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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

Seven who Changed the World

Lord, we have sung, we have brought gifts, we have shared gifts—gifts of music.

We have offered prayers, and if we have been in the Sabbath school, we have studied the word.

But now, Lord, we have set aside this time for all generations to gather as a family to hear Your word preached, which is different.

I'm asking now, Lord, anoint my heart, my lips, my mind, and I'm praying, anoint the heart and the ears and the minds of those who have gathered with us.

Now Lord, I pray, may this be a moment of true edification for Your cause.

Thank You for the freedom to hear and gather.

And bless us now, I pray, in Jesus' name, amen.

It is a journey to further focus, organize, and dedicate our lives to the expansion of God's cause It's important for everybody listening me here to know that if you are not being used by God to advance His name to tell the story of his glory if you are not Engaged in proclaiming the goodness of God and living it out as a witness you are going backwards Whether you can sense it or not This is a spiritual principle.

It is a spiritual law We are swimming or Boating canoeing if you if you should so like the metaphor upstream and when we stop paddling for the sake of those Who need to be conveyed from 1 understanding to another we go backwards Spirit of prophecy declares it to be a state of perpetual backsliding.

So should you think that sheltering your family from the world is enough to transport your kids from 1 world view to another, from 1 paradigm or 1 frame to another, Think again because all the shielding in the world will not save your children.

It's important to know Christian education matters and there are still people making decisions about Christian education even as of this weekend.

Reach out to our school or whatever school fits the appropriate age category of your children But it's still not enough Our schools are to be training centers for a mindset and a lifestyle That both declares a uniqueness for Christ and a determined focused effort to build up His work.

This reality is 1 that may not be recognized, but to be ignorant of it is to find oneself moving away from the very object you say you desire.

So this morning, as we come to our second leadership weekend with this church, we're especially looking at the organizational structure of the New Testament church.

So take your Bibles this morning if you would and open them up to our scripture reading.

In this moment in the history of the new church, a challenge is presented.

The challenge is, is that people find themselves disadvantaged economically because they've declared a loyalty to Jesus.

If you think that was for then and it's not that way now, understand that there will be sacrifices to pay that affect the pocketbook when we choose Jesus.

It's not just that we return an honest tithe and give a thankful, generous offering.

It's the fact that sometimes the devil decides and God gives permission to allow our lives to endure a certain part of suffering, and sometimes it's economic.

And if it's not for you now, be certain of this 1 thing, the day is coming when it will happen again." They responded by selling their property.

They responded by selling their substance.

They held all things in common, and nobody was to be neglected.

But if you lost your job as a priest or you lost your following, your clientele as a businessman, whether it was working with shoes or making copper pots or ceramic trinkets.

These things were such that the early church rise to the occasion and took care of its own.

We are to be taking care of each other now.

We are to be taking care of ourselves and our families first and when we find the poor amongst us Which Jesus said would always be there why to exercise?

As the King James Version would say the bowels of compassion or the the desires of our heart to care.

In this moment in church history, the church is robust and it is vibrant, but it's about to run through a big pothole.

The bridge is not out, but there are stress factors in the relationships that are holding it together.

It says, Now at this time, while the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint arose.

A complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic or the Greek Jews against the native Hebrews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food.

So The 12 summoned the congregation of the disciples and said, It's not desirable, it's not good for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables.

Therefore, brethren, select from among you 7 men of good reputation, full of the spirit and of wisdom of whom we may put in charge of this task.

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word." The statement found approval with the whole congregation.

They chose Stephen, a man of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch.

And these they brought before the apostles, and after praying they laid their hands on them.

And the word of God kept on spreading, and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith." Now, this isn't the first time or the last time some form of administrative crisis and attitudinal challenge is going to face a group of people.

As a matter of fact, depending on how you guarded the spirit of your heart and the garden of your mind over this last week or season of life, you might come here this morning with the bitter fruits of a negative spirit.

As a matter of fact, when we look at this storyline, there is a complaint that has created a crisis.

The question we ought to ask ourselves is, was this a real crisis or was this a perceived 1?

And you say, well, pastor, how are we going to know?

Well, there is a way to know if you care to know, and that is take just a little bit of time, read carefully the narrative, and then you might want to take advantage of that 5 books.

We call them the conflict of the ages series.

They're a commentary, but they're not an ordinary commentary.

They are a commentary that has woven through their insights and their understandings the prophetic gift of their author, actually the gift from God through the author.

When we look at this storyline, a complaint arose is a phrase that cannot get by us very easily.

And the question is, how often should complaints arise?

And what establishes the difference between a legitimate complaint and 1 that's prompted by a negative spirit?

These kinds of things ought to be considered by a modern day group of pilgrims that are going from planet Earth, from spiritual Egypt, on to the heavenly Caden.

Because if there's 1 thing that made Moses' life bitter and that God can't stand, it's a complaining spirit.

Proverbs 6, chapter 16, there are 6 things the Lord hates, yea, 7 are an abomination.

Lying makes it on the list 2 times, but when God thinks to himself and he wants to make sure the list is complete, as number 7, he puts down, 1 who sows discord among the brethren." Now when I showed you the picture of the nets in El Salvador, and I gave that boy his 2 dollars for letting us use his fish for some pictures, and I showed you this man who was just skillfully knitting his net, God knows that the net that catches people is the love of the brethren.

God knows that the bond of perfection is love.

And God knows that when the net of His people is full of holes, there are people who would be gathered into the kingdom, but under the stress and the uncertainty of conviction and the fear of the future, they swim away because they have not found that which would really keep them.

He hates the actions of those who sow discord among the brethren because the very act of sowing discord is like taking scissors and cutting holes in the net.

You see, the other reason I believe that this complaining spirit is an abomination to God is that it is the first fruits of pride and you can trace its experience all the way back to the days of heaven when there was 1 who had allowed and fertilized the seeds of arrogance to grow in his heart.

And he began sowing these seeds of discord very subtly, very, with lots of sophistry and wisdom, he began subtly causing doubt and eventually spilled over with negative spirit into complaining about God's methods and God's ways and God's administration.

You see, complaining is a fruit of arrogance.

And it becomes illegitimate when it is never focused on really solving the problem.

It's really just a platform for establishing the superior thinking, wisdom, education, or experience of somebody.

So how would you know when a complaint's okay?

Does this mean we live in a Pollyanna world where nobody ever says anything to anybody else?

I'm gonna tell you how you can know when your complaint has some legitimacy.

When you tell it to the right person who can do something about it and fix it, you've got a legitimate complaint.

And when you tell anybody else, you've got a spiritual problem.

And I want you to think about this, friends, because the Bible's clear that iron sharpens iron, so 1 man sharpens another man's countenance.

I had somebody actually sit and talk with me between the services about an observation.

If they would've gone to another person, it would've been this kind of complaining.

But because they brought it to somebody who could do something about it, it became a legitimate constructive criticism, and the 2 are miles apart.

So when you can't be honest enough to say to yourself, you know what, there's a little root of bitterness, or there's a huge taproot of bitterness in me, and I'm telling all the wrong people, you're just complaining.

You're part of that mixed multitude spiritually, and it is a stench in the nostrils of God.

God doesn't want holes in the net of this family fabric.

He doesn't want people cutting and carving and slicing and dicing the fabric of our togetherness.

Human pride began in heaven as devilish pride and it exists yet still today.

So carry your concern to someone who can do something about it and it's no longer a complaining spirit.

It's now a solution to a problem maybe somebody else didn't see.

Was this a legitimate complaint or was it illegitimate?

Well, let's let the Spirit of Prophecy answer that question for us.

She says, the hearts of those who had been converted under the labors of the apostles were softened and united by Christian love despite their former prejudices all were in harmony with 1 another that's the state of the church through Acts chapter 5 Satan knew that so long as this union continued to exist, he would be powerless to check the progress of the gospel truth.

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Seven who Changed the World

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