Acts 6:1-7, What’s the Problem?

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church

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Act chapter 6, starting in verse 1, hear the word of the Lord. Now in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the

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Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

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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.

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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.

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But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. And what they said pleased the whole gathering.

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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 Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch.

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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.

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May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. But what's the problem?

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Finding out what the problem is goes a long way to solving it. Last fall, we kept having problems with our church van.

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It would just refuse to start sometimes at the worst possible places, like at the entrance to an apartment complex.

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And some people thought it was the solenoid. I don't even know what that is. One mechanic, we had a look at it, thought it was the starter.

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And so he put a new starter in it. And then even with the new starter, the problem persisted. Maybe the new starter was defective.

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Then we took it to the mechanic on 86th. What's his name? Bobby. He said the problem was with the gear shift, which

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I never would have thought had anything to do with it. And he fixed it, and it's worked mostly fine ever since. It's the same with health issues.

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If they can find what the problem is in medicine called diagnosis, then they can possibly cure it or at least alleviate it.

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Once in 2003, the morning of the day we flew to Singapore, I wake up that morning.

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We're about to fly off. And I wake up with this pain in my big toe, my right foot and my big toe that hurt just to walk on it.

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I wondered if I had broken my toe and I couldn't figure out how I injured my toe in my sleep.

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How do you break your toe while sleeping? When I got to Singapore, I went to a clinic and in about two seconds,

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I remember this young female doctor looked at it and said, that's gout. Oh, that was the first time I was diagnosed with gout and it can be treated and managed.

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First though, you've got to know what the problem is. What's the problem with the church today?

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A lot of people have all kinds of different opinions. We're not relevant enough, they say. So we've got to adopt a style of music, of talking, of preaching, of maybe the sermon should be a quote, a

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TED talk with a Bible verse, as one parody video put it. Maybe we're too relevant, even worldly, some would say.

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You know, we had someone come here, visit once and they left early, leaving me a nasty letter saying we were worldly with those drums on the stage.

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That's just, that's horrible. We need to go back to the old time religion, the King James version that was good enough for the apostle

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Paul. Old time hymns are actually probably no older than like 100 or 200 years. That's not which church history is not really that old at all, but maybe that's not it.

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Now, some reform people would say that maybe we're not going back old enough. That's our problem. We need 500 year old hymns.

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The best though would know better than that, that we've never been first about a style, but about being biblical, sola scriptura, the cheer of the rallying cry of the reformation.

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Now, whether the packaging of being biblical comes in is old or new really doesn't matter.

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What matters is being biblical. A big part of the problem is that we're asking the wrong questions.

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A lot of people think it's a matter of style of what we're doing rather than why we're doing it and who we're doing it for.

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What's the problem? The problem today is the virus of consumerism, of individualism that says that churches are great, like restaurants are great, or theaters are great, or gas stations are great as long as they meet my needs.

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They give me the service that I want or the show or the inspiration that I need. The problem here in act six,

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I think is much different than that. I think it's less deep seated, less serious. It's like a fungus on the skin that you can, if you get the right ointment, you can cure it rather than the virus in the bloodstream like we have today.

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But here we see still a lesson for us to help secure our problem. We see the apostolic church deal with a problem.

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They diagnose it. They handle a proposal to deal with it, which turns out to be a bad one.

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They then come up with a solution, a cure, and then there's the result. That's the four parts.

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There's the problem, which is division. There's the proposal, which is the distraction.

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There's the solution, the diaconate. And finally, there's the result, the development.

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Now, first, what's the problem? We think of this here in the book of Acts, this is the golden age of the church, right?

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Their teaching is pure. Everyone was sincere and devout.

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They weren't bogged down with traditions and worries about buildings and budgets and bureaucracies.

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Oh, to return to pristine beauty of the apostolic church, you know, we pine.

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Here they are. Notice they're called disciples. That's how the believers in the early church were described.

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They're described as disciples. That is people who are disciplining themselves and being disciplined by the church to follow

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Jesus in their daily lives. They're not just converts, they're disciples. And that discipleship was leading to increasing numbers.

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The Lord was, he said earlier, adding to their number every day, every day a new one was coming in.

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People weren't being put off because, you know, like today they hated the idea of discipline, which can subtract from the church.

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The church was growing rapidly and not just with people who came forward in an emotional invitation as the organ was softly playing, just as I am, as they led in a repeat after me prayer.

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And then they were counted as converts. And even though you hardly saw them in church after that, no, none of that here, here they are disciples.

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So this church here is a pristine disciple filled growing church, but even they had problems.

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You've already seen the problem with Ananias and Sapphira. Now, once again, a problem arises from within.

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What's the problem? Well, there's a division. The people are called

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Hellenists. That is those of the Greek culture. They're complaining against the

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Hebrews. Those are those of a traditional Israelite Aramaic speaking culture.

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Those would be the local people, the Hebrews. In other words, they lived here in Jerusalem or the surrounding area, maybe Galilee, but they're from that area and they've been raised in Jewish culture.

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And then these other people are raised in Greek culture and there they speak a different language and they're different culture.

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The division is caused by culture, not race. It's ethnocentrism,

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I guess, not racism. Notice that everyone here or almost everyone is of the same race, the same ethnic group.

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They're all Jewish. Okay. So this is like, no, how do you say there's a division between, yeah, but they're the same race, but that doesn't mean they're the same culture.

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Some Jews had been dispersed in the nations around Israel and there they grew up around the

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Greek culture. They learned to speak Greek. They like to eat Greek food as long as it was kosher, I guess. They talked about Greek things.

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They dress like Greeks. They look like Greeks, except they were just Jewish in their beliefs and in their background and their heritage, where they came from, their ancestry.

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So while they're in Jerusalem, for whatever reason, maybe they're visiting during Pentecost. Maybe they're passing through in business, or maybe they had moved back there to be around their kind of people, but they had heard the gospel and become part of the church.

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They had believed. And there were so many of them, they had their own little group. They were the Hellenists in the same culture, speaking

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Greek to each other. And that's what they're most comfortable with. Their Greek language. They knew what to talk about to other

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Greek culture, Hellenistic people. They could talk about the Olympic games. Hey, did your racer do well last week?

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They would talk about the best place to go get baklava, I guess, whatever the Greek food is.

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Now, they didn't reject Hebrew culture people, Hebrews. And none of them, they disliked them.

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They just, you know, it's just hard to relate to them. They, it's hard to communicate to them.

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It's, you know, they would think, well, my Aramaic's not so good. So I hang around people like me who speak

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Greek mostly. They didn't have much in common. It wasn't race, nothing to do with race.

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It was culture. There are cultural differences, even among people of the same race.

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You understand that? And sometimes people of different races can share the same culture and get along fine.

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And in America, we have what are called ABCs, American born Chinese. They're often different from their parents in that they are racially or ethnically

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Chinese, but they are culturally American. I remember speaking with a young Chinese lady, probably in her early twenties in Oakland, California.

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She was complaining about the discrimination she experienced in America. And I was thinking, I listened to her thinking, man, you're so American.

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It's not at all like those Chinese in Singapore. I used to be around all the time. You're complaining about America because you're

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American. I read an interesting statistic just a couple of days ago. 80 % of Chinese immigrants to America marry other

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Chinese, 80%, but only 45 % of ABCs do. American born

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Chinese. And you think about that, it's what's even more remarkable about that. Most of the ABCs live in places like California, New York city, other places where there's high concentrations of other

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Chinese people. Yet they still only marry 45 % of the time, marry other Chinese. You think about then what that means a place like this, where there's very few

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Chinese. You understand you have a child here, he or she is growing up to be an

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American. That's the way it is. Now there are white people who are put off by, maybe scared of black culture.

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It just seems odd to them. They don't know how to relate to it. Maybe they look down on it, but maybe they just can't, it makes them feel awkward.

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So they just had nothing to do with black culture. Or maybe they don't know how to relate to Chinese people, Chinese culture. That didn't mean they're racist because they will say some of the same people will very easily accept a black person or a

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Chinese person who has been shaped by the mainstream American white culture. Otherwise you talk like they do, you shake hands like they do, you know, it doesn't matter what race you're from, they'll, they'll, they'll accept you.

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They're not racist. They may be ethnocentric. They may just like our kind of people. We talk a lot about race in this culture.

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And some people think race is a big divide. I think race is only a divider. If our culture makes it one, but culture itself is indeed a major divider, very hard to overcome culture here.

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Notice first in verse one that the Hellenists, those are the Greek culture. Notice that they're right. Okay. They have this complaint, but the way

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Luke writes it is Lucas saying there, what they're complaining about is right. They have a legitimate grievance.

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Their widows really are being neglected. Luke writes that they were, that they were complaining because that's the way he puts it because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

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It doesn't say because let's say because they thought their widows were being neglected, or it doesn't even simply say they complained that their widows were being neglected, which kind of leaves it up to you.

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Is it true or not? No, but Lucas saying is they really were being neglected. It's a fact.

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In other words, it's not just a perception. And the word neglected in the ESV implies that it wasn't deliberate, that it wasn't because of purposeful discrimination or conscious hostility.

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I don't like those kinds of people, so I'm not going to serve them food. Let them starve. No, neglected implies that they were just being overlooked.

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In Greek, the word literally is overlooked, and that's probably how it should be translated. Their widows were being overlooked. In other words, they weren't being intentionally discriminated against.

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They just weren't being noticed. The majority local Jewish Christian people would just totally forget all about the

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Greek people. They didn't hate them. They just didn't see them. And you can imagine why.

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They don't talk to them much after all. They're most comfortable speaking Greek, and so you're not.

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And if you don't speak Greek, you're not going to talk to them very much. You know, they would say we're most comfortable speaking

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Aramaic or Hebrew. So after church services, the Hebrews were talking to each other over here, and the

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Greek speakers were chatting to each other over there. And at church meals, the Hebrews sat at their own tables speaking

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Hebrew to each other, and the Greeks sat at their tables speaking Greek to each other. They didn't dislike each other.

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They just didn't have much to do with each other. So they didn't think about each other. And so it's out of mind, out of sight.

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They don't see each other anymore. So they think, you know, distributing food. Did we get to all the widows?

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Hmm. Yeah. All the widows I can see. It's not racism. It's ethnocentrism.

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My culture is best. Or maybe, or at least, I'm not really interested in relating to anyone of another culture.

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It's just too much work. They don't understand me very well. They're awkward trying to translate, trying to get it through.

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Their English or maybe their Mandarin isn't so good. Is it good enough? They don't know any better than to not take their shoes off at the door.

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What's wrong with these people? Or maybe they don't know any better to stand up for democracy and human rights.

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Once when I was living in Singapore, I'm taking a course on German from the Goethe Institute there, which is sponsored by the

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German government. My class had a party to which I brought Mary, who was pregnant with Micah at the time. And I remember entering this house or this party hosted by these

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Germans and looking at the people thinking, this collection of people there, who do I want to try to talk to? Okay.

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There's the Germans over there. And they're the same race as I am. But you know, what do you talk with the

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German about anyway? How's Hamburg doing in soccer this year? Oh. And besides, they'll probably try to make me speak

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German. Und ich bin Amerikaner und spreche nicht gut Deutsch. There's the

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Singaporeans. Now, mostly Chinese and their English is fine, but I'm surrounded by those people all the time.

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I'm kind of tired of it. And I brought one with me anyway. Then there was one man, Caucasian, like the

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Germans, but I could tell he had the look. He's an American. So I approached him and we talked for most of the time in agreement about all kinds of things, especially how we saw

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Singaporean politics. And we had a tie that bound us together,

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American culture. Here in Acts 6, culture caused a division.

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Remember the church we saw earlier in Acts chapter 2, they were devoted to the sharing. They gave their money and that was distributed to the needy.

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Here, the widows were supported by the church, by the money given to the church by people like Barnabas.

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Apparently, they bought food with the money and then they distributed that food to the widows going door to door to every church member that they could think of.

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And that's where the problem came from. They couldn't think of those

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Greeks. They forgot about Stephen's mother or Philip's mother, not because they didn't like them, because they just didn't think about them.

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It's out of mind, out of sight. They overlooked them. Here's a very painful example.

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Perhaps one I shouldn't even mention in public. If I were a wiser man, I probably wouldn't because it's kind of negative. There are some positive examples

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I've seen. Just last week, I remember some people from one group talking to another. It's great. But I'll mention this anyway.

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I don't say this to speak down on someone who's left, but it is a perfect, although extremely painful example of exactly the problem here in Acts chapter six.

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What's the problem? Last October, I got an email from someone saying that they were probably going to leave the church because there weren't any children in the church for their children to play with.

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I was initially totally flummoxed by that. What do you mean there's no children?

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Last July 4th, I personally took six of them to a movie. At that time, that was half of our children. I was stunned.

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I couldn't understand how looking at those children, someone can say that there's no children.

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But after a while, I got it. I realized what the problem was. Those children and their parents are of a different culture.

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We don't dislike them. We just don't relate to them. And so we don't really see them.

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If they depended on us for food, like these widows here, we'd probably neglect them too.

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When we don't feel that Christ is a greater tie that binds than culture, we don't see each other, at least those of a different culture.

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That's the problem. Second is the proposed solution.

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Now we have to kind of read between the lines here, because I didn't say it outright, but in verse two, it appears that some were proposing that the solution to the problem was that the apostles take over the distribution of the food themselves.

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Notice in verse two, first, they call in the full number of the disciples. That is all the church here in this first, here's the first recorded church business meeting.

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Here it is. Everyone is there and they say, it's not right that we should give up the preaching of the word to serve tables.

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It's a lot in that one statement we'll be looking at that implies first that apparently someone was saying,

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Hey, disciples, you need to, you need to take this over. You know, Peter, John, the rest of you disciples, the apostles, these locals here are, are overlooking our widows.

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My mother went hungry yesterday because they forgot all about her. If you all would, you apostles, if you would personally do it, we wouldn't have this problem.

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Now, first that's probably true. If the apostles did it themselves, they, they wouldn't overlook the culturally

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Greek people. They had learned from Jesus to care for all kinds of people. The Samaritan woman at the well, you know,

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Jesus taught, love your neighbor as yourself. And then someone was smart. I like asking me who was, who was my neighbor?

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Well, I'll tell you, he's, he's the good Samaritan despise Samaritan that group of people.

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They hated Jesus taught them as you've done it to the least of these you've done it to me. And so, yes, if the apostles did it themselves, they could solve the problem, but that's not their calling.

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Their calling is to preach the word. And so they just don't have time to take care of this problem.

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Personally, it's a major problem. They're not putting down serving tables. You know, they respond that way.

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It's not as though they're putting this down. This is such a trivial thing. We don't want anything to do with it. No, the widows, those widows need that food.

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Remember what James who's probably in this church by now said in James two religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this to visit orphans and widows and their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

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The world says only my kind of people matter. God says, take care of orphans and widows, the needy, even if they're not your kind of people, it's an important ministry.

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It's just not their ministry. And so they say, it's not right that we should give up preaching the word to do that, to consume all our time and administering and visiting and doing good deeds.

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And social work, it may, it needs to be done just not by us. The problem was division, the temptation here and the implied proposal was a distraction.

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Now, some people today would propose that the answer to some need in the church or themselves for their family or whatever, the answer is the pastor do it and him meet the need after all, that's what we paying for, right?

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So the pastor is supposed to do everything, driving vehicles, visiting everybody, running every ministry. Now reformed churches are supposed to know better than that.

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Because ideally if possible, we have multiple elders who should be sharing ministry responsibilities.

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And we have, we should have deacons who do practical matters, but some people still bring in their expectations that they got from their culture.

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That's right. You pay them to do it and they'll do what you said. If their parents have a parent who was in the hospital, it's not good enough that other elders visit.

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If the pastor doesn't do it right away, nevermind if he normally prepares sermons and lessons and songs on that day, but he's got to come when

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I want him to visit, he's got to do it. And in this culture, we're so, I think we're just so used to such people.

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And we're used to the fact that they're often just obstinate and they're unreasonable. So no use trying to talk to them. So we got to do what they say or else, or else they'll go elsewhere.

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So we surrender and we surrender to distraction. The proposal today is that the pastor do everything.

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And if he doesn't, they'll have another proposal. Let's go somewhere else. Notice that that's not even on the radar here.

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Notice that that's key because what's assumed here is the idea of the church.

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And here they don't, apparently it's not even contemplated that they would split off today in our culture.

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The first time a church missed delivering meal to a Greek widow, ABC, that's enough.

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We're not putting up with that. And there would, they would be a split and they would start the first Hellenistic church of Jerusalem.

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And then they would have a split over something about else. And there would be the second Hellenistic church of Jerusalem and go on and on like that.

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But here they understand that they are a church, that they are a body attached, the family of God.

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And you don't just storm off from your family, do you? Even if they disappoint you, they stay together and they work things out.

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And notice something that's implied about the ministry of the word here from the apostles, preparing food, they're saying would, would require us to drop the ministry of the word.

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What's implied is that the ministry of the word takes time. It does.

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And people today would propose, hey, you pastor, you can serve tables or do whatever we want during the day and then prepare your messages and lessons at night, maybe on Saturday night, right before church.

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What's the big deal? It's just talking. Well, if you want it done well and consistently, if hearing and learning the word of God, if that's important to you, something valuable to you, then it will take time to study and to prepare and to deliver it.

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It takes some energy and I only have so much. And if I spend much of my energy on serving tables or social work or visiting or working some other job, because the church doesn't pay enough, then that detracts from the energy

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I have and that finite set of energy I have that I have available to prepare and deliver the word of God.

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The first proposal was for the apostles to be distracted, but they would not do that.

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They should not give up the preaching of the word of God. Well, the solution they came up with is the diaconate, that is the office of deacon.

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Now, although the noun deacon, servant, is not used in this passage repeatedly, other forms of the word are here.

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In verse one, the word distribution in the ESV is actually a great diaconia, service.

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You can hear it's a form of the same word. The widows were being overlooked in the daily service of the deaconing of the food.

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In verse two, the word for serve, as in serve tables, you can't give up the preaching of the word to serve tables, is diaconine, which is the verb form of deacon.

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The apostles shouldn't be distracted by serving or deaconing tables.

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In verse four, after creating the office of deacon, the apostles say that their service, their deaconing will be the service of the word, what we call, another way to translate the same word, the ministry of the word, which we have right on the screen there and in your bulletin, the ministry of the word, it's where we get it from, this passage right here.

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So the solution to the problem of division is not the proposal of distraction from the ministry of the word, but the diaconate, the office of deacon.

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Notice two things about the office of deacon. One is the need for teamwork. The old sports cliche is true.

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Teamwork makes the dream work. Even in a sport that seems, in my sport, that was individualistic as track, you know,

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I need a team. I need sprinters, shot putters, and discus throwers. I need other long distance runners if our team is to do well.

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Of course, people who are infected with the virus of individualism and consumerism, they don't see the team or the mission.

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They only see themselves and their needs. But we are a team on a mission.

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We need different people of different gifts to do all the kinds of practical things that need to be done. We need people to understand that their role in helping the church accomplish its mission, to obey the great commission, is to serve in some practical way.

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Now, in this culture, it seems that every other man, in this county anyway, seems that every other man, and a lot of the women, they want to be preachers to do the ministry of the word.

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But it's kind of hard sometimes to find people who want to serve. You know, everybody, almost the same sometimes, wants to be the guy talking in the spotlight.

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Hardly anyone wants to be the deacon, a real deacon, and I don't mean like the traditional Baptist so -called deacons with a title and sit on a board and act like directors.

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Often, they end up being pastor's complaints committee telling the pastor what to do. Those aren't real deacons, okay?

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That's not at all what's happening here. Deacon literally means servant, and so we have the situation now in this culture here in which there are about 100 applicants for every pastor opening, but we have a hard time finding people who are willing to mow the grass or drive the church van to pick up kids or wash the cups in the sink.

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Some of you will do that, that's nice, but visit other members in need.

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Those kind of practical things, they're needed, and sometimes they're hard to find people to do them. We need people who see themselves as part of a team, who want to help others do the ministry of the word by taking other tasks that could be a distraction.

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Second, notice that even to be a servant or a real deacon, even just serving, that is deaconing tables, requires, what do you need to be?

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Serve tables, maybe good etiquette and always pour from the right or the left,

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I don't really don't even know which, but also three qualifications to be a deacon, to be a servant.

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One, they have to be of good repute, that is even most people outside know that they are reliable, they're quality men, they keep their word, they have integrity.

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Second, they are, he says, they say they're full of the Holy Spirit, that is they show the fruit of the

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Spirit, they hunger and thirst for the things of the Spirit, for the word of God, they seek first the kingdom of God, and third, they're full of wisdom.

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Wisdom is the ability to see with discernment, they have discernment, the skill to respond with insight.

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Some today complain that it seems that the only requirement for holding an office in a church is that one be breathing, maybe have a pulse, that's enough, we're so desperate for anybody, but that shouldn't be.

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Even to be a deacon, to serve, to handle, maybe to handle our bank account, our soundboard, our needs, we need a well -thought -of, spiritually alive, wise people.

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So, the apostles asked the church to nominate seven such men, and I assume that the apostles had,

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I assume here that the apostles had the final say, they're not accepting anyone, but that they could veto the selection, but if they met the criteria, the apostles would then officially appoint them, the deaconate would be the solution to the problem of division without giving them a distraction, because their main priority in verse four was that they would be devoted, as the apostles would be devoted to the ministry of the word, and they will, that is, they will keep their main service undistracted by not, undistracted by other things, so they will be devoted in verse four, notice they add something new this time, prayer, adding prayer as a priority along with the ministry of the word, that's why we have a prayer meeting, that's why we have a pastoral prayer in the service, prayer is a priority, and the ministry, that is, the deaconing of the word, and that's what they are called to, that's what the pastor in the church is called to, and we need a team of people who are called to serve the church in other ways, serving tables, maybe driving vehicles, hosting the gym, leading music, uh, giving, visiting, to enable that ministry, teamwork makes the dream work.

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So, they appoint seven men to this new office, the deaconate, the deacons, and they are listed for us in verse five, maybe a couple of them are a little hard to pronounce.

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Just last year, I noticed something about those names that I'd never seen before, even though I'd read this passage,

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I don't know how many times, it would be something that would be obvious to anyone living in the culture, you know, when

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Luke first wrote this, I think it was just obvious, something about these names, they would just, you know, would just stand out to anyone that understands the issue here.

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All the names are Greek. One of them, Nicholas, is even a proselyte, which means he wasn't just of Greek culture, he was originally racially

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Greek, he was an ethnic Greek, he was a Gentile who converted to Judaism, and now he's converted to Christianity, so he was

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Greek through and through, I mean, he was raised Greek, he was fed Greek milk when he was a baby.

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Remember the problem? There's this division between the majority, the local culturally

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Hebrew people, speaking their Hebrew and their Aramaic, and they were overlooking the minority culturally

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Greek people, and their solution to that was to create an office of deacon, and the first seven of those deacons are all from that minority of culturally

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Greek people. That's interesting. It would be like if a church had a division between, because the, because maybe the white majority was overlooking some of the black members, and so they appointed seven men to be deacons to solve the problem, and the names of the men were

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Tyrone, Gishon, Jamil, Jamal, Marquise, Darnell, Terrell, maybe

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Alfonso, then you think, well, maybe he's Italian. Alfonso sounds kind of Italian, or maybe, maybe the issue would be the

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Chinese widows were being overlooked in the food distribution, and so they appointed seven deacons, Gokak On, Yo Chow Ming, Yao Lao Hock, maybe

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Lin Ling Chow, what do you say your last name there? I can't say that right, Chow Wai Yin, Li Zhen Tao, where's, there he is,

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Zhu Ren Zi, see if he notices. No, he didn't even notice. I say it so badly, he doesn't even look up. What would you immediately know was happening?

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Hear those names. You'd know that they decided that the way to ensure that the minorities aren't being overlooked is that they chose people from the minority to do the job.

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You'd know that they really cared about the tie that binds, that faith in Christ is more of a tie than just culture.

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The unity of the church means so much that we have to ensure it by going out of our way, intentionally, deliberately, to include people that we might normally overlook.

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We set up a structure that makes it impossible for us now to overlook them, because now they're running the ministry.

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Today, infected with individualism, and our culture now infected with individualism and consumerism, we don't think of the unity of the church at all, no more than, you know, we would think of the unity of the restaurant or the unity of the theater.

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You know, some chef splits off from Venice Pizza and Yanceyville and starts Roma Pizza in Danville, we don't care.

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It's just another one, you know, for me to choose from. It's there to serve my needs, to feed, entertain, and inspire me.

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So why do I care about including people who, no, I don't, I don't hate them,

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I don't dislike them, but they just aren't in my orbit. I don't relate to them. I have nothing to do with them.

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Well, here they knew that preserving unity, staying together, even with people you'd normally have nothing to do with, some of them people you can hardly talk to, is more important than my entertainment.

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So they appointed seven Greek men to be the solution, the deacons, to avoid the distraction and heal the division.

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The result of the solution to the problem, after rejecting the implied proposal, the result of the deacons enabling the church to avoid the distraction of downplaying the

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Word of God and heal the division was the development of the

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Word of God growing. In verse 6, it says the apostles approve of the seven Greek men, they pray for them, they lay hands on them, they appoint them officially to their office.

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The result, in verse 7, it says the Word of God continued to increase.

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That's an odd way to put it, isn't it? The Word of God continued to increase? That's not the way we talk about church growth today, is it?

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You don't say the Word of God continued to increase. We usually talk about numbers of people in the seats. We have more this week than last week.

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Here, though, it's not it's not just converts or seekers or visitors. It's the

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Word of God that is increasing because now the Word of God is being accepted and believed and followed by more disciples.

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They're disciples of the Lord Jesus because they're changing their whole lives, they're disciplining their lives by what the

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Word of God says. It's increasingly believed and lived out. There's more of the

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Word of God being believed and lived in actual life. And so, it says the number of the disciples, again it's disciples, multiplied.

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You know, before they were being added. Notice the change in mathematics here? Before they were being added, now they're being multiplied.

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Even amazingly, it says a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. That is, they became believers who obeyed what

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Jesus taught, who made him their Lord. This is particularly amazing since it was the priests, remember last week?

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They were some of the same group of people who were, it says they were jealous of the disciples in the previous chapter who ordered the apostles be arrested and enraged that they be killed.

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Those were mostly priests. Now, some of those priests are bowing the knee to Jesus.

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And what's more amazing is that the priests have the most to lose about being obedient to the faith in Jesus.

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Think about that. If you're a priest, what are you doing? What does it mean to believe in Jesus now? Because it means if you believe in Jesus, you're a priest.

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That means you accept the fact that Jesus has now put you out of business, right?

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Jesus offered himself as the final sufficient sacrifice for the sins of his people.

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So when no one needs to come to you to offer a sacrifice anymore, that there never need to be any other sacrifice that Jesus is our great high priest and we don't need any other priests anymore.

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So for a priest of all people, a priest to become obedient to the faith means that he has to put faith in Jesus as more important than his self -interest, than his job, than what gives him standing in society, what makes him somebody, gives him some income.

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A great many priests chose to believe what wasn't in their selfish interest to believe.

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Why do you think the church now is able to attract people to Jesus even against their own selfish interest?

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What do you think that is? Maybe it's because now the church has just proved, but by going out of their way, deliberately to include people that they had overlooked, people they normally didn't have anything to do with because they weren't in their orbit.

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They didn't relate to them. They didn't, they didn't see them. They didn't get anything from them. They didn't dislike them, but they just weren't in their life, but they stretched themselves to include them.

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They intentionally determined to include them, include people that don't do anything for them that aren't their kind of people, but they included them anyway.

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And that showed, that proved that there was a tie that bound them that was greater than culture and language and just self -interest.

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They decided, the church, amazingly that even if they aren't my kind of people, even if they're not in my orbit, they're not like me, still they're part of the family of God, the body of Christ, that they are attached to the same body that I am, even if I haven't been aware of it, even if I haven't seen them.

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That is not about me. By doing that, they show, they prove, they proclaim their actions.

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That is not about me. It's not about my interest. Jesus is real.

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What he's done is real. It's about Jesus and about those he bought with his own blood.

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Maybe the priest, maybe the priest saw that and realized, hey, if they can put

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Jesus ahead of their self -interest, so can I.