The Weightiness of Gospel Growth

Let's dive into the text together.

Now, before we do, here's what here's something I'm trying to learn.

Um, God is omnipresent, right?

And if you're in Christ, his spirit dwells within you.

We really can't ask for more of the presence of God.

But here's what we can do, and what I think we ought to do, is ask for more awareness of the presence of God in our life.

Because we can be mute to the reality that he is with us, that he desires to be intimate with us as his people.

And so here's what I know.

I woke up an hour late today and I was rushed, and my whole brain and heart is like just ramped up, and I can be dismissive of the reality that the Father wants to give me a good gift this morning, that the Spirit wants to do a significant work in me this morning, that there's something in his word to conform me more deeply to the image of his son this morning.

And so I want us to try in this time to be aware of that presence and reality and know that you're not just here to fill a seat, but you're here to receive from a good father who loves his children and desires our best.

Amen.

Can you do that together?

Yeah?

Great.

Acts chapter six, verses one through seven.

We're diving in.

So here's what I know to be true.

Growth always brings complexity.

Growth always brings complexity.

There is never a time where an institution or an organization grows and simplicity follows it.

It's just not how things work.

As we get larger as a church body, we become more complex in our ability to do ministry in faithful and fruitful ways like we once did, because growth always brings complexity.

Every growing church eventually hits a point where their gospel growth outpaces their capacity for care.

This isn't because we love the institution more than we love the people, though that accusation is often thrown out, not against us necessarily, but I've heard it throughout other churches.

It's because we used to be able to carry the weight of ministry and still care well for people.

But now what we find is the weight of ministry too heavy to carry on our own.

And so, as an outcome, the care of people falls through the cracks.

It is inevitable.

In many healthy churches, the gospel is advancing, people are being added to the church, disciples are being made, and in the midst of that growth, real needs, genuine and sincere needs are multiplying faster than the current structure is able to handle.

And it's often right in the middle of that momentum that a problem arises that exposes all of the weaknesses and shortcomings of a church.

That's exactly what we discover here in Acts 6, right?

The church is exploding with growth, the gospel is spreading throughout Jerusalem, and vulnerable people, specifically these Hellenist widows, are falling through the cracks, and because of this, a genuine complaint is raised to the leadership of the church.

Now, the apostles, when they heard this complaint, they could have minimized it and dismissed it as not genuine, right?

They could have tried to pick up the pieces and carry all the weight to fix it themselves.

They could have ignored it entirely, but that's not what we see.

Instead, they call the church together and say, here's what we need: spirit-filled servants to help us carry the weight together.

And what happens next, it actually shows us that when God's people order their life around spirit-empowered calling and they embrace gospel responsibility, the gospel doesn't just survive in a church community, it advances to create an ever-expanding one where more and more people are saved by the gospel.

So let's dive into this.

The opening verse tells us two things at once.

Let's read it together.

Verse 1 of chapter 6.

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 here's what we see in verse 1.

Growth and complexity arrive together.

The Hellenists, right, in the text.

Who were they?

Well, they they were these Greek-speaking Jewish believers from the diaspora.

The diaspora is this reality where this dispersion of Jewish people went beyond Israel into the surrounding nations as a result of their former judgment and exile from God Himself.

So they were Jewish people who have been dispersed to the surrounding nations because of God's judgment and exile, and they had learned the Greek language and Greek custom that shaped their life in this moment.

The Hebrews, they're the Aramaic-speaking Jews from Palestine.

So what we see early in the church's life is that these cultural fault lines begin creating challenges that they have to work to live out in this new gospel community that Christ is creating by his spirit, right?

And you bring into this new spirit-filled community all of the traditions and customs and baggage of what you once were into this new transformed life.

And the Hellenist widows here in this community, they were some of the most vulnerable among them.

And they were bearing the cost of the church's rapid growth.

Now, this wasn't just some minor administration error, right?

We can't just chalk it up to a spreadsheet that didn't account for these dear women.

In Acts 2, we're actually told that there was intentional caring for the church, that they actually devoted themselves to caring for one another, even to the point that they were selling off large portions of their properties and land and selling their abundance of goods to be able to meet the needs of the community that Jesus was shaping.

And so the neglect of these widows wasn't administrative, it was familial.

They were neglecting in part of family identity that the gospel had created.

Their own were being looked over.

Their own were suffering.

And so the complaint that was raised, it was legitimate.

Now, watch what the apostles do.

Verse 2.

And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.

Now, some of you, you hear this and you think that the apostles are saying that table ministry is beneath them, that they're too important.

You see this and you think that their response is driven by ego and arrogance.

But it's not.

Diaconia.

It's the word, this word, that will eventually establish the office of deacon within the church.

Now, while deacon, diaconus, refers to the person as a servant within the church, diaconia refers to the action of service given by the person.

Why is that important for us?

Here.

Here's what we see in Acts 6.

It's that both the serving of tables and the ministry of the word is an act of loving gospel service for the good of the church that is not distinguished by importance or value, but by spirit-filled gifting and calling.

There is no hint, whatsoever within the text, or whatsoever in the life of the church, that the apostles somehow regarded this social work or this table ministry as inferior to pastoral work or beneath their own dignity.

It was entirely a question of calling.

How has the Spirit filled you, gifted you, and called you?

Stay focused in that.

They didn't have the freedom to neglect their main responsibility for another one.

Their solution reveals that they weren't actually trying to lead from a place of ego, but from a place of wisdom.

Look at verse three.

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.

So first, let's notice the qualifications here.

It's important.

Here's what they didn't say.

Right?

They did not say, find seven people who are available.

Find people with a pulse that can just do something.

Right?

They didn't say pick whoever's willing to help out and just get them working and serving these poor widows.

No, here's what they said: find men of good repute, full of the spirit, full of wisdom.

So what we need to see about this process is this was not just simply a recruitment process, this was a discernment process.

Who among us has God's spirit filled and gifted and called to this specific work?

The church isn't just looking for warm bodies to fill in the cracks, they're looking for people who are already walking in the Spirit's power, people with proven character, people equipped by God to fulfill this specific need.

Right?

When we talk about any sort of leadership within the church, we're constantly looking for people who are already doing it and affirming them rather than affirming someone who's not doing anything, hoping they become what we need.

And so elders are already elding, shepherding, pastoring, caring, leading, discipling, right?

Deacons are already serving, helping, working, laboring.

These are people that are already, we're just here to affirm what we see God already doing in the lives of his people and set them apart for the work of ministry.

And because, as we've already established, serving tables isn't lesser work in the scope of dignity, it requires the same spirit-filled gifting as preaching, and both ministries equally demand God's empowerment for fulfilling it.

Right?

And so the point isn't the value of the work.

That's not the point.

The point is the calling of the person.

And so we have to try and get our minds around that.

How valuable each of us are to the body of Christ, that we might become all that Christ desires for us to be.

And so the whole community agrees to the apostles' purpose, their solution.

And what do they do?

They choose seven men, all with Greek names, right?

We can talk about contextual ministry here for a second.

The Hellenist widows are the ones who need cared for.

They are Greek-speaking Jews who have come from the diaspora.

And so I don't think that it's coincidence that each of the seven men that they call and appoint are men with Greek names, right?

It's as important to serve where they discovered the need.

And Stephen is listed first.

Stephen, he's described as a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit.

Now, let me address something really quick.

Give you a teaser into next week.

Stephen dies, right?

How does he die?

He dies preaching the gospel of Jesus.

Here's why that's important.

Many of us who will be called to table ministry and not to word ministry will be tempted to neglect the calling and responsibility of the Christian to preach the gospel boldly to our culture.

Those two things are not separated from one another.

They don't create this dichotomy that we want to function within the local church.

Stephen, appointed and set apart for the work of mercy among the church, dies preaching the gospel.

You see, we have to understand every believer is called to preach.

I don't care if you're male or female or rich or poor or whatever status you want to lay hold of, every believer is called to preach the gospel.

There are some in particular contexts who are called for pulpit ministry, that we might preach the gospel in such a way that it matures and equips the body of Christ for fruitful ministry.

Those are elders and pastors, but every single person in Christ should seek to live such a life that we might suffer even like Stephen, because we've opened our mouth and proclaimed truth to a world that does not want to hear it.

Amen.

Amen.

Then verse 6.

These men they set before the apostles and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

Now, this is possibly, I want to submit this to you as a possibility.

This is possibly the ordination of what would be known as deacons within the church.

We were able to ordain eight deacons a couple of Sundays ago here at Sacred Mission.

Men and women who we are affirming in their calling and gifting, we're affirming what they've already been doing within the church, laying hands on them, setting them apart for a specific work, right?

So we see this even within the New Testament church.

It was a commissioning public in nature, setting them apart, qualified men to serve the church in distinct and particular ways.

And the apostles, they weren't just delegating, they were setting these men apart for spirit-empowered service in the authority of the church.

And what was the result of this structure?

Right?

Verse 7, the end of this shows us.

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.

Here's what we can pull away.

When we take the time to build the trellis, the structure of an organization or institution in faithful biblical ways, it creates the space for the vine to produce the fruit that it's intended to.

And look at the gospel growth that comes.

Because the church listened to the Lord.

The conflict handled with clarity and wisdom, it became a catalyst for gospel growth.

And when the church orders its life around spirit-filled servants, when both the word ministry and mercy ministry are carried by people empowered for the task, the gospel explodes.

The passage even tells us that priests came to faith.

Like, look at the significance and the impact that the gospel is having in the city around them.

That the religious elite, some of those who were there to condemn Christ Himself and put him to death, are coming to faith now.

You see, here's what we see.

The structure is not the main point of this passage.

The mission is the main point.

The mission would suffer if the structure wasn't established.

That's what we've got to stay focused on.

What has the Lord called us to?

What is the mission he's given to us as his church?

How do we continue to see his glory fill and transform the culture around us?

We've got to build a solid structure, a trellis for the vine to grow and produce fruit.

So it's not about the structure ultimately, it's about the mission.

The structure supports the mission.

Without structure and without spirit-filled people helping to carry the weight of ministry, the mission is going to suffer.

But when the church discerned spirit-filled servants and structured its life around their giftings and callings, the mission advanced.

How beautiful is that?

Because we are the church.

We are called to carry the weightiness of gospel growth.

And so hear me say this: the whole church carries the weight of ministry.

We are all a part of the body of Christ.

Are there specific situations and specific needs where we're discerning, spirit-filled, qualified, called people?

Absolutely.

At the same time, the whole church carries the weight.

This is what we need to understand.

The weight of ministry is not carried by everyone doing everything.

It's carried best when God raises up spirit filled servants with specific callings, and then the church orders its life around that.

The apostles didn't try to do it all themselves, nor did they just ask for random volunteers to lighten their load.

No, they discerned who was.

God was already preparing, people full of the Spirit and wisdom, and they commissioned them for specific ministry.

This is how the church is designed to function, not with a few people carrying everything while everyone else simply watches.

Nor is it with overwhelmed volunteers feeling bitterness and burnout, filling the gaps of ministry out of guilt and obligation.

That's not how the church is supposed to be.

It's supposed to be the whole body recognizing that God is raising up servants, setting them apart around calling, around character, and then releasing them into the work that He's prepared for them.

That's what we want to do here at this church.

Because when that happens, when we stop organizing around simply availability, and we start discerning around calling, the word increases, the church multiplies, and people's hearts become obedient to the faith.

That's the fruit.

Because the weight of ministry is real.

And as we grow, that weight gets heavier and heavier.

It's not light, but it was never meant to just crush one person.

It was never meant to foster bitterness and burnout in the heart of God's people.

But it also wasn't meant to be ignored by 80% of the congregation.

God designed the church that the whole body carries it together.

Each person faithfully stewarding the calling that God has given them, empowered by the Spirit, ordered toward the mission.

And when we live that way, the gospel doesn't just survive, it grows, it advances.

But many of us in this room, man, when we look at that and we think about that, we see the weight of ministry is too heavy to carry.

Like some of you are in here, in this room.

You're coming from other places where that weight crushed you.

And I'm not trying to say I know why.

I'm just accepting the reality that it did.

And when we think about getting back into the mess that the church is, we see the weight of ministry is too heavy to carry.

Or many of us, we've never even been a part of this, and we look as an outsider toward the inside, and we get terrified by what it might demand of us as a people.

When we look at the real needs around us, people being overlooked, ministries that require attention, the mission expanding faster than our capacity for care.

Man, we feel the weight.

We often respond in one of two ways.

And I think neither of which looks like what the Lord desires from us as his people.

The first way is many of us, we expect others to carry the weight of ministry.

We expect others to carry the weight of ministry.

Here, many of us see the needs around us, but we often assume someone else will handle it, don't we?

There are leaders for that, there are elders for that, there are deacons for that, there are staff for that, there's people who are more qualified, more spiritual, more equipped for that.

We show up on Sundays, we joyfully receive what's offered, and when we notice something off, something lacking, something not meeting our expectations and standards, we mention it.

We may even raise a complaint about it.

We may even grumble and gossip in our tertiary spheres of relationship, hoping it might trickle down to the right person who will fix it.

But the shortcoming and the failure is that we don't ever see ourselves as the solution, or as at least a part of the solution.

Ministry is what other people do.

We're simply here to benefit from it.

The problem in this is that it turns the church simply into kind of a religious service provider, and you've slowly turned yourself into a customer.

And customers don't carry weight.

Customers come into organizations and institutions and they expect to be served to their own predetermined standard of excellence.

And when that standard is not met, they grumble and murmur and complain.

Customers don't carry weight.

You see, the church is a body where every member has a function.

And when you stand on the sidelines expecting others to serve, you're not just avoiding the weight.

You're actively weakening the design of the church.

Because the body cannot function at only half capacity.

The body doesn't work when half of it refuses to function.

I don't know if you're at that age yet, but at any morning you may wake up and parts of your body just refuse to function like they used to.

That makes for a hard day, doesn't it?

When you wake up and a couple of your members are just like, not today.

And you're like, all right, I'll figure this out.

And you get exhausted and tired.

I mean, we're the body of Christ.

You think we're gonna function properly when some of us or half of us wake up and say, nope, not me, someone else can.

But here's the deeper issue.

I would submit that when you operate this way, it's not that you're just hurting me.

You're hurting yourself.

You're missing out on joy that the Lord desires from you and for you.

You see, he's given us gifts, the good Father that he is, that we might serve in his church, and that in serving his bride, that we might find joy in her glory.

So, really, we are simply robbing ourselves of some measure of joy that the Lord desires from us.

You miss the privilege of being used by God.

You miss the experience of the Spirit working through you for someone else's good.

You're simply watching ministry happen instead of participating in the mission that Jesus gave his church.

And let me tell you, no matter how much fear or pain you're bringing into this moment, don't let it keep you from the joy that the Lord desires to lavish upon you by serving his bride, the church.

But others of us, man, we we we carry the weight of ministry all by ourselves.

Like this is my propensity.

I have a ton of pride and ego and arrogance that causes this heart posture in my life.

If you're like me, you don't avoid the weight, you just try to carry all of it.

And we see the needs right around us.

We have like 360 court vision, we're able to see what's going on around us, people who are hurting, people who need help and care.

We step in, we get our hands dirty, and often we refuse to let anyone else share the load.

Partly it's because we care so much.

But if we really dug deep down into the issue, it's in part because we don't trust others to do it as good as we could.

Like that's a voice I hear in my head constantly.

If they can't do it as good as I could do it, I might as well just do it myself.

Isn't that ugly?

Like I do things really good.

I'm gonna be honest about that.

But man, I've been so surprised and delighted when I've stepped back and released someone into their gifting and calling, and then they just blow me away by doing it better than I could.

Isn't God good to humble you?

Some of us, though, it's not just because we want to do it right.

Some of us we have our entire identity wrapped up in being the one who handles things.

When the ball is dropped, this brother or this sister will be there to pick it up.

You're answering on the messaging app, people who need switch for mission kids.

You're there when we say we need help cleaning, you're there when we say that somebody has a need in the church.

You're there.

But that becomes your identity.

And you get so wrapped up into it that you don't create space for others to be brought in.

And what's the result?

Man, it's burnout, bitterness, and ironically, it's mission failure.

It's mission failure because when you try to do everything, you can't do anything with the excellence that ministry truly needs.

The apostles understood this.

They said, it's not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.

Not because serving people in that specific way doesn't matter.

But it's because they weren't called to that specific work.

Their calling was the word and prayer.

And if they abandoned that to do everything, ultimately they would abandon the very thing they were called to do.

So when you carry the weight alone, you're not being faithful, you're being disobedient.

You're refusing to trust that God actually gifts and fills and calls other people around you.

You're holding on to control instead of allowing space for others to be developed in their gift, and ultimately, man, you're robbing the church of what God wants to do through the very people that you're not empowering to help carry the weight.

You wonder why you feel bitter and burnt out.

Man, you're crushed.

And here's how I know who you guys are you're actually relating to the first person who's not doing enough.

And you're in like three ministries, four ministries, rather than relating to this person, because you're still wrestling with the guilt and shame of not enough.

That's you.

And I think the Lord wants to help you this morning and free you from that.

Because the beauty of the gospel is this, church, that Jesus carried the weight of building the church so that we could carry the joy of serving it.

Man, how does the church even exist?

It's not through our efforts and our strivings, it's not through our strength or our programs or our strategies or our volunteer recruitment efforts.

Man, the Jesus, the church exists because Jesus bore the full weight of fulfilling it.

It was Jesus alone who carried the crushing weight of God's wrath against our sin.

It was Jesus alone who stood under the full judgment that you and that I deserved.

And on that cross, forsaken by the Father alone, he bore the cost of redemption.

Church, he did it alone so that you and I wouldn't have to.

He did it so that he could build his church, and no man could boast in her glory.

He didn't just die to forgive individual sinners, he died to purchase a people, to establish a body, to form a community that would display his glory and carry his mission to the ends of the earth.

Look at Ephesians 5.

Paul laying this out so clearly about Christ's deep love for the church.

Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he, not we, might sanctify her, that he, not we, might present the church to himself in splendor.

Jesus carried the full weight of building his church.

He bore the cost of its existence, the price of its purity, the burden of its acceptance.

The work is finished and done.

The church stands because of Jesus.

He built the church through his death and resurrection, and now, now we get to serve what he has built.

We don't get to earn it.

We don't get to create it, we don't get to boast in it or sustain it by our own strength and strategy.

We get to participate in what he's accomplished.

Is that not good?

You see, we carry the joy of serving the church that Jesus died to establish.

That means that the weight that we carry in ministry is fundamentally different than the weight that he carried to Calvary.

He was not crushed until he had reached the top of that mount.

And it was the Father who crushed him, not the weight of the cross.

That we might find joy in his bride, the church.

Church, we carry calling.

He endured wrath, we experienced grace.

He worked alone.

We work together, empowered by his spirit.

Man, because Jesus carried the weight of building the church, we're free to joyfully carry the weight of serving it.

Not as those who are earning salvation, but as those who are already saved, delighting to steward the gifts and callings that He's given us, the body that He purchased with His blood.

So here's my prayer for us that we would joyfully carry the weight of ministry together.

Growth brings complexity.

There's a weightiness to gospel growth.

And church, we're not going to make it if we don't carry it together.

This means we don't just organize around availability, but we discern, we commission around calling.

We look for people full of the Spirit and wisdom, people whose lives already display the fruit of walking with Jesus.

And we commission for the work that God has prepared for them.

It means that we see ourselves, each and every one of us, as a part of the body carrying the weight together, not guilt-driven volunteers.

That's not what we want.

We don't want a body of people who just feel run down and embittered from obligation.

But we want joyful servants empowered by the Spirit for specific calling.

And when we order our life that way, when word ministry and mercy ministry are both carried by people called and equipped for those tasks, the gospel won't be able to be stopped.

It advances through us on mission, and the word and work of God increases in us through us for his glory and the good of all people.

Amen.