00:00: Please pray with me.
00:04: Father, what a privilege to hear how the early church lived and functioned as your spirit empowered them.
00:14: Your grace to your people is nothing new to us.
00:19: It's something you have been doing and working for millennia.
00:25: And yet today we get to experience it personally day by day as we walk by faith following Jesus Christ.
00:34: Would you give us eyes to recognize your presence, your voice, your leading?
00:42: Would you help us to learn what it is to rely on you for the strength that is needed?
00:48: To live and minister in the ways that you call us to.
00:54: We pray that the priority of the preaching of the word and prayer would not be neglected.
01:02: Nor would any of the ministry of helps in our day either.
01:07: We surrender ourselves to you afresh this morning and ask that you would work in our hearts.
01:15: Encourage.
01:16: Correct.
01:18: Strengthen.
01:18: Do what is needed in each and every mind and heart here in a personalized way.
01:28: So that we are drawn into deeper relationship with Jesus Christ.
01:33: And we are more joyful as we experience daily communion with you.
01:39: We pray these things in Jesus name.
01:42: Amen.
01:42: Amen.
01:42: Jesus said, I will build my church.
01:49: Matthew 16, 18.
01:52: And he has.
01:53: And he is.
01:55: And he will.
01:56: It is Christ's who builds the church.
02:00: There is not one of you here today as a Christian who is here believing in Jesus Christ apart from the work of God in your life.
02:11: Now to be sure, almost all of us, probably every one of us had somebody who shared the gospel message with us.
02:21: We encountered scripture at some point or another.
02:25: We understood by God's grace through either the scripture or a person or both the good news of who Jesus is for people.
02:35: But it didn't change our lives until God's spirit went to work in us.
02:44: We need that every single day.
02:48: We have all sorts of things that we can do for God and that we can do for the sake of God's kingdom.
02:55: All sorts of things that we're even commanded by God to do.
02:58: And yet none of them is effective apart from the work of God.
03:04: We can share our faith.
03:06: We can seek to make disciples.
03:07: We can do Bible study.
03:09: We can give.
03:10: And none of these things is truly meaningful if God's spirit isn't at work in us and through what we do.
03:20: Just this last week I was reading in Psalm 127 about how God provides for his people.
03:25: It's a short psalm.
03:26: It's only five verses.
03:27: And at first it seems a little disparate.
03:29: You know, this part and that part don't seem to go together until you realize that it's all about God taking care of his people.
03:35: God at work.
03:37: And in verse one it says, Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.
03:45: Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
03:52: Those are necessary things.
03:54: People need houses.
03:55: People need to build houses.
03:57: In that context with attacks and so on, people needed to stand watch at the city walls.
04:03: And they needed to stay awake so that they weren't caught by surprise.
04:07: Necessary human activity but without value.
04:13: Without effectiveness.
04:14: In vain it says if God's not at work in the midst of it.
04:18: God has to be watching over the city as the watchman stands guard.
04:22: God has to be building the house as the construction workers go to work.
04:27: What about today?
04:28: We have the duty of making disciples of all nations.
04:35: Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
04:38: And teaching them to obey everything that Jesus has commanded.
04:41: Those are our central marching orders as believers.
04:45: Should we be about doing that?
04:46: Yes.
04:47: Do we need to take actions toward those ends?
04:49: Yes.
04:49: Yes.
04:50: But it will not be effective apart from God being at work.
04:56: Now as we've been looking at the book of Acts in recent weeks, there's been two primary emphases.
05:02: The coming of God's Holy Spirit to live in and empower the believers on the one hand.
05:07: And on the other hand, the growth of the church.
05:10: Now those are not two kind of randomly same time things that are haphazardly thrown together in the book of Acts.
05:20: They are both there in these chapters because the first is the cause of the second.
05:26: It's because the Holy Spirit has been sent into the world and is living in the believers and is making them effective in ministry that the church is growing as it is as we work through the book of Acts.
05:41: Acts 115 is about 120 believers.
05:44: Chapter 2, verse 41, it jumps by 3,000 people.
05:48: Chapter 2, verse 47, the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
05:55: Like every day there's new people coming to faith.
05:57: And who's doing it?
05:58: The Lord added to their number.
06:02: Acts 4, 4, up to 5,000 men, it says, not even counting the women and children who were presumably part of it.
06:09: You get to chapter 5, verse 14, more than ever, believers were being added to the Lord.
06:14: Multitudes of both men and women.
06:17: That's what God's Spirit was accomplishing in the early days of the church because the Holy Spirit was at work.
06:26: And the Holy Spirit lives in us today every bit as fully, every bit as powerfully as he ever has in anyone.
06:34: We are not disadvantaged.
06:36: We're not second class, second tier Christians with regards to the Holy Spirit.
06:41: God wants to work in you and through you for his glory and his kingdom.
06:48: God wants to be at work through you and me today building his church.
06:53: Not that we're doing it, but God's doing it through us.
06:57: We get to be involved in that.
07:00: That's why we say here at Faith Chapel that our mission is for every believer to become, make, mature, and multiply fully surrendered disciples of Jesus Christ.
07:10: We need to be fully surrendered.
07:12: Ever more fully surrendered.
07:13: I'm going to follow Jesus.
07:15: Even if no one else does, I'm going to follow Jesus.
07:17: That should be all of us.
07:19: We should all be saying, whatever comes, I'm committed to following Jesus.
07:24: We are apprentices, as it were.
07:26: That's essentially what a disciple is, is an apprentice.
07:28: We're going to apprentice to Jesus.
07:31: Whole life long.
07:32: There is no testing out.
07:33: There is no finish line in this life where you've achieved your top status, your top credentialing.
07:39: It doesn't happen.
07:40: We just keep apprenticing to Jesus.
07:42: But then we're called to make disciples.
07:46: That is, help people to come to saving faith.
07:48: Sharing the gospel.
07:49: Helping them to understand the good news message of Jesus.
07:52: That God entered the world, became one of us, lived the perfect life that we should and don't.
07:57: And then, innocent, allowed himself to be condemned to death in our place.
08:03: He traded places with guilty people.
08:05: So that anyone and everyone who repentantly trusts in Jesus would have their sin eradicated by Jesus.
08:14: And get credit for Jesus' righteousness.
08:17: That's the glorious divine trade that God offers humanity through Jesus Christ.
08:24: Jesus has already done his part.
08:26: The Holy Spirit calls you and says, come to Jesus.
08:29: Accept the trade.
08:31: Receive the righteousness of Jesus.
08:33: Be accepted by God.
08:36: Be forgiven.
08:36: Because there is no other way.
08:38: On your best of days, you don't measure up to Jesus.
08:43: And you don't have that many best days.
08:45: Right?
08:46: None of us do.
08:47: But Jesus didn't have a bad day.
08:50: He never sinned.
08:51: He never messed up.
08:53: That's the good news that we need and that we need to latch on to.
08:56: And so we need to be living on mission every day.
08:59: Encouraging each other with the good news.
09:02: And then bringing that great good news to the people around us who don't know.
09:07: As we do that, God is going to be at work building his church.
09:10: That doesn't mean that there won't be problems or challenges.
09:13: There will.
09:14: We've already seen that in our study of the book of Acts.
09:16: Chapters 4 and 5.
09:18: The early church is facing opposition and threats from the outside.
09:22: The Jewish leadership in Jerusalem is opposing this fledgling church.
09:27: And is opposing the message about Jesus.
09:30: We see that happen in a couple of different ways.
09:32: In chapters 4 and 5, which we've already looked at.
09:35: And in chapter 6, it begins with a triple threat to the church.
09:40: From the inside.
09:43: Threat number one.
09:44: The first threat we see in our passages this morning is the church neglecting to love the whole church well.
09:50: There's this danger of the church loving some people in the church effectively, faithfully well.
09:58: And neglecting others.
10:01: That's a danger.
10:02: That's a way that a church can go off the rails.
10:05: There ought to be no one in any Christian church who is neglected, overlooked, marginalized.
10:14: It ought not happen.
10:15: You see it in verse 1.
10:16: Now in those days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.
10:29: And you've got to put that in a little bit of context here.
10:31: The Hellenists would be Greek-speaking Jewish people.
10:36: Hellenism refers back to the Greek empire, the Greek influence in that larger portion of the world.
10:42: And so if you were raised as a Greek-speaking person, you were called a Hellenist.
10:48: Now these were Jewish people, ethnically Jewish, who had grown up in a place where Greek was their primary language.
10:57: So they're Hellenistic Jews, but they're part of the church here.
11:00: So they're Jewish people, speaking Greek, who've heard the gospel message and come to Christ.
11:05: Now, then you get the Hebrews.
11:08: This would be Jewish people who grew up speaking Hebrew and or Aramaic.
11:14: If you grew up in the area of Israel in the time of Christ, the default trade language of the time was Aramaic.
11:21: You might be thinking, well, Aramaic, we never heard about that.
11:23: Well, Abba Father, Abba, that's Aramaic, for example.
11:27: Made it into the New Testament.
11:29: The average person in that area spoke Aramaic.
11:31: Hebrew was the language of the Israelite people going back to ancient times.
11:35: And so if you spoke one of those, you were called a Hebrew.
11:38: So you got these two different groups of Jewish people, both Jewish people who had come to Christ, but they had different languages.
11:45: There's this language barrier going on.
11:48: And the Greek-speaking Jewish background Christians are saying, hey, our needy old ladies aren't getting the care they need.
11:57: The Hebrew-speaking needy old ladies are getting help, but ours aren't.
12:03: And that's a problem.
12:05: It's not okay for any of them to be overlooked.
12:08: They're being neglected in the daily distribution.
12:11: Now, it doesn't specify exactly what the daily distribution was.
12:14: Common sense tells us it was probably some sort of food help, some sort of basic needs kind of meeting.
12:21: This would maybe be the 2,000-year-old version of Meals on Wheels like we might have today.
12:28: And the Hebrews are getting their Meals on Wheels and the Hellenists are not.
12:33: I'm saying that's not right.
12:36: We've got to take care of these widows as well.
12:39: So, it is whatever the motivation, however that came to happen, whether it was intentional or unintentional, it was in practice a form of partiality.
12:54: This group was getting the care and that group wasn't.
12:57: And that's not okay.
12:58: James, the brother of Jesus, author of the New Testament book of James, twice explicitly calls partiality a sin and calls it out and says, no, that can't happen among God's people.
13:10: That's the first threat.
13:12: Neglecting to love the whole church.
13:13: Well, the second threat is conflict within a diverse church.
13:17: It's not as though they were all of the same type and said, hey, we've just realized that there's a few widows who are being overlooked and they're just like us.
13:27: But it was this group and that group who were unlike each other in some ways.
13:33: And the one group was being overlooked and the other wasn't.
13:35: And notice that the way this plays out, verse 1, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.
13:50: Now, take out against the Hebrews, and that sentence still makes sense.
13:53: A complaint by the Hellenists arose because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.
13:58: That would be a totally legit thing.
14:00: Like, hey, our older widows here aren't being cared for.
14:04: We've got to deal with this.
14:05: No problem.
14:06: That's fine.
14:06: Bring that up, right?
14:08: But the complaint was arising against the Hebrews.
14:11: They're saying, you guys who are different are treating our folks badly.
14:17: So conflict is budding here.
14:19: The church in Jerusalem at the beginning was diverse.
14:24: You had Jews who grew up speaking Hebrew or Aramaic.
14:27: You had Jews who spoke Greek.
14:29: You had Gentiles coming into the church, non-Jewish background people.
14:33: And with these different languages and cultures and assumptions and ways of thinking, there's just this breeding ground for conflict.
14:42: Any time you bring people together into a group, there's the potential for conflict.
14:52: Who was it that said, I'd never want to join any group that would have me as a member?
14:57: Is that Marx, maybe?
14:58: Carl?
14:59: Groucho?
15:00: Those are different Marx.
15:01: I think it was Groucho.
15:04: Any church that lets people like you and me become members has got some challenges, right?
15:10: Because we all bring our baggage.
15:13: We all bring our imperfection.
15:15: Now, this church, Faith Chapel, has unfortunately experienced division in its history.
15:21: In the last 25 years or so, we've had three church splits, which just breaks my heart.
15:27: Two of them long before I was ever here and one in the decade I've been here.
15:32: It ought not happen.
15:34: But churches face conflict.
15:37: And how we deal with that is a big deal.
15:40: And when you have language or cultural distinctives at play, the opportunity for division multiplies.
15:47: So the second threat is this division within a diverse church.
15:53: The third threat is neglecting the preaching and prayer that was necessary in order to focus on caring for those in the church.
16:00: You see this in verse 2.
16:01: The twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.
16:09: Now, I don't know how the idea came that the apostles ought to personally, directly intervene and get involved in this situation.
16:19: Maybe somebody suggested they do it.
16:21: Maybe somebody asked them to do it.
16:23: Maybe somebody got in their face, Why aren't you doing this?
16:26: Maybe they were just brainstorming about the problem.
16:28: And one of the things, Well, should we do it?
16:31: Maybe they were just doing it.
16:31: Maybe they were just doing it.
16:32: But however the idea arose, they came to rightly recognize, No, we can't be the ones to fix this idea.
16:39: Because if we do that, if we focus on this food distribution need, we're not going to be able to put in the time and energy we need into the preaching and the praying stuff.
16:55: It's going to have to be one or the other.
16:58: And they understood rightly that their priority was preaching and prayer.
17:02: There's only so many hours in the day.
17:03: How many of you feel that on a regular basis?
17:07: You run out of time and you have to go to bed before you accomplished everything you might have liked to have accomplished that day.
17:14: Years ago, I learned that I needed to say no to some things.
17:19: I needed to say no even to good, godly opportunities in order to say yes to other things.
17:28: If you say yes to everything, you're not going to be able to do everything that you're trying to do well.
17:32: You're just not.
17:35: Say no even to good things in order to say yes to the necessary things.
17:42: What are those necessary things?
17:44: Well, it depends on who you are.
17:46: You have a different calling, potentially, than the person next to you.
17:51: You've got a different wiring and different gifting and different calling than others.
17:57: We're not all called to be the same.
17:59: We ought not be cookie cutters.
18:01: We ought to be different than each other.
18:04: And no, that's not me just defending my propensity for telling dad jokes.
18:09: I was talking about spiritual gifts.
18:11: We're talking about the way that we serve in ministry.
18:13: God's word says that God prepared good works in advance for us to do.
18:25: And I tell you right now, there are good works that he prepared in advance for somebody else to do and not me.
18:32: You see me up on this platform week after week.
18:35: Have you noticed I'm never down on that portion of the platform?
18:41: You are welcome.
18:42: I don't belong over there.
18:44: I can't carry a tune in a bucket.
18:46: I have no business helping lead the music ministry of this church.
18:50: I'm not gifted to that.
18:51: I'm not called for that.
18:52: If I started trying to fill gaps over here, I'd drive attendance right down to 10 people.
18:59: Right?
18:59: Like nobody would want to stick around.
19:02: I ought not be involved in that.
19:05: But there's other people that have great business over there that have no business over here.
19:11: Right?
19:11: We've each got our different calling and area of responsibility.
19:15: So as the apostles and as the early church looked at this situation, they came to a wise decision.
19:25: They said, we're going to focus on what God has called us to focus on.
19:30: But we're not going to ignore this other need.
19:32: We're going to delegate responsibility for that to some other folks.
19:36: Not random folks, but folks who meet some certain conditions, qualified people.
19:44: People who are qualified for that area of responsibility.
19:47: And people that the church approves.
19:50: Right?
19:51: He says, you guys pick out some folks.
19:53: They need to be of good repute.
19:55: They need to be full of the spirit.
19:56: And they need to be wise.
19:58: Right?
19:58: These are not just people who can say, oh, yeah, I'll do it.
20:01: I'll take care of it.
20:02: Don't worry about checking the books on the funding for this.
20:05: Right?
20:05: No, these are people that have a good reputation.
20:07: They've got, you know, character that's been seen and recognized.
20:11: These are to be folks who are full of the spirit.
20:15: Now, that doesn't mean that they have the Holy Spirit living in them.
20:18: Because all of them, all the believers had the Holy Spirit living in them.
20:22: But it means that they were surrendered to.
20:26: They were living in step with the spirit.
20:30: And third, they need to be wise.
20:31: They need to have some good decision-making skills.
20:36: They need to have some ability to understand a situation and make right choices.
20:41: And the congregation gets behind this plan.
20:43: They say, yeah, we'll do that.
20:44: So then some folks will deal with the distribution.
20:49: Some folks will deal with the preaching, praying.
20:51: Right?
20:52: They shared responsibility.
20:54: Now, I don't think this is merely the decision, the game plan that was worked out by the early church.
21:03: And I don't think that it was merely a good plan.
21:05: I think this is the very design of God for his people in all times and in all places.
21:13: Meaning that God has given every Christian various spiritual giftings.
21:20: And intends for all believers to use those spiritual giftings to build up the body of Christ.
21:28: To build up the church.
21:31: That's normative for Christians everywhere.
21:36: 1 Corinthians chapters 12, 13, 14 talk about this.
21:39: Paul's writing to a totally different context than what we're looking at in the book of Acts.
21:47: Which is Peter and company in Jerusalem.
21:50: And in his letter to the church in Corinth, he says, hey, you've got all kinds of different spiritual gifts.
21:56: And God has allotted to this one this and that one that.
21:59: It's not all the same.
22:01: So use yours and do your part.
22:03: What you're wired for.
22:04: Verses 4-7 of 1 Corinthians 12.
22:09: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit.
22:12: And there are varieties of service, but the same Lord.
22:15: And there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.
22:23: To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good.
22:29: Every single one of you here today, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you have been given one or more spiritual gifts by God.
22:38: He knows what he's doing.
22:40: And he intends for you to use those gifts.
22:43: Not simply for your own benefit.
22:46: But for the benefit of the rest of the folks here.
22:49: If you refuse to use your spiritual gifting for the good of the church, you are stealing from the other folks here.
22:57: The opportunities and the grace that God wants to bring to them through you.
23:03: And the church will not be as healthy as it ought to be without all of us bringing to the table what God has gifted us with.
23:11: In 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13, it says, 1 Corinthians 12, verses 12 and 13 says, For just as the body is one, and as many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ.
23:29: For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body.
23:33: Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit.
23:38: Are we individuals or are we one body?
23:43: Yes.
23:45: But every single person who is a Christian has been baptized into the spirit and has therefore been baptized into, been brought into the one body of Christ.
23:55: That is the church.
23:57: Whether it's Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, see all the different demographics that are present in the church.
24:05: All one body.
24:06: Different giftings, different jobs to do, but all necessary.
24:10: It goes on to say in verse 12 in a variety of ways, you need what that other person has.
24:16: Not that you have to have the same gifts, but you need what they're going to be doing for the life of the church.
24:20: And they need what you're going to be doing for the life of the church.
24:22: And already I know some of you who like to self-sabotage are saying, well, my thing's not that important.
24:28: My gifting isn't as impressive as so-and-so's.
24:31: That passage says there are no indispensable parts.
24:36: Verse 22 is explicit about that.
24:39: They are all indispensable.
24:43: Indispensable.
24:43: And no legitimate, no Christian can legitimately say that he or she doesn't need the effect of the giftings of other Christians.
24:55: Nobody here has it together enough that you don't need what the other folks bring to the table.
25:02: Scott.
25:05: Baseball.
25:06: How many people you put out on the field?
25:09: Nine.
25:10: I knew you'd know that.
25:11: I didn't arrange it with them ahead of time.
25:12: And they should be nine different position players, right?
25:18: Normally.
25:19: Don't play on his team or you're going to have issues, right?
25:25: Oh, he's trying to defend himself now.
25:27: Yeah, yeah.
25:28: Well, let's go.
25:28: Let's pretend he doesn't know what he's talking about for a minute.
25:31: And he says normally you need nine different positions.
25:34: Imagine he's coaching a team.
25:36: And he's like, hey, I'm going to put a right fielder, a left fielder, a center fielder.
25:40: I got a third baseman, a shortstop, and a second baseman.
25:43: But I haven't got a first baseman.
25:46: So I'll just put my pitcher over on first base.
25:50: And then we'll put our catcher out there.
25:52: How's that inning going to go without a pitcher?
25:55: Not well, right?
25:56: Or suppose the pitcher says, I really would be more pleased to play first base.
26:04: So two guys are standing at first.
26:07: Getting each other's way.
26:08: That's not going to work out well, right?
26:10: Or the catcher says, I don't want to do my thing.
26:13: I'm embarrassed to be a catcher.
26:15: And they just keep throwing the ball to the backstop.
26:17: And then the pitcher has to walk over and pick it up.
26:19: It's ridiculous, right?
26:20: The image of baseball without all nine folks doing their individual parts is absurd.
26:26: But it is more absurd for the church to try to be the church, to try to do what God calls us to do, without everyone pitching in.
26:34: If you're a shortstop, be a shortstop.
26:37: If you're a third baseman, be a third baseman.
26:40: Teaching, serving, administrating, helping, giving, all the different kinds of spiritual gifts have their place.
26:51: And as each person takes their place, things get done the way they ought to do it.
26:58: Now, I love that Tyler had to read the names, right?
27:02: Nobody who gets asked to read scripture wants the names passages, right?
27:06: Oh, no, these weird, hard-to-pronounce names.
27:08: And there's seven of them in there.
27:11: And you know what's really interesting?
27:13: All seven names are Greek names.
27:18: They're all Greek names.
27:20: Now, by the time that this was written, there was a fair amount of overlap where Greek names were becoming more commonly used by Hebrew-type Jewish folks in that area.
27:31: But they're all Hellenist Greek kinds of names, implying that probably at least some, perhaps all of them, were actually Hellenists.
27:42: They didn't just say, because we've got a majority of Hebrew Jews in this Jerusalem church, we're going to keep the power to ourselves.
27:48: They said, no, we'll invite the others to have a share in authority, to have a share in really making things happen.
27:55: So there's this shared responsibility.
27:58: For years, I hadn't noticed that.
28:00: And then when it was pointed out to me in some of my studies, I was like, oh, that makes sense, right?
28:04: If I told you that we had a new committee in church, and it was Miguel and Jorge and Juan, like right away you'd be thinking, is this the Mexican committee or the Hispanic committee, right?
28:16: Because the names jump out at you as being from that culture.
28:20: That's what's going on here.
28:21: And what happens as they bring these other folks into play, saying, you take responsibility for this, you make sure this happens, then the apostles can still focus on what they're supposed to focus on.
28:36: Verse 4, Now, if you look at your Bible, you'll probably notice that verse 7 is like a new paragraph.
28:47: It's not blended in.
28:48: And if you look at it as a standalone, you can kind of be like, well, it's this weird standalone verse that doesn't really go with the previous passage, doesn't really go with the next passage.
28:58: Is Luke just giving us this random update like, oh, by the way, things are still growing?
29:03: No.
29:03: No.
29:04: This is the punchline of verses 1 through 6.
29:09: It's the ending.
29:11: It's the conclusion of the passage.
29:13: It's crucial to understand what's going on.
29:16: The word of God continued to increase, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
29:27: And in an explanatory way, I'd add, because the church was being the church, because these guys didn't get pulled off mission to do the table serving, because these other folks took on the table serving so that the apostles could do their job, so the widows weren't neglected, so the conflict between different demographics in the church, that fire was put out.
29:48: All triple threat problems were dealt with by shared responsibility, by delegation.
29:55: So I've got to ask you, where's your fit in the church?
30:04: You've got at least two parts to what you need to be doing in this church.
30:08: You need to be giving, and you need to be receiving.
30:12: Now, when I say giving, that can include time, talents, and treasures.
30:18: Putting in time, talking to folks, listening to folks, praying for folks.
30:23: Talents, your abilities.
30:28: What can you do that helps somebody else?
30:31: Just today, we had a situation come to our attention in this church where there was a need.
30:36: And immediately, a few of us started talking.
30:37: We said, okay, how are we going to deal with this?
30:39: And got on the phone.
30:41: And another portion of the church said, yeah, we can meet that need.
30:44: We'll go do that.
30:45: And so right away this morning, I got to watch people in this church stepping up, saying, I will bless, I will love, I will help, I will serve.
30:55: And it got taken care of almost instantly.
30:57: It was amazing to watch.
31:00: Talents, our abilities.
31:02: What do you have for an ability?
31:04: And I don't care what your ability is.
31:05: There's a place for it.
31:07: The church is better together when we're all working in sync with each other.
31:12: But you also need to be receiving.
31:14: You need to let people bless you.
31:16: If you're not letting people bless you, you're contradicting 1 Corinthians 12 and you're saying, in effect, I don't need you guys.
31:24: That's not true biblically.
31:28: We need to give.
31:29: We need to receive.
31:32: The entry of this church has two big pillars out front.
31:35: Have you noticed those when you come in?
31:37: Getting kind of shabby recently, I noticed.
31:40: The paint on the bottom was chipping off.
31:42: Looked pretty bad.
31:44: It was getting worse.
31:45: Then, of course, the wood's exposed and that's not good for good stewardship, letting it begin to rot.
31:50: So I talked to the trustees and I said, hey, when you guys have a chance, can you get on that?
31:55: And they did.
31:56: In a timely manner, boom, it was done.
31:57: A number of weeks back, I looked out.
31:58: I'm like, it's done.
32:00: I don't know who did it.
32:01: I don't know how it was arranged, but there it is done and I didn't need to worry about it.
32:06: That wasn't my area.
32:07: I saw it.
32:08: I brought it up.
32:09: It got delegated out and it got done.
32:11: Beautiful to see that thing out, that kind of thing at work.
32:14: I don't know if you noticed when you drove in, there's a bunch of fence panels propped up against the garage.
32:19: Recent rains and windstorms knocked down some of our fencing towards the neighborhood.
32:24: That's being worked on.
32:26: We've had challenges in recent years making sure we had enough folks to lead the worship time.
32:30: Different folks have stepped up for that.
32:32: Technology and computers, leading the women's ministry.
32:35: God provided somebody to direct and to guide that area of ministry this year.
32:41: Cassie, who is often overlooked because she's often out serving in other parts of the church, oh, God bless that woman.
32:48: This is the only church of which I have ever been a part where there's somebody that said, oh, I would love to coordinate the nursery ministry.
32:57: And she loves to do it and she does it well.
32:59: God made her special.
33:02: Every other place I've been, there's been people like, no, I don't want to do that.
33:05: Please don't make me do that.
33:07: And God has just wired her for that.
33:09: And the shipments say, hallelujah, right?
33:14: They're so grateful that there's a nursery.
33:16: Am I right?
33:18: Amen.
33:18: Amen.
33:21: Up front, behind the scenes, introverted, extroverted, young or old.
33:27: And by the way, I don't care if you've retired from your job, you don't retire from ministry, there's not a person in here who's too old for ministry.
33:34: Not one of you.
33:36: And if you think you might be the exception, talk to me and we'll find a place for you in ministry.
33:41: Newer believer, long-time believer, somewhere in between, every single Christian in here is called to give and receive in the life of the church and in ministry.
33:53: Find your place.
33:54: And if you don't know what that is, come talk to one of the leaders and we will help you figure that out.
34:04: We'll help you figure that out.
34:07: Would you join me in prayer?
34:11: God, help us to recognize what the early church recognized, that you have a good design for the functioning of your church.
34:21: You will build your church.
34:22: You will provide people with all the right giftings for what you want to accomplish.
34:30: Help us to know and embrace your call on each of us individually and give us a heart of love so that we don't just do the serving that you call us to, but that we do it in love.
34:44: That all of our serving is an expression of love.
34:47: 1 Corinthians 13 says that without love, it's all meaningless.
34:51: And that was in the context of spiritual gifts.
34:53: So help us to recognize that and live that out here in Green Bay today.
34:58: We pray these things in Jesus' name.
35:01: Amen.