Acts 6:1-7
Please remain standing and turn
in your Bibles to Acts chapter six. Acts chapter six, verses
one through seven will be our reading today. Over the next couple of weeks,
we want to stay camped out on this passage. You’ll see why
in a few moments. But next week, we want to look
at the office of elder, the next week, the office of deacon, and
then the third week, the office of the minister. And so we want
to take this opportunity to see how Jesus runs his church. the
gifts he gives to administrate the work of the church. So we’ll
begin that four-week series today with the choosing of the seven. Before we read God’s word, let’s
pause and ask for his help and grace. Pray with me. Lord, unless
you open our ears, unless you give us sight, unless you soften
our hearts, we will not hear, see, believe. Nor can this word
land on good soil that may produce. So Father, till our hearts and
open our minds and stop our ears and give our eyesight that we
might receive treasures from this your word. We ask it in
the name of Christ, amen. Hear the word of the living God
from Acts chapter six, beginning at verse one. Now in these days,
when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the
Hellenist 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 preaching the word of God to serve tables. 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. 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. And these
they set before the apostles. 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. Amen. You may be
seated. I try to read every year at least
one book on how to run the church. It’s helpful to kind of be reminded,
you know, why we do what we do and how it can be done well for
the glory of God. Two books stick out in my mind
that I’ve read. One was about 20 years ago, the
other about 10 years ago. The book I read 10 years ago
was a book by this compelling title, The Trellis and the Vine. Now, I think many of you know
what a trellis is. You’re riding along and you see
in somebody’s yard a scuppernong vine or some grapes or maybe
a wisteria plant. And underneath all the vines
and all the leaves and all the buds and the growth or the fruit,
you’ll see an old piece of wood, an old clothesline, an old trellis. Maybe you walk through an arboretum
garden and you walk under a terrace and it holds up those plants. That’s a trellis. No need to
really explain to you what is a vine. We know what they are,
especially kudzu, right? But a vine is one of the principal
ways God speaks of his people. Isn’t it interesting as you read
through the Bible to see how God refers to his children? I don’t know if you caught it
in the book of Numbers a moment ago when we read over and over
in that passage, the people were called the congregation. We think
that’s a New Testament word, don’t we? But what were the people
of Israel called? They were called the congregation
or the assembly. But very often God speaks of
Israel as a vine. I planted a vine in a land. I tended you and you became a
wild vine, he says. And so in the prophecies, we
see God promising to come in Jesus. I am the vine, you are
the branches. He prunes, he cuts, he tends
to us. So we get this image, don’t we? We understand what is a trellis,
a support system. What is a vine? It’s the plant. And one of the things we ought
to remember in the life of the church is the key, the critical
thing that needs our work is the vine. And we hope and pray
that it bears fruit. But so often in the church, we
think too much of structures. We think of the trellis. We think of it’s important to
have our committees. I think of the life of some of
the churches I have served. We had ministers. We had elders.
We had deacons. We had women in the church. We
had men in the church. We had youth organizations. We
had a finance team. We had a personnel team. We had
a cemetery committee. We had a building and grounds
committee, a meal team, a mercy team. I mean, it went on and
on and on. And you know how cumbersome church
life can be when there’s all trellis and no vine. We’ve seen that, haven’t we?
Committees, it has known, are from hell, right? You read Dante’s
Inferno. I think every level of hell has
a committee, at least it should. The joke you’re supposed to tell
about committees is committees are like the gestational period
for elephants. There’s a lot of rustling around,
a lot of dust flying and 18 to 22 months later, something finally
is produced, right? We have committees, we take minutes
and we do nothing. But structure is needed, right?
It’s biblical. Our passage today shows us that
structure is needed in the church. And so we’ll take a look over
the coming weeks at elders, deacons and ministers. But we’ll look
today at a basic overview of verses one through seven. How
does Jesus run his church? How does Christ, the ascended
Lord and head and king of his church, how does he run his church? We’ll take a look at these things,
but we’ll begin today by looking at the growing church. The first
thing you notice from this passage is the number of disciples. It’s
there at the beginning. It’s also there at the end. But
the apostles, the sent ones, the 12, they’ve been preaching
Jesus. And remember, they’ve been preaching
Jesus with great opposition. In fact, last week we saw Peter
and John. called again before the Sanhedrin,
called again before them to answer, why is this you’re preaching
in Jesus name, healing in Jesus name? They were questioned. They
were beaten. They left and they counted it
a great joy and honor to go serve God with great hardship. But
the disciples, the followers of Jesus have increased in numbers. Don’t you imagine their growing
pains? Don’t you imagine in a church of, well, it’s at least been
5,000, maybe it’s 10,000 by now. We don’t know, but it has grown. It has grown. And so the disciples
are growing in number. And well, we see the second thing,
our passage features a dispute. You’ve been around the church
block long enough to know that what the churches do best. Oh,
they fight. And they fight over the thickness
of the fried chicken, right? They have their tussles over
the color of the carpet. Is it crimson red for the blood
of Jesus or is it mauve or is it green? Remember green? Or is it Carolina blue? Oh, sorry. Sorry. I brought up a little
pain for some of y’all. We fight over that. I remember preaching
in a church outside of Charlotte when I was in seminary. I would
preach there on Sunday nights and this little church, didn’t
begin out of a desire to preach the gospel in their neighborhood.
No, they left their other church. And I kid you not, I don’t make
this up. They left over a dispute with their former congregation
of which HVAC company to hire to replace the air conditioning
unit. Now, does that not scream at you, the trellis, the support
system, the structure of the church is is taking on too much
meaning, too much importance. That’s very often the case in
our world. But it says here a dispute arose among the disciples. Well,
the dispute was in the daily distribution. It was a habit
of the people of God, the Israelites. It was a habit to take care of
the widows and the poor and the orphans. And there would have
been in their communities a daily distribution. They didn’t have
Social Security. They didn’t have Medicaid. They
didn’t have food stamps or the EBT cards you see people using
in the grocery. There weren’t food pantries.
You lived day by day in those cultures. You lived hand to mouth,
as it were. And so there was a daily distribution
among the people of God to take care of the widows, the poor
and the orphans. Well, as the early church began
to form and they increased in number, remember where they’re
worshiping. They’re worshiping at this point in time in Jerusalem
in the temple. They’re worshiping on Solomon’s
port, a big open area where this many people can certainly gather
for their worship and the preaching, but even their congregational
meeting, which we are witnessing today in this passage. But a
dispute arose between the Hebrew speaking people of God and the
Greek speaking people of God. That’s what the Hellenists are.
Remember in your history studies, the Hellenization of society,
that’s when the Greeks, the Romans, they took over and everything
became like their culture. Even their language took over,
the lingua franca, the language of the world, much like English
is today. And so the dispute was that the,
One group was getting overlooked. It’s not a good thing, right?
That’s something to, to bring up, uh, excuse us. We, we need,
uh, we need our distribution as well. And so you have two
large people, groups, two large nationalities, two different
languages, and you see the dispute among the disciples. Now, remember
when, uh, The first idea of eldership in the people of God came up
was because of a problem as well. It was when Moses was leading
Israel and his father-in-law, Jethro, comes to Moses and says,
you can’t judge all these people yourself. And so they chose,
they selected from among the people, same basic way, people
full of the spirit, people with gifts, people whom God would
approve of. And so they became the elders
of Israel. And so our view of eldership begins back in the
life of Moses, carries on through Israel. But this deacon office
is a new one. And this is right where it comes
from. It comes out of a dispute. It comes out of a need for the
church. And so the disciples have this issue. They come to
the apostles. And the third thing we notice
from this passage is some direction. The apostles give direction to
the disciples to solve this dispute, to give structure to the church
in order that it might run well for the glory of God and the
good of the people. And so what do the directions gather from
among you seven people? They’re full of the spirit. They
have graces. They’re people whom God would
approve of. There’s a standard of their character. There’s a standard of their abilities.
And we’ll think over the next few weeks of the character, the
qualities that are needed for the office of elder, the office
of deacon, the office of minister. We find those in Timothy and
in Titus. But the direction of the apostles
to the disciples, to the church, to solve this dispute, but to
give structure and help to the ministry of the church was to
choose men, seven men, in fact, who would wait on tables. They would wait on tables. And
the reason for that is the fourth thing our passage shows us. There’s
a division of labor in the church. This division of labor here,
at least, is between apostle and deacon. I know it can get
a little confusing. We don’t, we don’t have apostles
today. I know people call themselves apostles, but they were 12 and
that’s over with. And now we have ministers, we
have elders, we have deacons, but there was a division of labor
given to the church in its formation here in the book of Acts. The
apostles were to devote themselves. to the ministry of the word and
to prayer. How often today do you see ministers
devoting themselves well to prayer? Let’s start there. Not very often. We got three or four of us ministers
in the room today. And I bet every one of us would
say prayer was probably is one of the hardest things that we’re
supposed to be doing that we don’t do well at. But, but part
of the reason we are set apart not to do another work, but to
work for the church is so we can devote our time to prayer.
we are to devote ourselves to the ministry of the word. My
job as a minister is not to be a community organizer. It’s not
to get out the vote. My job is not to run a soup kitchen.
My job is not to run a hotel for homeless people. My, and
these are all things that are needed in our world, right? My
job is to labor in the word and to gather you the saints and
to minister the word to you. My calling is minister of word
and sacrament. And so many ministers have gotten
off the beaten path. They’re giving you Saturday night
specials, right? About 10 o’clock on Saturday
night, they say, oh no, oh no. And you see, you ride by the
manse and the light is on. And the keyboard is a clacking,
right? It is my job, it is the job of
the minister to labor in the word day by day, week by week,
and to feed God’s lambs. And so there’s this division
of labor. And in order that the apostles and today the ministers
and elders may minister to the congregation spiritually, we
need deacons to do well in our form of government, what we call
sympathy and service. The word deacon at its heart
is the word servant. When I was in seminary, we had
in every class a person we called the doulos, slave. And it was your job to make copies.
It was your job to get the teacher coffee and to make sure the cream
was right. And the doulos was the sermon
of the class. And it was actually a position
of great honor. It also meant you didn’t have to take the quizzes.
because while everybody else was getting quizzed, they were
getting the coffee and the copies. But there was this division of
labor in the early church and we still see it today. A ministry
of the word and sacrament and a ministry of sympathy and service. And we’ll flesh out this division
of labor a little more over the weeks to come in the office of
minister, the office of the elder and the officer of deacon. But
look at the end of our passage at the result. of this wise way
to run the church. We go back to the word disciples.
We began with the word disciples. The disciples were growing because
the apostles were preaching Jesus. And the number of disciples was
growing so that they had growing pains and a dispute. And the
way to fix that problem was for the apostles to direct the church
and give a division of labor. And now we see the result of
a happy, well-running church. We see more disciples. In fact,
it says very importantly, this is a phrase here in verse seven,
that’s repeated over and over in the book of Acts. And the
word of God continued to increase. or in other translations, and
the word of God continued to spread. So, think about the mission
of the church for a moment. It’s to preach the word. How
else are we to make disciples? Oh, we can get into soup kitchens.
We can get into Boy Scouts. We can get into running a homeless
shelter. We can get into running an upward
basketball program. We can get into running a preschool
and a play school, and we can get into running all the things,
all the programs that churches do. In fact, go back through
a shelf of books from the last
50 years on church leadership. It never mentions, they never
mentioned prayer and the preaching of the word. Oh, it’s, you gotta,
you gotta do a gifts analysis. You, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta,
um, you’ve gotta have a side door, you know, basketball program,
a soccer program, a car repair program. You gotta do all these
things. And so you wonder why the word of God isn’t spreading
in our world, in our country. It’s because the word of God
is not being preached. And there’s a place, those are diaconal ministries,
aren’t they? If you have a strong enough diaconate
to repair cars for ladies in the church or to feed the homeless,
you go, do it. Do it in the name of the Lord.
Run a hospital in the name of the Lord. The church has done
so well. But remember the first of first importance to the church,
it’s prayer and the ministry of the word. A well-ordered church,
a well-structured trellis will allow for the vine to grow. And it did. And the word of God
continued to increase. The number of disciples multiplied
greatly in Jerusalem. And a great many of the priests
became obedient to the faith. Don’t don’t miss these little
phrases. A great many of the priests came to faith. Remember, the apostles are in
the temple. And they’re in the temple with
all the authorities sitting over here in their semi-circle, the
Sanhedrin, grumping and trying to figure out how to kill the
apostles without themselves getting stoned. You quit preaching Jesus
or we’ll kill you. You quit doing things in his
name or we’ll throw you out of the city and stone you. They’re
grumping and sitting over here while the apostles are out doing
ministry and God is doing many great and mighty things. It’s
a wonderful thing to see the word of God spread. But dear
friends, one of the things that I’ve seen in my ministry, and
this has been something that maybe the Lord has called me
to do. I hope there’s not another one because it’s hard work, but
we have to turn our churches around. Some years ago, I was
thinking about leaving ministry and I went and met with a banker
to see if I could get a job in a bank. And he said, you know
what you are. He said, we’re what we call in
the bank business, a turnaround specialist. Instead of losing
our shirt on a business loan, we send somebody in to turn that
business around to make it a profit again so that they can pay off
their loan. And we need that in the church. So many churches
today are so cumbersome with so many moving parts. And you
know what’s better is a simple, well-ordered church. A simple
church that can be small and strong, but because of its foundation,
it can grow again. I told you 10 years ago, the
best book I read was the trellis and the vine. Well, 20 years
ago, the best book I read was small, strong church. Keep it
simple. Do the main things, preach the
word, pray, make disciples. If you get into a side thing
here and there, go for it if it’s the right thing. But generally
speaking, churches that have done well over the centuries
have stuck to preaching and to prayer. And you say, well, what
about outreach? every week as you stand at the end of the service
and you receive the benediction, the Lord bless you and keep you,
the Lord make his face shine upon you and all the rest, he
sends you out of here back to your houses, back to your neighborhoods,
back to your law practice, back to your teaching at the school,
back to your retirement, back to your mall walking, back to
your insurance sales, back to your, well, all your spheres
of fluence. There’s, I don’t know how many
are in here today, 60, 70 of you. Think of all the places you go,
all the influence you bear. That’s how God best works, I
think, in the church. It may be for us someday to build
this or that or have a special program unique to our church,
but for now we stay small, we stay strong, we stay simple,
and we have a trellis that’s enough because our main task
is vine dressing. And we remember well the words
of Jesus, I am the vine, you are the branches, Abide in me. He didn’t say obsess over the
trellis, did he? He didn’t say obsess over the structure, make
sure it’s cedar and oak and bolted together, right? It needs to
be there. But what’s the big task of the
church? It’s to bear fruit. And so that’s our goal. And over
the next few weeks, we’ll look at how we can do that best with
elders and deacons and with ministers. Let us pray together. Our Lord
and God, we thank you that you’ve given so many gifts to your church. Forgive us, we’ve cluttered it
up. Sometimes even we do everything but the church. And we can do
that very well and it can look like the world we are very successful
with our buildings and our rummage sales and our bake sales and
our this, that’s and the others. But Lord, keep us on task, praying
and preaching and building up your disciples and make that
so for us. We pray in the name of Jesus
Christ, amen. We want to prepare for the Lord’s
Supper by singing number 339. It says 338 in your bulletin,
but it’s on the same page. We want to sing, When I Survey
the Wondrous Cross, and we’ll stand to sing.