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 the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It would not be right 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 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.’ 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. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.
Acts 6:1-7 NIVUK
You might be aware that there are people who have rediscovered an ancient, and long-discredited belief. They believe, against every shred of evidence, and apparently unironically, that the earth is flat.
It may (or may not) surprise you that most ‘flat-earthers’ are American. But their belief has a fundamental weakness: it just does not stand up to scrutiny. Thousands of years of science, photographs from space and the experience of every long distance pilot or sailor will quickly tear their belief to shreds.
It just isn’t practical.
Maybe that’s how you feel about the three last meditations we have had on love. It’s nice. It’s pretty. You might even (incorrectly) think that it’s romantic.
But practical? That’s another question entirely.
Paul is about to prove you wrong. He now moves unto two practical, real-world applications of the love he has just talked about so eloquently.
These applications are how the church deals with a burning problem that have caused numerous problems throughout history and has not gone away now.
That problem is the problem of division.
How do we deal with division?
There is no point putting our head in the sand. Division exists. It exists whenever sinful people form a community and try to get along.
It is inevitable.
The problem is not division itself per se. The problem is how we deal with it.
Before we look at the two important issues Paul discusses in 1 Corinthians, we will take a look at how the Early Church dealt with division the first time it reared its head and see the practical principles we can learn from it.
The first of these is that we should acknowledge the cause.
And there is a genuine cause here. The Jewish widows who had adopted Greek culture and language were being neglected when the church was handing out food.
This was quite a loaded situation.
The Hebraic Jews looked down on the Hellenic Jews. They thought they had ‘sold out’ to popular Greek culture.
The Hellenic Jews looked down on the Hebraic Jews. They thought they were sanctimonious legalists.
Both groups were bound by Jewish law to obey this command:
When you have finished setting aside a tenth of all your produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, you shall give it to the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied.
Deuteronomy 26:12 NIVUK
They were required to take care of widows.
So this was a truly contentious issue.
The apostles were all Hebraic Jews. Hellenist Jewish widows were being overlooked in the provision of food. Of course, this was cause for complaint – particularly as the widows being overlooked were all from the same cultural group.
From the outside, it looked like bias and favouritism.
This was serious. If the issue was not dealt with swiftly, sensitively and efficiently, it could have a major impact on the spread of the Gospel throughout Judaism and into the Gentile world.
The apostles needed a solution.
And their first solution is to acknowledge that there is an issue: that the Hellenic Jewish widows are being overlooked, and that this is wrong.
We cannot be blind to the fact that there are huge forces at work in our modern world that seek to divide society and categorise us all as separate. Let me name a few: race, gender, class, education, sexuality, age. None of these are new. They just take on new forms of expression.
It will not do us any good to ignore these issues. They will come back to bite us if we don’t.
It’s as if you were gardening and you found something metallic. So you dig around it and realise it’s an unexploded bomb or a land mine. There is no way you'll ignore that. You’ll call the army and get it dealt with.
These issues are unexploded bombs in our churches. They are landmines waiting to blow up the unwitting and unwary. We cannot ignore them.
We see in these verses that at no point did the Twelve dismiss or ignore the issue. Instead, through their words and actions, they admitted it. In doing so, they cut through the noise and bluster that always exists in these situations and validated the negative feelings of those who felt aggrieved.
And this is vitally important.
In doing so they communicated that the issue was important and worth doing something about.
Imagine for a second if you had an issue that really irked you. If you took it to someone who could solve it for you, but they didn’t take you seriously, that would make the issue a thousand times worse.
But if they understood and sought to help you, your burden would start to lift.
Effectively, that is what is happening here.
Nowadays, there wee those who will do anything for power, and that includes seeking to manipulate age-old, festering grudges and using these to make a play for power and fame.
We should always be wary of people like that.
However, there are modern issues where we can absolutely understand why people are hurting: slavery, discrimination, bigotry, poverty, etc. These are wrong. Just wrong.
Generations have been ensnared by them. So when we find people bringing the painful legacy of these issues into church, we simply cannot tell them that it happened a long time ago so it has no relevance now. It has – for them.
These Hellenist Jewish widows took their issues to Hebraic Jewish men to sort out. That must have taken a lot of courage. But it also took a lot of understanding on the part of the apostles to understand and validate their issues.
We must seek to do the same.
After acknowledging the issue, the Twelve also understood their priority:
So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It would not be right 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 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.’
Acts 6:2-4
Two things are often overlooked here.
Firstly, the Twelve understood that their priority was prayer and the ministry of the Word. They had a clear idea of what they were called to do.
This is absolutely vital, and yet often misunderstood. Do we, as the Body of Christ, understand what God has called us to do? And are we concentrating on doing it?
Nowhere in all of Scripture is the church commanded to be a social club or a matchmaking agency or a museum of our personal tastes. Yet in many of churches, these are what we find.
This is the purpose of the church:
Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’
Matthew 28:18-20 NIVUK
The purpose of the church is to make disciples. That’s it. Nothing else.
But here’s the thing: the Twelve recognise here that, although their purpose is to pray and carry out the ministry of the Word, this is still an issue that needs to be dealt with. They could not neglect the Word, but they could also not neglect this work.
Why?
Because it was clear from the mission Jesus gave them that the Gospel should spread to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). The ends of the earth included Hellenist Jews. Could you imagine for a second the negative effect it would have on the spread of the Gospel among them if the Twelve would allow for their widows to be neglected?
So the Twelve’s core purpose was prayer and the ministry of the Word, but if they neglected this apparently peripheral issue, the fulfilment of their core purpose could be at risk. That meant they had to do something.
This explains why they took the wise decision that follows. It wasn’t that correcting the food distribution of food was a side issue and unimportant. No, it was that the ministry of the Word and prayer was crucially important, and could not be negatively affected by issues with food distribution.
This is the second issue that is often overlooked. As believers we either don’t give the ministry of the Word and prayer sufficient priority or we prioritise then so much that, to repeat an old saying, we become ‘too heavenly minded to be any earthly good’.
Consider, for a moment, pastors who spend so much time working for their church that they neglect their family.
Or missionaries who scamper off at the drop of a hat to preach the Gospel just about anywhere, and habitually dump their children in boarding schools thousands of miles away.
Or ministry workers who can spend hours fixing someone else’s broken child while their own child is slowly falling apart.
Often we forget that, as Christians, what speaks the loudest is not the words we preach but the life we live. And the part of the life we live that speaks the most is the way we love. If people hear us preach the Gospel but see a broken family behind us, they will not hear our words because the mess left by our neglect will drown them out.
It’s the same with church. How can we expect anyone to hear the Gospel if we can't find a way to solve the niggling relationship issues in our church?
When it comes to the ministry of the Word and prayer, relationship issues are not peripheral: they are front and centre.
In the oddest of places – Song of Songs – we find this odd little verse:
Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.
Song of Songs 2:15 NIVUK
If anyone had ever seen a little fox, you will know that they are just incredibly cute and appealing. However, they are also fearless and careless and thoughtless. They don't set out to ruin your garden, but they can.
What if, by not taking care of the little niggly relationship issues, it is as if we are inviting the little foxes to come in and ruin our vineyard?
After acknowledging the issue and setting their priorities – and, of course, realising how the issue affects their priorities – the Twelve did a very wise thing: they took action.
And what an action it is!
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 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.’ 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. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.
Acts 6:3-6 NIVUK
These men have three very important characteristics:
They are full of the Spirit – these are spiritual men, not given to carnality
They are full of wisdom – they will take right decisions and do what is right
They all have Greek names and are likely all Hellenists
That’s right: the Hebraic Twelve recognise an issue with the distribution of food to the Hellenist widows by Hebraic Christians, so they appoint Hellenic Christians to take care of it.
The Hebraic Christians appoint a committee of Hellenist Jews to serve Hellenist Jews.
Think about modern business values: diversity, representation, inclusion. They’re not at all new – the Apostles did it first!
So how would our church change if we followed their example?
How would our church change if we stopped ducking the issues tearing our society apart and again dealt with them with sensitivity and wisdom?
This huge decision had massive ramifications.
Firstly, these seven men are the first deacons. Isn’t that interesting? The first deacons were men appointed to take the burden of resolving a burning issue off the apostles’ shoulders, were full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, and were all Hellenists. Every last one of them. Not traditional, dyed-in-the-wool Hebraic Jews, but men who adapted to their local dominant culture, spoke the language, were in tune with its issues and were appointed to solve a serious problem.
In fact, they were so spiritual and effective that one of them was later martyred (Acts 7:54-60), and the young man who took care of the coats of the men who murdered him went on to become Paul the Apostle (Acts 7:58).
Secondly, their appointment was a huge success. They resolved the issue.
Thirdly, their resolution had a dramatic effect. Their handling of this highly sensitive issue supported the rapid spread of the Word of God.
So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.
Acts 6:7 NIVUK
You see, that is just it. That guy who had what seems to be a somewhat tenuous and somewhat violent link to this event, and also wrote 1 Corinthians – the Apostle Paul – also wrote these words:
So from now on we regard no-one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
2 Corinthians 5:16-19 NIVUK
And Jesus Himself wrote these words:
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Matthew 5:9 NIVUK
The Gospel is supposed to be a about reconciliation and peace between God and people.
But ask yourself this: if a stranger walked into your church, would they see it?
That’s what makes unforgiveness, cliquiness, gossip, envy, jealousy, pride and back-biting such tragic sins. When the world sees us fighting – more often than not – they don’t see the Gospel as a reconciling force. Instead, they see religion on the whole as trouble-making and divisive and they want none of it.
If we have any regard for the Gospel – any at all – we will stop knocking our brother and sister down with so-called ‘tough love’ or ‘friendly fire’ and seek to be agents of reconciliation in our families, our church and our communities. We will reach out to our rival factions in compassion to understand why they think what they think. We will keep our priorities straight – while recognising that bringing people together and healing wounds is as much a vital ministry of the church as preaching, teaching and leading worship. And we will do something about it. We will not just hide in our comfortable church buildings as the rest of the world goes to hell around us, and we will certainly not allow the divisions of the world to dismember the Body of Christ.
Why?
Because this is what the Gospel is really all about.
Questions
What is the priority of your church? Does it match the Twelve’s priority?
What divisions exist in your community? How could the church be involved in healing these divisions?
How could you be involved in bringing divisive groups together?
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