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August 24, 2008
Problems & Gifts in the Missionary Church
a sermon on Acts
6.1-7
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama
What an encouraging passage! If the four passages we will use in this sermon series
were people, this one would be a cheerleader. This sermon is our third in the
series from the book of Acts about how our church can begin to function as a
missionary in our community. You know the drill by now: From the time of the
Roman Empire until our lifetime, the Christian church functioned as a chaplain
in society. Not anymore. Drastic social changes have propelled us back to New
Testament times, so that we, like the church in Acts, have to become a
missionary church. This sermon is the feel good sermon of the lot. After all,
preaching isn’t just a reminder about what we need to do better; it’s also a
celebration of what we get right! This passage gives us a lot to celebrate. I
love this passage. Let me tell you why. To begin, it shows us that the early
church in Jerusalem had problems. Isn’t that great?! You might not think so, but
consider … Our church has problems. Not a lot of them, but we do have problems.
Do our problems mean something is wrong with our faith or commitment? Do they
mean God isn’t at work among us after all? No! Not at all! If the church led by
Peter and James, the brother of our Lord, and the other apostles had problems,
then every church is going to. I’ve figured out why. I’ve thought this through
carefully and theologically, and I believe I have isolated the factor that
causes problems in churches: people. Churches have problems because churches are
made up of people. If you got rid of all the people, there would be no problems.
Of course then there wouldn’t be a church either. The question is not, will we
have problems? The only question is, do we have the maturity and grace to
overcome them? Seeing New Testament churches struggling to get it right ought to
give us heart. Remember when you were in school, if you failed a test (not that
anyone here ever did that, of course, I’m speaking hypothetically), if everyone
else in the class failed too, you didn’t feel as bad about it. If everyone else
aced it, and you alone failed—that’s a miserable feeling. I am so thankful that
the Bible doesn’t try to gloss over the flaws and struggles of Jesus’ disciples
and the early church. We are no different from them. They messed up and had to
repent. So do we. They faced problems they could only solve by the grace and the
power of God. So do we. Scripture is very realistic about the
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Christian life. Yes, the standard is set extremely high. Our destiny is to be
conformed to the image of Jesus Christ himself. But we are a long way from it.
That doesn’t mean God isn’t working in us. It only means he is capable of a
bigger renovation than most people imagined. Some people are deeply troubled by
problems in a church. Those who have never seen the inner workings of a church
are in for a rude awakening the first time they serve on the session. They
discover the pastor and other elders are not spiritual giants who stride
effortlessly over every obstacle. We are just sincere men and women who
desperately want to do God’s will, and sometimes, by his grace, we get it right,
even if in spite of ourselves. But Christians should never be less realistic
than the Bible. It calls the gospel a treasure in clay jars. Guess who the clay
jars are. This goes back to a point I made about A.W. Tozer in the first sermon
in this series. God is not finished with any of us yet. We all need more grace
and healing. So I find the honesty here in Acts refreshing. Another reason I
love this passage is because it tells me that, although we will have our share
of problems, God has given us the gifts and the wisdom and the power to solve
them. I’m going to say more about this as I dig into the text, but just a
preview: When the apostles noodled over the crisis in Acts 6 about the care of
widows, the solution was right at hand. They told the Greek-speaking Christians
(the Hellenists) to appoint seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy
Spirit and wisdom, to handle the need. The Hellenists didn’t come back to the
apostles and say, “We couldn’t find seven people like that” or “Only three
agreed to serve” or something like that. They discovered that God had already
prepared and provided the leadership they needed. As a church, we may not have
the resources to do everything we want to, but we will always have the resources
and gifts to do the work God has for us. Always. The question is our
faithfulness, not God’s. God is faithful. He is at work in our community. He
loves our community and the people in it. He is calling them to faith, to holy
living, to helping neighbors. God has put us here so he can use us. He has a
purpose for us. He gives us the people, the financing, and the gifts we need to
do his work. Be warned: God cares about the mission of the church, not the
institution. The institution exists to make the mission possible. God never
guarantees the continued thriving of any congregation. In fact, before long, in
the book of Acts, the church in Jerusalem will be struck down. Only a fraction
of its membership will be left. Persecution will drive the others to distant
places. But we’ve already seen the results of that. It works out really well,
because wherever those Christians fled, they shared Jesus, and churches began
sprouting up all over the place. My point is, if you put the mission of the
church ahead of the institution, you will never be disappointed. God makes
mission possible by giving us the gifts and power we need. Even something that
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seems horrible at the time, like persecution, can turn out to be a good thing.
Maybe, just maybe, God is working out a purpose in our society and churches
today. Do you think so? I do. Maybe God wants us to be a missionary instead of a
chaplain. Who knows what God might be up to? All we know for sure is, God
remains ultimately in control. Our part is to faithfully answer his call. A
final reason I love this passage is: I always rejoice when what we do as a
church lines up with scripture. I look at this text and the way the congregation
chose the seven, then the apostles laid hands on them to set them apart to this
special work; and I think, “Wow, that’s how we do it.” This is no accident, of
course. Our practice is intentionally modeled on scripture. But I still find it
gratifying when we manage to get it right. The way we elect and ordain elders
and deacons squares nicely with Acts 6. Also, just as the apostles were
dedicated to teaching and preaching the Word of God, we have the office of
pastor devoted to the same functions. The transition from a chaplain church to a
missionary church will involve painful changes in how we think and what we do,
but it’s comforting to know that some things we already have right. We have an
office devoted to the Word. We have leaders selected by the congregation. In our
church the session has the leadership function exercised by the apostles in the
Jerusalem church—a function that came to be exercised by elders in churches
outside Jerusalem as they came into existence. If you take our church’s polity
for granted or don’t know how it works, you ought to look again, because this is
something to get excited about. I think the way we select elders and deacons and
pastors, and the checks and balances we have, provide the kind of stability and
flexibility a missionary church needs. The way we handle leadership has the
potential to serve our mission very well. I’m always happy when we’re doing
something right. This is such a fun passage, we ought to take a closer look at
it. There are things here you can’t observe on the surface. For example, this
passage is generally considered the origin of the office of deacon, even thought
the seven are never called deacons. Why is that? It’s because the word diakonia—from
whence we get our word deacon—appears three times in the passage. The Hellenists
complained against the Hebrews that their widows were being neglected in the
daily diakonia—the daily service. Oops, let me back up and clarify this. We are
talking about the very early church in Jerusalem. All of the people have come to
Jesus from a Jewish background. Most were born Jews. A few were converts to
Judaism. We know this because on of the seven is called Nicolaus, “a proselyte
of Antioch,” meaning he was from Antioch and he started out a pagan but had
converted to Judaism. Then he became a believer in Jesus. Anyway, all the
Christians at this point were Jews. We’ve turned back in the book of Acts from
our sermon last week. They were all Jews, but … they were not all they same.
Some came from Palestine and spoke Aramaic as their native language. These
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are called the Hebrews. The Hellenists in this passage were the Greek-speaking
Jews who came from other places. Jews lived all over the Roman Empire and even
beyond, as Pentecost reminds us. So some were local and spoke Aramaic, and some
were “not from here” and spoke Greek. They were all one in Christ, but you know
how differences like these tend to divide people. It seems the early church had
a system for caring for the needy. Widows were particularly vulnerable in those
days before pensions and social security. Job opportunities for women didn’t
exist in Palestine, not reputable ones. So widows were dependent on relatives.
The church functioned as an extended family, and they cared for the widows among
them who did not have grown sons. Here is a funny thing—funny as in odd—we don’t
know whether the daily distribution was money or food. The Hellenists, those not
from here, felt their widows were being neglected in the daily service. Later
the apostles will say they should not neglect serving God’s Word in order to
serve tables. But the phrase “serve tables”—in Greek diakonein trapezais—could
mean either wait tables by serving food or administer finances. In the parable
of the ten pounds in Luke 19, the nobleman asks the lazy servant, “Why didn’t
you at least put my money in the bank?” Bank is that same word: trapezais. So
the meaning could go either way. We don’t know whether the church provided food
or money. You may wonder, “Why does it matter?” I mention it because for a long
time, we took this to mean administer finances. Thus the deacons in Presbyterian
churches had control of the money. It made for an interesting situation. The
deacons control the money, but nothing else. The session makes all the
decisions, except financial ones. When things are going well, that might work.
Imagine the problems that could result from the least disruption of church life.
We don’t do that anymore. Mainly because it didn’t work well. Now deacons do
pastoral care. They don’t control or decide anything. They just care for people.
I think this is a more biblical role for deacons and very needed in the church.
Do you know that every member has a deacon at Westminster? It’s true. If you
don’t know who your deacon is, a list is posted on the bulletin board outside
the church office. Your deacon is someone you can turn to. The deacons and I
work closely together. They visit the sick and homebound. They help take food or
provide other assistance when it’s needed. The deacons are great. And the gifts
for being a deacon are different than those for being an elder. So our deacons
today take care of people, not money. I think the daily service in Acts 6 was
food anyway, not money. Because it was a daily distribution. If you are
providing food, you would need to do that at least daily. If you were providing
money, it seems once a week might be enough.
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In any event, this is the origin of the office of deacon. Five of the seven
deacons mentioned by name in the chapter are never heard from again in the
Bible. We can be sure they served God faithfully, but we don’t know anything
more about them. Philip and Stephen shows up again in the record, and when they
do Stephen is debating in the synagogues and preaching, and Philip is teaching.
They couldn’t help themselves; they had to tell others about Jesus. I love this
passage. The church has a very practical problem. It makes perfect sense. The
kind of differences people usually stumble over caused contention. The apostles
called together the whole community. “We have to serve the Word of God,” they
said, “but we see you have a valid concern. Here’s what we want you to do:
Select seven from among you, with good reputations, full of the Spirit and
wisdom. We will lay hands on them and consecrate them to the work.” It sounded
good to everyone, and that’s what they did. What happened next? Luke reports,
“The word of God continued to spread; the number of the disciples increased
greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the
faith.” The problem became an occasion for growth. Problems solved by wisdom and
grace always are. So, we arrive at the end of the sermon, and what do I want you
to do, beside rejoice that the way we do leadership is rooted in scripture and
God has given us so many wonderful elders and deacons? Three quick things: 1.
Use your gifts. You may be the solution to a problem in our church. You may be
the person God has provided because of an opportunity in our church. We
routinely struggle to find Sunday school teachers, volunteers for children’s
church, elders, and folks to handle a number of other responsibilities. I can
think of two reasons why: Either we are attempting to do too much or gifts are
not being used. The only person who can answer that for you is you. Are you
using your gifts? Are you doing what you can? Use your gifts. You undoubtedly
are God’s answer to some problem or opportunity. He has a purpose for you. 2.
Don’t lose heart over problems. Problems, especially when they come in waves,
tend to discourage us. We forget how big God is, and we focus obsessively on our
problems. Shake off that discouragement. Know that God gives his people the
strength and grace to overcome. Again, it may not be in the way you want. Who in
the Jerusalem church welcomed persecution? No one. But God was working. God was
doing something good, in spite of everything. We saw last week that even though
they had been persecuted in one place, those Acts Christians kept on telling
people about Jesus. They didn’t let discouragement or failure get them down.
Problems will come. Count on it. It doesn’t mean God has abandoned us or that we
have failed him. Our problems can be occasions for growth.
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3. This passage reminds us that it takes effort for different kinds of people to
get along. We are all one in Christ. We are family. But like most families we
have to be intentional about building close bonds. I see two potential fault
lines in our church. One is between older and younger members. We don’t seem to
have much difficulty there, but it is always good to build relationships across
those boundaries. The other is the same issue as the Acts congregation: a
difference of place of origin and language. We have several families originally
from Liberia in our church family. God has brought us together. This is one of
the ways I see God’s hand most clearly among us. Language differences make
building close friendships more difficult. But we need to make the effort, on
both sides, because God has brought us together. We are all better off together,
and God in his wisdom has done this. I have spoken of barriers within the
congregation, but that is theologically false. Christ has torn down every
barrier that divides people. They do not exist anymore in God’s family. You only
have differences that would be a barrier outside the family of faith. We can’t
think that way anymore, because Christ has made us one. Paul’s whole career as
apostle to the Gentiles was dedicated to this truth. What a fun and encouraging
passage. God has brought us together. God has given us gifts. As we rely on his
grace, our problems become occasions for growth. So rejoice! It is wonderful to
be a Christian. We are no different from the Christians in the book of Acts.
Pray that God will show his power among us, just as he did among them. Amen.
rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
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