Growing Pains

Boldly at the throne we come to hear the Lord's voice.

He speaks to us this morning. Now in these days, when the

disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the

Helenus 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 at the

word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out

from among you 7 men of good repute, full of the Spirit and

of wisdom, whom we will appoint this duty.

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

the Word. And what they said please the

whole gathering. And they chose Stephen, a man

full of faith, and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and

Procurus, and Nick Candor, and Timon, and Parmenius, and

Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch.

These they set before the apostles, and they prayed, and

they 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 many of the priests became obedient to

the faith. And this is the word of the

Lord. Gracious God, we do pray once

again that you would bless us with an understanding of this

word so that we would not just hear it and walk away empty, but

rather that we would be transformed by it, shape it and

mould it. Lord, so that we might serve you

more and more faithfully. We pray through Christ our Lord.

Amen. Please be seated.

If you would grab your Bibles, you can turn to Acts Chapter 6.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

It'll be helpful to have the Scriptures in front of you as we

work our way through this text together.

I want to begin, though, by expressing thanks again on

behalf of Kelly and myself for your generosity and allowing

Kelly and I to be gone the past two weeks.

Obviously, great appreciation for the staff and the elders and

others who hold down the Fort so wonderfully.

Kelly and I went to visit my mother and to spend some time

together in Florida. We had a wonderful rejuvenating

time. So we appreciate that very much.

Your freedom to allow us to do that, encouragement to allow us

to do that. In addition to which, I want to

point out something that I hope at this point is somewhat

self-evident, that we're at the beginning of Holy Week, then the

Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday.

That's what we're celebrating today.

If you know the story of long Palm Sunday, you might question

the use of this text to highlight the Palm Sunday theme.

Palm Sunday is that moment. If you haven't read it, I

encourage you to do so. You can look very close quickly

at it. And Mark, Chapter 11 in

Mark 11 · chapter mention

particular is a great account of the triumphal entry when Jesus

enters into Jerusalem and all of the people gather, come out and

welcome him in. Now, the welcome that they are

offering is not the kind of welcome that we would offer

somebody who's coming to visit or something like that.

It's very specifically a welcome for a king.

And so the key thrust of Palm Sunday is the fact that all the

people gathered together and are celebrating and welcoming him as

a king. Now, of course, the irony of

Palm Sunday is in four days, all the same people are screaming,

crucify him, crucify him. But we'll look at that in a

couple of days here. What we want to focus upon is

the fact that the people have gathered together and are

recognizing Jesus and celebrating him not for being a

great prophet, not for being a great teacher, but for being

their king. And this is essential in the way

in which they cheer him on when they say hosanna, hosanna in the

name of David. We cried that together in song

numerous times, and then in reading the text we heard it.

Hosanna is basically a transliteration is the way in

which we say save us, Oh God save us, Oh God.

That's what we're saying when we say this.

And it's not just a plea, it's sort of a please save us, O God.

But it's primarily a shout of joy, a shout of excellent

exclamation. Here comes the King, and we want

us, and we praise him by acknowledging that central core

aspect of who he is. Save us, O King, save us, O Lord

Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest. And so we are praising and

saying, Hosanna, praise the Lord to acknowledge his kingship.

Now, one of the things that we recognize when we get to the

book of Acts is it crucial, not a side issue, not a second

thought, but crucial to Christ being a king is the formation of

his Kingdom, and central to that Kingdom is a formation of a

people who will be his church. Now as we've been working our

way through the book of Acts, we keep highlighting that central

characteristics of the church, the Spirit, the church in the

world, those themes that run through the book of Acts that

stress that they are the result that the church comes about

because of the work of Jesus Christ.

It is so common for a lot of Christians to think of church as

important but somewhat secondary to the work that Jesus has done.

What Christ has done upon this earth is to come and to save us

from our sins and to give us eternal life.

And so he wonderfully has. And yet the church is not

ancillary to that. The church is not a second

thought. The church is central to the

God's work in doing that. And so when we read a text like

this, we are not reading something that is on the side of

Jesus, Jesus Kingdom or Jesus kingship.

We are reading something that is central to what it means that

Jesus is king. And what we see in the early

parts of Acts is the church and its flourishing and its

greatness. We see the church as its caring

for its members, loving one another in such a way that the

whole, whole world can see and notice this.

We see the church expressing the word of God, proclaiming the

word of God, and worshiping together as a group, and of

praying together and of eating bread together, of spending all

this time in the temple doing all these wonderful things that

the church is doing. And yet we also see the

pushback, the counter attack from Satan himself.

Over the past couple weeks in particular, some of this has

become clear. The Satan's use of the world

itself to hinder the work of the King, to oppose the work of the

king, how Satan uses the world to persecute the Church and to

toss barbs and arrows at the work of the Church in this

ministry in this world. And we see also the work of the

sin within our hearts and Satan using that very sin that is part

of each and every person in this room.

Each and every member of the church has that indwelling sin

that is working against us and that Satan uses that to affect

and to work against the work of the king.

And today we're going to see again the work of Satan as he

tries to hinder the coming of the Kingdom of our Lord.

Satan uses the persecution of the church to oppose your king.

Satan uses the corruption of your soul to oppose your king.

Satan uses the distraction of the good to oppose your king,

the persecution of the world, the corruption of our own souls,

and yes, the distraction of the good.

Let's take a look at that for a second.

Here in Acts chapter 6, we can see again one of these problems

Acts 6 · chapter mention

that the church early on has to fix.

One of the problems that the church has to deal with

articulated right away in verse one.

Now in those days when the disciples were increasing in

number, this is the church is growing and here we have a

problem of growing pains. I remember when I was younger

seeing a video of a butterfly fighting its way out of a

cocoon. You know, the butterflies birth

from a cocoon and they have to fight their way out.

And I remember thinking to myself, oh, that's just

terrible. I wish somebody could just help

the help the little butterfly RIP open the cocoon so the

butterfly could fly and those kind of things.

And at some point or somewhere in my life, I voiced that idea

of somebody and says no, no, the butterfly.

If the butterfly doesn't struggle to get out of the

cocoon, it never learns to fly. It is because of the struggle of

getting out of the cocoon that enables the butterfly eye to be

able to fly eventually. In the same way we have the

church experiencing the growing pains.

We've got the disciples increasing in number, and so the

church is growing faster and faster.

And that introduces a problem. Here's the problem at the end of

verse 1A. Complaint by the Helenus arose

because the Hebrews against the Hebrews because they were their

widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

And I fumble that. So let's try it again.

A complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews

because their widows were being neglected in the daily

distribution. Now unless you're real familiar

with the Scriptures, etcetera, there's a lot of words in there

that maybe make sense to you that you don't know how they all

fit together. So I'm going to help fit

together. What's the problem that the

church runs into? Well, as the church has grown,

as the church has brought in more and more new members, they

have brought in members. Overwhelmingly all of them are

Jewish at this point, but they fit into two different

categories, two different levels, two different statuses,

almost a caste system that easily existed within Judaism

that we have to explore here. And this is the difference

between Helenus and Hebrews. OK, Now the Hebrews, those were

the Jews who were born somewhere in Jerusalem or Judea, maybe

extending all the way out into Galilee.

But they were the Jews who were born somewhere nearby, right

around Judaism. And they probably spoke Aramaic,

which is most closely related to the Hebrew language itself.

So they were the pure Jews. They were the Jewish Jews.

They were the upper tier level Jews, and then below them,

though, were these Hellenist Jews.

Now, if you're really up on world history, you know that

about 300 years ago, Alexander the Great has swept over all of

known Europe and from India, sorry, the known world.

From India all the way through Egypt and into Europe itself.

Alexander the Great came and conquered all this territory.

And one of the things that he was very intent on doing, his

spreading not just his fame and not just his role, but also his

culture. And so the Greek culture was

spread throughout the whole world.

And this Greek culture came under the name of Hellenism.

Hellenism was the name, the title in which we use for the

Greek culture. Then that Alexander the Great

spread throughout the world. So by the time of Jesus, 300

years later, once again, most of the entire world that everybody

knew would have been Greek culture, would have experienced

Greek culture in general. Their language would have been

there. The religion would have been

present, the culture, the attitudes, the, the, the, what

am I trying to say the, the way in which the people live their

lives. The whole culture would have had

this Greek undercurrent to it. And any Jew that was born

outside of Jerusalem, any Jew that was born outside of Judea,

the immediate surrounding area around Jerusalem would have been

exposed to Hellenism, would have probably spoken as their first

language, Greek, would have been exposed to all of the

Hellenistic cultural traits that would have been part and parcel

of things. Now, when they come, they're

still Jewish. And when they come to Jerusalem

and become part of the church, there's this second tier sense.

This is just short of racism, and maybe it is racism a little

bit, the way in which people would look down upon the

Hellenistic Jews. Well, yes, you're Jewish, but

you know, you have this cultural baggage of being part of the

Greek Empire, part of the world, so much influenced by this.

And So what happens? You have these two groups of

people, the real, real Jewish Jews and then the Hellenistic

Jews, and a complaint by the Hellenistic Jews arose against

the Hebrew Jews because they're widows.

The Hellenistic widows were being neglected in the daily

distribution. Now this goes back to a couple

of weeks ago when we looked at this earlier in the book of

Acts, that the church early on was able to care immensely for

one another. Their compassion and and love

expressed to those around us was overwhelming by their ability to

help one another and to care for one another.

And certainly one of the essential aspects of that was

for caring for the widows. Now, why emphasize on the

widows? The widows are a character, are

a caricature of the poor. In Jerusalem at this time,

widows would not have had access to land, would not have had

access to food, the agricultural that is born.

So widows, you know, we think in today's society, well, you can

go out and get a job. 99% of everybody back in this in these

days lived off of farming, subsistence farming.

And so they needed access to land in order to provide food.

And a widow would not have access land passed from male to

male to male. So a widow would not have had

access to the to the land. There are not social services,

there were not a big government that would come along and care

for the widows and the poor in this world.

And so by caring for the widows here, the church was expressing

God's concern for the poor, God's concern for those who have

not, do not have access to the very necessities of life.

And so the church, stepping into this marvelous role of

demonstrating the kingship of Jesus Christ, the rule of God

himself, is able to care for and nurture those who are in

poverty, those who are in need. And so they do so by a daily

distribution. By this means they, they pass

out food, They were able to pass out food to those who do not

have access to food and to strengthen them by giving them

the very substance in which they need in order to live.

So you can see now what the problem is that you've got a

community of 5000 people, 5000 folks, and you've got a number

of poor that are associated with this.

And people are prioritizing giving food to the Hebrew Jews

and taking it away from the Greek Jews.

Now, in our mindset, we could go a day without food, maybe some

of us, sort of. We could possibly go 2 days

without food. But if we were stuck on three

days without food, many of us would be talking to our

families, talking to our church, talking to the government.

There's no such situation. There's no such scenario

available to the Hellenistic Jews, the Greek Jews.

And So what happens when they miss the daily distribution for

one day, 2 days, three days, Literally, this is a life and

death situation. And so you have people starving

in the church and the church is this community is committed to

demonstrating the King's love for his people.

So what's the solution? Look in verse 2, verse 2, then

the disciples, that's the 12, the 12 summon the full number of

the disciples. So they gathered the whole

church together. Now there's 5000 or so

believers, we were told at this point, I don't know how they got

all 5000 of them together, but they brought the full 5000 of

them together and said it is not right that we should give up

preaching the word of God to serve tables.

Let me clarify something for a second here.

That sounds pejorative. You know, the disciples are

like, hey, you know, we, we've got the word of God here.

We're the important people. It's not important.

We, we can't wait tables. We can't do that lowly job.

That's not at all what's going on.

And you can see that earlier, later in this text, as we go on

later in the Ted text, you'll see how important the disciples

recognize the ministry of loving and of caring for our, our our

brothers and sisters is how central it is to the work of the

gospel message. That's not what the disciples

are doing. What the disciples are saying,

the apostles are saying, is we can't get distracted from what

God has called us to, to pursue something else That is very

important. This is the distracting.

This is Satan's attack against the church.

In this point. Let's bring forward something

that is, is it important to care for the widows?

Is it important to care for the poor in this world?

Of course it is. It's crucial to the expression

of the gospel message. The book of Acts up until this

point has made that crystal clear to us, and we all have to

recognize it. And is that important to our

ministry? It's central.

It should be central to our ministry.

People should walk in. Do you remember the silly little

song from the 70s? They will know we are Christians

by our love. OK, Somebody acknowledged that

they recognize that song. No, because otherwise I'll sing

it. No, you know, So, yeah.

Thanks, Chris. They will know we are Christians

by our love. Tacky, gross song.

So true. So true, it is exactly what's

supposed to happen, visitors, and we have some among us that

right now visitors are supposed to come in here and they're

supposed to be overwhelmed by the love in which we show one

another. That is gospel message.

That's crucial to the gospel. And the disciples, the apostles

here are saying we can't afford not to do that good ministry,

but at the same time we can't get distracted from preaching

the gospel message. So what do we do in verse 3?

Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you 7 good men of

good repute. The the weight, the importance

that the the apostles put on this task is seen in in the

people that they choose and how they're charging to do this job.

Just don't find any flunky that can do the work.

No, what do we need in order to show God's love, to demonstrate

the care and compassion that God has for his people, the king has

for his people. What are we supposed to do, pick

out seven men of good repute? It's too, we don't have time to

develop the intent of that. This is not just, you know,

they've got a good reputation. There's so much behind this,

this word of good repute, full of the Spirit and full of

wisdom, and we will appoint them to this duty, but we will devote

ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.

How do we combat the attack of Satan here in this case?

To distract from the good, from the best by the good, to

distract us by the good, helping, caring, loving for one

another, from what is best for the disciples.

The apostles are called to proclaim and to preach the Word.

What's the solution? Gather among us, the people of

God, and the task becomes not theirs, but ours.

Just to build on that a little bit, look in verses 5 and 6

again, what they said, please, the whole gathering.

And so they chose Steven, a man full of faith in the Holy

Spirit. Once again, he's passing out

bread. No, that's not the point.

The point is that this is the ministry of the king.

This is work for the king. And what is work for the king?

Demand work for the king, demands those who are full of

faith and of the Holy Spirit, Stephen, Philip, Procurus, Nick,

Andor, Timor, Permanius, and Nicholas.

Now I read those names. To communicate something that

you're probably not going to be able to pick up.

And I understand that this is one of the things for studying

scripture. You come across things that you

wouldn't picked up otherwise. All of those names are Greek.

All those names are Hellenistic names.

In other words, it's the Hellenistic Jews that are losing

out on the on the daily distribution.

They're the ones that are suffering.

And so how do we go about compensating?

How do we fix this problem? We pick people who will care for

them. And specifically, we on behalf

of the whole community are not picking Hebrew Jews, we're

picking Hellenistic Jews. There's wisdom in what they are

doing to solve this very problem.

What's this? If this is the solution that

they come up with, what's the result?

Sorry, we should read verse 6. These they set before the

apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

And what's the result? Verse 7?

And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of

disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of

priests became obedient to the faith.

The result is 3 things. Look at it.

And again you can see the word of God continued to increase.

Now, I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I think we all

kind of get the feel for it. The proclamation of the gospel,

the spread of the message of love, the care for the king, the

elevation of the king of kings. This continued to increase.

In other words, it it was manifested more and more clearly

to the whole community, to everybody that was around.

The gospel continued to increase to everybody around.

That's first. Then secondly, and this is, I

don't know, a pastor that it hates that doesn't hate this

verse because what happens because the number of disciples

multiplied greatly. Now we hate that because adding

them disciples is something we want to do because you can

measure adding them multiplied. That's a lot of pressure

multiplied. In other words, God is bringing

in so many people into the community.

The word of God is spreading so powerfully, so wonderfully, that

it's not that you can tell that, well, we're getting different

people, we're getting new people every week to worship.

It's not that. It's that the number is growing

so big that the only way to quantify it is by saying it's

multiplying. It's spreading that much.

And then thirdly, even priests were responding to the Gospel

message. Now, why do we say even priests

Because they were the opponents of the Gospel message.

In other words, one of the results of not being distracted

from the good, but focusing on the on what God has called us to

do. Is it even the opponents end up

embracing the gospel message. What's the point?

I think the point is this. The king is calling each and

everyone of you to a specific task.

Don't get distracted by what is good from doing what God has

called you to do. That's the easy way of looking

at it. OK, so hold on to that.

Put that aside for a second and realize the second point.

Here's the second point. We can't function as part of

God's Kingdom the way God called us the function as part of God's

Kingdom without the input of every single person in this

room. That's that's what what the

people did. They gathered the disciples, the

apostles, gathered up the whole congregation and said, how are

we going to solve this problem? And then they appointed 7 people

as representative of the whole entire group.

The whole entire group is to love.

The whole entire group is to communicate the gospel.

The whole entire group is to share their faith.

We're going to see this in a little bit.

You might have picked up some of the names that you recognize.

Parmenius never shows up again, Timon, Nickandor.

But you do recognize Steven and you might recognize Philip.

And both of these men communicate the gospel message

in all that they do in life. We need to be pushing forward to

understand what God has called Hebron Church to be.

What is Hebron Church's goal in life?

How do we fulfill that mission calling to be part of the

Kingdom of God? And in order to do so, every

person in this room is needed. That's the message of Scripture

that's communicated over and over again.

The passage that Tim read earlier for us hits on that very

point. Every person, no matter how

young you are, you have a role in God's Kingdom.

No matter how old you are, you have a role in God's Kingdom, no

matter how immature you are spiritually.

And I know that there are people here that say, hey, I've only

been coming to worship for a couple of weeks.

I've only been a Christian for a year or two.

No matter how immature you are spiritually, you are called by

the King to serve him and called into this community.

Do you have to be a member of this church?

No, you worship in this church. You're part of our community.

God has called you to minister here in this place, and we can't

fulfill God's calling without you.

It's that easy. The Cantor was necessary.

Timon was necessary, Steven Phillip was necessary.

Henry is necessary, Linda is necessary, Alex is necessary,

Mark is necessary, Chuck is necessary.

I'm just naming off people that I see necessary, and I know it

because God's called you here to this place, to his Kingdom.

First off, Lord, speak to me so that I can see what you want for

me to do. Secondly, empower me.

Enable me, fill me with your Spirit, fill me with wisdom.

Enable me to be the man or woman of God that you call me to be so

I can fulfill that Kingdom purpose here at Heaven Church

and beyond. Two prayers, speak to me,

empower me. Go ahead, pray.

Lord, I do pray that you would enable us not to be distracted

by good things, but to listen well for the calling that you

have given to us as individuals, and then as calling to be part

of this community, to see your Kingdom come powerfully here

through Hebron Church and in Penn Hills and in Pittsburgh and

in the United States and across this world.

Lord, speak to each of us individually if we are used to

listening to your voice or not. Lord, speak so that each of us

can hear. And then, Lord, give to us what

we need in order to be faithful to the calling that you've given

to us. We ask all this through Christ

our Lord, Amen.