Welcome to a new week, it’s Tuesday but I failed to put this in on Monday - my apologies, I will catch up. In many ways, this mirrors much of what we are reading as we continue to work our way through the New Testament in a year. Today we read Acts 6:1-15. After reading the Scripture come back and we’ll think some more about what we’ve read.
It seems as if Luke is determined to help us realize that all of the great things that developed in the early church happened through “blood, sweat, and tears”. The success of the early church in its growth (1st 3000, then 5000) continued on as Luke reminds us in vs. 1, “In those days...the number of disciples kept increasing.” You notice it is “disciples”, not “church members” that is increasing. The emphasis of word choice - I believe - is purposeful. We’ve accustomed ourselves to speaking of the church as a place with “members”, but that is not the biblical word choice, as we will see, in the New Testament. Believers who come into the “Church” do not enter into a building and/or an institution; they enter into a relational brotherhood, sisterhood, with Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord.
The early church was growing without building, and with little structure. The early church’s leaders were still the Apostles who had been appointed by Christ Jesus, and along with the nucleus of 120, became the backbone of the church’s enormous growth spurt. While Luke mentions both 3000 and 5000, he wants to make sure we realize that above these miraculous numbers, daily people were coming to receive Christ Jesus and enter into the “family” of Christ’s followers - disciples - people who were being changed by faith in Jesus Christ.
This leads us to the next “problem” the early church faced. The early church was Jewish, completely, in its family form. Yet, as saying American doesn’t fully describe all Americans, so also saying Jewish doesn’t adequately describe all Jews. The church was made up of both Hebraic Jews and Hellenistic Jews. What was the distinctive character that made them described differently? It is not necessarily geography as some have contended. For example, Paul was from Tarsus, a city in modern-day South-western Turkey; but he was called a Hebraic Jew. It is also not that one group was more faithful to Judaism than the other, i.e. Hebraic Jews were more faithful to the Old Testament Scripture, Talmud, and other Jewish writings than the Hellenistic. As far as we can tell from other sources, such as Josephus’ writings from the first century, both groups were entirely committed to their Jewish faith. It seems that the distinguishing characteristic between Hebraic and Hellenistic Jews is simply their language. Hebraic Jews were committed to speaking Hebrew in terms of worship and Aramaic in terms of common everyday life in and around Israel. Hellenistic Jews came - in general - to know Hebrew, and use it in their Synagogue worship, but speak the language of the Roman Empire - Greek - as their preferred language. All of this background is to say that the difference between them was enough that the Hellenistic disciples came to the Hebraic Apostolic leaders and “complained” that their widows were being overlooked. Was it purposeful? Was it based on some sort of biased prejudice? It might have been as simple as misunderstandings in communication between two different languages. We don’t know, but the complaint was such that the Apostles recognized it as a threat to the unity of the Church. So they acted decisively!
The twelve Apostles gathered the church of disciples together and spoke directly to the need. Their task, appointed by Jesus, was to give leadership to the whole church by speaking the word of God to teach the church of disciples. It’s a very clear mandate and one that most churches today soon set aside. When I began pastoral ministry I was expected to do everything...it was a small church, and the Pastor was involved in every activity of the church. It might surprise some but most people who enter into pastoral ministry do not last. A majority of pastors leave the ministry in less than 5 years of beginning - in part because they are overwhelmed by the expectations of what they are being paid to do. It doesn’t help that church leaders appointed by the congregation often forget what the role of a Pastor is to be, according to the New Testament. They are to be studying to teach...to disciple the church. The Apostles knew that to become involved in something else, other than being students of the word of God, to teach the word of God for the sake of discipling believers would be a grave mistake. Thus, they stood in front of the church of disciples and explained that the solution was to appoint seven men to serve as “diakonos”, deacons, literally it meant “one who serves tables”. They who would be entrusted with the task of “diakoneo”, to be servants to the ministry of the church’s growing needs.
It’s an important distinction. The Apostles became the early church leaders, who as churches spread out over the Empire, appointed Church Elders, and commissioned some of them to be “Pastors”, “Shepherds” whose task was to lead the church through preaching the word, overseeing its prayer, worship, and sacraments, in discipling believers. The Apostles saw this ministry of the word and prayer as their priority, but the social needs of the Church were important too. So, they appointed people who are also full of the Spirit of God to oversee the needs of the Church. Deacons, as they were called (1 Timothy 3:8-13, lists their qualifications), were also overseers of the church’s needs - but along the lines of their daily social needs. It was a wise plan, and one that when put into effect in the church today can make the church much more effective. It was then too.
Luke writes that the group of disciples chose seven and listed their names (you can exercise your Greek in attempting to pronounce those names!) The effect of it is immediate, vs 7), “the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.” The last part of that sentence is telling us that this action not only met the ongoing needs of the church’s widows but had the added quality of other Jewish priests see the fruitfulness of this early church. These Priests were from the middle class, not from the ruling class of High Priests, Sandhedrin, or Scribes. They were the “every day” middle-class Synagogue priests who populated around some 500+ Synagogues that were estimated to exist at this time in and around Jerusalem. It was a wise decision that even made them look at the church and what they were teaching in a positive way.
The chapter ends with the beginning of a long narrative that will spill into the next chapter (7), and even into the early part of the one after that (8), concerning the beginning of persecution against the Church which will lead to the eventual separation of the Church from its Jewish roots. It all began immediately after the appointment of Stephen as a Deacon of the Church. He was “filled with God’s grace and power, and great wonders and signs” began to accompany his ministry as a Deacon. Serving in an area where a Synagogue was largely made up of Jewish ex-slaves who had once served the Roman army. As these ex-soldiers got older they were “freed” by the Romans, and given their Jewish background moved to Israel, settling in the Jerusalem area. When Stephen ministers in their area, they become jealous and unable to refute his teaching about Jesus, they plot to have people accuse him of blasphemy...a serious crime that is punishable by death. It was the same thing that happened to Jesus. Unable to refute his words, his actions, or his results, the Jewish leaders plotted to kill Jesus by charging him with blasphemy. The NIV says in vs 11, these jealous Jews called Freedmen, “secretly persuaded” some to charge Stephen with this - it was literally to “pay them off” to make the accusation.
This reading will continue to tomorrow as Stephen is summoned to stand, as Jesus did, as Peter & John did, before the Sandhedrin to face these charges. Luke says that as they issued false charges Stephen stood before them with a “face like the face of an angel”. I take it to mean Stephen was calm, unfazed by the place he found himself in. Knowing that he had spoken the truth and that he was not blasphemous, he stood in confidence knowing that God had him there on purpose. We pick up the story tomorrow, but as we leave it today, we have to ask, “am I willing to be a servant of Jesus today?”
Peace
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