on 14 March 2024
What is the greatest risk to the Church? I suspect our minds might immediately go to a hostile secular culture, militant Islam, radical LGBTQ+ agenda, authoritarian government – you can take your pick. But in Acts 6 the threat is more subtle and yet just as dangerous.
In Acts 4 and 5 we see opposition to the spread of the gospel. At the start of chapter 5 we have the hypocrisy of Ananias and Saphira who are insiders, well respected church members. In chapter 5 verse 41 we have this remarkable verse that the apostles, “Left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name.” They had just received a beating from the Judaisers, and been warned not to speak anymore about the Lord Jesus, but rejoiced in it. Enemies without and enemies within. Of course, behind these attacks we see the malevolent influence of the devil. His attacks come from every angle, having failed to destroy the church from hypocrisy within and hostility without. In chapter 6 we see the most subtle attack of all – diversion and distraction from the real priorities of the gospel.
The structure of chapter 6 is pretty clear: verse 1 is the presenting problem, verse 2-6 the resolution, verse 6 the results.
The chapter begins with a growing church, and with any growing church there are problems. Here, it is murmuring and grumbling, and both those things are specifically because the church has grown. It is the problem of a living church. Here there are all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds. In verse 5 there are widows, but there are also rich people, Jews and Greeks, insiders and outsiders. Every real, every living church, knows that when you get a cross section of people there is bound to be some friction.
The eternal reality of every living church is that we are one in Christ Jesus and we have to keep putting off the old self to put on Christ. When we see murmuring and grumbling about the ministry in a church, it is a sure sign that we are not focussing on the true reality of eternity but focussing too much on the passing earthly reality of this world. Instead of thankfulness that others are being brought into Christ, there is grumbling that our needs aren’t being met. Each of us is a grumbler by nature, that is the natural drift of the human heart.
Interestingly in verse 1 we’re not even told whether this neglect of widows was real, or whether it was just a perception. It seems safe to assume there must have been some kind of oversight and people were missing out, particularly these Greek widows. Many Jewish widows in the diaspora had come back to Jerusalem to live out their days there and wonderfully many of them had responded to the gospel. The church however had to deal with this influx.
You can well imagine in a situation of great growth in the church that things got hard to manage and change was difficult. Church growth is never a tidy thing. There are times when God wonderfully answers our prayer for growth but that same growth will bring challenges, difficulties, tension and even conflict. As churches grow it is very, very easy for people to begin to feel left out. They begin to grumble and probably here in Acts 6, there was a real reason for that, a genuine neglect. But it is very important for us to notice what Luke is telling us: they were wrong to grumble or murmur like they were. That is clearly to be implied by the language that Luke uses.
Murmuring, grumbling or complaining is always a negative thing in the bible. Luke, in the language he is using in describing this situation is making a clear allusion back to the Old Testament. He is wanting us his readers to make that connection. Think back to the people of God in the wilderness. What characterised them? They grumbled and murmured and complained against Moses but ultimately against the Lord. In Exodus 16 and 17 we see this extraordinary contrast to Exodus 15 where they are found singing the songs of victory but in the very next chapter in verse 2, “The whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.” God then miraculously gives them manna and quail, but remarkably they go on grumbling.
The Lord says in Numbers 14:27, “How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me.” The end of the story is the Lord judging the people, and a whole generation was cast off (Numbers 14:29). In Acts 6 it’s the same word that’s used. We might think grumbling is an insignificant thing, but not in the Lord’s eyes.
This grumbling, resenting and murmuring in church is actually a grumbling against God himself and is incredibly dangerous. All you need to do is read the book of Exodus and Numbers and you see their focus is on this world’s thinking and this world’s priorities. In Acts 6 it is food and drink, but in church life it can be a whole host of issues. The focus of these grumblers and murmurers is not on the eternal kingdom of Christ.
However legitimate the issue (and it does seem to be legitimate in Acts 6), grumbling and resentment is a sign that our eyes, biblically speaking, are on Egypt and not on the Promised Land. To use the words of Paul in Philippians 3:19, “Your God is your belly not the God who has given you citizenship in heaven”. It is why the New Testament warns us not to be grumblers like they were in the Old Testament. The apostle tells the Corinthians, “Don’t grumble and be destroyed as they were by the destroyer.” It is a tough and unpleasant message, but, “These things happened as warnings and were written down for our instruction” (1 Corinthians 10:10). In Philippians 2:14 he commands us to, “Do all things without grumbling or resentful murmuring.”
In Acts 6 there were real issues to be addressed, but the way to resolve those issues was never by resentful murmuring. It is the case that grumbling often arises from misunderstanding, and my guess is that is the case here. It’s reasonable to say that many problems in church life arise from misunderstanding, but misunderstanding often occurs because we are very ready to misunderstand.
It has been one of the great surprises of my ministry, as I had no idea before how people – including myself – misunderstand things. In fact I was remarkably naive about how ministers and elders communicate.
The truth is we misunderstand things very easily because deep down in our hearts we often have a spirit of self focus, the easy spirit of discontent. I see that in my own heart. If you are anything like me, you tend to easily put a negative construction on things first, not a positive one. We can easily assume the worst and not the best because our drift is toward “uncharity” rather than charity. Paul again in 1 Corinthians 13 says that love or charity is kind not resentful, it doesn’t murmur. As I read Acts 6 I often find myself reacting like these widows, grumbling, murmuring. I can easily assume the worst, a simple oversight, and I’m ready to think something is studied intentional neglect.
Here in Acts 6 there is an oversight. Probably because of the wonderful growth of the church, the apostles could barely cope with the growing situation. But the natural assumption of some of the people is ‘we are being neglected and they don’t care about us’. We are not the ‘in people’ and so we’re on the outside. That spirit is very common in the church and it is easy for us to fall prey to it: ‘no one cares about me’, ‘nobody thinks I’m important’. Resentment builds and bitterness begins to grow and it is exactly that which gives the devil a foothold. Satan is right in there to stir up murmuring and resentment. People get together and instead of sharing encouragement about the gospel and people being converted and finding salvation, of the church growing, they speak of the problems, or the perceived slight, or the things that really ought to be done better in church.
If our churches are characterised by that spirit, even things that are good can have real faults in our eyes. Pretty soon everything is disastrous. We have this exact warning in Hebrews 12:15, “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled”. That is precisely the devil’s strategy in Acts 6 verse 1, to stir up resentment and murmuring to work with the natural drift of our hearts towards self centeredness and selfishness.
It is a tactic that the devil still uses very effectively all over the world and in all sorts of churches today. He will do it particularly in a growing and living church: in every church where God is at work and doing things.
Secondly, we see the resolution of the problem.
The response of the apostles in verse 2-6 is a resolute management of the church’s ministry. I think that is a surprise as it is not a ‘super spiritual’ response. They recognise immediately that behind this practical issue is a spiritual issue.
The first thing the apostles do in seeking to resolve this problem is that they put the gospel firmly at the centre of the church’s life: they insist on it. Having done that, they work out all the practicalities that flow from it. Notice there is no knee-jerk reaction to the practical issue, they don’t rush to pander to the complainers. It is very tempting to do that in a situation like this. The temptation is to want to go to people and massage their egos, and make them feel very special. The result being they calm down, things are smoothed over and all is at peace again. The big problem with that approach is that you reinforce that the way to get attention in the church is by murmuring and complaining. It would have been easy for the apostles to do that, to drop everything and devote to the temporal needs of these widows, to cut down their teaching of the word and prayer and go into a public relations initiative and a frenzy of activity for the widows. Their popularity would have soared in certain elements of the congregation. Any minister can make themselves very popular by flinging themselves into welfare issues.
After resolving to keep the gospel firmly at the centre of the church’s life, they rebuke the attitude of the complainers, “And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, ‘It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.’” (Acts 6 verse 2) On first reading, that might not sound like a rebuke. But the clear implication is that the grumbling was about what they think the disciples ought to be doing. The grumbling is against the apostles and their priorities. The apostles are adamant that the ministry of tables is not a priority for them over the ministry of the word. They refuse to be diverted from the true priorities of the ministry of the word and the gospel. However, we need to notice that they didn’t say word ministry is more important and we are going to stick to that. They didn’t say we are not going to address this, we will just preach and pray, we won’t reorder and change the church, we are not going to get involved in the reforming and managing of the church.
It is possible to have a church where the gospel is preached and taught, but the principles of the gospel don’t get worked into the pores of the life of the church. The principles of the gospel not only need to get from the pulpit to the person in the pew, but also into the life and structure of the church.
It is one of the sadnesses of the last 70 years in the UK that there has often been Reformed pulpits where there has been a faithful preaching ministry, where the word has been taught, but it has not changed the church. The congregations have been happy to have an evangelical ministry in the pulpit, but not allowed that ministry to change the structures of, and ministry of the congregation. It is why in times of crisis, or times when there is the need to call a new minister, the gospel that may have been preached over the last 20-30 years, is then denied practically in the decisions that are made.
We saw it clearly in the Church of Scotland meltdown over a decade ago and I fear we may well see it in the Church of England in this next decade. The problem being churches have been happy to have gospel preaching pulpits but that same gospel has not been applied either to the church structures to which they are accountable and sometimes even to the nitty gritty of the congregation’s life.
Driving the priorities of God’s word into a congregation’s life and structure is hard and difficult work and tragically hasn’t often been done. There is a difference between a gospel preaching pulpit and a gospel preaching church, it is a wonderful thing when that distinction is eradicated but it is only done by the back breaking work of applying that gospel into church life.
As the gospel is at work in a congregation, there will ordinarily be growth and development and that will mean inevitable changes need to take place. A refusal to make those changes there will result in a blockage to growth and this will increasingly provide a focus for complaint and division. What the apostles are doing here in these verses is forcing the principles of the gospel firmly into the centre of the church’s life. They are making the church see that eternal issues must be the priority, not temporal ones. It is not right to have it the other way round. They are saying we will not give up gospel proclamation to focus on another kind of ministry.
The danger at this point is that the priority of the apostles is misunderstood. The practicalities are not ignored, the issue the widows raise is solved. However, the principle of the gospel must drive the priorities of ministry which in turn will dictate the practicalities and management of the church.
The practicalities of these principles and priorities result in them instructing the people to, “Pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.” (verse 3). In verse 5 we find that the first two names are Stephen and Phillip and we find out later that these men become gifted teachers and evangelists. They were spiritual men. Their chief focus above everything else was the gospel. That is the kind of person who is needed for practical ministry in the church. It is not two spheres, one a spiritual ministry and the other a social ministry. Practical ministry in the church of whatever nature is profoundly spiritual.
It is also worth noting there is also sensitivity on those men appointed. All of the names of those appointed to wait on tables in this situation are Greek names which would certainly have helped as it was Hellenists widows bringing the complaint.
None of these practical decisions would have been easy to implement, but it is part of the ministry of the world to apply these things into the structures and life of the church. We are not told how long the apostles deliberated over this. It is a short account in Acts 6 and only a few verses, but that does not mean it was a short process. If it is anything like managing change in church life in my experience there may well have been much discussion, prayer, frustration, disagreement and even tearing your hair out. We don’t know, but that is realistic and what church life is like.
The apostles had to give time and attention to the problem in order that they would establish the right pattern of ministry permanently. It is why it is right for elders to give time in their meetings to the oversight of the church, looking at various ministries, managing change in the congregation, discussing different ways of working to best put the priority of the ministry of word and prayer at the centre of church life. Elders have to do that because gospel principles need to drive gospel priorities and therefore shape the practical management of the church.
It’s been stated often and in various ways but keeping the main thing of the gospel of the Lord Jesus the main thing in church life takes hard work as well as prayer and preaching. It is the calling of elderships to grasp the difficult nettles of church life and work the priorities of the gospel in the warp and weft of church life.
Thirdly and finally, the results
Verse 7 describes the resultant multiplying of church’s ministry, “And 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.” It is one of the key phrases in the key verses for growth in Acts – ‘the word of God spread’ (Acts 1:7, 12:24, 13:49 19:20).
We can see in Acts 6 that knowledge and understanding of the gospel grows inside the church and outside. The influence and and rule of Jesus grows and expands. The two are linked together: as knowledge and understanding become deeper in the life of the church therefore the church impacts the world more and more. The result is in Acts 6 a, “multiplying greatly”.
In Acts 2 verse 47 we are told that the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved, but in Acts 6 addition is turned into multiplication. “The number of disciples multiplied greatly” and in an extraordinary twist, many of the priests became obedient to the word. The priests, the ones who had been beating and flogging, then became obedient to the faith. They bowed the knee to King Jesus and that happened because the church became more and more obedient to the faith themselves and more obedient to Christ and his promises.
They became more obedient to his priorities not their own, to their heavenly citizenship, their heavenly calling, their seeking first the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In Philippians 1 Paul urges the church to be side by side striving for the gospel. When that happens the church won’t be face to face, grumbling and resenting one another. Whether Hellenists or Hebraists, highbrow or lowbrow, old timers or newcomers, there are always these potential tensions in a church.
How do we resist the devil seeking to destroy us through dissension or distraction? We put the gospel, the eternal gospel, resolutely at the centre of church life driving the priorities of the church’s mission. Whether ministering God’s word or serving at tables, we are side by side resolutely contending for the faith.
When the gospel of Jesus is at the centre of church life, Christ will be at the heart of a congregation. His presence will overshadow everything that is done and his grace and power will be seen. He will add, even multiply the number of disciples. The devil himself and the gates of hell shall never be able to prevail against a church that has the gospel of Jesus Christ as its ultimate priority.