Acting vs. reacting (Acts 6:1-7)

 

Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon March 30, 2008

Once in a while, Lyn and I find our sleep get disturbed in the middle of nights. Soft cries or in other times, very loud cries and screams from Abby wake us up. Well, if it is soft cries, it is usually the elbow jabs and Lyn’s voice that wakes me up. When it happened first times, I don’t think I knew what was going on with her. It usually involves her crying while holding her legs in her bed. Looking back, I also have vague memories of waking up in the middl­­e of night because of some sort of pains in my legs. Lyn remembers it too. Well, after all, there was an explanation for what was going on. Thankfully, pain is not caused by any underlying disease like cancer in bone. What wakes my girl up is called ‘growing pain.’ I anticipate that all the rest of our girls to experience growing pain in the various stages of their growth. What we usually help with growing pain is messaging calf muscles and other areas that hurt and if pain is more intense than other times, usually ibuprofen would take care of it. How about you? Do you remembering waking up at night because of pain in your legs?

In Acts 4:4, you read, “many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand.” Well, this is the last time a specific number is mentioned to indicate how big the church had become. Counting women and children, the church had grown substantially. Without mentioning the specific number belonging to the church, it read in 5:14, “more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.” And, now in our today’s text, 6:1 reads, “In those days when the number of disciples was increasing…” So, by this time, we don’t really know how big the church got; the people back then didn’t know either. They reached a point where trying to count the number belonged to the church became a counterproductive practice.

1. Expect growing pain when you are growing.

Now, with the growing in number came the growing pain. That is what we see in our text. In the past I used to romanticize the early church in the book of Acts, thinking that it was the ideal, the model problem-free church, well that was until I started reading through Acts beyond few chapters from the beginning. When I stopped reading beyond chapter 2, I thought that church was enjoying the favor of all the people all the time according to Acts 2:47. Then, I read in chapter 3 and 4 about the growing persecution and opposition coming from the Jewish religious leaders. When I stopped reading at chapter 4, I thought that the church had no needy persons among them according to Acts 4:34. Then again, I read chapter 5 and you discovered that the church had to deal with sin issue. When I considered the whole book of Acts I began to realize that the early church was far from being perfect without any problem.

Instead, what has been instructive is to learn how the early church tackled each problem. With growing in number came the growing pain. What the early church did right was not letting the growing pain become the growing problem. But act decisively to deal with it.

2. When there is growing pain, act decisively instead of react passively.

When there is pain, it is important to know the cause of pain and treated it accordingly. For Abby’s case, if her pain persisted with swelling, redness in joints, fever, limping, rashes, or loosing appetite, getting weaker and tired, if she started acting erratically, it would have required more extensive testing to figure out what might be going on with her. But, it didn’t. Her pain was simply a part of what it meant to be a growing child between the ages of 3 to 5. So, our decisive intervention has been to message her legs and to give her ibuprofen. As any good parent would do, we didn’t ignore her pain and pretended it didn’t exist.

Here is what we see in chapter 6. We see the church acting decisively to deal with the growing pain.

Verse 1 us tells where the pain was coming from. As the number of disciples was increasing, a group of believers called the Grecian Jews began to make complaints against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. We know from chapter 4 that the people’s needs were being addressed by a distribution system; people generously donated their goods and moneys to the apostles. And, it was distributed to anyone as he had need. However the distribution was being carried out, it was working since there was no one in need. But, now in chapter 6, we see that the system wasn’t working any more.

The Hebraic Jews were the old timers. These were the native Jews whose native language was Aramaic and Hebrew; they maintained Jewish culture and customs. The apostles and the very early believers belonged to this group. Then, there were growing body of the Grecian Jews, or otherwise referred as Hellenists. These were the part of the Diaspora, the group of Jews who were born and raised outside of the land of Israel; they were different from Hebraic Jews in that the Grecian Jews’ native language was Greek and their custom and culture reflected more of Hellenistic tradition. If the Hebraic Jews were the old timers, the Grecian Jews were the new guys.

The gospel that spread among the Hebraic Jews, the old timers, now spread among the Grecian Jews, the new comers in town. And, as more of the Grecian Jews joined the church, the number of their widows grew as well in the church. And, this threw off the distribution system that was working so well in chapter 4.

This became a sore spot for the Grecian Jews who felt that their needs, specifically the needs of their widows were being neglected. Put it another way, they felt that the widows of the Hebraic Jews, the old timers were favored, while their widows, the new comers, were marginalized and ignored.

This was the nature of the growing pain. What we see in verse 2-6 is the response to this growing pain.

Now, here is my confession. I can be a terribly grouchy person if I am rudely awakened from my sweet sleep. With the elbow jabs to my side, waking up all grouchy and half asleep still, instead of addressing the growing pain, at times, I would tell Abby, “Go to sleep… you will okay.” Well, my grouchiness only made it worse for her, more cries, more pain seems like.

Now, this is exactly what the apostles and the other disciples didn’t do. They didn’t get annoyed and angered by the complaints from the Grecian Jews. They didn’t dismiss their concerns. They didn’t blame them for the pain. They didn’t take it personally.

What they did was they acted decisively by focusing their effort and their energy on dealing with the root cause of the pain. Instead of deflecting or shifting the responsibilities by ignoring the pain, or worse blaming it on others, they went head-on to address the pain. The pain, the concern, the need of other brothers and sisters became their pain that needed to be dealt with. And, they did it decisively with care.

3. When there is growing pain, act humbly instead of react in pride.

Now, for the apostles, their primary calling from the Lord was to ensure the gospel, the good news, be spread through the ministry of the word of God. When they said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables,” they weren’t making a value statement as though the ministry of administration is inferior to the ministry of the word. Rather, they were affirming God’s primary call upon them to preach, teach and defend the faith while acknowledging the need for a response to the growing pain.

Now, if their concern was to maintain their pride as the leaders of the church they would insist on being in charge of fixing the problem. Reacting in pride would have led them to put their hands on all the affairs of the church. Pride basically feeds on controlling. Pride ignores God’s calling. In pride, they would have neglected God’s call to carry on the ministry of the word of God which would have been detrimental blow to the growth of the church.

But, they didn’t react in pride. Instead, they act in humility. They gave up the control in order to see God at work.

4. When there is growing pain, act collectively instead of reacting alone.

Pride would insist on reacting alone, rather than acting collectively. But, as we see the apostles acted in humility by acting collectively. They led the church by delegating, sharing the responsibilities. They didn’t handpick certain individuals by themselves for the task of overseeing the distribution to the widows. They delegated the choosing of the seven men to the church with this one condition that these men meet the spiritual qualification of being full of the Spirit and wisdom.

And, to these men full of the Spirit and wisdom chosen by the church, they would turn this responsibility over to them. Here is the mark of the true leadership, delegating, sharing, giving the opportunities for others to step up to do God’s work.

And, this is exactly what the church did. Under the leadership of the apostles, being pleased by their proposal, the church chose seven men; most likely all these seven men come from among the Grecian Jews since their names are Greek. Who better equipped to meet the needs of the Grecian widows than their own kinds?

In verse 6, we see a picture of the commission of these seven men by the apostles through praying and laying hands on them. When the growing pain is felt, the whole church was involved to address the pain.

5. When growing pain is dealt decisively, humbly, and collectively, you can expect the new growth.

What was the result of dealing with the growing pain decisively, humbly and collectively? Verse 7 spells it out for us. “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.”

The issue at hand could have been potentially divisive and damaging to the growth of the church if they engaged in blaming-game, taking things defensively and personally, giving into pride and neglecting God’s calling to preach the gospel and care for the needy.

There is a right way to deal with growing pain and a wrong way to deal with it. The benefit, the reward is great if as a church, we choose to act decisively, humbly and collectively to deal with growing pains that are sure to wake us up at night.

Conclusion

Consider for a moment how you and I deal with growing pain. As a child experiences growing pain as a natural process of growing, we as a church have and will continue to experience growing pain. The difference is that with a child, growing pain goes away, but in the church and in any relationship, growing pain doesn’t go away unless we deal with it biblically.

So, I have choices, either to react passively or act decisively. Reacting passively sweeps growing pain under the rug and pretends it doesn’t exist. Reacting passively forces growing pain into growing problem.

Or, I could act decisively. Acting decisively takes out growing pain while it is still a pain not a bigger problem. Acting decisively acts in courage from God. Acting decisively sees seeking peace not as an option, but God’s mandate.

I have choices either to react in pride or act in humility. Pride defends and fights. Pride takes things personally. Pride pouts and gets angry. Pride blames and doesn’t take responsibility. Pride refuses to deal with underlying causes. Pride makes growing problems out of growing pain.

Or, I could act in humility. Humility takes responsibilities. Humility identifies and feels others’ pain. Humility seeks to address underlying causes. Humility has eyes on God’s greater purpose, and to that end, it seeks God’s solution, tangible and working remedy.

I have choices either to react alone or act collectively. Reacting alone thinks I am the solution. Reacting alone rejects help from God and others. Reacting alone inadequately deals with growing pain. Reacting alone doesn’t believe or see God at work.

Or, I could act collectively. Acting collectively sees myself as a part of a solution. Acting collectively embraces others as indispensable equation to God’s solution. Acting collectively delights God at work in us.

How about you? What choices will you? Will you react passively, in pride, and alone? Or, will you act decisively, in humility and collectively?