In the sermon titled 'The Office of Deacon' by Scott Brown, the focus is on Acts chapter 6, where the early church appoints deacons to handle the distribution of resources, particularly to widows, to allow the apostles to focus on prayer and the ministry of the Word. The sermon highlights the cultural challenges faced by the early church, similar to those faced by modern churches, such as murmuring and dissatisfaction among believers. It emphasizes the importance of spreading the Word of God, maintaining unity, and the role of deacons in the church's organizational structure. The sermon also discusses the qualifications for deacons, emphasizing character and wisdom, and the need for church leaders to prioritize prayer and the Word over administrative distractions. It concludes with the importance of unity and the church's responsibility to care for the poor and spread the gospel.

Good morning. Please turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 6, and I will be reading verses 1 through 7. Now, in those days when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. Then the twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, It is not desirable that we should leave the Word of God and serve tables. Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.

But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word, and the saying pleased the whole multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith in the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch, whom they set before the apostles. And when they had prayed, they laid hands on them. Then the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith. Let's pray.

Oh Father, Would you help us to understand what you have for us from these beautiful words which say so much about our life together in the church and each one of us individually and the importance of the spreading of the Word of God. Oh Lord, I pray that you would come and help us to be involved in this very same ministry of the spreading of the Word of God. In Jesus' name, Amen. Well, I believe that this passage is about a number of things. It is particularly about the spreading of the Word of God.

And the people of God are first and foremost to be a people who know and who practice and then who communicate the Word of God in the culture in which they live so that the Word of God would be preserved in the earth when it is so desperately maligned as it is in every culture of the earth at every period of history and time. We are called to uphold the Word of God in the midst of a culture that is careening out of control. Our culture is very much like the culture in which this passage of Scripture was written. We are much like Rome. The Roman culture was the cradle, the place for the gospel was birthed, and the same challenges that the early church experienced are our challenges, and the same responsibilities that they had before the watching world and the culture in which they lived are our responsibilities.

I was interested to read again the words of Edward Gibbon, the great historian in his book The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, and he attributes a number of reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. And this unbelieving historian, not writing from a Christian worldview by any stretch of the imagination, says that the fall of the Roman Empire was a result of a number of things. I'll list some of them. The rapid increase of divorce and the undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis of human society. Number two, higher and higher taxes and the spending of public monies on bread and circuses.

Number three, a mad craze for pleasure and sport, sport becoming every year more and more exciting and brutal I'm quoting from his book the rise and fall of the Roman Empire number four the building of gigantic armaments with it when the real enemy is within and the decadence of the people themselves. Number five, the decay of religious faith, faith fading into mere form, which has lost all contact with reality. Well, This challenge that the Roman Empire faces is the same challenge that every culture of believers faces. In Acts chapter 6 comes and records for us the genius of the organization of the church as delivered from God, even though the great kingdoms of the earth might malign the word of God, it is to the church to spread the word of God. And the church itself, with its own organizational structure, facilitates the spreading of that word.

The steadying factor in every church, in every community, and in every nation is the teaching of the word of God and the spreading of it through the ministry of the local church. And Acts chapter 6 is about the spread of the gospel. And the section that we're in begins and ends with the same principle of the spreading of the Word of God. And there's nothing more pleasing to God, there's nothing more important to God than the spreading of His holy word. And this passage makes it very clear.

And the Word of God needed to spread, and at the same time, a ministry maintained to destitute widows who desperately needed help from the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. But in this context of the spreading of the Word of God, we also encounter the very first case of murmuring in the church. A murmuring raises up its ugly head in a timely manner for the enemies of Christ to stop the spreading of the Word of God. There already was corruption in the church and the judgment of Ananias and Sapphira to strike fear into all of the hearts of the church there and our church today that we would turn from sin in all of its forms as much as we can. But Satan attacks the church now with murmuring, with gossip, with discontentedness.

And Acts 6 brings us a case of these very unfortunate circumstances, but we see that God used it for an even further spread of His glory and of his word. The devil is roving around as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour by sowing seeds of dissension. And here we see envy, misunderstanding, or whatever it was was carried through the murmurings of the Hellenistic Jews who had who thought they had been shorted or were actually shorted in the distribution of resources to them. And they were expressing dissatisfaction in the form of murmuring in the church. We learn, particularly from the Old Testament, of the devastating impact on an individual soul who murmurs.

We see tremendous judgments to us, to our eyes, outlandish responses to murmuring and dissension and gossip, in particular in Israel as they're wandering in the wilderness. And here it raises its head in the form of the outward expression of dissatisfaction in the hearts of the Hellenistic Jews who didn't feel like they were getting their share. There are many things we could say about dissatisfaction and the murmurings that come from it. The first thing that I would just like to say is typically murmuring and dissatisfaction comes when we have lost an appreciation for the provision of God for us. God provides certain things for us.

He does not provide the same thing for all of us. And that leaves us wide open for dissatisfaction and envy. We see that we don't have what someone else might have, and so we have envy in our hearts. But there is a, at its root, dissatisfaction holds within it the poisons of a dissatisfied spirit, of an unthankful heart, of a heart that's rejected the gifts that God has given. And we cease to be like Joseph who is in prison yet he praised God.

Joseph who has made a slave yet he praised God for it. We lose that sense in the midst of what God has delivered to us. A murmuring spirit rises within us and first of all it destroys us and it may even destroy the whole church. This case before us we find God working in a mighty way through the wisdom of the apostles to head it off. So through this context of murmuring and the story of how it was handled, are many insights regarding the structural operation of the church, the offices of the church, and the division of labor of the church, as well as the beauty of our calling together, and that is to spread something so precious, so beautiful and perfect, something so refreshing and wonderful and happiness producing the Word of God.

And here we find in the church these new patterns were established that allowed for all of these things to happen. I really enjoyed what Calvin said about this and what he said about this is true of all of our trials that we encounter. And I know many of us are going through trials and difficulties and roadblocks and box canyons as it might seem to us. Here's what Calvin says about this conflict. He said, good laws have taken their beginning of evil manners.

And that's true of this how out of the ashes of a devastating situation of something that could have been summarily destructive arise a new organization of benefit for all in the early church and for even us today. We experience the blessings And I would suppose that there are millions of widows today who are cared for who would not have been cared for had not this gossip and dissension had happened. Of course God could have raised up this in any way he desired, but this is the way that he desired to do it. Now there are those who genuinely believe that there are no fixed patterns for the church and of course we don't believe that here. We believe that there are specific offices with specific roles and responsibilities and the office of elder and deacon are in the midst of that and they are required by scripture and that this passage of scripture delivers to us at least the beginning, the beginning of it all.

So from this first big test of brotherly love comes the first major establishment of the division of labor in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are statements to that effect here. There is the creation of a new administrative function in the church, which will continue to this day. We've had the joy of relationship and reading Alexander Strouk on this matter, And he says that this passage of scripture is very helpful to get deacons out of the boardroom and the building maintenance mentality and into the people-serving business. And I think That's a beautiful summary of what we see happening here in the early church.

Okay, so along with the growth came discontentment in the church. Verse 1 makes that so clear. If you could bear down on verse 1. Now in those days when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists. Now we are immediately encouraged that the church is multiplying.

A marvelous thing is happening, and I mean it is multiplying maybe like never before. We're talking about 20, 000 new believers on the ground right here. This is a stunning outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Would that God do that today? Only God can do any of this, but we pray that He would do it in our day.

But it happened here, But while they were in one accord, they came to be in discord. And this discord had specific roots. While the apostles were serving the widows at tables, there was either a real or a perceived inequality in the service. And this first crisis of unity in the church was over money. Isn't that interesting?

The first dissension in the church was over money and the distribution of resources. I don't know if you've ever seen churches destroyed over this route of dissension over money. I see some of you shaking your heads. I've not seen that, but I am aware that it happens quite regularly. Sometimes it moves from money to the color of the carpet or something like that.

And I've heard a number of amazing stories of churches being destroyed because someone was offended and it grew in a mighty way regarding this area of money. The service and the collection and the distribution of material things is in one way a liability to every heart in the church. And it certainly was to these Hellenistic Jews as they became offended at it. And so There's always a particular danger at work in every church. And you can see evidence of this in every time of revival and renewal of the church.

You can see it even in maybe perhaps even dead times where as people come into the church one of the problems is that they bring themselves and they bring immaturity, they bring wagging tongues, they bring maybe an entire history of offense in their families and a family culture of dissatisfaction and then it spreads all over the church. The church is always in danger of immaturity in her ranks. This doesn't mean that we remove the immature. It means that we do better at instructing and helping people come in line with Holy Scripture regarding the thoughts and the meditations of their hearts and then how it works itself out in the speaking, regarding the difficulties and even the failures that every church experiences. So there's a particular danger of immature people in the church.

I have a book that was published in 1670 by Richard Baxter called The Cure for Church Divisions. He has an entire chapter dedicated to how pastors and elders should deal with immature people in the church. It's just an assumption that there will be immaturity in the church, but how would we deal with it? This is something that as leaders we need to grapple with and learn how to do exceedingly well at it so that blessing occurs in the lives of all of us who are immature. All of us are immature in so many ways.

And God has brought us into the church so he would grow us up and mature us. He would edify us year by year for the purposes of His glory. Now, so there was immaturity in the church, there were all these pressures of growth and influx of all these new people, brand new believers, and bringing with them many of their old practices and patterns right into the church and it caused difficulty. It's a blessing that God would rescue sinners, but it also provides challenges for all those who are in the church and who are mature to come and care for those people and to help them to act properly. These were Hellenists, they were Hellenistic Jews, they were Greek speaking Jews, they had been dispersed during the diaspora and had come back to Jerusalem, they spoke Greek, they read the Septuagint, which was the Greek version of the Old Testament.

Because they were living in Greek cities, they had absorbed a number of the cultural perspectives of those around them. None of us can help but be affected by our culture. It's completely impossible for us to be a cultural. And so they came into the church and They had these Greek perspectives and perhaps they were despised as second class Christians in this early church. Perhaps they didn't dress or talk or think exactly like everyone else.

They might not have been quite like-minded enough, but yet they were God's people and they needed love and encouragement and help. At the same time, they had fallen into the trap of dissension. And the apostles deal with this in a beautiful way. Now I'm assuming that these widows were truly poor, that they were destitute. I used that word earlier because I think that's what they were.

The practice in the early church from what we know from the New Testament was that the front line of care for a widow was the family. If the family was non-existent or destitute, it was to the church. Now, that I know trivializes a number of the rules and regulations for dealing with widows, but that's kind of the top level view of it. So I'm assuming that these widows were profoundly poor, and their poverty offered them no virtue at all in this sense. Greed and envy is not just the territory of the rich and the powerful.

Greed and envy fills the heart of every person, rich and poor. And it's a liability for, for all of us. So the Hebrews were, seemed to be holding the purse strings. They weren't distributing the funds fairly. And it's quite possible, and the, the passage doesn't tell us.

We don't know if they were genuinely being shorted or not. We're not even told what, what, who, whose fault it was. We don't even know where to pin the blame, except that we do know that the complaining is blameable. Whether it was quote unquote justified dissension, we don't know. But something was definitely wrong.

Matthew Henry makes a great statement. He says, note in the best-ordered church in the world, there will be something amiss, some maladministration or another, Some grievances or at least some complaints, those are the best that have the least and the fewest. So I just think that we should acknowledge that problems are part of every church, even the glorious first century church with all of its great evangelism and discipleship that took place there. And one of the problems with the church, quite honestly, is that it includes people like you and I who haven't been properly bred by the Lord Jesus Christ, and we bring ourselves into the church, and for this we need much mercy. So we see along with the growth, we see discontentment.

Secondly, we see an undesirable condition is identified by the apostles. Verse 2 says, then the twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples. Now notice this, this is a huge crowd, this is a multitude, thousands upon thousands. Was it 10, 000, 20, 000? We don't know.

But it was a multitude. They gathered together and the apostles stood up and they explained the problem to the crowd. The twelve gathered up the whole church and they said to the church that there was something that wasn't desirable. There was something wrong with this picture. And what was not desirable, there was something that should not be brought upon them, and that was that they would neglect the word of God in prayer for the serving of tables.

That was the undesirable condition that was identified. Apparently the apostles were administrating all this. They were serving the widows personally with their own hands and it stole away from them their ability to understand and then communicate the Word of God so that it could properly spread. They were involved in these other things that were actually undesirable for the progress of the gospel. Now, it's always easy for church shepherds to get sidetracked.

There are probably at least two categories of sidetracking that happens. One category might be an overabundance of administration in the church, hundreds of programs to administer and run. And pastors often end up with very little time for prayer and meditation on the Word because they're cranking so many gears. We think this is one of the great liabilities of the modern church. It is so incredibly complex.

It's like a massive corporation that needs huge administrative resources. I'm aware of pastors who administer all week long and maybe by Friday or Saturday at best they get to their study for their teaching of their people. That's because there's the crush and the pressure of so much administration is upon them. So there are internal pressures that would sidetrack us. And then there are outside kinds of sidetrackings that can take place.

All kinds of interests that we might engage ourselves in, that we neglect the interests of the Word of God. This is one of the particular difficulties of pastoring in our day and age are the thousands of websites and emails that pastors receive. It's so easy to get distracted with all these things and never find ourselves letting the word of Christ dwell richly within us. It's a very dangerous time as it has always been dangerous. Satan will always find a way to distract church leaders from the ministry of the Word and prayer.

One of the things we try to do when we have elders meetings is we spend the first hour praying so that we don't do any business. Once you start talking about business, it just absolutely overcomes you. And then it is stolen. The ministry of prayer is always being stolen by conversation about administrative tasks. And so it's always a difficulty that we have to fight against through normal routines of our meetings together.

And so the leaders in church need to create a lifestyle that allows for prayer and the ministry of the Word, and they need to always understand their vulnerability to it and be watching it carefully so that they don't fall into this trap of undesirable conditions as these apostles did in verse 2. And then number 3, a solution is implemented, qualified deacons are appointed, verses 3 through 6 explain how all this happened. Now it's interesting, maybe you've probably seen this, the term deacon doesn't even appear in this text. By the way, the term deacon doesn't even appear in the book of Acts. Now the term diakonos does and it appears here, but The technical term for the office does not really appear here.

But what we see here is the beginning of something that's verified and implied in many other texts of Scripture. The Christian church has almost universally referred to this as the beginning of the Deacon office. There are some who say no, it was just a response to an administrative problem in the church. Well either way, the office of Deacon is well argued for in other places. I believe that this was the beginning of the office of deacon, but again it isn't such a massive issue.

The office of deacon is very clearly identified in other places in scripture. But I think I'll hang with hundreds of others, and interpreters over history to take this same interpretation. How many? There were seven that were selected. Does this mean that every church should always have only seven deacons?

No, I don't believe that. But there were seven who were selected here. We know a lot about Stephen and we know a lot about Philip, but we don't know hardly anything about the rest of them. There's conjecture about a number of them. For instance, Nicholas, some believe he was the one referred to in the book of Revelation chapter 2, who is the head of the Nicolaitans from the Lord Jesus says, those whom I hate.

We have no evidence that that was really who it was, but there's really nothing more said about them. What was the gender of the deacons? They were male. Of course we know in the New Testament church that women were not put on the shelf. They had a vigorous ministry of managing the spiritual administrative functions of the home.

They taught their children. They were mentors to one another. We see many godly women in the book of Acts. We see Dorcas and Lydia and Phoebe and Priscilla. We see Philip's daughters.

We see these marvelous expressions of godliness there in the book of Acts. But here, these were specifically seven men, men, not women. And the women in the New Testament, we never find them in leadership roles. We don't find them teaching anywhere in the New Testament testimony of the church, but we do see them operating beautifully in a number of different contexts. Where did they come from?

They came from among you. That's something we need to really stop on, I think, for a minute. Churches should develop their leadership from within. This is the normal pattern. Is it wrong to have a leader come from outside the church?

Well, not necessarily. But the biblical pattern really is that leaders are developed and known from within. That's the normal pattern. You know, I know there are a number of Christian executive search services that place people in churches all around. It's not exactly what we see here.

We see leaders rising from the within out of the knowledge base and the relationship base in that local church. And it's the very best pattern. The qualifications, there are three that are listed here. They're of good reputation, they're full of the spirit, and they're full of wisdom. And they have righteous judgment, they're handling money, they're handling difficult situations that here they're having to navigate, you know, the potential for dissension and dissatisfaction among those who they're serving.

Anybody who's ever tried to be involved in ministry of resources to the poor knows that it's really messy business. There are a lot of very difficult situations that sometimes you bang your head against the wall and you say, oh Lord, what do we do? What's the right thing to do in this situation. We just, we don't know what the perfect track is here. So you need to have men who generally make good decisions and they have a good reputation for it, men who are full of the Holy Spirit, and men who have godly wisdom about situations.

They're not easily misled, they're not easily driven by their emotions, but they are informed by godly wisdom in every way. Now, in this whole area of qualification, 1 Timothy chapter 3 gives us a number of qualifications. I've got here up on the overhead a comparison list of the qualifications for deacons and elders and it's very interesting. The qualifications for deacons in 1 Timothy chapter 3, some are the same as elder qualifications, but there are some distinctions. And so Jason made this slide up some time ago and he sent it to me the other day, but I thought it would be helpful just to help us see the differences.

First of all, the first qualification in 1 Timothy 3 is that deacons are reverent or they are dignified. Secondly, they're not double-tongued. Now neither one of these are qualifications for elders in their exact form. But when you get to the third, not addicted to much wine, there's the exact crossover qualification for the elder. Not fond of sordid gain is the qualification for a deacon, and it's the same qualification for an elder on the other side.

Holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience, that's a qualification for a deacon but we don't see that one listed as a qualification for an elder. It doesn't mean that that should be part of a guy's life, but specifically it's just not mentioned. Then beyond reproach as a qualification for a deacon, and then beyond reproach for an elder. And then the wife's character is specifically mentioned in a qualification for deacons, but not for elders. The marriage relationship is referred to, but this very specifically speaks of the wife's character that she's not given to gossip.

This is probably particularly, I believe this is such a particularly relevant qualification because of the handling of money, perhaps knowing inside details that no one else will know. No one else should ever know this woman has to be a tight-lipped woman in order for her husband to qualify for the office of deacon. The husband of one wife, again we have the same crossover qualification with elders, and then a good manager of his children and his own household. And again, that also is duplicated in the qualification for elder. And then of course elders have further qualifications that are not listed for deacons.

They're temperate, they're prudent, they're respectable, hospitable, able to teach, and not pugnacious, they're not violent. So that's the range of qualifications. The offices in the early church and in the modern church have their qualifications. And so deacons should be found within the realm of those qualifications. In the modern church, and I'm sure it's always been that way, it's easier to make men deacons who are great businessmen, or they're just crack shots administratively, but you know that's not really what the Bible would teach us to do.

The Bible is always driving us toward character, toward relationship to Christ, toward holiness, toward dependence, all these things that are implied here toward the kinds of relationships that they are able to maintain. So those are the qualifications. Then we move to the task, and the task is to be put over this business, and that is, of course, the business of ministering to these poor widows. And this raises up the importance of the deployment of possessions, of the wealth that God brings together in the church for what purposes? Well, at least for the taking care of the poor, the hearts of the people were very generous in the early church.

We see really a very stunning and also very convicting spirit in the early church that really should cause us to rethink all of our priorities about our possessions, because they freely gave in order to provide for people who were needy. D. Martin Lloyd-Jones makes a very amazing statement. He says, these earthly treasures are so powerful that they grip the entire personality. They grip a man's heart, his mind, and his will.

They tend to affect his spirit, his soul, and his well-being. Whatever realm of life we may be looking at or thinking about, we shall find these things are there. Everyone is affected by them. They are a terrible danger. And he's talking about the danger of hoarding resources, of not having a mind or a heart or any operational care for the poor.

And this task is a task that we must engage in. It's difficult for us in the context that we live in because we don't have the profoundly poor right around us. The poorest of the poor drive cars and have televisions and they always eat. There are some exceptions, but generally the abundance of our nation is so dramatic that we don't see the profoundly poor. That doesn't mean that we withhold our resources from one another.

But we have unique situations here because we live in such an affluent world. We're so terribly affected and blinded by it. I'm not sure we can see clearly at all on this issue. We really, as for us, we in our church, we really need the Holy Spirit to come and give us great conviction and deeds in this area that God would reform us and help us in it. So the task is to be over this business.

The church should be in this business, we should be in this business, and then the reason, the reason is so in verse four, we will give ourselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the word. Don't miss the word continually, It would keep you from many things if you're involved in this because you would be involved in it continually. It would shortchange many other areas of life so that there would be a continuous involvement in prayer and the ministry of the Word. If a man would take on the office of elder, then he would have to be very highly focused. He would not be able to be involved in all the affairs of daily life that are legitimate affairs, but that he would have to focus time, he would have to eliminate certain things so that this continual involvement in prayer and the ministry of the Word could take place.

And the result was that it pleased the multitude. Imagine pleasing 10 or 20, 000 people. That's interesting. Hey, that's a miracle in and of itself right there. The third miracle in the early church was right here.

It pleased the multitude. And then there was a commissioning that took place. There's a commissioning, this is point number four of these seven in verse six. And the commissioning was signified by laying on of hands. They chose these men and it says here that they laid, and when they had prayed, they laid hands on them.

Now a couple things here just to step back. Act 6 gives us an orderly process for selecting deacons. First, the congregation selected them, and it's very clear that it was the congregation who selected the deacons. And then they were submitted to the apostles, and the apostles verified and put them into service. The congregation didn't put them into service.

The congregation selected them, and then there was this structure of authority and responsibility among this church in Jerusalem. The apostles verified their fitness apparently and then put them into service. Now the laying on of hands is an interesting subject. We see the practice in a number of places in scripture and it's typically, the practice is used when there is the consecration of a person or a task or the identification of something in particular and there are many references we just can't go over here this morning, but in the Old Testament you see it as a conveying a blessing or even identifying a sacrifice or transferring sin in the New Testament. You see it as the conveyance of blessing, the healing power of the Holy Spirit, a number of different things like that, the conveying of a spiritual gift to Timothy.

There don't really seem to be any rules or regulations for this practice, and it seems to be done in a number of different kinds of circumstances. And God's people are free to lay hands on one another as they see it being appropriate. I think probably most churches don't lay hands on people because of maybe perhaps abuses or strange restrictive doctrines about it or over exalting it or giving it some kind of power that it might not necessarily have. But I believe that it's a practice, it's a legitimate practice, and that it should be done carefully and without inordinate rules and regulations and expectations. That's just my view of it as I read the different practices, different places that it's practiced in the New Testament.

Well, their identification or their consecration by the laying on of hands was the mechanism, It was sort of the line in the sand that put them into service. Now, the deacons here were not the elders' assistants. They operated this ministry according to the wisdom that God would give them, and it was a ministry to the poor. And it is always to the church to be ministering to the poor. And then fifthly, you see the impact.

It was dramatic. If you have an outline in front of you, you'll see this last point. The impact was beautiful. It was dramatic. There were three results.

The Word of God spread. And the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem and then something really amazing happened. The hardest of hearts, the most encumbered by tradition, many of them were coming to the faith. This is wonderful. You think of the people who would be most jaded to the gospel.

The priests were those. They had already crucified the Lord just a few days earlier. And they had hardened their hearts against the message. But now God opened their hearts and it says here that many of the priests were coming to the faith. Think of what a relief this must have been to the priests.

They had been in this daily repetition sacrifice of blood and they would be brought in to the Lord Jesus Christ and He would fulfill all the sacrifices and they would stop and they would rest. They'd been working for the forgiveness of their sins all of their lives and now they would rest in the grace of Jesus. They would realize that all of their human sacrifices were nothing and that God was merciful toward them and that He would wash them in His blood once and for all and then He would fulfill all of His promises to sanctify them and take them to heaven even in the midst of their knowledgeable weakness and sinfulness. So these priests are coming to the faith. Well, okay, our passage of Scripture, It opens up with this devilish threat against the church, dissension, murmuring in the church, and then you see this swift response on the part of the apostles to handle the problem.

And then the section ends with an even greater multiplication of the church and these precious priests coming to the faith. The hardest of hard, the most jaded of jaded coming into the faith and more blessing being unleashed. It was just a marvelous, marvelous picture of the glory of God working in the church. Okay, let me give you some applications that I think are relevant. First of all, our best efforts are corrupted in some way.

There were either imperfections in the implementation of the apostles or imperfections in the hearts of the people or their perceptions were warped, but somewhere there was corruption in the system. Somewhere. Nobody gets blamed for corruption in the system for some reason in this passage. And it just demonstrates the truth about every church that I've ever seen or ever been a part of or ever been a member of establishing. And that is that there's always human weakness mixed with whatever good thing that's going on and So we must be patient with one another in the midst of it We ought to be humble in all of our judgments We we should we should be we should handle this our problems in the same way that this was handled.

We end up with Christ as the center of it all and the murmuring cease. Number two, order in the church is important. If the gospel would spread, it would Do so in a church where there is order that somehow facilitates the spreading of it. There's some people who are against organization. That's not a biblical idea.

There are probably some extremes here. You have massive organization and administration that is exemplified in a number of, you know, historical models that we can look at. Or there's complete lack of organization, complete lack of authority and structure. Those are the two extremes. The book of Acts provides for us though, I think, you know, reasonable structure that allows for the right things to be happening.

Good organization gave the apostles freedom to focus on what would bring long-term blessing to the church and to the people. And so here it's so that the the leaders are able to be devoted to the Word of God continually and to prayer. This just should be something that we fulfill here in our own midst, that we would set aside, that Jason and I, the elders now, would be free to set aside so that this continuing focus on the word and prayer. I certainly do have that now, and I'm so grateful for it. It is such a blessing to be able to have that freedom.

If I managed it perfectly, that would be even better. And then thirdly, the church is designed by God to be hard at work, to meet the needs of the poor. There always ought to be people allocated to this task. We're a new church. We ought to allocate people to this task.

In fact, in the next short period of time, we want to allocate deacons for this task. Our first task is to establish elders. Everybody's really gone through the process. In the next few weeks, we're going to conduct membership interviews and then just the final putting together of the structure of our church. The church is designed by God to be hard at work at meeting the needs of the poor.

We are going to appoint all of us together, you know, are going to appoint deacons for this task. And then fourthly, don't forget the priority of unity for the spreading of the gospel. The murmurings are always a threat to the church. They will always work to undo it. Satan always attacks in different ways and often he attacks with murmurings and we must guard against it and be very diligent to preserve all of God's blessed ways regarding the uses of our hearts and our tongues.

And then, fifthly, What is our main business? And it's this, the spread of the Word of God and the care for the poor. And this is the task of the church. These are elements of our main business together. And we ought always be asking ourselves, how and where can we take the gospel beyond where it is now?

How and where can we take the gospel beyond where it is now? How and where can we take the teaching of the Word of God to spread it in the community and in the world? We have internal responsibilities for the Word. We have community responsibilities to declare the Word of God. And we also have global responsibilities.

And the book of Acts makes that very clear that this is the pattern of the church. Well, the Word of God is the only thing that will bring the dry bones back to life in the world and even in the church. The words of the Lord Jesus are spirit and they are life and Here we see them spreading. Would it be so among us that God would give us such an inordinate focus on His Word that it would dwell richly in all of us, that it would spread in the same way that we would be feeding on it, we would be speaking it and living it everywhere we go. Would you pray with me?

Oh Lord, we pray for this same beautiful experience of the spreading of the Word of God. We pray for good administration of the church. We pray for the destruction of the wiles of the devil against us in murmurings. We thank you, Lord, for this great example in showing us both the dangers of mammon and envy, and at the same time the glory of your grace in the church which would rescue a church like this one from these things and then cause more care for the poor and more spreading of the word Lord what could this be true of us Would you grace us with this gift? Amen.