Luke: 00:06

We're going to transition into a time where pastor Cameron's gonna come up. He's gonna continue in our sermon in sermon series in the book of Acts. Let's take a moment and let's pray for the preaching of the word. Heavenly Father, ask this morning that you would bless the preaching of your word, that you would be with Pastor Cameron, that you would give him the words to speak that you would have for him. And Lord, that you would give us the willingness to be sensitive to your spirit, the willingness to listen and to hear the message that you have for us today.

Luke: 00:46

Lord, might you be glorified in all things. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Cameron: 00:51

Amen. Good morning, Conduit. How are you? Good. It's good to see you all this morning.

Cameron: 00:57

Been praying for you, filled with love in my heart for you this morning and asking and praying that the Lord would use his word this morning to transform your hearts. We're in the book of Acts and have been going through the book of Acts here for a few weeks now. Gonna continue throughout the rest of the summer. And we're approaching a section of the book of Acts that kind of changes, you can say changes the direction or changes the kind of the trajectory of the mission of the church. Up until this point, we're gonna be in like chapter six of the book of Acts today.

Cameron: 01:39

Up until this point in Acts, the growing movement of Jesus' followers has been located primarily in and around Jerusalem. It's a it's been internal to the Jewish culture and the faith primarily, where people who have been either Jews by birth or Jews by conversion and the diaspora have come to know Jesus as the Lord and savior, have been filled with their spirit filled with the Holy Spirit, and have been displaying the fruits of that spirit there in and around Jerusalem. Now in Acts six, we're gonna see how the whole shift of the ministry of the spirit goes not just into like deeper into the Jewish nation, but begins to fulfill the promise that Jesus said it would and that it should through the power of the spirit back in Acts chapter one. If you remember when Jesus told the disciples before his ascension that he was leaving, it was like in verse You'll receive power. Acts chapter one, verse eight.

Cameron: 02:57

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem. That's where you've been seeing so far. And Judea, we're getting a little bit wider of a concentric circle, and Samaria even wider still, and to the ends of the earth. And so as the Holy Spirit of God has been flowing through by faith, the people who have responded to the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that group of people keeps growing and growing and growing and growing and growing. And now it's ready to kind of, like, set out into the Gentile world or the non Jewish world.

Cameron: 03:38

And what we're seeing today is kind of like the the birth pains of that, the beginning stages of that. In Acts chapter one, we're just gonna be, like, in the first seven verses of Acts chapter six, I'm sorry, this morning. Acts chapter six, verse seven verses. There is just these three these four words, the beginning of that chapter. Now in these days, it was you know, it may seem or sound kind of ominous.

Cameron: 04:15

It may sound like a, well, what exactly what kind of days are we talking about here, Luke, when we are writing what like, now in these days, well, what kind of days are there? There's a lot of conjecture as to the distance of time between what was happening at the end of Acts chapter five, which we talked about last week, and what was beginning or happening at the beginning of Acts chapter six. Because it sounds like there was like a long span of time. Now in these days well, what days actually are you talking about? We anticipate actually that this time was probably somewhere just in like a handful of couple of of years.

Cameron: 04:56

Less than ten years, probably not probably not somewhere less than five, but probably somewhere between five and ten years. Now in these days. So what exactly these days? When the disciples were increasing in number. The writer of Acts here is beginning to describe something that is happening as the community of faith, those who have followed Jesus, who have joined the ekklesia, right?

Cameron: 05:28

The church, the called out people of God, people called to holiness unto Jesus where they were. He's describing that there was a period of time, a large period of time where they were seeing significant growth. The number of disciples was increasing. Now, as I was preparing to preach today, as I've been we've been talking about here for the last eight, nine months or so, as we've been, trying to be as, like, open and honest and, clear as we possibly can be about kind of the season of life that we find ourselves in here at Conduit, experiencing a lot of growth in our congregation, running out of room everywhere we look and all of the physical environments and places that we find ourselves in here in the sanctuary. We're out of room.

Cameron: 06:26

In the parking lot, we were out of room. Now we're not as much out of room. Conduit kids rooms, all of our kids ministry spaces out of room. Just kind of out of room, I, you know, it felt very appropriate this week, to kind of bring ourselves back into, a little bit of contemporary application for what the book of Acts is gonna chapter six is gonna talk about this morning, recognizing that some of the issues that they were having are some of the issues that, guess what, we still have today, and that the solutions or the ways in which those problems or those issues are addressed also should not be too dissimilar for us as they were for people in the early church. And that that is more of a I'll tell you, that is more of an assessment of my willingness, personal willingness as your pastor, my willingness to let go.

Cameron: 07:40

My willingness to teach and empower and train, in my willingness to let go. So I want you to know that as I was reading this and studying for week, that there was a certain amount of personal conviction that I was falling underneath that was aimed towards how how how as you grow, Cameron, how much are you gripping, holding on to white knuckling in order to maintain some sense of, like, capacity or leadership? And how are you becoming the funnel or the lid behind what God wants to do through the people that have brought here. So I want you to know that that's something that I'm asking the Lord to change, redeem, renew, sanctify in my own heart this morning and this week as we're looking at these scriptures here. Is a kind of a universal biological phenomenon, I don't know if it's a phenomenon as much as it is, reality about things that are alive.

Cameron: 08:51

Things that are alive generally grow. Right? Something that is something that is living has life within them as a bi it's a general biological principle grows. And just like any of you who have had kids will understand the difficulty in keeping them in clothing. Or can anyone testify to shoe the shoe problem?

Cameron: 09:23

Does anyone know the shoe problem? We should have a community shoe closet here for kids. Yeah. Just we're gonna do that. Let the Lord has said it.

Cameron: 09:38

We shall do it. Let it be written. I do this all the time. I don't even remember what I was saying now. Oh yeah, growing or living things grow, right?

Cameron: 09:53

And as things grow, they change. This is kind of a universal biological principle, and generally speaking, although not universal in its application, generally speaking, we can make the same assessment of organizations. Organizations, businesses, churches, nonprofits, when they are when they have life coursing through their veins, when the when the spirit is infusing life into the members of the body, the body grows. And as the body grows, the body changes. Grow and that and that change often causes pain.

Cameron: 10:45

Pain. Just like a shoe that you've grown out of causes pain, right? Growing things change, changing things sometimes hurt. Now in our world and in our in our general, like, psyche, we usually associate pain only with something negative. Like pain pain even from growth is only negative.

Cameron: 11:18

We wanna avoid pain whenever we can and pursue good feelings, happy feelings, fulfilling feelings. And in general, I would agree. You know, like, avoiding pain is a great thing. But pain also can have a can have a lot of purpose in our life. And in the case of what we're gonna see this morning, and what we can recognize maybe in our life as a church here at Conduit, is that pain and the pain of growth that requires us to change can also point us to important opportunities to have the spirit of God released in people's lives and released in the community.

Cameron: 11:57

See, pain points in the body because of growth are not something that we should I to encourage you to not get too discouraged about pain that we might experience as we grow as a church and as a congregation, but rather as opportunities that you and I have to look at how we live as a body and how we live as a church, and asked kind of important quote here, Well, what does this pain give us opportunity to look at in a new and different way? How can we be more intentional about the way that we care for one another when we don't know everyone's name? How can we be more intentional, or how can we take the opportunity for pain and growth to maybe consider some of our methods and our ministry philosophies here to say, all right, when we were a church of 100, it made sense for us to do something like this. Now that we're a church of 300, it makes sense for us maybe to do something different. Maybe we analyze the things that we're doing as far as programs or ministries.

Cameron: 13:17

Maybe we take more intentional effort to release more people into the important work that God has equipped them for. Whatever it is that we're doing, we should recognize the pain of change that comes from growth as an opportunity to say, Okay, Lord, how would you have us show up in a way that honors and glorifies you in the community, in our relationships with one another, and even just in our own heart posture towards You, Lord. We shared with you at the beginning of the year here that one of our goals kind of as a church and as leaders is this year is to build systems, better systems, that help keep people as the primary way in which, or the primary focus of why we do ministry here. And we're talking about systems like our internal and external communication, the way that we train people to serve, the way that we disciple you, the way that we organize safety and security for our kids or organize their curriculum, the way in which we're making sure you're safe coming in and out of the parking lot, our bus ministry, our food truck ministry, our conduit kids ministry, our prayer ministry, our work like, just trying to create better systems for those so that we can be as efficient and effective as possible, not losing our focus on doing everything that we do for the glory of God and loving people, growing in our capacity to love God and to love others all at the same time.

Cameron: 15:09

Sometimes when an organization or a church builds a lot of systems or a lot of organization, there is a kind of a reflex against that that says like, well, we're building all these structures, all of these plans, procedures, policies, ways of doing X, Y, or Z, and it seems pretty clinical, or it seems a little sterile, or it seems really impersonal. Right? Why, like, why do we gotta build all these things? Why can't we just be all about the people? And and I understand that tension.

Cameron: 15:47

But what I want you to see or encourage you to see is that as we take a more as we take our focus, and we're like, how do we get better at x, y, and z, we actually build systems that keep people at the center, that make sure people's needs are being met. Systems don't eliminate the need for people, they highlight the importance of people. Systems help us say things like, Well, we don't want to let anyone slip through the cracks of our life here together. We don't want anyone to kind of sneak out the proverbial back door. We don't want anyone to get overlooked or to feel undervalued.

Cameron: 16:34

And that truly is our heart posture, that truly is who we want to be as a church is, although we understand that sometimes people want to come in and go out, they don't want to be known, and they don't want to know, I understand that, and I understand where that comes from, and there's no judgment here. But what I want you to know is that there is freedom. There is joy. There is purpose, there is community, there is friendship, there is life in the body of Christ. I don't want I And want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to make sure everyone has a place to belong, a place to serve, a people to call their own, a family that loves them, people that care for them and look out for them.

Cameron: 17:36

But if we refuse because we don't like growth because growth is painful and creates change. Right? If we refuse to honestly assess where we are and continue to do things, you know, the old phrase, the way they've we've always done them the way they've always been done, then we run the risk, honestly, of missing people in the complexity of the crowd, and we don't want to do that. We recognize that we have done that before. We don't want to do that.

Cameron: 18:09

That's not our heart. That's not our desire. That's not what we want for you. That's not what we want for the church. So the looming question there is how do we manage growth in a responsible way and continue to ensure that the real needs of people and the ministry are met?

Cameron: 18:29

Now this is not a business meeting. Okay? That was all just kind of naming the problem that has existed since the beginning of the church. Okay? And the story that we see today is a perfect example of how that existed and how the leaders of the church kind of dove into solving that problem.

Cameron: 18:56

If we read in Acts chapter six this morning, verses one through seven, we see what happened. Now in these days, the days of growth, right, when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose, and that was like the Greek speaking Jews. Hellenists are just Greek speaking people. A complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. And the 12, the 12 apostles, summoned the full number of disciples, so the larger crowd of disciples, okay, and said, It's not right that we should give up preaching of the word of God to serve tables.

Cameron: 19:47

Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.' And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip and Perchorus and Nicanor and Timon and Parmenas and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them. And the word of God continued to increase, and a number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of priests even became obedient to the faith. Okay. So what was the growing pain of the early church here in Acts?

Cameron: 20:40

The growing pain of the early church is that their number was growing so much that certain groups of people were being overlooked in what they said was the daily distribution of food. Now there's really no there's no other information given about what the daily distribution of food was other than for us to already understand and have some information that in the Jewish culture and faith, there was both a monthly distribution of food and there was a daily distribution of food specifically for widows and those who were extraordinarily poor. And so this kind of culture of caring for members of the body certainly carried over into the growing followers of Jesus and had become or was maintained as a like, hey, this is just a normal thing that we do. There's no like a they have the grand idea that they should take care of one another as if it was some like insightful thing or some kind of like cutting edge ministry in the early church. It was written on the tablets of their hearts that the that the that the hungry should be fed and that they were going to systematize in some way, making sure that on regular intervals, people got what they needed as an expression of the love of God in them and for them.

Cameron: 22:12

And so what was happening is is that as the body was growing, there were groups of people, specifically non or, like, Greek speaking Jews who were who had made a complaint to the apostles saying, hey. Look. Our the the widows our our widows have kind of been overlooked a little bit in the daily distribution of this food. And the question is like, well, why? Why?

Cameron: 22:42

And, you can read a lot into this, and, you can we can make up narratives that don't exist in the texts. Like sometimes the narrative is like, well, obviously they were prejudice against these Gentile or Greek speaking Jews, and so that's why they were overlooking them. But the context of our actual text doesn't relay that at all. The context relays that the church was growing in significant fashion, probably faster than the 12 apostles could manage on their own, right? And it may have had something to do with the fact that they spoke different languages, the difference between Greek and Hebrew or Aramaic, that they could not rightly communicate that, Hey, we're kind of being overlooked, or You missed us over here in this little neighborhood.

Cameron: 23:28

And so there's no indication that this overlooking was being done intentionally or along any ethnic or cultural lines, but rather that the complexity of the growing community of faith had contributed to this like the, oh, man, we didn't want that to happen, but it happened. How do we solve it? And what the apostles recognized in that moment is that if they continued to alone be in charge of ensuring that everyone's needs were met, that their focus and their capacity would be diluted, and they were probably already at the lid of their ability to do was fruitful and faithful for the body. And so that there there had to be some sort of replication in order of the apostles' leadership in order for there to be enough people to care for the needs of the community around them. Now what we see in the text here this morning is that the apostles said some things about this, that if we we we have a presumptuous or kind of like an accusatory heart already, we can read them as being pretty prideful by the apostles.

Cameron: 24:58

Because what did they say? It's not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Right? You can read that with a tone. You know, with a tone that's like, who do these guys think they are?

Cameron: 25:14

You know, that they're like you can certainly read that for a tone. It's not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. So we're going to appoint people to do it so that we can devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. We shouldn't see here feeding widows as secondary type of work or not primary type of work from the standpoint of its value. The text communicate that idea that somehow the work of preaching the word and prayer was more important or a step above the feeding of the widows.

Cameron: 25:56

It's not what the text communicates. It's actually quite the opposite. It was so important to the apostles that the needs of the widows continued to be met, that they wanted to ensure that there were people who were specifically focused on it. This is such an important ministry. This has so much value.

Cameron: 26:25

This meets the need of people in our community who God loves. It is so important that we need people who are not generalists about it, but who are specifically aimed at doing this one thing. It's not right for us to wait on tables is a recognition that there are different ways in which different people have been called to exercise the life of the Spirit within them on behalf of the kingdom, to focus specifically on serving in one area or another area, not as some sort of, like, exclusive way to distinguish between who's the really important spiritual leaders over here and who are the ones that simply just feed people. And so what was the solution that they came up with to address this really significant and important problem? They created a system.

Cameron: 27:24

They created a system of delegation, not necessarily of a task, because we don't just delegate tasks. We delegate authority and permission to live or permission to lead. K? We delegate we don't people are not just robots that do the thing and check the box. What we wanna do as a church and as church leaders is we wanna say, we pass along the authority and the responsibility and the calling to see, be present, be prayerful, be wise, and be active in the fulfilling and meeting of this spiritual work that we're doing here.

Cameron: 28:14

Because for the apostles, what we're gonna see is it wasn't just like, ah, just find anyone. Just find anyone to do it. It doesn't matter who does it. Just find someone. That was not their heart at all.

Cameron: 28:27

It was something significant that they recognized and saw. And so what did they say? It says they brought the whole of the disciples together. I don't know how big this group was, probably pretty big at that point. And they said, Pick out from among yourselves.

Cameron: 28:48

So even they were like the apostles were like, I know you guys look at us and you think we're the experts and you want us to just solve it, but this is not just an Us problem. This is an Us problem. It is a we problem. Yes. This a we we need to find a we solution, not a, hey, religious professionals, do this thing.

Cameron: 29:19

It was like no. They they brought them together. We're like, we need you to choose from among you, those who can take part of this ministry. It was something that they wanted full participant patient in from the body. It was important that there would be It was important because they wanted ownership of this ministry for the body.

Cameron: 29:43

They didn't want to delegate tasks. They wanted to delegate authority and permission and spirit giftedness. Go, serve according to the work of the spirit in you. They weren't just the professionals that had all the answers. Oh, listen.

Cameron: 30:06

Please do not ever think that I am the professional that has all the answers. I like I I will so sorely disappoint you if you think that I'm the, like, the expert that has all of the answers. I am not the expert that has all the answers. I am a fellow sojourner with you, trying to become more like Jesus every day by maintaining faithfulness to his word, worship in my heart, prayer on my lips, service of other people, generosity in my gifts, humility in my countenance, right? And every day asking the Spirit of God to give me wisdom and discernment to lead us, to lead you, to lead we in a spirit of humility and reliance and surrender to the Lord, knowing that the minute that I take over, it fails.

Cameron: 31:14

Okay? A complete reliance on the spirit of God to lead. That's my heart, and that's what I desire. Now, I think the apostles were kind of in the same boat here, and if you read the Gospels at all, you know they certainly weren't killing it all the time. Right?

Cameron: 31:36

They were struggling to figure this thing out as well. They were merely facilitators of the whole body's response to the spiritual needs of the community. Yes, both they and I, we may have some additional insight. We may have some additional wisdom. We may have some additional, some answers for some things or some direction or whatever.

Cameron: 31:59

But their job, the point here is that their job, they never saw their job necessarily as to fix the problem as much as it was to empower the body to take ownership, authority, and responsibility for the needs that God has set before them and within them. K? So it and and this is listen. This is not even a new idea in in early church leadership. This is an old idea that way back in the Old Testament, in Exodus, we see pop up in the life of Moses.

Cameron: 32:41

Yeah. We see if you remember this brief story in the life of Moses, I'm going paraphrase it, but it's in Exodus chapter 18. It's in verses 13 through 33, if you want to go there at some point. But what happens is Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, was hanging around Moses one day, and he's like, Hey, what we doing today, Moses? And Moses is like, Well, tell you, I got this whole nation of people, and what I do is I sit in this chair, and all day, every day, they bring me their disputes and their problems, and I determine who's right and who's wrong.

Cameron: 33:23

Right? Paraphrasing. And Jethro is like his father-in-law, who's sitting outside of the system and is just looking at it, he was like, Bro, you're crazy. You can't do this. You're gonna get wore out.

Cameron: 33:41

And what was he saying here? Not that Moses was too good to hear the problems, but that God had given Moses a special dispensation for leadership, a special dispensation for leading in this way. And what was stopping him from leading in the fullness of his giftedness was the fact that he wouldn't let go of a responsibility that he easily could have given to someone else. And so he was robbing himself of his own spiritual giftedness, but he was also robbing those whom he refused to empower for leadership of their ability to lead faithfully and through the spirit. And so this is not a new idea.

Cameron: 34:30

And so what Jethro says is like, listen, you need to set up these people to settle these disputes so that you can be separate from that and go and do the thing that God has called you to do and chill out thinking that you gotta be the guy to do everything because it cheats the people. It cheats people for leaders to hold onto all of the authority, all of the power, all of the permission, all of the initiative to lead. It doesn't invest more power in the leader. It just drowns and overwhelms them, and then it robs the body, you. It robs people whom God has filled with His Spirit and called into purpose and mission and vision and ministry.

Cameron: 35:22

It robs you from the invitation to step into something that God has designed you specifically for, that wants to do in you and through you, that God is ready to bear significant fruit in your life and significant fruit in the kingdom when you step into the role that He's called you to, and you just need permission to do it. And that permission starts by me saying by Luke saying by the leadership team saying by the elders, like, letting go. I mean, like, we're gonna build systems that empower our people to step into their God given giftedness through the Holy Spirit of God. See, it's recognition that without systems like this, the leader's capacity becomes the growth, becomes the lid of growth. And what I love about the way that the apostles addressed this issue is that they didn't just want the problem to go away.

Cameron: 36:31

Like, just get a warm body, couple warm bodies in there, just I don't want it to be my problem. Just make it go away. Just let anyone can do this. It was not something that they just wanted a warm body to take care of. They saw this work as necessitating the presence of the Holy Spirit of God and for wisdom in those who are caring for this ministry.

Cameron: 36:59

They didn't say, Just find anyone. They were like, Pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom. There was a spiritual standard here that they wanted to maintain or to keep or for the body to recognize, hey, these are the types of men for this task that I want you to be looking for. Why was this a standard? Why would they say something like this?

Cameron: 37:31

Well, clearly they said, Full of men of good repute, full of the Spirit of God, and full of wisdom, because they didn't just see this as some meaningless, menial task that didn't matter or that didn't have any significance or that any just anyone could do. It involved the care of people who mattered to God. It involved the care of people who were close to the heart of God and the community. And listen, when people matter to God, they matter to us. They're not just a people are not just a task or a project.

Cameron: 38:16

People are an object of the Father's love. They are daughters, they are sons, and they should be an object of our love. See, the presence of the Spirit in our lives, in your life, makes it possible for us to do this, to love them with the heart of God in supernatural ways. We we love them with the type of love that the world isn't able to love people with. Do you know that's you know, like your supernatural spiritual gift of being filled with the spirit of God is that you have the ability to care for people and to love people and to receive people in a way that the world cannot.

Cameron: 39:02

You can love someone in your life in a way that the worldly people who don't have Jesus, who don't have the spirit of God in their life can never love them. They can't treat them with the same kind of patience or kindness, gentleness or forgiveness, compassion and empathy, truth and grace, mercy and forbearance. The world can't give that to them because they've never received it from the father. Those who do not have the spirit of God in them, have not received those gifts from the father through faith in Jesus Christ, have nothing to give other than their own selves to anyone else. You have been raised from death to life through the power of God.

Cameron: 39:55

The Holy Spirit of God lives within you, and so you have a gift to give to others that the world does not have to give, and it's a supernatural gift that God works in and through you. Additionally, it's clear that they wanted they wanted men of good repute, full of the spirit, and full of wisdom because they didn't believe that there was any type of secondary or menial tasks or jobs or opportunities in the kingdom of God. One of the stories that we tell all the time, or I don't know if we tell it, but it's been told a lot of times is I'll tell a story for Bryce here, is that when I came to Conduit, we planted Conduit North on the North side of the city, and we were meeting in the back of what was then Papa Joe's laundromat on 2nd Street. I mean, just like time of my life. Okay?

Cameron: 40:56

Awesome. And Bryce was Bryce and Amanda were some of the senior leaders over there, and we had a great time with ministry. But there was one particular day where someone who had come in to to join us used the bathroom and just had a real difficult time making it happen where it needed to happen. And we're not just talking liquid, we're talking chunks. Okay?

Cameron: 41:34

And Bryce and I looked at each other. We're both kinda like this, right? But faithfully, Bryce went in, hands, knees, gloves, Clorox wipe, you know, cleans the bathroom, right? And throughout just that entire thing, just reciting kind of of a mantra that we had said and we continue to say here is that nothing is not my job. Nothing is not my job.

Cameron: 42:07

Right? When I am full of the spirit of God and for the glory like cleaning bathroom chunks where you why? For the glory of God. Because there's no menial tasks in the kingdom. There's no secondary work in the kingdom.

Cameron: 42:30

Listen, the spirit of God is not reserved for platforms. God does not put His Spirit for the work of the building of the ministry, only for those who stand on a platform. God puts His Spirit in all people who call on Jesus by faith. God puts His Spirit in all people and the same Spirit that God has put in me, He's put in you. And the same Spirit, right, that cleans toilets, preaches the Word.

Cameron: 43:03

And the same Spirit that feeds the widow serves inconduit kids. And the same spirit, the same spirit, the same spirit. One of my favorite stories is from, again, the book of Exodus, a guy named Bezalel. Anyone know our bro Bezalel? You know the story of Bezalel?

Cameron: 43:25

Come on. Someone who knows the story of Bezalel? Okay. Let's tell the story of Bezalel. Right?

Cameron: 43:32

Who is Bezalel? Bezalel was one of the first people in all of the Old Testament that God says He put His spirit in. He had spiritual gifts. Now, what were the spiritual gifts that Bezuelel had? Was he a great preacher or order, great evangelist, great leadership and wisdom or discernment?

Cameron: 43:56

None of those things. It says in Acts chapter 31 verses one through five, what did God put his spirit into Bezalel specifically for? Acts 31 or I'm sorry, Exodus 30 one:one-five. The Lord said to Moses, 'See, I have called by name Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the spirit of God, with the ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting stones for setting and in carving wood to work on every craft. What did God put his spirit into Bezalel for?

Cameron: 44:54

Bro was blue collar to like the nth degree. Right? He was like, no. Wait. Wait.

Cameron: 45:03

The spirit of God isn't for the platform of just preaching. The spirit of God is for the man who's going to carve the designs in gold and stone, who's going to have intelligence and wisdom for the things that we do with our hands, not that we just do with our mouths or our ears. There is no such thing as, well, I just do this. I just do that. Every job, every job is a calling to serve Jesus.

Cameron: 45:39

Every single thing that there is to be done is a is a calling and a job to serve Jesus above all else. There's this well known story about president Kennedy when he visits when he visits NASA. He's getting the tour, you know, like they're trying to it's the the race to the moon. Right? And he's getting a tour of the facility, and I'm I'm I'm you know, everyone who works at NASA is all standing around and shaking the hands of the president.

Cameron: 46:20

And president comes to one man who's the janitor and asks him, what what do you do here to the janitor? And the janitor what does the janitor say? Well, I'm working to put a man on the moon. I'm working to put a man on the moon. What does it look like we're doing here?

Cameron: 46:44

Alright? It wasn't I'm sweeping the floors. I'm emptying the garbages. I'm cleaning the bathrooms. It wasn't I'm unseen.

Cameron: 46:51

I'm unimportant. I'm not a part of the mission. It's like, no. I understand that the job that I'm doing is part of the mission that we have. Without the job that I'm doing, the mission doesn't get done.

Cameron: 47:03

I'm not the janitor. I'm fighting to put a man on the moon. Every job is a calling to serve Jesus. Every job, every job, every task that we have is to help people live like Jesus, love like Jesus, serve more like Jesus. You might run the check-in station at Conduit Kids.

Cameron: 47:20

You might pour coffee. You might be organizing cars in the parking lot, or you might you might be doing a a number of things. But but but the question here is, like, can you say, well, the thing that I'm doing today, the very thing that I'm doing today, maybe no one is seeing it, maybe no one is ever seeing it, maybe no one even knows that I do it every single time I come into this building, but that's fine because I'm not doing it for any of them. I'm doing it for the one that sees. Because every job is an opportunity to serve Jesus.

Cameron: 47:59

Every job is a calling to serve Jesus. Paul understood this. He reminds us readers in Colossians chapter three, he says, whatever you do, do it heartily as for the Lord and not for men. Whatever it is that you're gonna do, whether you're cleaning up the bathroom or whether you're serving in Conduit kids or whether you're pouring the cup of coffee or whether you're just shaking the new person's hand who looks scared to death to be here. Right?

Cameron: 48:26

You're helping someone find the bathroom. You're saying hi to a kid in the hallway. Whatever it is that you're doing it, doing it unto the Lord. The apostles go on to say in verse four of Acts chapter six, We will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. Apostles' part of this also is the apostles' understanding that they had a job and a specialized calling as well, a devotion to prayer and ministry of the Word.

Cameron: 48:54

It's not that their job wasn't important. It was. But it was a recognition that they had a job, they have a job, they had a job, they had a job. All the callings were not There was not a hierarchy. But when everyone is called and released in the ministry, then all the other people are free to function in the strength of their own calling.

Cameron: 49:15

The body functions as a whole unit, not as individual parts. So the primary job of the leaders, really by the pattern we see in Acts and elsewhere in the New Testament, the primary job of the leaders of the church is not necessarily to do everything as the resident professional and expert, but rather to utilize the word of God to speak and teach purpose and vision into the people to discover and experience your unique spirit filled calling and work that God is calling you to. Some have even described the goal of pastoral leadership, and I would substantiate this as the goal of pastoral leadership as making yourself unnecessary. Not because my work doesn't matter, not because my calling doesn't matter, but because my job is to raise up a body so equipped and released that the mission doesn't depend upon me or any other individual leader alone. So it says they chose Stephen to be the leader of this ministry, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit.

Cameron: 50:29

You're gonna hear a lot about him next week when we preach specifically on the life and death of Stephen. But it says that they set these men before the apostles and prayed and laid their hands on them. The laying out of hands, both in Old Testament and New Testament, we shouldn't try not to read into, like, our more, like, modern idea of ordination type of laying out of hands or even, like, healing laying of hands. But the laying out of hands was always meant to denote the, like, the transfer or the passage of authority. It was it was it was authority, not even permission.

Cameron: 51:13

It was because if I give you permission to do something, I can remove permission. Right? So you still gotta come back to me in order to, like, keep having permission. But the laying out of hands invested authority. You are now responsible.

Cameron: 51:35

It is yours. We trust that you're going to do this through the power of the Holy Spirit. And this is what they did. The word of God, they laid hands on them as a sign of authority, and the transfer of responsibility. And it says here that via their work in verse seven, 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.

Cameron: 52:10

What is the one thing that you may have been or are waiting for someone else to do that you get the sense that God may have already equipped you for? What is the thing that you've been waiting for someone else like, Man, someone should really do that. Right? Or, you know, we should really do that. I try to be a little bit more introspective when I say that these days.

Cameron: 52:52

We should really do that. What do you mean by we, Cameron? Mean they? Him, her, or us? Right?

Cameron: 53:05

What is the thing that you've been waiting for someone else to do that God may have already equipped you to do? This is the question I want you to pray through this week, ask the Spirit of God to give you discernment on, because the text ends with this multiplication, and that that multiplication was the result of ordinary people being released into real authority to operate in the fullness of the Spirit that God has placed in them. And so what might it look like here in this place? If we took seriously the question, like, what has what is God's spirit within me equipped me and called me to do in these moments as a work unto the Lord? That is our prayer for you.

Cameron: 53:52

What could multiply here if we did the same? I bow my knees before the father from whom every family in heaven on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all of the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Cameron: 54:50

Conduit, you are loved. Have a great week. We will see you next time.