INTRO.- Growth problems. Ever had any? I have. I was born with a heart murmur. Guess I got over it. I’m still here after running many marathons in my forties. I remember standing in the street in Huntsville, AL, (Rocket City) with about 1200 other runners waiting for them to shoot the gun to start that marathon race of 26.2 miles. And I thought to myself, “I wonder if I’ll live through this?” I did. Apparently, I outgrew that heart murmur.
I had another growth problem. I had/have a twin sister who got all the goodie! My twin sister Sharon weighed 5 lbs. 8 1/4 oz. And I was 4 lbs. 6 oz. And I didn’t get released from the hospitalized right away and it wasn’t because I was causing trouble. I needed to weigh 5 lbs. before they would let me go home. And I finally got over my growth problems, as you can well see!
There is growth and there is growth. We need to be somewhat concerned about our physical growth or how big we grow because our bodies belong to the Lord. We are supposed to be stewards or managers of these bodies that God gave us. We need to take care of them as best we can.
And there is another body that we need to take care of and it’s called the church. The church is the body of Christ and God wants His body to grow. He wants it to grow numerically and spiritually. And when it doesn’t I am sure He is quite concerned about it. WE SHOULD BE TOO.
In our text we notice that the number of the disciples was increasing. That’s exactly what God wants! He wants the church to grow! He wants people to come to know Him and be saved!
But have you noticed that whenever something good is happening the devil seems to throw a wrench in the works?
ILL.- Remember Matthew 3-4 just after Jesus had been baptized? Do you remember what happened? The devil showed up to test Jesus. Perhaps he thought, “Oh, so Jesus was baptized to please God. We’ll see if it did any good.”
What about you? Did your baptism take? Did it do you any good? Did it change you somewhat? Jesus was, no doubt, on a high after His baptism and then the Devil showed up.
ILL.- Deborah Scott is the wife of my preacher friend, John Scott, who just passed away on Monday, July 2, just after their 5th wedding anniversary. Here is what Deborah said about her husband, “I thanked God all day long for His tender mercies in bringing us together and keeping us for the happiest 5 years of my life. I found something he wrote after I visited him in California for the first time: ‘Deborah is fun and I am falling in love with her. We have many things in common. ‘God bless our relationship!’ And He certainly has. Of course, there was some sadness, too, in that John couldn’t talk to me. I miss his sweet voice so much. And he wasn’t having the best of days that day. Actually, he seems to have gone downhill a little bit since then, which makes me terribly afraid and sad. I would love to be married to him for another 20 years! Please keep praying for us. God is good.”
She apparently had a great love in her husband, John. And then a few days after she wrote those tender words, John died.
Sometimes it seems that whenever something good happens in your life the devil shows up to test our faith. Ever happen to you? I’m sure it has. The early church was having a growth spurt. She was growing by leaps and bounds and then the devil walked through the door and started causing trouble.
PROP.- In our text about the early church let’s consider some of the growth problems they faced and how they overcame them. Or some of the things that hindered their growth.
1- Complaining
2- Lack of workers
3- Poor organization
I. COMPLAINING
ILL.- Entering a department store, a little old lady was startled when a band began to play and a dignified executive pinned an orchid on her dress and handed her a crisp hundred dollar bill. She was the store’s millionth customer. Television cameras were focused on her and reporters began interviewing. “Tell me,” one asked, “just what did you come here for today?” The lady hesitated for a minute, then answered, “I’m on my way to the Complaint Department.”
Some people don’t go to the complaint department; they live in the complaint department! Some people are chronic complainers. However, if anybody ever had the right to be optimistic about life, it should be the Christian.
ILL.- Recently, Elaine and I watched a Larry King interview. It was on July 19th and guess who he interviewed? Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, who died with lung cancer only two days after that interview. At that time, she weighed only 65 lbs. Did you see that interview?
Frankly, I never liked Tammy Faye and certainly not in the days when she was married to Jim Bakker. I thought they were con artists but I really didn’t have any right to judge them. No one has the right to judge anyone else. However, their fruit didn’t look too fresh to me. It looked spoiled.
But I changed my attitude toward her somewhat and especially, in her last days on earth. Do you know why? Because she always seemed to be positive in her faith in Jesus and she always pointed people to Jesus. And that’s not bad.
She died in faith. And that’s the only way to die. We all must put our trust in the Lord Jesus no matter how bad we’ve been or no matter how good we’ve been! We are only saved by God’s grace or graciousness. We can’t save ourselves.
Regardless of what else you might be tempted to say about Tammy Faye, her optimism and faith in the Lord was to be admired. Now granted, there may be a time for complaining.
Acts 6:1 “In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.”
Some of the people complained against others in the church. In this case, it was become some widows were being neglected when it came to the matter of providing food. This may have well been a justified complaint.
ILL.- Did you read my letter to the editor of the Jonesboro Sun a few weeks back? It was something of a caustic, complaint letter about those invade our church property and burn their tire rubber, shoot fireworks and leave their trash behind. THAT WAS A JUSTIFIED COMPLAINT.
I had several positive comments from you people but of course, I actually meant it for those crooks and gangsters who invade our parking lot! Some complaints may be justified. But often when people complain it’s because they feel they are being neglected. “Someone isn’t paying any attention to me!”
ILL.- I knew a preacher one time who was the president of his local ministerial alliance. That alliance had a meeting at one of the area churches in which all the churches in town were invited, but no one from that preacher’s church came to the meeting. The next Sunday he was upset about it. He chewed out his church people from the pulpit and refused to take communion with them. That preacher was whining and complaining because he thought his church ignored him.
God have mercy on us when we complain too much. We have far more reason to be full of faith and optimistic than to complain.
Phil. 2:14-15 “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.”
II. LACK OF WORKERS
Acts 6:1 “In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.”
Some widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food, which tells me there was a possible shortage of workers and/or servers. And certainly a lack of workers means a lack of work getting done and souls coming into the kingdom of God.
ILL.- Preacher Howard E. Butt, Jr. said, “Too many churchgoers tend to regard sermon-listening as an end in itself, so much so that sermon-listening may actually be one of America’s greatest sins.” Sermon-listening, a great sin?
James 1:22-25 “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.”
Listening to a sermon is not really a great sin. The great sin is listening and then not doing anything about it. AND MOST OF US ARE GUILTY OF NOT PUTTING THE WORD OF GOD INTO PRACTICE!
ILL.- We all need to be like the fellow who walked out of church, saying to the preacher, not “what a great sermon,” but “I WILL DO SOMETHING!”
ILL.- Once the philosopher John Dewey found his son in the bathroom. The floor was flooded. The professor began thinking, trying to understand the situation. After working a few minutes the son said, “Dad, this is not the time to philosophize. It is time to mop.” The problem is: not many want to help mop up the mess in this world.
ILL.- In one church where I served we used in a jackhammer in the basement of our church to remove concrete. We were in the process of putting an elevator in the church and a certain amount of concrete had to be removed to make room for it. The men never thought about it and put the concrete in our trash dumpster. BAD MOVE. Do you know why? Because the disposal company wouldn’t pick it up.
The next Saturday morning our men had a prayer breakfast. We had a great breakfast and devotional time. Prior to the breakfast I announced that help was needed to remove the concrete from that dumpster and I explained why. There were probably 15 or more men at that prayer breakfast. But guess how many men stayed to help remove that concrete? One man and myself!
Everybody got in their cars and drove away and I was one hot preacher who got a lot hotter in the heat when I had to climb into that dumpster and start throwing out concrete chunks! It took several hours and I was wringing wet when it was over.
The world’s situation demands attention. It demands that we do something. It demands that we get busy and mop up the mess. Are you willing to help with mopping? The old saying applies: many hands make light work. The more people to mop, the quicker we get the job done.
How do we get the job done? By doing all the good we can, wherever we can and by presenting a witness for Christ every chance we get! Just think of all the people who could come to Christ if we ALL would begin to speak for Him!!!
III. POOR ORGANIZATION
Acts 6:2-4 “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, 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."
It appears that the early church may have had something of an organizational problem. The twelve apostles were called to wait on tables when they should have been preaching the Word.
Now, does this mean that waiting on tables was beneath them? Of course, not. That was not the problem. They were willing to serve in any form they could. And who does this remind us of? Our Lord.
Matthew 20:26-28 “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
Our Lord was a servant. After all, did he not heal people, bless children, make a wine at a wedding feast, raise the dead, and wash the feet of the disciples? He did all those things and more. But He also preached and taught the message of God! And that was the most important aspect of His life. He wanted to bring people to a saving relationship to God.
Likewise, the apostles were not too proud to serve others, to wait on tables, to take food to widow ladies, etc. But they were probably best engineered for preaching the gospel!
And this is one reason why I don’t mind helping to serve in our church anyway I can. I think I preach better than I clean restrooms but I am still willing to clean restrooms and mop floors, etc. But I’ll tell you one place where I’m no good in this church and that’s on the roof of this building. Just ask Ray Sandy if you don’t believe me! So please, don’t ask me to preach from the roof! I don’t care if you get 500 people here on Sunday, I won’t do it! You might get me up there but you’ll have to get a crane to get me down!
Sometimes there is poor organization in some businesses where certain people are given the wrong job. Did you ever see that happen? But notice in the text, that the apostles turned that poor organization around.
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, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom.”
The twelve apostles gathered the church together and basically, “We need to fix this problem. Here’s what we should do.” Smart apostles and that’s the kind of men to have in church leadership.
It’s always smart to keep the communication lines open with the people of the church and get them involved in what’s going on. THEY ARE THE CHURCH. And did you notice what happened to the church when things fell into place?
Acts 6:7 “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.”
ILL.- Perhaps we need to think of the church as a baseball team. We are on the team together but we all have different positions to play. Some are managers, some are fielders, some are pitchers, some are batters, some are catchers, etc.
In order for our team to win we all need to find the right position from which to play to the game and then give it our best shot. WE’RE IN THIS THING TOGETHER and must work together. And we do want to win the game, don’t we?
CONCLUSION --------------------------------
ILL.- In Charles Colson’s book Born Again, which details his experiences related to Watergate, Colson shares one of President Nixon’s problems—he could never admit he was wrong in anything. In fact, Colson says, even when Nixon obviously had a cold—nose running, face red, sneezing, all the symptoms—he would never admit it.
Regardless of whether we’re talking about our country, our home or our church there will be no progress made until we admit our weaknesses and failures and seek the Lord’s will.
We all experience problems in life, but we need to face those problems and seek the Lord who can fix anything and make it better and make it grow!
