Hellenistic Jews vs. Hebraic Jews

Good morning, Good News Church. Good to see you guys. Today we begin a new series,

which is cool. I haven't said that for a long time.

Last week we finished our series on the book of Genesis, and it was a long one.

I think it lasted as long as the events of Genesis.

That's not true. But we did a long series on Genesis. We just finished it last

week. Today we begin a new series, and it is a short one.

The plan is to talk about the topic of rough Patches in Ministry for a couple of weeks.

And I wanted to begin this morning by explaining the title of this series,

because I think if I am not careful, this title could be misleading to you.

In fact, it was misleading enough that I thought that maybe I should name it

something else. And then I thought, I was imagining a different name,

and then I went, no, no, no, you know what, I'm going to name it what it is,

and then I'm going to explain what I mean.

So my concern about this title, and the reason why I almost went with a different

one, is because it seems to me this sounds like it would be a good name for

like a pastor's conference, right?

Or a youth pastor's training event. Like this sounds like it's going to be about

how to handle problems that come up when you do what I do for a living, doesn't it? Okay.

So my worry about that is that it would look like this is not about you or for you.

But if you think that, you would be incorrect, okay? The reason why this sounds

like it does is because modern day

Americans use the word ministry in a different way than the Bible does.

Most modern Americans use, like the way they think about the concept of ministry

is different than the way the Bible describes it. So here's the common view of ministry.

Let's say there's two people, okay? And we're going to apply it to Good News

Church in particular. So there's two people, and let's say one of them says

to the other one, hey, how many people go to Good News Church?

And let's say the other person knows the answer. And they say,

oh, I think it's about 700 people. And then the first person says,

okay, how many people are on staff at Good News Church.

And then the other person goes, well, like full-time staff, there's Mario and

Doug and Daniel and Ken and Jenny. So there's five full-time staff.

And so this is the common view.

There are five ministers here at

this church, and there are 700 people who receive their ministry, right?

That's the common view, is it not? Okay, so people think of it that way,

and typically church people, they don't often use the word like customer or

client when they're referring to people who show up here at church,

but that kind of is the way that they think of it.

They'll say attender or member, but really what they think of it is like a group

of customers or clients that show up to be served by the professional ministers,

okay? Here at Good News Church,

We don't believe in any of that, okay? I would say we have about 700 ministers at this church, okay?

Well, as I'll admit, the number's probably a little bit smaller than 700.

I do realize that there are, this very morning, and pretty much has been all

15 years that we've been at church, there have almost always been people here

in the room on Sunday mornings who don't even know Jesus yet, okay?

They're just here because, in some cases, they want to know what Christians

believe, or they want to know what Christians do, and they're just,

you know, they're open-minded, and they're listening.

In some cases, it's a friend of theirs that invited them, okay?

And their friend said, like, this was really good for me. I think it'd be good

for you. And then they went, all right, I'll try it. I trust my friend. I'll go.

And so if you're one of those people that just walked in, you're like,

I don't even know what you all believe yet. And then you showed up and you said,

yeah, and you're a minister here, okay? I can imagine you'd be going, uh-uh.

And to you, I say, fair point, okay?

Good, fair enough. You're right. You're not a minister. You just walked into

a building. You didn't make a commitment.

So there are visitors among us. There are people that don't know Jesus yet.

When we say there's 700 people here, we actually count every single human being.

But like, that means there's like babies and toddlers that are over in the other

building. They're part of that number, but they're not ministers,

right? A one-year-old is not a minister. A two-year-old is not a minister.

So if you were to take all the people that are here and then subtract out people

who don't know Jesus yet and visitors and babies and toddlers and kids that are too young to serve.

If you take all those out, I still think we would be able to say like,

we have, or at least we should have, over 500 ministers at this church.

And the truth is the staff of the church,

and the elders and the community group leaders are not here to do all the ministry,

but they are here to equip you to do the ministry that God would have you do.

So the passage in the Bible that makes this the most clear is Ephesians chapter

Ephesians 4:11

4 verses 11 and 12. So I'm going to show it to you. It's not our main text for this morning.

And I think this point could be shown all throughout the New Testament.

But this is the place I think it's the most clear in the fewest number of words.

So Ephesians chapter 4, let me read to you verses 11 and 12.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

It says, and he personally gave some to be apostles, some prophets,

some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. Let me stop there.

So this he right here, anybody want to guess who the he is? I'll give you a hint.

It's the answer that you can just kind of yell out at church and you're almost always right.

Yes, very good. Jesus. Okay, so the he here is referring to Jesus.

If you had read the words in Ephesians up to this point, like you would figure

it out that this pronoun refers to Jesus.

Okay. Jesus Christ personally gave to the church, some to be apostles,

some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.

So without getting into the weeds of what all these words mean in the original

Greek and blah, blah, blah, I guess I'll just try to point out to you that at

the time this was written, this was a reference to leaders in the early church.

Okay. During the first few, like the New Testament describes the first few decades

of the Christian church.

And during that time period, they're referring to these different people.

Apostles would be people who were directly trained by Jesus,

in some most cases I think sometimes the word is used differently than that

prophets are people who speak God's word evangelists are announcing the good

news of Jesus Christ to people who don't know it yet okay pastors teachers so,

so what this verse is saying is to the early church Jesus Christ gave these

various church leaders to the church for a reason now what's interesting is

what the reason is look what it says.

He personally gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets,

some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.

You would think it would say to do the ministry, right?

But that's not what it says. He gave them, it says, for the, what's the word?

That's interesting. For the training of the saints in the work of ministry to

build up the body of Christ.

Now the word saints here means just regular Christian. Okay,

that's what the word meant.

Why didn't they say that? because the word regular Christian either hadn't been

invented yet or it was very, very new, okay?

A lot of the New Testament was written

during a time period where the word Christianity wasn't a thing yet.

And even the word Christian was barely used. They often would use words like

saints or believers or disciples to talk about the people who follow Jesus.

So I know sometimes nowadays people will use the word saints to mean like a

dead person that you pray to. That is not what's being referred to here.

It would be really hard to train dead people. Okay, so apostles,

prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers exist for the training of the Christians,

in the work of ministry to build up the body of Christ.

All Christians are supposed to serve God with their lives.

And God has gifted some people as leaders. And it seems to me these leaders are a bit like coaches.

They exist to help you better play the sport that you signed up for,

that is following Jesus.

So if that sounds good to you, then this series on rough patches in ministry

is for you okay if not if you're someone that goes i think i'd rather be a client

okay where a religious professional meets my psychological and spiritual needs.

This probably isn't the church for you and i guess i should let you know like

we're not even attempting to do that right so if you don't know that there might

come a day where you go i think y'all are failing and i'd be like oh we're not

even trying like we're not even trying to do that.

So Rough Patches in Ministry is a series to help us, all of us,

think through how to handle problems as they come up as we all serve the Lord.

And I purposely picked this time of year to preach on this because this is kind

of missionary season for us as a church.

We sent out missionaries to Royal Family Kids Camp two weeks ago,

right? Royal Family Kids Camp is a camp our church sponsors for kids that are in foster care.

So we sent out missionaries two weeks ago to that camp. And then next week,

we send out missionaries to Teen Reach Adventure camp track.

That's the older version of the same thing. And we'll send them out next week.

While we are supposed to be missionaries all year long, I think it's still fair

to say this is a special time of year for us, like where there's especially

a lot of missionary focus where people are coming and we are laying our hands

on them and saying, okay, go and serve Jesus.

Go serve these foster kids in the name of Jesus.

So we're doing that a lot this time of year. And so I thought this would be

a good time to talk about the role that we all play.

So rough patches in ministry. Here we go.

There are a few places in the New Testament where there is a description of

Christians in conflict with one another about how to do ministry.

I wouldn't say there's a ton of them, but there are several.

Because the New Testament describes the first few decades of the Christian church,

it occasionally will describe times where Christians are in conflict with one

another about how to serve the Lord.

Acts chapter 6 is one of those occasions.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 15 is one of those occasions. In fact, Acts chapter 15 has two

Acts 15 · chapter mention Acts 15 · chapter mention

different conflicts within it. At the beginning of the chapter,

there's sort of a famous conflict among the people. And then at the end of the

chapter 15, there's one as well.

Galatians chapter 2 talks about like a big disagreement, rebuky kind of thing

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

that happened between Peter and Paul.

So we have a few times in the New Testament, these descriptions of these conflicts

that happened in early in ministry.

So the plan for this series is to just cover two of these accounts of problems

in the early church. It's that simple. The idea behind the series is we'll do

one story this week and we'll do one story next week.

So this week's story is Acts chapter 6 verses 1 through 7. If you have your

Acts 6:1–7

Bible, I would love for you to turn to Acts chapter 6 verses 1 through 7 or

Acts 6:1–7

find it on your phone or what have you.

But I'm going to read that passage now.

I'll read it all the way through and then we'll explain it.

Acts chapter 6 begins this way. In those days, as the number of the disciples was multiplying,

Acts 6 · chapter mention

there arose a complaint by the Hellenistic Jews against the Hebraic Jews that

their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution.

Then the twelve summoned the whole company of the disciples and said,

it would not be right for us to give up preaching about God to handle financial matters.

Therefore, brothers, select from among you seven men of good reputation,

full of the spirit and wisdom whom we can appoint to this duty.

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the preaching ministry.

The proposal pleased the whole company. So they chose Stephen,

a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus,

Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch.

They had them stand before the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them.

So, the preaching about God flourished. The number of the disciples in Jerusalem

multiplied greatly, and a large group of priests became obedient to the faith.

So, let me pray. God, I pray that you would use the preaching of your word today,

like for your will, in a good way, that you would be our teacher,

and that you would do something great in our lives through this.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Okay, so let's go ahead and explain this all the way through,

starting with the very first words of the verse. This chapter opens with the

words, in those days, okay? So this story happened in those days, okay?

In what days? These would be the days very early in Christianity.

This is before the word Christian is invented.

This is before the word Christianity is invented. This is like Jesus died on

the cross for our sins. Three days later, he rose again.

I think about 40 days later, he ascended to heaven. And then a little while

after that, the Holy Spirit descends on the people of God, like Jesus said would

happen. And the church is formed.

And I think a few weeks or a few months goes by.

And then this story happens. Okay. So I mean, very early on,

when I'm saying how early on this is, like calendar year, this is probably the

same year that Jesus died on the cross. Okay. Just a few months later, this is happening.

So in those days, as the number of disciples was multiplying.

So at the beginning of the book of Acts, right after Jesus died and rose again,

there's like hundreds of Christians. Christians number approximately in the hundreds.

And then shortly after that, they start numbering in the thousands.

Okay. There, of course, are millions of Christians now. But this story is at

the time when Christians were going from hundreds to thousands. Okay.

In those days, as the number of the disciples was multiplying.

Okay. And why the word disciples? You want to know what it means?

Christians. It's just like saints. It's just like believers.

It's just, they hadn't invented the word Christian yet. So they're coming up

with stuff. Disciples means follower or learner, right? A follower of Jesus.

In those days, as the number of people who were following Jesus was going from

hundreds to thousands, there arose a complaint.

Oh, as far as I know, this is the first complaint. This is the first church

complaint that ever happened that I'm aware of. Okay.

There've been a lot since then, but this is the first one that I know of.

There arose a complaint and it's by the Hellenistic Jews against the Hebraic

Jews. So this is a conflict between two groups within the church.

One group is complaining against the other group.

And both groups are Jews, right? It's a complaint by the Hellenistic Jews against

the Hebraic Jews. Why was there an argument that broke out, or why was there

this conflict or this complaining that was happening between two subgroups of Jewish people, okay?

Well, the answer to that is very easy, because that's all there were.

At this point, every Christian was Jewish, okay? Christianity was only Jewish

people. You might go, really? I didn't even know that. I didn't think that was

the case. It was. Every Christian was Jewish at first.

Well, why was that? because Jewish Jesus was here and he died on the cross.

He's the savior of Israel. He had Jewish followers, right? His disciples who

after he ascended to heaven, went around telling their friends that they knew

about Jesus, which would be a bunch of other Jewish people.

And so the first few thousand Christians were all Jewish people.

So when there was an argument among Jewish people, that's how it had to be. That's all there were.

Okay. So there's all these Jewish people and there's this argument between them.

So what is it? Well, it's a complaint by the Hellenistic Jews against the Hebraic Jews.

What is this? A Hellenistic Jew would be a Jewish person back then,

in this case a Christian Jewish person.

Hellenistic Jews spoke Greek as their primary language.

They probably read the Bible in a Greek translation of the Bible,

and they were probably more affected by the broader culture of the Roman Empire,

because that's probably where they lived or where they grew up.

They grew up in other nations outside of Israel, more familiar with the language

and the culture of the broader empire, whereas the Hebraic Jews would have been

people who spoke Hebrew as their primary language or maybe Aramaic.

They probably read their Bibles in Hebrew when they went to synagogue.

And they were from the Jerusalem area and surrounding that, and they were much more Jewish in culture.

So these two groups and this like, you know, rough patch that appears,

the complaint here, this is between two groups of people that I think is important

to understand. Both groups are the same religion, Christianity.

Both groups of the same ethnicity, Jewish, but they were different culturally, okay?

They may have dressed different and acted different than one another,

okay? So the Hellenistic Jews were lodged a complaint against the Hebraic Jews about what?

That their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution.

What is the daily distribution to the widows?

We actually don't know a ton about this, but we have stories like this where

we can figure out what happened, okay?

Apparently, there was a distribution that happened daily for widows who were,

it sounds like, at risk of, like, starvation.

So early on in the church, Jesus ascends, here's the Christians,

they're starting the church, there's hundreds of them, then there's thousands of them.

At that point, there's probably a lot of persecution going on of these early

Christians. Well, I don't know about this new religion, and this is weird,

and you better not become one of them. And probably a lot of people are getting

disowned by their family, probably a lot of people are losing their jobs at this point.

And so this group of just a few thousand early Christians, they band together

and go, well, I'm going to help you get through this, and I'm going to help

you get through this. And they get their money together, and they're like,

well, we're just going to make sure that we all help each other out.

And so probably in the midst of all that, somebody said, well,

we should probably do something special for the widows.

There's a big problem there. Like there are some widows among us who they might

starve to death if we don't do anything. And someone said, yeah,

that's right. We need to put our money together and we need to make sure that doesn't happen.

In that culture, I think widows would have been one of the most vulnerable people types among them.

It was such a different world than the one we live in. So if you're a widow

there, so you're Jewish and you're now a Christian, and let's say your husband

dies, well, now how are you going to make it? Your husband was the one who would provide for you.

And especially if you didn't have any kids, or if your kids moved off to other

cities in the Roman Empire, like, how are you going to make it?

This is in a world with no, like, no EBT, no welfare, no Medicaid,

nothing like that. Like, it's just, like, there wasn't, you might go,

well, why didn't she just get a job at public? She could be a cashier, you know?

Why anybody can do that? Like, not back then.

Like, what are they supposed to do? and so the early church obviously set up

some sort of distribution of either money or food for these widows I'm guessing

it was probably food since it was daily,

so some sort of distribution to make sure that the widows all get taken care

of that's wonderful I'm sure somebody said this is a wonderful idea and everyone

else said yeah and so they started the program but the first conflict at least

that I'm aware of in the Christian church was a conflict over this program.

The first conflict that rose up in the Christian church was an accusation of racism, okay?

I mean, not exactly racism because they were both Jews, but it would have felt

like racism, I think, from our perspective in the sense

that the complaint was, hey, you all are showing favoritism to these women because

they're from these cities or from this region, and you're overlooking these women simply because,

they're from this region and they're from these nations. Like you are overlooking people.

These people could starve to death because you're not paying attention to them.

And you're not paying attention to them because they speak a different language,

than most of the other ones. Because they're from out of town.

That's not right. That's not fair. And so what happens next? Look at verse 2.

Then the twelve summoned the whole company of the disciples and said,

it would not be right for us to give up preaching about God to handle financial matters.

Now, when it says the twelve, you can tell this is like a technical term for

twelve people that had a particular role, okay? This would be the twelve apostles

or the twelve disciples. Sometimes we don't call them the twelve disciples because

you can tell there eventually was a whole bunch of other disciples,

right? A whole bunch of other followers of Jesus.

But the 12 apostles were like the original 12 that had a direct relationship with Jesus.

And they were the people who were leading the church at this point.

And when I say the church, I mean, there's just one church in the whole world

at this point, just the one in Jerusalem. And they're the ones in charge of it.

And they summon the whole company of the disciples and they address the issue

as the complaint arises. And what I think is interesting is when you look at

their response, it seems to me, this is my guess, their response shows that

the favoritism that was being shown was not on purpose.

Why do I say it was not on purpose? Because when the complaint came up,

hey, you don't care about the Hellenistic widows, the apostles did not respond

with, well, yeah, because they're not as important as Hebraic widows.

They didn't say, yeah, this is by design. You've got to get over it.

Some people are more important than other people. That's not what they did.

They recognized it as a problem, and the rest of the passage shows they thought

this inequality needs to be fixed. We've got to do something about it.

They recognized it was a real problem.

But what did they do about it? This is interesting. Look what they said.

They summoned the whole company and said it would not be right for us to give

up preaching about God to handle financial matters. So they recognized,

they basically, it seems like what they said to everybody when the complaint

came is they're like, yes, legit complaint. You're right. This is a problem.

And we don't have time to fix this problem and do everything else that Jesus has called us to do.

So what did they do? What happens next is, I think this is the earliest instance

that I'm aware of, of the church saying, we need volunteers.

Okay? That has happened a million times since then, but this,

I think, was the first one. This was the first, we need volunteers.

So verse three, this is the apostle still talking. Therefore,

brothers, select from among you seven men of good reputation,

full of the spirit and wisdom, whom we can appoint to this duty.

That's how many they thought needed in order to pull this off.

Like this problem can be fixed, but we need seven people to step up and do it.

The proposal, oh, sorry. And we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the preaching

ministry. So brothers, select from among you seven.

We will devote ourselves to prayer and the preaching ministry.

So they said, we have a ministry we got to do. And there's got to be seven other

people that have a different ministry than we do.

Okay. And we need to focus on prayer and we need to focus on preaching,

which is interesting because what that shows you is, like notice they say the

preaching ministry, because preaching is a type of ministry.

Notice they didn't say, you all go do this thing that doesn't matter too much,

and then we will do ministry, right?

No, you all are going to do ministry, and then we're going to do a different

kind. Preaching ministry is one type of ministry. It is not all of the stuff.

So they said, we're going to do our type, and we need some other people.

We need seven other people to do this other type. So, verse 5.

The proposal pleased the whole company.

So they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit,

and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus,

a proselyte from Antioch.

Now it's interesting because this passage talks about the seven names,

the seven people they chose, and Stephen is specified as someone who's full

of faith and the Holy Spirit, okay?

And full of faith and Holy Spirit is not said about the other six guys, okay?

Which, I mean, it's kind of disappointing if you're Nicholas. But here's the thing.

I think based on what the passage had just said and what the qualifications

were in order to do this ministry, the verses that came just before it,

I think all seven of these were people who were full of faith and had the Holy

Spirit, or they wouldn't have gotten the job, okay?

But I think the reason Stephen is specified is because the very next story in

the book of Acts, Stephen is the star of that story, okay? Stephen's big story

happens right after this.

And so I think the writer, the narrator, Luke, who wrote Acts,

he's getting his readers ready like Stephen, a man full of faith in the Holy

Spirit. Remember that guy, because I'm about to tell you more about him.

But I think actually all of these men believed in Jesus, they had the Holy Spirit,

and this job was given to them.

Verse 6, they had them stand before the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them.

Why did they pray and lay their hands on them? I believe that was to like officially

appoint them to this duty.

That was the way they did it. By the laying on of hands, they were saying,

we officially appoint you to this ministry.

We will be doing that same thing next Sunday here at this church when it comes

to TRAC, Teen Reach Adventure Camp. We're going to have the people that are

going to be involved in that camp come forward. We're going to lay our hands on them.

We're going to pray for them and appoint them to that duty, saying like,

go serve these kids in foster care. Do this in the name of Jesus. We send you out.

All right, so that's what's happening. Now let's look at the final verse of

the passage, which shows us the results of this decision, right?

So they make this decision, they do this, they get the seven people,

then look at verse seven.

So, okay, let's stop there. The word so is a connector word, okay?

The word so is saying, because of all the stuff that happened before this,

this next thing happened. So it's not just like, and coincidentally,

this other stuff happened to happen at the same time.

No, it's because of the decisions they just made and the 12 and the 7 and all that.

Because of that, then this happened. The result was the preaching about God flourished.

The number of the disciples in Jerusalem multiplied greatly and a large group

of priests became obedient to the faith.

Wow. The program was a success. The church grew and more people became Christians.

And I want you to notice how fascinating this is. the preaching about God flourished.

Think about this. The preaching of God flourished with the addition of some non-preachers.

Isn't that weird? The preaching did better when we added non-preachers.

Isn't that interesting? The preaching became more effective,

but they did not add seven preachers to the mix. Okay. They added seven distributors.

They added seven caregivers. They added seven organizers, maybe, right?

When I say organizers, like maybe the reason they're getting,

like maybe one of these seven guys said, I just got an idea if we don't want

them to get overlooked. What if we wrote all their names down and all their

addresses and did like a little check mark every day? And probably someone else

went, genius. And then that's what they made sure they did.

So I don't know if they were organizing or caregiving or distributing which

things they were doing more, but their goal was to make sure these widows were not overlooked, right?

Stephen and Philip are two of the seven names. They actually do become preachers.

So it's not like you can't do a non-preacher thing and then do a preacher thing.

Stephen and Philip do preach later on, but in this passage, that's not what they're doing.

The preaching of God becomes more effective with the addition of seven non-preachers.

So as we close, let me end with three principles that we learn from this rough

patch in ministry that I believe still apply today.

And this was genuinely a rough patch, was it not?

I mean, the church is just a few months old and like, I don't know how many

were in each group, but like, it seems like half the group is sort of looking

sideways at the other half of the group. Why are you doing this to us?

Like this could have been a church split early, early on, right?

This was genuinely a rough patch.

And then they did this. And so I guess I wanted to look at it and go,

okay, what are some principles from this story that would still apply to us

today, even though we're not dealing with a lot of Hellenistic or Hebraic anything?

So here they are. Principle number one.

Sometimes ministry needs to be organized. Okay? Principle number one.

Sometimes ministry needs to be organized.

I know that sometimes some of us have personalities that are like,

I don't like organized religion and I don't like organized anything.

Like I just, I just want to, I want to serve the Lord and I want to be free,

you know, and I just want to be flexible and I don't want someone telling me

what to do and policies and procedures and blah, blah, blah.

Why do we got to do all that?

And so I will say, first of all, there actually are lots of ways to serve the

Lord that way. There are all sorts of ways to serve the Lord in Marion County

that involve almost no like rules and policies and procedures.

But what I am saying is sometimes for some endeavors, it helps

to break multiple people down and multiple things down into different departments

and have specific job descriptions where it's like, these people do these five

things and these people do these eight things, right? And that's what the job description is.

And in the case of this story, it was, you look after the Grecian widows.

I'm going to go tell those people about Jesus.

I have my department, you have yours. I have my job description, you have yours. We'll.

Principle number two, as the church grows, new people need to step up to the plate and serve.

That's what happens in this case, right? The church grows from hundreds to thousands,

but then when it gets to thousands, there's all this stuff that needs to be

done. And so one day they go, we need seven more people.

And I think that continued to happen for the rest of the history of Christianity.

We need new people to come and serve.

And I think that still applies nowadays. Like think about this,

when a church is small, particularly like I'm thinking when a church is first starting out, okay?

And church is small, those first few years.

When a church is small, a small group of people can get everything done.

But as the church grows, and the number of needs rise, and things become more

complex because there's more moving parts.

I mean, that does happen. I don't know if you know this. As a church grows,

like a 200-person church is more complex than a 50-person church,

just because the number of people and their issues that are involved.

As a church grows and needs arise and things become more complex,

the solution is not for the original people to stretch thinner and thinner and

thinner and thinner and neglect their primary ministry.

That's what the 12 were saying here.

The solution is for new people to step up and help serve the growing ministry.

If you have been attending here at Good News Church for a while and you have

not volunteered to serve at all.

I don't know what else to tell you other than you need to. Like,

please volunteer to serve. Please volunteer to serve in KidZone or assist with

a community group or help with long care or something.

It is important. It has always been important.

Uh, principle number three, different people do different kinds of ministry. This is important.

Different people do different kinds of ministry. You can see that in this passage,

right? The seven had a different job than the 12.

So when God is making Christians, he doesn't make them all the same.

I don't know if you know this. Okay. Let me tell you how it does not work. Okay.

God is not up in heaven making Christians like this. This is how I imagine it.

Okay. So like there's a conveyor belt and like whatever Christians are made

of is coming down the conveyor belt, Christian material, whatever it is.

And so it's coming down the conveyor belt, and then God has this mold, okay?

And then as the material comes, he just makes it mold, and then the next one

gets some more of that stuff.

And he just takes the Christian material, and he just keeps stamping out,

and he goes, what do we need? We need a million more Christians,

okay? And he just makes a million more people that all look the same,

act the same, they're all wired the same, they have all the same job.

Job. That is not how he did it. It's not how he did it. It's obvious that's

not how he did it. Anybody with eyes can tell that that's not how he did it.

Romans chapter 12 and Ephesians chapter 4 tell us that's not how he did it.

Romans 12 · chapter mention Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Different people have different gifts, and there are some things that some Christians

do that they're supposed to do more of than other Christians.

So let me break this into two sub-points, okay? So the bigger point,

principle three, is different people do different kinds of ministry.

So here's like the two ways to say this.

You don't have everyone's job and everyone doesn't have your job.

This is so important. You do not have everyone's job and everyone doesn't have

your job. Let me explain what I mean by this. When I say you don't have everyone's

job, I think sometimes Christians think that they are responsible to do all

the things they see going on around them by all the other Christians,

as if they have everyone's job.

And when you think that, I think that there's a major potential for there to

be like ministry jealousy or ministry shame.

Ministry jealousy is like, oh, look at the way she serves God.

So amazing. Like, I wish I could be like her.

I don't know why God made her like her and me like me. You know what I mean?

Like, it's just, I'm so, I'm like, I'm almost, I'm frustrated at her.

Like, she just, it seems like everything's successful and people walk up to

her. Oh, thank you so much for ministering to me. And I'm like,

no, no one's thanking me for nothing.

And everyone's thanking her. And it's just, it's not, it's not right.

And right. And so ministry jealousy, I think is a real thing.

And also ministry shame. Ministry shame can be like, look at him.

He's such a good Christian. Look at how, look at his role in the body of Christ

and all the stuff he's doing and accomplishing. And then look at me.

He's a good, I'm a bad Christian. He shows up early.

He shows up early every week, setting everything up.

I can barely get there late.

There's no way I can be like him. I am a bad Christian because I don't do what

he does, right? Now, here's the thing.

It is certainly possible you are a bad Christian, okay?

I don't want to take that off the table, okay? In a room this size, it applies to somebody.

But what I'm saying is it's also possible that you don't have everyone's job and that you're fine.

Okay, here's the second one. Everyone doesn't have your job.

Okay, this is important because sometimes we have the opposite of shame.

It's like ministry pride.

Sometimes it can even be like ministry judgmentalism. When you think that your

job is the way you measure how good everyone else is, Like, you know what your

role is in the body of Christ, and then you measure everyone else to see how

good they are at doing what God's called you to do.

And so you go, I've been leading this Bible study for 10 years.

And look at these people who have never led a Bible study one time.

Lame, lame, lame, lame, lame, lame.

Right? That's ministry pride and judgmentalism.

I've been volunteering in KidZone for seven years. I've been spit up on more times than I can count.

And then there's these people over here, never been spit up on for Jesus,

not one time in their whole life.

What's their problem? I'll tell you this. First of all, it's possible they're sinning.

It's also possible God might have them doing something else for him.

So that's rough patches in ministry, part one. Sometimes ministry needs to be organized.

As the church grows, new people need to step up to the plate and serve.

Different people do different kinds of ministry.

And if Jesus did not die on the cross for our sins and rise again,

then none of this would matter.

But if Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again then every bit of this matters,

let's pray.

God, I thank you for this time. I pray that you would shape us as a church so

that we would, like, you would form us to be the way you want us to be,

which includes multiple people doing varied things that we know.

I pray you'd provide for us what we need as far as people doing whatever they need to do.

I mean, I see in this passage, there are times where it's like,

well, 12 will do this and seven will do this. And we have not really been big

here at Good News about picking particular numbers of we need this many people doing this or that.

And if we need to do that, Lord, I pray you'd help us to see it.

But as of now, I just ask that you would cause the right number of people to

volunteer for the right jobs so that your ministry here in Marion County would

go the way that you want it to.

I pray you'd help us to do what you want us to do here in this town.

I thank you for Jesus. I thank you for the gospel. I thank you that this all

matters and that you allow us to cooperate with and join in with your work here in this world.

I thank you for Lord's Supper coming up and what a picture it is of the gospel

and you, Jesus, giving your life for our sins and the reason we need to believe

in you and give you our whole lives. I thank you for all of that.

I pray that we would worship you in it.

In Jesus' name I pray, amen.