Acts 6:1-7
What happens if you build a house and then do nothing to it? In just ten or twenty years the house will be a wreck. The lawn will have become a little forest. Water pipes will have burst and the leaking water will have destroyed the floors. Mold and other plant life will have begun to grow inside the house. Some windows may have broken and birds and rodents will be living inside. It takes a lot of evenings and weekends and money to maintain a house and keep it in good order.
This is a good example of the second law of thermodynamics, known as entropy. This law states that systems in our universe move from order to disorder. Loosely understood, this means the universe is in a state of disintegration and energy is required to resist this move to disorder.
Entropy can also be applied to the social world. Relationships require energy and effort. If effort is not put into a relationship, the relationship dissolves. This is true with casual friendships, with marriage and it is true with our relationship with God.
Marriage takes work. If you donât believe this, ask anyone who is married. Marriage is not about falling in love and then relaxing and being happily married until death do us part. Marriage requires work to communicate and understand. Couples must take time to talk with each other. If a husband works during the day and sits in front of the TV watching sports in the evenings and on weekends with his buddies and interacts with his wife only to get a meal or be sexually satisfied, this is a marriage relationship that is disintegrating.
It takes effort for nations to be unified. Since 1990 there have been 30 new countries in the world formed by splits and only two new countries formed by mergers. Fifteen countries were created from the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Yugoslavia split into five countries and then fourteen years later one of these split again into Serbia and Montenegro. Namibia became independent of South Africa. The Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau gained independence as former colonies of the US. Czechoslovakia dissolved into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia. East Timor became independent of Indonesia.
30 countries resulting from splits and only two new countries were created from mergers: North and South Yemen merged to form a unified Yemen and East and West Germany merged to form a unified Germany.
The move to disorder can be seen from the most casual of friendships to the most intimate of relationships. It is seen with individuals and it is seen in nations. Entropy rules.
The move to disorder is part of our human condition. Disagreeing and fighting and splitting are what come naturally to us. It is what happens if we do nothing to prevent it.
It is what happens in the church. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, There are over 33,000 Protestant denominations. This does not include congregations of a couple hundred people or less which would significantly increase this number. Add to this the Catholic and Orthodox churches with their orders and we have a church that does not seem to reflect an answer to Jesusâ high priestly prayer for the church that was to follow him. (John 17)
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
In Luke 15 in the parable of the lost coins, Jesus said
I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.
What do you imagine is the reaction in heaven when yet another church has a fight and splits over irreconcilable differences?
From the unity of the early church the body of Christ has disintegrated into alienation, estrangement and conflict.
From the very beginning of church history there were tensions that split the church into factions. Some were theological, some were cultural, some were personality conflicts. It may be that over the years there have been good reasons why some churches split. When churches split there may be important issues at stake, but many times it is a petty and insignificant issue that acts as the cause of the split.
Many churches have split over issues as simple as the choice of a hymn book or the color of the carpet. There is a church in Louisiana in the south of the United States whose roof is green on one side and red on the other. This was done because some members of the church insisted on green and other members adamantly wanted red. The disagreement was so intense that the church was going to split because of it. Fortunately, a compromise was reached and the church did not split. Unfortunately, the red and green roof is a monument to the surrounding community of the disunity within the body of Christ.
When the church fights within itself it is quite discouraging. Somehow we expect opposition to come from outside the church. When we are looking out over the walls and then find ourselves attacked from within, it is very disillusioning.
In Acts 1-5 we have read of the birth of the church. Now in chapters 6-9 we begin to see the expansion of the church. After the introduction to this section on which we are focusing this morning, we will look at the martyrdom of Stephen, the expansion of the church into Samaria, then Ethiopia and finally the conversion of Saul who took the Gospel into the Gentile world.
Acts 6:1-7 serves as an introduction to the expansion of the church and in this introduction the first real opportunity for the church to split presents itself.
In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.
God cares about widows. In Deuteronomy when God is giving instructions about how to use tithe and how to dispense justice, he expresses his special care for the aliens, fatherless and widows. These were three categories of people who were not able to take care of themselves.
When James wrote about true religion he said:
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Property was passed from father to son and if there was no son, then the property was passed to the closest male relative. So widows needed to be helped.
The early believers operated out of a common pot. Money was given to the apostles and then it was distributed to those who had need. This worked fine when the church was smaller but as it grew, it became more complicated to distribute funds to those who had need and some felt the distribution was not equitable.
The church experienced rapid growth and the followers of Jesus were no longer all friends who had known each other for a long time. Now there were people in the fellowship whose names the apostles did not know and even people who did not speak the same language as the apostles.
As the church grew, so did the differences among the believers grow.
Who were the Grecian Jews and who were the Hebraic Jews?
The initial followers of Jesus were mostly Galilean Jews with the possible exception of Judas. You can see this because on the day of Pentecost, the Judean Jews were amazed at what was happening:
Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans?
After Pentecost, a large number of these Judean Jews joined the fellowship of believers. And even more joined when the people of Judea came from the towns and countryside surrounding Jerusalem to bring the sick and possessed to be healed by Peter and the other apostles.
By the time of this account in Acts 6, the majority of Hebraic believers would have been Judean.
The Hebraic believers spoke Aramaic as their mother tongue. This is a Semitic language that was used in the movie, The Passion of Christ. It is a language close to Hebrew and even Arabic speakers in Morocco could understand a lot of what was said in the film. Some of the better educated Hebraic Jews could speak Greek, the trade language of the eastern part of the Roman world. They worshiped regularly in the Temple and some were undoubtedly Levites and so served in the temple rituals.
Jesus was a Hebraic Jew. He spoke Aramaic. He spent his years of ministry in Judea. The Judean Jews were the ones most like Jesus. This part of the church could easily have felt superior to the Grecian Jews.
The Grecian Jews were Greek-speaking Jews. They belonged to what is known as the âJewish dispersion,â meaning the migration of Jewish families from Palestine to other nations of the ancient world. And there were a lot of Grecian Jews. Most large cities of the Roman Empire had a synagogue and estimates are that 10% or more of the Roman Empire was Jewish. There were a million Jews in Alexandria alone.
Although they spoke Greek as a trade language, their mother tongue was most likely the regional dialect of the city or area where they lived. What is important to remember is that they were not likely to speak Aramaic. The Hebraic Jews read from the Bible in Hebrew while the Grecian Jews read from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Septuagint.
What is also likely is that few of the Grecian Jews would have had a personal memory of Jesus. Did this make them feel spiritually inferior to the Hebraic Jews?
Why were there so many Grecian Jews in Jerusalem? They came for the annual festivals in Jerusalem, just as Muslims go each year to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. To make the trip to Jerusalem was an expensive proposition and so only the more affluent Grecian Jews would make this trip. If they were at the end of their lives and wanted to stay there, it meant they had money to do so.
This meant that the Grecian Jews in Jerusalem were wealthier as a whole than the Hebraic Jews. In fact, Barnabas who was singled our for having made a very generous donation to the church was a Grecian Jew who came from Cyprus.
Disparity in wealth might have been an issue that created tension. Cultural differences and misunderstandings might have created tensions. Certainly the different languages that were spoken created tensions.
This is something with which we are familiar here in Rabat. We worship each Sunday morning in a church that hosts a Korean service, followed by our English service and then the French service. In our English service, there are many for whom English is not their first language and even for those who have English as a first language, the accents spoken seem to be separate languages sometimes.
Language differences are probably my biggest frustration in living in an international community. It frustrates me that the work I put into sermons cannot be appreciated by those who are not fluent with the English I speak. I think I could have much stronger friendships with some people but am limited because we cannot communicate well with each other. I have seen conflict between two people that was the result of one person speaking English as a third language to someone speaking English as a fourth language. Each thought the other had heard what was said but the truth is that what was said and what was heard was not what was meant.
I would love to go back to the time the story in Genesis 11 says existed.
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
This would make the world a lot easier to live in. But this idyllic world was shattered when the people were confused and scattered.
That is why it was called Babelâbecause there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Entropy rules!
Although the early followers of Jesus wanted to be one body, reality intruded its ugly head and all of a sudden there were too many people with too many differences.
Can you see the potential for conflict? âWho do these Hebraic Jews think they are? They may have been with Jesus before his resurrection, but what difference does that make? We put most of the money into the pot but it is the Hebraic Jews who speak a language we cannot understand who are deciding who gets the money. They take care of their own widows but who is taking care of our widows? Barnabas should have given his money to help our part of the church.â
Us versus them distinctions were being made and the unity of the church was being threatened.
The early church was ripe for a split but they did not. What enabled them to maintain unity?
In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. 2 So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, âIt would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. 3 Brothers, 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 4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.â
5 This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. 6 They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.
This passage is often used to make the distinction in churches between elders who take care of the spiritual needs of the congregation and deacons who take care of the physical needs of the congregation. This is not what this passage is talking about.
We know from the further accounts of Philip and Stephen that they had a ministry of evangelism and preaching. Miraculous signs accompanied their ministry. They did far more than wait on tables.
There was an awareness that two distinct groups existed among the believers. When the apostles taught, someone needed to translate what they said into Greek so the Grecian Jews could understand what was being said. The miracle of Pentecost had ended and now when the apostles spoke, people no longer heard what was said in their mother tongue. The early Hebraic believers were well aware that a significant part of the fellowship was a distinct group.
The problem of caring for the Grecian widows was raised by the Grecian Jews and so when the apostles said
Brothers, 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 4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.
the believers chose from among the Grecian Jews to find these leaders. These seven all have Greek names because it is from among the Grecian Jews that they were chosen.
Did this happen naturally? Was this the work of the Holy Spirit? Or did the apostles speak to the Hebraic Jews and urge this course of action. Whether it was the Holy Spirit or the apostles, I suspect this is what happened. I think there was a deliberate decision made to select leaders for the Grecian part of the fellowship but we will have to wait until we get to heaven to hear the full story.
This is what the apostles did to avert conflict. What can we learn from their example?
What they did is rather simple and may seem obvious to us, but if the church had followed their example over the centuries and if we followed their example today, we would be an entirely different church.
They kept their focus on Jesus. They chose not to hold on to power. And they gave their blessing to the Grecian Jews.
They kept their focus on Jesus.
We will turn this responsibility over to them 4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.
This is so obvious and yet it is the most violated Biblical principle in the church. We are creatures of the earth and our emotional energy gets so easily sucked up by the affairs of this world that it is embarrassing. When I get really busy and absorbed in the periodic crises that come to churches and organizations, my instinct is to get up and get on with the business of the day and not take time out to sit with my journal and Bible and to pray. It is not difficult to ask God for help as I make my way to a meeting but it takes a lot of discipline and conscious awareness of my need for time with God to take time at the start of a busy day to sit, read, journal and pray.
I can imagine that some of you are thinking, âOK, Iâve heard this before. Tell me something I donât know.â But we have to be told this over and over because we forget it over and over.
It is quite stunning to me that so many Christians go through long stretches of time without having a regular, consistent time with God and then discover the benefits of taking time to be with God as though it is a new thought.
We choose to get distracted by our responsibilities and pleasures and it is when we come to a crisis because the pressures around us have become too intense that we come to our senses and return to a focus on God.
This may seem a very basic point but it is not only foundational, it is what keeps us spiritually alive.
A second lesson is related to this. The apostles kept their focus on Jesus and did not hold on to power.
How many organizations do you know who have responded to a threat to their leadership and control of the organization and gave up power to keep unity? I can think of lots of examples of people who have fought to maintain control and power but not the reverse.
The apostles could have viewed this complaint from the Grecian Jews as a threat to their leadership and created a huge conflict in the church by resisting this perceived challenge to their authority. But they did not. They recognized a need in the church for leadership they were not able to provide and gave up control for the sake of unity in the church.
The apostles continued to lead the church but they gave up control of a part of it they could not as effectively lead. They became smaller so the church could become larger.
We fight to the death for our organizations. The apostles gave up control to bring more life into their organization.
A third lesson is that not only did they not hold on to power, but they gave their blessing to this new group.
I think the apostles realized that whatever they did, this was a group that was going to go its own way. The differences between the Hebraic Jews and the Grecian Jews were too great and it only made sense for them to divide. The church divided into two groups but they did not split.
They divided into two groups and then in Godâs timing, the Grecian Jews were pushed out of the nest and took the Gospel into the wider world.
After Stephen was martyred
a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.
The Grecian Jews went out into Judea and Samaria but at least a portion of the Hebraic Jews remained in Jerusalem.
Because the apostles acted wisely, the unity of the believers was maintained even though they divided into separate groups.
A few years ago the EEAM church in Rabat suffered a bitter split and we are still facing the aftershocks of that today. How different it might have been if instead of a bitter split, the group that left had been sent out with the blessing of those who remained in this church building. How different it might have been if the group that left did so praying for Godâs blessing on those who remained?
When you sense that someone is going to leave your church, ministry or project and even if it hurts you that they want to leave, send them out with your blessing. No matter how much your pride is hurt, send them out with your blessing.
When Pilate questioned Jesus and tried to find out what Jesus had done to deserve this treatment by the Jewish leaders, Jesus told him: (John 18)
My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.
Why do we fight so fiercely for what is going to fade away? Fight for the Kingdom of God, not for your own part in it. Let power and control slip out of your hands. It is OK because the only part of your organization you control is the part that is going to fade away one day anyway. The part that will endure is not something you can control.
Speak and work for truth but do not hold on to power and control.
