Empowered to Serve: Living the Gospel Out Loud

Introduction

One of the heartbeats of being a Christian is being a servant. As followers of Jesus, with Him as our model, we are to be self-less servants. We are to put the needs of others above ourselves.

I’ve said it many times, but everything God does is based in relationship and serving others is putting feet to that statement. It’s putting flesh on it, if you will. Serving others is us walking out what true and loving relationship looks like. We are modeling what Jesus did and if we are doing it right, we are doing it with Him. Jesus said I only do what I see my Father doing.

Matthew 20:25–28 ESV

But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

When we serve others we are reenacting the gospel. Jesus here says he didn’t come to be served (even though as a King, he certainly deserves it), but he came to serve. And he doesn’t stop there. He says he came to give his life as a ransom for many. In other words, the gospel, Jesus dying for our sins, is rooted in the idea of service.

In the church, we believe every Christian has been given gifts by the Holy Spirit to be used for the service of the church. The gifts were given to build up or to edify the body of Christ, aka the church.

Now when you hear serving the church, you may think about pastors or ministers. Those that have given their life for the gospel. You may also think of other leaders within the church or if you came from a big church, other staff members.

There tends to be a false dichotomy of those that serve the church, the superstars of the Kingdom, and then there are regular folks like me. You may even be thinking I have no gifts. What could I do for Jesus?

But in God’s kingdom, there are no heroes in the church, only regular people using whatever gifts God has given them to bring glory to his name.

“There is no hierarchy in the gifts of God. The ministry of the church does not rest on status but on service. No gift that serves others is little. God uses both stars and candles to light His world.”

Broadman’s Bible Commentary

Every one has a gift and every gift is important and God is calling you to use your gift.

With that in mind, let’s look at our main text for today. I have notes loaded in the app and the words will be on the screen.

Main Text

Acts 6:1–7 ESV

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. 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. 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.” And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them. 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.

Today I want to open us up by looking at the early church. If you remember this is the church that started with great power at Pentecost and God used mightily to spread his good news throughout the world.

But this church wasn’t perfect. Some people look at the early church as prescriptive rather than descriptive. Some think, oh that we could go back to those days, what a wonderful thing to be apart of, but in the same breath they are not ready to sell everything they own and give it to the church, which was one of the identifying markers of the early christian church. They want the power of the early church without the sacrifice of the early church.

And to be clear I don’t think God is asking you to do that, but I also believe that there are lessons to be learned and some things to be modeled in the early church. The book of Acts is predominately descriptive and not prescriptive. God is telling us how they did it, not telling us to go and do likewise.

And here’s one of the biggest issues, the early church had lots of problems. Read the book of 1 Corinthians, they had lots of problems. They were growing and learning, but they were still very immature as well. The early church had seen some great growth throughout the book of Acts. And a growing…

A Growing Church Produces Uneasiness

Whenever a church grows, problems arise. People start complaining. Sometimes their complaints are legitimate and sometimes they are not.

Have you ever been a church that was growing and heard the complaints?

Someone was sitting in my seat.

Why don’t you have a bigger kids ministry?

Why is your kids ministry so big?

Why doesn’t the church get a bigger building?

Why don’t you play the music I like?

Why are your sermons so long? Or boring? Or loud?

In the case of the early church they were dealing with a complaint from the Hellenistic Jews (aka Greek Speaking Jews) that their widows were being neglected.

So to paint the picture, as the early church grew, they sold all they owned and simply threw all of their money and possessions into one big pot and the Apostles would daily divide up the food and money to distribute it to those in need.

Now, this was incredibly important work. It needed to be done. But sometimes in the church we have the wrong people doing the right things. In other words, we have people who have a gifting in one area, but serving in another area.

This happens quite often out of necessity. Typically the reason they are in the wrong role is because the people that should be doing that work, won’t. Did you know there are people in the church that come and participate in the church, but they refuse to serve? Tell your neighbor, he must not be talking about our church. Or is he?

In this case, the apostles were serving the tables, but their real gifting to serve the church was found in the ministry of preaching and prayer.

The Wrong People Doing The Right Things. Sometimes though it is One Person Who Does Everything and doesn’t allow others the blessing of serving.

When I grew up, the pastor did everything. The people watched (consumer mentality). The Pastor preached and counseled of course, but he was also church janitor, the secretary, the treasurer, the head of the food ministry, the one who did visitations, the grass cutter, the plumber, the electrician, the painter, the sound guy and the lead mechanic for the church bus.

This is absolutely contrary to what the Bible teaches us about the ministry of the pastor in Ephesians 4. In that passage we see that Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers were given to the church to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

In other words, Pastors aren’t supposed to do the ministry, they are supposed to equip others to do the ministry. So if I look at what I do around here, I have to be honest, I need to do a better job at equipping and empowering others.

Or to put it plainly, you are supposed to be doing the ministry. That’s your job. My job is to equip you to do it.

And that leads me to my next point…

Church Leaders Must Empower People To Serve

The early church, just like our church, had a problem and problems were meant to be solved. The Apostles formulated a plan. While the church itself had multiplied, but the number of leaders hadn’t.

In order to solve this problem, the apostles decided they needed to empower seven men to serve the church and meet this need. Now, many commentators call them the church’s first Deacons.

Deacon is a theological word, taken from the word “serve” in this passage. It’s the Greek Word - “Diakoneo”, which means to serve or to minister.

While they weren’t called deacons in this passage, they were commissioned to serve the believers in a real and tangible way. They were going to serve the tables of the church to make sure no one was neglected.

They would need to pick out (or elect) seven men who had a good reputation, full of the Spirit and Wisdom to preform this important task.

The Apostles would then be free to spend their time in prayer and preaching the word. This solution satisfied the church.

This was a great miracle! Maybe the greatest miracle in the whole bible. Why?

Look at the church’s response. It says in verse 5 that what the disciples decided “pleased” the whole church. I’ve been pastoring here for 5 years and I don’t think I’ve ever made a decision that pleased the “whole” church! It was a miracle.

Moving on we see that these men had to have some qualifications.

A Good Reputation.

Full of the Holy Spirit.

Full of Wisdom.

Now I know it’s popular for preachers to say things like, “God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called.” And that sounds good right? But what it’s not saying there is that qualifications do not matter. God is the one who sanctifies you and prepares you for a position, but that doesn’t mean the qualifications don’t matter. They do matter and the qualifications have to do with your character, not your education or life history. God still uses crooked sticks to draw straight lines.

In other words, no one’s past is perfect, but you do need to show signs of God working in your heart, on your character, before you should be put in positions of leadership in the church.

So there are some qualifications.

A Good Reputation - This I think is two-fold, this implies that the person is known (think authentic and transparent), and two they are trustworthy. The disciples were trusting them with food and/or money in this case and that person needed to be trustworthy.

These were people known to the congregation and they lived transparent lives so that they could be fully known and they were of a good reputation. This wasn’t a Johnny-come-lately or a charismatic person with character defects, these were to be good people.

Full of the Holy Spirit - They were to be Christians who filled their cup up with a the Spirit of God. This wasn’t a person who just talked the talk, but they also walked the walk. They knew God personally. This was a person who had a recognizable walk with the Holy Spirit of God. They had Spirit given gifts and they were using them.

Full of Wisdom - This person must also be wise. They need to know how to handle problems. They need to know how to handle a dispute between widows. That is what is going on here. They needed that conflict resolution tools in their toolbox.

The Importance of Empowerment

Now this is something that churches get wrong often. We typically only see a laying on of hands when it comes to pastors or missionaries or something like that, but true godly servants need empowerment too!

In this passage we see that they set the men before the apostles and they prayed over them and laid hands on them. The whole church witnessed this event.

This teaches us two things.

That empowering people gives them the confidence to do what God calls them to do.

Empowering people to serve tells people that serving isn’t a second-class gifting but an equally important part of the body of Christ.

When people feel empowered they will serve with zeal. When people are empowered they will take a key step that every leader wants to see which is ownership. They will own their actions. They will treat their ministry of service as if the whole church was counting on them.

This is what we want at Cornerstone Church. We want to empower people to do what God has called them to do. We want to empower you to serve and one of the ways we are going to do that is by the laying on of hands and prayer.

Now let’s look at one final idea in this passage.

Multiplication Is Better Than Addition

All throughout the beginning of the book of Acts, we see that as the church grew, God added to their number those that believed.

Acts 2:41 “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”

Acts 2:47 “praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

Acts 5:14 “And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women,”

But here in our passage today we are told for the first time, when the church empowered more leaders, the church did what? It multiplied greatly.

Acts 6:7 “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.”

If you want to see a church grow, you empower leaders. You raise up new leaders and train them and empower them to serve their king.

So why am I preaching on this today? There are two big reasons.

We need more people to serve. We need people to raise their hand and see, here am I, send me. It’s not just a good thing to do, but I want you to follow the example of Jesus and the early church and serve others with your gift or talent.

We want to install deacons in this church. For those that do not know, this is an elder-led church body. Tony, Dave and myself serve as the elders of this church and quite honestly, we need to multiply our leadership.

We need other people to step and lead in various areas. We need people who are of a good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom to serve our body so that we can see God move in amazing ways.

He is no Christian who does not seek to serve his God. The very motto of the Christian should be “I serve.”

Charles Spurgeon

So let’s me put some practicality to this conversation. Here is a list of needs that we have as a church.

Children’s ministry/Youth Ministry workers

Food ministry workers

A Hospitality Team Leader

A Planning Team Leader

A Men’s minister

A Women’s minister

A Care Coordinator

A Social Media Manager

These are all areas where you could volunteer and use your gifts. We will train you and empower you.

Let me go back to the beginning. When we serve people in the church, we are being the hands and feet of Jesus. We are bringing the gospel to life. We are laying down our lives in service to someone else.

It’s a beautiful picture of the gospel. Those that help in the church are showing the world that they are disciples.

John 13:35 ESV

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

The way we show our love is by serving one another.

“Oh! The infinite value of the humble Gospel helpers. Thousands of people who have no gifts as leaders are number-one, helpers. How grand, revival work moves along, when red-hot platoons of fire-baptized helpers crowd around God’s heroic leaders of the embattled hosts.”

W.B. Godbey

Conclusion

Next steps:

Nominate someone as a deacon

Write down your information and where you’d like to serve.

On the tables in the back are pens and slips of paper. You do not need to fill out both. On the table near the door, put someone’s name down to nominate as a deacon. On the table nearest the lobby, put your name and phone number down along with where you’d like to serve.

Other title ideas:

"Serving Like Jesus: How Your Gifts Can Multiply the Church"

"No Gift Too Small: Serving Like the Early Church"

"From Addition to Multiplication: Unlock Your Call to Serve"