| Reflections on Acts |
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Chapter 6
We have here in the fledgling church two distinct classes of people–a distinction that the church in years to come would try very hard to eliminate. But the Grecians were a category of people who had come to Judaism at one time in the past and had essentially for all intents and purposes become Jews. Yet they still were considered a different class by the Jews. I guess it was a form of racism, but it was a little more than that. It was religion based racism. The Jews of that time saw themselves as the chosen people. They were special before God and everybody else was, in their eyes, second class when it came to religion. The Jews had a very powerful tradition of taking care of the poor. It’s embedded in the law, it’s embedded in their oral law, it’s a part of their way of life. Perhaps those who were of the Grecians were not so well grounded in that. Those who were Hebrews took care of their widows but they didn’t bother taking care of the Grecians.
What they meant was that there were two kinds of jobs to be done. One was the day in and day out job of taking care of the physical needs of the poor and the helpless among them. It was the right thing to do. This care had risen up naturally in the church. When the need arose, the people organized themselves and took care of it. The problem was the church had grown so fast that there really was no organizational structure behind it at all. So the apostles got everyone together and said this doesn’t make any sense. We can’t leave the word of God and administer this thing. so here is what we will do:
This is the first example of a division of labor in the church, and the acknowledgment of two distinct areas of service. One was the "ministry of the word" and the other was a ministry to the physical needs of the church–taking care of people. These were the deeds that Jesus held up in the third parable of Matthew 25. The important deeds He listed were visiting the sick, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry. In other words, just taking care of people. And so this is a very important part of the duties of the church. The problem was that the apostles job was bearing witness of Jesus Christ, teaching the teachings of Christ. It was a ministry of the word. In other words, they were teachers, preachers, evangelists. Now here was a need that came along that was distinct from that. If you’ve ever been in the work of the ministry, you’ll realize how fast the normal, week to week needs of people in the church can consume your time–the needs for counseling, encouragement, a visit, or even the physical need of a little money so they can have some food in the house or some clothes for the kids. These things mount up and the larger a church becomes the larger problem it becomes. Now in a small church where everybody knows everybody else, you can work out that type of thing fairly readily. But with a church that grown to around 8000 people, it’s not hard to see how things like that could begin to become confusing. So, the apostles said, here’s how were going to deal with it. You look out among you 7 men honest report, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom whom we may appoint over this business. Now if this business was nothing more than money, and accounts and food moving and waiting on tables you don’t particularly need the men full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. You just need honest, reliable guys. So the task that was going to be given to these men of encouraging, leading and helping the church needed men who were full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom. They needed a lot of both, because they were also to be spiritual leaders among God’s people.
The laying on of hands in the Bible is a setting apart of a person or persons for a particular task. What’s interesting about this occasion is that the apostles did not go out and find cronies of theirs in the congregation and appoint over this business. They told the church to do the search.Why did they do that? Well, because of the very close way in which these men would be working with the church, it was extremely important that the people of the church trust them. So therefore, the church was required to have a part in the selection of these men. How did they do it? Luke doesn’t tell us, but we do know one thing: the apostles did not select them, the people did. If you’ve ever been involved with an organization especially a large church, you realize that there are people in the company who look really good to the people above them and who look like an absolute louse to the people below them. They toady up to the boss while they walk all over the people below them. And this is the risk that you take as a boss when you appoint someone you know to be in charge of your subordinates as opposed to appointing someone they know and trust. Now if we can get to the situation to where they trust the person and you trust the person, then we have what good leadership. That seems to be the idea in Acts 6. They searched out these remarkable men set them apart for this task. As a result, the word of God increased and the number of disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly. Note the words "in Jerusalem" So far they had not done anything outside of Jerusalem. Maybe one of two people had gone home and taken the gospel with them, but for the most part everything that was happening in relation to Christianity was still happening at Jerusalem.
Power often creates chaos, and it takes a little time to bring order to it. All of a sudden, if a great deal of spiritual power comes rolling into the church and great things begin to happen, the result can be chaos. It may take a little time for things to settle down, a little time for directions to be sorted out, for goals to become clear. In this case, as things settled down, the result was not a slowing down of the progress of the church, but an acceleration, including the conversion of some of those who had been in the priesthood and some of whom had been in opposition to the church prior to that time. Now it should come as no surprise that there is considerable difference between these 7 men who were ordained to this office. I expect some of them went right to work feeding widows and clothing people and taking care of little children and so forth. But one of them, a man named Stephen, was a man of considerable intellect who was also full of the Holy Spirit and he became quite a problem to the establishment in Jerusalem. Stephen is a man full of faith and power. There’s not much doubt that he would have been among the original 120 disciples who had the Holy Spirit fall on them on the Day of Pentecost, who had spoken in tongues
In Jerusalem at this time people tended to orient themselves in synagogues along the lines of things of things they had in common. It might be country of origin, country of birth, a common language. And each of these different synagogues would have had their own intellectual attitude, approach, interpretations. They would have all been adherents to Judaism, and they would have had most of the things they believed in common. But each synagogue would have had its own angle, its own philosophical approach. As Stephen became more active in public ministry, he became increasingly effective. This force the men of these synagogues to challenge him. Up to a point, this is understandable. The problem is that they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke. I have little doubt that Stephen had on occasion backed these fellows into a corner. The situation got so bad that they were willing to lie to stop Steven.
Liars, they hadn’t heard any such thing. But they had to stop Stephen. Whatever it took to stop Stephen, they to do it. They couldn’t prove he was wrong, they couldn’t refute his arguments, but they know he must be wrong because they had to be right.
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The
Sinless Life
Youth in Action |
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