Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Saxophone
In 4th grade I picked up the violin.
In 5th grade I played the stand-up bass.
But in 6th grade I discovered the saxophone.
Inspired by the greats like Kenny G and Michael Bolton, I was going to be a saxophone legend.
Now this isn’t the saxophone I had in sixth grade, this is a new saxophone my parents gave me for Christmas many years ago.
It has followed me from house to house… and I would now like to share with you my saxophone prowess.
Just kidding.
I can’t really play the saxophone.
I had ambitions of relearning alongside Logan when he started on the trombone… he eclipsed me in a couple months.
I want to learn the saxophone.
And I am a musician… I could learn to play the saxophone.
And I even have a saxophone.
Why am I not Kenny G.?
Book
This is a pivotal moment in the early church and one that shapes the way we church today.
So we are going to spend some time in depth here.
Look
Church Split
Everything is going so well.
First time the early followers are called “disciples” (learners) in the book of Acts.
They are growing in number, but they are “learners” as well.
It’s going great!
… and another potential crisis raises its head.
The “hellenists”.
Either Greek speaking Jews (from the Diaspora) or possibly, less likely, God-fearing Gentiles now converted to be Christ followers.
Thousands upon thousands have come to Christ.
We are at least at 10,000 men, so we are looking at thousands of widows, hundreds of them perhaps are these Hellenists.
This is not a small problem, this is an organizational administrative nightmare.
OF COURSE some people are getting slighted, neglected, missed out.
And it’s a bit racist.
There is a natural “my people first” default that seems to be preferring the Hebrews over the Hellenists.
This is the kind of institutional racism that shows up wherever humans are humans.
It’s gross, it is sinful, and it’s a problem.
So we have a crucible moment for the church.
Split or grow in unity?
What will they do?
I got kind of fixated on this this week… such that we are going to spend a couple weeks launching off from this point.
The Solution - What they did
What the apostles actually do is fantastic.
They create an administrative role that we call deacons.
They call 12 men of great reputation to that ministry, they pray and lay hands on them.
And that “serving” role, “deacons” (which is a transliteration of this word which means to “serve”) it becomes a major role of leadership within the church in the following decades.
And that idea lasts to this day such that we have people in our church we call deacons who are called to serve in a special way.
And the greatest miracle of all… is that when the apostles have this idea, they bring it to the church (there’s a model of congregational polity there) and… one of the greatest miracles in Scripture:
“What they said pleased the whole gathering...” Amazing.
And there was great rejoicing!
We are going to dive into the actual solution and the men who were put in that role next week.
The Process - How they did it
But this week I have been fascinated by the wisdom and the focus demonstrated by the apostles in this moment, this crucible of leadership.
The Apostles - Called to Serve
They, the church, the aggrieved members of the church, they bring this brewing division to the apostles, to the 12.
This problem is brought to the apostles.
Why to them?
To date, they are the only leaders the church has.
In a church of thousands, a community of maybe 10s of thousands… there are 12 guys leading the pack.
No one else has the authority, no one else has the vision, no one else has the big picture.
In fact, if I am sitting in their shoes, my first reaction would be to solve the problem.
They bring a readily fixable problem and I am a problem-fixer by reflex.
Tell me: some Hellenist widows aren’t getting enough food.
That’s the problem.
What’s the solution?
GIVE THEM MORE FOOD! Tweak the process.
Maybe oversee it for awhile.
Yeah… that doesn’t sound right, let me take over the distribution of the food for a bit and we will get this sorted out.
After all, the apostles are called to serve in the humblest ways.
It wasn’t that long ago Jesus sat at the table, teach them what “greatness” means in the kingdom of God.
The “one who serves” is exactly this word.
Jesus himself “served” them at table and washed their feet.
You can imagine the inner dialogue among the apostles.
This too is our “Christian” responsibility.
What, are we too good to serve tables, to serve the widows, isn’t that righteousness?
Isn’t that good.
This word “serve” or “diakoneo” is the same in all these places.
So this is an opportunity for humble service.
And if we read this text and the apostles went that way, wouldn’t we be impressed at their humility and service?
But they don’t jump at the chance to “serve”.
To serve “widows” even, which, along with orphans, is the most explicit and commanded service opportunity there is!
Instead, they gather all of the disciples, all the “learners” and give them this answer.
What is their answer?
“No”.
“No”.
Not going to do it.
It isn’t right that we should serve tables.
Why? Because, they have the wisdom to see, serving tables comes at a cost.
A great cost.
The cost of serving tables means that they would “give up preaching the word of God.”
There are only so many hours in the day.
Instead, choose seven men (more about that next week)… but as for us, we say “no” to that service opportunity SO THAT we can say a bigger YES to this:
The apostles say “no” to a good ministry in order to be an all in “yes” to what God has called them to do.
This is their one sentence job description.
It is still “diakonia”, service, but service of the word, not of tables.
In that sense the apostles are still “deacons” (literally).
Deacons of the Word, where the 7 become Deacons of the Table.
They devote themselves to Prayer - Talking to God, spending time with Him, in communion, following the model of the Master who regularly retreated from them to spend time alone with His Father.
Devoting themselves to intimate prayer and service of the Logos, of the Word.
The Living Word, certainly at least including the Scripture...
and then we see above the preaching of these things, presenting the outcome of both of those to the church.
The apostles say “no” to a good opportunity to serve in order to say the bigger “YES” to
The knew the center of their calling, the center of their passion, the center of their ministry.
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