SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/26/2017 9:20 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 The Reason
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 6:1-2, 4
Message of the verses: “1
Now at this time while the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint
arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews, because
their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food. 2 So the
twelve summoned the congregation of the disciples and said, "It is not
desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. 4 “But we will devote ourselves to prayer and
to the ministry of the word."”
In our introduction we
mentioned a problem that had arose, and the problem in a sense was a good
problem in that it came about because the church family was increasing very
rapidly, in fact there is no more counting those who had been saved as that
number was very large. In Acts 4:4 we
read that the number is 5,000, and this probably only refers to the men as that
is the way we see things like this in the Bible, as numbers usually only speak
of men. With that said the number could
be around 20,000 including women and children.
This section sort of
reminds me of what we read in the early chapters of the Bible that spoke about
Moses listening to the problems of the children of Israel as they made their
way towards the Promised Land. Moses’
father-in-law came to speak to him about this problem and he told Moses to
appoint leaders to hear the cases the people brought to him and that is what he
did and this took some of the load off of him.
The apostles could see that the rapid expansion of the church brings
about problems and they were going to need help with these problems as they
were unable to carry the load for all the problems expansion to the church
brought. The church was certainly not
like what we have in our country today in communication and technology ways. The apostles could not send out an email to
all the people in the church and have them get it on their smart phones, so
indeed times were different then. What
this problem did was cause the church to organize, and that is what they were
going to do.
John MacArthur writes
“There was another reason for the church to organize. They had fulfilled the first part of the
Lord’s four-part charge to them (1:8).
They had saturated Jerusalem with the gospel message (5:28) and even
begun to reach out to the surrounding region (5:16). Now they were poised to evangelize Samaria
and the Gentile world. To do so successfully required further planning and
structuring of the assembly.”
As we read this
section we see that the problem discussed here is that the Hellenistic Jews
were not getting their enough food as they were being overlooked in the daily
serving of food. We have seen Satan’s
attacks on the early church through persecution and then moving inward into the
church to cause people to lie in the first part of chapter five. More persecution happened at the end of the
fifth chapter of Acts, and now this problem which may well have been something
that Satan was trying to accomplish behind the scenes could have been a huge
problem for the church. In order to
continue to work on the mission of the church, which is evangelism, the church
needed to remain pure.
What Satan was trying
to do here was to cause dissension within the church, dissension through the
complaining of people not getting enough food at the correct time. We must remember that this church grew fast
and also when people first received Christ on the Day of Pentecost that many
were from out of town and therefore many must have stayed there to be under the
teaching of the apostles and thus needed both food and lodging, and perhaps a
job too. I remember listening to one of
John MacArthur’s sermons where he spoke of how he met with new arrivals at his
church after the service to talk with them.
This must have happened each and every week as his church really began
to grow. It went from 500 to 5000 in a
short time after he began to preach there.
He mentioned that people would come in and say that they had sold
everything and moved to be near the church and they wanted information on where
they could live and also where they could get a job. These people wanted to be under the preaching
of the Word where MacArthur was preaching.
Something similar may well have been happening here in Jerusalem. Growth can bring about problems, problems
that the enemy can magnify and could cause disunity in the church.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I have noticed that since I have been
teaching Sunday school that there have been some things that have happened to
me that I can say may never have happened if I had not followed what I believe
the Lord wants me to do. Satan never
takes a holiday.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to give me the understanding
and the strength to overcome the problems that go along with doing what He
wants me to do.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:
“Jesus” (John 21:6).
Today’s Bible question: “To what
town did God send Samuel to anoint a king?”
Answer in our next SD.
10/26/2017 9:55 AM
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