The Word Will Not Be Stopped

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We're together.

The kind of God you are is the kind of God we need.

And not that we even have a clue what we need, because we don't.

But who have you revealed yourself to be meets our deepest needs.

And some of us could say, right now, you're hidden.

Would you get out from behind the bushes or the curtain and say, Yep, here I am.

All along I've been working.

And so some this morning are holding on, Lord.

And we know, we remember how you've rescued in the past.

We say, rescue again.

And some are sitting on your lap right now.

Some are like, oh, can it get any better than this?

And you're not confused by all that happening at the same time.

So this morning, we everything you are is everything we need.

We need you to work miracles.

We need you to make ways.

We need you to shine forth in holiness.

We need you to bring conviction and to bring invitation to us this morning.

So we trust you, Holy Spirit, to do those very things.

Amen.

Good morning.

As Neil said before, I'm Blake Harcastle.

I'm the Spiritual Formation Pastor here at Grand Parkway.

And this morning we're going to be in Acts chapter 6.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

If you brought a Bible, turn there.

We'll be in the first seven verses.

And this is the beginning of Deacons.

Now, let me first remind you or tell you about something that vexed me incredibly in seventh grade was this.

QWERTY.

Because in seventh grade, I had to take keyboarding or type typing.

And I was terrible.

This is a section on the on the on the American keyboard.

Let's go to the next image so you know what I'm talking about.

QWERTY, this is just the those letters are in that space.

And so in seventh grade, I didn't grow up.

I mean, there wasn't a cell phone.

I don't know, maybe the CIA had one or something, but I didn't grow up touching a keyboard.

I didn't type anything before seventh grade.

And so the first time I'm touching a typewriter is in seventh grade.

And I am hunting peck and terrible.

And I I cannot understand why is this not in order?

How am I supposed to do this?

I gotta just gotta know that S is over here and B is over here.

How?

And and you were graded on how fast you could type, which is incredibly unfair.

If you cared about grades.

And so I'm I'm I was probably a 20-ish word a minute typer.

Because it was, all right, what's the word?

Okay.

Click.

Wait, what's the word again?

Okay, click, click, click.

And my mom, uh, she was an admin at the time, and she was over 100 words a minute, and she'd be like, and she didn't understand why this was so hard for me, uh, why I was getting C minuses and typing.

Because it was vexing to my seventh grade soul.

But here's what I learned much later.

In college, I'm in a physics class, and our TA, he's uh he's right he's uh designing uh a circuitry for a keyboard.

New like how much what do you need, circuitry?

And he said, Oh yeah, yeah, circuitry keyboard.

And he said, Oh, did you know, by the way, that the design of the keyboard is actually to slow down the typer?

And the seventh grader in me said, I knew it.

I knew it! I knew that was wrong and unfair and unjust.

So when when these things are first coming out in the 1800s, um maybe you've seen one or maybe you've used one.

They had these mechanical buttons, and this arm would come forward and interact with this ribbon and slap the paper.

Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap.

And so what the design was to take letters that were almost always together and separate them so the left hand and the right hand would hit them separately, so these arms wouldn't crash.

And my grandmother had one of these, and I thought it was really fun to go, oh, watch this.

Four letters at once, snap, they're all welded together.

But so this QWRTY, this was to solve a problem, which was how do we keep these uh machines from clogging with people who get good at this?

It was helpful at the time.

It was not helpful to me, a seventh grader.

And I'll just let you know, in case you want to rise up and say, yes, let's change it, it's not changing.

It's just stuck in human psyche.

The text this morning is has some similarities.

And what happens is there's a problem, and God issues forth a solution to that problem that still is a solution to our problems today.

That's deacons.

So let's look at the text.

Let me get some background where we are in the salvation history is that Jews have been coming to faith in Christ.

And Hebrew-speaking Jews from the Jerusalem area, they've been coming to faith and coming to faith not in trickles, in droves.

3,000 here, 5,000 here.

The text last week, verse 14, more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women.

Basically, we're not, we're done counting.

This is this is getting hard.

So lots of believers from from Hebrew speaking, from the Jewish Jerusalem area.

But there's also now some other people who their native language isn't Hebrew, it's Greek.

They're from the surrounding areas and they're Jews.

They've gone to synagogue and they've come to faith in Christ, and they're around this Jerusalem church.

Now, the people in Jerusalem, uh, they had needs from the beginning, and then some of them were moved by the Spirit to, you know, they they sold their uh little little shorehouses, they sold their ranchettes, and they gave the money to the apostles and said, let's let's take care of people's needs.

And so the bank accounts in the black, and now you have Greek-speaking Jews who've come to faith, they're brothers and sisters in Christ, but now they're hanging around Jerusalem.

And that's where we are in the text.

So we're gonna make three observations of the text today.

We'll apply it all the way through.

First one is this having needs and meeting needs, this is biblical.

Having a need is not sin, having need is not wrong.

It's actually biblical.

It's actually being a finite human means you can't do life on your own.

Having needs and then meeting needs is also biblical.

Where do we see this?

Let's look at verse one.

Now, 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.

So again, disciples are increasing.

We got this complaint.

The complaint is grandma's going hungry.

That's the complaint.

People who are who are at risk in life, these widows who are Greek speakers, the people in charge of the food distribution of serving their Hebrew speakers.

We don't really know why this, we're not told why this is happening.

It's not like I can't understand you.

You gotta speak Hebrew.

No speaky Greek here.

No, that will not get you food.

They're not beyond that.

They have the same fallen condition you and I do.

A complaint arises, see that the Hellenists, the Greek-speaking Jews, they're being taken advantage by the Hebrews.

And so we're not told why this happened.

And maybe it is, I just I just don't like Greek speakers.

Maybe it said, look, you guys, why don't you just go back home?

Well, how about better yeah?

Why don't you if you're gonna stay here?

Why don't you sell those homes and give them money so that you can take care of your own people?

So the early church, we have a very serious problem that could not just divide the church, but make the cross look wimpy, powerless.

People are just the same, people don't change, people are just the same as they were before.

See, when you have a lot of new believers, especially at one time, you have a lot of old flesh that needs to be killed.

When you got new believers, you got people who have not yet begun to walk consistently in the life of the spirit.

There's still walking, so flirting with life in the flesh.

This is what's orbiting right here.

And in some way, you know, we here in this congregation, we must always be developing leaders.

There's future problems this congregation is going to face that future leaders will be the one God rises up to address.

It's likely some of you in this room would be men and women God raises to leadership in this congregation to address future hurdles we've not even dreamt of yet.

So you should be asking yourself, what is God grooming me to do in the kingdom?

What what problems is he nudging me toward?

What complaints, when I see them or hear them, what complaints move me?

See, having a need is biblical.

They don't say that the widows, uh, it's their fault, they made bad choices, they could go back home.

They don't blame the widows.

Sometimes you just get in a tough spot.

I mean, this is a broken world with lots of sharp edges.

Sometimes you just get where you need help, you're not gonna get by without help.

And they don't say that that's wrong.

Now, having a need is biblical.

Having a need is also humbling.

I have uh uh this couple weeks ago, I replaced the side mirror of my truck with the help of a friend.

Now, this friend, uh now now listen, back up three years ago, it's unimportant who this who did this.

That's not important at all in this story.

Just so you know, the identity of the person doesn't matter at all.

Someone was backing out of our driveway in my truck, and they hit some foliage that bent and smashed and cracked this piece, this side mirror.

But because of the cultural mandate to rule and subdue creation, someone's created gorilla tape, which is half amazing and mostly magical.

And that and so this thing just held together.

It went through the buckets, car wash, and everything with gorilla tape.

And so this one friend of mine who goes to this church, who's a car guy, said, How long are you gonna drive around with a taped up mirror?

And I'm like, I mean, as long as the tape holds up the mirror, I think.

That's how long I'm gonna do it.

And you know, this is pretty easy fixed.

Well, yeah.

For some people, maybe.

So imagine me long enough, three years later, I get the order in rock auto, and we got this thing here, and I Google, how do you replace this thing?

And it's it seems pretty easy.

It's like five minutes.

Like I'm almost certain I could do it.

I just have attempted so many things that end up uh taking a thousand times longer and I end up bleeding, that I'll let my smart odd friend help me.

So he comes over to help me, it takes five minutes, and it's all done, and it's glorious.

And at one point during minute three, I'm thinking, I should do this myself.

And what that is, it's my pride saying, Hey, hey, I still want to live, versus saying, How great is God that my friend is gonna serve me?

See, having a need is humbling.

A lot of times that's why people don't know what our needs are, because we don't want them to.

Because we don't want to be humbled.

Meeting a need is biblical.

Verse 3.

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.

What's the duty?

To serve tables.

Now we're gonna look later.

This word serve is this Greek word, and this is gonna be important later.

Uh it's this Greek word we just kind of zoom into English called deacons, diakonos.

So the duty is to serve tables.

Deacons, these are the lead servants.

These are the these are the men and women who coordinate the serving of the church.

The deacons don't do all the serving, they're kind of the leaders coordinate all the serving.

That's how it works.

Let me give you an example.

Uh, so meeting and so not just having your needs met, but meeting a need, this is also humbling.

There's a couple in our church that uh they got involved right before COVID.

And the husband just a series of just never catching a break health-wise, uh, to where it was really serious heart trouble in uh in the cardiac care unit very frequently.

And we ended up connecting one of our deacons uh to the wife just to just kind of provide some emotional under emotional support and find out, you know, he's he's getting out of the hospital again.

And what would be helpful if we had maybe a couple meals a week for a while?

That'd be helpful.

So we connect one of our other deacons, say, look, check in that ability survey and find out who raised their hand and said, Yeah, I'm good at making food for people.

I like doing that.

And so we'd send out a needs request to those folks.

Within two days, we had almost all nine weeks filled.

It's beautiful.

Then some of these folks who go over to deliver a meal just get curious and ask, hey, um, is it hard bringing a wheelchair over this threshold and they stare?

Oh, yeah, it's real hard.

What if we were to figure out a way to like build a ramp?

Oh, you could do that?

And so they did it a week later, build a ramp.

And this is stuff you didn't know about unless you were part of it, where this family is getting cared for by the people.

The deacons weren't doing it all, they were coordinating it all.

And what ends up happening is when you enter into the heart of someone else, your self-pity just it can't you can't hold on to it any longer.

When you enter into someone else's problems, you can't keep pitying yourself.

So serving people is humbling for us.

Who are these deacons?

What are they supposed to be like?

Quick three three quick things.

Good repute.

This just means they're supposed to be followable, that uh they're maturing in Christ-likeness.

And what this means, it doesn't mean that they don't sin anymore.

It just means sin is less and less what characterizes them.

There's someone, there are men and women you could follow.

This means they exemplify service, they exit, they're an example in giving, they're an example of a biblical pattern of tithing, they're an example of involvement in the life of the church, where, okay, I'm gonna follow Christ as this person follows Christ.

Full of the spirit, this means they're maturing, that they don't want what their old self wanted as much anymore.

That they're much more sore, more uh Romans 8, life in the spirit versus life in the flesh.

Full of wisdom.

This means they're peaceable.

This means it's like their car shock absorber.

And my car friend and all the other car people just shut it for a minute, okay?

I am aware there's more to the suspension than the shock absorber.

I don't know how to do anything, so if something breaks, I'm calling you.

But uh they're like a shock absorber, which means the bumps our church goes through that could create disharmony and disunity and and be a black mark, a scourge on the truth of the gospel, they minimize that.

They don't amplify it, they don't make it worse, they diminish it through serving.

This is God's design.

So you should be thinking, well, how are needs known?

How do they get met?

One of the ways the most common way needs are known is where you become known.

The way needs are known is is with the places where you don't stay hidden, where you are fully exposed.

That's things like a community group or a discipleship group or even a Bible study where when when we get smaller and smaller, that's when you can't.

Then you can keep hiding.

Look, you some of you can dance great and keep hiding and hiding and hiding.

But many of you, that's where you get known and that's where you get cared for.

And so there's there's some needs that never arise to our deacons.

We never know about it because a community group is handling the need all on their own.

Or a D group is handling the need all on their own.

And that's not wrong.

That's just biblical.

That's just being a Christian.

That's just the life of Christ living in you.

Verse 5, there's one last thing about having a need, and these are biblical.

And what they said pleased the whole gathering.

And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith, and of the Holy Spirit, Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenius, Nicholas, a proselytide of Antioch.

And these were set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid hands on them.

Maybe you recognize this, maybe not, but none of those are Hebrew names.

Those are Greek names.

They said, We're so committed to never ever again violating our Greek-speaking widows that we're gonna make all the deacons Greek.

I thought we're gonna do it.

In fact, one of these guys, he's not even Jewish.

This last guy, Nicholas, he's he's a convert.

So he's not even a Greek-speaking Jew, he's just a regular old Gentile.

So we're not gonna do this any longer.

Where we hold these ancient grudges from our old dead self.

All right, second observation serving addresses a multitude of sin.

It doesn't cover it, but it addresses it.

There's four in the text, and we look at these.

Uh, the first one is the sin of society against widows.

The fact that someone has no protection, no provision, no leading at such a frail time in life, that's wrong.

The Bible has a lot to say about uh not just encouraging but commanding the care of widows and the care of orphans.

And so there's a societal sin against widows in this text.

Doesn't mean every widow was destitute.

Some pride it great.

It just meant there was enough that there had to be a daily distribution of those needs.

And we don't got to give all the details.

Maybe some, when they came to faith in Christ, their family said, That's it, you're dead to us.

Or when the husband died, legally, all the rights to all the stuff went to the oldest son.

And maybe he's just a regular old run-of-the-mill jerk.

Just selfish.

Serving addresses this sin.

Second sin.

We got the sin mentioned specifically, the Greek speaking widows are sinned against by the Hebrew-speaking widows.

Remember, there are uh a complaint arose against the Hebrews because their widows were by the because of those being neglected by a daily distribution.

The simple correction to this is to serve.

It's very simple.

Oh, you're you're you're not serving them?

Okay, the correction is to serve them.

So let's let's find seven men we can put our trust in and say, uh, not not we're gonna tell you what to do, but we trust you so much.

One of the things we say around here is we trust your priesthood.

This is one of the places that comes from.

We're not gonna tell you, deacons, how to solve this.

We're just we trust that you're full of the Spirit and full of wisdom, and you're gonna he's gonna give the solution to you of how to make this work.

And we're not told that they get an excel file, that we don't know what they did, how they solved it.

But we know this was no longer an issue.

Paul didn't address it in Corinth, he didn't address it in Ephesus.

This wasn't a problem any longer.

Let me get another example of this.

Uh, two of our deacons, Dean Wade Knox, they uh preside, they are the lead servants in our ordinances.

That's our communion, Lord's Supper, and baptism.

And so part of what that means is they don't do all the work, but they coordinate.

They have a couple other couples who they do all this behind-the-scenes work that maybe you're not even aware of.

For example, they come on Saturday and they pull off these heavy panels and they fill the baptistry and make sure the heater works.

And then they get here early this morning and greet and basically kind of hold the hand, because it's nerve-wracking doing the baptism.

It's nerve wracking being dunk, and it's nerve wracking being the dunker.

And so there's baptism going, hey, it's gonna be fun, it's gonna be great.

Yep, hold on, I'll let you know when to walk out there.

And then maybe you saw when they're done, a big, huge, fluffy towel gets around.

That's them, the towel person.

And then and then all this a bunch of mass.

Adding back there, they roll it back up, they get it dried out.

In between services, they'll empty this tub.

And then sometimes they take the towels home and launder them at their house.

Just serving happily and digitally.

In fact, when I talk, when I talked to Dean Wade about, I want you to not do all the work that you coordinate the work.

They're kind of sad, like, well, we really like doing this.

And then we had a whole bunch of baptisms like we really think this is a good idea.

We should be, you know, teeming.

Not every time, every third time, maybe.

Third thing.

Sin, there's a third sin that's addressed here.

This is this is one we're gonna spend some time on.

This is it, it's not visible right away, but it's crucial to the text.

And that is the sin of hindering the ministry of the word.

You notice how uh read verse 2.

The twelve summoned the full number of disciples and said, Stop starving widows! They didn't say that at all.

They said nothing about the widows.

They said this it is not right that we should give up preaching the word to serve tables.

See, it's far worse than starving widows.

The whole community of people is being starved of the word.

That's the big sin.

By this group not serving one another, now that the 12, they gotta get involved and they gotta neglect what they're doing with the word in order to serve.

Not they're not above serving, but they've been set apart for the ministry of the word.

And so the big sin here is by them not serving each other, they're starving each other.

They're just ensuring that they're malnourished spiritually.

What is this ministry of the word?

If we go back to last week's text, verse 5, verse 42, or chapter 5, 42, and every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus the Christ, consistently and constantly applying the gospel in all contexts that come to you.

This is the ministry of the word.

And so you you should you should ask yourself, you should actually ask the Holy Spirit Is there anything I'm withholding that's getting in the way of the word?

Is there any way where I'm staying fat and others are starving spiritually?

You should ask yourself that.

Verse four.

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.

Now, what is this?

This is things like preaching, teaching, counseling, encouraging, provoking, admonishing.

And not everyone could do those, but a few more than the apostles could do that.

Things like pastoral counseling and teaching a class or leading a group or hospital visits.

But here's the thing the shepherds of your church, you have asked them, be devoted to the ministry of the word.

That's your charge to those of us who are pastors.

Devote yourself to the ministry of the word.

It's not because we're not above serving.

In fact, it's so much so that if we weren't charged to do that, we would we would drift towards serving.

Let me give you an example.

Uh, this last Wednesday, uh the need arose.

We're a young family that's been orbiting our church.

Uh, they they needed to pack up and relocate, and it was real fast.

And uh, I found it on Saturday, thought, oh, holy spirit, this is this is gonna be a great illustration for Sunday.

This is great.

And so I found out Saturday, so I ping all our deacons, and then I check in the ability survey, and almost 60 of you who filled out this thing said, whenever there's stuff to move around, call on me.

I'm good at it.

All right, great.

So send an email out, and I'm waiting, and one day, all right, nobody, but it's okay, just one day.

Tuesdays, nobody.

Three days.

And that's I'm thinking, this is supposed to be a great illustration, Holy Spirit.

I mean, what's you like?

Oh, it's gonna be a good one.

You watch and see.

And so, a couple hours before, I got one of our deacons said, okay, I I uh I got my grandson coming.

Okay, great.

Let me just pause and say, I'm not mad at anybody.

This is not get back at you time.

No one's in trouble.

I was thinking, hey, where are the teachers at?

They're kind of off, aren't they on?

Are they off right now?

I thought about that for just a sec.

I wouldn't let myself go there very long.

Um and I had some people say, look, I want to do this, but we're out of town.

And we we can't reschedule the yeah, you can't reschedule a cruise.

I understand you're out of town.

And it was super last minute.

But what ended up happening is we had a deacon, his grandson, and one of our men didn't tell us from the survey, just showed up.

I was so grateful they did.

But the other people who helped were four of our pastors.

And look, we listen to me, don't blank out on this.

We don't mind serving you, we don't mind sweating and getting calluses for you, we don't mind that at all.

We love to love you in all the ways you need to be loved.

We do.

But the text says you have to be devoted to the ministry of the word.

And so every look, every once in a while, it is good for us to use our backs physically for you.

But if it's every time or almost every time, really what happens is you just you get less of the ministry of the word.

You just slowly starve yourself, you starve one another.

And I say it one more time, just so you're sure.

I'm not mad at anybody at all.

I am thinking next time we got one of these, maybe a few more are gonna say, I don't want the word to suffer.

See what happens is when people, when serving increases, the ministry of the word increases.

And maybe you've never considered that the word having a deeper and deeper grip on my soul and over my flesh and over the people I love.

Maybe you've never considered that there's a correlation to the freeing up of those who minister the word and the ability of the word to flow with power through your family.

That's the big concern in this text.

The last sin that's mentioned here, this is verse seven.

It's the sin of unbelief.

Not believing is a sin.

Not saying, God, you are who you say you are, that's a sin.

That damns people to hell.

Verse 7, and 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.

The priests, the people who've been around a church for a long, long time, the people who are considered their pastors, they see this is so unnatural.

I've never seen this before.

Where people forsake their built-in generation after generation, where they see the world, and now they see it differently.

What was once a dividing is now this this is not two different people, this is now one people.

It's not Hebrew speaking and Greek speaking, it's believers in Christ.

I need to have that spirit and mean it's not.

So when the past people are a pastor and get saved, because the serving is flourishing, the word is moving with power.

Last one, last point, last thing we're observed.

Everybody deacons.

Everybody deacons, everybody deacons.

Now, this is one of the very, very few times that talking about the original language word makes all the difference.

So we don't do this very often, but this is the time we're gonna do it.

So the Greek word I said before is diakonos, and it'll come here in a second.

Diochanos, and it's used 29 times in the New Testament.

Only three times is it used referring to this, well, this office of deacon.

Every other time, it could have been translated, in fact, it is translated as the word serve.

Same word.

So illustrate this, let me give you some texts, and I'm gonna tell you, you're gonna, this is gonna feel more and more weird as I read them.

I'm gonna give you four.

So be prepared for this.

Matthew 23, the greatest among you shall be your diakonos, your deacon.

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

Mark 9.

And he sat down and called the twelve, and he said to them, If anyone would be first, he must be last and deacon of all.

My Bible says servant.

Same word.

John 12, this might weird you out.

Jesus says, If anyone deacons me, he must follow me, and where I am, there my deacon will be also.

If anyone deacons me, my father will honor him.

Are you starting to feel?

If someone's a believer, they serve, they deacon.

Last one, Mark 10, for even the Son of Man came not to be deaconed, but to deacon and give his life as a ransom for many.

If we translate the same Greek word instead of servant as deacon, this is what it feels like.

And so it is not the deacons who hold the office, the lead servants, the general contractors, not them who do all the work.

They're the ones helping us deacon one another.

This is the overwhelming expectation when Jesus comes to rule over someone's life, they become a servant.

They deacon one another.

Now, our deacons, they function like a general contractor, which means they kind of have oversight to bring harmony and make sure it's excellence.

You are the contractors.

You are.

And if the contractors don't do the work, the shepherds won't let it not happen.

But the word will be diminished.

So you should be thinking, well, how do the deacons know who to ask?

I mean, if I'm supposed to be deaconing, serving, how do they know that I want to help?

I'm so glad you asked that.

I'm gonna send an email this afternoon and remind you to fill out this thing called the ability survey.

What's that?

It's a series of questions.

You just let us know.

Uh either things like, don't ever call me, I'm horrible at this.

Because you've got four, four, you can grade yourself.

Uh, you can say, look, I'm a doobie.

I don't mind helping, just don't, you know, don't have it require too much.

Or you can say, I'm pretty decent.

Or you can, or the last one, the highest category is say, look, I should, I'm so good, I should be getting paid for this.

That's how good I am at this.

And you let us know.

And look, if you say I'm terrible, yeah, we're not asking you to do that.

Okay?

And don't say terrible for everything, because that's a lie.

That is a lie.

Um there's some things you're good, you're great at.

And so fill out this survey.

Now, there's 210 of you of our whole congregation who filled this out.

There's more of you than that.

I'd like to move this from 210 to 410.

That's what I want to do.

What do we do with this data?

I'm glad you asked.

We do what we do with all data.

We make an Excel file.

That's what we do.

And what do we do with that?

We don't sell it to anybody.

We, as a need arises, um, for example, on the 23rd, we have this need where we got to deconstruct, tear down a fence at one of our ministry partners.

So Al, the lead deacon in this, said, Well, what do I check?

Well, once you check a couple categories where it seems like someone gets real sweaty doing something, like construction, yard, and we just take who are the people who said I should be getting paid, or I'm pretty decent at this.

And so later this week, an email is gonna go out from Al saying, you want to help?

And if you want to help, say, yeah, I do want to help.

The only way you're gonna get asked is if you fill out this ability survey.

I will send you a link today.

You can also go to our website under volunteer, that's where you're gonna find it.

Now, this means is if you're 13, tearing down a fence is pretty fun.

It's pretty, it's a 31 is pretty fun.

If you're a teacher on your summer recharge, physically destroying something or just you know moving it into a trailer, look, you don't have to say the name of the kid out loud, but you can, it's cathartic.

It's good for your soul.

Uh if you're empty nester and you've escaped the gravity of all my kids have stuff to do, this just come serve together.

Now we're gonna close with this and we'll be done.

Uh, do you remember group projects in school?

You know, where teach teacher and and I think the only person who likes that is teachers, actually.

I think that's the only person.

Um and so there's this phenomenon in group projects called social loafing.

And what that means is when people are gathered in a group, there's a tendency to do less than if you were all by yourself.

And there's a couple different people in the group.

There's some people who say that's not true.

I will not do less if there's a group.

In fact, I almost have to do all the work.

Yeah, because the rest of us were loafing.

We knew you, you, we knew you had to protect your score and you would not handle this, and you uh and then the other extreme is the people who are like uh C's get degrees, C minuses get degrees, and they do as little as possible.

And so you have one person saying, You're taking this too seriously, one person saying, You're ruining my life, and my you know, I'll never get into where I want to get into.

And then you have a third category of people who just kind of watch this emotional tennis match between um, I don't care about this, and I hate you.

And it's just said nicer, like, uh, do one of you want to help out with the graph?

And and so that so you just watch that.

You just do as little as possible so that the uh the nerd queen won't you know get mad at you and give you a bad grade.

But I say all this to say this the church is not a place for social loafing.

It is not that you are on a group project called the Gospel to Sugarland, to Houston, to the ends of the earth.

And social loafing is not a place for that.

Jesus is not honored by that.

In fact, you you're you're you're not living the life you're supposed to by living that way.

Now, if you're new here, if you just came to see a baptism, just relax, okay?

This shoe is not your size.

If you've been here for some time, you've been here for a decade, and this place and this people do not have your fingerprint on them.

If your tears and your sweat and your blood are not on this place and these people, you should ask yourself, why is that?

Why am I here?

And if that indices you, then why am I disconnected?

All you have to do is repent and then start serving.

We close our services almost every way.

Uh Brett's gonna come up and sing, and so we we don't just jump right to and we're done, go eat lunch.

We give ourselves some time to come to some conclusions with the Holy Spirit.

And so some questions are gonna be in the screen.

I'm I'm gonna pray, and then we're gonna give you some time just to feel what you need to feel from this morning, and then decide to act on what you need to decide to act on.

These questions might help you.

So let's pray together.

Father, this text is is from your mind through the pen of an apostle to us.

And Holy Spirit, it is as relevant now as it ever has been.

Because yours is relevant now, and we have the same needs that they had.

And Lord, I'm grateful this isn't a church where nobody ever does anything.

In fact, so many people are doing something that we we could keep going at this pace, and we'd all think, eh, this is going pretty good.

But you want better for us than this.

You want not just a few hands helping most of the time, you want every hand helping in all the ways you have uniquely designed them to.

They would lift up your name, and the people who've been around church most of their life would say, Okay, I'm not, I am not converted.

I want that in me.

So, Holy Spirit, come now and just sit on our shoulders.

Move our feelings and our thinking.

Holy Spirit, you're not interested in guilt and shame.

That's not how you do it.

You're interested in mercy and invitation.

And so we receive it from you.

We receive mercy, and we hear your invitation to come.

Come be my hands, come be my tears, be my mouth, be my feet.

We say yes.

We want to be those who are characterized that the life we now live in the flesh, we live by faith in the Son of God, that you live your life in us.

Amen.

Why don't you give your attention to the screen?

We have a few important announcements we want to make you aware of.

Here's what's happening at Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

If you're new, text welcome to 281-626-5707.

This way we can know you're here and get you connected with the church.

Grand Parkway does not want to trip over its neighbors while getting to the world.

So our first missional focus is local.

Our mission partners are ESL, English as a Second Language, Fort Bend ISD Schools, Global Gates, Afghan Refugees, Neri's Promise, and Pregnancy Resource Medical Center of Rosenberg.

For more information, email missions at Gramparkway.org.

Men's Breakfast is Tuesday, June 27th in the student building.

Come and enjoy breakfast, fellowship, and a message from Pastor Neil McClendon.

Our student camp for 7th through 12th graders will leave for Mount Lebanon Retreat on July 17th and will return on the 21st.

Finally, Pastor Leo Almeida will be leading a new community group for graduated seniors.

The first gathering will be on June 13th and will continue every second and fourth Tuesday.

To learn more about our community groups or to register for our events, please visit our website at grandparkway.org.

If you have any questions or want someone to pray for you, find one of our pastors at the front of the stage at the conclusion of our service.

As you exit, if today's a day you practice tithing, uh the wooden boxes, you know, that's where you take care of that.

And uh this is also vacation time, which that means uh you travel somewhere and you isolate yourself on headphones to ignore your family you haven't been with all year.

And so uh to do, I'm gonna send you, I'm gonna send you the ability survey.

I want you to fill it out.

I'm gonna send you a link to, we have a church podcast where it's pretty good, in my opinion.

I host it.

Uh, but we I interview people.

Uh hey, listen, if you do something, you should enjoy what you do.

I host people and and they retell the story of what we said Ebenezer's before.

They retell the story of the Ebenezers.

This is what God did to rescue, and and it may be sometimes the same rescue you need.

We close our service with spoken blessings.

So lift your hands or put your hands out and you receive something.

I'm gonna lift my hands and bless you.

Congratulations! You're in a group project called The Christian Life, and you're teamed up with Jesus.

He's not honored by you loafing around and doing the bare minimum.

He wants all of who you are, he wants all your family history, he wants all your limitations, he wants all your abilities.

He must take all that and make his father look amazing.

So be all in.

It's an easy A in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.