Stopping A Church Split - [Acts 6:1-7]

Many years ago, a friend foolishly asked me to preach at his church.

And when he told me about it, he said, it's a Chinese church, and I'm like,

you know, what does that mean?

Am I going to have a translator?

How's that all work?

And he said, no, you're going to be speaking to the young people.

I'm like, young people?

Yes, those who speak English.

So they're like 35 and younger.

And yet there was a whole generation, a big generation of people older than that, and they met

in the main sanctuary, and they were preached to in Chinese.

And I thought, that is pretty odd.

You basically almost have like two churches, because I wasn't preaching the same thing that the other guy was preaching.

But I asked my friend, I said, do you speak Chinese?

And of course, he laughed at me because it was a dumb question.

But I thought, this is really an odd thing.

Now, there are churches, we drive by them.

You know, there's a Chinese church or a Korean church, or maybe there are churches

where they obviously speak Spanish, or, you know, different ethnic

groups that have, like there's an Armenian Orthodox

church, or there's this, that, and the other thing.

And I always find those, I mean, I guess they're understandable from the standpoint of,

you're new to the country, you don't know the language, so if there's a group of you, you gather together.

That kind of makes sense.

But I wonder about that.

You know, I read articles where people say the most

divided, or the most racially, or the most ethnically divided hour in the United States is

the church hour.

And it ought not to be that way.

And this morning, I think we're going to see the emphasis that the Lord places on

unity in the church, regardless of our differences, whether they be

cultural, or language, or other things.

Unity is important.

Why?

Well, in this particular case, I think it speaks to the watching world, that is to say, the other people

in Jerusalem, the unbelievers.

And it also spoke a lot, I think, to the church, well, to the church itself, to the

people in it, but also spoke to the leadership, the Sanhedrin, the Jewish leaders who were

persecuting the church.

Let me read our text this morning, just seven verses, and I say just seven verses.

I was talking to Scott before we started, and I'm like, you know, the whole testimony of Stephen thing, I've gone from dividing it up, to

doing it all in one shot, to dividing it up, to, you know, and I keep going back and forth.

So it's only seven verses this morning.

Acts chapter 6, verses 1 to 7.

Now in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the

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

distribution.

And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we

should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.

Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and

of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.

And what they said pleased the whole gathering.

And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and

Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and

Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch.

These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of disciples multiplied

greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became

obedient to the faith.

Now, last week we finished looking at what I called the church the world hates.

And we focused on the second persecution, really, of the church in Jerusalem by the Jewish leaders, the

Sanhedrin.

This panel, this group of 71 men who were the

religious rulers of Israel, and they were a combination of the Sadducees and the Pharisees, which

seems impossible since we know they didn't agree on a lot.

But what they did agree on was these Christians were a real problem.

In fact, they had the 12, all of them, publicly arrested and then placed them in a jail

where it would be obvious to everybody that they'd been arrested.

This was a public place where everybody could see them.

But they get delivered by an angel.

God sends an angel to them, and the angel tells them, sets them free so that the guards

don't even know, and then tells them to return to their preaching and teaching at the temple.

And so they do this, even before dawn the next day.

The temple guard and the captain of the guard went to re -arrest them after someone comes to the Sanhedrin and tells them,

hey, those guys you were holding in jail that you can't find, they're up at the temple, back to their old tricks.

If you recall, we had four numbers last week, two charges.

The two charges that were brought against them, teaching in the name of Jesus.

Remember, they were warned not to do that, don't teach anymore in this name.

And also, they were charged with bringing the blood of Jesus upon the leadership, the Jewish

leadership.

Essentially reminding the people that the Sanhedrin was complicit in the execution, the

illegal execution of Jesus Christ.

It was illegal, it was immoral, it was wrong.

How dare you bring it up, basically the Sanhedrin says.

Then we have three witnesses.

First, God the Father, who sent the Son, and if we just think about it, not in our text last week,

but if we think about it previously, the Father had said what?

That he was well -pleased in his Son.

This is my Son in whom I am well -pleased.

Second witness, the apostles themselves, who'd spent three -plus

years with Jesus, day in, day out, listening to him, watching him.

Then, after he was crucified, they were with him for 40 days,

after the resurrection, and they even watched him ascend.

They watched the ascension into heaven.

So they were witnesses, and the final witness was the Holy Spirit.

Three witnesses, God the Father, to Christ, to this name that they weren't supposed to talk

about.

But they had three witnesses, God the Father, the apostles, and the Holy Spirit.

And if you recall, I said the Holy Spirit can only be a witness if he was actually a person.

You can't call a force to the stand, if you just think about your average courtroom drama.

I now call a force to the seat.

You can't do that.

It has to be someone who can testify, somebody who is a valid witness.

The third number was two responses, responses to the

defense, essentially, of the apostles.

The Sanhedrin was enraged.

They wanted to kill these men.

The second response was Gamaliel, this noted teacher, this

Pharisee of notes, who one day would be the teacher of Paul, of Saul, who became Paul.

And Gamaliel urged caution, saying that if the apostles were indeed from God,

that they could not be stopped.

You can't stop God.

But if they were not, then this whole movement, this whole Christian thing would just fade out, like these other

men, Theodos and Judas.

And then there were two endings.

The Sanhedrin heeded Gamaliel.

They said, OK, we will not intervene in this.

We will wait and see what God does with these men.

But in the meantime, just so they know, they can't talk anymore about this Jesus,

we're going to give them 39 lashes, one short of basically the death

penalty.

And even 39 lashes sometimes would cause death, because as I described, you would get

one on the chest and then two on the back.

One on the chest and two on the back.

And they did that 13 times, 39 lashes.

It's brutal.

And the response of the apostles?

They rejoiced.

Why?

Because they loved being beaten?

No, because they'd been counted worthy to suffer for the cause of Christ.

So we come to our text this morning.

This morning we have three R's to help us see how the church

weathered this first serious internal strife in our history.

I mean, there was Ananias and Sapphira.

That was a bit of a trial, because now there's obvious sin in the church.

But this was a moment where the church could have been split.

We'll see also what the Lord did as a result of the resolution of this strife, of this

in -house struggle, as it were.

This is ultimately a fight to preserve the unity of the Jerusalem church, and we can

learn some valuable lessons from it.

The first R, recognize the potential split.

Secondly, remedy the potential split.

And thirdly, reap the benefit from avoiding the split.

I mean, this sounds almost like a business proposition, right?

How do you resolve?

You have to identify the problem, come up with a resolution, and

then observe whether your resolution works or not.

It's similar to that, but not quite, and this is very much not a business matter.

But first, recognize the potential split.

Notice here, really kind of a curious phrase at the beginning.

Now in these days.

There are commentators that take various positions, but I think the one that's

right said that this is just a short time after the events of chapter 5.

He wants to let us know there's a little skip in time, but not that it's a big one.

But despite the Sanhedrin's attempt to put an end to the Jerusalem church, to just

stop them from talking about this man by which they met Jesus,

the church was bigger than ever.

There were maybe about 10 ,000 people.

In fact, the text says when the disciples were increasing in number, there was this constant

ongoing growth.

10 ,000 sounds really huge, but it's

difficult to say exactly how big Jerusalem was because there are some estimates that it

was as many as 3 million people.

So then if you think 10 ,000 out of 3 million, okay, it's a big church,

but as a fraction of the population, not very big.

But I saw another estimate where Jerusalem, and I don't subscribe to this one, 20 ,000, so

that would be like half of the city.

I'm not really going for that one.

And why would the estimates vary so much?

20 ,000 out of 3 million, you go, this is kind of esoteric.

Well, it is.

Indulge me for a moment.

The reason that they don't have better records is because I've hinted at it, I've talked about it,

the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, not only did they destroy the temple,

but they wiped everything out.

They took the whole city down.

Why did they do that?

And as I've mentioned before, because the Jews had this habit of rebellion, rebellion, rebellion,

rebellion, because they didn't like being ruled by the Romans, and eventually the Romans just said, enough.

They sacked the city, they sent everybody out, and so there are no good records.

There's no way of really measuring how many people there were.

You just have estimates.

What we do know is that the church continually grew.

No matter what they tried to stop it, it just kept growing.

Why?

Because the Holy Spirit was at work.

He was convicting the hearts.

He was causing people to be born again.

Now, the heart of the matter, the real essence of the problem, again, to verse 1, a

complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being

neglected in the daily distribution.

Now, just a little portion of this text, there's a lot to explain.

First of all, who are the Hellenists?

That's not something we see very often.

They are Greek -speaking Jews who had been spread out

across the, really around the world, but mostly in Asia

Minor and other places, either as a result of the

Assyrian conquering or other times

where the Jews had just been carried off or even sent out by the Romans.

So they would be Greek -speaking, they would have Greek culture,

and they would have come back into Jerusalem.

Some of them would be older people.

This sounds really weird, right?

Because what happens when you get older usually?

I mean, I guess in my mind I always think you get old and you go out to a farm and you just live, I don't know,

maybe not a farm, some cottage out in the middle of nowhere, but these people came back into

Jerusalem because they would be taken care of there.

The big synagogues were in Jerusalem, and they would take care of people.

They had a system.

There was no, you know, I mean it's hard for us to kind of wrap our heads around, but there was no Social

Security, there was no life insurance, there was no, you know, when you got old and

you couldn't work anymore, somebody had to take care of you, and you went to where, you know, even cousins and distant

relatives would support you.

So the Hellenists were ethnic Jews who came from various

places around the Roman Empire and came back into Jerusalem.

Some of them would have been there just for Pentecost, had been convicted, had been born

again, and stayed in Jerusalem.

Why would they?

Well, because you couldn't go back home where there was no church, right?

You couldn't go to Bithynia or Thessalonica because there were no churches there.

The only church was in Jerusalem.

So the Lord was using this time not to merely build the numbers of the church in Jerusalem, but also,

I think, to build their spiritual maturity because we know what's going to happen in the chapters that, I mean,

unless, have you been reading ahead?

What's going to happen is the church is going to spread, the gospel is going to go forth.

So some of these men, some of these women are going to be sent out in various ways

to spread the truth, to spread the church, to spread the gospel.

But these Hellenists did not speak, the local language in Jerusalem would have been

Aramaic.

Some spoke Hebrew, but mostly Aramaic.

And so they had adopted because they'd lived most of their lives or maybe all their lives out there in the Roman Empire

where the Greek language, the Roman culture, that's the way you lived.

In fact, if we look back at Acts chapter 2, verses 5 to 11, we see this.

Now, the word dwelling in Jerusalem, listen carefully, Jews, devout men

from every nation under heaven.

And at this sound, the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak

in his own language.

And they were amazed and astonished, saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

And how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language, Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of

Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus in Asia, Persia and Pamphylia,

Egypt in the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome.

Both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we

hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.

That was the miracle of Pentecost, right?

The Holy Spirit comes upon these simple Galileans and they're able to speak to testify of

the wonderful works of God, safe to say, in Christ Jesus,

in all these different languages.

Then skipping down to Acts 2 .41, so those who received his word, talking about

Peter, were baptized.

And there were added that day about 3 ,000 souls.

And so as time goes on, the word keeps getting preached, people keep getting saved.

So the Hellenists are all these people from these different areas around the Roman Empire

who are in Jerusalem.

They were formerly Jews with this kind of, I guess you could say, Roman

worldview, spoke Greek primarily, although they would have spoken other languages as well.

And so they hear them in their mother tongue.

Maybe Greek was like, you know, English is kind of like Greek.

English today is kind of like Greek in those days.

It was kind of the language of business, right?

You couldn't really be a success in much of anything without speaking Greek.

And I think that's true today, although you might want to brush up on your Mandarin.

But anyway, those are the Hellenists.

The Hebrews, as described here, in Acts chapter 6, were

native to Jerusalem.

They'd lived there all their lives.

And they were Jewish converts to Christianity.

They'd come to Christ straight out of a Jewish lifestyle and spoke

Aramaic.

So we have Greek -speaking, culturally Greek Jews who have a complaint against the

Aramaic -speaking Jews with the Jewish culture and customs.

You can imagine this a little bit.

I mean, just imagine that you're, I don't know, you're on vacation or you take a business trip and you

go to Japan.

And you walk into a Japanese church.

And the hymns all sound familiar, but they're singing the wrong words.

And they get up and they read from Scripture.

You can't understand what's going on.

I mean, you might recognize the fact, because the Holy Spirit's attending the meeting, you might recognize the fact that Jesus Christ is

being worshipped.

You might even be able to appreciate part of it.

But are you going to feel like, yeah, I'm at home?

Not really.

Now imagine you were living there.

There are a lot of challenges.

You're probably going to want to learn Japanese.

It might take you a while.

But these people that you're with, even though they love the Lord Jesus, they

speak differently.

They act differently.

They like different foods.

You can't really hang out with them because you don't know what they're talking about.

So here's the problem that they point out that these Hellenist Christians

point out to the Hebrews.

They say, you know what?

This church is doing a great job of taking care of the Hebrew widows.

We see the Jewish widows being very well taken care of, but what about ours?

And this whole idea of care for widows.

Very important.

If you just think about, James historically is believed to be the first book of the New Testament written.

And what does James say about religion that is pure and undefiled before God?

He says, it is to visit orphans and widows in their affliction.

It's important.

And it was a huge deal in the Jewish culture.

Some of the practices of the church mimicked what the Jews were doing.

But listen to Old Testament.

Deuteronomy 14 .29, And the Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, in

other words, a traveler, the fatherless, those who are orphans, and the widow

who are within your town shall come and eat and be filled that the Lord your God may bless you in all

the work of your hands that you do.

These are people who could not provide for themselves.

They weren't integrated into society or like in the case of widows, they were not able to work to support themselves.

So the Jews were commanded to terror them.

And then there was a promise that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do.

In other words, if you keep my commandment here, there's a blessing for you.

God himself even promised to take care of widows.

In Deuteronomy 10 .18, He executes justice for the fatherless again,

orphans, and the widow, and loves the sojourner, those traveling through

the area, giving him food and clothing.

So, I mean, this was a priority that God had given, and the Jews had a very good system for doing this.

If you were a widow, you could literally get money for every meal, although they distributed it

a couple of different ways.

You would get your money for the next couple of weeks, you would get it all in one visit.

But it says, our text says, that the Hellenists had a complaint,

that they were complaining against the Hebrews.

That word, translated complaint, is one that you're very familiar with because Pastor Mike loves

to say this word.

What is it?

Gungismus.

That's the word.

That was their complaint.

It's that murmuring kind of gungismus.

Mike goes like this, gungismus.

And that word figures prominently in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament,

because what does that describe?

That describes Israel as it's murmuring, as it's complaining against God, while

they're in the wilderness.

Now, that's the complaint.

So you have to ask yourself, if we were to think like 21st century Americans,

which most of us are, we hear that and we go, okay, the Hellenists, most of us,

the Hellenists had a problem with the Hebrews.

And specifically, really, with the apostles.

They're saying basically, you're doing a great job taking care of those widows, what about ours?

What are you?

Racist?

Sexist?

You don't like women?

That's what would happen now, you know, LA Times.

Apostles accused of this, that, and the other thing.

This is just what happens when something gets too big.

It's unwieldy.

You have some executives who are just like, basically, over their head.

This was more than they could do.

And notice what they don't do.

What the apostles don't do, and they're not going to say, oh, you're wrong.

We're taking care of it.

Or be quiet.

Or you're being divisive.

They don't do that.

Why?

Because they know it's true.

They had a system.

But when you think about the language issues and cultural issues, maybe the Hellenist

widows weren't comfortable, you know, going and demanding from the church, and they couldn't go

to the synagogues because they weren't Jewish anymore.

They didn't believe in Judaism.

So this is a situation where there's a legitimate problem.

These Hellenists were separated from family members who might help them.

So they needed help.

And they weren't getting it.

So now they recognize this, and this is something that could potentially split

the church.

I mean, when you think about it, what's the easiest possible fix?

You know what, you're right.

Why don't you guys just form the Hellenist Church of Jerusalem?

We'll have the Hebrew Church of Jerusalem, and you guys can be the Hellenist Church of Jerusalem.

That was a solution.

That's not the one they chose, and I think there are several reasons for it.

One is because I think it's important for them to preserve the unity.

But the other thing is, like I was saying earlier, if we just think about what's coming down the road,

the kind of persecution that's coming, the expansion of the gospel even

apart from the persecution, these people are going to be needed.

So you don't want to be dividing up now.

You need that unity.

So that's our first R.

Our second R is remedy the potential splits.

Now there was one other problem besides the fact that the

Hellenists are mad at the Hebrews, or they're pointing their finger at the Hebrews saying you guys are dropping the

ball essentially.

There was one other problem.

The apostles didn't have any more time.

They could not serve these Hellenist widows.

Look at verse 2.

And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word

of God to serve tables.

Now before we all, you know, get excited about this idea of serving tables, just think about what they're saying there.

First of all, it's doubtful that all 10 ,000 or so Christians all got together.

But this was a big enough issue where enough of them gathered that the word Luke

uses could describe a multitude or a throng.

In other words, this isn't a handful of people making this decision.

This is a lot of people gathering together.

They recognize this as a problem and they want to solve it.

Now just a side note, it's interesting that believers here are called disciples.

Some of you may have a study Bible where it says this is the first time they're called disciples.

And that's true.

And what's cool about that is if you think, cool, when you think about it, what's really impactful

about that is what were the apostles always called during the time of Jesus' ministry?

Disciples, disciples, disciples, disciples.

Now here, the apostles have gotten to the point where they have disciples.

People that are actively learning, trying to emulate them, trying to follow them as

they follow Christ.

Now, I think it goes without saying, the apostles are in, but I'm going to say it anyway, the apostles are in a whole

other category than say elders or pastors today, right?

Because they lived with Jesus.

They walked around with Jesus.

They listened to Him every day.

They ate with Him.

Then after He was crucified, they saw Him.

They spent 40 days with Him.

And as I said before, they saw Him resurrected.

They saw the ascension.

These are not just typical pastors because they could say, you know, I remember when Jesus

did such and such.

Or I watched as He ascended into heaven.

They're powerful.

These men are eyewitnesses.

So when they say, it is not right that we should give up preaching the Word of God,

they're saying, this is why we're here.

This is why we exist.

This is the charge that we've been given by the Savior.

The fact that the Hellenist widows are not being properly ministered to is

basically evidence that they could not do anymore.

So they're like, okay, we either give up some of our preaching ministry or

we minister to these widows.

It would be wrong.

It would be sinful even for us to stop doing this because this is what Jesus said to

do.

We're to be His witnesses, not His administrators, His witnesses.

But now you look at this, the second part of this, to serve tables, and

it seems a little insulting because what do we think?

Serving tables, you know, like you're a waiter or a waitress or something like that, might

help a little bit, might mitigate it a little bit, make it a little bit less offensive to know that that first word of

those two is really, it's the word from which we get deacon and it means to serve.

Now is it better that they're serving tables?

I don't know.

But it's not, they're not demeaning it.

They're just saying that this work is work that we cannot do.

Essentially they're saying others can do this ministry.

It would be like, you know, if there was no fire department and you sent the police force in,

you know, with their guns and badges and stuff like that and handcuffs, those things are not really helpful against fires.

So you say to yourself, maybe we should do better.

Maybe we should come up with a fire department.

And so what they're saying is, look, we're the police.

They're not saying that, but you get my drift.

We need somebody else, some other ministry, some other ministers to do this.

They're not making light of the complaint at all.

They're saying you're right and we have to find an answer.

And here's the apostolic remedy in verse three.

Therefore, brothers, because your complaint is just and right and good and true,

pick out from among you seven men of good repute.

Why seven men?

We're not really told.

I mean, it could be because there's seven days of the week.

It could be because there's seven language groups.

I don't know.

But take seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom whom we will

appoint to this duty.

Now note, it's the church, it's the congregation that picks these seven men.

They're the ones who are going to be overseeing it.

Now, I think if you just think about the problem, what does that do?

You know, in any kind of situation, if there's a if there's a problem and

you can take the people who are making the complaint and make them part of the solution, then what happens?

You get a much better resolution, right?

So they they include the Hellenists in this and they say, listen, how about we

pick you guys, let's pick these seven men and then we'll lay our hands on them.

Now these seven are often, I don't know, maybe you've heard them referred to as deacons.

I don't really think that's right.

Or proto -deacons, kind of prototypes of deacons.

I think that's right.

Certainly the role of a deacon is to take things off of the plates of the elders so they can focus

on prayer and preaching and teaching.

Now notice the requirements there.

That they be of good repute, full of the Spirit, and of wisdom.

Now for a moment, let's turn to 1 Timothy 3 because I want to sort of

highlight the parallels between these men and deacons.

1 Timothy 3, verses 8 -12.

Deacons likewise, like the elders, must be dignified, not double -tongued, not

addicted to much wine, not greedy or dishonest or for dishonest gain.

They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.

And let them also be tested first.

Then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless.

Which is why our men have to undergo a thorough exam, 100 multiple choice questions, 10 essays,

no, no.

Verse 11, Their wives likewise, must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober -minded,

faithful in all things.

Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own

households well.

So let's go back and just think about Acts chapter 6.

It says they're of good repute.

They're to be of good repute.

Now, in 1 Timothy 3, it says dignified.

Okay?

You have a good reputation.

People look at you and think, he's dignified.

You have a good reputation.

People say, he's not greedy.

He doesn't just blindly pursue money.

Good repute.

You're blameless.

In other words, accusations can be made, but they don't stick.

Good repute.

You're a one woman man.

Your children are not out of control.

Your finances are under control.

That's what it means to run your household well.

Everything within your household must be run well.

Full of the Spirit.

When I was reading through 1 Timothy chapter 3, I just thought, full of the Spirit, okay.

Not being addicted to much wine.

What does that sound like?

It's the opposite of being filled in the Spirit.

In Ephesians 5 .18, Paul draws that contrast.

Be filled with the Spirit.

Don't be drunk with wine, because that's dissipation.

The two things, you know, if you're drunk, then what happens?

You lose your self -control.

It's kind of the opposite of the fruits of the Spirit, right?

Full of the Spirit.

They have a clear conscience that they hold on to the Gospel with.

They're faithful men.

How about full of wisdom?

They understand the Gospel.

And I thought, you want to see a wise man?

How about somebody who's married to a dignified wife?

And again, able to manage their households.

It takes a lot, as you know, when you have kids, to run

your household well.

So at the very least, there's a lot of overlap between Acts 1 and what Paul eventually writes

in 1 Timothy chapter 3, and I believe that's the work of the Holy Spirit,

where Paul is teaching, or talking to Timothy about how to run a church.

This is a good way to run a church.

This is how it ought to be done.

You have elders, then you have deacons who take the load off of the elders, and this is

how you do it.

This is what they look like.

So back to Acts chapter 6, verse 4, we see

again that they stress what they are to be doing.

The apostles stress what they're to be doing, their priority.

Verse 4, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.

In other words, you men take care of this.

You men take care of these widows, these seven.

We're going to have them do it.

We have to get ourselves out of this administrative burden.

It's good and right that it's being done, but the Lord didn't call us to that, and we don't have

time to do it.

Can you imagine suggesting and listening to the apostles and then going, Wait a second, guys.

Actually, I think you ought to be doing all these little things and not going out and preaching and

teaching.

That would be terrible.

Kistemacher says this.

He says, Surely it was not fitting for anything to limit their bearing

witness.

That had to be their primary function.

The apostles were only around for a short period of time, and nobody could talk about Jesus the way they could.

So who are these proto -deacons?

Who are these nominees that step into the breach?

Verse 5, And what they said, what the apostles said, pleased the whole gathering, both the

Hebrews and the Hellenists.

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.

Now, Luke basically tips his hand.

He foreshadows what's coming.

He does this pretty often, and he lets us know that the next person he's going to be talking about, he doesn't say it this way,

but this is the way he writes, the next person in the narrative is going to be Stephen.

And then after that, he's going to be talking about Philip.

The other five, he doesn't really talk about.

That doesn't make them insignificant.

In fact, I would say what it tells us about them is they were faithful.

We don't see, for example, a Nicanor who later fell away from the faith or had to be sacked or whatever,

or Timon who was stealing from them.

We don't see anything like that.

But it's interesting that six of these men were Jewish.

And how do we know that?

Because Luke identifies the seventh one, Nicholas, as a proselyte of Antioch.

What does that mean?

It means that he was a Gentile who came to the Hebrew faith.

That's what it means to be a proselyte.

And he was originally from Antioch.

So this Gentile from Antioch comes into Jerusalem, gets saved, stays

in Jerusalem, or he comes to Jerusalem and then he gets saved, whichever it was.

But what he wants us to know is all seven of these men are of the Hellenist camp.

They all have Greek names.

And it's important because how did they solve this?

They solved this by appealing to the Hellenists, by pulling in seven Hellenists to make sure now

that the Hellenist widows were going to be taken care of.

Okay, so then the seven men were prayed over and set apart for this ministry by the apostles.

Look at verse 6.

These, they, the congregation, set before the apostles.

Here are the seven men.

And they, the apostles, prayed and laid their hands on them.

So we've seen now two R's.

Recognize the potential split.

Remedy the potential split.

And now the third R, reap the benefit from avoiding the split.

Now wouldn't you just love it if every time there was a problem in your home or a problem at work and you resolved

it and you thought, man, that was good.

And then you got to see the results and that was also good and you're going, perfect.

I mean, you probably had moments like that.

I hope you have.

Because it's pretty satisfying.

But it doesn't always happen like that.

But in this case it does.

Look at verse 7.

And the word of God continued to increase.

Now when you see the word of God continue to increase, you know, if you just see that phrase, the word of God, what do you think about?

Of course you think, the Bible.

That's not what it means in this setting.

We know that from various things here.

I'll just read them quickly.

Acts 12, 23 and 24.

Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, talking about Herod, down, because he did not give

God the glory.

Remember, the voice of a God and he was claiming deity.

And he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.

But here's the important part.

Verse 24.

But the word of God increased and multiplied.

Didn't mean that the Bible was being added to.

Didn't mean that the pages were multiplying.

It meant that the gospel was going forth and people were coming to faith in Christ.

Acts 19.

Similarly, talking about the seven sons of Sceva.

And the man in whom the evil spirit, or the man in whom was the evil spirit,

leaped on them and mastered all of them and overpowered them so they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus.

These men who were claiming this power to cast out demons.

Both Jews and Greeks, so it's all throughout Ephesus.

And fear fell upon them all and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled.

And many of those who were now believers came confessing and divulging their practices.

And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all.

And they counted the value of them and found it came to 50 ,000 pieces of silver.

Here's the important part, verse 20.

So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

In other words, evangelism was being blessed by the Lord because of

this spectacular event.

In this case, the preservation of the unity of the church of Jerusalem resulted in the

Holy Spirit continuously prospering the ministry of the apostles.

Right?

Just think about it.

These seven men have now taken this burden off of them so they're able to go out and preach and teach as

they should.

They're being obedient to the Lord.

And what happens?

More and more people are coming to faith in Christ.

They said they needed to pray and to preach.

They do that.

And the Lord blesses the result.

And it turns out that some of the people being saved were among the elite.

Again, verse 7.

And the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests

became obedient to the faith.

I hope that encourages you because, you know, if you think, if you were back there 2 ,000

years ago, you're in Jerusalem and you think, you know what?

Who are the least likely people to get saved?

Well, it would be people in the Sanhedrin.

It would be the priests, the leaders of the local synagogues.

What does that mean?

What it ought to mean for us is that nobody is beyond the reach of the Holy Spirit.

There's nobody that he can't regenerate.

Even as we think about Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night, the teacher of all Israel.

And he tells him, you must be born again.

And then what happens later?

I believe he was born again.

This, ultimately, is a fulfillment of the promise of Jesus.

Consider, if the Gospel did not take root in Jerusalem so firmly,

if there wasn't such unity that is brought about by the Gospel between the Hellenists and the Hebrews,

these people that normally might not get along so well.

Think about what Jesus said, that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem.

And then what?

In all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

If it wasn't for this, would it have continued?

I think the answer is no.

God knew what he was doing.

The sovereign God planned this all from the beginning to the end.

And I want us again to just focus on kind of the international aspect of the church.

And I want to just quickly go to Revelation

5, verse

1.

Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the

back, sealed with seven seals.

And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the

scrolls and break its seals?

And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it.

And I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it.

And one of the elders said to me, Weep no more.

Behold the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered so that he can open the

scroll and its seven seals.

And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a

lamb standing as though it had been slain with seven horns and with seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God

sent out into all the earth.

And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne.

And when he had taken the scroll the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb each holding a harp

and golden bowls full of incense which are the prayers of the saints.

And they sang a new song saying, Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slain

and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe

and language and people and nation.

And you have made them a kingdom and priest to our God and they shall reign on the earth.

Then I looked and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels

numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the lamb who was slain

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.

And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them

saying, To him who sits on the throne and to the lamb be blessing and honor and

glory and might forever and ever.

We're going to see in the weeks and the months that come the spread of the gospel.

Why?

Because Jesus Christ redeemed people from every nation every tongue every tribe from all

around the world.

So that in heaven what we're going to see is not the church of

the Nordic peoples and the church of Japan and the church of this and that and the other.

We're going to see one people of God people redeemed from every corner

of the earth.

This is more than mere conflict resolution.

This is the church gathering together to solve a problem for the glory of God

for the unity of the body that Christ might be glorified that he might be in

all and of all.

Jesus Christ lived, died was raised from the dead to redeem

people from everywhere from all walks of life.

So that Paul eventually in Galatians 3 could write this for as many of you as were baptized into

Christ have put on Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Greek.

There is neither slave nor free.

There is no male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And that's the underpinning of this whole story.

Let's pray.

Father,

we thank you for your Holy Spirit attending your church giving these men these 12

apostles the wisdom to solve what really was

a crisis.

The easiest solution was the wrong solution.

Father, you in your wisdom determined to keep them

preaching and teaching Christ.

Why?

So that the elect in Jerusalem would come to faith in Christ.

Father, help us to strive for unity within the body of Christ.

Help us to see one another not as different skin colors,

different languages, all these different barriers that the world so wants to emphasize.

Help us to see one another as the Bible.

As you see us.

Image bearers of equal value and of equal

need of salvation.

Father, let us preach Christ.

Glorify Him in all that we do and say.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.