More People to Love
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
February 16, 2020
We’ve been teaching through the book of Acts, and we turn now to chapter 6. There’s a line from Jesus in the gospel of Matthew that should never drift too far into the background as we read the book of Acts. Jesus told Peter and the otherdisciples, and he tells us, that he “will build [his] church, and the gates ofhell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).
Thus far in thebook for Acts we’ve seen an array of challenges that could have prevailedagainst the growth of the church of Jesus Christ. A change of leadership aftera moral failure in chapter 1. Differing languages preventing the spread of thegospel in chapter 2, and as well as now in chapter 6. Arrests and persecutionin chapters 4 and 5. The internal erosion of hypocrisy and greed and jealously,also in chapter 5. And yet the Lord builds his church. But with this growthcomes new challenges.
Scripture Reading
Follow along withme as I read Acts 6:1–7, and then we’ll pray that God would be our teacher andstudy this passage together.
6 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. 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. 3 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. 4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 5 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 Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. 6 These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.
7 And the word of God continuedto increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, anda great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
Introduction
Sometime in 2012,another pastor sent me an email with only six words. The email said simply:
More people to love.
Thanks,
John
That email changedthings for me. When I received it, the church I was serving was growingrapidly. Someone needed to evaluate the current trends and create a plan toaccommodate the growth. I drew from my former career in engineering, opened upMicrosoft Excel, and took a hard look at our attendance data. I created prettygraphs and conservative growth projections for the next few years, and I sentthem to all of the staff and elders in an email.
There’s a line inthe movie Boss Baby where one of the main characters says to the other, “Onegreat can memo change the world.” That email was my memo.
At that time, Iprimarily viewed the new people as more of a problem than a blessing. Of coursethere was some truth to the fact that the line on the graph representingattendance might as well have been labeled “Benjamin’s workload.” For everyfifty new people, could I really keep adding five hours to my workweek? At somepoint, simply trying harder wasn’t going to solve the problem. (Again, there’sthat word, problem.)
Then, just a fewminutes after I sent my concerned email, I received John’s reply: “More peopleto love. Thanks, John.” That’s all it said. I remember staring at my computerscreen. The contrast between my approach and John’s was stark. He was ready foradventure, ready to see his story and the story of our church in light of theBig Story of the Bible, which is to say the Big Story of the expansion of thelove of God to more and more people. He was ready for that adventure. I wasnot.
Following the stingthat I had as I read his response and thought about my own response, camerepentance.
As we read the bookof Acts, a theme we’ll need to discuss from time to time is growth, both thegrowth of spiritual maturity and numerical growth. Growth seems to be a thingLuke wants us to notice as he narrates all that Jesus continued to do inbuilding his church.
We’ve already seenand preached about some of the numerical growth of the early church. The 11apostles became 12 again (chapter 1). The 120 disciples became 3,000 (chapter2). The 3,000 became 8,000 when another 5,000 were added (chapters 3–4), andthat was just the men. We are easily way over 10,000 new Christians by the timewe hit chapter 6. Speaking of chapter 6, here we get the first summary verseabout growth. There are six of them in the book of Acts. The six verses won’tbe on the screen. Just listen to them.
Acts 6:7 And the word of God continued toincrease, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, anda great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
Acts 9:31 So the church throughout allJudea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking inthe fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.
Acts 12:24 But the word of God increasedand multiplied.
Acts 16:5 So the churches werestrengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily.
Acts 19:20 So the word of the Lordcontinued to increase and prevail mightily.
Acts 28:30 He lived there two whole yearsat his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, 31 proclaimingthe kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldnessand without hindrance.
When you press intothe context of each, you realize the growth co-existed with difficulties. ThePax Romana, the peace of Rome, did not necessarily provide the peace we wouldtypically associate with the things necessary for growth. Instead, mingled withthe growth, perhaps in some cases despite the hard things and in other timesdirectly through the hard things, Jesus builds his church.
Last year I wastalking to another pastor about church growth. This pastor leads a church farlarger than our church. And I told him about the growth at my former church,the one where I worked with the guy named John who sent me that email. In mythree years at that church, we went from 700 adults attending regularly tonearly 1,200 adults. We went from a handful of small groups to over forty smallgroups meeting every night of the week throughout the city. And did I mentionthat I was the associate pastor of connections and small groups, which I mentionnot to take credit for the growth so much as to complain about the growth; welaunched thirty-five small groups, so about one a month for three years. It wasexhausting.
When I told thatstory to my pastor friend at a larger church, he nodded and said, “Oh, that kindof growth will break things.” I sensed he said it from experience, that he hadthe scars to show it, and probably so did some in his church.
In the passage today,we see that the explosion of growth of the early church, while wonderful and exciting,also broke things. What we see in the passage is that growth without structure canactually present challenges that could impede the spread of the gospel. It doesn’ttake a large church for people to fall through the cracks. And I don’t use thatcliché lightly. Falling through the cracks has become a cliché that makes us callousto the reality. The actual experience of falling through the cracks at a churchcan leave bruises that don’t heal quickly. Maybe some of you have those bruisesfrom other churches. Maybe you have them from us. Maybe you have them from me.
The good news isthat God loves his people enough to confront our sin and help build structurefor his church. He does all this so that in all things he might be praised. Heloves his church and builds structure for the sake of the widows and poor amongus, for the sake of the health of the leaders among us, for the sake of churchattenders, for the sake of outsiders watching from a distance.
1. The Problems, vv. 1–2
As the passageopens up, we see the problems right away. Look with me at vv. 1–2 again.
6 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. 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.
Do you see theproblems? Notice I said problems, not just problem. There is more than oneproblem. You probably saw the issue of the distribution of food, but there isalso the issue of who does what to solve the first problem. If we were to readbetween the lines a little, I suspect that some were saying it was right forthe apostles to wait on the tables (a point made by John Piper in his March 17,1991 sermon “Serving Widows, Preaching the Word, and Winning Priests” on thispassage).
But let me talk fora moment about the widows and the food distribution. Luke calls one group theHellenists and the other the Hebrews. What is that about?
You might betempted to think that because Hellenist has the word “hell” in it, that Hellenisthas something to do with hell. It actually has nothing to do with that.Hellenist is simply the word to describe Greek culture and those who speak theGreek language. In this case, Hellenist would have been used to describe the Jewishpeople who formerly attended a Greek-speaking synagogue. The Hebrew group, conversely,spoke Aramaic, which was a Hebrew dialect. In Jerusalem, which is where theearly portions of the book of Acts all take place, the vast majority of Jewishpeople and the vast majority of then-newly converted Christians came from whichgroup? The Hebrews. The smaller group—the minority group and the group who camefrom outside of Jerusalem—was the Hellenists, the Greek-speaking Christians.
Do you see theweight of this problem more clearly—they charge the majority culture of overlookingthe minorities? If this is mishandled, all the growth and all the unity could evaporateunder the heat of selfish and sinful treatment of other believers.
And then considerthat there was a way to go about fixing the problem that actually created moreproblems. If the apostles waited on the tables, who would preach and pray andlead? It’s not that one job was important and the other was not. Clearly, thispassage shows both were important. But there was a way for the apostles to fixone problem while creating others. I’ll put it like this. If you’re out inpublic, but the tag on the back of your shirt keeps scratching you, well, thereare different ways to solve that problem. You can take your shirt off, but thatcreates other problems doesn’t it.
2. The Solutions, vv. 3–6
Let’s see how thechurch responded to these challenges. Look with me at verses 3–6.
3 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. 4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 5 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 Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. 6 These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.
Although they arenot called this, many consider this passage as the first instance of installingdeacons within a church. The word deacon means servant. The noun of deacons,although not necessarily as a title of a church office, shows up in thispassage. And the verb of servant—the verb of deacon—shows up twice in thispassage. In v. 1, the word for daily distribution means the daily service, thedaily deacon-ing. In v. 2, the apostles say they shouldn’t give up thepreaching of the word to serve tables, that is, they shouldn’t give up thepreaching of the word to deacon tables, so to speak. In v. 4 the apostles saythey will give themselves to the ministry of the word, or the service of theword, or more literally the deaconing of the word.
About thirty yearsafter this event in Acts 6, the apostle Paul—who isn’t even a Christianyet—will write to two young pastors, one named Timothy and another named Titus.Paul instructs them (and us!) on how to organize leadership within a localchurch, namely, the offices of elder and the office of deacon, and we believedeaconess. So if you wonder why churches have these roles, it’s because we aretrying to pattern our church after the leadership structure in the NewTestament.
One pastor has saidthat deacons serve the church by being shock absorbers. Shock absorbers on acar are not necessarily the most sexy things about a car. In most cases, you can’teven see the shock absorbers unless you poke around a bit. Perhaps in some supped-upJeep or monster truck, you can see the shocks, but otherwise, shock absorbers goabout their business effectively and quietly, bringing health and stability tothe vehicle. Shock absorbers protect everything else about the car, includingthe passengers and drivers.
So how does thechurch in Acts 6 address the problem? The leaders call seven men who arespiritually qualified to lead this ministry. They are full of the Spirit andwisdom and have a good reputation. Don’t miss those qualifications. Many achurch has erred in overlooking the spiritual qualifications for those inministry, prioritizing white-collar professions above blue-collar professions.He’s a lawyer, or she’s a doctor, so they’ll be good at this. Maybe. Maybe not.God is interested in spiritual maturity and character that’s been tested (cf. 1Timonthy 3:10).
While the listed qualificationsare obvious to us because they are so plainly stated, but there is somethingnot as obvious to us but would have been so to them. All of the names in thislist, except perhaps Phillip, were Greek names. Think about that. Let that sinkin. The majority of the early Christians were Hebrew speaking. An issue israised that they are neglecting a vulnerable and weak part of their community.They see that problem as a real problem. And they empower six men, if not all seven,from among the minority to meet the need. They gave away power. Oh, theseleaders must have been captivated by the gospel, where they saw Jesus do thatfor them. Jesus gave up his rights and power for the sake of enemies. Surely,they could now do the same for their brothers and sisters. And they did, and weshould too.
This last yearwe’ve really been trying to think through how to better love those among us whoare not a part of majority culture, I’m thinking specifically of our immigrantsand refugees. Last summer when we wrote the job description for the newassociate pastor of connections, we added lines about this. The beginning ofthe job description reads, “The connections pastor will serve as the primaryshepherd to move people from visitor to engaged member at our church, helpingus to become the type of community God desires local churches to be. He willimplement strategies to integrate a growing refugee population into membershipand full participation in the life of the church.”
That’s good. That’sreally good. But as I read this passage, I long to be more explicit. Yes, tofull participation in the life of the church. But let me be explicit that I’mpraying for the day when the leadership of the dozen or so different ministriesat our church look more diverse. That is full participation.
Speaking of this,let’s talk about for our church a bit longer. Last year we had a beloved pastortransition to another church. Right before he told me he was going to leave, wehad spent six months as pastor-elders updating our constitution and bylaws. Wedid that refresh for many reasons, but the most pressing reason was that thecurrent practice of our leadership of the deacon and deaconess ministry (themen and women who serve at shock absorbers) was not only out of step with ourown bylaws and constitution, but we believed in some small but significant waysout of step with the Bible.
Now, let me beclear. There were and still are a number of great people doing great deacon anddeaconess work. The problem was not so much the small handful of reallydedicated people who were serving the church thanklessly as shock absorbers.Jay Martin comes to this building at all hours of the day and night to drainand fill values that most of us do not even know exist, let alone what eachvalve does. There are feveal “Jay Martins” at our church. The problem was thatmost of the ministry was not defined. So we spent time over six monthsrewriting those sections. The goal was to officially commission men and womenhere at the church to lead us in serving those in and outside of our church.
That was the plan.And we did all that—sort of. We rewrote the bylaws, and our membership approvedthem in April of last year. We were going to spend the next nine months buildingout that deacon and deaconess ministry. Instead, because our small staff got evensmaller, we’ve spent the last nine months scrambling and finding a new pastorand making sure the visible ministry of the church, the preaching of the word,and the invisible ministry of this church, knowing people and praying withthem, was happening as best as we could do.
In August I thoughtto myself that even if Pastor Jason were here this would have been the mostdifficult fall ministry season I’ve ever had at our church. There were fiveweddings to officiate, my ordination to prepare for, a shoulder surgery, and 30people who asked to join small groups, and oh, by the way, those small groups thatthe new people wanted to join didn’t exist yet. And something I didn’t realizebut now realize was that not only would it be challenging to be short-staffed, wasthat the meetings to find a new staff member would take an extra 2–4 hours aweek. It was a double whammy of missing man-hours and spending man-hours.
And yet through itall, the fears I expressed to some of you about attendance and giving andgrowth and other problems haven’t happened. None of them happened. We’ve neverbeen larger, our giving is strong, and people are wrestling with what the gospelmeans for their lives. In short, more people to love.
Growth can breakthings. But I will tell you that my desire to serve you and this church isstrong. This year has stretched thin my ability, but I’m here. And you’re here.And I want to challenge us to keep running together. It’s worth it.
Let me be verypractical at how you can apply this passage. What is your biggest frustration hereat church? I don’t mean that you don’t like the kind of coffee we serve. Whatdo you see as a real problem, something hindering our effectiveness at reachingpeople with the gospel and hindering the maturing of Christians among us? Thinkabout that problem. Write it on a card, maybe your sermon notes, and spend aweek praying about it. Ask God to give you insights into what you perceive theproblem to be and why it might be hurting our church and how you can be part ofthe solution.
If you don’t seeanything at our church that we can improve, you might not actually be here. Youmight be here, but you’re not really here. Remember, for them to see the plightof these widows, and for them to create a solution to that problem, they had toconsider the problems of the community their own problems. If you can walkthrough this church and see the problems of our church as a problem for ourleadership or as problems for someone else to fix, then to what extent is thisreally your church? I’m not talking to newcomers, but those who have beencoming for the last six months or a year or more. If this is your church, thenwe are in this together.
At a time when culturallya growing number of people are skeptical and cynical about institutions, if youare a Christian—if Jesus has changed you and adopted you into his family—then thispassage is calling you to sacrificially invest in the institution called the localchurch. It might be costly. But it will be worth it. It cost Stephen dearly. Hewas listed first, and he’s the first to die. This week, they lay hands on himand commission him to leadership. In next week’s passage, he’s dead.
But don’t miss allthe good that happened in the meantime.
3. The Results, v. 7
Look with me againat the summary comments in v. 7.
7 And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
A lot of reallywonderful things are mentioned in that verse. Lives are changed. Generationshave been changed. Family trees have been changed. The struggles that come withmore people to love doesn’t mean you are necessarily doing things wrong. Thestruggles of ministry and the blessings of God can co-exist, and they often do.They did in the book of Acts and they do here at our church right now.
And don’t miss thatline about the priests. Luke writes, “and a great many of the priests becameobedient to the faith.” The fiercest of all enemies can be saved. The way Jesusbuilds his church is by loving outsiders until they become insiders in thepower of the gospel. And if this is how Jesus builds his church—if Jesus evensaves priests who were so hard-hearted—it means that all the effort that isrecorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to reach the priests, andit means that all of the ministry so far in the book of Acts—the continued preachingamidst fierce opposition—it was not in vain.
Jesus loves hischurch, and then and now he is building his church with more and more people tolove.
