In Acts chapter 6, it's only 15 verses in that chapter and I want to cover them all. And again, glad to have you here. We've got Aaron and Erica who is involved in a lot of different things, the sound booth and the video and all the techy stuff and the music and junior church. They're gone. He's preaching in Moralton today, and his wife, who plays the piano, has gone with him. And, of course, I don't miss them. I miss their little boy. In Acts chapter 6, verse number 1, And in those days, when the number of 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 the multitude of the disciples unto them and said, 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, whom we may appoint over this business, but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the And the saying pleased the whole multitude, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and 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 disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly. And a great company of priests were obedient to the faith. And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people. Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines and Cyrenians and Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia and of Asia, disputing with Stephen. And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake. Then they suborned men which said, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God. And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and the scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him before, or brought him to the council, and set up false witnesses which said, this man seeth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us. And all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel. Father, we pray that you'd bless and give anointing to the message this morning to thy servant. Lord, please give these lips the power to speak that which you'd have spoken, and to leave off that which would not be helpful. Lord, we pray that you'd stir our hearts for good today, stir our hearts to see the example of these great people that we read about in the Word of God, of how they set examples for us that will work in our churches today. We pray that you'd bless and fill us with the Holy Spirit of God, and Lord, that you'd anoint the ears with the Holy Spirit of God, The ears could hear and the heart could apply the message that you have for us today. In Jesus' precious, marvelous and wonderful name, Amen. Well, there's a problem arises. Now we've seen in this passage an association of people coming together in this new church at Jerusalem that's been formed and is growing in leaps and bounds, and so they're associating together. Probably they were not all meeting, since there were thousands of them at this point, they were probably not all meeting in one place. I mean, they didn't have church houses then, so some of them met at the temple where the Jews had established, and so there was preaching and teaching going on there, but it's more than likely many writers and commentators believe that this church was a large church of thousands of people but they met because of the lack of a facility to hold them all and can you imagine how hard it would be to speak to a multitude of thousands without a sound system. And not being able to get them all together in one place, they were probably meeting in individual houses. And it does say, we read in the book of Acts earlier, where they were breaking bread together, house to house. So they're probably meeting in smaller groups in houses, but they all were elements of a large church. Now we find them associating together because they had come to believe on Jesus Christ and the gospel message. And so they're coming together. And now there's a problem that arises. And the devil's always tried to stir up strife. And we read it in every chapter of the book of Acts so far. We found that the devil has persecuted them. The devil has raised up Jewish leaders, religionists, and even Ananias and Sapphira who decided to lie to the Holy Ghost of God and were punished with death. We see the devil trying to attack this new group of believers from every direction. In this chapter, we see him rooting his way into the church and trying to stir up strife within its ranks. The devil knows, and I heard somebody say, the devil doesn't care to attack from the outside so much, he's busy joining churches, trying to stir up trouble from within. since he's not had as much success from without. So God uses the situation. Here's what happens. The apostles are preaching the Word. They're called the Twelve. Go back to, let's see, verse number 2. It says, Then the Twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them. The Twelve, meaning the Twelve Apostles. Well, didn't Judas die? He was one of the original Twelves. Yes, he had died. And remember, in Acts chapter 1, they held a meeting, the apostles did, and they elected Matthias to take Judah's place. And while some say, well, I don't believe Matthias was ever accepted by God, it appears here in the Word of God that he was one of the 12. So I don't doubt that he was accepted by God as one of those 12 apostles. So they're kind of... as 12 of them, Peter seems to be maybe the most noticeable one of the 12 that's spokesman a lot of times, but the 12 seem to be operating the leadership of the church. And so while they're preaching the word of God and people are getting saved right and left, I mean that would have been an exciting time, wouldn't it? Just seeing people getting saved, thousands coming to the Lord and being baptized and starting to live for the Lord, being discipled. And so can you imagine how busy these 12 preachers would be trying to disciple all those thousands? Man, they're ministering the Word. And they were already spread pretty thin. And now the Grecians, this being the Hellenists, they were Jews, might have been some Jewish converts from maybe the Gentiles, but most of these seem to be Jews who were Hellenized Greeks, meaning that they had adopted much of the Greek culture and probably only spoke Greek or mainly spoke Greek as opposed to Hebrew. So there you have the Grecians, the Hellenized Jews, disputing against the Hebrews, the ones who had remained in the land all the time instead of being part of those who had been scattered abroad. And so the Grecian guys come and say, hey, our widows are getting neglected. They're not getting ministered to as most of the other needy Hebrew women. And it seems to be the needy widows, mostly those who didn't have a husband to supply for them, and they're saying, our Grecian widows are not being, they're not being fed, they're not being provided for like those Hebrew women are. So a problem arises. Murmuring, that's the first thing we'll see. in this passage of scripture that we want to talk about. There are about five parts in chapter five that we want to look at today. Number one is the murmuring that arose. There was murmuring. It says in verse number one, in those days, meaning the days as soon as the church was beginning to flourish and grow, in those days when the number of disciples was multiplied, and it seemed like, see if this doesn't strike you as true. The more people you get together, the more potential there is for murmuring. The more people you have, the more internal problems might present itself. I mean, if you've just got a little handful of people, it's easier to kind of keep things harmonized, but the more people, the more problems, but we want more people, right? And so they're getting more people, but along with that greater number of people, there's problems, and this one began to make itself known And this murmuring, complaining, grumbling, as my former pastor would say, mulligrubbing, this mulligrubbing could have brought the success and evangelism of this early church, could have brought it to a screeching halt. Because problems have a way of knocking the wind out of your sails. And so, they began to murmur and complain. One problem, with complaining and criticizing and gossip and mulligrabbing is that it will knock some people out of serving the Lord. Some people who are maybe, these are all new Christians. You know this was the beginning, right? This is the early beginnings of that church in Jerusalem. And so, you got some brand new Christians there and some apostles who are taking on a new role that they never had before. this murmuring could have knocked them out of their plan to serve us for the Lord. And you probably figured this out too. Sometime or other somebody criticized you, somebody gossiped about you, somebody mistreated you, and it can work on you. It can get your goat. And some people just say, I'm not doing this. I'm throwing in the towel. I don't have to live this way. I'll just go take it easy. This happened to me a couple of times in my nearly 45 years of ministry. Once, I don't want to play a victim card, but once I was treated rather unfairly and I was about ready to toss in the towel. I told my wife, I'm not putting up with this. I don't have to take this. People were criticizing me for things I'd never done. I was standing up for the old pastor that used to be there, and they were attacking him, and I was trying to defend him, so they transferred their attack to me, and I was ready to get out. I told her, I said, I'm not teaching anymore. I'm not preaching anymore. I'll go to church and sit on the back row, and if nobody speaks to me, I'm getting out of there as soon as it's over, and I'll go to church, but I'm not doing anything. You see how criticism, murmuring, a complaining spirit can knock people out. And I know preachers who have got out of the ministry because they said, it's too tough. I heard somebody say just in the last few days that a preacher needs to have a skin that's the thinnest of all. and yet a skin that's the thickest of all. And he has to have a skin thin enough that his compassion is not thrown out. That he can be touched by the needs of people and through the word of the Lord. But it needs to have a tough skin that when the criticism comes, it'll bounce off like water off of a duck back. Otherwise, if every little thing bothers you, and look, I've seen it over the years, people get their feelings out on their sleeve and they get their feelings hurt and somebody said something to hurt their feelings or make them mad and they just said, that's it, I quit. And they either move on to another church or drop out of church altogether. Neither of those are usually very successful. I mean, if you don't find the perfect church in the one you're in, you may not find the perfect one when you move. In fact, I'm the only perfect preacher I know of. That was a joke for the rest of you and those watching online. I'm pointing over this way and I'm pointing at the camera. I'm not pointing to you people sitting on this side. There's a camera over there. I say that because some people, we got people that are watching us in other countries and other states and they may not know that I've got a warped sense of humor so I have to explain that once in a while. Mully grubbing, murmuring, complaining. The story's told about a judge who was frequently attacked by a conceited lawyer who's always saying derogatory things, never a good thing, never a good word about that judge. That lawyer's always saying bad things about that judge. One judge's friend says, why do you put up with that? Why don't you put him in his place? The judge said, well, in our town, there lives a widow who has a dog. And that dog, every time there's a full moon, he sets out on the porch and barks at that full moon all night long. And then the judge changed the subject and went on to something else. And so the guy came back and said, but you didn't answer. What about the dog howling at the moon? Oh, the judge said, oh, the moon's still shining. And when people bark at you, and when people criticize you, and when people gossip about you, and people misuse you, just keep on shining. Don't let the gossip... because there's gossips, and there's critical people, and there's mean-spirited people just about everywhere you go. You'll find them at the grocery store, the gas station, on the job, and in just about every church that I know of. So you can't drop out and throw in the towel. I'm glad these apostles didn't say, that's it, we quit. John Wesley, old time preacher in the 1700s. He was kind of known for being a spiffy dresser and he had worn a brand new bow tie one day and had long streamers hanging down. And after the sermon was over, a lady who was known as the church critic, She came forward, never had a good word to say about him, never a complimented sermon, never said that the sermon helped me, never told him he looked nice, never said anything good. She came up after the church service and he was standing down front and she said, Mr. Wesley, I want you to know that your tie greatly offends me. She said, those streamers are way too long. He looked around and there were some other ladies standing around. He said, any of you ladies have a pair of scissors in your purse? One of them had a pair of scissors. He took them and handed them to the lady that was criticizing him. He said, would you cut those streamers off where they would be pleasing to you? And she said, I'll gladly do it. She grabbed those streamers and snipped them off. He said, now can I see those scissors? He said, stick your tongue out. He said, your tongue is entirely too long and I want to trim it some. Now, he didn't follow through on his threat, but I think she got the point. The critics, they're always there. And they were in Jerusalem that day. And they'll be everywhere you go. There was a man, a new member of the church, stopped in the Dollar General store to get some things, but the parking lot was full, so he had to park in the parking lot next door, which was a beer joint. And so he stopped and went in, grabbed his stuff, This town gossip, who was a church member too, saw his truck parked in front of that beer joint. And so the next day at church, she confronted him and the elders of the church and said, this man that just joined the church is an alcoholic. I saw his truck parked in front of the bar. And we all know where there's smoke, there's fire. Well, the man never said a word to defend himself. He just turned and walked away. That night he took his truck and drove over to the widow's house that had criticized him. He parked right in front of her house and left his truck all night long. Critics, they're everywhere. Don't let them knock you out. I'm glad the apostles didn't give up. The church at Corinth had divisions and strife and it damaged their reputation. By the way, the things we say, the things we say to other people, whether in the church or out of the church, the things we say, the way we talk about the brethren, the way we talk about our sisters, the way we talk about the leadership, the way we talk about our church, can either have a positive effect or a negative effect on those outside. And when we say derogatory things about our own church, we are cutting our nose off to spite our face because you'll have children or grandchildren who will grow up hearing that criticism and they'll say, I can't trust that preacher. Not going to listen to anything he has to say. Not going to listen to that youth teacher. He doesn't, you can't trust him. Criticism. The more we criticize, the more we shoot ourselves in the foot, Barney Fife. Mark Twain said, don't complain and talk about all your problems. 80% of the people don't care. The other 20% think it's just reward. So nobody wants to hear your criticism. Criticism, even if it's constructive, is more apt. Listen to this. Criticism, even if it's constructive criticism, is more apt to be taken seriously if it's sandwiched between some compliments If all I ever hear from a person is negative, critical comments, then when they say something that is legitimate criticism, I'm probably not going to pay much attention to it because after all, they're usually just trying to shoot me down. You know what I mean? Does that affect you that way? The apostles rightly concluded in this passage of Scripture that the preaching, the preaching ministry must be preserved. They said, brethren, it's not right. We realize these widows over here, maybe that's a legitimate complaint. Maybe they're not getting served. Maybe that's something we overlooked. After all, we have got a bunch of people. And after all, we are busy preaching the word. and we're busy preparing and we're busy praying to try to meet people's spiritual needs and so their temporal needs might not be met. But would it be right for us to say, okay, we'll quit preaching and go serve the tables? I mean, wouldn't we again be cutting our nose off to spite our face? That's what they're thinking. We can't leave off the preaching. It's a priority. Not that this doesn't exist. Not that that temporal need shouldn't be met. We got all kinds of churches who are in social justice mode and leave off the preaching of the gospel. I don't care how many people you feed, if you don't give them the gospel to change their soul, they'll die and go to hell on a full stomach. We need to minister to the soul and then the apostles said we need to have you look out seven men who would be mostly qualified to do this and we can stick to the preaching of the word. Why do the apostles need that much time for preaching anyway? Before church, Chad and John were asking me, how many sermons have you preached? I said, I don't know, multiply it out. Three times a week, 52 weeks, nearly 45 years, comes out about 7,000 sermons. 7,000 sermons. And if you kind of take that, if each sermon needed 10 hours of preparation, and I frequently spend 10 hours and more on a sermon, Even if it's one that I have preached before, I'll probably put another 5 or 10 hours into it before I preach it again because I want it to be fresh and something that will help people. You don't really just want microwave spiritual food, do you? And so 7,000 sermons and 10 hours of study for each sermon make 70,000 hours of preparation for a sermon. That figures out to 3,000 solid days. 3,000 days if a preacher never went to bed, never ate a meal, never even took a restroom break, if he spent If he had preached 70,000 sermons and 10 hours of sermon, he would have invested 3,000 days of study. So why did those apostles need some time? Because they didn't want to just slap something together and say, here you go. It makes you appreciate bivocational pastors, doesn't it? I mean, I see advertisements on Facebook on a member of a KJV church pastoral search. And people post on there every day, churches all across America that needs a pastor. And most often it'll be a church about the size of this one or smaller. And they'll usually say, you know, must be a man of this caliber and this qualification and he must be bivocational. What does that mean? It means you better make his living doing something besides preaching. He's got to preach and then make a living. There's a lot of preachers doing that today. They're bivocational and more and more churches have moved in that direction. I don't know if it's a lack of commitment to giving or the size of the churches or maybe it's a combination of all those things. And the sad thing is a lot of those churches, they're a church of 15 people but they want a man with a theological doctorate and he's been to seminary, he's not too old and he's not too young. His wife plays the piano and he ministered to youth as well. and he'll be required to do all of this. Oh yeah, you've got to be bivocational. You've got to make a living doing something else. They really have some high... You know, it kind of reminds me of an ugly girl that can't get a date with somebody because she's expecting a perfect man. Churches ought not to be an ugly date. I'm not saying take anybody that just walks on two legs. I'm saying that many times they set their expectations way too high, especially if there's 15 people there and they want... They want a man that's invested half his life in preparation. So why did these apostles need more time? Why couldn't they just serve the tables and preach too? Well, putting that many hours in, if they're putting half of their day in preparing sermons, and they were probably preaching every day at that time, several times a day. And so, they couldn't spread themselves too thin, and if they went all the way over to the side of meeting people's temporal needs, then they'd have to leave off and water down the preaching of the Word. A second reason for the necessity of preaching the Word, was that preaching all that important? Wasn't feeding those people important? It was important, but not on the level of the spiritual feeding. Brother Chad was teaching out of Jonah this morning about Nineveh, about how the whole city repented. Man from the top to the bottom, they repented and believed God. They had a big time revival there. But wait, what happened to Nineveh later? Did they stay revived? No, their culture had been leading up to that point. They had been a very wicked culture and they had some habits probably ingrained that come back to haunt them after they trusted the Lord. With the passing of time, people tend to forget what they heard preached. Are you like me? You have to stop and think a little bit about what was even preached last week? What happens after a few months? Why do we need to go to church so often? They went every day in the New Testament early church. Why? Because our brains get occupied with things of family and job and entertainment and with social media this day. Boy, I wonder how long a sermon lingers in the mind. So these apostles needed to stay in the Word of God and they needed to pray and they needed to prepare and they needed to preach often because the Word of God leaves us so soon. We need a refreshing. We need more revival. We need to be stirred up. over and over and over. That's why Nineveh failed. That's why you couldn't go to the area of Nineveh today and you'd have a hard time finding a Christian group and eating like we are this morning. You know about Iraq and Iran and those places, right? Christians don't fare too well there. They tend to be eliminated, either exiled or killed. So what happened to Nineveh? It didn't last long enough. But we can't be too critical of them if we don't hear the preaching of the Word of God and we don't stay in the Word of God reading and praying and studying, it leaves us too. And so these apostles knew that they had to carry out what Jesus had commanded them to do. Jesus had already told them, preach the Word, stay busy, go into the uttermost parts of the earth and preach the Word because they all need it. And by the time you get Paul, Apostle Paul, by the time you get around to that church at Corinth again or that other church over yonder, by the time you get back after you've preached your heart out one time, you go back and they've already started to backslide. So we need the Word of God regularly. So we notice the murmuring. And secondly, the multitude. 3 and 4, it says, Then the twelve called the multitude of 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, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word. You have two groups here. The Apostle was saying, okay, that need is legitimate. We can take care of it. But we need another group of people, another group of servants. Every church doesn't need just a preaching staff. Every church doesn't need just a leadership staff on the platform or in the classroom. Every church needs the pews filled with servants of God who minister daily to other people. And so those seven men who made it their business to walk close to God were appointed over this business. Now they called out these guys and said, we've got seven guys that we think will be okay. And they brought them before the apostles and the apostles said, yep, I believe you've made a good choice here. We're going to ordain these and approve these and we're going to send them over to do that job and we'll just keep preaching. So what happens with this multitude? It says that they were pleased when they heard this. It must not have been a Baptist church. They were pleased. The multitude was pleased. You see, they had harmony going because some credit has to go to the multitude here. Yeah, there had been some of them murmuring and complaining. But boy, when they saw that the apostles were on top of this, and they're going to take care of that, and they're going to take care of their other responsibility by pointing to… You remember when Moses in the book of Exodus, Moses wearing himself out trying to minister? to different people all day long from morning till night and finally his father-in-law, I thought it was good advice, he said, you need to delegate some of this responsibility and have other people to take care of these smaller matters and if something's too big for them, they can bring it to you. And it seemed to work. Delegation. I said this is association in this chapter and it's organization. when a church gets organized. I mean, a church does good if it's disorganized, but it does a lot better if it's organized. If they're getting the gospel out, however they're doing it, it's going to be better than not getting the gospel out at all. But if a church is organized and has members who are saying, I can fill this need, I can teach in junior I could handle a Sunday school class. I could sing a special once in a while. I can play an instrument. I can go out and visit and try to bring people in. You see, there's all kinds of things. I could work in the nursery. No, no. Nursery? Not that. Can I be honest with you? Well, I'm going to anyway. It's like pulling hen's teeth to get women to work in the nursery. I've been with those kids all week. I want to get away from them. I can appreciate that. But do we need to punish the older women who've already raised their families every Sunday? Maybe we ought to have some ladies who are saying, you know, I'm willing to do this. I can do this. I can do this. Even if it's not my specific calling, God didn't look down from heaven and say, hey, I'm calling you to the nursery. There's a need there. We could do like Isaiah and say, here my Lord send me. We're getting our bus ministry geared back up again and thank God for Jonathan and Megan that's going out. They brought some kids in this morning, took the van. And we're going to try to get things built up for the fall when Ed Dunlop Crusade comes, the family crusade. And we always have this place packed out in October the first week of October with kids, parents and grandparents coming for the family crusade. We need workers in the area of bus ministry. Now the bus ministry is good, would you nod your head? But Megan and Jonathan need some help and there were some people went out with them. How many of you in here right now went out with them yesterday? I saw their pictures on Facebook. Some people went out. Either you're bashful or they're back in the back with them now. You know what that seems to indicate? We probably need a few more. Kids ministry is just not my thing. Well, it wasn't mine either. When I first surrendered to preach, my pastor said, Brother Rick, I need you to preach in junior church. I said, well, I've never been particularly felt like I was led to that area. He said, well, we don't have anybody else right now. I need you. And I just figured he knew what he was talking about and he had confidence that I could do it. And so I, well, I'll do it. And I preached in there for, I don't know, a year or two. Wasn't what I felt like was my forte, but I did it because there was a need there. You know what makes a church a successful evangelistic church that's reaching into the community and beginning to see things grow like they were here with these apostles? It's because people are willing to say, I'll help. I'll help. Some people are only willing to help if it's in the spotlight. A lot of things going on behind the scenes. Brenda shows up every Sunday morning to help my wife clean and wipe things down and get things nice and fresh for the Sunday morning service. They come before anybody gets here. Now, you don't hear Brenda saying much. She doesn't ever get on the platform and say, hey, look what I'm doing, or look what I've done. But she shows up every Sunday and does it. It's quiet in here, man. Is my microphone? No, I'm not using it. Yeah, it's still working. Well, that multitude said, you know, this saying of the apostles pleases us, picking out those people to serve the tables and letting the preachers go ahead and do the preaching and spend their time in prayer and preparation, that seems to be a really good idea. And they were pleased. And the murmuring evidently stopped. The murmuring stopped. You know, if somebody points it out to me, hey, Brooks, you are so negative, man, you're always criticizing and talking down to people. If that ever comes to my attention, I hope I'm willing to say, I hear what you're saying, I better quit that. Well, these people quit it. And in Proverbs 26, 20, it says, where no wood is, the fire goeth out. So where there is no tailbearer, the strife ceaseth. They removed the wood from the fire and the fire went out and the criticizing and the gossiping and the mully-grubbing stopped. Where there's no fire, or where there's no wood, the fire goes out. Don't let somebody use your ears for the wood, right? Remember, only you can prevent forest fires. A few of us are old enough to remember Smokey the Bear. Remember only you can stop the murmuring in the church. When you refuse to listen to it, they'll figure out nobody wants to hear this. And by the way, throw in a compliment once in a while where you can. Don't lie to somebody and don't flatter them. But a little compliment every once in a while makes it smoother. I mean, I'm going to preach. If I never get another compliment, I'm called to preach and I'm just going to keep on preaching anyway. So don't get your hopes up that I'm going to leave if you criticize. Brother Lloyd told me after Wednesday night, Wednesday night lesson, message here, he texted me and said he really liked that lesson tonight. I think he was being honest that he liked it and it was helpful. Now I didn't have to have that to go ahead and preach next Wednesday night too. But you know what, it kind of adds a little soothing to the soul to know if you're kind of headed in the right direction. The multitude was pleased. And then number three, we see the men, verses five and six. And it's saying, please the whole multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost. And these other Jewish guys, it's got names that we don't like to read again. And it says, whom they set before the apostles. And when they prayed, they laid their hands on them. The apostles gave instructions to look out seven men that would be suitable for this business. So see him after the tables. And so the apostles said, yep, these guys will work. They laid hands on them, ordained them to that ministry and sent them forth. And they asked for representatives from the bigger crowd, the multitude of several thousand. They asked for representatives, probably a representative maybe from each one of those house churches or groups according to their families or something like that. And so they couldn't They couldn't hash all this out with like 10,000 people there. Can you imagine doing a brainstorm session with 10,000 people and everybody saying, hey, what about this? What about that? What about that? Man, 10,000 people, do you think you could do that? So they got representatives and brought them in and said, now what do you think we ought to do and how can we handle this? And those guys went out and got seven men, brought them in and said, we believe we can do it with these guys right here. So what they did, I'm talking about organization of a church. Those seven men are not called deacons in this passage of Scripture. The word deacon is not used, not in the Greek, not in the English. But they seem to fit the description later on in the Scripture, at least of some of their duties would seem to be very similar to deacons. So whether they're deacons or not, I don't know for sure and I don't think anybody else does. Some churches choose associate pastors, assistant pastors, and things like that to carry out temporal needs and seeing after individual families and stuff. Now I think deacon is obviously a biblical office, but somebody said, do you think a church this size needs deacons? I've seen churches smaller than this have deacons. Every member of the church was a deacon. You know when they chose deacons, when they got over 5,000, We're not quite there yet. How many is in the back today? Well, we go about church business in our church similar to what they did here. For instance, we've got needs at the end of the year when we're getting ready to do a financial budget for the next year. Our staff will meet together and get some numbers together. Brother Paul and Miss D will print out some sheets for us, show us where we've been during the last year financially, whether we met our goals in this area, that area, and we'll meet with them, and then we'll meet with our leaders in the church, and then we'll have a men's meeting. We'll get some ideas from brainstorming with that smaller group, and then we'll have a men's meeting where we'll all go back there at a time when the church is not going on, and we'll invite all the men who are members to come, and so we'll take this brainstorming recommendation from that smaller group of staff and leaders and we'll take it to the men's meeting and say, here's what we're thinking, what do you think about this? And we'll talk about it and discuss it and we'll take an informal vote. Do you think this is what we ought to do? And if everybody says, yeah, I believe that's a good deal. So we'll take that as a men, it's not a binding vote on the whole church, but we take that decision from the group of men and we'll bring it in here and present to the whole church. Every voting member then can discuss it and vote on it. And that's the way they did here. And so I think that as opposed to having some hierarchy out of state, out of the country or in a different region that makes your decisions on your local church. We believe the local church ought to make its own decisions right here in house under the leadership of Jesus himself. And so I think that organization is one that carries through till today that works very well. Now the multiplying in verse number 7, let's talk about the multiplying. And the Word of God increased and the number of disciples multiplied. Would you see a direct relationship there? The Word of God preached in its purity. These apostles were preaching, they were devoting time to prayer and preparation and presentation of the Word of God faithfully and regularly. And that directly resulted in the number of disciples being multiplied. Now, I'd like to say if you've got every church that's got good preaching will have a gazillion people. It doesn't seem to prove out to be that way. I know some really good little churches that's got some really good preaching but they don't have a gazillion members. But they've got members who are growing internally, spiritually And if that continues to happen, they're probably going to grow numerically. All you got to do is find some members that will stay put for a while. You know what I'm saying? Well, let's move on. Our harmony in this church is good. The harmony is good. There's very little murmuring. and complaining, and I don't say that to butter your toast, I'm just telling you like it is, and we've been that way for ages. Once we, as a church, come together on a decision, you know, people obviously have a different idea, maybe a little nuance here and there, but it never turns into a debate. It can be discussed, but nobody gets bent out of shape. Nobody gets mad and storms out of a meeting. We vote on it and we're done. We don't have a business meeting every month. We have a business meeting when there's business. Am I boring you? Is it okay? Okay. I'm nearly through. Our harmony is pleased, for instance, with our internet outreach. Those guys in the sound booth, They're not just controlling the sound in here. In fact, if we didn't have a sound system in this room, it wouldn't be a great tragedy if we didn't have a microphone because you can hear me just fine, I think. But we do have sound in the room just because we've got it all set up back there, but the main reason we have sound is because it It carries through to the internet presentation of our sermons and people all around the world can watch it and hear it because we've got it recorded by video and audio and we hear a report occasionally. Brother Aaron will read a report from sermon audio of how many states in our union sometimes it's nearly all 50 states that have listened to sermons in a given month or quarter and oftentimes it includes countries from around the world. Who could believe a little church like this could have that far reaching? What I'm saying is when a church is growing spiritually internally and the Word of God is being presented the way it ought to be, then there's ways like the internet right now that the Apostle Paul I think would have, must have, would have loved, I think. We're getting the word out, the gospel out, the death, burial and resurrection, how people can be saved for eternity. We're getting it out into every state and country around the world. So we, just because we don't have them in this room, does that mean we're not growing in some area? You can be growing internally and we can be growing in our outreach. and maybe that will add up to more seats being filled when summertime and vacation is over. Finally, we see the fifth part of this movement of the text. We see the mob in verses 8 to 15. I won't read them, but I'll just read a couple of verses. In verse number 12 in chapter 6, it says, And they, the religionists, stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes and came upon him and caught him, Stephen, and brought him to the council and set up false witnesses which said, this man seeth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law. And so, they probably didn't just outright lie about everything, but because they took Stephen's words out of context and twisted them, they were able to get witnesses to say, yep, he's guilty. And this ended in a tragedy, and we'll get into some more of that next week. But in verse 15, the very last verse, it says, And all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it were the face of an angel. Do you remember in Moses' ministry, when he came down off the mount, he had to wear a veil. Do you remember that? Moses had to wear a veil because his countenance, his face was glowing because he'd been in the presence of God. And those people didn't even have sunglasses. Evidently Stephen, because he walked so closely to the Lord, maybe his face was glowing like Moses. It says he looked like he must have been an angel. I don't know, angels just look like men in the Bible. And so I don't think they would have seen anything unusual about just the countenance of an ordinary man. There must have been something. render that into our own life and how do we apply that? If we walk close enough, listen, if we walk close enough to the Lord in our devotion time, our prayer time, in our preaching time and we walk close enough to the Lord people will see a difference. I thought I'd hear about 10 amens right there. If we walk with the Lord, if we walk with the Lord faithfully, and we're really close to Him, and we're letting Him change us from glory to glory, I think that people will see there's something different about you. And when you give your testimony of how you got saved, and you give them the plan of salvation, how they can be saved, they'll say, there's something different about this person. I'm going to listen. Let's conclude this. I was reading also about another preacher just last week. He preached a long, long sermon, longer than Donald Trump's message the other night. And he preached a really long sermon. It was like three hours long. And somebody said, why did you go so long? He said, well, I was trying to land the airplane, but I just couldn't quite get it down. He said, man, you passed the runway hours before. Well, I don't want to pass the runway, so here's my conclusion. The dirty devil will try to get into a church and he'll try to get people murmuring and complaining and unhappy and not working in harmony. not pleased with what they have. The song we sang about our blessings. Boy, isn't that a great thing if we just take time to count our blessings. Oh sure, there may be a problem here and a problem there. And there may be something we wish was a little different. But boy, we ought to thank God for what He's given us. What we've got. I'm saved and I get to go to heaven. That's just a pretty big blessing. And so I'm not going to get my nose out of joint too far about some little thing that doesn't go to please me. The dirty devil is going to come in, old smutty face. He's going to try to kick things up a little. He's going to try to get people stirred up a little. Kick him right back. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. unsaved people. Look, the reason it makes so much difference is not only if we're in harmony, we're associating together and we're organized as a bunch of believers, not only will it bring peace in our own heart, our testimony will mean more to those who are not in the faith and they're looking, maybe they're seeking and they hear our testimony and they see the way we act and the way we talk and they know that we're pleased with the Lord Maybe they're willing to give a listening ear. People struggle to find excuses not to come to the Lord. Let us not be guilty of giving them another excuse, but rather entice them to come on into the family. Let's pray together. Father, I pray that you'd bless us, Lord, as we consider and apply the Word of God from Acts chapter 5. Lord, that we would see that we have great responsibility to bring about harmony, to be busy serving, finding our place of service where you need us, Lord. Not just where we'd be the happiest, but where you need us. Lord, I pray that you'd help us just to live according to Isaiah 26.3. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee. Lord, help us to be that kind of a people. We're just a happy people. We're glad to be saved. We're glad we got brothers and sisters to meet with. And Lord, we're glad we got the Word of God to give us guidance through our lives. We're thankful for the Holy Spirit that helps us to apply the Word of God to our lives. Lord, I pray for those who may not be in the faith, those who have not trusted Jesus as Savior yet. I pray that this morning that they would make that decision to come to Christ while there's time.