Serving at the Kids Table

Sa My name is Jordan. I'm one of the elders here at Heights. It's so great to have you here this morning. Really, really glad to have you. You saw Stuart getting baptized and as Kelly just mentioned, we are doing baptisms here in just a few weeks. We're doing child dedications. Just quick plug if you're interested in getting baptized, if you've never done that, never expressed your faith in that way, or if you want to get your child dedicated, can come chat with me, chat with Drew. We'd love to have you be a part of that. We're in a series in the book of Acts. It's in the New Testament. In fact, it's part of a long letter written by the same guy who wrote the Gospel of Luke. And it's a continuation of a letter to a guy named Theophilus. Essentially, Luke decided to write down the accounts, the stories of Jesus, but then continuing on in the book of Acts, he also wanted to write down the accounts and the stories of Jesus followers after he died, rose, and then ascended into heaven. And so we now get the benefit of also reading this book. So that's just kind of a quick background of where we've been. We really, really like this series and we're obviously calling it that the story continues because as much as the story continued in the Book of Acts for the original disciples in the early church, the story is continuing now for us, for Stuart up on the screen, for Hope downtown, for Hope Heights, for Hope Lowertown and throughout the greater Twin Cities. And this is all a part of the great story of God redeeming a people back to himself that he dearly loves, but also that he dearly desires. And so if you hear nothing else this morning, it is that there is a God that dearly loves you and dearly desires for you to be redeemed back to him. So as we're continuing on in our series, we are going to be looking at how this great big story not only has an impactful and influential way of how we make huge life altering decisions, but also maybe smaller logistical decisions, kind of day to day decisions. So we're going to dive in. Context is helpful. Again, if you're just joining us this morning, maybe you've missed it a couple weeks. Here's where we're at. Jesus was here on earth, had a group of people around him called followers. They followed his teaching, but also sometimes just legitimately followed him around wherever Jesus went. Okay. These were called disciples. Okay. Jesus dies on the cross. Three days, rises, there's the empty tomb. And then sometime later, there's also then his ascension into heaven. And during this time, these 12 disciples get commissioned to become apostles. And that's how they're referred to in the book of Acts. And all that means is disciple to apostle. Apostle just means now you are sent. You were once followers. You were once disciples. Now we want you. Jesus wants you to, to be sent out into this world with the message of redemption and God's love. So for our passage today, we're going to be hearing apostles. That's, that's all that, that means. Sometime within the early part of the book of Acts, Jesus ascends into heaven. And then the Spirit of God comes down onto this early group of followers. This is fascinating. We spoke about this a few weeks ago. Some amazing things started happening. They were able to speak in different languages with great boldness and energy. They started preaching, sharing the good news of Jesus and his redemption story. This is the early church, and by God's grace, the Spirit moves in people's hearts and the church just takes off. Lots of people. Here's, Here's a sampling. Just within the first couple chapters of Acts. Acts, chapter 2. With many other words, he. Peter, warned them, pleaded with them, the crowd. Save yourselves from this corrupt generation. Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about 3,000 were added to their number that day. Three thousand, my goodness. Just a few verses later, again talking about the early church. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes, ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. So this is a continual act of God and the Spirit moving and just more and more people jumping to right away. Chapter four. This is right after the. The paralyzed beggar was healed, says the priests. And the captain of the temple guard. And the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. They are greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They seized Peter and John, and because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. But many who heard the message believed. So the number of men who believed grew to about 5,000. This is getting out of hand, people. Come on. Okay, and then into chapter five. We've. We've lost count now. Now we're just. Now we're just a crowd. The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon's colonnade. No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people. Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. It's fascinating. Verse 13. No one else dared join them. But this movement is great, is growing, say, rapidly growing early church. And the last number that we even have reference is 5,000, 5,000 men. That doesn't include women and children. But as we also just see, it hasn't been without its challenges. Multiple times, the apostles, the Peter and John specifically, they've been arrested, they've been threatened, they've been flogged, beaten, been told by the authorities, hey, stop what you're doing. Stop preaching the name of Jesus. That didn't stop them, and that didn't stop the Spirit from moving in this early church. And so for today, our passage, we're looking at some of the realities of this rapid expansion, because now a different kind of problem is presenting itself, and it's not necessarily persecution. So if you'd open up your Bibles, we're in chapter six. We just have seven verses today, and the words will be up on the screen as well. So Acts 6, 1, 7. In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the 12 gathered all the disciples together and said it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them, and we'll give our attention to prayer in the ministry of the Word. This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith, and of the Holy Spirit. Also Philip Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon Parmenas, and Nicholas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. So the Word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith. So this is a. This is a different kind of issue than what the apostles have thus far faced. There's some administrative challenges, some logistical issues of having thousands of people a part of this, this new movement, this saying yes to Jesus. But now all of these people are trying to figure out what saying yes to Jesus looks like going forward. How do the leaders help administrate and delegate things that are important? So let's get into this. We have to identify the problem here first. The widows are being overlooked for distribution of food, specifically those belonging to the Hellenistic Jews compared to the Hebraic Jews. So we've got kind of this comparison and maybe even a little bit of contrasting just here to help us understand what's happening. Hellenistic Jews would have been Jews that would have been ethnically the same. So racially the same, but culturally different. They likely spoke the different language. They likely spoke Greek, not Aramaic. Okay. Hellenistic Jews were Jews that likely lived away from Jerusalem, away from Judea, and were a part of the Roman Empire. But if you remember, it wasn't that long ago in Acts that we were sharing that at the time of Pentecost when the Spirit came down and people started talk in different languages that coincided with a traditional Jewish festival that was taking place at the same time. And so there were all, all of these Jews from around the, the Roman Empire coming into Jerusalem. And then they heard the message of Jesus, said yes. And then they stuck around. And so now we have these two cultures kind of colliding. We've got the Hebraic Jews who are just like, yo, this is my town. And then these Hellenistic Jews who have now come in, and now they're all a part of this same Jesus movement. How do we figure this out? Specifically now, because the widows are being overlooked in food distribution. There were supposed to be some systems in place to, to take care of these widows, but now because those widows were from far away, they're not, they're not being taken care of by their normal systems because they're not even in their home country, their hometown, they're in Jerusalem. But also maybe there's a little bit of prejudice because they've also now said yes to Jesus. So this, this is that context. So we, we've identified the problem. How are the leaders, how are the apostles going to respond? Verse 2. So the twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, quit your complaining. Right? That's what it is. They complained against the Hebraic Jews because of what it was. Funny. So many other times in scripture when we tried to identify the problem, it would actually be, ah, it's actually a heart condition. The problem we kind of anticipate is they're complaining. But that's not what this account actually has us look at somehow. And from what I looked at, this is one of only a small handful of times where complaining, some of your translations might say grumbling actually was responded to favorably, which is kind of wild. Somehow some way spirit led God honoring people complained to Spirit led leaders and the leader said, you're right, this is not in alignment with what we've been preaching about in regards to who Jesus is and what he cares about. So we're going to do something. We're going to do something. So they said it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and we'll give our attention to prayer and ministry of the Word is really, really interesting in the sense that this is an administrative need, this is a logistical issue. And yet the qualifications that are being set forth are still really high. These seven men, you got to know who they are. They're known. They're known amidst and amongst the community of the early church. They're known to be full of the Spirit, they're known to be wise. These are some pretty high qualifications. Okay, as we read this, I'm guessing, I'm guessing some of us might have been tempted to maybe misconstrue or even misapply some of our Western understanding of the language. Waiting on tables see that maybe in some way as inferior. That would not be the case for this passage. They're actually the same word. We'll highlight that. A more accurate translation would be service or ministry. So we've got service, ministry of the Word, service, ministry of tables, same word. J.R. stott I love this picture by the way. Really fun theologian Old guy says it this way. It is surely deliberate that the work of the 12 and the work of the 7 are alike called Diakonia, ministry or service. The former is the ministry of the Word, the latter the ministry of tables. Neither ministry is superior to the other. On the contrary, both are Christian ministries, that is ways of serving God and his people. Both require spiritual people full of the Spirit to exercise them. The only difference between them lies in the form the ministry takes, requiring different gifts and different callings. If we understand kind of the gravity and what the seven are being asked to do, we'll remember it was just a couple chapters ago it was described that as this early church grew there, there was almost kind of a consistent constant. People were selling off all of their possessions, their property, taking all that money and then laying it at the apostles feet symbolizing, do with this what you will, we trust you. It is now these seven guys who are going to take this pile of money and help with the distribution of Food to widows. Did we kind of follow that? So there's a lot of money. There's a lot. There's a lot at stake to make sure that they are full of the Spirit and wise. This is beyond waiting on tables, so to speak. Continuing on verse five, this proposal to choose seven men full of spirit pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. We'll actually get to highlight Stephen next week, who we find out is a very bold and gifted preacher. But in this case, we actually get introduced to him first as very gifted administrator. Okay, so they chose Stephen also Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon Parmenas, and Nicholas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them. Pretty sure this is the first time that we actually see this practice referenced. And we still do this today. We, we commission, we pray, and we lay hands on people. So that's kind of fun. All of this then is summed up in verse seven. We get a summary statement. So the word of God spread, the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith. So not only is all of this happening, verse one through six, all of this is happening as a way to bless and take care of the church internally. Okay, Amongst their own members. All of this is playing out in a way that it assists and benefits their evangelistic efforts to, to the point that we get the, you know, the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly. But then we get this note about priests, Jewish priests become obedient to faith. Likely the same priests who were vocally or maybe internally against Jesus when Jesus was doing his earthly ministry. Somehow in, in, in God's way, it wasn't Jesus who turned, you know, in his earthly ministry like face to face. It was in some way the internal administrative work of the church that allowed them to see it was benefiting the. Their evangelistic efforts. And so it. We have to kind of exclaim, like what. What a great benefit internal administrative work can, can have for our own witness. Because there's a watching audience that's watching what they were doing, watching what we're doing internally. All right, so this is our passage for today. We kind of got to ask, why is this here? Why would Luke want Theophilus to know that this happened? Why would the Spirit inspire Luke to write this? And now we get the benefit 2,000 plus years later of, of reading this and looking at it, part of the reality and not to push this Too far. If you get to the end of chapter five, if you got your Bible open. Okay, read the end of chapter five, skip this section and go to verse eight of chapter six. The story kind of continues just fine. This is kind of like a weird. It's like what, what is this? So we have to ask why, why is this here? What, what are, what are we to, to pay attention to? Here's what I think I'll throw up. A passage from chapter four just a couple chapters ago says all the believers, verse 32. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own. They shared everything. They had the great power. The apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who own land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales, put it at the apostles feet. This is what we just talked about. Distributed it to anyone who had need. This is beautiful. This is ideal, like almost supernaturally magical. Utopia esque, verse 34. There are no needy persons among them. We're a chapter and a half later and we find out the widows are needy. What happened? God could have kept the early church here, but he didn't. What happened? I think, I think this passage is here and we're sharing its today. Because while the Spirit can and does allow for great blessing and great provision and even glimpses of the ideal of almost heavenly ideals, the spirit also allows for the element of human involvement. God can do it all. But instead God invites desires for human involvement, invites the church into the things that he wants done and wants accomplished. Imagine if you will, a, a dad, he's building something, building anything that dad could, could likely build whatever that thing is. Faster, better, safer. I've most dads here, I'm sure that's, that's true. Okay. But instead he tells, tells us, Son tells his daughter, grab a hammer, put on some safety glasses, we're getting to work. And it takes effort and it likely takes longer. But our Heavenly Father is now doing, doing the same. I'm convinced because the story of Acts and this, the story of the church and the story of today is that it is continually invitational, personally and first and foremost invitational to accept Jesus and the, the salvation that is found in him and him alone. To say accept that invitation first, but then also it's invitational to the work of blessing, the work of service, the work of building the thing that we get to be A part of the church. Church is a. Is a team sport, friends. And that the service of the church and the response to the gospel looks anti consumeristic. We saw that in chapter four, right? Instead of withholding possessions, instead of saying, that's mine to hold onto, they're freely given away to those in need. Instead of claiming ownership over things, over money, our time, our talents. It's anti individualistic. And instead others focused. None of this is mine anyways, so I can freely give it away to serve joyfully, to invest in the truest of true things that is to come. That's our response to the gospel. And that's the invitation in this passage, Jesus saying, come on. I think that's why this is here. Now we have a. We have a potential temptation, especially for us, kind of in our cultural context, that we can confuse or assume that the people on staff at a church are the ones that are the only ones that are responsible. Okay? The only ones that are doing ministry. Now. We are doing ministry. You're not being hoodwinked or anything like that, but the responsibility is for all of us. Ephesians 4 says it this way, verse 11 and 12. So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and the teachers, okay? The professional Christians, so to speak. To equip his people for works of service is the same word Diakonia. To equip his people, all the people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up. The people of the church are working together to build up the people of the church. This is a. This is a beautiful invitation. You know, some of you might be waiting for, like, is he mad at us? I'm not. Okay? In fact, I do not share this to shame. I had a very proud moment, actually, this past week as I was preparing for the sermon, Drew shared some numbers with me. That. That honestly made Emily and I just kind of sit and we were just really, really proud of this community. There's one ministry here that we're likely all well aware of that needs a lot of help. Guys, we got a lot of kids. So many kids. Okay? This was my proud moment. Drew shared with me some numbers, and the one that really struck me, I was so thankful. We have 40 regular volunteers helping out with kids ministry. 40 guys. We are not a big church. 40 people. That was so encouraging to my heart, so thank you. And in the calendar year of 2025, this year, we are aware of 10 newborns either already born or on their way. Guys, it's March. God damn It. Brenna told us that to accommodate this growing number of kids, we already need four more. We need to increase that army of kids helpers by 10% just to accommodate the kids that we already know about. And again, it's march. We don't even know who else has come. I'll just put it there. Okay. Okay. So I want to say thank you and consider this an extremely tangible invitation to get involved. I don't. I don't think Britta is at the point of complaining or grumbling. If you know her. I'm not sure if she would ever complain or grumble in. In that way. So we'll take our cue from the newborns. They. They tend to squawk a little bit. Okay, we'll take our cue from them, and I invite you consider helping out with kids church, because this is a very real, tangible need for our small little church here. Is this our only need? No. No, it's not. And if you want to hear about what those other needs, you can come talk to me, talk to Drew, talk to Sadie. We'd love to talk to you. This, though, this is an opportunity for us to respond to the gospel in a really, really tangible, effective way. Because as we look to build up the church, that church also includes the youngest of us. We get the opportunity to respond faithfully, to care and to shepherd, and to faithfully be present to disciple these kids. You might even get the benefit of one of the kids looking at you so skeptically. That's Mack, right? Is that Mac? Yeah. Mac loves Stan now. Okay, this looks like the whole body of Christ being built up here at Hope Community Church, Columbia Heights. This means giving our kids a safe, appropriate space to do gospel and community in a context that makes sense for them. And that won't happen without our continual help, encouragement. Okay? So consider this an invitation. We don't want to look at our kids as an annoyance, as a. As a barrier to us as adults getting something out of church. But rather, we're all in this together to try to build up the body of Christ. Worship team, you can come on up as we finish up. I have a few questions for us as we look to respond in heart, in mind and action. And the first. Have you accepted the invitation of Jesus? None of. None of this really makes sense without first understanding that we're full, we're complete, we're good. We are a redeemed people in the eyes of the Lord. Deeply loved, deeply desired because of the work of Jesus on the cross and the empty tomb that changes everything. Including then the invitation to invest and involve ourselves with the church. Have you accepted that invitation as well? To be a part of the church, to help build up the church? And then how might our internal service to each other help with our external witness to a watching audience? Whether we want them to watch or not, what we do inside these walls affects how we're perceived, what we look like to other people, what. What they see when they walk in for the first time. So with that, who else can be invited? Who do you know that can be invited? Other ways we like to respond, and we do this every week. We'll have communion out in the hallway. Consider the communion table also. Invitational. Jesus is inviting you to the communion table. Here's the thing. You didn't bring anything. He has everything laid out for you. You didn't bring anything to the table. And yet you're still invited and deeply desired to come and to feast. You don't have to be a member here to take communion, but we would ask that you're a follower of Jesus, that you've received that invitation. You've said yes. Maybe you've received it just for the first time today. That'd be awesome. Jesus is saying, come, eat, drink, Remember, take the juice that symbolizes my blood that was shed for you, the cracker that symbolizes a body broken. Okay, we'll sing a few songs. We also want to pray. Pray individually, pray corporately. There's folks that'll be in the back with yellow lanyards. They'd love the opportunity to pray for you or even, dare I say, pray with you. Okay. Give them that opportunity. We have the opportunity to give. And certainly this means financial. Don't. Don't hear that. Okay, but this also means giving of our time, our talents. How might you be able to. To give this week? So let's pray, and we'll transition to a time of song and music. Lord, thanks. Thanks for inviting us first into your great story of redemption and salvation, but also into the continual work that you're doing in our midst and throughout the whole world through your church. We are grateful to be called sons and daughters and to enjoy the fruit of your labor. May we now respond in kind, not out of obligation, but out of fullness and joy to build up the church, to invite more brothers and sisters along into your story. God, we're so grateful for this people and for this time together this morning and for your word. We pray all these things in your holy and precious name, Jesus. Amen.

Acts 2 · chapter mention