[0:00] Good morning, everyone. I wish that I could say that Nathan not being here today is the reason that I'm up here.! But that wouldn't be a sufficient excuse per se. I asked Nathan a couple months ago if he would allow me the privilege of preaching the Word of God again.
[0:18] And as the week drew near, work was insanely busy. And even as the days drew near to today, I feared quite a bit about my preparation, it not being sufficient.
[0:35] And I was really just afraid. So I had to go to Nathan and just seek counsel from him about this. And he just continued to encourage me to rest on the Lord and lean on the Lord, because ultimately every man that comes up here in the pulpit has to find a sufficiency in Christ to preach his Word.
[0:54] And my hope is that you'll bear witness of that today. And my hope is that I will bear witness of that today as well. Let me go ahead and just open us up in prayer and we'll dive into the Word together.
[1:08] Father, we praise you for this morning bringing together your children, brothers, sisters, families, husbands, and wives to hear the preaching of your Word.
[1:22] I pray that that would happen today, that it would be heard in this building. And I pray that it would also be heard in all of the other congregations that are gathering on this Sunday morning, Lord.
[1:34] I pray that this would be true. I pray that you would have us all understand what it means to see your young and early church and how that applies to us today, even as your church continues to grow and spread throughout all of the world.
[1:51] So let that be true today, Lord. And we ask this in your name, Christ. Amen. So open up with me to Acts. As most of you know, we have been going through the book of Acts since the beginning of the year.
[2:04] And this book can be, the title of the book can be somewhat misleading. For example, in my version it says, The Acts of the Apostles.
[2:17] It is true that this is a story, it's a written account written by Luke, about what the apostles were doing after the ascension of Jesus Christ. But I think, and others have mentioned this, that it's sufficient to say that this was the act of the Holy Spirit.
[2:32] After Christ ascended, he said that he was going to send a helper. And so only a couple of days later, when the disciples are gathering together, he sends the Holy Spirit to them.
[2:42] And they begin proclaiming the word of God all throughout Jerusalem and eventually into Samaria. And we're going to bear witnesses of that as you continue to come on Sundays, as you continue to meet on Wednesday nights to discuss these things.
[2:52] You're going to see that take place and unfold. And that's going to lead us all the way up to where we are today. Two thousand years later, you've all heard the gospel of Jesus Christ preached and proclaimed to you in some way or another.
[3:04] So it's incredible to see that continuation of the church after this book concludes. It's not the Acts of the Apostles, it is the Acts of the Spirit that's done that. So here we are in Acts 6.1.
[3:18] We kind of get to see a young child beginning to walk for the first time is how I like to imagine this. It's the growth of the church or the organization of the church.
[3:29] It is like a living, breathing organism, as I've heard it described. It becomes mature. It's understanding some of its faults and failures, how it can fine-tune itself by listening to the Spirit to serve others and to preach the gospel louder and throughout other places.
[3:45] And so what we're going to witness here in this text is a division that arises amongst the early church in Jerusalem and how the Spirit allows them to approach that and reconcile it.
[3:58] So read with me in Acts 6.1. Now at this time, while the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food.
[4:13] 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. Therefore, brethren, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may be put in charge of this task.
[4:29] But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. The statement found approval with the whole congregation, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolás, a proselyte from Antioch.
[4:50] And these they brought before the apostles, and after praying, they laid their hands on them. The Word of God kept on spreading, and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.
[5:07] So I want to just lay out and brief the characters that you see here in this part. And we've got the disciples. It's referring to all the Jews that have now become Christians in Jerusalem.
[5:20] But we see two distinctions of Jews. We see the Hellenistic Jews mentioned here and the native Hebrews. Something I learned several weeks ago in Cog was that these Hellenists were actually from the Despora, which is the region outside of Jerusalem.
[5:35] They had come to Jerusalem during Pentecost. And at the time, they were heavily influenced by Greeks. They all spoke Greek. They partook in their culture.
[5:47] They partook in their art. All of these things that were very foreign to the native Hebrews. And then, other characters that we see, we've got the Twelve Apostles. So when you see the Twelve, it's referencing the Twelve Apostles.
[5:59] And then eventually, the Seven Appointed Deacons. And I'll get into that a little bit more. As I continue through this, I'm going to give you just kind of a line-by-line, verse-by-verse exposition.
[6:11] That's how a lot of us like to do it here. And there are six observances that I want you to make as I'm going through this. And you can write these down. I'm not going to be going back and forth to these.
[6:22] I just really want you to listen to the text and find these as I'm preaching on it. But these six observations are the success of the church thus far. So what have we seen?
[6:34] What successes in the church have we seen up to this point in Acts 6.1? What I call Satan's third attack on the church. Number three, the obedience of the apostles.
[6:47] Number four, the spirit solution. Five, the call to service. And then six, the result. And I'll go ahead and give that one away.
[6:59] But it's a reconciled and powerful church that we're going to see in Acts 6.7. So as we go into Acts 6.1, we see at this time, while the disciples were increasing in number, we believe this time is in a reference to only a couple of months since the ascension of Jesus Christ.
[7:17] When it says increasing in number, the word that they actually use for that is plethora. And that's obviously where we get the word plethora. It means a great many or a multitude of people.
[7:29] And the estimates of this are upwards of 20,000 people. Some even say that it could be up to 30,000 individuals that have come to know Christ through the preaching of the apostles and the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
[7:44] And it says, A complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily food. This complaint that arises, this is an attack by Satan, is what I believe it to be, because we've seen that already happen a couple of times in the church.
[8:04] John's preached on it. Nathan has preached on it. We saw the persecution of John and Peter and later the other apostles when they were beat. That's what I believe to be the first. Then we see sin that divides the church and the giving.
[8:16] We see Ananias and Sapphira, how they're struck down by God. And then eventually we see this, this dysfunction, this disunity coming up in the church. And this is all an attempt by Satan to stop the growth of the church.
[8:31] That's what he was always trying to do. He was always trying to stop the Word of God from being spoken. In order to do this, he tried to put Jesus Christ up on a cross, but that was a plan all along, is that he had to go to the cross.
[8:42] He had to be crucified. He had to bear the wrath of God. Satan thinks that it's his plan, but it wasn't, hence the reason he rose from the dead. So this is just another effort.
[8:52] Now that Christ has ascended, he says to himself, how can I divide this church? How can I break it up? How can I make them less powerful than they are? And we're going to see that result, what happens from that.
[9:04] On the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews, now as I said, prior to knowing Christ, these Hellenists were more Greek than they were Jews.
[9:16] Obviously this caused a great amount of division when they came back to Jerusalem to worship during Pentecost. They tried to bring all of these foreign, just foreign cultures with them. So there were already divisions between these Jews prior to them being unified in Christ.
[9:31] As a matter of fact, the Hellenists were known for wanting to translate the Old Testament into Greek. And the native Hebrews said, no, this is specifically written in Hebrew.
[9:43] This is what it should be. This is what it should remain. But that's how much they wanted to somewhat be a part of the Jewish culture. And there was division because of that. So this is why I believe Satan chose these two groups of people originally to attack and divide because they already had dysfunction amongst them prior to coming to know the Lord.
[10:04] So he simply says, I'm just going to wedge myself back in there and I'm going to divide them once again. That didn't work despite his best efforts. They complained.
[10:16] They griped. They said, our widows are being overlooked in the daily serving of food. And I thought to myself, I said, well, how is that happening? I just tried to put myself in the shoes of the apostles or the people complaining.
[10:30] And I read some things, listened to things, couldn't really understand about how this conflict is coming about. How were people being overlooked? And you would say, well, there's 12 apostles, there's 20,000 people. Obviously, it'd be pretty easy to overlook a group of people.
[10:44] But we can see up to this point that thousands of people are being served by the hands of the apostles. And this is just a theory of my own, so you can take it for what it is. But it's quite possible that in their gatherings, in the servings of the tables, they would have the men come up and get the food that was sufficient for their families, that was sufficient for their wives, that was sufficient for their children.
[11:05] And the apostles would hand them out to them. They'd hand them out to all the men that came up. Well, if you've got a group of widows, that's the point, is they don't have any young men or any men that are able to come up and represent them. So that's a possibility.
[11:19] That is a theory of the reason why they could have been overlooked. And the fact is that they spoke Greek, so it's not like they could come up and tell the Aramaics, the ones who spoke Aramaic, that they were being neglected, that they were not having food, et cetera, or that they needed food.
[11:35] So, hence they're overlooked. As some of you may remember, I think John mentioned this last week, or maybe a couple weeks earlier from someone else, but one of the duties of the Christian church that we're going to see as it grows is James says this in James 1.27.
[11:52] He says, Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their distress. And so that's a very simple duty. I think the apostles knew this, that it was their duty to be serving widows who could not be served in the home by men.
[12:07] But when they're being neglected, obviously the church is failing to perform one of its functions. So when they came together and complained to the apostles, the apostles said to them, they summoned the congregation and the disciples and said, It is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables.
[12:30] And that word that they use for serve is diakone. And I'm going to explain that a little bit later. But that means to serve or to be a servant of.
[12:40] That's where we eventually get the word deacon from. And that's something I'm going to be talking about a little bit today. But when I first read this, and it says, It is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables.
[12:53] I said to myself, Who are you as the apostles who think that you're too high to serve the low, to serve the widows, to serve the needy? That's where my flesh went.
[13:04] I've learned from constantly reading scripture that my flesh is much more critical than my spirit is because it wants to find a lot of faults in the word of God. So, when I asked myself though, when I prayed and I said, What do they mean by this?
[13:22] They're simply saying that it is their duty. They were ordained to preach and minister the word of God. That up to this point, they were able to serve maybe 10, maybe 15,000 people, but eventually it became too many to serve on a weekly basis.
[13:38] So they had to choose one or the other. They said, We can either continue preaching the word of God or we can serve the tables. They said, It is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables.
[13:53] And what I mean by that ordination that they have, that duty that they had to preach the word of God, we see it a couple of times. We see it at the very beginning of Acts. And I want you guys to turn here with me.
[14:04] Turn to Acts 1. 1. I'm going to read through 2 and then I'm going to skip to verse 8.
[14:19] It says, Verse 8, And that's his direct decree to the apostles, that they would be witnesses of the word of God and what they've witnessed in Jesus Christ throughout Jerusalem and the rest of the world.
[15:06] It's also, I'm not going to make you turn here, but it's also an echo of what Luke also recorded in Luke 24, 44 through 48. What we see in Matthew, Matthew 28, 18 through 20.
[15:17] All of you are familiar with the Great Commission. This is a parallel text of where he's commissioning them to go out and be ministers of the word. But someone pointed this out to me recently.
[15:29] It's not just, this commission was not just found here in the New Testament. It was not just found in the Gospels. It was not just found in Acts. But it's also a reference to something in the Old Testament.
[15:40] St. Augustine said that the new is the old concealed and the old is the new revealed. That means that what we see in the Old Testament is a concealing of what we now see in the New Testament and vice versa. What we see in the New Testament is revealed to us of what was spoken of in the Old Testament.
[15:55] So turn with me to Numbers 8, 14. I'll give you all some time to get there. I'm going to read through verse 22.
[16:18] And I want you to see the parallels between the Jesus ordaining and blessing the original apostles and what we see the Lord's commandment for the Levites here in the early church.
[16:35] If you will. Thus you shall separate the Levites from among the sons of Israel and the Levites shall be mine. Then after that the Levites may go and to serve the tent of meeting.
[16:48] But you shall cleanse them and present them as a way of offering for they are wholly given to me from among the sons of Israel. I have taken them for myself instead of every first issue of the womb.
[17:01] The firstborn of all the sons of Israel. For every firstborn among the sons of Israel is mine among the men and among the animals and on the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them for myself but I have taken the Levites instead of every firstborn among the sons of Israel.
[17:19] I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and to his sons from among the sons of Israel to perform the service of the sons of Israel at the tent of meeting and to make atonement on behalf of the sons of Israel so that there will be no plague among the sons of Israel by their coming near to the sanctuary.
[17:39] Thus did Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of the sons of Israel to the Levites according to all that the Lord had commanded Moses concerning the Levites so the sons of Israel did to them. The Levites too purified themselves from sin and washed their clothes and Aaron presented them as a way of offering before the Lord.
[17:57] Aaron also made atonement for them to cleanse them. Then after the Levites went in to perform their service in the tent of meeting before Aaron and before his sons just as the Lord had commanded Moses concerning the Levites so they did to them.
[18:11] This is where he sets aside people, priests, holy priests to take care of the sacrifices that constantly had to be made for the sins of Israel but this is also the people that he chose to minister the word of God to his people and eventually God himself ordains the prophets to do the same to speak about the coming of the Christ.
[18:34] These are the men that are set aside and it's the same for the apostles in this era that they were set aside to minister and to preach the word of God and they said that. We can't neglect the word of God. This is of the utmost importance.
[18:48] So their solution is therefore brethren select from among you seven men of good reputation full of the spirit and of wisdom whom we may put in charge of the task.
[19:01] And this goes back to that word that I used for serve earlier. It's diakone. It means to serve. It means a servant of. That's what they're looking for.
[19:13] They're looking for servants. People who know how to serve these widows that are being neglected. So there are six qualifications that I could come out of or that I could pull out of this text.
[19:26] for these men. The original deacons. They say select from among you. So that means the people that were bringing the complaints to them they're saying well what we want you to do is we want you guys to get together talk to one another nominate seven individuals that you believe can best serve you.
[19:52] The reason they had to be among them is because they spoke their language they knew their culture they knew what their needs were which even obviously the apostles had a hard time doing that.
[20:04] They were still men nonetheless but it was best that they found someone who was similar to them people within their community. Another qualification and I want you all to take this loosely and I'll explain why is he says seven men.
[20:20] In this time they were looking for men to serve the widows. They didn't have the husbands as I mentioned they didn't have the sons so they needed men to step up and serve these widows but that doesn't necessarily mean that deacons from this day forward had to be men and there is lots of evidence for that in the New Testament.
[20:38] We see that with Phoebe I think in Romans 16.1 we also see a description of what a deacon should be what they should look like and I'm going to go to there I'm going to have everybody go to there in a little bit that's in 1 Timothy so I think that there is sufficient evidence to say that women can also be deacons in many cases and the more struggles that the church has as it's growing you're going to find things that really only women can confront and serve they can serve a lot better in some ways to men you'll notice here that we don't have men throwing baby showers for people it's because women are best qualified for something like that they're better to serve in that role another observation is they had to be of good reputation and here I want you to go ahead and turn to 1 Timothy 3 I'm going to start us off in 7 where Paul is actually telling Timothy what the leaders and the elders and the deacons need to look like in the church so in verse 7 he's actually describing the overseers kind of the elders however he uses the same word here that Luke uses for good reputation he says in verse 7 and I'm going to read all the way through 13 and he must have a good reputation with those outside the church so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil deacons likewise must be then of dignity not double tongued or addicted to much wine or fond of sordid gain but holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience these men must also first be tested then let them serve as deacons if they are beyond reproach women must likewise be dignified not malicious gossips but temperate faithful in all things deacons must be husbands of only one wife and good managers of their children and their households for those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a high standing and great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus so we see there what Paul lays out is the specific qualifications of the deacons but he's only going off of what he saw in the original church the early church that was set aside by the twelve apostles the next qualification the fifth one is that they must be full of the spirit they must be proven to have the Holy Spirit within them and third fifthly sorry yeah fifth and of wisdom they must have wisdom and they must also be leaders and I pull that from that they may be put in charge of this task they weren't looking for someone who just simply had a good reputation they weren't looking for just Greeks for Hellenist Jews they were looking for men who could step up as leaders to serve the church and then they go back to what they originally said the apostles do they said but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word this I believe to be the crux of this portion of the text or of this text is that the apostles are remaining obedient to what they were originally called to do and they're not deviating from that despite the dysfunction that they're seeing in the church the two things that they mention here are prayer and the ministry of the word
[24:21] Jesus prays upwards of or at least what we see recorded in the gospels upwards of 30 times throughout his ministry that's not including parallel texts so that's single accounts of what we have of Jesus praying and we know that John says he didn't even record he didn't record anywhere near what he witnessed Jesus do in his three years of ministry with him so there's no telling how many times Jesus prayed it daily by himself and with others that was constant and so the apostles eleven of which are the original disciples of Jesus Christ they're just simply copying that they're mimicking that because they know that it has been fruitful they know that they need to call upon the Lord so they do that they say we can't neglect that Martin Lloyd-Jones says this about prayer he says prayer is beyond any question of the highest activity of the human soul man is at his greatest and highest when upon his knees he comes face to face with God that's absolutely what the apostles of this time understood that everything that was happening within the church in Jerusalem was not on their own accord it was by them calling out to God saying we want this to happen we know that you desire for this to happen so please make it happen and then we see the ministry of the word or preaching that's how that can be also translated again this is simply mimicking what
[25:52] Jesus Christ did if you think that these were the first preachers of the word then you're wrong turn with me to Matthew 23 or Matthew 4 yeah Matthew 4 I'm going to start in verse 23 and read through verse chapter 5 verse 2 Jesus was going throughout all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people the news about him spread throughout all Syria and they brought to him all who were ill those suffering with various diseases and pains demonics epiletics paralytics and he healed them large crowds followed him from Galilee and the
[27:02] Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan when Jesus saw the crowds he went up on the mountain and after he sat down his disciples came to him he opened his mouth and began to teach them it can't be any more clear than that Matthew even wants to tell you that he had to open his mouth to preach the word some of you may know that right after this he goes into what's known as the sermon on the mount every religious scholar whether they study Christianity or something else or all religions they are all familiar with the sermon on the mount it's considered one of the greatest sermons ever preached Jesus knew that if he called everybody together by healing if he healed a few people word would get out everybody would come to be healed he said I'm not here to heal everybody physically I'm here to save their soul I'm here to tell them how to get to God he concludes that sermon or he comes close to near the conclusion of that sermon on the mount tells them that you have two options you can go through the narrow gate that path is hard it's on the narrow way or you can go through the broad gate via the broad way that everybody else goes to only one of them reaches to God the other will lead you to hell that's what he preaches to these people who are sick who are dying who are needy who are poor so all we see the apostles doing is the exact same thing
[28:33] Jesus also tells the people why it is that he preaches the word of God and why they need to truly understand the word of God he says this and you don't have to turn here he says this in John 539 many of you I'm sure are familiar with this text he says you search the scriptures so that in them you think that you have eternal life it is there that they testify about me the scriptures testify about me the Christ and you are unwilling to come to me so that you may have life there there's a record I can't remember in which gospel it is there's a record of eight lepers that come to be healed by Jesus so that's eight individuals who need physical healing only one of them comes back one of the eight comes back and praises Christ because of what he's done has faith in him that he is the Messiah so it's obvious that
[29:33] Jesus Christ was not there just to serve people with their physical needs nor are the apostles they need to be constantly devoting themselves to the word Paul echoes this charge and the reason for it in Romans 10 I want you to go there with me I'm going to read Romans 10 1-4 and I'm going to skip to 14 I know that I've done that a couple of times skipping in between but what's in between there is just as fruitful I promise you but just for the sake of time Paul says brethren my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation for I testify about them that they have a zeal for God but not in accordance with knowledge for not knowing about
[30:41] God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes verse 14 how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed how will they believe in him whom they have not heard and how will they hear without a preacher and how will they preach unless they are sent just as it is written how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things however they did not all heed the good news for Isaiah says Lord who has believed our report so faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ it's right there that's why I believe it is of the utmost importance that these men do not stop what they're doing to serve the tables doesn't mean that the serving of the tables is not important they knew that it was if they've stopped fulfilling the reason that they're preaching if they stopped serving others like
[31:51] Christ served others what's the point they're wasting their time so back to Acts the statement found approval with the congregation this is a great thing because now they're getting to see reconciliation right before them those who were complaining they're told this by the apostles and they say okay yeah this makes sense and they chose the seven they chose Stephen a man full of the Holy Spirit even though it says that Stephen specifically is full of the!
[32:26] Spirit we've got to go back to the qualifications of what they say that they need to have all of these were full of the Spirit but I believe the reason that Luke emphasizes Stephen is full of the Spirit is because what we're going to see in the next few chapters or the next chapter or two as we go on through the study of Acts you're going to see that you see the goes on to save an Ethiopian or brings the Ethiopian to salvation the other five I already read those names to you I'm not going to do it again however we don't see them mentioned anymore in the book of Acts I don't know the reason for that I didn't take the time to speculate so it's probably not that important and these they brought before the apostles and after praying they laid hands on them so when they nominated these men they took them back to the apostles knowing that these apostles needed to approve they needed to see that these men had those six qualifications of the deacons they needed to know that these men were capable of serving the widows so when it says they laid hands on them we see that a couple of times we see that both healing that's when hands were laid on people sometimes it was for prayer in this case it's really the leaders what
[34:04] I see is kind of the knighting the deacons saying they laid hands on them I'm sure they prayed over them and they blessed them to go back out and serve the widows and then we have the result of this reconciliation this coming together of the church this agreement that they have the election of these seven deacons we have the word of God kept on spreading and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith so the ESV I think says that the word of God was increasing in the NSB it does say the word of God kept spreading because people kept preaching it kept spreading because people kept talking about it twelve apostles were not the only ones that were preaching the word of God were ministering the word of God those who were being healed would go back to Samaria and tell everyone you've got to know about this
[35:04] Christ he's come believe it or not the Jews crucified him but he rose again from the dead and so the result of the word of God spreading is the number of disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith it's obvious that Satan's efforts were throtted here everybody came together and they went back out and we see that word used again that pletheno where we get plethora continued to increase greatly a great multitude of people more than 20,000 people were coming to know Christ that's a wonderful thing when you see the obedience of the apostles and the service of the deacons together what I want to exhort or challenge this body to do with that is that some of you know that we're going to be multiplying and creating a new body here pretty soon an extension or a branch of
[36:15] Christ's family in flowery branch I think it's in flowery branch or is it in Gainesville Oakwood right in between so as we go and do that these are the two things that you cannot neglect it's the preaching of the word and prayer it's designated for men to be doing praying faithfully and often and then the service to those people that are coming coming to hear the word of God they're not going to be saved they're not going to know who the Christ is unless they hear it when you think about who can serve I guarantee you almost everybody in this room everybody I believe has something to give to the body we saw this in the early church I think Daniel preached on this that they're coming together they're selling all their possessions or they're giving they're divvying out all their possessions to whoever had need so when that happens there's a great service that's going on to these people that are in need and we're able to be those people too
[37:24] I want to read to you from a quote or a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer from a book that several of us have been reading called Life Together he says that the church does not need brilliant personalities but faithful servants of Jesus and the brethren those who are seeking to serve Christ and those who are seeking to serve their brothers around them this is what Christ says love your brothers as you love yourself that's all that we need to do we don't need to have programs if it ends up being ten of you guys in a room in Oakwood be faithful to preach the word of God be faithful to know the needs of those there and serve them now we're kind of hindered here in my opinion that we don't have a lot of diversity in this church and when I say diversity
[38:25] I mean different ethnicities you're going to look around you the majority of us I'm going to be so bold to say all of us are white Caucasians that doesn't mean that you come from the same types of backgrounds some of you many of you come from broken homes many of you come from poor homes it's absolutely true but when you get amongst a group of people like those in Oakwood and Gainesville they come from those same backgrounds but they also have something that the Hellenist Jews had they have a different language they have a totally different culture those are the ones that I'm hoping that we're able to reach with the gospel of Jesus Christ you have to be faithful we have to be faithful to serve them I want to close with a passage from 1 Corinthians 13 I'll take that back 1 Corinthians 12 there's great application that goes on into chapter 13 and I'm sure that everybody in here that's been married or is married in a ceremony has heard this verse but that's one of the reasons
[39:47] I'm not going to read it instead I'm going to read the context and that's prior to that so in chapter 12 verse 14 listen carefully so this applies to everyone everyone that's in this room if you are serving Christ if you know Christ if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord all of you are one of these members of the body for the body is not one member but many if the foot says because I am not a hand I am not a part of the body it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body and if the ear says because I am not an eye I am not a part of the body it is not for this reason!
[40:44] any the! less a part of the! If the whole body were an eye where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing where would the sense of smell be?
[40:57] But now God has placed the members each one of them in the body just as he desired if they were all one member where would the body be?
[41:09] But now there are many members but one body and the eye cannot say to the hand I have no need of you on the contrary it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary and those members of the body which we deem less honorable on these we bestow more abundant honor and are less presentable and our less presentable members become much more presentable whereas our more presentable members have no need of it but God has so composed more abundant honor to that member which lacked so that there may be no division in the body that the members may have the same care for one another and if one member suffers all the members suffer with it if one member is honored all the members rejoice with it let!
[42:09] let me pray to