The Choosing of the Seven - Acts 6:1-7 - Comments by Mike Kines

In Acts chapter 6, trouble arises within the church as the Grecian widows feel neglected. The apostles recognize they can't handle everything and delegate the responsibility to seven men, including Stephen. This reminds us of how each member of the body of Christ has their own gifts and ministries, working together for the common goal. Christians should not work alone but be united as one church. We should find our place in serving the Lord and be faithful to our calling. Continuing on with Acts, and we'll be in Acts chapter 6 today, and we're looking at verses 1 through 7. This is the section of scripture where we kind of take a turn. So far the church has been primarily being attacked from the outside through the religious leaders and their persecution and opposition from the outside. And now we begin to see a little bit of trouble being stirred up from the inside of the church. So there was a murmuring among the Grecians that their widows were not being taken care of in the daily ministration. And so they had some kind of a program that they had set up here to set up tables. So it's probably some type of a place where they were feeding people, because they mentioned waiting on tables and sitting at tables and they were being fed. It seems like the Gentiles here were not being taken care of as well as the Hebrews. And so you see this is an attack vector of the enemy. This is an area where the enemy will always attack to bring strife between. Any way he can to bring division and strife, he will attack. The ethnic or the racial division here, people, was an attack surface for the enemy. The apostles recognized this and they realized that they were not going to be able to take care of all these problems. So they came up with a solution, which they recommended to the people, that they pick out seven men who could wait on these tables. So they basically, they wanted seven deacons. And one of these seven deacons that was chosen was Stephen. But you see here, their solution to this problem was to basically delegate the responsibility of this ministry of waiting on tables to other people. Once the people chose the seven, they wanted the apostles to lay their hands on and pray for them. And they appointed them to this work in this ministry. So this is an interesting way that reminds me of how when Moses was trying to take care of all these people judging their problems, and his father-in-law recommended that he get some people to help him with that work. This is the same type of scenario here we see that the problem, there were so many people, and the church was growing so rapidly, that the twelve apostles really couldn't cover all the bases. And they wanted to primarily focus on the preaching of the Word and prayer, the ministry of prayer, the ministry of the Word. That's what they were called to, and so they needed other people to come alongside of them to work with them in this ministry. Just like the priests in the Old Testament, they needed the Levites to take care of the tabernacle, and the priests took care of the ministry in the tabernacle, but they needed somebody who would pack it up, pack the tent up, and take care of all the work that needed to be done. So you see this type of sharing of responsibility in the church. And this reminds us of how in the body of Christ, how each one of us has our own gifts and our own ministries, but we all work together as one body. And you can read in, also in Romans chapter 12, how Paul was talking about this, how different people in the body, we're all members one of another in the body of Christ, and how each person has their own gift that they use to minister to others. And Peter compared the body of Christ with the church to a temple of stones being built up together, how each stone needs the other stone in order to be built up into a temple. We got to remember that we're not in isolation, that Christians are not lone rangers, but we're all working together as one household of faith, one church, one people. And that's the way God's created it, and that's the way it is. So we need to learn how to get along with other people, and we need to find our place where we are gifted in serving the Lord, and be faithful to that calling that God's given to us. Amen. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you.