Acts chapter 6, and this morning
we'll be looking at verse 1 of Acts chapter 6. And the title
of the lesson this morning is, A Positive and Negative of Church
Growth. A positive and negative of church
growth. Let's look at this in verse 1
of chapter 6 of the book of Acts. The scripture says, and in those
days when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a
murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews because their widows
were neglected in the daily ministration. Now, there are two things in
this verse that I want us to see a positive and a negative,
a positive and a negative concerning this verse. First of all, the
positive. The positive is that the disciples
were multiplied. That's a positive, isn't it?
The disciples were multiplied. That in the church of this time
it had grown greatly in such a short amount of time. Now,
This band of disciples started with 11. We had 11 apostles at
the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we had
the 120 in the upper room when the Spirit of God was poured
out on them. And then from that, we had the
gathering of the 3,000 at one time in Acts chapter 2. And the
next time we read of the apostle preaching, we have 5,000. Gathered
at one time and so at some estimates Put the church at this particular
time at around 10,000 people 10,000 disciples of Jesus Christ
in one place Let me ask a question What then is the root cause of
church growth? I? What is the root cause of
this growth? What is the main purpose and
reason behind this many people coming to know Christ? And by what means did God use
to bring them in? Every pastor I know longs for
church growth. I know many pastors. And I know
that there are many pastors who long for the church to grow in
number and people to hear and believe the gospel. This is why
we're here. We long for people to come to
know Christ. We long for people to know Christ
and come in among us and join themselves with us. I like that
song that says, we long for our churches to be full, that all
the chosen race may with one voice One heart and soul sing
Thy redeeming grace." I long for that, don't you? I long for
God's churches to be full. But although we long for this,
we know that numbers do not account for success. Numbers do not account
for success. At times, God has had many elect
in one place, And at other times, God has very few elect in a certain
place. If you want to look at this,
I mean, the example that we had before us, I mean, 10,000 people
in less than a few weeks of time, a few months of time, and there
it is, one service, one service brought in 5,000 of God's elect. That's something. That's a mighty
work of God. And yet we read of the prophet
Elijah, you remember him on top of the mountain there, bemoaning
his situation. Oh is me, I'm the only one left. Yet God said, I have left for
myself 7,000 that have not bowed the knee to Baal. Now we think
7,000, we're such a small group, 7,000 is a lot, but you got to
understand, he's talking about 7,000 out of everybody. out of
everybody, two million people, 7,000 is not a lot. So it's sometimes
God has a elect people that are large in number and sometimes
he does it. And so many of God's chosen, as many as God has chosen
to salvation, they will come and join themselves to the local
body and hear the gospel being preached. So the root cause of
this growth is what? The election of God. That's the
root cause of any growth whatsoever. Any growth that is not of the
election of God is not growth at all, but just a facade, just
a mirage. And so then, What is used of
God in the church to bring this church is His election, but the
means by which God uses. What is the means by which God
uses to bring His people in? The Holy Spirit through what
means? The preaching of the gospel.
The preaching of the gospel. When these 120 in the upper room,
when they were anointed with the Spirit of God, and they spoke
in tongues, what did they do? They keep it to themselves. No,
they went out and preached. And when they were preaching
in other languages, they came up to Peter and said, hey, you
guys must be drunk. No, that's not what was happening
here. Peter went back and he showed
them the scriptures. He preached to them Jesus Christ. This was Acts chapter 2 in verse
22. He says, Jesus, a man approved of God in verse 23, you crucified
him. Verse 33, you, he, but God raised
him from the dead and has exalted him. And what was the result
of that? That was a 3000 that was brought
in off that one message. God brought 3000 of his elect
off that message. And after Peter, remember, he
healed the lame man. When he healed the lame man and
the people were gathered around Peter and said, hey, this fellow's
got some power. And Peter looked about and he
said, what? Wait, wait, wait. I don't have any power. The power
that I have comes from only the Lord Jesus Christ. And he preached
to them Jesus Christ and Him crucified, Jesus Christ and Him
risen from the dead. And what happened after that?
Five thousand were added. Five thousand were added. And
even when the Sanhedrin brought him in before their councils
and the rulers beat them, what's the result? What did they do
when their council was against them? And they whipped them. And when we say whip them, you
know, that word beat in the previous chapter, it's a word for skinned,
like you skin an animal. That's what they were. They were
skinned by the scourge and by the by the whips of these men. And look at the end here in verse
41 of chapter five, just above this, and they departed from
the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy
to suffer shame for his name. And here it is. And daily in
the temple. And in every house they ceased
not to teach and preach Jesus Christ." You see, nothing stopped
them from this means and method. Nothing stopped them. They didn't
attend to worldly wisdom concerning how it is that people should
come in the church. They didn't say, well, you know,
this, these religious folks are against us. So what we need to
do is we need to change our tactics. They didn't say that. They didn't
change at all. Nothing stopped them from doing
what God had commanded them to do. Why? This is the means by
which God will call His people, and nothing else. And to the
world, this is foolishness. To the world, what we are doing
is absolutely and utterly foolish, and they mock and they scourge
at it, they laugh at it, but my friends, this is the mean
God has chosen to call His people in. This is the means. The wisdom of our day, if we
were to cater to the wisdom of our day, I do not doubt this
church would be full. I don't doubt that. One minute.
If I would show a movie and put it on the sign out there, I could
probably have the whole neighborhood come in. If I were to have some
kind of education seminar to come in and do some marriage
counseling and do some daycare programs, I can have a whole
bunch of people come in here. But my friends, that is not the
means God has chosen and that's not the means I'll use. I'll
use the means that God has chosen. And whether few come in or many
come in, it matters little. It matters little. I remember hearing about this.
Some church, they had a lottery. I'm not kidding. They had a lottery
to get people to come in. They would have tickets underneath
every one of their seats in their auditorium. And at the end of
the service, they had to wait till the end because they wouldn't
stay if they won beforehand. At the end of the service, they'd
pull that ticket out and they'd win money or a car or something
like that. to try to draw people in. That's
the wisdom of this world. And by all means, I know it draws
people, but my friends, I don't want just people from the world.
We don't want the world in the church. We want God's people
to come. When God calls them, they'll
come and they'll be glad to come. This is by, this is the means
that God has chosen. It is the preaching of the gospel.
This is the means by which God will add to His church. In Acts 13, 48, the scripture
says, as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. As many as God has ordained,
they'll hear the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, of the
forgiveness of sins, the pardon of sin, and they'll come in. They'll come in and they'll join
themselves with God's people and rejoice over the message.
And only those that God has chosen shall come in. But my friends,
how shall they come in? How shall they believe? except they hear the preaching
of the gospel. This is why it's incumbent for
me to bring my children and make sure they're here. I know this
is why Kathy brings her grandchildren every time she gets a chance.
Because if there's anywhere in all of the world, they'll hear
the gospel. In this place, they'll hear it
here. She knows that. I know that. If there's any hope
for them to be saved, they must come under the sound of the gospel.
This is why they do it. This is why we're here. to hear
the gospel of Jesus Christ and rejoice in the forgiveness of
sins by the blood of Christ alone. This is the means. Now, this
is the positive. We love to see this. But my friends,
when a church is blessed with growth, when a church is blessed
with growth, we must also recognize the negative of it because there
will be. In those days, let me read that
scripture to us again. And in those days when the number
of the disciples were multiplied, there's a positive, here's a
negative, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews.
Now, in this day, there were two types of Jews. Now, this
was still a Jewish church by and large. I'm not saying that
there weren't Gentiles proselytes in this group, but for the most
part, they were Jews. And these were divided into two
different types of Jews, Grecian Jews and Hebrew Jews, a Jew Jew
and somebody else that was a Jew, but decided to be more progressive. So we would say that these were
progressive Jews and Orthodox Jews. Now, the traditional, the
progressive Jews, the Hebrews were more like the Pharisees,
while the Grecian Jews were more like the Sadducees. You see,
the Sadducees, they embraced the Hellenistic viewpoint and
most of them usually even spoke in the Greek language or had
a different dialect because they were with it. They were people
of the times. These were modern folk. And the
Hebrews, they were the people, they were traditional folk. You
know, so you have all types in a church. That's what that's
going to teach. We come from all different types
and backgrounds, every one of us. And some of you have traditions. I remember for the first time
going to the Burns' for Thanksgiving. They had a tradition. I never
saw it, but in my family, we didn't have it. It's a wonderful
tradition that they do, telling everybody how thankful they are
of what God has provided. That was a good tradition. I
never did that. We never had that in my family.
So there's different types in the church, and God chooses people
from all different types. He said that they come from all
kindred, tongues, tribes, and peoples. And so when God brings
them in, there'll be differences. And so these Grecian Jews, they
were of the opinion that the Hebrews were neglecting their
widows. They probably thought that, hey, they're putting our
widows at the back of the line. You know, our widows is not getting
the right amount of money for their food that they need. You
got to remember, they had all things common at this point.
Nobody had any possessions. They gave it all to the church
and the church administered to the widows and to the fatherless. And that's good for us to understand.
That church then, and even this church now, if we have a widow
indeed, it is our responsibility as a church to take care of that
widow. And what I mean by that is a widow who has nobody else
to help her, no other family. That's a widow indeed. And so
these widows were being neglected by the Hebrews, putting them
in the back or skimming them from their necessities. What we must understand about
this, when the believer's number increases, that doesn't always
mean that joy increases. You put a bunch of sinners together,
in one large group of sinners together, in one place, you are
going to have trouble. You're going to have trouble. The negative of prosperity in
the church is discord and disunity. It is something we must understand
and always be on guard against. Let us therefore remember that
the church is not made up of holy people, but sinners saved
by grace. It's made up of ones in need
of great mercy. and have obtained great mercy. It's ones in need of forgiveness
of sins and have been forgiven of our sins. Then we should even
walk as children of grace in order to avoid this type of disunity
and trouble. If we'll keep our eye on the
Lord Jesus Christ, I guarantee you we won't have disunity. If
we'll keep our eye as to who we are and what we are by nature,
if we'll keep our eye as to who God is by nature and see the
great gap that He has bridged by Jesus Christ in coming down
for us and dying for our sins, then, my friends, we can easily
love and forgive one another more readily. Remember, Jesus
said, He that is forgiven much, loveth much." How much have you
been forgiven? And that will determine how much
you'll love somebody else. How much you'll be able to willingly
overlook something somebody has done to you is by determining
how much you've been forgiven. Friends, there's no perfect church.
There's no perfect church. We all have problems. but rather
than allow the seed of discontent to grow, let us rather go to
our brothers and sisters in whom we have grievances and work it
out." It is imperative that we do this, whether large or small. I mean, even in the small number
we have, we still can have disunity. We still can. I know many of
you in this church in time past have seen us split by just one
person. One person. My friends, let us
help each other and serve one another as Christ served us.
And this will guard against any type of disunity. I know this to be true, the more
we see how much God loved us in Christ, the more we'll be
able to love each other. And I hope to guard against. The negative, if the Lord would
be gracious to cause us to grow, we'd love that. We love for God
to call His elect in. We don't want the world. We want
His people to come and enjoin themselves to us. But when they
come, we ought to understand and guard against the negative
of church growth, which is disunity. And we do that by seeing ourselves
in Christ, by always hearing the gospel. I pray that God will
bless this to our hearts.