Acts 5:27-6:7

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

You can always read Acts 1 through 5 all on your own. You can also go back and listen to our previous sermons, both on the Church Center app or through our website or on Spotify. You can go back and listen to all of those things, but this is the last week. This is the week that we are kind of looking at our origin story. We've been going through, from Acts 1, we're going all the way through Acts 6, verse 7, or actually start with verse 7 today for some reasons that you will see later. And even if you are unfamiliar with this story, I believe that you could pick it up pretty easily today. We find the disciples,

they had been facing outside opposition, okay? This is the second time the disciples, the leaders of the disciples, first time was Peter and John in Acts chapter four, and then in Acts chapter five, where we're gonna pick it up, it's Peter and John and maybe some other leaders. And this time they were in jail, right? And this time an angel had let them out and said, okay, go preach. And the government officials carefully, for fear of the people, walked them back into jail. And when the council, the religious and governmental powers of the day, when that council brought the leaders back before them, it's the second time they're before them. They made the mistake of saying, look, we told you, disciples, not to say anything. And then here's the response in Acts chapter five, starting in verse 30. This is how they respond. It says, the God of our fathers raised Jesus,

whom you killed by hanging him on a tree, God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. So the disciples here are not wavering in their testimony. They're not waving in their boldness. But look at what the opposition, it says in verse 33, it says, when they, the religious officials, when they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them. And look, that's not idle threats. They had the ability to do so. If only technically they had the ability. But what we learned last week is that they feared the people. They feared the people's response. So they're not killing them now because they think they're gonna have a riot on their hands. So they're not killing them. There's a tension here that the religious leaders, they wanna do something, they have the power to do something, but they're kind of unsure, they're mad.

Look at, they've just been accused of killing the Son of God and liking it. And so they're saying, okay, like what's gonna happen? And in the middle of this, we hear from a man named Gamaliel. We're gonna hear from Gamaliel. The next verse, Acts 5:34, it says, but a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, held in honor by all the people, stood up and gave orders to put them in outside for a little while. So tradition actually tells us that this is the same Gamaliel that discipled Paul as a Pharisee. Okay, so this Gamaliel here, and you see kind of evidence of this later in the New Testament, but Gamaliel is likely the guy that discipled Paul as a Pharisee, not as a Christian, but as a Pharisee. So this guy was held in very high honor, okay? Everybody was kind of looking at him. There's tension building, Gamaliel speaks. He says, verse 35 in the beginning of 36,

Gamaliel said to the men of Israel, take care of what you are about to do to these men, for before these days, Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about 400 joined him. Okay, so we are about to get a lot of Gamaliel's words, which is curious because we typically don't hear a lot from a Pharisee. The only things we hear about from a Pharisee are when they are getting owned by Jesus in dialogue, okay? They're usually stepping in it. They're usually putting their foot in their mouths. We are not reading a Pharisee's words going, oh, it's gonna be good. You know, like, he's gonna have some wisdom here. That's not how we read Pharisee's words. If we've been reading the New Testament, the Pharisees, and if you're new to that, the Pharisees are the religious elites who are out of touch, okay? They are doing really bad things, and Jesus actually saves his worst rebukes

for those Pharisees. So for us to hear from a Pharisee, and for the story to kind of paint this Pharisee as a man of honor that has a good idea, is noticeable. We should pay attention to what he says. The other reason it's curious that we get this long form of Gamaliel of his words is because Luke could have, the author of Acts, Luke, could have easily just given a short record of this thing. He could have just said, well, Gamaliel, convince them to let the disciples go, which is what he's going to do, okay? Luke could have just written that one line, but we get Gamaliel's words, and it's curious, and we should look at kind of what's going on. So back to Gamaliel's words, he just said that Theudas rose up, second part of verse 36 and onward. He was killed, Theudas was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean rose up

in the days of the census and Drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered. So there are two things that Gamaliel's words are giving us so far. The first is that he's giving us a short and consistent history of religious celebrities. You got some religious celebrities going on in Jerusalem. He said, hey guys, remember Theudas? Remember whenever he was doing some things, whenever he was attracting crowds, there was a lot of disturbances. He got like 400 men, tried to make some things happen. What happened? He died, everything came to nothing. Remember Judas the Galilean and his followers? Remember, he was such an influencer. He had such a following. People love Judas the Galilean. He rose up in the days of the census, and Gamaliel's saying these things like they know exactly who he's talking about. So these are pretty famous guys,

pretty famous insurrectionists. You see in the first century, all over actually, you keep reading the New Testament, you see particularly in 1 Corinthians 1, there are people clamoring. Paul is writing to this Corinthian church, and he's saying, hey, here's what's going on in your church. One group of you says, hey, I follow Paul. Another group of you says, I follow Apollos. Another group of you says, I follow Peter. Another group of you says, I follow Jesus. And you gotta know that the people that were saying, I follow Jesus were definitely, definitely the self-righteous ones, okay?

Just kidding, okay. You had these factions going on in the first century church, right? You had all these factions going on, and today, following religious celebrities, it still goes on today. It was happening before Jesus' time, it's happening after Jesus' time, and it's still happening today. And the reason that we are so tempted to follow religious celebrities even today is because it's easier to hear from a person than it is from God.

It's way easier to check whoever said something on Instagram than it is to seek the Lord's face in prayer. Those are two different enterprises, and one is a heck of a lot easier than the other. It's tempting to do that because today, you know, we have a lot of people that we can follow, and so I wanna just turn this into a quick application. I want you to just kinda hear me say this once and for all. I'm probably gonna say it again, but I don't want you to not listen to religious leaders. I don't want you to, if anybody's a religious celebrity, you just shut them off, you just shut them down. Don't do that, that's not a wise thing to do, okay? Sometimes people are very popular and they preach the truth. It happens, it does. Those things can sometimes be at odds with one another, but it does happen a lot, and so what I wanna do is I wanna encourage you, don't just listen to one.

Don't just listen to two, don't just listen to three, go four or more, four different people. Listen to various voices, including mine, right? Listen to various voices, and you might be saying who? Let me just give you a quick list. You just pick a name on there, pick three, pick four, it's fine. None of these men are perfect, okay? None are perfect, if you want this list later, you can grab it later. None of these guys are perfect, but I run into people all the time, you know, just I ran into one of our church members, this is maybe a week ago, and they were saying hey, I'm listening to Joel Osteen, but somebody told me that wasn't a good idea, so who should I listen to? Which, can I just tell you, I love that question, it's so honest, right? And it's like yeah, I'm listening to Joel Osteen, and I'm sitting there, I'm trying not to choke on my water as he says that, which is fine.

Look, I don't know anything about Joel Osteen, personally, I just don't, I would not recommend listening to him as a religious leader, okay? Just wouldn't. The man doesn't have to be a vile demon for me to say I wouldn't recommend him, okay? These are men that I would recommend to you, some are dead, some are living, and there's others that could be on that list, but I'm just gonna tell you, I'm just gonna be super transparent, there are things that each of these people say that I vehemently disagree with, okay? It's not like we're all singing the exact same tune on every single point, but here's what I'm confident of, and here's why I'm telling you to listen to three or four of them, including in addition to listening to me, hopefully you're not sleeping too hard this morning. So listen to me, listen to these guys, here's what I'm confident of, I'm confident that as you listen to people

that continually point to the Lord, what you're gonna do is you're gonna be encouraged to listen to the Lord. You're not just gonna be encouraged to listen to these people, or not just gonna be encouraged to listen to me, look, if I'm your only source of spiritual connection to the Lord God in heaven, something's wrong, okay? And I can help you with that, we can talk about it, the cash is in chairs back there, that's great, but if you're like, no, this is where I come to get God, okay? I get it, that's helpful, but we probably need to adjust the settings a little bit, we probably need to understand a few other things, okay? My hope is, as you're listening to me, as you're listening to other people that are pointing you toward the Lord, is that you're going to hear from the Lord. That's what I wanna encourage you to do. I don't bust things out of this Bible that aren't here.

I read what's here, I explain what's here, because I want you to read what's here and to know what's here, because I want you to know the Lord. I want you to hear from the Lord. You say, I need to hear from the Lord. I'm telling you, read your Bible. I need to hear from the Lord. You say, listen to good preaching on the Bible. There are people that say many great things that are uplifting things that are, you know, just really spiritual sounding, but that just, they amount to just fluff, it's just nothing. It's vapid, it will not nourish you, right? The word of God, listening to the Lord God in heaven will nourish you. Religious celebrities will not do that all the time. You can't just say, well, they're famous, they must be right. No. And I actually have a list just as long of people I would not recommend. So if you want that list, I'll give that to you in private, but I'm not here trying to just,

you know, draw the line real thick in the sand and saying these are wrong, these are right. What I'm trying to do is just commend to you, the people that will point you toward the Lord and listening to the Lord. Religious celebrity, it's just a hard thing. It's a hard thing. What Gamaliel's words help us do is to see that that's been happening a long time, right? This is something that we deal with today, that our parents dealt with before us, that grandparents dealt with before us, and it wasn't always social media. It wasn't always the radio. It wasn't always the tent revival. It wasn't always, a lot of times, it was just whoever was popular and influential in an area, whatever the medium. And so don't think this is a 2024 problem, and it's not a age-old problem. Religious celebrities have always been around, and it's always easier to listen to them. So Gamaliel kind of references these people,

so let's get the last bit of his encouragement. He says that Theudas and Judas the Galilean, they've risen, they've fallen, and what does it say in Acts 5, 38, and 39? It says, so in the present case, I tell you, so with this insurrection happening, with these rabble-rousers, right, with Peter and John and the gang, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone. For if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail, but if it is of God, you will be able to overthrow them. You might even be found, oh, excuse me, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God. So they took his advice, okay? This is likely the bigger reason that Gamaliel's words are included. This is why Luke included his words, because it gives us a sense that everybody, including Gamaliel and all these men of high honor, everybody has their eyes on this little church,

and it's waiting to see what's gonna happen next. And maybe they're just hoping it's gonna cave in on itself. Maybe they're just hoping this isn't gonna be a real thing. Let's let them go free, let's see what happens. In the short term, things are going well. So you look at verse, the last verse of chapter five, Acts 5:42, it says, and every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus. So this is good. This reminds us of several things that have been happening. This is kind of our fourth or fifth time in Acts one through six where it says, and things are going great. And things are running down the road like 65 miles an hour, right? Like it's like you're on the Chisholm Trail. It's just clean and free, and you're just going, okay?

And the church is moving without fetter. It's moving at a great speed. And as we turn to Acts six, the road gets a little bumpy. We encounter another problem. And I wanna say something before we look at it. The church's response to this problem is likely one of its biggest decisions in terms of impact, in terms of setting the tone for the rest of the New Testament. The decisions, the way the church handles these problems in Acts six, and it's just in the first seven verses, the way it handles that, it just ripples through the rest of the New Testament. And I wanna show you that. We need to see the problem, and then we need to see what happens.

Acts chapter six verse one, it says, now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution, okay? That assumes that we know a lot of things. So let me just explain a few things here. First, Hellenists and Hebrews, who in the world are those people? Those people are probably subsets of Jews. So those are Hellenistic Jews or Hebraic Jews. The reason it makes that distinction is because you had Jews that were part of this church thing happening. You had Jews that were from many other places in the world, okay? You had Jews coming from several countries over. Well, and as you might imagine, the Jews that come from several countries over have a different culture, a different set of expectations, a different way of doing things, maybe a different way of the way their families operate.

It's just different than the Jews that are in Jerusalem. If you would think of it this way, if you were born and raised in Texas and you still live in Texas, you are under the strong impression, whether you know it or not, you are under the strong impression that everybody knows Texas history. Okay, you are. You don't know it, but you believe that. So when somebody's like, when you venture outside of Texas and you're like, yeah, doesn't everybody know exactly what happened to battle the Alamo? They're like, Al-a-what? You know, it doesn't compute, right? And so when you are a native born Texan and you grew up here and you learned Texas history and all that, and then you go live in Thailand for a few years and then you come back, you're not gonna be the same. Thailand is going to have affected you, changed you in small ways, maybe that you can't see, maybe the way you dress, maybe the way you talk,

but it's going to affect you. And so when you come back to Texas, maybe for your pilgrimage to Texas, which apparently can happen, you make your pilgrimage to Texas, things are gonna be a little bit different. And especially if you're sticking around for a while. So these are Hellenistic Jews that culturally are so different that you can tell. They're so different in how they dress and talk and how their family operates, how they behave, you can tell that they aren't Jerusalem Jews, okay? That's who the Hellenists and the Hebrews are, okay? So then it also says, so the Hellenists are complaining that they're being a little neglected, maybe on purpose, maybe not. Their widows are being neglected in the daily distribution of food. So in the daily distribution of food, you gotta think, we aren't talking, this isn't like 60 people, this is more like 10,000, okay? That's a safe guess.

Maybe on the low end you're talking 8,000. A lot of people, because in the middle of Acts, like in Acts like three I think, we talk about, there were 5,000 men, okay? So there's 5,000 men, probably 5,000 women, maybe some children along with that. So the conservative remark on this is 8,000 people. Now then you gotta take a percentage of that 8,000, how many of them were widows? We don't know. But let's just say for kicks, it was 5% of them. Just for kicks, that's 400 widows.

Okay, you are daily distributing food to 400 widows across town without the internet. Okay, what do you do? Apparently there was a system that was working and those widows were getting the daily distribution of food. However, something was happening and the Hellenist thought, now we actually don't know that the Hellenist Jew widows were being neglected, we don't know that, we just know they were complaining about it. So we're complaining about something is amiss.

In the narrative, and just to kind of bring this back just real fast, in the narrative, in Acts 4 and 5 and 6, we have problems that come from the outside. So we have outside opposition, we have problems that are inside like internal corruption and an isis and sefira we looked at. And then we go back to outside opposition again and then now we're back to inside. This is a problem that is internal. But it's still different. It's not internal corruption. Okay, the Holy Spirit's not gonna kill anybody for this, at least it seems. It's not corruption. And in fact, we don't really know what the cause is. It's easy to kind of look at that and go, that's racism, right? Against the Hellenistic subculture, you know, the Hebraic subculture. But we don't know that. And really, whether it's racism or just simple neglect, somebody's feeling stubbed and now we look at the response.

So that's the problem, here's the response. Six two, Acts six two. And the 12 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. The 12 could have handled this a number of different ways. I mean, really just your imagination can run wild. Let me just give you three quick options. The 12 could have voted themselves. They could have said, let's take a vote among us 12, let's make a decision and then hand down that decision, they could have just kicked it back to the Hellenistic Jews and just say, hey, settle it yourself. We don't even know if this problem's real. We know you're complaining about it, but can you fix it on your own? None of these are bad, by the way. They also could have just taken down the whole system of daily distribution and said, you know what, this is too much of a mess,

this is too administratively complicated. Let's just kick it back to the house churches and let them, if you have a widow in your house church, and you're responsible for it. None of those are bad, but they didn't do any of those things. They did something specific, and that's really what I'm trying to impress upon you here this morning, is that they are doing something specific in response to this, and their specific response says something about who they are and how they think church should go. This is our origin story for a reason.

Okay, and here's their response. And it ripples through the entire New Testament, they share the work, they share the work. And they say it's not right for the 12 to take care of it. Why? Was it beneath them? Do they think, oh, we're too important, we're religious celebrities, we don't touch things like that. No, it's because it was not their primary calling and gifting.

This is part of the reason it's in our origin story because the early indication here is that churches share ministry. We later find this in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, it talks about how there's one body and many members. There is one body, but there are a variety of gifts, and in that body, all these different gifts they're supposed to work together, hand and glove. They're supposed to come together.

Ephesians 4, it talks about how the Lord gives us each gift to contribute to the one body. We are diverse but unified. This is a constant thing in the New Testament and it is an early indication here, this is not just division of labor. This is to say specifically, look, it's not right for us to do that. And we see this, it's happening in real time. We see it with us, with our ministry teams. We see different people, pastors, deacons, we see different people coming together in their gifting. And yeah, you have different levels of authority, but we're still all working together toward the same cause. Spiritually, God, let me just put it in a different way, God has ordained you specifically to serve specifically in a way that specifically brings life and blessing not just to this body, but to this community. That's a lot of specificlies, but I didn't use enough of them.

Right, you are made specifically, you are put here specifically. You came to this church service this morning for a reason. Whether you are aware of those things or not is immaterial. Your awareness of all this has no bearing on it. But what we should do is at least understand that we need to cooperate with that, not work against it. We need to understand that we are specifically gifted to serve and we need to serve. We need to do that in ways that are a blessing to people. The purpose of our lives is not to exist for our own convenience or to pander to our own extroversion

or our own introversion. The purpose of our lives is to be a sacrificial servant on behalf of other people in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ so that people can find life through him. That's what we're here for. And your gifting is an encoded way that you're supposed to do that. I, for instance, am six-five and very loud. I've been told occasionally I can be persuasive. The Lord has made me to preach, to teach a church. He's called me to do these things. We talk about this whenever we call leaders, right? There's an outside call and an inside call, right? Or the inside call, like, I feel like the Lord's calling me to do this. But if there's no church that's saying, yeah, come be our pastor, then I'm kinda out of luck, right? I need the internal and the external call. Look, our church has needs. We are calling people forward. Be members, be counted, stand and serve.

This is the same thing that's happening. Acts 6, three through four. It says, therefore, brothers, they give further instruction. This is gonna tell us a little bit more. 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 into the ministry of the Word, okay? This is really important because the 12, the apostles describe what they do as ministry right there at the very end. It says, we're gonna devote ourselves to prayer into the ministry of the Word. That word ministry is the same word that is serve in verse two. So it says, we can't stop preaching to serve tables. We have to serve people in the Word. It's the same word, it's actually diaconos. It's where we get the word deacon from. So they're like, hey, and hey, we can't stop preaching to deacon tables.

We have to deacon the Word. That's what the 12 say. They view it as the same thing. We need to understand that. They need to say, or they are saying, you need to choose spiritual leaders to fulfill the ministry of distribution while we fulfill the ministry of preaching the Word. Churches share ministry in Acts and the rest of the New Testament and today. Another way their response ripples through the New Testament, it's just the other way. I only got two this morning, is that they initiate self-government. You can see it in those verses that we just read. It says, pick out from among you. And what those 12 are telling to those churches, so they assemble, remember verse one, they assembled the full body, or verse two, they assembled the full body of the disciples together. They assembled everybody. And then they said effectively, you have the ability to pick leaders for yourselves.

Not just the ability, but the responsibility to pick leaders for yourselves. There's an early indication here in Acts chapter six that churches should govern themselves. You find this even whenever you have lists of leaders in verse three and in Titus one, that churches, the churches are the ones who receive the qualifications for leaders. Why? Why would you tell a church what a pastor should look like and what a deacon should look like? The reason you do that is because they are the ones selecting them. This isn't just FYI, these are the kind of men that only the pastors are gonna choose or only the deacons are gonna choose. No, no, this is given to the entire church so that that church can say, okay, here's the qualifications of what it is to be a pastor, to be a deacon. We should only choose people who match those qualifications. First Corinthians five, it's the church

that disciplines a member who, the complainer or the sin is that he has his father's wife. We don't really know exactly what that means, but he has his father's wife. So the church, it's not like in first Corinthians five, it says, hey, there's a man who has his father's wife, he's a member among you. You should bring him to us so that we can discipline him. You should bring him to us so we can tell him that he's in the wrong. No, they tell the church to do that. They say, look, you need to take this brother aside. You need to help him understand what he's doing is wrong. You need to restore him gently. You need to be sweet, you need to love him, you need to reach out to him, tell him you care about him, what he's doing is hurting himself, it's hurting the reputation of Christ. Don't do it. Tells the whole church to do that. The churches should get, there's a thousand other examples

are only limiting it to a few here, but you find this happening in real time in Acts six. And this is why we vote on things as a church. Look, we don't vote on things as a church because we're Baptist, okay? We don't. I'm Baptist by conviction. I don't care about global affiliation. I don't care about those things. We don't fly that flag, right? We happily participate in missions. We have Sutor and Caroline, right? They're part of our global efforts to reach the world. That's good. We can participate and we should, but I do not care what a church in Kentucky is doing. I don't care. You really shouldn't either.

It shouldn't matter. We shouldn't get our marching orders from what a lot of churches are doing or even getting our marching orders from what historically our type of church has done. No, no, we have the Bible. It's so great. It's so sufficient. It'll tell you how a church should go. I promise. It's all here. It's how we got the traditions in the first place. It's because they were reading the Bible and going, this is what a church should be like. Let's do that, okay. And I'm telling you, I'm Baptist by conviction. I was not Baptist for like eight years because it didn't make any sense to me, right? I worked for a different church, different denomination, or just, I was out there. I wasn't Baptist at all. I even planted a church that was not a Baptist church. You know, clutch the pearls. I mean, you know, wow. But it's because I didn't understand what it was to be Baptist.

And I had no, I had no inclination to go like, yeah, I should do Baptist because I was raised Baptist. Like, that is not me. I don't do that, right? But whenever I read scripture, whenever I kept looking at what was happening, I'm going, okay, like, this is how it should be. And it just so happens that historically, Baptists line up pretty well with that. And our church, the way we run a church, it's very kind of New Testament.

And I'm excited, not that we're perfect. Look, we're not perfect. Other churches aren't the devil, okay? It's just, I'm Baptist by conviction, okay? That's probably enough. And it's because I believe that what the Bible is saying about how churches should run is true. This is why we vote as a church. Because it, and let me just be on the positive end. We vote as a church because it agrees with the fact that we all have the Holy Spirit. It agrees with the fact that I don't have some direct line to God that you don't have. We actually, when you read the Bible, and when you look at kind of our kind of churches historically, we reject that outright. If somebody says, I have a greater, more direct line to God than you, I'm calling that guy heretic and throwing the first tomato. No, that's not right. It's not Christianity. It's not how we do it. Anybody who claims such, they're a celebrity looking

for influence, turn the other direction, unfollow them. Don't do it. They don't have more of a line to God than you. I promise. Jesus didn't die more for them than for you. Okay? Didn't happen. Man, I'm spunky today. Sorry. You guys are just catching the other end. I'm not mad at you, I promise. We are all called to govern ourselves. We are all called to personal responsibility as believers. That we, and the judgment seat, our whole church isn't going up there. It's you. Your family's not going up there with you. It's you. That's what we believe. That's what the scriptures tell us in an overwhelming fashion. Acts six, verse five.

It says, and what they said, what the 12 said, please the whole gathering and they chose, they chose, the church chose, Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Permanos, and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch. Okay, the they that is choosing is the church. Let me just point out one more time, this is the exact opposite of a religious celebrity. This is not, this is not based on who's the most popular. This isn't based on who has the most influence. No one should receive spiritual authority because they are popular. It's a bad idea. Churches should feel the weight of deciding these things together. It should push us to pray and seek wisdom and consider what's gone before us. Churches should feel this weight of conferring spiritual authority upon a person. That should be a heavy thing. We just voted for Daniel Oster to become a pastor.

That is no small thing. That was after, was it Daniel, 13 months? It was a long time. Like it wasn't like, Daniel should be a pastor. Okay, let's lay hands. That didn't happen, okay. It was this long drawn out process that actually started before the 13 months. But then for 13 months, like we just went through this process where he was learning about it. We were having discussions. And then he gives us testimony. You guys ask him questions and then we vote on him. All of that, we do all of that out of conviction, not out of tradition. All of it. We do it because Acts 6 happened. And much of the rest of the New Testament, that's why we do those things. Acts 6, 6 says, and they set these they set before the apostles and they prayed and laid hands on them. Why did they do this? Why do they share ministry? Why do we self-govern? Here's kind of where I just wanna help you see this.

I just wanna help you kind of hear this well. This whole thing, the reason that we kind of have this nod to sharing ministry, the reason why we have this nod to personal government and we govern ourselves, right? We have personal responsibility. The reason that we do all of those things is because it reflects what Jesus has done in us. Why do we all share ministry? Because Jesus has made us ministers, quite simply.

Jesus died on a cross, not so that you could sit in a pew. Jesus died on a cross in order to make you new and make you a servant to other people, a minister in his name. Why do we self-govern? And I've already kind of covered this, but I wanna say it just so I can stick the land date. We self-govern because we all have the Holy Spirit. We self-govern because we believe that when we as a church are talking that we're gonna agree on some things that the Holy Spirit's leading us all toward. It doesn't mean we won't have disagreement. It doesn't. It means that we can confidently say we have the same spirit. Let's work together to be one body. We can say it with confidence. It's not some dice roll. It's not some, man, I hope everything's okay. I hope people aren't weird. I hope we can just get along. Maybe there's some person that maybe people won't be there at the vote tonight.

Maybe, no, no, no. If you're a member of me, I want you here. I want you voting. I want you knowledgeable. I want you understanding kind of where we're going as a church, because it's not just about having a say. It's about owning a decision together. And it is my deep and abiding desire. The Lord has put this in me as a leader of this church to have us going the same direction and knowing why. It reflects what Jesus has done in us. This is our origin story. This is our heritage. Not Baptist heritage, not capital B, Baptist heritage. This is Christian New Testament Acts 6 heritage.

This is our origin story as Christians. The Holy Spirit is working in us. Look, I just want to conclude this whole series by just helping you remember a few things distinctly. And I'm just gonna hit on a few things. Just that the Holy Spirit, remember, the Holy Spirit is the one who's instigating all of this. We call this book Acts. And traditionally, it's called the Acts of the Apostles. I would say it could be just as easily called the Acts of the Holy Spirit, okay? The Holy Spirit's the main character in all this, remember? We're hearing about Peter and John, but pretty soon Peter and John are gonna fade to the background. We're gonna hear about other people that are gonna fade, other people they're gonna fade, other people they're gonna fade. It's not even going to end well, okay? In Acts 28, it kinda ends on a cliffhanger. You're like, what happened? And it's in part to say, it's still happening.

The church is still going, right? The Holy Spirit is still working. How's the Holy Spirit work? We see this. See this in Acts 1 and 2, the Holy Spirit is opening avenues for ministry. The Holy Spirit is authorizing opposition to you and me so that we will have avenues to walk through so that we will do ministry, right? So that we will say yes when the Holy Spirit says, okay, it's your time. It's what you've been praying for. Holy Spirit kinda parts the Red Sea. You gotta walk, you gotta go there. Calling us out, the Holy Spirit's calling us out continually. Like, you're asleep, but the Holy Spirit's still calling you out. You're distracted with whatever your Netflix queue is, but the Holy Spirit is still calling you out. The Holy Spirit's still saying to you, I'm working in you, I'm creating avenues for you to do ministry, I'm convicting people of sin, I am moving people into your life

so that you can be a servant of them. This is what our heritage is as Christians, not super Christians, not pastors, not missionaries, not church leaders, not Christians. The Holy Spirit's working on our behalf to do good works so that we can do them, and at the same time, all while that is happening, the Holy Spirit's orchestrating all that, which seems like a full-time job. That is happening, and the Holy Spirit at the same time is making you and me holy, making you and me more like Jesus. Why, so we can deserve heaven? No, so that we can represent Christ to the people that we're called to. The reason that Cash was baptized this morning, it's not because now he has all of his original sin washed away, that's a farce and a lie. The reason he was baptized today is because he's declaring publicly before his church, before his spiritual family, that he wants to follow Jesus forever,

and we commemorate that with a symbol of baptism. We go down just like being buried, and we are raised to a new life. Cash is already living in that new life. He's already said yes to Jesus, already been following Jesus, but his baptism is a step of obedience. The Holy Spirit is purifying us as a church body, not so that we can be more righteous than other people, but so that we can reach the people and not be perfect, but look like Jesus when we do it. And this is setting us all up for us to make disciples. This is why the Holy Spirit is making us holy. This is why the Holy Spirit is calling people to us. It's because God in heaven is building his spiritual family, and he is calling us onward and forward. This is also good to remember, and we haven't really talked about this, but it's been kind of just obvious in front of us, but we haven't ever said anything about it.

It is good to remember the early church was a freight train, like barreling down the tracks, looking like nothing's gonna stop it, but it was very turbulent. If you're in the midst of it, your leaders are getting jailed twice. People are dying, and it's weird. I mean, if you're able to make decisions, your life is changing, like your circles of influence are changing. Everything, it's very, very turbulent. You find later in the church letters that there are people that claim Christ and then fall away. They have specific names, like it's calling out specific people, like Hymenaeus and Alexander and Philetas. And it's because that happens. Some people get excited for a little while and then they fall away, and sometimes they come back and sometimes they don't. And it's hard to make sense of all that. It's very frustrating for everybody. It's hard on churches.

But this turbulent growth that they're experiencing, these ups and downs is also our heritage. It's not, we're not called to be some perfect church that's gonna make the cover of Cool Church Magazine. It's not, that's not our call. Our call is to kind of stumble forward, figure it out, not be too afraid to make mistakes, try our best, but understand we're not gonna get it right. We're not gonna be perfect, but we are gonna be a church.

There is a deep joy and a deep satisfaction in following Jesus together as a spiritual family. We see, not just glimpses of this, we see this all over the first six chapters of Acts. And it's not just for the first six chapters of Acts, it's for us too. And it should, I hope, it should make you yourself, I don't care if you're not a deacon or a pastor, I don't care if you're, I don't care if you feel like the dumbest Christian alive, I don't care. It should make you ask and answer the question, like what is the Holy Spirit calling me to do in the midst of this body and in the midst of my wider circle of people? Who am I called to serve? Who am I called to lead with? How can I grow? Everybody, that's a question for everybody, not just for seminary candidates. That's a question for anybody. If you're gonna do that, then you've gotta take that step, right? And we're about to have our time of response

where I'm just gonna encourage you to do that, I'm just gonna encourage you to take that step. I don't know what that step is. I'm not pretending to know. But the Holy Spirit's usually pretty clear in what He's calling you to do. And so being able to kind of take that step to kind of actualize, like whatever the Holy Spirit's asking you to do, that's a really good thing. And sometimes it looks like Jesus calling you to walk on water, and sometimes it looks like Jesus calling you to give cold water to somebody, okay? Sometimes it looks totally daunting, and sometimes it looks completely obvious and simple. But I'm telling you, the Holy Spirit calls you, the Holy Spirit calls you to do things, and to respond is to find life, and to reject it is to die.

Respond, find life. Keep walking in that life that the Holy Spirit has put before you. Maybe you're in a spot, and just in thinking, maybe you're in a spot where maybe the fire used to burn really hot, and now you're in a place where it's not burning so hot. Maybe you're experiencing some doubt and some frustration that you didn't intend on facing. Maybe it's got you in a really tough spot. Cash part of his testimony is that he was in a tough spot because he was like, I should be baptized already in my own mind, right? And I'm a pastor's kid. And so that kind of locked him up for a bit. And some of you were locked up. Some of you don't really know what to do next, and that's okay. The Lord wants to find you in that moment. As we pray and sing, I want you to consider, if it's during the song, that's fine. If it's after the service, that's fine. I'll be hanging out by those couches and chairs.

Why don't you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for your Holy Spirit that works in us, that moves in us, that authorizes opposition and authorizes us to do ministry. Thank you for the ways that you open things up before us, for our good and for your glory. You are the king of all creation. You line everything up, and I ask that you would help us to cooperate with you. Give us the courage to say yes.

That's your name that we pray.