Empowering Growth: Addressing Needs in the Early Church
Devotional
Sermon Summary
Bible Study Guide
Sermon Clips
### Quotes for Outreach
1. "Growth brings blessing, problems, and opportunities. This is what the early church is experiencing. They've gone through some opposition, they've gone through some persecution, and that has not stopped the church from growing." [37:35]
2. "Get together a group of people, and it's almost inevitable, right? At some point in time, you're going to end up with some grumbling and complaining. It will come up. You probably see it at work, right? You see it at work, you see it in other groups. I mean, it's like it's in our nature, and it is. It's actually part of our sinful nature, but this is not how God wants His people to be." [40:33]
3. "We're blessed to be a blessing, and it's important for us to recognize in what ways. And so, he's telling them, I want you to, I'm going to bless you, and you're going to be a blessing. And there's people right around you in concentric circles going out from there that you're going to be able to bless, and that's exactly what I want you to do." [47:21]
4. "The apostles know that the complaining needs to stop, and that the problem also needs to be resolved. The problem, the issue here for them, the difficulty is they can't personally address it, especially with how large the size of the church is now. If they do that, it's going to steal them away from their primary responsibility. The ministry that God called them to do, which helped the church grow in the first place." [51:51]
5. "When we tackle problems together, when we grow and we face the blessings and the problems and the opportunities that come with growth, if we let God provide and work through us godly wisdom to better organize and manage things, good will come from it." [01:16:42]
### Quotes for Members
1. "The church is growing, and now what do we have? We have a complaint. The same original Greek word used here shows up in the Old Testament, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint in Exodus chapter 16, and it's translated as grumbling. The grumbling going on by the Israelites in the wilderness against Moses and Aaron, complaining about not having enough meat. They don't have many meat to eat that they were used to." [40:33]
2. "The growth and the size of the church has demanded more involvement, which is a good thing. Not only is involvement required to help the church function as it should, it's actually pretty good for us personally. Be involved, and it helps us to grow spiritually." [01:05:13]
3. "Gather for worship. Gather to worship. As I just said, gather with God's people to engage in prayer, praise, and receiving of the preaching of God's Word, the teaching of it. And if you know the Lord, and if you've grown at all, I'm guaranteeing you that was involved. If you had it available to you, God knows how to make up the difference if it's not available to you. But if you've had it available to you, then you've, a lot of people have discovered, if you want to grow spiritually, you have to do this. And you have to make it more of a priority. You're not thriving as a believer if you're not gathering for worship." [01:08:11]
4. "The apostles know that the complaining needs to stop, and that the problem also needs to be resolved. The problem, the issue here for them, the difficulty is they can't personally address it, especially with how large the size of the church is now. If they do that, it's going to steal them away from their primary responsibility. The ministry that God called them to do, which helped the church grow in the first place. And this is a big enough issue, apparently, that the 12 decide to bring it up to the whole gathering of disciples. They called a church meeting. That sounds like what they did, the whole, like, okay, we're going to call the church together, and we're going to talk about this. We're going to make it clear, hey, we've got a problem. It needs to be resolved, and we can't do it ourselves." [51:51]
5. "And so the 12 decide to address the whole church with the issue at hand. How are they going to handle it? Well, the first thing they said was, hey, it's not appropriate, it's not right for us to neglect the preaching, because that's what it's going to take. To manage this issue, we're going to have to back off from preaching, and that's not what we want to do. And so they go on to say in verse 3, therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, or good reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this day. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word." [54:40]
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1. "Growth brings blessing, problems, and opportunities. This is what the early church is experiencing. They've gone through some opposition, they've gone through some persecution, and that has not stopped the church from growing." [37:35]
2. "Get together a group of people, and it's almost inevitable, right? At some point in time, you're going to end up with some grumbling and complaining. It will come up. You probably see it at work, right? You see it at work, you see it in other groups. I mean, it's like it's in our nature, and it is. It's actually part of our sinful nature, but this is not how God wants His people to be." [40:33]
3. "We're blessed to be a blessing, and it's important for us to recognize in what ways. And so, he's telling them, I want you to, I'm going to bless you, and you're going to be a blessing. And there's people right around you in concentric circles going out from there that you're going to be able to bless, and that's exactly what I want you to do." [47:21]
4. "The apostles know that the complaining needs to stop, and that the problem also needs to be resolved. The problem, the issue here for them, the difficulty is they can't personally address it, especially with how large the size of the church is now. If they do that, it's going to steal them away from their primary responsibility. The ministry that God called them to do, which helped the church grow in the first place." [51:51]
5. "When we tackle problems together, when we grow and we face the blessings and the problems and the opportunities that come with growth, if we let God provide and work through us godly wisdom to better organize and manage things, good will come from it." [01:16:42]
### Quotes for Members
1. "The church is growing, and now what do we have? We have a complaint. The same original Greek word used here shows up in the Old Testament, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint in Exodus chapter 16, and it's translated as grumbling. The grumbling going on by the Israelites in the wilderness against Moses and Aaron, complaining about not having enough meat. They don't have many meat to eat that they were used to." [40:33]
2. "The growth and the size of the church has demanded more involvement, which is a good thing. Not only is involvement required to help the church function as it should, it's actually pretty good for us personally. Be involved, and it helps us to grow spiritually." [01:05:13]
3. "Gather for worship. Gather to worship. As I just said, gather with God's people to engage in prayer, praise, and receiving of the preaching of God's Word, the teaching of it. And if you know the Lord, and if you've grown at all, I'm guaranteeing you that was involved. If you had it available to you, God knows how to make up the difference if it's not available to you. But if you've had it available to you, then you've, a lot of people have discovered, if you want to grow spiritually, you have to do this. And you have to make it more of a priority. You're not thriving as a believer if you're not gathering for worship." [01:08:11]
4. "The apostles know that the complaining needs to stop, and that the problem also needs to be resolved. The problem, the issue here for them, the difficulty is they can't personally address it, especially with how large the size of the church is now. If they do that, it's going to steal them away from their primary responsibility. The ministry that God called them to do, which helped the church grow in the first place. And this is a big enough issue, apparently, that the 12 decide to bring it up to the whole gathering of disciples. They called a church meeting. That sounds like what they did, the whole, like, okay, we're going to call the church together, and we're going to talk about this. We're going to make it clear, hey, we've got a problem. It needs to be resolved, and we can't do it ourselves." [51:51]
5. "And so the 12 decide to address the whole church with the issue at hand. How are they going to handle it? Well, the first thing they said was, hey, it's not appropriate, it's not right for us to neglect the preaching, because that's what it's going to take. To manage this issue, we're going to have to back off from preaching, and that's not what we want to do. And so they go on to say in verse 3, therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, or good reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this day. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word." [54:40]
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