Is church just a sermon and some songs?
WATCH
Sparking the Flame, 6 of 7 from October 11, 2026
“God may lead us through conflict so that we will grow."
Acts 6:1-7 by Michael Lockstampfor (@miklocks)
SUMMARY
The sermon explains that God can use conflict in the church to help people grow, just like the early church grew when they cared for neglected Greek-speaking widows with wisdom and humility. Pastor Michael teaches that church is more than sermons and songs—it is a daily community where believers serve one another and show God’s love to the world.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
💬 Is church a weekly exercise or a daily community for us?
💬 How are you loving Jesus by serving those He loves?
💬 Who might notice Jesus because they see His love in us?
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Well, good morning, church, and welcome to our neighbors. If we haven't met yet, my name is Michael. I'm one of the pastors here at Neighborhood Church. I want to start off with a little bit of a quiz, okay? I want you to think real quick.
Okay. How many, like global leaders do you think you could name? So I'm talking presidents, I'm talking Kings, I'm talking prime ministers. How many think I'm not? Come on, come on, this is.
Just because this is church doesn't mean I'm asking about Jesus. Come on. Yeah, okay, so I'll give you king Jesus. Sure. I'm talking about political.
Okay, three maybe. I see three. Two. What's that? Okay, all right.
All right. So just a handful. Okay.
How many politicians do you think that you could name?
Okay, Maybe one. Your Venn diagram of the presidents and the politicians, you know, might be a circle. Okay. Like we could probably name a handful of those. Maybe five, six maybe.
Y' all think I'm going to go somewhere squirrely? I promise this is not a trap. Okay, okay. How many world leaders or politicians from, I don't know, the first hundred years from the ancient world do you think you could name? Like maybe one.
Okay. Solomon. That's a little bit older than I was thinking. Maybe three or four. Okay, okay, okay.
All right. Modern day. Modern day. How many contractors can you name? 1, 2, 3, 3.
Okay. We see their billboards around town, maybe we know Ben Mawr. I'm out. I think Kelly Builders is another one around town. Okay, so maybe a handful of contractors.
How many folks that are subcontracted out? So like the actual builder person. Everybody knows contractors just tell people what to do. How many builders do we know by name?
None. Okay, how many first century contractors do we know?
At least one. How many, like builders, right? Yeah. How many builders do we know from the first century? Maybe 12.
Okay, sure. If we're counting all the disciples as builders. Right. As far as, like our day to day lives go, most of us, like, unless we're working in the industry, are not like intimately involved with contractors or builders or anything like that. And when it comes to like, things that we're going to take interest in as far as, like world history goes, like for all of the monuments that we want to go and visit, we never look at like the Parthenon in Athens and are like, I wonder who built this?
Like, I wonder what the contract was. Like, how long did it take? Like, that's just not even a thing that we think about. We don't think about the contractors and we don't think about the builders. So there's literally no reason why any of us should be able to think of one blue collar carpenter from the first century.
Except that that guy, I'm, let me presume, I'm assuming that that one guy is Jesus.
And if he had just stayed in his industry, there's probably no reason why any of us would know him today. But the reason we know him is because he didn't just build with his hands, he also built people's lives. Like he was a teacher. And not only that, he claimed to be not only the son of God, he claimed to be God himself in the flesh. And so that's the reason why we still like think about this first century builder.
But on its face, there's no reason whatsoever why we should pay any attention to him or the people who thought he was cool. Like, there's no reason why we should think about fishermen and think like, yeah, those guys became really great. Like most fishermen across the course, across the course of history were just completely forgotten. Most tax collectors were wiped out of the history books. The reason why we know Matthew's name, Levi, is because he was with Jesus.
The reason why we know Peter, James and John as fishermen is because they were with Jesus. And Jesus was a builder in the first century. For the most part of his Life, he spent 30 years just working a job.
So at neighborhood church, over the last couple of weeks, it's been about five. Today will be the fifth week, we've been asking the question, why is it that their movement has continued? Why is it that still 2000 years later we're studying this rabbi's teaching, this old teacher's teaching, and then the teaching of his disciples. Because after he went back to heaven, there's no reason on earth why that movement should have continued if it was just a bunch of dudes hanging out. And odds are they were like not as old as you think they are.
Peter probably was the oldest of them because he had to pay the temple tax with Jesus. But the rest of them were considered underage. They didn't have to pay a temple tax to go in. So you're thinking 18, 19, 20 year old dudes walking around hanging out, why would we care? How is it that anything that they built would have lasted for their lifetimes, much less the next generation, Much less hundreds of thousands of generations?
Maybe not hundreds of thousands. Math is not my strong suit. But you get the drift of what I'm saying, right? Maybe it's because God was at work through them. I mean, spoiler alert.
That's kind of how I think about it. If God wasn't working through them, it wouldn't have sustained. But we've seen that over the last couple weeks. We keep following Jesus because he's the only one with the plan. He's got the plan for how life is supposed to work.
He's got the plan for how world history is going to move to its completion. He's the only one with the plan. So we just keep following him, even when he asks us to wait. And we've seen that the Holy Spirit will always show the truth of what's in our heart. Like, even when we're trying to make other people think something that's not necessarily true about us, but we want to appear better than we are.
Like, God's not deceived. The Holy Spirit will always show the truth of what's in our heart. And we've seen that God's plan stands fast even though people are broken. Like, broken people are busted.
There's no reason for us to, like, really trust one another apart from the work that God is doing in us. So we've called this series Sparking the Flame. And the flame is the fact that the church has continued. The flame is the fact that we still know Jesus name. The flame is like the pervading influence of God in our world.
I was listening to a podcast this week that was trying to talk about the history of the AA chip. You know, when you go to an AA meeting and I don't know if you've gone, but when you go your first time, they give you a chip, your day one or your day zero chip. And they wanted to talk about, like, what's the history of these chips? Where did they come from? And the person who was reporting on the story was incredibly frustrated because they're like, this is a mental health issue.
This is a substance issue. Like, this isn't necessarily something that church should be involved in. And yet as they were reporting, they were like. And everywhere I turn, there was Christian influence in this. And it's almost like Christians are the only ones that want for people to get well.
But the secular world gets really frustrated when they come up against the fact that they were the ones who broke the ground.
I don't remember what I was saying. Let's pray.
It's our habit just to pray together. The disciples prayer. And Jesus, as he instructs us how to pray, he says, this is kind of the format. And he wasn't trying to give us a magic Spell that. If we say these right words, then God makes things happen like that we want to happen.
It's not a way to manipulate God. In fact, it's the opposite. Jesus describes a heart posture that sees him as the one who's in charge and us as the ones who are dependent on him. And so I'm going to take a deep breath. I'm going to invite you to take a deep breath before we pray these words together.
And you can pray them out loud if you'd like to. I think that's beautiful when we do it. But more than like saying the right words, what God's concerned about is that we pray with a heart that's surrendered to him. So let's take a deep breath.
And let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Amen. Would you navigate with me to the book of Acts in chapter six? We're going to be in chapter six and we're going to start in verse one.
If you want to follow along in the blue Bibles, they're kind of tucked around in the chairs. They might be sitting next to you. It's on page 1055 in the blue Bibles. 1055 in the blue Bibles, Acts, chapter six.
And as we've been looking at the story of how Jesus followers carried on after Jesus left the planet, he didn't die and stay dead. He actually like supermanned out. He ascended into heaven. As he left them behind, we've seen them really seeking God's face. We've seen the Holy Spirit come on them in power.
We've seen the teachers and the leaders, the apostles be able to demonstrate God's power through some incredible miracles. And we've seen opposition from outside of the church where people are like, hey, you guys got to stop teaching in the name of Jesus. And they're like, yeah, we're going to do what God said, not you. And we've seen too, in that community, we've seen people grow with generous hearts and kind of sell property and then just kind of give, give the proceeds away. And then we've seen people give with selfish motivations and we've seen God intervene in that.
And so here in that. Let me just read the last verse of Chapter five. And every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus. So it's talking about the apostles specifically that their habit was to go every day to the temple and in different houses and teach that the Christ is Jesus. So if you weren't aware, Christ is not Jesus last name.
It's actually like a title. His name is Jesus. And they usually would name you by your dad, or they would name you by the town you came from. Now, Jesus had kind of a complicated relationship with his earthly father in the sense that his earthly father wasn't his father at all, but he was the guy who raised him. And so they always called Jesus by where he came from, Jesus Nazareth.
But his last name isn't Christ. Christ is a word. It's a Greek word which translates a Hebrew word, meshuach. And meshuach is a word that kind of sounds familiar to Messiah, because that's the thing. And messiah is the Bible word for, like, God's chosen one.
So the apostles are teaching that Jesus is the one who came from God. That's going to help us be reconciled to God, be friends with God again. Okay, so now we'll start in chapter six, in verse one. I'm not going to get very far. Just a spoiler.
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. I'm going to pause there. Right. Okay. So in those days, when the apostles are teaching, when they're being clear, when they're being theological, when they're expositing the Old Testament, in those days, there's a dispute in the community.
Like, I don't know if that's encouraging to you, but that's encouraging to me because as I'm reading the Book of Acts, I'm like, man, they're just getting everything right. They pray and the Holy Spirit shows up and they start speaking to people who are lost. And the lost people respond positively. They're like, yeah, well, we want to follow Jesus. Like, that doesn't happen.
When I share my. My faith with lost people. Usually. Like, you're kind of a psychopath, right? Like something, something good is going there.
And the, and the apostles are teaching and, and. And they're being opposed. And they're handling the opposition with grace and mercy. They're firm, but they're not, like, disrespectful. And like, sometimes I'm like, man, when people get in the Firefight.
And they end up in, in the headlines of the news reports. I'm like, guys, just, that's not, maybe not the tone that we should be using with lost people. You can't expect lost people to respect like what Christ has revealed as truth, right? So, but the apostles are doing it. Like they're doing it.
They're responding with grace and truth and they're holding it in perfect tension. And then you've got guys like Barnabas who were just selling stuff off and just giving it away. And I don't care, like, like I just want for Jesus to be magnified. And there's a sense as I'm reading these first five chapters that I'm like, man, like God. It's almost like, like, like everything's going perfectly.
Like yeah, there was the Ana's, Anais and Sapphira thing, but there's a bad batch in every apple. Like, and that was pretty extreme. Like God like struck them down so you know that they, there was something really, really extreme going on there. That's gotta be like an extra, extra bonus scenario. But what about like the normal stuff?
And in the normal stuff, in chapter six, 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. A complaint. A complaint in the first century church that sounds like today.
This church is actually really gracious. People will sometimes be like, Michael, like, don't you get tired of people berating your sermons? I'm like, I don't ever really get a ton of feedback. I like, like it's neither good nor bad. Some people are encouraging and I'm not, I'm not fishing for compliments.
I'm saying my experience as a pastor is different from the majority of people that I meet and interact with. Those pastors where people are just complaining to them all the time about stuff that's going wrong, has not been my experience. You guys are just gracious and probably holier than every other church.
It's such a privilege to serve and to lead here. But I'm encouraged that as Luke is telling the story of the early church, he doesn't have rose colored glasses. He's not saying everything is exactly how it ought to be. There's a complaint that arose and that can feel threatening to some people. Depending on your personality, your disposition and be like, oh, no complaints.
Like everything's going off the rails and there's some of you like a complaint like, let's do it. That sounds like Fun. But Luke is just kind of accurately reporting what's going on. And there's a complaint from the Hellenists about the Hebrews. And so we've got two different groups here.
And primarily the difference between the two groups is their language, what language they speak. So I did some reading. If you want to argue with me about it, that's fine. We'll do it after. But, like, I think primarily the Hellenists, like, what distinguishes the Hellenist is that they are speaking Greek.
It's not necessarily that they are trying to influence the church into a more secular way, but it's primarily just the language that they use. So the Hellenists speak Greek, and the Hebrews speak Hebrew. Some of you guys are real bright.
The Hebrews speak Hebrew. That's, like, their native language. So probably the families that are speaking Hebrew are families that grew up in Jerusalem and around Jerusalem. And so that's just kind of what they, like, they speak. And most all of the stories so far have taken place in the same city, in the city of Jerusalem.
So Hellenists are probably people whose families grew up in Jerusalem. They would be what we call natives or locals to Jerusalem. And you're like, oh, that's so weird. Why would you put that on a giant sticker on the back of your truck? Like, ancient people are so odd.
But these are probably the locals. And then the Hellenists are people who probably moved to Jerusalem from somewhere else. And primarily they speak Greek. So there's a conflict between people who speak different languages. Now we're in America, and for the most part, this is not a part of.
Of our culture that we have to contend with. But Jess and I had the privilege years and years ago, before we were married, to serve at an orphanage in South Africa, where there are seven national languages. Seven national languages. It is not uncommon for people to speak three and four languages. And here I am as an American, and I'm just like, all I got is English, right?
And my pride and joy. The one thing I'll brag about from being on the mission field. This is so stupid. The one thing I'll brag about is one time I was able to purchase gas in Afrikaans, one of the local languages, without anybody suspecting I wasn't from there. Now, they probably knew I wasn't from there, but they didn't say it, like, most of the time, like, oh, you're not from here, right?
And this time, I was able to buy gas and exchange in the Marketplace in Afrikaans completely. And they didn't ask Me, where I was from. So that was like, the big deal. But for them, like, it's not unusual for them to speak four or five languages. For us, we all just speak English, and so it's not a thing.
But can you imagine, can you imagine, hypothetically, that a group of people came in and their primary language was a different language than English? If suddenly we had a group of Haitian believers who joined our congregation, and they primarily are speaking Creole, not out of a sense of hostility, not out of sense of mistrust, but just out of the function of communication, do you think that you would gravitate more towards guests that are speaking Creole or guests that are speaking English?
You probably, unless you have a backstory I don't know about, are probably gonna navigate towards the people who are speaking English. It's not because you think that all Haitians are evil. Like, that's not the thing. The thing is just a familiarity and ability to communicate. So the folks who speak a different language, the Hellenists, are complaining because the Hebrews are conducting a daily.
What is it called? Daily distribution is the word where the Hebrews are giving out to the widows some kind of a support. Whether it's food, it could be other resources, too, but there's a daily support for widows in the community. And the Hebrew widows are able to communicate. They're able to get the support that they need.
And the Greek speaking widows are not getting as much support. Now, it's logical you get it, right? Like, it just makes sense. I didn't mean to not speak your language. I just don't speak your language.
Right? And so now we've got a complaint. And you know what complaints mean, right? Conflict, grumbling, fighting, church splits. We've got to rip out the carpet, we've got to paint the walls.
Right? That's what we got to do, right? Sorry. I grew up in a Baptist church. Let's read the verses.
Let me start again in verse one. 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's 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 Nicantor and Timon and Parmius and Nicolaus, a proselyte from Antioch. These they set before the apostles and they prayed and laid their hands on them. So what do we kind of do with this passage? The first thing that I'd like for us to observe, and I take this out of verse one, but you see it throughout the text too, is that church is more than a sermon and songs.
Church is more than a sermon and songs. If you ask people, do you go to church? Most of the time they're going to give you an answer that relates to where they are on Sunday morning. Do you go to church? Yeah.
And primarily what we think about as American Western Christians, it's neither good nor bad. It's just how we think. It's like, yes, I go on Sunday mornings, or I tune into the live stream, or I grab the live stream later on in the week when I can do it. Like. We think about church as being a sermon and some songs, but church is more than a sermon and songs.
As God is moving through the preaching ministry of the apostles, they are holding God's gifts with open hands, one might say, being generous with the ways that God has blessed them and caring for those who are in vulnerable positions, that they're given a daily distribution to the widows. Church is more than a sermon and a song. Likely in the initial phases of this, the apostles were the one who were administrating it because as gifts were given, they were laid at the apostles feet. And so the apostles, I think, were probably simple guys. And they're like, oh, here's the money.
I guess we have to go and do something with it. And if they're guys, if they're dues, they're like, I have to solve this problem. And so they took it and they were the ones who were handling it until there was a dispute, until there was a little bit of grumbling. And then they asked the question, is it smart? Is it wise for us to be handling this?
I think the oversight we've said is unintentional. There's no malice. But here you see that as the community of God grows, it's not just the people's connection to the apostles.
It's not just the average person on the street getting connected and really, really liking the way that Pete presents the gospel or talking about the way that John delivers a sermon. It's not about the people getting connected to the apostles. The apostles are sharing God's Word. But the people are getting connected to and caring for one another.
And so the way that a church is supposed to function is that we should primarily be connected to one another more than we're connected to the guy on the platform.
I'm replaceable.
I hope you can quit me without batting an eye. There are hundreds of preachers, and we live in an age where you can listen to the best of the best. You can listen to dead preachers. If you like Tim Keller, you can listen to every sermon he ever preached. And you should, because he's good.
You can select your teachers and your preachers. But I hope you can quit me. And I hope that it breaks your heart if the day comes where you have to separate yourself from the church family.
Being connected with people is more important than being connected to the teacher or the preacher.
So is church. I'll be generous if that's okay. Is church a weekly exercise or is it a daily community for us? Is church a weekly exercise? And statistically that's generous.
Most. Statistically, today, most people attend church one in three weeks. So is church a weekly exercise or is it a daily community for us? Are we connected? Are you connected to other people in the body of Christ?
Outside of what happens on a Sunday morning, greeting time is very shallow. We know that it's not bad. It's just we don't have a ton of time. And that's why I love that this church. You guys never leave.
I don't know if you've ever like, stayed around after church, but like, people are here for an hour, hour and a half after everything ends. And that's like, beautiful. I love it. I grew up in a church where the deacons are turning off the lights as soon as service is done and get out of here. And I vowed that would never be us.
And so we haven't. We even leave the air conditioner on for you. We're real kind.
Is church a weekly exercise or is it a daily practice? Are there people that know what's going on in your life enough to be able to ask you you questions about how God is moving with you? I give you a slide at the end of the week every week, and I say, you should probably ask yourself these questions. You should probably ask these questions with other people who are following Jesus. That's not hypothetical.
I could cut that out. I could pretend like, you know, we came and we got the sermon, everybody's fed, like, let's go home. And I don't believe that that's true. If you're Counting on me to feed you, you will be malnourished. If you're counting on me to spell out for you every application of what the text is supposed to be in your life, you're gonna miss major things.
We need one another, and we need the work of the Holy Spirit through one another to build a community and be able to follow Jesus together.
Michael, that's real pretty, but you got those rose colored glasses you were pooh pooing earlier, like that's, that. That's hard. People are hard.
I didn't get any amens about that, but I thought he was saying that people are hard. And here's our big idea for the morning. God may lead us through conflict so that we will grow. God may lead us through conflict so that we go, no, no, no, no, no. I want to grow apart from conflict.
I would prefer no conflict whatsoever, please and thank you. Right, okay, here's the deal. God loves you too much. God may lead you through. He may walk with you through some incredible heartbreak or frustration, or you having to change your mind, you having to change your mind about something and see it from somebody else's perspective.
God may lead you through conflict not because he's mean, not because he just likes to make life difficult, but, but because he wants us to grow.
And we see here that the church has a conflict. There's a disagreement, there's no malice. People aren't like actively fighting with one another, but there is an oversight that's taking place. And so somebody had to say something. Hey, our Greek speaking widows aren't actually getting taken care of the way that the Hebrew speaking widows are.
And the apostles hear the thing and they're like, okay, what do we do? Because every opportunity to solve a problem is a requirement for you to stop doing other work. So they say, okay, it's clear that our role in the community is that we are, like, entrusted with the responsibility to preach and to teach the word of God. Our preaching ministry is important and not everybody can do it, particularly in this season of the life of the church. Like the 12.
And this is the only place in Luke that he calls them the 12. But the 12 are guys who, they have walked with Jesus, they've seen Jesus. Much of the teaching that is being interpreted through their testimony of what it was like to be with Jesus. And so they're like, we did a poll of how many other people could do this job, and we only came up with two. Remember that in chapter one, like, we need to replace an apostle who's done the job before and there are only two guys, right?
So they're like, it's probably not a good idea for us to stop the thing that only we can do in order to take care of this need. And so we need to appoint other people to take care of this. I think it's interesting. If you are okay with it, I would probably circle or underline the word serve in serving tables. Underline the word serve in verse two, serving tables and then in verse four ministry.
I'd circle ministry. So serve and ministry. One is serving tables and the other one is ministry of the Word.
The Bible was originally written down in Greek and we have access to those Greek manuscripts. We can translate directly from Greek into, into English. It's not like a big phone game. But there's something that the English Standard Version has done here that I want for you to not miss. That word serving tables and that word ministry of the word serve and ministry are.
The academic term is cognates. You say cognates. That means they have the same root. One is a verb form of serving tables. The other one is, is a noun form describing the service.
But the word is the same. One is diokonin and the other one is diokonia. It's the same word. It's not the same word, but it's almost the same word. One's a verb and one's a noun.
It's the same root. So in the apostles mind, in chapter six of the book about how the church grows, the apostles are thinking about the ministry and spirit serving of the Word in the same terminology. As they talk about people serving one another at the table. They say we're probably the only ones right now who can do this. We're training up other people.
We're going to equip them and we're going to send them out to do that. But for right now, this is a thing that we're entrusted with doing. And so we can't neglect the thing that only we can do. But we can equip and empower others to be able to do the that important work. Because the church is more than a sermon and songs, but the sermon and songs grows the community and the community serves one another and cares for one another.
So the Holy Spirit empowers those who serve. Ministry, service, it's the same thing. I'll talk to people, I do it. I think I find myself most often doing it to like nurses and things like that where I'll hear a story about how they've taken care of somebody and all this kind of stuff. And I'll just say, hey, thank you for your ministry.
And they're like, preacher, you've lost your. I'm not a pastor or nothing. I don't get up and preach or anything like that. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Like you are doing ministry.
Serving and ministry is. It's the same cognate. They go together. And the preaching ministry, the preaching service is one aspect and serving one another is another aspect. Both are essential to a thriving and healthy church.
Both are essential to a thriving and healthy church. If people gather and they hear, I want to hear the bald monkey talk. So they show up and they listen and they are biting each other and whispering and gossiping across the room. Room. And they've got a problem with something that you did, but they're not going to talk to you about it.
They're going to talk to all their friends about it. If that's the kind of culture that neighborhood church becomes, we are losing. Because the ministry of the word and the serving of one another is essential.
Word ministry and table ministry are both vital. Now they say, okay, we need to appoint some people to this. And so there's some things that we need. We need them to be of good repute. We need them to be full of the Spirit, and we need them to be full of wisdom.
Right now, I just want you to think about this for a moment. If they are men who are of good repute and full of the Spirit and full of wisdom, when did they become men of good repute and full of the Holy Spirit and full of wisdom?
Probably before this Monday. I can guarantee this happened on a Monday, because every big conflict in church happens on a Monday.
These guys had these character qualities before the conflict started. And what the apostles are asking the church to do is recognize the people who are already demonstrating this character, bring them to us, and we're going to authorize them to do this work. You should have a good reputation. You should be known for being a person who's reliable and who hates a bribe. You should be full of the Spirit.
You should know who God is. If you want to be godly, you should know who God is, right? Full of the Spirit, like being guided and directed by him, and full of wisdom. You should not only, like, just know God and have your heads in the cloud and be able to parse all these theological terms. You should also be able to, like, function in society and have a practical knowledge of how people work and how to have a conversation like, full of the Spirit and full of wisdom.
You should know God and you should also know sense. Like you should have sense. I wouldn't call it common sense, but I haven't seen it very regularly, so I don't call it that anymore. You should be godly and you should be street smart. And the apostles say, go find these guys and we're going to set them apart to the service.
And so they do. The people go and they find these seven guys and they list them all. The people kind of select them all and they bring them. And the apostles appoint them to this work. Hey, we want for you guys to make sure that the widows are taken care of regardless of what language they speak.
Okay, cool. One thing I want you to notice that might not be evident is that every single one of the names on the list is a Greek name.
So the apostles say, hey, there's been this oversight. We're giving more to the Hebrews than we're giving to the Greeks. We want for you guys to choose some men that we're going to appoint to this service. And the men, and the men that the community as a whole selects are all from the minority. This makes no political sense whatsoever.
Have you heard the criticism that like the Bible is this, is this made up story in order to like satisfy people in power and manipulate the masses? Have you heard that story? This, Take them to Acts, chapter 6. The apostles have every right to say, shut up, you Greeks. We're Hebrews.
We're God's chosen people. We speak the right language. We don't need a translation of the Bible because we can just read it in the language it was written with. You guys need to learn our language. That way it'll fix all the problem.
They can be authoritarian because they're in authority. And that's not what they do. They say, hey, find us some guys of good character that we can trust. And they bring them all Greeks and they let the minority solve the problem for the community at large.
That doesn't happen when men are the ones who are making decisions. That doesn't happen when, when pride and power are the driving forces of what a community is trying to be. That only happens when the Holy Spirit is moving through the people to select men that God has appointed and the apostles are listening and working together with the people that they're presuming to lead. Authority does not mean authoritarianism.
And so you have these guys that are set apart for ministry, for serving, for making sure that people are taken care of. How are you? How are we loving Jesus by serving those he loves?
How are we loving Jesus by serving those he loves, coming to church on Sunday morning, singing the songs, listening to the message. I call all of that stuff Sunday, celebrating Jesus. That's what we say our purpose is here. That is one part. It's an essential part.
But that's one part of discipleship, of what following Jesus looks like. It's the most visible part. It's the one that comes to mind for us very often when we think about going to church. Is I celebrate Jesus. Beautiful.
That's great. It's a good start, but it's one piece. I would say celebrating is one part. I'd say gathering together with other believers and sharing your life and praying through how the Holy Spirit is challenging and encouraging you. I'd say gathering is a second essential part to following Jesus.
I'd say learning and having an understanding of what God's revealed in His Word and how His Word applies for itself, like going deep dive, doing deep study, learning and knowing God as he's revealed himself is an essential part of being a disciple of Jesus. And I also think taking all of that edification, taken all of that influence, that the Holy Spirit is bringing stuff to you, all of the ways that people are pouring into you, taking that and then using that to speak serve other people is an essential part of disciple, of being a disciple of Jesus. Because if you're celebrating Jesus and if you're gathering together as other and gathering together and being encouraged by other believers, if you're doing Bible study and learning deeper and you just keep intake and intake and intake, and I want to grow and I want to be close to God and I want to go and you never, ever use any of that to serve other people. You will be what I affectionately call spiritually constipated.
I say it regularly as we're leaving. The mission isn't me. I want for you to be encouraged. I want to serve you with the Word while we're here together. But the mission isn't me and the mission isn't you.
We are here together to be encouraged to be able to go and serve others. So how are we loving Jesus? By serving those he loves? Now, there's formal ways. Here we see an example of them trying to organize themselves into a formal ministry.
We're going to appoint seven people. We're going to give them the job. They're going to have to do the job right. That's a formal structure. But the Holy Spirit often works in informal ways where he just says, hey, you should probably go and take care of that need for somebody else.
But notice that God may lead us through conflict so that we'll grow. Let's finish with that last verse there. What's the outcome? Verse 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. Imagine that conflict showed up in a community, in a spiritual community. They dealt with it in a reasonable and organized spirit filled, gracious way. And people from the outside were like, oh, maybe God's at work over there.
And it doesn't just say that the church grew. It says that the church multiplied. There were a bunch of people that like, got on the Jesus train because they watched a church body navigate conflict with grace and humility, taking care of those who are most vulnerable.
The world sees God's heart when we love one another. Well, Jesus said it to his disciples the night before he was arrested. He said, they will know that you're my disciples by your doctrinal statements. They will know you are my disciples by the radio station that you're blasting in your car.
They'll know you're my disciples by your love for one another.
This is weird.
There's no reason why we should get along.
There's no reason why, like, people should see needs and meet needs and take care of one another. Like, every single one of us gives plenty of reasons for everybody else to leave you alone. If you don't know what they are, I will list them for you. I will not. I will not.
That God grows. Spiritual communities that care for one another is a miracle in and of itself.
And God may lead us through conflict so that we'll grow through. The world sees God's heart when we love one another. Well, the world really doesn't care that much about, like, what it is that we say to God. Like, they would probably think, like, that's between you and God. That's a private thing.
That's a personal thing. I don't really need to be involved in all that. And you don't need to be involved in my private life. You don't need to be concerned with how I'm praying. Like, you just you do you and I'll do me.
That's typically the attitude, right? And yet when they see people caring and loving and serving one another, they're like, something's going on there that I need to be a part of.
And it's interesting because there's this dynamic where they're serving one another well at tables. But then the description is the word of God Continued to increase. Which ministry grew? The word ministry where the apostles are teaching or the serving? Ministry where people are taking care of the widows?
Yes, they go together. They're hand in hand. You can't pull them apart.
God may lead us through conflict so that we'll grow. And those who had a strong familiarity with the word looked at that spiritual community and said, is there something true to that? Because who is it that joined? Who is it that came to church? After they did this, the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the truth.
Jewish priests serving in the temple watched the community care for widows and said, maybe the church is doing something that the temple isn't. Because the primary. Now, I'm taking this just on sources, okay? So I wasn't there. But the attitude in the ancient world is probably close to our default attitude, where if somebody is poor or if somebody is needy is because they're untrustworthy and they've made bad decisions.
So most of the time, it was difficult for people who were in financial crisis to be able to get support. Oftentimes, the only people that you could bank on were your family, because they. It was. It was shameful to let your family go, but you could let strangers go, right? And so in that shame culture, the only time that you gave money or gave financial support to somebody who was in need was when you could expect them to reciprocate either by paying the debt back or by saying really nice things about you in public or by doing something that you could earn.
You would never. You would never. You would never in the first century, give to somebody who could not give something back to you. The cultural mindset of the Romans was reciprocity. I do good so that I get good back, right?
It's crazy how those ancients dealt with stuff like, they don't think like us modern people, right? But if there is in us any sense where we could give people without expecting something in return, that's a fundamentally Christian idea.
Hospitals were Christian first.
And let society wrestle with like, we're gonna be. We're gonna do good and be good without God, and they can't. When they get down to the foundation, they just find Jesus there. Loving people, serving people, shaping people's hearts, helping them to be generous. It's incredibly frustrating.
And the priests here see that the church community is taking care of widows and those people who are most vulnerable. And they say, you know what? The temple has failed in what the Old Testament commissioned them to do. And Maybe because they're doing it right. They have something that we are missing.
And the something was a someone, it was Jesus who might notice Jesus because they see his love in us.
Pastor Ryan shared a couple weeks ago about one of the things that the Holy Spirit leads us to do is to notice people who are in need. To just have our eyes open and see where there's a need and notice them and kind of intervene, do what we can to help and to point them to Jesus. We want to notice people who are in need. But what about the other way? What about the other direction?
Who might notice Jesus because they see his love working through us?
I just want to make a big deal of it because the growth in this context, the growth of the church is the church taking diligent care of the most vulnerable people in society. Society.
And who is it that the Lord is calling up to do that ministry?
There's not a huge chasm between the preachers and the servants. They're two arms of the same body. And one takes a different kind of preparation and awareness, and the other one takes a different kind of preparation and awareness. But the two can't lift the mission of the church by themselves.
If our church is going to be known as a church that cares for people when they're in crisis, it's going to be because the average person in the seat sees a need and meets a need and loves people well.
And it's probably not going to get posted on Instagram.
The worst representation of what our church is is our Instagram because it's often my face or Ryan's face. Like, I mean, he's got really nice hair, but that's not enough to like get people to Jesus.
But what our church ought to be known for more than what gets posted is how we love one another. And I am privileged to often get to be a front row seat or second row seat to the ways that you guys care for one one another. But I'll say that if you keep your need to yourself, if you hide and say, I just need to. I just got to make sure everybody thinks that I've got it all together. Like, know that the Holy Spirit knows the truth of what's in your heart and know that the body wants to help where they can.
Ask for help when you're not sure, I'd encourage you as you become aware of needs, to fill the gaps in your knowledge with grace. If you see that there's a need and you're like, I don't know, I just feel this. Jesus knows you don't have to know all the gossip. Just do what it is that you know he wants for you to do and be done.
Follow through with what's been entrusted it to you. If you see a need, step in. If you see something, say something, do something. What if they don't like it? What if it causes a fight?
What if they were offended? Well, perhaps God may lead us through conflict so that we will grow. Let's pray. God, I just thank you for your word. I thank you for this example.
Got just a couple of short verses, but you've done so much in them.
And Lord, we kind of go all or nothing. We're like, well, it's all about the person who's talking. Or it's all about the ministry. And Lord, I just thank you for the ways that you don't fit in our boxes. And you smoosh our boxes together in ways that are uncomfortable.
And you make the work of the church something that no human could fabricate, that it has to be something that you are doing. And so, Jesus, as far as it depends on me, I just surrender this church body to you, Lord, as you lead and guide me. As you speak through your word, Lord, I pray that it would be clear what is true from you. What's my own opinion it would be clearly for would be quickly forgotten. But Lord, you take all the credit for the work that you do in this body of people caring for one another in a world where everybody just wants to mind their own business.
God, I pray that you would help us to be holy. Holy. H O L Y Holy. Nosy.
Not trying to get the gossip, not trying to spread rumors, God, just trying to love one another. Well, God, I pray that you'd help us to see the needs and to meet the needs. And Lord, in those spaces where the need is too big for any one of us to kind of handle and lift by ourselves, God, I pray that you'd help us to organize well, to develop formalized ministry. Not so that we can put a tree sticker on it and call it neighborhood, but so that your people can be taken care of. So that your spirit can be active and like, physically manifestly active in the lives of people in a way that matters and is tangible.
And then as you do that work in us, as you are doing that work through us, that all of the folks kind of on the periphery who are skeptical, who have all the right answers or who are carrying all their baggage about church would look at the work you're doing in and through us and say, man. Maybe I'm missing something.
And would that something be of someone, Lord? Would you introduce yourself to our neighbors, Jesus? Would you shine your light in dark places? Would you meet the needs of those who are suffering?
God? Would you make us willing to be collaborators with you? To be stewards of what you've entrusted to us?
It's work that only you can do.
Inspect us today. Help us to see what you see. Help us to love what you love. It's in Jesus name we ask. Amen.
LINKS
Music by Blue Dot Sessions
