So I don't know if there's ever happened to you or not, but it's happened to me. There have been times when I have asked someone where it is that they go to church, and rather than answering me with the name of the church, they give me the name of the pastor of their church. Like, like, well, I go to, I go to Matt Chandler's church, I go to Max lucados church, right? And so there's these, these well known pastors, these, sometimes they're referred to as celebrity pastors. They're just pastors of mega churches. And they're so well known in those churches, as well as in the online realm, that it's just easier to say, I go to their church rather than the name of the church, because you might not recognize the name, but you know who the pastor is. Sometimes, in those particular settings, when someone is so well known and they're kind of seen as a celebrity pastor, it can be easy to think of them as the really spirit filled people. I mean, there's the super elite Christians of all Christians, who who do the work, and God's really empowered them to be a part of His kingdom work here, and they'll the rest of us are here to just kind of watch them perform, or maybe support the ministry that they're called to by, by giving and helping to fund their ministry. Well, if you've been here over the last several weeks and we've learned about the apostles in the early church, you could have been tempted to think of them in a similar manner as kind of the celebrity pastors, if you will, because it's really been focused on them and what God has been doing in and through them. And they've been doing some pretty big supernatural things, really, they haven't been but the spirit has been at work in and through them doing that. And so it can be easy to think, well, there's the apostles, and they're like the super Christians, the really spirit filled elite of elite. And then, well, there's there's us, and, yeah, we're a part of the church, but we're really not like them. You know, if you've been tempted to think that way and focus on the apostles, and there's no one that's quite like them. Well, I'm glad you're here today, because as we continue in this series and what we look at here in Acts chapter six, we're going to finally start to hear a little bit more about others who are involved in the church, and not just the apostles. We're still going to hear a lot about them, but we're going to hear more about those who are in the church and how God was using them to be a part of important Kingdom work. And that's going to say so much to just you and I today. And so again, if you have your Bible Acts chapter six, starting in verse one, Luke says this in those days, in, in what days, right? Well, if you were here last week, you know that at chapter five, the apostles had been arrested. They were being persecuted for their faith. They were they were being tortured. They were flogged just for telling other people about Jesus. And what we're told is that when they left that flogging and that suffering, that they were rejoicing. They were rejoicing in their suffering. And we're told in the very last verse of that chapter, right before verse one here, that in those days, or day after day, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ, and so in those days, when the church was starting to be persecuted, but they never stopped proclaiming the good news about Jesus. In those days, the number of disciples was increasing. Now, when you see this word increasing here, it really means multiply. We've seen over and over throughout the book of Acts that people came into the church, were incorporated into the church, and it would say something like Luke would say, in in more were added to their number. Well, that's not what he's saying here. This is the term for for multiplying, like there's exponential growth that's beginning to happen. We're not just talking about addition. We're talking about multiplication that is starting to happen in the early church. And so in those days when the enemy was at work trying to persecute the church, to stop what it is that God was doing in this movement, in those days, it just continued to multiply. And we've talked about that a little bit already, how oftentimes the church grows during times of persecution where we're really leaning on him and trusting in Him and and going you can do whatever it is that you want to to us, but you can't break the abundant life that I have in Christ and the Kingdom work that he's called me to here. And when people see that kind of faith. And trust and expression of faith, then they're drawn to those kind of things. But when we as the church become a little bit more comfortable, it's just kind of an ease, it's just kind of a show, then that's not real attraction. Oh, nobody, they can go get comfortable in their recliner at home, right? And so in those days when things were growing. Now he's going to introduce a problem, though, something else that could get in the way and begin to divide the church. So he says the Hellenistic Jews, among them, among those in the church, the disciples, complained against the Hebraic Jews. See, I have two different sets of Jews mentioned here, Hellenistic Jews and Hebraic Jews. What's the difference? Well, the Hebraic Jews spoke Aramaic they were in and of Israel. The Hellenistic Jews were more Hellenized, if you will. They were they were part of the Greek culture. They lived outside of Israel. They spoke Greek. And so there were a number of cultural differences. They spoke different languages. And so they started to complain. What were they complaining about? Because the widows, their widows, the Hellenistic Jews, were were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. Now, if that was happening, and it apparently was, then that's that's a legitimate problem. That's a legitimate problem that needs to be addressed. The problem is, is it says they complained against them. The word in the Greek there means to grumble or to murmur. I can't say it, but the way it's written and spelled out, if you were to try to say it, it's written in such a way that it sounds like grumbling. Just when you say the word, there's a name for that. You English teachers would probably know it, or whatever. But they were grumbling. They were they were murmuring. Think about the Israelites in the desert and the grumbling and the murmuring and all the stuff going on there. The Greek word there emphasizes a smoldering discontent.When there's a smolderingdiscontent, if that's not handled, then that can flame up and easily split a group in two. So a legitimate need, but it was brought up in the wrong way. How do we know that? Well, later on, after the book of Acts, the apostle Paul, we're going to be introduced to him in just a few chapters, comes to know Jesus and then inspires him to write most of the New Testament. And when he wrote to different churches, he was teaching them in the church what life in the Spirit looked like. Someone had to disciple the churches and all the people that were coming in, one of the things that he said about what life in the Spirit looks like when he was writing a letter to a church in an area called Philippi. Was this, do everything without grumbling? Same Greek word there is in ours and acts or arguing. What does life in the Spirit look like? No grumbling, no arguing. Does that mean you can't bring up legitimate problems in the church, of course not. You just do it in a way where there's no grumbling, grumbling, complaining and arguing. That's what happens when you try to do grumble and complaining and provide them together there. So this is what was going on. And again, it was something that needed to be addressed. But if the Holy Spirit was the one bringing this up, it would have been done in a way where there was no grumbling or arguing. And so with this happening, what we see next is that, because that's the kind of thing that the enemy can grab a hold of and really begin to divide and disrupt and destroy the things that God is doing. It's something that has to be dealt with quickly. And so that's what they get into right away. Verse two, you say, Okay, so the 12 did what they gathered all the disciples together and said, it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in order to wait tables. Now that sounds a little bit condescending, like we're way above that kind of thing. What you need to know is that when it says it would not be right, I mean, this is not it's not a moral issue. It's like it would be morally wrong for us to do that, because we're the super elite, we're the apostles, we're the celebrity pastors. We don't do that kind of thing. But you also know that these were the same disciples who sat three years under Jesus. And when one of them began to argue about who the greatest in the kingdom of heaven was, he says, You know what, guys, the greatest among you is going to be the ones who actually serve and doesn't Lord their authority over others. And say so they knew this. They were aware of that. They weren't, weren't saying these things. What they're what they're really saying here is that it wouldn't be appropriate because of what their main role in the body of Christ was, right? I mean, Jesus had met with them and said, The Holy Spirit's gonna come upon you and you're gonna be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and all. Way to the ends of the earth. And so I'm going to use you to share the gospel, to tell the good news of Jesus with unbelievers, people who don't know the good news yet, and use you to bring them into the church, and then when they come into the church, we saw this in Acts chapter two. What did he use the holy or what did the Holy Spirit use the disciples, the apostles to do there, to teach those who came into the church. They've got new life in Christ. What does this new life in Christ look like? I'm a new creation in Christ. Well, how new what does that mean for me? How does that play out? And so their role in the body, their main role, was to share the gospel with unbelievers, and then when they come into the church to disciple, to teach them truth and to make sure that they understood how this played out in the rest of their lives. And so this is what they were trying to say whenever they make this statement here and now, as we get into seeing how they deal with the problem, what we notice as we get into verse three is they're not the ones who do it. They get the rest of the church involved. And so look at verse three, brothers and sisters. So family members, you're my spiritual brother and sister in Christ. Here's what we want you guys to do. Choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them, and we'll give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word. This is what we're ultimately called to. This is our role. This is what the Holy Spirit has for us. And so we want to let you guys and empower you to do those things so that we can focus on this. Now, one of the things that we need to just pay attention to as he turns it over to the church, or the qualifications for this particular ministry that they're entrusting them to. The first thing, and it's written on a little bit of a weird way, and it comes out better in some translations. But the first thing here is the phrase known to be in describing these things is really of good reputation. It's more literally men of good reputation. So the first qualification is that they have a good reputation. They're known for their character. They're known for their integrity. You can see it in their actions and their speech and their behavior. They have a good reputation among the people. That's the first qualification. The second qualification is that they must be full of the Spirit. Now, again, we mentioned this a couple of different times, but every single believer, when you put your faith and trust in Jesus for salvation, is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Being indwelt by the Holy Spirit is different than being full of the Holy Spirit. Being full of the Holy Spirit doesn't mean that you get more of the Holy Spirit. It means that you're being carried along by the Holy Spirit. So maybe it's helpful to think of it if you're sitting out on a body of water and in your a sailboat, right? And if the wind's always blowing, the Holy Spirit is always constantly there. And there's not going to be any more of the Holy Spirit coming. If the wind of the Holy Spirit is there, it's as much as it will ever be. But if your sails not up to catch it, then you're not going to be carried along by it. It's there. It's in you. It's always present. But when you put your sail up. Now the wind fills up that part of the sail and begins to push and carry you along in the direction that it wants you to go. And this is the similar thing that we're talking about. You can be indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but not full of the Spirit in a sense that you're being carried along. These men need to be of good reputation. Need to be evidencing that they're being carried along by the Spirit and not living life in their flesh, in their own power, in their own strength. Third, need to be full of wisdom. Again, full meaning, carried along by wisdom, not they need to read more Socrates and get more wisdom, right? It's the one who is all wise is joined into a spiritual union with them, so they have access to his wisdom and to be carried along by his wisdom in their life. And so they put this upon them. There needs to be evidence of these kind of things. They're going to be handling food, they're probably going to be handling money, and it's going to take integrity and all the other things, wise choices and ways to be able to distribute and administrate all of those kinds of things. Now look who they told to choose them.The Church, right brothers and sisters you choose wasn't the leaders, wasn't the celebrity pastors, the ones who are doing all the work over there. We choose them. They go, you guys have the Holy Spirit living in you. Why don't you choose them? We're going to trust the spirit in you to do that. And so that is what they do here. And then that frees them up to. To be a part of their calling now, with them stepping into their calling and free to do that, and with other people involved in their calling now and part of His kingdom work, we see that this proposal pleased the whole group, all right, and so now they bring it back before the church. They're going to choose the men, and then they're going to present them to the apostles. And so they chose Stephen, a man full of faith. He's described as full of faith in the Holy Spirit. We're going to hear more about him in just a moment, also with Philip prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, parmenas and Nicholas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. And so these are, again, are not apostles. These are not any none of these are people that spent three years with Jesus. They're not super apostles, not celebrity. These are just regular people in the church who had been filled with the Spirit. They were being discipled by the apostles, learning the truth how it learned what it looks like to live life in the Spirit, and now people were seeing the evidence of them, trusting who they were in Christ, the spirit, carrying them along and using them in different things. So we're going to present these guys to you, and then when they presented to them, they prayed over them and were told that they laid their hands on them. Why they do that as a way of saying that they agreed with their choices. Right? We're we're going to lay our hands and say we agree with who you've brought it in before us. We're going to commission them to this work. You guys have authority to do this. We're going to be praying over how the spirit is going to be work in and through you. And so with that happening, the word of God spread, right? Well, why does spread? Well, because now we've got other people in the church involved in using their gifts to play a role in it, and then it frees up the apostles to be a part of their main calling, and what Jesus or the Holy Spirit was doing in their lives, to be witnesses all around and so it continued to spread. And the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased again, multiplied rapidly, and so much so that even a large number of priests became obedient to the faith. You remember priests, priests in the Old Testament, under the Old Covenant, were the ones who were responsible for making the sacrifices. They were making sacrifices for people's sins, and so they were the ones that were supposed to be making these sacrifices for their forgiveness, ongoing forgivenesses, and then once a year, entering the holy one person, the Holy of Holies, and all the people and all the things and all the blood that was sacrificed for the forgiveness of sin. And let's be honest, Jesus had put them out of a job. I mean, Hebrews says he's the once for all time sacrifice that was made for this all sins of all time, and so there's no more sacrifices to be made. And so they're seeing this activity. Maybe they saw the curtain of the temple torn in two whenever Jesus was crucified, and those kind of things. And they're hearing the gospel. And now they put their faith and trust in Him. Their lives have been changed. Holy Spirit dwells in them. Now they don't live under the Old Covenant. They're not making any sacrifice anymore. Now they're living under a new covenant. They have a new role. Now it's not like, oh, well, I don't have a role anymore. Sit their feet up on the Lazy Boy. It's like, well, it's a new covenant. God's Kingdom works gonna look different in through me now. And so this is what they enter into. So in these first seven verses of this chapter, again, we're told about how the spirit was in or in people and at work through just normal people in the church, not through the celebrity apostles. They were used to handle a problem. But now Luke goes on to show it was much more than just that. He's going to describe one of those particular just general members of the church, and know what the Spirit did in their lives. Now Stephen, one of the seven that we were just told about in the first seven verses, a man full of God's grace and power performed great wonders and signs among the people now that right there is an extremely important verse. You may not think so whenever you first read it, you may just go, okay, yeah. Or maybe you've read it before and thought of Stephen as somebody different, but again, Stephen is just a regular old dude in the church, Stephen's not an apostle. He didn't spend three years with Jesus. And up until this point, the only people that we have seen performing great wonders and signs among the people have been the apostles. And so if you were to only read all the way up until this point, and that's all you read, you go, Well, that was the work of just those super apostles back in the day who spent time with Jesus, and not for the regular old any day people in the church, but oh my gosh, now just a regular dude who has the holy spirit in him in the church. Church is performing signs and wonders. Well, he's not, but the Holy Spirit in Him and through Him. So apparently, it's not just the apostles that experience His grace and His power to be able to perform signs and wonders. And many will tell you that, well, it was just the apostles. It's just an early church thing when the apostles were filled with a super measure of God's spirit that we didn't really have back then, and they're the ones who did all these things that you don't really see happening today in and you go, Well, what about this guy then? Because he wasn't one of the apostles, and apparently the spirit was at work in him the same way that he was at work in them, which means guys, God's grace and power also works in and through you and I today. You don't have to be a celebrity apostle or a celebrity pastor or anything like that. Life in the spirit means that he can use any willing vessel to display his grace and power throughis your sale up,just blowing by? Is your sails down, not looking for it,because every single one of us are Stevensfull, carried along by God's grace, carried along by God's power perform great wonders and signs among the people. So my point is is don't be closed off to what the Spirit is doing. Be open and willing to allow God's grace and His power to be at work in you and through you, to share the gospel with others and to meet needs of people out in this world. Do not let the enemy convince you that your role is just to sit on the sidelines as a spectator and cheer everybody else on and support the ministry. But if you step into what the Holy Spirit has for you and begin to experience His grace and His power out in the world, be prepared to have some opposition, because that's exactly what happened in Stephen's life, and the same thing that we should expect today. Verse nine says, opposition arose. Opposition arose, however, from members of the synagogue of the freedmen. Synagogues were were buildings that Jews gathered in outside of the main temple. And so there were a number of synagogues, and in this one was the synagogue of the freedmen, as it was called. And they were made up of Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria, as well as the province of Cilicia and Asia and and these people in the synagogue began to argue with Stephen, but I love what verse 10 says, but they could not stand up against the wisdom of Stephen that he had wasn't the wisdom of Stephen was it couldn't stand up against the wisdom that the Spirit gave him as he spoke,Stephen had a sail up. Hewas being carried along by the Spirit, carried along by the wisdom of God, and they could not stand up against his wisdom. Now I don't know if you've been an argument like that. Maybe you've been in a discussion, let's not call it an argument with someone and and you're sharing the truth, you're sharing the gospel, and they're kind of going, I don't know if I believe this or trying to share. And then maybe the Holy Spirit gives you some wisdom to really prove your point, and it makes logical sense about something. There is often times when that happens that people don't just go, Oh my gosh, you know what, you're so, right? I mean, that's just, there's so much wisdom in what you just said. And so I believe that, no, no, when they can't prove that they're right and you're showing more wisdom than they are, what happens? They start coming at you harder. They start undercutting you and trying to do more. And that's exactly what happens here. Then they secretly persuaded some men to say, we have heard Stephen speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God. So they stirred up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law. They seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin. They produced false witnesses who testified this fellow never stopped speaking against this holy place and against the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us. It when it says that they seized Stephen earlier, back here,somewhere in there, right there,it means that they violently grabbed a hold of him. It's, it's the it's the image of when a wolf would come and attack and grab a sheep and pull him away from, I mean, this was a they were not just coming and going, Hey, let's come have a discussion about, I mean, they were violent. They were being aggressive with him here, snatching him away. And they were, they were bribing him and and others to to share blasphemous. Things and to destroy their character and to produce false witnesses around all of these things. It was ugly. It was nasty,even though this was 2000 years ago. Idon't know if you've experienced this, but it's been my experience that when you face someone who is preaching law and a real Legalist in this way that you can encounter much of the same thing that is happening right here in this moment. Nothing's changed over 2000 years. There are a number of people who who will preach the law and preach effort, and a lot of times they'll, they'll preach Jesus. You need Jesus. Jesus is good. He died on the cross. That's important. That's a big thing. But it's not just Jesus. It's Jesus plus the law. It's Jesus plus your effort. And they'll preach these kinds of things, and they'll attack those who are preaching a different gospel, a gospel of grace, the gospel of grace that we see all throughout the New Testament here, some of the meanest and angriest people that I've ever faced have been people who were legalist, who preached Jesus plus the law Jesus plus effort, and you start trying to preach a Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Kind of gospel which is laid out all the way through the New Testament, then they will start to attack, they'll start to call names, they'll start to undercut you and do whatever they can to prove you wrong and to get to your church and to try to destroy you.It's happened in this church. Ipreach. Why wouldn't it?It happened to Stephen,life in the Spirit when you begin to preach grace, which is what Jesus came and was inspiring them to preach, led to opposition when we preach grace, the same way that they did in the early testament, the early church and the under the New Covenant and the New Testament that we see here, we should expect people to oppose that and to push back in it, to get ugly and mean and angry.But even though that's true,life in the Spirit is different. Life in the spirit is different even when facing opposition of the ugliest kind. Let me, let me point this out before we get there. These were serious charges, serious that's from the violence and the attacks and all that. Serious charges, Leviticus, Old Covenant, right, the one who blasphemes the Name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall certainly stone him. The alien as well as the native. When blasphemes the name, shall be put to death. Like we're we're not just bringing this up to be right and kind of prove our point that this is no no. We're trying to send it you to death, violently grabbing them, attacking name, calling all the things to take life. This is how it played out in their lives. But life in the Spirit is different, even when facing opposition of the ugliest kind like this. We're told this in Acts 615 all who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.You think about how they were spreading lies,all of their false accusations, the violent dragging him away, the attempts to even have him killed. It did not produce anger, it did not produce bitterness, it did not produce revenge, it did not produce hatred. Guys, life in the Spirit is different. Life in the Spirit produced a peaceful, graceful countenance on his face. His face looked like that because it was expression of the spirit from the inside out, was what was in his heart when he was being carried along by the Spirit. This is the fruit that was produced. I love the way that ha Ironside talks about this verse. He says, I just wish I could have had a photograph, a picture, video, something of Stephen standing before the council, listening to all those false accusations, noticing the expression of rage, ridicule, indignation on the faces of his accusers, yet he stood there looking at them with a radiant countenance, full of love, full of trust, full of peace, full of confidence, undisturbed by all the bitter things that were being said, his heart was not filled with them with malice because of their hatred toward him, but joy in the realization that he was there as Christ's faithful servant, as life in the Spirit. It is different when facing opposition,and that's why this is the first application for today.We're looking at the early church and what life in the Spirit look like for them, and then we're talking today. Then what does that mean for us? If the whole same Holy Spirit dwells in us and we're indwelt by it, and we're carried along, we're full of the Spirit, then what does it look like for us? Well, we'll start here and work our way backwards through the text. And so what we see is that life in the Spirit means that He, the Holy Spirit, will lead and empower us to treat our enemies with Grace if you face opposition out in the world, and you begin to sense hatred stirring up in you, malice stirring up in you, bitterness, anger, rage, revenge rising up in you against the people that are opposing you in some way that is not of the spirit, that is not You standing up for truth in the name of Jesus, people will oppose you when you proclaim, proclaim grace, but the Spirit will lead us, even in the face of opposition, to be full of love for them, full of peace, full of confidence in the spirit within us, undisturbed by the bitter things that people say. So that's the first application. The second one we saw in our text today, looking back a little bit further, is that life in the Spirit means that He, the Holy Spirit, will lead us, as the church, to deal with grumbling quickly and to address problems with wisdom. This is what we saw in the text. We saw that people were grumbling and murmuring, and it was something that the enemy could use to divide and we saw that the Spirit led them to address it quickly. The first thing that I think we should highlight and recognize is that what is life in the Spirit looks look like? Well, when, when problems arise, we can bring them up and address them. We just don't do it in a way where there's grumbling and complaining involved. You know, you know what? Guys, I noticed that there were some widows being left out. Now, I'm sure it was unintentional. I'm sure nobody was doing that is something, you know, because they were just out to get someone. It's probably unintentional. I just wanted to make you aware and and see if there's anything that we could do about it. Is there? Is there anything that we can do to make sure that they get their food? You know what? I'm I'm even willing to help. I mean, if I can be a part of the solution to what it is that I'm bringing up here, I'm, I'm happy to make myself available in that way. This is what life in the Spirit looks like when there's problems, if it's grumbling and complaining to other brothers and sisters in Christ, to your Sunday school class, or someone in your pew or someone in your neighborhood, then again, that's not of the Spirit. And when it comes up, the Holy Spirit led the early church through life in the Spirit to deal with it quickly, so you and I deal with it quickly as well. Hey, I noticed you're kind of complaining about that thing right there. And, man, I just wonder what we could do about that. I wonder how I can help. Wonder who we could approach about that, and do it in a spirit where we could, you know, we enter into it and we we address it, and we don't allow room for Satan to let it fester and continue to divide. We certainly don't join in with them. We encourage them to bring it out into the light and in a way where it maintains unity and we seek solutions with wisdom, because the Holy Spirit will carry us along and lead us to be able to make choices and address problems and situations in the church with wisdom. So life in the Spirit means that he will lead and empower us to treat our enemies with grace. Life in the spirit means in our lives that he's going to lead us in the church to deal with grumbling quickly, to address problems with wisdom. And finally, life in the Spirit means that all have a role in the church and in God's kingdom work. The introduction of Stephen and these guys in here shows us again that it was not all just the super apostles, the celebrity apostles, who were doing all of the work the others in the church were carried into were brought into God's kingdom work and allowed to play the role that he had for them. And so the same thing applies to us today. If we're indwelt by the Holy Spirit, you and I have His power. We have his grace. We have his giftings. And so for our church, this particular church, colonial hills, Baptist Church of Tyler Texas, to be the most effective we must all see that we have a role in the church to play and step into that role as the Holy Spirit leads us into that role and empowers us to be able to carry it out. It. So if we want to see God move in the way that he moved in the early church, and experience people being added to their number daily exponential growth and multiplication of that, then we trust the Holy Spirit to step into our roles. Let other people do their roles, and trust that the Spirit's working in and through us all, individually and collectively, to share the gospel and to meet needs. Last thing I'll just highlight again, Stephen, a regular guy, not an apostle. Here's all the descriptions of what we were told about him, as God was carrying out this ministry. He was full of the Spirit. He was being carried along by the Holy Spirit that dwelt in Him. He was full of faith. He was being carried along by faith and dependence and trust in Jesus, and not in his flesh. Full of Wisdom, being carried along by God's wisdom that he had in a spiritual union with Him. He was full of grace. He was being carried along by God's grace. And it showed in the way that he carried out the countenance in his face upon others faced in opposition. And he was full of power, not just in dwelt with it, but being carried along by the Holy Spirit's power. Guys, this is life in the Spirit.May it be true of us today, let's pray.