Growing Pains
Download MP3If you would, turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 6. Acts chapter 6. I'll begin reading in verse 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. And the 12 summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give a preaching the word of God to serve tables.
Joel Brooks:Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you 7 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 the ministry of the word. And what they said, please the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Iconor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselytite 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.
Joel Brooks:And a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. Pray with me. Lord, we desperately want to hear from you tonight, and so I ask just simply that you would speak in a clear and a powerful way. God, remove me from the equation here. We want to hear from you.
Joel Brooks:I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. As we've seen, from looking, in acts and in acts 4 in particular, this this early church has been described as having one heart and one soul or one mind. Luke tells us that there has been no needy people among them.
Joel Brooks:But now we have a threat against both of those things, the unity and the needs. Disunity has entered into the church and some of the poor people are being neglected. This was the first real large scale conflict problem to hit the early church. Now I grew up in a church that was chronically in conflict. There was always some grumbling on.
Joel Brooks:There was always some crisis going on. And so the the solution was usually to get rid of the pastor. And so, I can remember having at least 5 different senior pastors just during the time that was kind of an elementary school and junior high. And so you you can call this message self preservation, or just, good exegesis, but but but but we're gonna go a different route tonight and talk about what do we do when problems do arise up in the church. Because conflicts will arise.
Joel Brooks:Anytime there is growth, there's going to be conflict. Lauren and I dated for 6 years before we got married, and believe it or not, in these 6 years we dated, we never fought. Ever. We got married, and for our, first, gosh, I guess 6, 7, 7 years of marriage, we did not have a fight. And then our family grew by 1.
Joel Brooks:We had, we had a girl, Caroline, and this is something we just we just grew but 1 by 1 little 8 pound 6 ounce, you know, little body and yet we began to fight. Conflict all of a sudden just just grew in our marriage. Because you don't know what you're doing. You don't have any sleep. This is a it's a new experience.
Joel Brooks:It's an exciting experience, but man those things, that dynamic there just leads to conflict. Those of you who have kids know what I'm talking about. When you begin to grow, you begin to fight. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're going to the wrong church and go someplace else because we we have problems and sin here. One of my neighbors, they were struggling in their marriage and they came over and they said, we've decided to have a child.
Joel Brooks:I was like, why? And they said, well, to grow us closer together. It's like, you are fools. You know, you're fools. It will be a blessing.
Joel Brooks:It will be a joy, but you are gonna have so much more conflict as your family grows. Growth brings an excitement, it brings energy, but it brings a whole new set of problems. And what you have is this church growing from infancy to all of a sudden 3,000, all of a sudden 8,000. I mean, it's just exploding and growth and it's new. It's exciting.
Joel Brooks:It's a great, but all of a sudden, you know, the apostles are looking around. It's like, we're we're like this huge megachurch. Where's the infrastructure? What what what what are you gonna do? And and problems begin arising.
Joel Brooks:It's only natural that that happens. And in this story, we see a problem arise and this threatens the early church. Actually there's, there's 2 threats to the church at this point. There's the problem itself, the neglect of widows, and the other threat is how are they going to answer this problem? How are they going to respond?
Joel Brooks:These were serious threats that could have torn Christianity apart from the start. And I think one of the reasons that Luke records this for us is so that we can learn how we are as a church to deal with conflict. The situation here is that, the widows of Greek speaking Jews are being neglected. At this time in history, you had, these, these Greek speaking Jews moving back into Jerusalem, And as a result, they're not as well established. They're not as well connected.
Joel Brooks:They don't have as much family there in the city. And so when needs arise, some of them are beginning to fall through the cracks. I don't think this was outright neglect. I don't think this was intentional. I think this just happened.
Joel Brooks:And this was a problem because the church knew it's calling and one of his calling is to take care of widows and orphans. You know, even James says religion that is pure and undefiled before God the father is this, to visit orphans and widows and their affliction. If you read through the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, if you ever want to see God get really angry, just watch what happens when when Israel or or other people begin neglecting widows. Widows have a special place in his heart. I didn't really understand this until my mom became a widow about 20 years ago.
Joel Brooks:And I got to see up close that emotional damage that happened there. My mom cried every day for years after losing her husband. What used to be, after my dad died, what what used to be just kind of easy daily decisions, All sudden, she was paralyzed, and she was just she was crippled. She couldn't make even the most basic easy decision. She was scared all of the time.
Joel Brooks:Now she's she's in a house and she's all by herself. Who's gonna protect her? The dynamics of all of her friendships changed, you know, because she used to always go out with couples, and now she just felt weird just being by herself and going out with another couple, and and just everything about her life just kind of changed and it imploded when she became a widow. And this was even more so in the 1st century. Because not not only did they have the same kind of emotional, wreckage that happened when their husband died, but they didn't have things like life insurance that could at least help provide for you.
Joel Brooks:So you wouldn't have to worry about money if you lost your husband. If you lost your husband, money became a huge concern. Who is gonna take care of you, especially if you didn't have any family there that would that would take you in? So there are many widows here living in deep emotional and physical poverty. And they're trying to scrape by however they could.
Joel Brooks:And so the early church recognized this, and because of this, they set up a daily distribution of help for the widows and likely for all the poor. Early on, we, we, we see this in Acts. We see how the early church was very organized in the way that they would give. We've already looked at chapter 4 when it said that they, they would come and they would sell their possessions and that they would lay the proceeds of those possessions down at the apostle's feet, and we saw that also in acts 5. And I think what you're seeing here is the early church, they knew they were supposed to take care of needs, but they didn't just give money to everybody.
Joel Brooks:They didn't just let people take advantage of them. They were they they were wise in how they use their resources. They set up a structure, and so they laid the money at the apostle's feet to godly men, wise men, and they said, We, we trust you now to distribute our resources. To look at the needs there, figure out what's a real need, what's not a real need and give out our resources. And you see that very early in the church.
Joel Brooks:And the reason they have to set up that then is the same reason we set that up now is because there are some people who will take advantage of Christian's generosity. And so you have to be wise in how you give. I read as I was studying for this, there was an old rabbinical writing that talks about the generosity of these early Jewish Christians. And he says, we should give, but let the money sweat in your hands. And I love that.
Joel Brooks:Let the money sweat in your hands. So what he meant is you hold on to the money tightly. You don't just start throwing it away and you discern. You discern before you give, and you saw the early Christians modeling this. They gave the money to men who then gave it to others, and we might we try to model this at the church.
Joel Brooks:All the money that you give in the offering, you know, here, basically it goes to the elders and to our missions team, and we look at all the needs there, and we try to wisely then give. And so we can look, and if there is a widow who needs her utility bills paid for, we can check out the situation. We could pay for that. If there's Cornerstone who needs new Bibles for their children, we could look at that and we say, yes. Okay.
Joel Brooks:We'll buy new Bibles for the children. If there are some missionaries here who need help in planning the church, we could look at that and think, yes, that's a genuine need and we could take care of that and we can use our resources in a wise way. And so you can you can put a good system, and I think they had a pretty good system in place. I think we have a pretty good system in place, but when growth starts happening, even through the best system, people can fall through the cracks and not everybody's going to be happy. And here you have these Greek speaking Jews complaining that their widows were not being taken care of.
Joel Brooks:And this is a real problem. So the apostles gather everyone together and look what they say in verse 2, it says, in the 12 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 7 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 the ministry of the word. Now this seems like somewhat of a defensive answer that they give. I think it is a defensive answer.
Joel Brooks:I think the apostles were probably approached and asked said, hey, some people are being neglected. Why don't you take care of this? Why don't you do this? And that's why they they answer, but but it is not it is not right for us to do this. I know you're asking us to do this, but it's not right for us to do this.
Joel Brooks:They're they're defending their position here. And when the apostles give this answer here, what they're doing is proclaiming the absolute, utter importance of the word of God to church life. The proclaimed word of God is central for a church. Above all else, they they are not putting down taking care of widows. They're not putting down waiting on tables.
Joel Brooks:What they are doing is they are exalting the position of proclaiming the word, studying the word, and prayer. It's central. And they realize that this is a huge decision and that really the entire church hangs in balance with how they decide to go forward. If the disciples had answered this way, you know what? You're right.
Joel Brooks:You're right. It's a problem. God's called us to take care of the widows. We need to take care of the widows. So, I know we can't we can't do everything.
Joel Brooks:So we're just gonna put aside prayer and ministry of the word to take care of this real and this pressing need before us. If they had decided to do this, they would have been proclaiming at the heart of the church is social justice. The heart of who we are is doing good works. That's the very foundation of who we are. That's the heart of who we are.
Joel Brooks:And if they had chosen this to be a route, well for one they wouldn't have been persecuted. They would have probably been embraced by the church, or embraced by the world, and they would have done a whole lot of good. They really, I mean, if they had made that, this is the core of who we are, Social justice, helping people out. They would have done so much good, but they would have lost their soul. They would absolutely lost their soul.
Joel Brooks:And you can see this today, you can see churches that that preach social justice so much to the exclusion of the gospel. All about good works. Good works. Good works. And and without the ministry of the word and without the gospel being proclaimed, those good works are no longer a outpouring or outworking of the salvation God has given us.
Joel Brooks:They now become the means to which we try to achieve salvation. We just have to keep doing good works, doing good works, and then God will love us. Then we are saved. And the apostle saw that danger, and they said, no. We have to devote ourselves to the ministry of the word, and to prayer above all else.
Joel Brooks:The thing that's so difficult about the decisions that the apostles have to make here, is that the church really does need to be a champion for social justice. We do. We need to be a champion for social justice. We are called to to care for the widow, to care for the orphan, to care for the poor and the oppressed. That is part of our calling.
Joel Brooks:And so the choice presented before the apostles isn't between something good and something bad. It's between something good and something good. That's their choice. And it's choices like that, that have always wrecked wrecked and ruined the church. It's It's never usually between something good and bad.
Joel Brooks:It's not, hey, you either worship Satan, you know, or or worship the Lord here and be a minister to the word. It's not that clear. It's like, here's something really good and here's something really good. Good things are what threaten the church. It's what threatens us.
Joel Brooks:Many years ago, I was in seminary class. It was my second semester of taking Greek. And I will always remember this class. Changed my life, Greek class of all things. Definitely changed the way I approached all of seminary.
Joel Brooks:My professor, Doctor. Kinman, he was, he was writing on the board. We were studying participles at the time, and so he is parsing some participle and also he just stops, puts his marker down, turns around, looks at us and says, did did you know that just over 3 miles away from here, where you're standing right now, just over 3 miles, there is an abortion clinic and there are women lined up right now trying to decide if they should abort their baby or not. And here you are studying Greek. What in the world was that for?
Joel Brooks:We're we're all just absolutely shocked that killer Kenman is what we called him, and and and so he he continues to parse this participle and he turns back around and he says, you know what? I'm assuming that you are all here studying the word of God because God has called you here. Because you believe that this is the most important thing you can be doing. It better be. Had better be the reason you are here and not there.
Joel Brooks:So if you're here, be all here. And I'll tell you, once he started parties, I was like, I mean, I'm zoned in. I'm studying because he's right. There's good and there's good. That's what you're choosing between.
Joel Brooks:But God has called, he called me to be of the word. Therefore, I have to devote myself to the to the understanding and to the study of this word and to prayerfully going through it so I can teach others and that is the most important task that I have. When confronted with a similar decision, the apostle saw that the study and the proclamation of god's word was so important that it required all of their time and all of their effort. They they could not have any divided hearts or any divided energies when it came to this. They needed to be freed up from other good demands that were being pressed upon them so they could do this.
Joel Brooks:They realized that the word of God and prayer had to be the foundation on this, of this church. And so here we see the primacy of the word of God that it's to have in our midst. One of the things that just kind of struck me as I'm looking at this is, I mean, the apostles are saying this. I'm thinking, didn't they already have a pretty good grasp of scripture? Didn't they already have a pretty good understanding of the word of God?
Joel Brooks:I mean, Jesus taught them 3 years. Pentecost, Holy Spirit, and them in a mighty way. Luke 24 says that Jesus opened up their minds to understand the scriptures. And yet despite all of that, they said, you know what? We still need to dedicate ourselves to prayerful study and proclamation of the word.
Joel Brooks:It's that foundational. The church rest upon this. That's why I believe it's right for the church to to pay certain elders, teaching elders to devote themselves to the study of God's word. I I thank you all for allowing me to do that for for paying my salary. I realize, you know, you could take my salary and you can meet a lot of the needs in Woodlawn.
Joel Brooks:I I realize that, but I think it's right. I do think it's right to set aside and to pay for a minister to study, prayerfully study, and to be shaped by the word of God so he can proclaim it. I mean, this, this past week, I think it was either Tuesday or Wednesday, I got to read through the rest of Acts 6, Stephen's speech, which we're gonna look at next week. And I read it over and I read it over and I read it over and I got to read it over and I thought, I get paid to do this, To just be shaped by the text. And then I hope you get to enjoy the fruits of that next week.
Joel Brooks:It's needed. It's foundational for the church. But let me be crystal clear. That does not excuse anyone here from your calling or our calling as a church to help the widow, to help the oppressed. We're called to do that.
Joel Brooks:Let's look how the apostles fulfill this calling. Verse 3 says, Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you 7 men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. I love it that when the apostles were confronted with this problem, they didn't say, all right, what we need is a better system. We need a better structure. We need a better program.
Joel Brooks:They said, no, you know what we need? We need people. We need people full of the spirit and of wisdom. And that's what we that's what we want to pick, and we wanna get people to handle this. As I was studying this, I was reminded, an author, E.
Joel Brooks:M. Bounds, he has written several things on prayer, but a quote that he had, let me just read it to you. It says what the world needs is not more machinery or more novel methods. But men whom the Holy Ghost can use, men of prayer. The solution is to get men full of wisdom and the Holy Spirit and let them run with it.
Joel Brooks:And so they picked 7 men. If you look at the, the names of all these 7 men, something might stand out to you. They're all Greek names. They're all Hellenist that they pick. And I find this somewhat funny, somewhat wise as well, not somewhat wise, really wise, that this is what the apostles did.
Joel Brooks:You have the Hellenist coming to them and complaining. We've got this problem. Our widows aren't being met, and he get and and the apostles say, you're right. You've got a problem. Pick out 7 men and deal with it.
Joel Brooks:That's their advice. Pick out, and so they picked out 7 men from among themselves. 7 Hellenists. They're like, you know the problem. You're acquainted with the problem better than anybody else.
Joel Brooks:Now go. Choose 7 men from among yourselves and take care of it. That's how they dealt with the problems with the church. Problems came before them. They said, That's great.
Joel Brooks:No one's more qualified to deal with this than you. Pick 7 people full of the holy spirit. Take care of this. And they went back to praying, and they went back to preaching. It's brilliant.
Joel Brooks:It also really cuts down on the amount of people that are going to come up to me after the service and tell me the things that we need to be doing. Now people come, we need to start, you know, a frisbee lead. That's great. Go with it, because I'm not gonna devote my time and my energy to like setting up frisbee, but you are probably gifted in that. You know, I remember, David Fleming came up to me years ago and said, I really think we should start a choir.
Joel Brooks:I was like, that's great. No one's better for it than you. Go. And no one, I mean, can you imagine me? I'm really, I mean, really.
Joel Brooks:I would do a horrible job leading a choir and I would do a horrible job preaching at the same time if I try to combine those things. But instead we say, no, you're full of wisdom, you're full of the spirit, you have got that passion, you see the need. Do that. I have to keep the focus here on the ministry of the word and prayer. Verse 7 says, and the word of God continued to increase and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem.
Joel Brooks:And a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. I find it very interesting that up to this point in acts, we have only heard about the church increasing. You hear phrases like, and the Lord added to added that day about 3,000 souls, or the Lord added to their number day by day. And it's always the Lord adding people or the Lord adding souls. And you have all that all the way up through acts until you get here.
Joel Brooks:Here it says, the word of God continue to increase. The word of God continue to increase. And the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. And so what now you're seeing here, because this is the way they went forward with that, with that crisis, with that threat and they decided, no, we will not compromise on the preached word, the studying of the word, the prayerfully going through the word. That will not be compromised, but we will also do this because of their dedication to the word of God.
Joel Brooks:It says that both increase. They grew in-depth and they grew in width. I pray that the Lord would give us such wisdom. It's been encouraging for me to see just even over the last few weeks how our church has been growing, and I realize with that will come difficulties and will come problems. I realize that you're gonna come up to me and you're gonna want me to probably do everything, because some of you probably grew up in a, a southern church culture, in which the pastor was supposed to do everything.
Joel Brooks:Everything. I grew up in that culture. I mean, that's why when I said we had a church, I was chronically in conflict. We're like, well, this church isn't a good enough preacher. I mean, he's a really good pastor.
Joel Brooks:You know, he takes care of people, does a hospital visits. He's not a good preacher. Let's get rid of him. We bring in a fantastic preacher. You know what?
Joel Brooks:He's really not that good with people. Let's get rid of him. We need somebody who's a little more organized. Yes. You know, he's a good pre We wanted everything.
Joel Brooks:We wanted Jesus. That's what we wanted. We wanted Jesus to come with every gift. I don't have to tell you I'm not Jesus. No pastor is.
Joel Brooks:What we want to be committed to as a church is the word of God and prayer as our foundation. And the outflowing of that, the outworking of that will be us pouring into our community, pouring into the widows, to the poor, and to the oppressed because the Lord Jesus has so moved us to do so. Pray with me. Our father actually find great comfort in knowing that there there were problems in the early church, That there's never been a perfect church. Never once has any group of people rested on their own righteousness.
Joel Brooks:And so, God, we rest on your righteousness. We realize that ours is filthy rags, that the best obedience, our best works that we do dares not appear before your throne. But our faith in Jesus is what saves us. Lord, I pray that you would press that in on us in this moment at this time. I pray we would be a church that prays prayerfully studies your word, and we serve the community around us.
Joel Brooks:And I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
