the book of Acts Week 11 | May 25, 2025

Acts 6: 1 - 7

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So in my own time of personal growth, I've been
challenged by one of my spiritual mentors recently with the
idea that repetition is an essential step when you're moving
from knowing to believing something. In other words, if you
want to take if you want something to sort of
take root in your heart to affect the way that
you live, then you have to hear that same truth

(00:22):
more than once. You have to hear it repeatedly. Because
of this, I've been sort of reflecting on the question
of who am I. That's been one of the things
I've been doing on a regular basis, just reflecting on
the question who am I. I've been forcing myself to
sort of speak the Gospel to me. I've been repeating
who Jesus is, who he says I am, and I've
been doing it out loud, like by my I'm speaking

(00:44):
the words. On top of this, I've been annoying my
kids a little bit recently because I've been telling them
more and more, this is who you are. You are good,
You're loved, You're kind, you are compassionate, you are smart,
you are a good friend, you are capable, You're a
joy to be around. I've been saying those things repeatedly,

(01:05):
and they're like, Dad, I get it. It's like, I
don't think you do. You see, it's not a coincidence
that the Bible uses repetition in order to help us
not to only not only to know the Gospel, but
to believe it. The story of Jesus isn't told once
in the Bible. It's not even told twice. It's not

(01:25):
told three times. There are four instances of the story
of the life and ministry of Jesus. There are four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John. We are told about Jesus, then we're told
about him again, then we're told them about it again
and again. Within the gospels themselves there's repetition. And Mark's
Gospel Jesus tells his disciples on three separate occasions, I'm

(01:48):
going to die and to be raised from the dead
Mark eight thirty one, Mark nine thirty through thirty one,
Mark ten thirty two through thirty four. We see repetition
in the Old Testament. There's two creation accounts at the
very beginning of the Bible. The Ten Commandments are repeated
in Exodus ten and Deuteronomy five. Some of the proverbs

(02:09):
are repeated almost verbatim. Proverbs fourteen twelve says, there is
a way that appears to be right, but in the
end it leads to death. Proverbs sixteen twenty five there
is a path before each person that seems right, but
it ends a death. Repetition is a literary tool that

(02:30):
the Bible employs to reinforce important ideas and themes. Repetition
is used by the Bible so that you can move
from knowing to believing the Gospel. So in our time
of studying here on Sunday mornings, we have seen this
exact thing taking place in the Book of Acts over
the past few chapters, and Acts four one through twenty

(02:55):
two we see an account of the opposition to the
gospel sort of coming from the outside of the church,
and we're told the result of that opposition is that
the church grew. Then in Acts five one through eleven,
in this account of Anoni, since the fire, there's tension
and difficulty within the church, and the result was that
the church grew. And then in Acts five seventeen through
forty two, we saw opposition outside the church last week

(03:18):
the result of that the church grew, And our text
today we again see tension and difficulty bubbling up inside
the church, and wouldn't you know it? And verse seven,
we're told the church grew you. See, here's a big
idea for today. No one followed Jesus. We must expect

(03:38):
tension and difficulty coming from both inside and outside the church.
But in spite of that tension, nothing can ever thwart
God's purposes of growing his church. Nothing can ever short
circuit or get in the way of God's will being
manifested on the earth as it is in heaven. Using

(04:02):
our text as a guide, we're going to explore two
ideas together. To be rooted in a spiritual community, we
must first expect messiness with each other. And secondly, we
have to work together to empower everyone within the church
to truly participate, to truly belong to a church. We
must expect messiness and we must empower everyone. So on

(04:30):
that path that we join with God in building his kingdom.
If we walk the path of the messiness and the
submission to one another saying I'm not seeing things maybe
the same way that you are, help me to understand.
If we expect messiness and empower everyone, that's the path
that we join with God and building his kingdom. So
that's what we are reflecting on today in this passage.

(04:50):
That's what we're reflecting on this moment of just tension
within our own society. What does it mean for me
to join with God as he's building his kingdom and
the details of the life that we see not only
within the church, but outside the church as well. So
that's where we're going this morning. As we're preparing to
do that, let's first pause and pray. So God, thank
you for the finished work of Jesus Christ. Thank you

(05:14):
for giving us the gift of life, giving us the
gift of free will, and at the same time, not
leaving us alone, but coming alongside, empowering from the inside
out with the presence of the Holy Spirit. Teach us
to bend our knees to you more and more. Teach
us to have hopeful expectation for what you're doing. And God,
help us to live sacrificially in the same type of

(05:36):
love that your son have for us. Help us to
have the courage to sacrificially lay down our own ambitions
for the betterment of your kingdom, for the betterment of
other people, for your glory. Believing that it's your glory,
that's our good. So we submit these things you humbly,
asking that you continue to reprogram our hearts to be
more like you. So You're precious and Holy name, and

(05:57):
pray these things amen. So the first to truly partner
and belong, or to truly participate and belong to a church,
we must first expect messiness verse one of our texts.
In those days, when the number of disciples was increasing,
the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews
because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution
of food. So in the early Church there is basically

(06:20):
two primary demographics. There was the Hebraic Jews. These were
the Jewish people from the land of Judah Israel, Palestine.
These people spoke Aramaic. They prided themselves of being quote
like true descendants of God's people. These are the people
probably saying to Jesus and John, a hey, Abraham is
our father. These are Jewish people religiously and ethnically and culturally.

(06:44):
These are the Hebraic Jews. Jews religiously, ethnically, culturally. The
other group of people within the Early Church were Hellenistic Jews,
and as their name suggests, these are Jewish people who
are sort of of existing inside of Greek culture. These
Jewish people were from foreign countries. They had come to
Jerusalem on a pilgrimage for Pentecosts, and now they have

(07:07):
stayed behind to join the church. These are the people
that we saw in Acts chapter two who were amazed
when the apostles, like empowered by the Holy Spirit, started
speaking in all these different languages even though they didn't
know them. And they're like, like, we're hearing about the
good News of Jesus in our native tongue. This is strange.
Acts two seven through eleven. The Hellenistic Jews were completely amazed.

(07:28):
How can this be? They explained, these people are from Galilee,
and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages.
Here we are Parthenians, Meds, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Poncius,
the province of Asia, Fergia, Pamphelia, Egypt, the areas of
Libya around Syreen visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts
to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, and we all hear these

(07:48):
people speaking our own native languages about the wonderful things
that God has done. Instead of returning home after the
Feast of Pentecoons, the Hellenistic Jews here in the early Church.
These are the people who put their faith in Jesus,
and they decided, I'm going to stay in Jerusalem. I

(08:11):
want to learn more about this Jesus from these apostles.
These people probably did not understand Aramaic, but among other languages,
they probably spoke Greek because that was a fairly universal
language at this time. In fact, to some degree, these

(08:32):
people have probably conformed somewhat to Greek culture, to Greek
Greek habits, to Greek tendencies. The Hellenistic Jews probably would
have dressed a bit differently. They probably would have talked
a bit differently, appeared differently, they would have acted differently.
They're in Jerusalem, they would have stood out. They would
have been noticeably different. These were Jewish people religiously, but

(08:53):
not necessarily culturally or ethnically. The Hellenistic Jews. They are
religious Jews, but not necessarily culturally or ethnically. So what
we can see is that the world of first century
Palestine isn't all that different than the water that we
swim in. Within the first century Church, there is rachel

(09:16):
cultural and division. There's tension, according to our texts, and
people were being passed over in terms of the daily
distribution of food. The poor and needy Hellenistic Jews were
being ignored, and that is a huge problem because understand this,
these are people who have left everything behind. These are

(09:37):
people who have abandoned their support structures. They didn't return home. Instead,
they're here in this new land putting their faith in Christ.
So they're extremely vulnerable at this point. They don't have
their normal support structure around them. The poor, needy Hellenistic
Jews were being ignored, and that was a symptom of

(09:57):
a deeper problem boiling up within the church. There's a
fracture taking place here. The Hebraic Jews, to quote true
Jewish people, they were just blind to the foreigners among them.
They're like didn't even register on their radar, like it's cool,
you can hang out with us, it's fine. But they

(10:18):
weren't like in the fold, like fully, like around the table.
Fully you're sort of like orbiting as a satellite. Maybe
the Hellenistic Jews they were somewhat just being considered less
important and because of this there's an unbalance of care.
Again this sounds somewhat familiar. This is true in our

(10:41):
world today too, those who are deemed less important, there's
an unbalanced care. In all likelihood, this was probably the
last straw and a series of disagreements and frustration that
have been festering within the Church. This is probably like
the breaking point exactly. We see the same problem of
actioning along racial and cultural lines time and again throughout

(11:02):
the New Testament. This is like a major theme of
the epistles many of Paul's letter They were written at
least in part to address the division between Jewish and
Gentile Christians. Like a lot of the things that Paul
is saying in his letters is saying listen, like you
guys are coming from different perspectives, but you are you
are coming under the banner of Jesus Christ. Common problem

(11:26):
that Paul spoke again against time and again is this
assertion that gentile Christians have to become Orthodox Jews in
order to be fully accepted into the Christian Church. In
other words, the gentile Christians they sort of have you
have to like lose your identity in order and become
Jewish in order to be worthy of Christ. And frankly

(11:48):
this wasn't true. So Paul is writing letters to make
sure churches didn't like, didn't do that. Like, listen there,
you don't have to become orthodox jew to become a
follower of Jesus. You need to submit yourself to Jesus
what you need to do. So Paul wrote these letters
to make sure they understood that. And then these letters
are in the Bible because apparently we still need to
understand this. In fact, the Book of Galatians is a

(12:11):
pretty clear example of Paul just dismantling these false claims.
Paul's asserting it is only by the finished work of
Jesus Christ that you are redeemed, that you were adopted
as sons and daughters of the King. It's through the
finished work. Nothing that you can do, as Jacobs talking about,
there's not something you can build to heaven so that
God finds you worthy. It's only by submitting yourself to

(12:33):
the finished work of Jesus that you are that you
are redeemed. So I encourage you later today read the
Book of Galatians and through that lens, through the lens
of the early Church. Paul's writing this letter to the
church in Galatia because they're kind of going through with
some of the things that we see in our text today.
Regarding how our Texas Morning applies to our own spiritual

(12:53):
journeys here in our world, theologian David Peterson writes this,
it's likely that these two groups, the Hebraic and Hellenistic Jews,
they brought differences of outlook and attitude with them into
the community of christ followers. Old prejudices and resentments may
have reasserted themselves when practical problems relating to the care
of widows became obvious. Christians in every age and social

(13:14):
context need to be aware of the threat that cultural
and racial differences can pose to their unity in Christ. See.
I don't have to tell you this, but like these
same problems exist in our world. We still have tension.
We still have a fracturing occurring in the American Church
along racial and cultural and political lines. We still have

(13:38):
people asserting, listen, you need to lose your own identity
and sort of like morph into who I am and
what I believe in order to be fully worthy of Jesus.
I think you see this most clearly among political lines.
You have some people saying like, listen, if you want
to be a follower of Jesus, you have to be
politically conservative, Like you have to take all that upon yourself,

(13:58):
you have to believe all this stuff. You have to
lose who you are and become politically conservative to follow Jesus.
So you have other people like no, no, no no.
If you really want to know and follow Jesus, if
you want to have the heart of Christ, then you
need to be politically progressive. That's the heart of Jesus.
And you just have this like infighting and there's no
common ground. There's like this nothing but like a no

(14:19):
man's land in between. There are all kinds of issues
that are causing a fracturing within the American Church right now, immigration,
federal funding, foreign wars like Ukraine and Gaza, the integrity
and the efficacy of the president. Christ followers are vehemently

(14:42):
disagreeing with each other, and those disagreements are not leading
to conversations. They're not leading to debate, they're not leading
to growth, They're not leading to listening and humble submission.
A consideration of how are you seeing the world? What
am I not seeing that you're seeing? Leading to that
they're not leading to social justice, they're not leading the

(15:03):
God's king of being manifested here on the earth. All
that it's leading to is disunity and resentment and segregation.
More and more, we just have people that are Christ
followers that are surrounding themselves with people who think an
actress like they do. The truth is the capital see
American Church. It needs you right now and the sea

(15:27):
of insanity that we are currently in the Capital c
Church needs people like you to lead the way. We
need your voice, your wisdom, your perspective, your heart, your compassion,
your christ like love. We need you actively leading the
way here at Endie Metro as well. A few years ago,

(15:53):
we were still meeting downtown as a church and there
was a member who is a very talented musician. She
was a classically trained p She played at Carnegie Hall
in New York. She's extremely gifted. After attending the church
for quite a while, she came to me and confessed that, Hey,
I'm leaving the church. She was doing so in the

(16:13):
hopes of finding a congregation who did a better job
of sort of producing and performing musical worship. She wanted
like larger, more complicated and intricate bands, more complicated, intricate arrangements,
more vocalists, more harmonies, just more like big music really
mattered to her. So she wanted to find a place
where she could experience something sort of on par with

(16:36):
her own abilities. She wanted something that she could really
enjoy and appreciate. And to have that conversation was just
really saddening to me because in my mind I was
always grateful for her presence because I knew she could
help create the very thing that she was longing for.
I knew that she could step up and lead, that
she could offer her experience, her expertise, her perspective. In

(17:00):
leaving to find a place to enjoy and appreciate, she
could stay and she could contribute. I knew that we
were going to be better with her than we were
without her. And friends, I want you to understand that's
true view. As a church, there are a ton of
holes and who we are and what we do now.

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I firmly believe that God is positioning you to address
those needs. As a church, we have to grow. We
have to grow and our ability to be generous and
present to the community. We have to grow in our
pursuit of social justice and mercy. As a church, we
have to grow in our ability to come alongside disciple

(17:44):
and love kids. We have to grow and improve and
how we steward this space we have to grow, and
how we're creating pathways for relationship, for confession, for spiritual training,
for he We have to grow and our ability to

(18:04):
stand in the gap for the push to side the weak,
the vulnerable in our society. We have to grow and
our ability to steward our worship of God. I believe
that it's my job, as Paul says in Glatians chapter three,
to equip the saints for the work of that ministry.
But full confession, half the time I have no idea

(18:25):
what I'm doing. I need your help with that too,
help me to come alongside you and equip you. Don't
get me wrong, I think there are plenty of times
when the correct course of action is that you set
a boundary, you put distance between yourself and the dysfunction.
Sometimes the correct thing to do is just simply walk away,

(18:46):
like I cannot remain in this environment of toxicity. That
sometimes is the right thing to do, but that shouldn't
be our first course of action. That putting space between ourselves.
Can't be sort of our knee jerk reaction to truly
participate in belong to church, we have to expect messiness

(19:08):
as christ followers thinking about this, this girl, this conversation
that I had all these years ago. Don't we don't
discover healthy Christian communities friends, We create them. We create them.
So we have to consider in what ways the Lord
is positioning us to be leaders in the areas where

(19:31):
we see the potential for growth and maturation. We have
to expect messiness, and then we have to work together
in the middle of that mess. As a church, I
think we only have two options. We can sort of
remain surface level and superficial for one another. We can
refuse to risk offending one another. I can avoid saying
anything that's going to cost tension or disagreement. We could
just become homogeneous and we all see the world the

(19:53):
same way, and then anyone who comes along with a
different way we just push them out like nope. That's
option one. The second option is we dig in and
we do life. We trust each other, who we really are,
what we really think. We humbly accept that we don't
crush people that disagree with we listen to one another.
We humbly consider differing points of view. We pursue God's

(20:16):
kingdom together. We trip over ourselves and over each other
in the process. We do what Joel challenges last week
during communion, we embrace costly grace as a church. The
second option I think has to be the path. I
think that's how we can know and follow Jesus together.

(20:39):
We have to expect messiness. We're not gonna do everything well.
We're always gonna have room to grow in those spaces.
We come together and submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit
and problems arise. We don't have to act like they
don't exist. We can confront each other with the truth
of what we really think, and we can listen. We
can listen, we can listen to each other, and most importantly,

(21:02):
we can collectively listen to the Holy Spirit and God.
What are we not seeing here? To truly participate and
belong to a church, we have to expect messiness. Secondly,
to truly participate and belong to a church, we have
to empower everyone. Verse two. So the twelve gathered all
the disciples together and said it would not be right

(21:23):
for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of
God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters,
choose seven men from among you who are known to
be full of the spirit and wisdom. We will turn
this responsibility over to them. We'll give our attention to
prayer and to the ministry of the Word. This proposal
please the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full
of faith and the Holy Spirit. Also Philip Procerus, Nico

(21:43):
or Timon Parmenius, and Nicholas from Antiocha convert to Judaism.
So at this point in the church, the twelve Apostles
were basically doing everything. Three weeks ago we were told
that when people sold land, they brought the money and
they set it out the apostles feet. And what we
can deduce from this is the care of widows of
something that the Apostles were overseeing and apparently not doing
it very well. The responsibility to teach in the ministry

(22:06):
of the Word wasn't necessarily more important than the social
relief required in the church. The apostles primary gifting. Their
primary task was teaching and evangelism. What they needed was
to equip and empower others to step up. They needed
others who were gifted in shepherding and compassion and mercy

(22:28):
to join them in leading that aspect of the church. See,
the truth is there's no single leader, there's no single
leadership group that can or should be in charge of
it all. This same lesson that we're reading here in
Acts has already been told earlier in the life of
Moses and Jethro. So this is also a repeated theme

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in the Bible. For a church to be healthy and thriving,
everyone must be involved. Everyone must be contributing in their
areas of giftedness. The marginalized, the vulnerable people in our mysts.
They can't be ignored, they can't be pushed aside. They
can't be faceless and nameless. They have be treated with
equal respect and dignity. Their voices, their experiences, their positions.

(23:10):
They have to be amplified against the noise of the majority,
so that who they are is at lost or swallowed
up because you just got done observing differences will always
cause tension and conflict. That's just the name of the game.
In fact, I would go so far to say the

(23:30):
only time that you that you don't see tension and
division is when people with different ideas have been silenced
that they've just been trained like you, you can't talk
about that stuff here. That happens in families, that happens
in churches, that happens in friend groups. The only time

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there's not tension and division is when hey, if you
think something different than us, then you you're not welcome
to speak your mind. It's those situations that are fracturing
occurs right. So to truly participate and belong to a church,
we have to empower everyone to be heard. We must
listen and take the problems that others are pointing out seriously.

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We have to take it seriously. When someone is bringing
something to our attention, we can't be dismissive of it.
We have to approach conflict with a willingness to give
up our rights, our preferences, in order to restore shalom,
to restole wholeness, to restore peace in the middle of tension.
Preference should always be given to the more vulnerable. Look

(24:37):
again at our text the seven names of those appointed
to oversee the Benevolence Ministry. Did you notice something about
their names? These are all Greek names. Stephen a man
full of faith in the Holy Spirit, also Philip Procrus,
Nick and or Timon Parmenius, and Nicholas from Antioch, a
convert to Judaism. It's extremely likely that all seven of

(24:58):
these men were hel Jews. I think it's remarkable that
these people were brought up by the church. These the
apostles didn't pick these people out. The church did, and
then the fosil said, hey, great job. We even told
that Nicholas was from Antioch. He was a convert to Judaism.
This means he's a gentile. He was born as a

(25:19):
gentile converted to Judaism. I think this symbolically and practically
unified the church as more voices, more prospectives, more understanding,
more ideas were brought to the table in a meaningful way.
I don't want us to miss it. These seven men,
they weren't simply appointed because their minorities, and the early
Church like, man, we need a better marketing campaign, like
we need on the billboards. It's gonna look a lot

(25:41):
better if we have like three different looking people and
they're like, hey, get you can get your degree here,
like they weren't doing that. This wasn't a move based
on pity. These were people who were quote filled with
the spirit, they were gifted to lead, they had the
unique ability to understand and connect with an underserved population

(26:05):
of the church. They were put in that position because
they were filled with the spirit, they were gifted in
that area, and they had a unique perspective to be
able to connect and serve an underserved population. So here's
what we have to understand as a faith community in
the middle of the tension. If you're the majority, whatever
that majority is, you should expect to serve instead of

(26:28):
be served. You should expect to listen instead of speak.
We have to amplify the voices that are harder to hear.
We have to seek understanding with those who are underrepresented.
I don't think the scripture tells us that God's voice
is a whisper. I think there's two things we can

(26:53):
deduce from this. One is he's close enough to us
that he can whisper and we can hear him. He
doesn't have to shout because he's right. And secondly, it
is really easy to ignore the whisper. Friends, we can
ignore God's voice among us. We can we can over
shout the whisper of someone's sort of perspective on things

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We're not doing this because I want us to be woke,
or I want to do because we need to better
see who God is. I need your experiences, your thoughts,
your perspective so I can take my tiny sliver of
God's kingdom that I can see through, and I can
have that expanded so I can better understand who God is.

(27:43):
Each one of us we all have this like peephole
that we can look through. But together, I think we
can understand the heart of Jesus a lot more that
we can together than we can apart. Proverbs eighteen two
of them reflecting on this verse a lot this past week.
Fools find no pleasure in understanding, but delight in airing

(28:04):
their own opinions. It's foolish to take delight in being heard.
It's wise to listen. Fools take no pleasure in understanding,
they delight in airing their own opinions. To truly participate

(28:29):
and belong to a church, we have to empower everyone
to participate in the ways that they are uniquely gifted.
We have to give special attention to the hurting and underrepresented.
We have to navigate conflict together instead of avoiding it.
We have to expect messiness and then seek understanding In
the middle of that mess. We have to listen when

(28:51):
we'd rather speak. Can you imagine as a church. Can
you imagine if we just if we normalize this idea
that like we are a mess. The one thing that
Jesus calls us to do repent acknowledge that you're a mess.

(29:14):
Can you imagine what would happen if we just we
expected the messiness with each other, if we're able to
bring who we really are, what we really thought, to
the table without fear that we're just gonna get swept away.
Can you imagine what might happen in our church if
we empowered everyone to participate in their areas of giftedness,

(29:37):
If we learn to go out of our way to
submit to one another, to listen, to amplify the voices
of the of the underrepresented. What might we hear the
Lord saying what how white? Might we witness the Lord
moving that we can join with him in building the kingdom?
Jesus told his disciples on three separate occasions, I'm gonna
die and be raised from the death, and they still

(29:59):
didn't get it. So, friends, here's what I need us understand.
We're not gonna get this very easily. But the apostles
really struggle to understand the call of Jesus on their life,
and like what that meant? Then we are too, and
we better buckle up, say this is the road we're

(30:19):
gonna walk. We need to be reminded of this stuff repeatedly. Jesus,
How do I submit to you, Jesus? How do I
submit to you the ideas that we're talking about today?
This can't be just like a Hey, great monologue. It
has to be something that we continually practice through repetition
that we learn to understand what the Holy Spirit is doing.
It's through repetition that we move from knowing to believing

(30:41):
God's kingdom. It's through repetition that we learn to love
God and love others. It's through repetition that we can
learn to lead in this moment of societal craziness. We
can show a better way. So in just a moment,
we are yet again going to repeat a sacrament that

(31:03):
we do every week here at Indie Metro. We're gonna
We're gonna yet again do something so we can take
the Gospel from knowing to believing. We're gonna take the
elements and We're gonna internalize them to say I want
this in me more and more. Through the elements, we're
gonna repeat the truth. Jesus died and was raised from

(31:25):
the dead for you, Jesus died and was raised from
the dead. There was a huge cost of that. To
follow him, there's a huge cost. You're gonna have to
give up things that you maybe would rather hold on to.
You're gonna have to not speak when you'd rather speak.
You've got to consider things when you'd rather just bully someone.
There's a cost to following Christ, and that cost is

(31:45):
sacrificial love. It's only through the finished work of Jesus
Christ that we are redeemed. So as we're preparing our
hearts to take communion together, this first been a few
moments in discussion at our tables. Let's just chew on
these ideas. Two discussion questions will be on the screen.
Don't feel like you have to rush through the mall.

(32:06):
Let's just make a space for the Lord to move
right now. First, when have you navigated a message situation
with someone and in the end you're like that was
actually good? Like that I'm better off that we didn't
avoid this. But we actually had that discussion. And secondly,
when have you listened and learn from someone different than
you and then better off for it. So let's discuss
these things together at our table as we're preparing to
take communion