Back in the 17th Century, there was a German preacher named August Francke. He had seen the homeless children in his city and was so moved by their living conditions that he decided to found an orphanage for them. But as is often the case with such ministries, money was always tight, and he hardly had enough funds to feed the children.
One day, a widow came to his door begging for just a single gold coin (a Ducat). He sadly explained that he hadn’t the money and had no way to help her. To his shock she collapsed on the step and began to weep. Moved by her tears, Francke asked her to wait while he went to his room and prayed. The more he prayed, the more compelled he felt that God was prompting him to give the widow the money… and so he did.
Two days later he received a warm letter of thanks from the widow saying that because of his generosity she had asked the Lord to shower the orphanage with gifts. He was touched by the letter, but was soon surprised when – later that day - a rich woman of the city came to his door and gave him 12 ducats. Not long after that a friend from Sweden gave him 2 more. He was humbled to think that God had so amply rewarded for his meager gift to this widow. But God wasn’t done yet. It seems a German Prince had died not long before this, and, in his will, He left 500 gold pieces as a bequest to the orphanage!
A preacher met the needs of a destitute widow… and God rewarded him. In our text this morning we read a similar story.
By the time we get to the story in Acts 6, the early church had experienced heady times. At Pentecost 3000 Jews repented of their sins and were baptized into Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. And over the next few days the church grew to 5000… and then more.
But then they hit a snag. As you may recall from previous chapters, there were a number of people in this fledgling church that were needy. They’d come from a great distance and, when they were converted to Jesus, they decided to stay right there in Jerusalem with all the other believers. So folks like Barnabas went and sold some of their property and gave the proceeds to the Apostles to distribute to the poor
But there was a problem. The problem was that the church of THAT day suffered from the same kinds of problems that modern congregations have.
ILLUS: Have you ever noticed how people at church tend to hang out with folks they have common interests with? These groupings are called CLIQUES. And while cliques have a bad reputation, they are not necessarily all that bad in and of themselves. Everybody has their clique - people we’re comfort to "circle the wagons” and ONLY hang out with THEIR KIND of people. People in such cliques end up only spending time with and thinking about their circle of close friends.
Well, that’s kind of what happened at Jerusalem. There were the local Christians – Jewish believers that had been born and raised around Jerusalem. THEN there were the “outsiders” – called Hellenists (or Grecians). They were Jewish believers too… but their accent was different. And because they’d been born and raised in other countries they didn’t quite fit in.
Well, it seems that the Local Boys (who were responsible for taking care of the widows) were overlooking the widows from out of town. They may not have meant to slight these ladies. It may simply have been an oversight. But frankly the Hellenists didn’t “run in THEIR circle”. It was kind of an “out of sight – out of mind” type of thing.
Whatever the reason, these widows were being ignored in the daily distribution of assistance, and some of them were getting upset. The KJV says there was some MURMURING going on (Complaining) and we all know murmuring’s not a good thing at church.
This comes to the attention of the Apostles… and they say: "It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word." Acts 6:2-4
One of my commentaries notes that the names of the 7 men were “all Greek, it is likely they were all of the "Grecian" class, which would effectually restore mutual confidence”. (Jamieson, Fausset and Brown)
Now, what’s interesting is that – AFTER these 7 men were selected – and AFTER the needs of the widows were met: “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.” Acts 6:7
Do you know what that means? It means that WHEN the church took care of their widows… the church grew.
ILLUS: Now, I’m convinced that if you were to go to just about any church growth seminar you would NEVER (never, ever, ever, ever) hear that a great way for a church to experience dynamic growth would be for them to take care of widows and orphans and the needy. It wouldn’t be a “cutting edge” kind of teaching. And I would be willing to bet that you’d never hear this proposed. And yet that’s precisely what we just read here in Acts 6. When they met the needs of the Widows… the disciples multiplied greatly!
Now, what you’ll often hear from MANY church growth experts is that a church needs to know who they’re going after. A successful church (we’re told) needs to have a TARGET AUDIENCE. A church needs to decide who they’re going to target so that they can focus all their advertising and all their methods and all their activities on that target group. Are they going after Millennials, or young Families, or upwardly mobile business folks? Once they know WHO to target, they know how to market themselves for that specific group.
Now I have to admit that that method probably works. I suspect such a technique can yield a prominent, powerful and dynamic congregation…. But that kind of thinking has always annoyed me. And do you know why it annoys me? Because Jesus had only one group of people that He went after. He had only ONE TARGET audience that He focused on. Do you know what that target audience was? SINNERS!
Jesus said: “… the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." Luke 19:10
And again: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Luke 5:32
Jesus never went after rich and the powerful. He didn’t tailor His ministry to young married couples. He didn’t fashion His message for millennials of his age.
Do you know what Jesus did do? He spent His time with the common folks. He healed the sick … He fed the hungry… He raised a widow’s son from the dead. He said to His audiences: “come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest.”
He spent His time with the rejects – the sinners, the tax collectors, the losers. Jesus built HIS CHURCH on the outcasts of society. Even His 12 Disciples weren’t all that impressive. And now in Acts 6… God driving that truth home again to us. The only way to build the kind of Church Jesus wants to build is to reach out to the poor, the needy and rejected of society. That’s the way to build Christ’s church.
BUT WHY? Why would helping the widows and orphans and needy cause a church to grow the way that Jesus wants it to grow? Well I can think of 2 reasons:
1st – if we do this (help the poor /widow/orphan) GOD will build the church. It’s a supernatural thing because we serve a supernatural God. And our God makes these kinds of people a PRIORITY.
Psalm 68:5 tells us “(God is the) Father of the fatherless and protector of widows...”
In Isaiah 1:17 God tells His people to “learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”
In the New Testament God repeats that for us: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” James 1:27
It’s like a drumbeat across the Scriptures: God loves it when His people help the poor and the afflicted. Especially when we do it for those who struggle in the church. That’s what Galatians 6:9-10 tells us: “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”
ILLUS: I believe that’s what happened around here. This is a church that almost instinctively reaches out to poor and the needy. There’s our Food Pantry, our Free Lunch ministry, our ministry to young mothers and to those who’ve suffered terrible losses in the area.
Years ago, before we built this new sanctuary area, we had the money we needed to start building. But just about the time we got ready to make that decision, the recession hit. Several people in the congregation were struggling financially and the leadership decided it would not be appropriate to build when so many were hurting. They made the decision to take the money that had been set aside for building and use that as a kind of slush fund to assist those in need. Of course this was the kind of thing that needed to be run by the congregation, and it just so happened that the Annual Congregational meeting was just a couple weeks away. When Larry (one of our Deacons in charge of the building fund) stood up at the congregational meeting and explained what the leadership had in mind… and the entire group broke out in applause. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I was so proud of the church at that point I could of burst out in song. And God has blessed us ever since.
God is especially appreciative when we do what we do SACRIFICIALLY. In Mark 12 we’re told about the time Jesus was at the Temple and watched as people put their money in the “offering box”. Some scholars believe this offering box was where people placed money to help the poor and that this box had a metal “horn” (or trumpet) that allowed the coins to make noise as the coins banged around on their way down into the box.
Jesus watched as the rich put large sums of money into that box. Lots of coins – lots of noise.
But then along came a poor widow. And do you know what she put in that box? That’s right - two small coins (WIDOW’S MITE) … it was all she had.
“… (Jesus) called his disciples to him and said to them, "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." Mark 12:43-44
Did you catch that? Jesus paid attention to her gift. Jesus was impressed by her gift. She gave Sacrificially to help the poor. And in Acts 6 God is telling us that He paid attention to the church took care of its widows. When they did that… God made the church grow.
Now, of course, that would be enough – for God to make the church grow. But there’s a 2nd reason the church grew at this point. Folks around the church began to pay attention. That’s what Jesus said would happen in Matthew 5:16 “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
Bear in mind, the early Church wasn’t helping the widows so that THEY could be praised. They didn’t advertise on the marquee how much they’d given to the widows that week, or put out a circular bragging about their ministry. What they did, they did for Jesus. They were doing what they were doing because that’s what Christians were supposed to do. And people outside the church paid attention.
ILLUS: I recently read about a book by a historian named Rodney Stark. He wrote a book called “The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion.” As you might imagine, he was describing what led to the phenomenal growth of Christ’s church in the first few centuries.
One of the things that he discussed was the church grew so dynamically in the Roman world. He explained that in ancient Rome the Pagans had two philosophies that were diametrically different than Christianity.
1st – the Romans feared death. They believed the grave either led to non-existence or, at best, a drab existence in a shadowy underworld. So they literally ran from death and clung to life for all they were worth
2nd – the Romans viewed mercy and pity as things to be scoffed at and ridiculed. The philosophers of the day taught that mercy was unreasonable and that “the cry of the undeserving for mercy” must go “unanswered.” (E. A. Judge)
It seems that in A.D. 165, a plague struck the Roman Empire that shook the world. When the plague hit a city many people (including the doctors) left town. One person of that day noted that the non-Christians “deserted those who began to be sick, and fled from their dearest friends. And they cast them out into the streets when they were half dead, and left the dead like refuse, unburied.”
But many of the Christians didn’t do that. They stayed and took care of the sick and the dying. Why on earth would they do that?
Well – 1st Christians didn’t fear death. As one author put it: Christians believed that, by the merciful grace of God in Christ, they would be raised from the dead to a glorious new life (2 Corinthians 4:17), when “this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality,” and so death had lost its sting (1 Corinthians 15). So Christians believed that if they died from disease contracted while caring for the ill, the result for them would be glorious - and so they were able to overcome their fears.
And 2ndly – unlike the Romans (who felt mercy was a character flaw) the Christians saw mercy was what Jesus had called them to do.
We need to remember that caring for the sick then was much different than it is now. Today, if you get sick you can go to a hospital and they’ll treat you with antibiotics and other medicines. But they didn’t have those back then. So if they didn’t have the medicines we have today, how would the Christians of that day care for the sick? Well, they gave the sick what they could: food, water and compassion. And many of those that they cared for survived. And their willingness to help people in the face of certain death influenced many Romans to turn to Christ.
CLOSE: The point here is this: The early Church GREW the way Jesus wanted them to grow because they had the same priorities as Jesus. Churches that help the poor/widows/needy WILL grow. They may not become dynamic mega-churches… but that’s not the goal anyway. The goal is to become the kind of Church Jesus died to establish. When a church does that … then they will grow for God, not for themselves. Christ’s kind of church will grow because its people love and serve widows and the needy. Their hands will be hands of servants.
ILLUS: In the early 1500’s two struggling artists shared a room. They formed a pact: one of them would work at manual labor to support them while the other worked at his art and began to develop the patrons and THEN the other artist could focus on his artistic works.
Albrecht Durer was the first to focus on his art, and his friend spent his time earning whatever he could as a laborer. Durer eventually became recognized and began to sell some of his work, but by this time, his friend had used his hands so much in hard labor that they had become gnarled and stiff and Durer was heartbroken.
Then one day, as Durer was working on a painting, he heard mumbling in next room. Thinking something might be wrong he rose and walked to the door. There, he saw his friend bowing over a meal … his hands folded in prayer. From that scene, Durer painted one his most remembered paintings and gave a memorial to the faithfulness of his friend’s hands.
Most of you didn’t know who Albrecht Durer was, but all of you knew that painting (at this point we put the image of the painting up on the wall). While you may not have known the artist, you knew the hands of a servant.
It’s the same with the world. The people of this world are moved by a church that will show them the hands of a servant.
FOOT NOTE:
THE PLAGUE AND CHRISTIAN ADVANTAGE http://www.cornwallalliance.org/newsletter/issue/newsletter-december-11-2013/
In A.D. 165, a plague struck the Roman Empire. In 15 years, from one-fourth to one-third of the entire population died—many needlessly. Another plague, with similar results, struck a century later. In both plagues the mortality rate among Christians was much lower than among non-Christians. Why?
Neither Christians nor pagans had access to effective medicinal drugs. But the Christians had two things the pagans lacked.
As historian Rodney Stark writes in The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion, most pagans feared death because they expected mere oblivion or, at best, a drab existence in a shadowy underworld.
More importantly, … in the pagan world, and especially among the philosophers, mercy was regarded as a character defect and pity as a pathological emotion: because mercy involves providing unearned help or relief, it is contrary to justice. As E. A. Judge explained, classical philosophers taught that “mercy indeed is not governed by reason at all,” and humans must learn “to curb the impulse”; “the cry of the undeserving for mercy” must go “unanswered.” Judge continued: “Pity was a defect of character unworthy of the wise and excusable only in those who have not yet grown up.”
Consequently, when plagues struck, those who could—like the physician Galen—fled to avoid the contagion. Those who couldn’t flee still tried to avoid the sick. “[W]hen their first symptom appeared, victims often were thrown into the streets, where the dead and dying lay in piles,” Stark writes.
It was different among Christians, for two reasons.
First, unlike pagans, Christians believed that, by the merciful grace of God in Christ, they would be raised from the dead to a glorious new life (2 Corinthians 4:17), when “this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality,” and so death had lost its sting (1 Corinthians 15). So Christians believed that if they died from disease contracted while caring for the ill, the result for them would be glorious, and so they were able to overcome their fears.
Second, Christians had learned mercy from Jesus. Jesus had taught them that in the last judgment, He would say to some people, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” They would respond, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” And He would answer, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:34–40).
Not only had Jesus taught mercy toward the sick, He had also exemplified it—healing the sick, even touching lepers, and ultimately laying down His life as a substitute for sinners.
Though the ancient world lacked antibiotics and other effective medicines, what many sick people needed was much simpler: water and food.
Pagans, who feared death and considered pity a character defect, usually provided neither. Instead, as Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, wrote at the time of that plague, the non-Christians “deserted those who began to be sick, and fled from their dearest friends. And they cast them out into the streets when they were half dead, and left the dead like refuse, unburied.”
But Christians, who didn’t fear death but considered mercy, even at great personal sacrifice, a high virtue, freely and lovingly gave basic care to the sick. Indeed, that was one of the top responsibilities of church deacons.
Stark describes the consequences:
It is entirely plausible that Christian nursing would have reduced mortality by as much as two-thirds! The fact that most stricken Christians survived did not go unnoticed …. This surely must have produced some conversions, especially by those who were nursed back to health.
In addition, while Christians did nurse some pagans, being so outnumbered, obviously they could not have cared for most of them, while all, or nearly all, Christians would have been nursed. Hence Christians as a group would have enjoyed a far superior survival rate, and, on these grounds alone, the percentage of Christians in the population would have increased substantially as a result of both plagues.
What went on during the epidemics was only an intensification of what went on every day among Christians. Because theirs were communities of mercy and self-help, Christians did have longer, better lives. This was apparent and must have been extremely appealing.
As Stark pointed out in his book The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, the Christian faith also provided the worldview foundation necessary for limited government, religious and economic liberty, and the birth and growth of science and technology, leading to both prosperity and improved human health and lifespan through heightened economic productivity and medical science.
