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As you may observe by looking around you, we are now worshiping together in one service, instead of the two services we have had for the last year and half. This was not a decision made lightly, and part of the decision depended upon us having a message dedicated to the various issues surrounding this kind of logistical dilemma. So here we are.
“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 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 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 Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas 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” (Acts 6:1-7).
First, notice that their problem was caused by growth (v. 1), and their solution to it resulted in growth (v. 7). Growth brings about growth problems (v. 1), in this case a particular group being overlooked. Consider how ordinary and how predictable such a problem would be. The apostles responded with a proposal to delegate responsibility for this particular problem (vv. 2-3). They, for their part, were going to keep their focus on the ministry, that which was causing the growth (v. 4). And so the congregation chose seven godly men (with Hellenistic names, note), and they were set before the apostles, who ordained them (vv. 5-6). The end result of this godly solution to a dispute was godly growth (v. 7). The early church did not float through the book of Acts, never quite touching down. They were real people, with real irritations, and, we may assume, with real comebacks that could have set off a real quarrel.
The initial thoughts are taken from this text, but we are also going to assemble some biblical principles from elsewhere. First, we must distinguish growth problems from wasting disease problems. Growth is good compared to the dull as dishwater ministry of the scribes (Matt. 7:29; Acts 13:45). Growth is not an automatic good, but it can be a great good. So we also need to distinguish growth blessings from growth curses. Not everything that grows is good. Cancer grows. Morning glory grows. False teaching grows (2 Tim. 4:3; 2 Tim. 2:17). And when growth problems occur, they don’t solve themselves (Acts 6:3). When godly leadership of one sort causes a difficulty, godly leadership of another sort is needed to address it.
A balance must be maintained between focusing on the main thing, and solving the distracting problem (Acts 6: 4, 3). Giving ourselves to one or the other is foolish. This is why a godly approach must be applied both to the spiritual side of the ministry and the practical side of the ministry. In this place, the men they appointed to address their practical problem were “full of the Holy Spirit.” They didn’t appoint the impractical sky-pilots to the spiritual stuff and then appoint “realistic” worldly men to the practical side of things. Godly principles apply to everything, everywhere, and they must be applied by men who understand this.
Koinonia fellowship is the work of the Holy Spirit. As we gather to worship God, He knits us together, and we glorify Him together. This can be intimidating to outsiders, and we should not try to make that go away (Acts 5:12-14; 1 Cor. 14:25). At the same time, in the growth of God’s community, a clear priority should be placed on welcoming visitors and outsiders (Dt. 26:11). There is a real difference between the clannish and sectarian exclusion of outsiders and the scary prospect of real community. This is why our deacons, for example, have set aside two rows for visitors.
And a balance needs to be maintained between provision for those you are responsible for (1 Tim. 5:8) and adaptability in the light of larger concerns (Heb. 13:17)—and the needs that those who are responsible for those larger concerns have. So if the deacons ask you to do something, an appropriate response would not be, “This ain’t Russia, pal.”
And last, but also first, the task before us in establishing a worship service is to worship God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear (Heb. 12: 28-29). Just as we want to sing songs that God wants to hear, and not those which we want to sing, so also we want a service that is acceptable to Him in the first place, and our convenience occupying a subordinate place. This does not mean that two services dishonor Him (it depends, right?), but simply means that given our particular circumstances at this point in time, we should be largely focused on what would glorify God the most. Then we labor to make that happen. We want to do this across the board—with the fellowship, with the music, with the energy, with Word and sacraments.
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When we fall into the trap of thinking of the Bible as a book to aid us in our personal devotions, we often miss the larger context. We need to remember that this is a letter to a particular church in a particular city, and Paul gave the warning because he saw certain kinds of arrogance developing.
“And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off” (Rom. 11:17-22).
Those Jews who had not believed in their Messiah had been broken off from the olive tree—the tree of covenant continuity (v. 17). But Gentiles, wild olive branches, were grafted in (v. 17). The newcomers are exhorted by Paul not to boast about it—they don’t support the root (v. 18). There is an answer to this—weren’t they cut out to make room for us (v. 19)? Paul says that may well be, but they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Paul says that highmindedness is out, and fear should be there instead (v. 20). If God did not spare natural branches, why on earth would He spare grafted in, wild olive branches (v. 21)? There are two attributes of God that must be kept in mind—severity for apostates and goodness for those who stand by faith (v. 22).
The image of Israel as an olive tree is a common one in the Old Testament (e.g. Hos. 14:5-7). The root is obviously the grace of God found in Christ (John 15: 1-7), but the ancient manifestation of this root grace was found in Abraham (Gal. 3:29). The Jews had been cultivated for so long that they were considered the natural branches on this tree, and the Gentiles were the wild branches. Normally, the grafting practice was to graft a cultivated branch onto a wild root, but Paul reverses this. Here the blessing comes on the Gentile branches who were privileged to be joined to the ancient covenant promises.
Notice in this image that we find a biblical illustration that ties everything together in one unified covenant throughout the Scriptures. The apostle does not call the Jews an olive tree, and then say that with the Gentiles we have a newly planted peach tree. No, it is all one tree, with one glorious story. This illustration, by itself, overthrows many common ways of understanding the relationship of the Church to Israel. But in this analogy, the Church is the renewed Israel.
This is not a letter written to generic Gentiles. These words are given to the saints in Rome. “To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints” (Rom. 1:7). When he cautions them against hubris, why would he do this? He did it because he saw the first stirrings of it. Remember that Paul characteristically argues “one of you will say then,” and he does this because he knows how the Q&A sessions usually go. And what happens here? “God cut out the Jews to make way for us Romans” (v. 19). Remember that this was the capital city of the most powerful empire in the world. Anyone who thinks that Christians don’t get caught up by this kind of reflected glory need to ask more pointed questions of their sinful hearts. The Lord spurned the devil’s offer of all the kingdoms of men in their glory—His followers have not always been so successful.
Classical Protestants, following Paul’s teaching in Romans 8 have long held that nothing can separate the elect from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8: 33). We hold to the final and complete perseverance o f the elect because God will not fail to complete what He has begun (Rom. 8: 38-39). In contrast, the Church at Rome has ignored and set aside the letter than Paul wrote to them, not only on the question of faith alone, but also on the question of whether their church can fall away. The Roman church teaches that the salvation of no one is secure in this life—three popes in a row, and ten cardinals in succession, if they commit mortal sin, could all die and be condemned eternally. But they also teach that their church is incapable of falling away, that it is “unfailingly holy,” to use the words of their catechism. Paul reverses this, and so must we. Any church can fall away (Rev. 2:5), and the elect of God cannot cannot fall away (John 10:29).
We must face up to our constant temptation to draw contrasts between our position as Christians and the Jews’ position in the Old Testament. The New Testament consistently draws parallels, and we (for the sake of our traditions) want to draw these contrasts. But the way Israel fell into sin is set before us regularly (1 Cor. 10: 1-11; Heb. 3: 7ff; 4: 11; Rom. 11:17ff), and we are consistently warned against doing the very same thing. This means that the fact that Rome received this letter two thousand years ago does not make the warning less relevant, but rather far more relevant. How long before Paul wrote these words had the Jews been called through Abraham? Two thousand years—that is what created the temptation for them. And we should take care as well. Eventually the Westminster Confession will be two thousand years old.
Sermon Notes:FIRST SUNDAY OF EPIPHANY: 1 PETER 2:13-25
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There are two dangers when it comes to the interpretation of biblical prophecy. The first, fairly common among evangelicals, is to picture the fulfillment in lurid and garish colors, filled out with a crass literalism, but which fully retains the right to be called “fantastical.” Such fulfillments, were they to happen, would be amazing. But the second error is to learn about the first error, and then to retreat into an acceptance of the kind of biblical fulfillments that could conceivably escape the notice of virtually every historian. These things were “spiritually” fulfilled, you see, and you can’t expect them to alter the flow of history in any visible way. But this is not how the Bible teaches us to think. We are not to give way to a wooden literalism when it comes to prophecy, but neither are we to dilute it all into a homeopathic nothingness. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, what God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Cor. 2:9). Eye has not seen it now, but all eyes will see it then.
“Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing?? of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office: If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them. For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches” (Rom. 11:12-16).
Paul’s argument is that if the apostasy of most of the Jews was such a blessing to the Gentiles, how much more of a blessing (to the Gentiles) will their fullness be (v. 12)? Paul is speaking to the Gentiles there at the church in Rome, and he makes a big deal out of the fact that he had been designated to be an apostle to the Gentiles (v. 13; Gal. 2:8; 1 Tim. 2:7; 2 Tim. 1:11). The reason he does this is that he wants to provoke his brothers the Jews, and to provoke them into salvation (v. 14). And as it bends around again, this provocation of the Jews will be a blessing for the whole world (to whom Paul was sent), resulting in “life from the dead” (v. 15). Paul then argues that if the first fruits were holy, then the lump would also be holy. If the root were holy, then the branches would be also (v. 16).
This is how God works. When something negative happens, like the apostasy of the majority of first century Judaism, this is because God is working on a great blessing for the world. And we need to note that this apostasy was not just an unfortunate series of events, or a sad time. It was a disaster for the Jewish people, a cataclysm in which over a million people lost their lives. Jesus spoke of it as the very worst moment in the history of the world (Matt. 24:21). This was to be understood, in the words of Paul here, as the “reconciling of the world.” Just as the death of Jesus, another great disaster, was our salvation, so the destruction of the Jewish nation was designed to open the door for everyone else.
We think we get this, and we would reason that if that is true, then when blessing returns to the Jewish people, then that will mean that we have to see-saw back to a time when the Gentiles are excluded and cursed. Not at all, Paul says. If the Jewish fall was a great blessing for us, how much more will their restoration be an even great blessing for us.
Just as the apostasy did not include the remnant (the one that Isaiah had prophesied, and that Paul discussed a little earlier in Romans), so also it does not include the many Jews who have come to faith in Christ over the centuries. In the first few centuries of the Church, there appears to have been a large migration of Jews into the faith. But all that notwithstanding, the Jewish people as such have not believed in the Messiah that all their sacred books talk about. Those Jews who have come to Christ have tended to lose, over the course of a few generations, their identity as Jews. For example, our family is a Gentile family, even though my wife’s great grandfather was a Jewish rabbi. Those Jews who have kept their cultural identity have been those who have kept their distance from Jesus Christ. Paul is here talking about a Jewish return to Christ that would be as public and as visible as their rejection of Him was. This was not something that a number of individual Jews could just drift into. This prophecy will not be completed until we can say that Judaism is Christian. And when that happens, there will be no middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile (Eph. 2:14).
The word Paul uses for “provoke to jealousy” in verse 11 is the same word he uses here in verse 14. He wanted to make much of the fact that Gentiles were coming into salvation, were coming into the inheritance of Abraham, so that Jews would be stirred up by this and respond by coming to Christ. This is all in Deuteronomy, and it demonstrates that we are talking about something that goes far beyond what we evangelicals consider to be a “good testimony” about how Jesus saved us. We are talking about cultures, and we are talking about cultural jealousy. This tactic of God’s was predicted in the latter part of Deuteronomy, and it is the same way that God worked when He was blessing the Jewish during the times of the older covenant. This is how God works. “Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for?” (Deut. 4:6-7).
One of the great tragedies in the history of the Church thus far is that we have not understood the evangelistic potency of cultural identity and cohesion, rightly held and rightly understood. Instead of provoking the Jews to jealousy, which is God’s game plan, we have been envious and jealous of them, falling into the anti-gospel of anti-Semitism. And then, when we are feeling bad about that (as we ought to) we as a result abandon all attempts at building biblical culture and cohesion, believing that this sort of thing results in things like the Holocaust. In all this, we are refusing to do what our Master told us to do. We are being like that servant in Proverbs, the one who is smoke in the eyes of the one who sent him (Prov. 10:26).
Douglas Wilson
Christ Church