Acts 6:1-7 |

Intro .

Hey y’all, how are y’all doing?

Everyone good? Good.

So, question for you, does it matter how things are organized?

Like if you were to go to an event, and it was disorganized, would you enjoy that event?

Like who has gone to Fuge? Which sign ups are open now, wink wink.

Fuge is impressive to me because of the sheer logistics

Imagine if we go there and they didn’t have it together?

You’d be stuck outside for 4 hours with out rooms. That actually happened to us. And that was NGU’s fault not really fuges.

But still something was neglected, we felt the brunt of it.

But it matters how it is organized, and the same thing goes for the church.

Scripture has a template which is adaptable across the ages to how a church should be organized, so that it can most effectivly reach people for the gospel and effectively do what only a church can do, which is bring people to a saving faith in Christ.

Context

So this is where we are at tonight, this is an interesting passage

Acts 6:1-7, and it is one of the first instances of Church conflict.

and also here we see the institution of deacons.

And this is a shift in the way the church operates. and it still has implications for the church today.

It is kind of a change up from what we have been looking at the last couple weeks but

This is really how the church functioned from an administrative perspective

And I thought about jumping ahead over this passage,

but I think y’all need to understand that how a church functions and is organized matters.

This scripture here speaks to this, its the first mention of church conflict and the way it is solved is a team is empowered to solve it

That team is called deacons, they still to this day serve a valuable function.

We have Deacons here at FBC Gray and they serve a specific purpose and function.

And I believe y’all are the church of right now, you are a part of the church, so you need to know how what scripture says when it talks about how it is led and laid out and organized.

So if you have a bible, flip over to Acts 6:1-7, if you need a bible should be some scattered around. If you didn’t bring one, and you need one, let me know.

But let’s read this passage and then let’s see what its saying.

but before we do that, let’s pray for our time in the word.

pray

Okay read this with me.

Acts 6:1–7 ESV

1 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. 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. 3 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. 4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 5 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. 6 These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them. 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.

So let me talk through this for a second and then we are going to do something hands on, I think it’ll be helpful.

That will help you think through a practical problem but solve it in a missional sense.

Okay so what is happening here?

Look how this begins verse one, “now in these days”

So Luke is not really giving us a time frame, but it is just in the days of the early church in Jerusalem.

And what he is saying is as the church grew, the disciples increased in number.

SO this is the culmination of what we have seen so far in the text,

The Church is growing

more people are involved, more people are coming to know Christ.

and having more people is good thing, but more people means a need for more structure.

Cause guess what, a complaint arose.

So who are these complaints by?

Two groups and this is important.

The Hellenist and the Hebrews.

So gotta ask who are the Hellenists?

They are greek speaking Jews who converted to Christianity.

Most likely people who came back to Israel after the dispersion.

But they were more culturally greek than Hebrew.

They spoke greek as opposed to Aramaic which he hebrew people would have spoke.

So there are some cultural differences.

They looked different and acted different.

Not bad, but just different.

So what were they complaining about?

Their widows were being overlooked by in the daily distribution.

Basically the greek speaking widows are being neglected when they go to give out food.

Food ministry was a huge part of the early church. We still have food ministries today in our churches.

We have Jesus Hands here.

And so what we have going on is the new comers are being neglected by the ones who had been there a while.

More people, this is gonna lead to some divisions, you’ll see people group up with people they are like.

So what is the solution?

The twelve disciples gather up the church, and tell them to choose from themselves, seven men.

Good godly men to handle the logistics of the distribution of food.

The church chooses the men, presents them to the apostles and they prayed for them and laid hands on them, and empowered them to take care of what is going on.

here is what they did

They protected the unity of the unity of the church.

So here is the main idea of this passage, i know that was kind of a long lead in,

but the main idea is that the church should be organized in a way that ministers to everyone in the church, and the kingdom to be expanded.

The church should be organized to to do only what a church can do, which is affect the community and expand the kingdom through the preaching and ministry of the Gospel.

So how a church is organized matters. I want you to see that. One day, you will be leaders in a church, sooner than you think. You will serve in different organizational levels of the church and you need to know how a church is supposed to function and be organized biblically.

So heres the question, what problem did they solve?

Yes it was about the food distribution.

But really it was about how can we make the church more efficient in its ministry.

So how does it do that?

at the 30k foot level the team did two things. It protected the unity of the church. There was internal conflict and it was mundane but it needed to be solved. and also, it celebrated and allowed further kingdom expansion.

So I want to do this, I want to make you think missionally about a problem, and its a legit problem churches all over are trying to figure out.

SO break up in to teams of 7, as best as possible have at least 3 middle schooler and three high schoolers on each team. You can have 4 of either.

Put yourself in the shoes of the newly formed deacon body of the Grayberry Baptist Church. I have a sheet for you. It spells out the problem in detail and some considerations as you seek to solve it.

But here is the problem. it is twofold.

Guests are unsure of where to go or what to do once they are on property. Members are frustrated they aren’t connecting with guests.

create a team that address the two fold problem.

make sure it protects the unity of the church, and celebrates kingdom expansion.

How does a guest become family?

Come get a sheet, either write your solution on the

debrief

thoughts?

what’d you come up with.

cool.

let me wrap this up then.

P1 - Protect the Unity of the Church

P2 - Celebrate Gospel Expansion

P3 - Adaptable. Through change, be grounded to Christ. Stephen/Nicolaus

Defeater Belief/Cultural Analysis - All Change is good, No change is good. Semper Refromada. Adapt or Die. The Gospel Doesn’t Change but the people do, culture changes.

P2Christ - growing personally in Christ will bring change and will be hard at times.

The problem assumes that you can’t keep doing what you are doing.

can’t keep doing the same thing - change is part of becoming christ like.

Even the solutions you came up with would probably need to be tweaked and changed every couple years.

That is true of the church and it is true of ourselves.

You are going to change as you grow, but through it all, stick close Jesus.

This is what the passage was getting at, it is bookend with people coming to know Jesus.

1 and 7 say the disciples were increasing. God is always on the move, how we set ourselves up is to reduce barries to the gospel.

That need so to be true in your own life as well.

Crescendo: How does The Gospel ultimately solve this problem? Preaching is about pointing to Christ & the Gospel, not good works, trying harder or moralism. Beauty of the Gospel.

Close - What is Christ asking you to change? As you get closer to him, you become more aware of your own sinfulness.

Ultimately, that is the beauty of the gospel. The more you chip away at the old self, the more whole you come by becoming more like Christ.

I know this was a different sort of night

This text was talking to those in the church, so for those of you who may not know Jesus, that was probably uncomfortable, you aren’t used to thinking like that,

If thats you I want to invite you to come and know Jesus. Come and know him as savior and Lord, if you have an questions come talk to me.

Come see Christ as Lord, come see Christ as king. Y’all pray with me.

pray