Good evening, let's all stand
together. We'll sing hymn number 485. 485. We praise thee, O God, for the
Son of thy love, for Jesus who died and is now gone above. Hallelujah, thine the glory. Hallelujah, amen. ♪ Hallelujah, Thine the glory
♪ ♪ Revive us again ♪ ♪ We praise Thee, O God ♪ ♪ For Thy Spirit
of light ♪ ♪ Who has shown us our Savior ♪ ♪ And scattered
our night ♪ ♪ Hallelujah, Thine the glory ♪ Alleluia, amen. Alleluia, lime the pouring, revive
us again. All glory and praise to the Lamb
that was slain, who has borne all our sins and has cleansed
every stain. Alleluia, thine the glory. Alleluia, amen. Hallelujah, thine the glory,
revive us again. Revive us again. Fill each heart with thy love. May each soul be rekindled with
fire from above. Hallelujah, thine the glory. Hallelujah, amen. Hallelujah, thine the glory. Revive us again. Be seated. We'll sing hymn number
51. Number 51. Praise the Savior, ye who know
him, who can tell how much we owe him. Gladly let us render
to him all we are and have. Jesus is the name that charms
us. He for conflict fits and arms
us. Nothing moves and nothing harms
us while we trust in Him. Trust in Him, ye saints, forever. He is faithful, changing never,
neither force nor guile can sever those he loves from him. Keep us, Lord, O keep us, cleaving
to thyself and still believing, Till the hour of our receiving
promise joys with thee. Then we shall be where we would
be. Then we shall be what we should
be. Things that are not now nor could
be soon shall be. Acts chapter six. Acts chapter six. Read the first eight verses and 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. Then the Twelve called them all
to the disciples, and said unto them, It is not reason that we
should leave the word of God, and serve tables. Wherefore,
brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full
of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, who we may appoint over this
business. But we will give ourselves continually
to prayer and the ministry of the word. And the saying pleased
the whole multitude, and they chose Stephen, a man full of
faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Procurius, Nicanor,
Timon, Parmenas, Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch, whom they set before
the apostles. And when they had prayed, they
laid their hands on them, and the word of God increased, and
the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly. And a great
company of the priests were obedient to the faith. And Stephen, full
of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the
people. Our blessed Father, gracious,
gracious God in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Your name is holy.
You are righteous, Father. Blessed God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, our Savior, and Lord, we thank
you for the love we're with you. Loved us to send you son, loved
us enough to send your own son to take our place, to stand in
our room, stand in our stead, bear your judgment, bear your
wrath. and by our sins away, will they
never be remembered against us again. And Lord, we thank you
for that. We thank you for this wonderful
privilege. Oh, what a privilege, what a blessing to be able to
gather with the saints of God. I know always thankful for that.
Thankful for those who come out. Thankful for those who believe
and who trust and who are faithful. So God meet with us tonight.
I ask you to please come among us, enable me to speak, and Lord,
enable the saints to hear. Save your people in this place.
Have mercy, mercy, mercy upon our family, upon our friends,
on those that we love. For Lord, if you don't have mercy
on them, and you don't deal with them, Lord, they'll perish, perish
absolutely with non-thoughts of God in their mind. So meet
with us, bring glory to yourself. We ask these things in our Lord
Jesus' name, amen. On page 32 in our course books,
we'll sing All I Need. 32 in our course books. Jesus Christ is made to me. All I need, all I need. He alone is all my plea. He is all I need. Wisdom, righteousness. Jesus is my all in all. All I need, all I need, while
He keeps, I cannot fall. He is all I need. Wisdom, righteousness, and power,
holiness forevermore. My redemption full and sure,
He is all I need. He redeemed me when He died,
all I need. All I need. I with Him was crucified. He is all I need. Wisdom, righteousness, and power. Holiness forevermore. By redemption full and sure,
He is all I need. Glory, glory to the Lamb, All
I need, all I need. By His Spirit sealed I am, He
is all I need. Wisdom, righteousness, and power. Holiness forevermore. My redemption full and sure. He is all I need. Yeah, He's all we need to face
God with, nothing else but Him. Back here in Acts chapter 6,
I've named my subject this evening, A PROBLEM IS SOLVED. You remember when Ananias and
Sapphira act like they was given their all to the church. And
they kept back part of the money. But they pretended that they
gave everything. And that's the way it is in religion.
That's the way it is in... If anybody keeps back anything
from Christ, anything. As far as I... David said, keep
me from secret sins. Keep me from presumptuous sins.
Save me from my secret faults. But to hold back anything from
the Lord Jesus Christ, It's awful what it'll do to a
person. We can't imagine. I mean, Christ died for our whole
being. When Christ died, he died for
our souls, he died for our bodies, he died for our minds, he died
for understandings, he died for our will, he died for our love,
he died for everything about us. So why would we hold anything
back from Him? One of the greatest griefs, I
think, as believers, we feel like we have not committed ourselves the way we
really, really want to, the way we desire to, the way we desire
to. And then another thing, the apostles
suffered greatly for their gospel that they preached. The gospel
that they preached. They were beaten, slandered,
put in jail, and God brought them out of jail, and they were
warned not even to mention the name of Christ again. But here
we are. We're in this situation. Here's
the problem that they were dealing with at this particular time.
And in those days, when the number of the disciples were multiplied,
there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews,
because their widows were neglected in the daily ministrations. Now, you know, there was a, you
remember in Acts, when there's day of Pentecost, everybody in
Jerusalem down there, they all heard these men preaching and
teaching in their own languages. So there was a, people in Jerusalem
had a lot of different languages. And the two main languages that
they was doing in the days of Christ, our Lord, was of course
Greek. Greek was the number one language
in the world at that time. And the Jews, they used the,
what they call the Aramaic. So they have a problem over language
here. The Greeks and the Jews preached
one language and the Greeks spoke another language. And so they
had a communication problem. And here's the thing about it,
that there rose up, this is when the trouble started. In those days when the disciples
were multiplied. Now you know what it means to
be multiplied? Not doubled, tripled, quadrupled. But they were multiplied. Every day they multiplied. If
they start off with 100, they end up with 300. Start up with
300, end up with 900. Start out with 1,000, end up
with 3,000. So it just kept multiplying and multiplying. And so it got
so big, the congregation got so big, and the problem was caused
by growth, by the church growth. And then there are these Jews,
these Grecians, they began to murmur, and look who they murmured
against, the Hebrews. They murmured against the Jews,
murmured against the Hebrews. And why they were murmuring,
because every day, and this is what God taught them, God taught
the Jews this, and he rebuked them for this time and time again.
And you'll remember in Job, said he took care of the fatherless
and the widows. And God told people, said, listen,
if you got a widow, And she's a widow indeed, like Paul said,
she's a widow indeed. If she don't have a family, if
she don't have no nephews, no sons, no daughters, nobody that
would take care of her, said it's the church's responsibility
to take care of them. See they got a home to it? See
that they got money to take care of them? See that they got food
to eat? That's why it's called serving tables. Now I'll tell you something about
the Hebrews now. They took care of their witness, but they act
like the Grecians, it didn't make no difference to them. They
just ignored them for some reason. And so these Greeks, they began
to murmur, began to murmur. They began to have a problem
over this. And oh my, and so they was having
a problem. Now, what do you do with somebody's
murmuring and complaining? You know what most churches would
do? They'd have a business meeting and say, now listen, these folks
have got a complaint, and they're murmuring, and I'll tell you
what we need to do. We need to have a vote. And 51% carries
that they quit complaining, and if we don't, we'll ignore them. But that's not what happened.
That's not what happened. And they murmured, they complained.
And then it seems like they had a just cause for complaining.
It says there in the daily ministry, they took money out of the treasury. They bought food, they went to
the people's houses, and they seemed that they were taken care
of. But the Greeks weren't, and they murmured. Well, how in the
world are the apostles gonna deal with this? The problem rose
because they grew so much. Then the 12. These 12 apostles
called them all to the disciples unto them. I don t know how many
it was, but it was a great crowd, and they called them all around
them. And this is what they told them. It s not reasonable for
us. It s not right for us. It s not needful for us that
we should leave the Word of God and have to go out here and start
taking care of widows and orphans and people that s in need. It's
not reasonable that we should do that. And I tell you what,
and they went on to say this, wherefore brethren, look ye out
among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost
and wisdom of whom we may appoint over this business. But we will
give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of
the word. Now let me tell you what didn't
happen here. God didn't give these men any revelation. They
didn't have any revelation. They didn't say, well, God showed
us to do it this way. God showed us to do it that way.
There was no revelation given them how to deal with this. But
this is what they did. And I'll tell you what, they
got the congregation together, the multitude, and they left
it up to them. They said, it's not right for
us to leave the preaching of the word of God. and have to
go into these homes and start waiting on people. So he said,
look you out among yourselves. You look among yourselves. You
yourselves. You pick, you choose. And he
said, listen, and get you seven men. Seven. Always seven means
perfection, completeness. And he'd choose you seven men.
And I tell you, well, let me tell you what they didn't do.
They didn't have a business meeting. They didn't ignore these Jews
or these Greeks. And they didn't form a committee
and try to say, what in the world are we gonna do about this? Apostles
didn't do this. And they didn't say, well, let's
get the deacons together and take care of this. And that's
what they say, this is the first calling of deacons. But you don't
find the word deacon given here. And the word deacon in and of
itself means a servant. That's what it means, a servant.
Nowadays, deacon means somebody that runs the church. Somebody
that makes care of everything that you know, and they, if the
preacher don't want to fool with it, send the deacons, they'll
deal with it. And you know, I've been here 44 years, last March,
and we've never had a deacon. And if we ever had a problem,
God always took care of it. And we've helped a lot of people
over the years. Not with just a couple hundred
dollars, but with several thousand at a time. And we never had to
fuss and fight about it. And that's the way these fellas
were. These men trusted these apostles. And these apostles
trusted these people. They knew that they were converted,
knew where they were regenerated, knew that they had the new birth,
knew that they had the Spirit of God in them. They wouldn't
have been in the church had they not been. And he said, we're
four brethren. That's the first thing he called
them, brethren. You're my brethren, we're one.
And look what he says. Look you out among you seven
men. Get yourself, there needs to
be seven of them. Oh, the apostles didn't decide
to do this on their own. They said, and I want you, and
here's the qualifications that these men's got to have. Look
what I said, the qualification. First of all, they have to have
an honest report. That people's got to say these
are wonderful men, fine men, God-fearing men, honest men,
faithful men, converted men. God that loves Christ, people
that know Christ. And that's the first thing, honest
report. And that's what Paul said about a bishop. He said
he has to have an honest report of them that were without. And
the reason that is because of an office. It's the office. It's
the office. And here he says, look, so the
first thing they have to do is they have to be of an honest
report. When I listen, When somebody asks something about you, you
reckon they'd give an honest report of me or an honest report
of you? I said something, you know, I say things about myself
sometimes, and I said something the other day, and dear Shirley,
bless her heart, she told me, she said, you're not like that
at all. She said, you're not like that at all. You know, I
was talking about quick temper. She said, you're not quick tempered
at all. That's a good report. That's what we're talking about,
a good report. I give a report of myself in
some way, somebody else gives a different. And that's what
we're talking about, a good report. A good report. Then look what
else he says. Full of the Holy Ghost. Full of the Holy Ghost. Now this,
when he says they're full of the Holy Ghost, that don't mean
that they speak in tongues. That don't mean that they have
visions. It just means that they have
the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, baptized by the Spirit of
God. The Christ in them, the Holy
Ghost of God, the Word of God, the power. He told his disciples
when they was, when he said, you tear in Jerusalem until you
be endued with power from on high. And so these men were endued,
they were full. He said, make sure these men
are full of the Holy Ghost. They got some power, they got
some sense, and then look what else it says. And wisdom, wisdom,
wisdom. What in the world is wisdom?
Well, I think the scriptures teach us that wisdom, of course,
we have to get it from Christ. If any man has wisdom, let him
ask of God, give it to all men liberally and upbraideth not.
But wisdom is the right use of knowledge. It's the right use
of knowledge in a given situation. And then let me tell you something
that everybody ought to do. Now look with me over in Romans
when we're talking about honest report and being full of the
Holy Ghost and doing things for people. Look in Romans chapter
12 with me. This is some of the things that
all of us ought to do. We ought to pay attention to
it to ourselves. And that's what they're talking
about here. These are the kind of men they were talking about.
Look what he said here in Romans 10. Look in verse 12. Be kindly affection one to another. Oh my. With brotherly love and
honor before another. And that's what these apostles
did. And these other folks said, we prefer them in honor among
ourselves. Not one of these men stood up
and said, I'd make a good servant. Not one of them said, I'll be
willing to do that. No, no, they had to be chosen. And then not slothful in business. That's what the Hebrews were
choosing, the Greeks were choosing the Hebrews of being. Fervent
in spirit, serving the Lord. Rejoicing in hope, continuing in prayer. Listen
to this. Distributing to the necessity of the saints, giving
to hospitality, love, company. Bless them which persecute you.
Curse, bless and curse not. Rejoice with them that do rejoice,
and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind, one toward
another. Not mind, not high things, but
condescend, come down. And whatever you do, don't be
wise in your own conceits. So these men were looking for
wisdom. These men, they didn't volunteer. They didn't volunteer. And then
look what it says there in the last part of verse 3. Whom we
may appoint over this business. What business? In the daily ministry
of taking care of the widows. The widows. They didn't have anybody else
take care of them, so the church took the obligation of it. And
then look what else they said here now in verse four. You pick out these men, honest
report, full of the Holy Ghost, full of wisdom, and we'll appoint
them to take this business on. But this is what we're gonna
do. We will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry
of the word, is there any two more important things for a preacher
than that? Is there any things more important,
more necessary, more needful for a preacher, for an apostle,
or anybody? Prayer, prayer. Bruce Crabtree,
he preached on Sunday morning in our conference, he preached
on five encouragements to prayer. And then when he was here last
week ago, Sunday night, you know what he preached on? He preached
on prayer. Preached on prayer. And that's what these fellas
says. We're gonna give ourselves continually to prayer. We got to pray over the Word. We can't preach without praying.
We can't preach, we can't worship God without prayer. And if we
don't pray for ourselves, pray for somebody else. And everybody
in this building tonight needs prayer. And everyone of us in
this building tonight want us to pray for one another, don't
we? You asked me to pray the other
night for a particular person. And we ask people to pray. And
that's what they said, and that's what a preacher, listen, it would
be useless for me to get up here and try to preach without praying
over what I want to preach. Lord, what would you have me
to preach? Where would you have me to go? What am I going to
deal with? And I certainly don't have the
sense or the wisdom to do it. And so prayer, and then preaching
the Word, ministering the Word. There's nothing more important
than the preaching of the Word. I remember years and years and
years and years ago, Eleanor was still working, and some young
woman asked her, said, we was going to have a meeting. She
said, how do y'all conduct your services up there? I said, well,
we sing a couple songs. But the main emphasis in our
services is the Word, is the Word of God, and that is the
main emphasis. I've been listening to a young
preacher from out in Missouri, and you're talking about a fella
that's in the Word, and deals with the Word, and deals with
it Word for Word for Word. I mean, he deals with the Scriptures
honestly. And I tell you, here's another
thing. If a fellow can preach without
the Holy Spirit, and that's what most folks are doing now, and
that's why without the Spirit of God, without prayer, the Scriptures
is a dead letter. But with prayer and the Word
of God, ministering the Word, it's a living thing for us. It's
a living Word. And that's why we give ourselves
to that. And look what happens now. In verse five. And the saying pleased the whole
multitude. They said, that's wonderful. I'm glad y'all thought of that. Their folks were just
pleased. They said, now we'll know how
to deal with this. They were so happy. They were
so well pleased with the decision. They were so well pleased with
it, they was happy, they said, they was pleased by it. And it
says the whole multitude was. Now I have no idea what a multitude
it was. Spurgeon preached any words to
5,000 to 7,000 people at a time, at a service. And there's people today that's
preaching to several thousand people at a time now. But I tell
you what, there's a multitude here, and they don't tell us
because God says it don't make no difference. They're my people,
they're my elect, and they're my people, and it pleased them. Your apostles gave us something
to go by, something to do. And look what it says. So they
started choosing. They looked among themselves
and they said, ìThis is the first one. This is the first one that
we come to.î And they chose Stephen. And we know about Stephen. We
know what happened to Stephen. Iíll deal with that next week.
We know what happened to him. But look what it says about him.
ìA man full of faith, I mean he believed.î He's full of faith
in Christ, full of faith in God's Word, full of faith in the promises
of God, full of faith in what Christ accomplished, full of
faith in a salvation that's full and free, full of faith. And
listen, not only that, but he is full of the Holy Ghost. Oh, look what it says about him
down in verse eight. And Stephen, full of faith and
power, that's the Holy Spirit in him, did great wonders and
miracles among the people. Oh, God started using him immediately.
They chose Stephen, then look what it says, and then they chose
Philip. You know who Philip was? He was
an evangelist. He is the one that went down
and dealt with the Ethiopian eunuch. We find him later. So we see him later too, so he's
got these two men. But these other five, nobody
knows anything about them. We never hear of them, never
come across them ever again. But no doubt the Lord used them.
Procurius, Niceneum, Timon, Parmenas, and
Nicholas, a proselyte, a proselyte. from Antioch. And now look what
they done. They chose them the seven people.
And all these men had to be full of faith. They had to be full
of the Holy Ghost. They had to have an honest report. And they chose, this is the seven
people they chose, these seven men. And look what they done. They said, they brought them
out here. Here's the seven we choose. Here's
the seven we choose. And they brought them before
the twelve apostles. Here they are. Here they are, this is the ones
we've chosen. And they set them, brought them
up before the apostles. And listen to what happens. And
when they prayed, see there they are praying again. They prayed
over these men. Prayed that God would bless them,
God would teach them, God would uphold them. God would direct
them, God would do for them. And then they laid their hands
on them. They laid their hands on them. You know, when Paul
says, lay hands suddenly on no man, that's what he's talking
about. You know, you don't, it'd be
like somebody coming in here and stay in six or seven months
or something like that and tell me, you know, that I believe
God wants me to do this, believe God wants me to do that. And
me agreeing with it and putting my hands on it, putting my approval
on it. You don't do that. It takes years for a fella to
come to that place. But they laid their hands on
them. That means they set their approval on them. They set their
approval on these men. These are men that you have set
apart and that God has got his hand on. And I love this right
here. I love this right here. Listen
to this one. And the word of God increased. Oh, how does God's Word increase? Those fellows, they went to preaching
and you know how it increased? By people believing it. They
had more preachers, they had more people out witnessing, more
preachers out preaching than just the 12 apostles. Philip
became a preacher, became an evangelist. And the Word of God
increased. Oh, how I'd love to see God's
Word increase. Wouldn't you love to see it increase
here? Some places it looks like it's decreasing. That's the awful
thing to think about. It's decreasing, ain't it? That's
the awful thing to think about. The Word of God decreasing. Instead of folks being more interested
in it, more people listening to it, more people obeying it,
more people delighting in it, more people to come and hear
it. But oh my, but the Word of God
increased. And listen to what else here,
what happened. And where the Word of God increases, the number
of the disciples multiplied again. started out multiplied, and they'd
multiplied some more. Multiplied some more. If it said
doubled, but I don't know, it's a multiplication thing here,
said they multiplied. And oh my, and a great company of the priests
were added and were obedient to the faith. Now, like I told
you, we're deacon, and don't say these men are deacons, but
it says that they're servants. These fellows took on this business
as servants. The apostles were servants. Our
Lord Jesus Christ was a servant. He said, you know, when the Gentiles
get together, the one that's got all the authority and got
all the power, he exercises authority over everybody under him. He
said, but that's not going to be among you all. You take the
least one, and he's going to be the greatest. And let everyone,
if you want to, be a servant. And you know what our Lord did
to prove his servitude? What a servant he was. One day
he got these disciples together, these apostles together. And
he got them a pan of water and took off his clothes and put
a towel around himself. And he got down and washed those
disciples' feet. And he said, as you've seen me
do, do you likewise. You call me Lord and Master,
and so I am. But as I have done to you, do
you one to another. The greatest privilege. There's
an old man today. I was talking to him. Ninety-three
years old. Sharp, sharp, sharp. Oh, he just
works out just as healthy as he can be. And he told me, he said, you know,
he said, when my wife and I were fixed to get married, the mother-in-law
said, now listen, why you want to marry that old man for? You're
going to get old and you're going to have to take care of him.
Well, he took care of his mother-in-law and she died. And now he's taking
care of his wife. And I talked to him, I said,
what a privilege, what a blessing it is that God gives us people
that we love and what a privilege it is to take care of them. He
said, I've got to be home at a certain time. And he started
telling me all the ailments that his wife's got. And he said,
I got to get home and took her to doctor yesterday, got to take
her tomorrow, told me all of her problems. And he said, I
have to take care of her. I said, what a blessing, what
an encouragement. He said, you're right. And when I left, that
old man told me, 93 years old, he told me, he said, the Lord
bless you. The Lord bless you. And he talked
about the health that he had. He said, God gave me the health
that I've got. But what a blessing. And that's
what our Lord's teaching here. And these deacons and anybody
else in the church, serve one another. And what a blessing, huh? Our Father, thank you for meeting
with us. Thank you for your precious word.
Lord, it's got such power. There's such liberty just in
the word, not our opinion on it or not even our comments,
but Lord, your power. The word's in your power. The
power's in your word. God bless it to the hearts, God
bless it to our minds, bless it to our understanding. And
Lord, make us servants, cause us to love one another, in brotherly
love, love one another, minister to one another, take care of
one another, pray for one another. And if we ever see a brother
or sister in need, Lord, please give us the grace
and the wisdom to see it and to deal with it for your glory,
for your glory. And out of love in our hearts,
we ask these things in our Lord Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. He's the Savior of my soul. Jesus, my Jesus. He's the Savior of my soul. He's the Savior of my soul. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus, He's the Savior of my
soul. He's the Savior of my soul. And He is. He is. Alright, see
you Sunday, God willing.