Acts 6:1-7 And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews… I. THE INNER LIFE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 1. The election sprang out of the multiplying, and the multiplying begat a murmuring. Increase of numbers does not always mean increase of happiness and true spiritual life. God has made all things double one against another; and when He bestows such notable increase, He adds some counterbalancing disadvantage to keep His people humble. 2. The distribution of alms is always attended by jealousies and disputes, rendering the work one of the most unpleasant tasks which can be undertaken. Fretting and worry, weary days and sleepless nights, are often the only reward a Christian philanthropist receives. But here comes in the Acts of the Apostles to cheer. The apostles themselves did not escape the accusation of favouritism, and we may well content to suffer what they were compelled to endure. 3. The primitive Church was no ideal communion, but a society with failings and weaknesses and discontentent, exactly like those which exist in the Church of our own times. The apostolic Church did not disdain a mere economic question. II. WHAT LAY AT THE BASIS OF THIS MURMURING, AND OF THE JEALOUSIES THEREBY INDICATED? If we wish to understand the course of events in the Acts, we must refer to the books of Maccabees, where is told the romantic story of the struggle of the Jews against the Greek kings of Syria, who tried to force them into conformity with the religion of Greece, which then was counted the religion of civilisation and culture. The result was that the intensely national party became bitterly hostile to everything pertaining to Greece and its civilisation. "Cursed be he who teacheth his son the learning of the Greeks," was a saying among the Hebrews; while again, we hear of Rabban Simeon, the son of Gamaliel, who used to embody his hatred of the Grecians in the following story: "There were a thousand boys in my father's school, of whom five hundred learned the law., and five hundred the wisdom of the Greeks; and there is not one of the latter now alive, excepting myself here and my uncle's son in Asia." Heaven itself was supposed by the Hebrews to have plainly declared its hostility against their Grecian opponents. Hence, naturally, arose the same divisions at Jerusalem. The bitter dissensions which racial and linguistic differences have made in the Church of every age are here depicted in miniature. The quarrels between East and West, Greeks and Latins, European Christians and Hindoo converts, all turn upon the same points and embody the same principles, and may best find solution upon the lines laid down by the apostles. There are diversities of function and of work in the Church — a ministry of the Word, and a serving of tables. One class should not absorb every function. III. THE PEOPLE NOMINATED, WHILE THE APOSTLES APPOINTED. They took the most effective plan to quiet the trouble which had arisen when they took the people into their confidence. The Church has been often described as the mother of modern freedom. The councils of old time were the models and forerunners of modern parliaments. How many a quarrel in life would be avoided, how many a rough place would be made smooth, were the apostolic example always followed. Men naturally resist a law imposed from without, without any appearance of consultation with them or of sanction on their part; but men willingly yield obedience to laws, even though they may dislike them, which have been passed with their assent and appeal to their reason. (G. T. Stokes, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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