I knew a man 15 years ago, who had somehow worked himself into a dither about the condition of the world.
Now, I know that there is plenty to be concerned about with what is going on in the world.
“All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.”
This poor man saw an actual conspiracy behind everything that he didn’t like – or didn’t understand,
For that particular man, one week it was the communists, and then next it was the evolutionists;
At times he believed that the Jewish Illuminate were manipulating nearly every government on earth,
And then he’d say that it was the super-rich through the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sometimes it was the leaders of the New Age Movement and then it was the Humanists.
It wasn’t just that he saw problems, but he perceived that a handful of evil men, like puppeteers, making the world dance to their music.
That man was a detriment to his church, and it was blessing to them when he moved away.
I do not chase conspiracy theories, and I generally don’t listen to those who do.
But there is a sense in which there is a great evil puppeteer, who would like to control all things.
The “god of this world” would like to dominate creation and to usurp the rule of Jehovah.
The Bible calls him the “god of this world,” but he is not sovereign and not all things are under his control.
Satan would love to destroy the Lord’s churches,
And you can be sure that he was very interested in that first church.
And we have seen his handiwork several times thus far in our study of this book.
“Caiaphas, why hath Satan filled thine heart to hate and persecute the Lord’s people?”
Mankind’s depraved condition, when left by itself, can easily create its own disasters without the input of the Evil One.
Acts 6:1 reveals a problem in the Jerusalem church which Satan would love to have used to his advantage,
And I’m sure that he fanned the flames as much as he could,
The external and internal and the real or perceived troubles.
Intentional or unintentional neglect of the Greeks and Hebrew widows.
And the positive or negative effects.
Just as he wanted to break the lineage of Abraham and to break God’s promise of the coming Messiah,
Now he would love to break the only God-authorized instrument for world evangelization.
The first thing that he did was to open up his cannons against the sides of the church.
Throughout the days of the Lord Jesus, he tried to kill the pastor of the first church.
And that was after he encouraged Herod to behead the man who baptized the first members.
I guarantee that the Saviour was not the only member of the church to feel the breath of the Wicked One.
And now in the Book of Acts, first Peter and John were arrested and threatened with bodily pain.
And then the entire company of Apostles were arrested, threatened and beaten.
And what was the response of those foolish Apostles?
And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.”
Generally speaking, persecution and terrorism, rarely ever accomplish their goals.
Look at terrorism in the secular world today?
What have the suicide bombings in Israel accomplished or the bombs in Northern Ireland?
Acts 8:4 – “Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word.”
Acts 11:19 – “Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word …”
But the internal problems of the church have historically been an entirely different matter.
Although in this case there was no permanent harm done, and in fact it may have been a blessing,
Has been hampered in its work for the Lord, if not actually destroyed.
Pray for spiritual health and unity within the body of Christ in Post Falls.
I don’t think we should pray for persecution, but if it came it might be a good thing.
But problems among, and between, church members is ten times more troublesome than persecution.
The problems of chapter 5 began with money matters,
I though that we were supposed to seek first the Kingdom of God?
Have you ever thought about this:
In Genesis 1:22 – “God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.”
And then we read in Genesis 6 – “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man,
And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
I would like our church some day to have 10,000 members just like the church in Jerusalem,
But I know that with every ten new members come at least eight new problems.
And this is what makes it so aggravating – these things ought not to be.
If the saints are as sanctified as they ought to be, we shouldn’t have these quarrels.
If the saints are as loving as they ought to be, we should care about the needs of the other man.
If the saints are as observant as they ought to be, we’d see potential problems like this one and it would be healed before it became sore.
The spiritual and eternal should overcome and correct the earthly and short-term problems.
I am sure that their desire was only good – to be a blessing to some of the other saints who were in need.
Almost immediately that blessing started to cause problems, as we saw with Ananias and Sapphira.
And then there was the problem of administering all this money.
We are not told anything about it.
Did the Apostles oversee the bank accounts, the deposits, writing the checks, and balancing the books?
Human nature being what it is, it will either put pressure on that pastor to abuse his privilege,
Or it will put pressure on church members to THINK that he is abusing his privilege.
Human nature being what it is, I’m sure that there were people who didn’t like the choice of the administrator whom the Apostles chose.
Most, if not all those trustees were probably Galileans, and would come under the heading of “Hebrews.”
The Grecians were not Greeks; they were Grecians.
The original language denotes a marked difference between Greeks and Grecians.
The Grecians were Jews who had grown up saturated by the Greek culture.
Others, like Saul, had immigrated back to the homeland that their grandfathers left years before.
They had been raised in Alexandria, Ephesus, Athens, Tyre, Antioch and hundreds of other places.
Many of them grew up speaking Greek and Roman, knowing very little Hebrew or Aramaic.
I can image that those who were “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” felt superior to these Grecian Jews.
I sincerely hope that you are never like this:
If the Lord saved you, then praise Him, but there is no room to praise yourself.
There is no reason to think of yourself as more noble or less noble than any other child of God.
I can not answer that definitely, because I wasn’t there and the Bible doesn’t clearly say. Is it likely?
Let me put it this way: how many people were there receiving this assistance?
Was there a potential of missing or neglecting some? Absolutely.
Could it be that someone knew someone, who knew someone, whom he thought wasn’t getting quite as much help as someone else?
This might have been a real, but a very small problem, which was then blown out of proportion.
Remember that both the Old Testament law and the teaching of Paul outlined …
That ladies who were widowed were to be cared for first by other members of their extended families.
Then upon those family members lays the responsibility of their food and lodging.
I don’t think that we have enough information to adequately judge the situation.
But assuming that it was real, whether large or small, was it intentional?
The accusations might have claimed that it was, but did that make it so?
I really have my doubts that it was deliberate.
That sort of thing would have been completely out of character to people who were filled with the Spirit.
But I think that the solution to the problem turned out rather nicely.
The neglected widows crystalized the need for the acting pastors to focus on the more spiritual aspects of the work of the Lord.
It showed to the church that there were qualified men who could take care of things like this,
And that the church should take advantage to use their administrative talents.
Why were there no deacons before chapter 6?
The simple answer is that there wasn’t any need for such an office until that time.
We might ask the same thing about our own church:
Whether or not we have anyone qualified, at this point in time, we don’t have any need for deacons.
There are churches which honor people as deacons when they give large amounts of money.
These Biblical deacons were elected from the entire church body and ordained to oversee some of the temporal, social and fiscal aspects of the church.
They were selected in order to leave the Apostles more time for the more spiritual tasks of teaching and preaching Jesus Christ.
What we see in Acts 6:1-7 the some ecclesiastical lemonade:
The church had a potential problem which could have escalated into a permanent rift between two facets of the membership.
But it was handled wisely and Spiritually, in such a way that not only was the problem solved, but there were tools established which helped to solve future problems as well.