor, spent too much time going to the hospital, visiting the sick and not enough time on his sermon. Or maybe he spent too much time on a sermon and not enough time in the hospital.
Joel Brooks:Maybe he was too strong from the pulpit, or maybe he was too weak from the pulpit or maybe they didn't like the carpet or the hymnals. You know, it really didn't matter. The outcome was always the same. They voted out the pastor. I went through, 4 votes in which we voted out 4 of my pastors growing up.
Joel Brooks:So I had 5 different pastors. Now you you can call this self preservation or you could call this being faithful to the text, but I'd like to come up with a different solution when conflict comes our way. And conflicts going to come our way. I mean, anytime there is growth, there's going to be growing pains. There's gonna be stress points that come with that growth.
Joel Brooks:You might find this hard to believe, but the entire time that Lauren and I dated, we never once fought. We're both, you know, fairly easy going people and we just got along and we never fought. And after dating for 6 and a half years, we got engaged and then got married. And for our first 7 years of marriage, we never fought. We tried at times, but we couldn't make ourselves fight.
Joel Brooks:We'd break down laughing. But then all of that changed when our family grew. When we got a little 8 pound 6 ounce bundle of joy, Caroline, who came into our family. And and now we had this addition in our family. And when you don't know what you're doing and there's a lack of sleep, which is actually a form of torture, When that happens, you get a little grumpy and and you begin fighting.
Joel Brooks:And like I said before, we had tried to fight before, but we broke down laughing. But but I remember our first fight and and thinking, I actually feel genuine anger towards you. And Laura was like, and I feel real anger towards you. Like it took us 13 years to get to that point where we really we were proud of ourselves, like for finally being angry with one another and and having this fight. But growth it it brings an excitement, it brings a joy, it brings a new energy, new life, but it also brings a whole set of new problems.
Joel Brooks:So far in acts, we've seen the church grow from a handful of disciples to 3,000 to 8000, all in a matter of days or weeks. This is really exciting, explosive, joyful growth. But with that growth, you better believe there were some stress points. If you remember, a few months ago now when we were in acts chapter 2, we we read about how 3,000 people came to know the Lord in one day and 3,000 people were baptized in one day. And I bet when you read that, you're all like, wow.
Joel Brooks:That's that's incredible. That's really exciting. And that's an appropriate response. And you had that response because you weren't a pastor. As a pastor, I thought, wow, that's incredible.
Joel Brooks:How did they baptize 3,000 people in one day? Like the logistics of that is just mind boggling. I started doing the math of it and I started thinking, alright, if all 12, you know, the apostles, if they somehow got in the river and everybody could get access to them and and they did some speed baptisms there, you know, just hey, what is your name? Do you know Jesus? Quickly go through the gospel, 1 minute or less per person.
Joel Brooks:That is still over 4 hours of baptisms for each of the disciples. Can you imagine how tired their biceps were? Like just like rip these these guys were ripped having done this. And then after they they, you know, baptized all these people, probably the people who were baptized first, went out, told other people about Jesus, who then wanted to be baptized and the line just kind of kept going. By the time you finally finished everybody being baptized, you're thinking, okay, that was the easy part.
Joel Brooks:Now I gotta get them plugged into a church. I gotta make disciples of them. How does that happen? How do I get them involved in home groups? How do I raise up leaders for the home groups?
Joel Brooks:How do I know what everybody's spiritual gifts are? Do we take spiritual gifts tests? Do I make everybody take the Enneagram so I could better pastor them? Like what? What do we do at this time?
Joel Brooks:It's it's a logistic nightmare there. There were going to be stress points as the church grew like this. So it's no surprise that with growth like this happening, while at the same time your leadership keeps getting arrested, something was gonna break. People were gonna fall through the cracks. The question was just what and when?
Joel Brooks:Was it gonna be the youth ministry? Were the youth gonna be neglected? Was it going to be the worship ministry? Was it gonna be the nursery just screaming for more volunteers? Actually, what fell through the cracks was something far more quiet.
Joel Brooks:Something that's easily neglected, even when things are going smoothly. It was the voice of the widows, who were already quiet and hard to notice. It was the widows who were being neglected. So a complaint came up among the Hellenists against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected. Complaint here is the same word as grumble, murmur.
Joel Brooks:The church began grumbling. Sound familiar? Read through the Old Testament. Sound familiar to have the people of God recently delivered and they start grumbling? Hear me, a spirit of grumbling or complaining is a far greater threat to the church than any outside persecution.
Joel Brooks:The apostles have already been arrested 3 times, beaten to a pulp, but this in no way threatens the growth of the church, nor did it threaten their joy. Outside persecution cannot take away our joy, and it cannot take away our effectiveness of proclaiming the gospel, but complaining and grumbling can take away both. Let me ask you. Which do you think is a bigger threat to your joy and your ability to proclaim the gospel? Outside persecution, maybe like legislation passed where you can't pray in school, or you can't have a Bible study at an office, Or, is it when professing followers of Jesus can't agree how many songs they should sing on a Sunday.
Joel Brooks:Should we sing more hymns? Should we sing less hymns? What should the color of the carpet be? Or things like that. That's going to rob you of joy and your witness.
Joel Brooks:The outside world's going to look at that and think, I mean, you might, you might even be right that Jesus is the son of God, but I in no way want to be part of that group. Personally, we've, we've all experienced this too. In which there have been times where personally we have received some form of hostility towards us because of our faith in Jesus? And I bet when that happened, when you felt this hostility come towards you, maybe at work or at school or one of your neighbors, hostility came to you because of your faith, you actually still had joy in it. And I bet it in no way threatened your witness.
Joel Brooks:However, if somebody in your small group at church grumbled about you, You're like, why are we even doing this? Why do I even do this? It just lets all the air out. Your joy is gone. Your witness is powerless.
Joel Brooks:And you need to see that what is happening here is an enormous threat to the church. And how their apostles respond is going to set the course of the church. So let's look at the problem itself. The problem is that the Hebrew widows were being provided for, but the Hellenist widows were not. The Hebrew widows were the widows who lived in diaspora.
Joel Brooks:They were Greek speaking, but they had come back into Jerusalem during their twilight years, but but they didn't speak the local language, and they didn't understand all of the local culture. So there would have been a language barrier there, in addition to being an outsider. So it's no wonder that that resulted in them following, falling through the cracks. Now, Luke is careful here and we need to be careful here, not to ascribe motive. Motive towards their neglect.
Joel Brooks:I've actually heard a number of sermons preached on this, in which the pastor has said, this is where racism came into the church. And I would disagree with that. I think Luke is very careful not to ascribe motive here. It's actually pretty easy for me to imagine what's going on, because it happens with any kind of church growth. But when the church was really small, you don't even need deacons or anything like that, because everybody knows one another's needs.
Joel Brooks:Everybody, it's it's a very relational tight knit church. And I bet you had that in the early church. Everybody knew the apostles and they probably had Peter's cell phone number. They probably had Andrew's cell phone number. They could text.
Joel Brooks:They could call one another. It was, once again, a close tight knit church. But then the church begins to grow. Now, earlier when you had a need, it probably was like, you know, well just text Peter about it. And you know, you would text Peter and like, I know a widow.
Joel Brooks:Can the church release some benevolence funds for her? And you know, Peter texts back and says, sure Andrew's got the funds. Drop by his house. Thanks bro. Done.
Joel Brooks:You know, right there. Benevolence is given to the widow. But what happens when you don't have the cell phone number? What happens if even if you did have that number, you didn't speak the language? Well, you're gonna fall through the cracks as the church grew, this happened.
Joel Brooks:This was to be expected, but it is not acceptable. It is not acceptable in the church. Neglecting the widows, or I would say the poor and the powerless that they represent is not a minor issue. James tells us in James 1, that religion that is pure and undefiled before God the father is this, to visit the widow and the orphan and their affliction. Pure and undefiled Christianity is this, to visit the widow and to visit the orphan.
Joel Brooks:You would expect that because it's simply a reflection of the gospel. The gospel is grace being poured out to the poor and to the powerless. All you have to do is read through the Old Testament and you're going to see that one of the things that absolutely ticks God off is if you neglect the widow. You mistreat the widow and you will incur God's wrath upon you. Now I've got to confess that, although I knew God had a special heart for the widow and I knew if you neglected them, you you incurred God's wrath.
Joel Brooks:I knew that through reading through scripture. I have to confess that I didn't know why until I lost my dad when I was in college and I saw my mom become a widow. And I saw the tremendous emotional devastation that comes from losing a spouse. My mom cried every day for years. Simple decisions became insurmountable to her.
Joel Brooks:Things like, what shoes should she wear? What should she cook? Because she lost her life partner, who she would always just bounce those things off of. Her relationships with other people changed because, you know, they used to go out as couples, but now all of their couple friends didn't know how to be a friend to her. Like, do they still invite her to, like, go out with them to dinner?
Joel Brooks:All those relationships changed. My mom became a very fearful person. I cannot tell you how many security systems she had me install in her house, but she was terrified of being alone. Losing your spouse is devastating. After seeing my mom go through this, when I graduated from college, I still needed to stay in Athens for work.
Joel Brooks:But instead of just renting an apartment, I decided to approach a widow and I asked if I could rent a room at her house. She had recently just lost her husband and she actually agreed. And so, for an entire year, I lived with a widow. And it was a time of healing for both of us. She became a really good friend.
Joel Brooks:The best conversations we had would happen at 2 in the morning, because I could hear her walking around the house because she couldn't sleep. And so I would get up and I would join her and we sit down in the living room and she would pour a huge old glass of bourbon, for her, not me. At the time I didn't drink. Now I'd say pour pour me a glass, but, and we would just talk and cry. And I'm not ashamed that to say that there was a number of nights in which we would both wake up, or a number of mornings in which we would both wake up on the couch, having fallen asleep next to each other.
Joel Brooks:And I just want you to hear me say, it is not our duty to take care of the widow. It's our privilege. It is a privilege that God has given to His church, and not just to the widow, but every person who the widow represents. All those who are poor, all those who are powerless, We get to be an instrument of grace into their life. And what we're actually gonna find is, you're gonna receive grace in return.
Joel Brooks:So this is not a minor issue here. I mean one of the last things Jesus did on the cross was to make provisions for his mother. So this is a major issue. So the question is, what are the apostles going to do? You've got grumbling happening.
Joel Brooks:You've got widows being neglected happening. You have persecution hitting the church happening. Things are beginning to pile up. So how are the apostles going to respond? Well we read this in verse 2.
Joel Brooks:Verse 2, and the 12 summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Now when you read that, it it sounds a little defensive. Doesn't it? It's not it's not right that we should give a preaching the words who serve tables. It sounds a little defensive because I think it is.
Joel Brooks:I think it is defensive here. You see, up to this point in Acts, it has been the apostles who we have seen distributing the benevolence funds. People came and brought the money to the apostles and it was the apostles who distributed this. So the apostles were likely the ones who were taking care of all of the widows. And so what's happening here is people are coming up to them and saying, hey, you need you need to up this up.
Joel Brooks:You need to do more of this. And they're thinking how much how much more can we do? I mean, in between being arrested all this time and preaching and doing all this and traveling and trying to take care of the widows, like something's going to give if we do more of this. And you know what's going to give? Preaching the word of God.
Joel Brooks:And it's not right. It's not right. Here, the apostles are declaring the utter importance of the proclaimed word of God. They're not putting down waiting on tables. They're not putting down serving widows.
Joel Brooks:We've already seen this is extremely important, but what they are saying is that without the proclamation of God's word, there is no church. There's no church. Imagine if the apostles had said this. Thanks for bringing the complaint to our dis you know, to our attention. You're right.
Joel Brooks:You're right. We we need we need to do better. We need to do more for them. And it was their responsibility to take care of these widows. I don't know if you thought about this as you've read through this, but why did these widows need taking care of?
Joel Brooks:Where was their families? Where were they? It's likely that the reason these widows were going to the church for benevolence is because when they decided to follow Jesus, they were disowned by their families. They were destitute. And so, you you can't get a more desperate situation than this so this is a real pressing urgent need that's brought up.
Joel Brooks:And so, what if the apostle said, you're right, this, it doesn't get any more urgent or pressing than this. So this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna we're gonna give up preaching. We're gonna give up the word and we're going to just take care of this real pressing need. If they had said that, what they would have essentially said is that the heart of the church is mercy ministry and social justice.
Joel Brooks:That's the heart. Everything else can fade away. Everything else is expendable. But the one thing we have to hold on to above all else is social justice, mercy ministries. If they had decided that the church would have just become a nonprofit seeking to do good in this world.
Joel Brooks:If they had decided that, they would have lost their souls though. They would have lost their souls. But there had to be a temptation to do this. Because the moment if they had decided to do that, okay, we're just gonna take care of the widows, all persecution would have stopped. Do you realize that?
Joel Brooks:They would have been doing exactly what the authorities wanted them to do all along. The authorities are like, would you just quit proclaiming Jesus? Will you quit telling everybody about Jesus? Can't you just be a bunch of people who do good works? Can't you be a good people, just kinda love one another and love others?
Joel Brooks:It was them going around declaring the word of God and declaring who Jesus was that got them in trouble. It wasn't their good works. So they had to feel the pull of that. We could just give up this preaching and, gosh, the whole world will love us. And think of all the good we could do if we fully devoted our time to this.
Joel Brooks:But they would have lost their souls. You know, you can see this today in some churches. Churches that are all about mercy ministry, all about social justice, yet they ignore the ministry of the word. They don't submit to God's word. And I would say they've lost their soul.
Joel Brooks:They've lost their soul. The good works that they're trying to do, the good works they do, they're they're not an outworking of the salvation that God has wrought within them. Instead, they become an idolatrous way of them trying to achieve salvation. So they're working all the harder and harder just to try to get the approval of both God and man. And the apostles saw that danger.
Joel Brooks:And what they see is the gospel is at stake here. So what we're seeing in this text is taking care of widows is a gospel issue. Proclaiming the word of God is a gospel issue. The question is, how can the church do both? Well, what they would do is they would delegate this task to others.
Joel Brooks:The apostles got everybody together. It's like, we're not just gonna make this decision. We're getting everybody together. And what we suggest you guys do, is you pick 7 men full of the spirit and of wisdom, and then let them take care of the widows. Let them do this and we'll devote ourselves to the Word of God and to prayer.
Joel Brooks:And so they picked Stephen and they picked Philip. They picked 5 other people whose names are really hard to pronounce. They're hard to pronounce because they're Greek names. That shows a lot of wisdom in what they just did. Since it was the people who spoke Greek who fell through the cracks, well why don't we pick 7 Greek men to take care of this need?
Joel Brooks:People who speak their language, who understand their culture, it makes perfect sense. It was very wise, what they did. Now we read the result of their decision in verse 7. We read, and the word of God continued to increase. And the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem.
Joel Brooks:And a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. Now up to this point in Acts, Luke has described the growth of the church using a number of terms. He has used phrases like the Lord added to their number, or 3,000 souls were added that day, or believers were added to the Lord. But notice what he says here. He says, and the word of God continued to increase.
Joel Brooks:And the number of disciples multiplied greatly. It's the first time we have those two phrases here in the book of acts. And so what we see is the church didn't just grow. The church didn't just increase. It was the word of God increased.
Joel Brooks:And people were not just added, no, disciples were made and multiplied. And what you see here is the church isn't just growing, but the church is growing up. The church is becoming mature in its faith. It's not just growing a mile wide and an inch deep, but it's growing in-depth and it's growing in breadth. This is the calling of the church, the church universal, and in particular, the church here at Redeemer.
Joel Brooks:Our calling is not to be a mile wide and an inch deep. You have heard me say that multiple times. We have no desire. There's not an elder pastor here who has any desire to be the the new young hip church in Avondale that everybody goes to and we just grow really, really large and become a mile wide and an inch deep. We also have no desire to be a mile deep and an inch wide, in which all we do is go to Bible study after Bible study after Bible study, and we can't even get our head up and see the lost world around us.
Joel Brooks:God is calling us to be both. We grow in breadth. We grow in-depth. Now, in order for this to happen, everyone in the church has to serve. That means, every person here in the church needs to serve.
Joel Brooks:God has equipped and has called all of you to serve. Some of you it's to serve primarily through a way of teaching or through preaching. Others of you, you serve primarily through a way of of acts of service. And I use the word primarily there because you're gonna be doing other things. There's gonna be overlap.
Joel Brooks:And even when we see the apostles hand off the ministry to widows, we still see them later in acts. They're still doing acts of service to people. They likely still helped out some with the widows. And then we're gonna see next week when we look at Stephen, who was called to just wait on tables, the guy can preach the paint off the walls. God has a way of doing that too, of actually raising up lay people to embarrass the professionals.
Joel Brooks:But Stephen, he took care of the widows, but then at times, God called him to be an amazing preacher and he preaches the longest sermon we have in Acts. The One of the reasons we'll look at this next week, that he probably was able to preach such a sermon. I mean, where did he learn all that stuff? Was probably because the apostles had been enabled or decided that they would proclaim the Word of God, and they were able to teach these things. Teach these things to these deacons who then could go and proclaim it.
Joel Brooks:Now everyone in the church needs to serve, And one of the things I want you to hear is that there is no act of service that is beneath any of us. No act of service is beneath any of us. As a matter of fact, I would actually argue that the the more lowly the service, the more it points to Jesus. Because it's Jesus Himself who picked up the towel, knelt down and washed His dirty disciples' feet. And I can guarantee you that that was a service below Jesus' pay grade.
Joel Brooks:But Jesus, as the Son of God, came down stooped so low to serve. And when we do those types of lowly, humble acts of service, we point people to Jesus. I've been really encouraged over these last few weeks, really the last 2 weeks. I've been hearing just a number of reports of different acts of service, that people in our church have been doing. And so, just to kind of way to encourage you, let me just tell you some of the things that I've heard that we've been doing in the last 2 weeks.
Joel Brooks:3 of you have given away cars to people in need. I know 2 couples here at the church who have opened up their homes and allowed people in need to stay in their homes for the past month. One of you paid someone's power bill. I know this because the person had their power bill paid for told me. Someone else here stocks someone else's fridge.
Joel Brooks:A group of you last week, you found out that there was a handicapped woman who needed to be moved from her upstairs apartment to the basement. And so you all gathered together on a Saturday and you helped her move. Some of you have fixed people's cars or you have fixed their ACs this past week with no charge because you knew they couldn't pay for it. There's a couple here who I know who's been fixing a, you know, a couple hundred meals for the homeless every week for years now. Doing this just out of love for the Lord.
Joel Brooks:I'm looking around here and I see some people who I know tutor at Restoration Academy. Some who tutor at Cornerstone. Some who are mentors to the aspire movement. I know a number of you have offered free babysitting to some of our foster parents this past week. And then yesterday, I got to see 35 to to 40 of our men, go join together with 35, 40 of the men from New Rising Star.
Joel Brooks:And we had a great work day in Eastlake, getting to serve there. I love it. Just, just in this direction here, just a couple of miles, you have the the Interfaith Hospitality House. It's the only, family homeless shelter in Birmingham. So if you're a homeless family, it's the only place you could go and you can stay together as a family unit.
Joel Brooks:A number of years ago, our church decided to serve there. But if you notice the title was this interfaith and so they don't allow you to share your faith. You actually can't say a blessing. You can't invite them to church. You can't really just do anything to mention Jesus.
Joel Brooks:You're just there to purely serve. But because the people of our church were so passionate and so consistent in the way they served at this hospitality house, Week after week after week after week. Finally, the workers there said, do whatever you want. Do whatever you want. I mean, say a blessing, Lead Bible studies.
Joel Brooks:You could come by, pick up the residents here. Take them to your church. Finally, at one point for the last 2 years, we've been in charge of their continuing education for their staff who have come here. So we've got to educate how they better serve the homeless. These acts of service demonstrate the gospel.
Joel Brooks:These are all beautiful acts of service that point to Jesus. But in addition to that, you're all here listening to the Word of God. You're listening to God's word. So this is not just the church growing, this is the church growing up. All of these things are a reflection of the gospel that we believe.
Joel Brooks:The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ has come to save all the poor and powerless. And then when we cling to His word and when we demonstrate His word and who He is to others through acts of service, we are becoming the church that God has called us to be. And that's my prayer for us as redeemer. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Now, our father in heaven, we want to reflect your son, Jesus Christ.
Joel Brooks:In order to do that, we need you to be consistently bathed by Your word and we need to sit under its authority, so we can know who You are, Jesus. We don't wanna just be a non profit of social justice and mercy ministry. We wanna be the church. Lord, as we submit to your word and we listen to you, Jesus, talking to us through your spirit, through your word. May we then go and take that word and demonstrate it to the poor and the powerless all around us, So that they might see Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Through your Holy Spirit, God, I ask that we fulfill your calling upon us as a church. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.