Murmuring Begins

[00:00:00] Let's turn to Acts, chapter six, if you would. [00:00:07] Acts, chapter six. [00:00:12] We're going to do a brief study of one verse. [00:00:17] Acts, chapter six. [00:00:23] We will read verses one through verse number seven. [00:00:30] Acts six, verse one through verse seven. The Bible says 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. [00:00:53] Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them and said it is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom whom we may appoint over this business. [00:01:14] But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. And the saying pleased the whole multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip and Procharus and Nicanor and Timon and Parminus and Nicholas, Apostolite of Antioch, whom they set before the apostles. And when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them and the word of God increased. And the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly. And a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. [00:01:55] All right, let's pray together. [00:01:58] Lord in heaven, thank you for your people. Thank you for the church. But Lord, thank you. Especially for the gospel. Thank you for saving our souls. Lord, we were just wicked. [00:02:09] We weren't looking for you at all. And you came to where we were. You came to save us. You came to seek and to save that which was lost. [00:02:18] Thank you for that. Lord, thank you for being our Father, our God, our Savior, our Lord. Lord, that we are not required. We are not expected to guide or lead our own life. Lord, you said, trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all Thy ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct Thy paths. [00:02:42] Lord, thank you for each and every person in here that's seeking to walk in those paths. Walk in the fear of the Lord to obey You, Lord. And we do it imperfectly, but thank you for your grace. Thank you for your mercy. We pray especially for Trey. Lord, please have mercy on Trey. Please save him and open his eyes and protect him from harming himself. Lord, we pray that you would also bless our time in Your word here, right now. We pray for your blessing upon it that your Spirit would truly meet with us and teach us that the Word of God would effectually work in us that believe. So, lord, we commit it to you. Lord, we look for you to help us and to teach us in Jesus name. Amen. [00:03:29] Now, in chapter six, verse number one the number of the disciples, as we've already seen, was multiplied. And there were thousands of disciples at this point. Many, many thousands of disciples. Of course, we know about 5000 and we know about 3000. We know about 5000. But outside of that, I mean, there's no telling. It's just very general statements about how many there were. [00:03:57] And we get to this and we see in the verse there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews. Now, that's probably a little bit of a difficult term, but just understand the difference between the Grecians and the Hebrews. In reality, the Grecians were Hebrews, all right? So when you talk about a Hebrew, you're talking about a person who is he is a Jew by blood. Now, in America, oftentimes we talk about a Jew, and we might be referring to a person who practices Judaism, which is the religion of the Jew. Or we might be referring to a person whose bloodline, whose race is Jewish. Okay? That is, they come from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the twelve tribes. [00:04:49] But in this, that's what the word Hebrew refers to. It refers to the bloodline. But the word Grecian is different than the word Greek. Obviously, it has something to do with Greece, but this is actually a different word than the word Greek. So when you see the word Greek in your Bible referring to a person that's referring to a person whose bloodline, whose race is of the Greek race, but the word Grecian in the Bible exclusively refers to Jews, that is Hebrews, who lived among the Greeks. Because remember at what's called the dispersion, when the Jews left, they had to leave Israel. We're talking about the Babylonian captivity and all that, some 400, 500 years before this that we read here, when those people left, they had to leave to be servants and slaves and such in Babylon and Persia and such, they maintained in a lot of cases, they maintained their cultural identity. But they lived among the heathen. They lived among the nations, and some of them lived among the Greeks. They lived in places where Greek was spoken. You got to understand at this time the Greek culture had dominated that part of the world. [00:06:07] We're talking from Italy, we're talking, of course, Greece, Asia Minor, all the way down into Palestine. The Greek culture under Alexander the Great. And so many people spoke Greek. So these Jews, they were Jews. They practiced Judaism, but they lived. And their culture was not so much like the Jew, it was more like the Greek. And at home, they spoke Greek not very much different than what we would find as a Jew, like, say, in New York City. A Jew in New York City. Even an Orthodox Jew in New York City is going to speak English as his native language. That's the same way. It's just they spoke Greek. Does that make sense? That's what a grecian was. But now, at this point, the Grecians and the Hebrews these widows were both believers in Christ. Now, these widows, whether they were Hebrews, that is, they lived in Israel, or they were Jews that were from Greek speaking areas, the Grecians, they were now both believers in Christ. Okay? So now we understand who we're talking about here. [00:07:15] And the Bible says that the number of the disciples had increased, had multiplied. And that goes back to our theme, right? Our church's theme, what we're kind of reminding ourselves of. What's our theme? Somebody help me. Now, there's two words edify and multiply. Edify being what we're trying to do inside these walls to build up the body of Christ, strengthen each one of us in our walk with God and our spiritual maturity, which is what we're talking about tonight. Or multiplying, which is what we do on the outside that deals with our ministry to people that aren't saved trying to get the gospel to other people. And we want to see God multiply our church, multiply his word. [00:08:03] And that's what was happening here. [00:08:05] But as a direct result of God's blessing now, follow me. As a direct result of God's blessing, problems arose. [00:08:17] As a direct result of God multiplying, the church, problems arose. Now, of course, this is an issue with the widows. They were neglected in the daily ministration. You got to understand at this point in time, if a lady was a widow, and she was a widow indeed, by that meaning she was destitute. She had no one that could take care of her. I know sometimes Karen and I were talking before the service about how oftentimes people in our communities view the church as a social organization. [00:08:51] They view the church as a community organization, basically like a nonprofit, like a soup kitchen or a women's shelter or that's the way people view it. They view the church of God as that. You know what? Many churches are social organizations. They're not about preaching the gospel or saving souls. They're really about helping their neighbor. And we try to do that, too. That's not the point. But that's not our focus, because that's not the commission. The commission which we've already studied is very clear. [00:09:24] So when the community views the church as a social organization, sometimes they expect us to do things. They expect the church to do things at our dime. But the problem is, here's the thing. When we do what the community wants us to do now, we need to be very careful. We need to be very careful as a church, because these truths I know they're doctrine on that kind of thing, but they guide what we do. They must guide the Bible must guide what we do. [00:09:53] We can't make decisions based upon the expectations of the community. That's part of it. But that's not the most important guiding principle. The most important guiding principle is the Scripture, okay? So the community lays these burdens at our feet and says, you do it. This is your job. And we're like, hold on. They don't determine what our job is. [00:10:15] Jesus determines what our job is. Because truth is, if we told them what Jesus told us to do, they'd be like, you don't need to worry about doing that. [00:10:27] That's not necessary. [00:10:31] But the reason I brought that up is because this society puts burdens upon the church and says, this is your job to do that god doesn't say it's our job to do. And for that reason, when you talk about widows, the Bible's requirements to take a widow into support are strict. [00:10:54] It's not just like any old person that just whatever, this lady down the street needs help. No, it was strict. She had to be holy and she had to have nobody, not a nephew, not a cousin. She had to be completely destitute. That's what the scripture teaches. So reason I'm saying that is because the standard is high. The standard god puts the standard high because anything that we expend our time and money upon and energy upon that society has told us to do takes away from what Jesus has told us to do. [00:11:35] That's why we have to be careful. That's why we have to be careful. All right, so you have these widows here's. What's the first thing I want you to see? I have several things I want to point out. [00:11:48] Even though this passage deals with deacons, the word deacon is not in this passage. But I believe, and I think it's clear based upon other verses in the Scripture, that this is talking about the selection of the first deacons. Okay? The word deacon just means a servant, okay? So this passage is talking about deacons, but in verse one, the deacons haven't even been selected. They haven't even figured out they need them, right? [00:12:14] And yet there were people performing daily ministration. They didn't have a title, they weren't picked. It wasn't formal. There's no official anything. And yet there were people that were serving these widows in the church without a title. They were serving it just because there was a need and there was a necessity. And they wanted to help. They wanted to help the widows. They served the Lord by engaging in a daily ministration. That is, we read earlier how that the church was taking collections and then they were given it out according as every man had need, remember? So these widows would have been part of that, and maybe they took them the money so they could the market maybe they went to the market for the widows. Whatever the case might have been, there were people who were engaged in that every single day. They didn't have a title. And listen, if we serve God only because of a title, there's guys listen, come out of Bible college, they are lazy. [00:13:21] They don't even try to witness anybody. [00:13:25] All they do is they sit on their backside and wait until the church calls them to be the pastor, and that's not right. [00:13:34] That's not right. You know why? Because if they're not going to serve the Lord, and if we are not going to serve the Lord without the title, then we don't need a title. That ain't right. We got to serve God with no recognition, and that proves our faithfulness. If we're faithful in little, then we'll be faithful in much. So that's what's happening here. No title, no deacon, no anything. But yet there is a daily ministration. Somebody's doing it. [00:14:06] And if we only serve the Lord because of a title, we have totally misunderstood our role in the church. [00:14:15] We think it's to be served rather than to serve. [00:14:19] All right, let's look at another thing. [00:14:22] It says there rose a murmuring of the grecians against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected. All right? The Scripture says very plainly that the widows were neglected. It wasn't just somebody saying, they don't like me and they're not helping me. No, there was a legitimate problem. That's what I want you to see. There was a legitimate problem. Some of the widows had been overlooked. I think probably I think from the context, it's reasonable to assume that they had been overlooked by accident, okay? [00:14:53] And so some of them were left in want. [00:14:57] And so even though you have murmuring, which I'll talk about in a minute, even though you have that, you can't ignore the fact that there is an actual problem going on here. There are widows who are believers who are going without. I mean, these are destitute. Like, they really do need the church. They really do need people showing up and helping them, or they're not going to have what they need. [00:15:20] So there's a legitimate problem, and this problem resulted directly from the church's growth. [00:15:28] And so God bless the church. Thousands upon thousands of people are getting saved, and we think, man, that's great. [00:15:35] And because of that, problems arose, because now there's more widows than they can handle, and now the people that are doing the ministry don't have enough time to get around all of them. So now there's a problem. [00:15:51] Listen, if our church is going to grow, be it spiritually, be it numerically, there are going to be problems. [00:16:01] It is a byproduct of growth. Proverbs 14 four. It's one of my favorite verses, where no oxen are. The crib is clean, but much increases by the strength of the ox. So the question is that's a proverb? Do you want the ox or not? [00:16:18] You just got to know if you get the ox with the ox, which is great. There's great profit in having an ox, right? [00:16:26] What are you talking about, an ox? I don't know if you're a farmer, do you want to push the plow or do you want the ox to pull it? [00:16:35] There's great profit in having an ox, but you just have to know it's going to be dirty, you're going to have work, it's going to be hard, but that's the cost and the price you pay for the benefit of the ox. If our church and you can apply that verse to so many things, you ought to memorize that verse because it could apply so many things. [00:16:59] If the church multiplies, what kinds of problems might result? [00:17:05] You think about if we have a kids ministry, stuff's going to get broken, right? You think about the air conditioners. The air conditioners are already on. They're going out. But you know what? The more you use them, the more frequently they go out, the more money it costs to maintain them. Are we willing to pay that price? [00:17:23] The carpet is going to get worn out faster. This brand new, beautiful carpet is going to get worn out faster. There's going to be more scuffs on the walls. People are going to spill things. There's just going to be more people. More people means more difficulty. Problems are going to arise. That's what happens anytime you put a bunch of sinners in the same room. [00:17:42] More time is going to have to be expended, more cleaning is going to have to be done. [00:17:46] Sister Amy, Sister Rita, more toilets are going to be stopped up, right? Is it worth it, though? [00:17:55] Or should we just say, now listen, I'm addressing something here, or should we just say, well, I like everything like it is. [00:18:03] I'd just rather have a clean bathroom, a clean fellowship hall, nice new carpet as long as possible? No, wrong. [00:18:11] The price is worth it. [00:18:13] The price is worth it. [00:18:17] Are those problems worth the potential opportunity to serve the Lord in a greater capacity? The answer is yes. But we have to go into it open eyed, knowing that there are going to be problems. [00:18:32] The more people you have, the more difficult you think about. With each person comes a slew of baggage. [00:18:42] You got to work through that with them. [00:18:47] Now, look at Exodus, chapter 15. [00:18:55] Hold your place in acts. [00:18:58] Exodus 15, verse 24. [00:19:07] The Bible says this, verse 24. And the people answered, I'm sorry. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, what shall we drink? And he cried unto the Lord. And the Lord showed him a tree. Of course, he's talking about the waters. Chapter 16, verse one. And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came into the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the 15th day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses in the wilderness and Aaron in the wilderness. [00:19:39] And they said, would God we had died? And they whined about that because they're hungry. Verse three. [00:19:47] And so God gives them manna in verse four. [00:19:52] Verse seven says, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord for that he heareth your murmurings against the Lord. And what are we that ye murmur against us? And Moses said, this shall be that when the Lord shall give you shall give you in the evening flesh to eat and in the morning bread to the full. For the Lord heareth your murmurings which ye murmur against him. And what are we? Your murmurings are not against us, but against the Lord. I'll just say it like this because just for time, throughout chapter 16, they're whining, they're murmuring, they're groaning, they're grumbling the whole time. You get to chapter 17. [00:20:27] Verse one says there was no water for the people to drink. [00:20:33] Verse two says wherefore the people did chide with Moses and they give us water that we may drink. [00:20:40] Verse three says the people murmured against Moses and thirsted for water. Now, what I'm trying to show you is we see an overlap with Acts because in Acts six one, you see the widows murmuring. [00:20:54] But what you also see is there is an actual problem that needs addressing. Now, in Exodus you also see murmuring, but you also see an actual problem. They're in a desert. There is nothing there. The wilderness of Sinai is barren. [00:21:12] Barren. [00:21:14] There's no food and there's no water. And you have a couple million people. That's a big problem. [00:21:22] If God doesn't intervene, they're all literally all going to die. They'll be dead within a week, all of them. [00:21:28] Right? So there is a legitimate problem. [00:21:32] That's what I want you to see. There is a legitimate problem. And here's what you see. We know the murmurings were not right. God rebukes them. But despite their murmurings, God and his patience provided what they needed, solved the problem even though they were murmuring. That doesn't make the murmuring right. [00:21:54] And God was displeased with that whining, grumbling, complaining spirit, but he still acknowledged that there was a problem and provided for them. That's what you have in the Book of Acts, chapter six, legitimate problem. [00:22:10] Now go back to Acts, if you would. Chapter six. [00:22:16] What I want you to understand in this case, the problem is here's the problem. There are some widows that are being overlooked. [00:22:25] Legitimate shouldn't be, but it is. There's just too many. [00:22:32] But the problem is not the problem, but the problem is the response to the problem. So the response to the problem is bigger than the problem itself. [00:22:50] They did not handle the problem correctly. The problem was legitimate, but the handling of the problem was not. How did they handle it? They murmured. And you know, as we've already seen, whenever you deal with people, there are going to be problems people overlook. And look, this is an accident. As far as we can tell, this is an accident. But they're responding to it wrongly because instead of in other words, they have a legitimate complaint. They could say, all right, listen, Peter, we're being neglected and we have nothing else to turn to. But that's not what they did to murmur. [00:23:30] The word murmur actually means to speak in a low voice, speak quietly. But the idea is that instead of dealing with the problem, they are taking the problem and maligning the leaders and the ones involved in the administration, in the service. [00:23:52] They're spreading an evil report. They're slandering those in the church. So what's happening is you're taking a legitimate problem and because it's being handled wrong, it's actually causing harm greater than the problem itself. [00:24:14] You know what? [00:24:17] There are oftentimes in our lives as believers that we are faced with difficult issues where we are disappointed and sometimes we are wronged. [00:24:30] Indeed, sometimes there is an actual problem. We're not making it up. Someone offends us, someone slights us, someone defrauds us, someone hurts us. Listen, I'm talking about a believer within the church. Sometimes that kind of thing happens. But that's not the big problem. The big problem is the way you and the way I respond to that problem. [00:24:56] The wrong response every time is to murmur. [00:25:03] The wrong response every time is to go talk to somebody else. That's murmuring. See, murmuring is lateral. It goes this way. Dealing with it correctly is this way. [00:25:17] And see, when we deal with problems by maligning the people involved to others, what we're doing is spreading the problem. And now we are the bigger problem more than the problem itself. [00:25:32] Now look at one Corinthians, chapter six, if you would, verse number seven. This is in the subject of going to, going suing one another within the church. Verse number one. Dare any of you having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust and not before the saints? This is all about suing one another. Notice what it says. [00:26:03] So in this church in Corinth, there was a problem between two people. [00:26:10] And in this church, one of the people actually did something truly wrong. Right? They defrauded that's deception. [00:26:22] Okay? Does that happen in a church? Yes. [00:26:26] That's what I just got done saying there is a legitimate wrong. Verse number seven says this now therefore, there is utterly a fault among you because ye go to law one with another. Now, notice the next word, the next sentence. Why do ye not rather take wrong? [00:26:49] Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? [00:27:01] So this what's in view in verse number seven is not the person who did the wrong. [00:27:08] What's in view in verse number seven is the response of the victim. [00:27:14] Because the victim wants to go to court about it before the unbelievers. And the Lord says that is not right. [00:27:22] And he asked the question, why do you not rather take wrong? [00:27:26] Take it. [00:27:30] Take it. [00:27:32] See, this is the opposite of murmuring. [00:27:36] The carnal and spiritually immature man will not deny himself to take wrong done to him. [00:27:47] He demands justice. [00:27:50] And because he is self centered, he cannot defer his response when he's wrong. You see what I'm saying? So he is legitimately wrong, but he has to respond. He cannot let it go. He cannot take the wrong. He cannot suffer himself to be defrauded. You know why? Because the carnal man is self centered. That's the idea of being carnal. The flesh consumes his decisions, and so it's too strong to resist because he's led by the flesh. So the question again, what we're talking about in Acts six is we're not talking about whether or not they're being neglected. They are being neglected. That's a legitimate question. But their response, their response according to the flesh, they murmured instead of dealing with the issue, and by doing so did wrong. [00:28:44] Listen, it is important. Listen, everything's not a hill to die on. And sometimes people slight you and you'll never get an apology. [00:28:57] They'll never acknowledge it, they'll never make it right. You know what you got to do? [00:29:05] You got to answer according to the scripture and according to the spirit, not the flesh. You got to say, I still love them, I'm still going to treat them with kindness, and I'm still going to respond correctly. [00:29:19] See, sometimes when we feel wronged, we put that thing right on the tip of our tongue and the moment somebody says something about it, we explode. That isn't right. [00:29:32] That's worse than the problem. [00:29:35] Even if the problem is legitimate, you have to understand, just because we have a legitimate complaint doesn't mean we have license to walk and act and respond according to the flesh. [00:29:50] We should just take the wrong. [00:29:53] That's what the scripture says, take the wrong. That doesn't mean you can't address the problem. But this is talking about the way we respond, whether it's according to the spirit or according to the flesh. [00:30:06] Now, so we see in Acts, acts six, we're going to be in one corinthians, chapter three. In just a second, we see in act six, these widows, they were wrong, but they responded incorrectly because they murmured laterally, dealing with it this way, spreading, oh, they're doing this because of that and they're doing this because of that. Whatever. Instead of dealing with it with the Lord and dealing with it with those in charge directly, they started spreading things left and right, and that's not good. But another thing I want you to see about them is that the source of the murmuring should be a little bit surprising because these were widows, these were elderly people. [00:30:44] They should know better. [00:30:47] But the reality is physical age does not necessarily reflect spiritual maturity. [00:30:55] That's the truth of it. People who are elderly can be just as carnal as people who are young. [00:31:02] And sometimes the age becomes a pretext and an excuse. [00:31:07] But none of us listen, none of us, none of us has earned the right to walk in the flesh. [00:31:17] So it's kind of surprising that these widows are the one doing it. This problem actually comes from the widows themselves, the people that are supposed to be mature. [00:31:26] But their response shows that they're immature, that flesh still consumes their thoughts. [00:31:32] They're still self centered. Why weren't the widows thankful that people had been ministering to them every day? [00:31:42] Why did these widows have an entitlement mentality where they were expecting someone to help them at all times instead of a thankful mentality? You see, there's a world of difference between those two. One is self centered and carnal in its nature, and one is spiritual and has gratefulness as its basis. [00:32:08] They were not legitimately asking for help. They were just grumbling. Look at one Corinthians three, verse one. [00:32:15] Listen to this. And I, brethren, cannot speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. [00:32:21] The word carnal is related to the word flesh, even as unto babes in Christ. So here they are carnal. What is the mark of a carnal person? What is the mark of a spirit? Let me rephrase that. What is the mark of a spiritually immature Christian carnality? [00:32:39] They act and live and walk according to the dictates of the flesh. Doesn't matter how many Bible verses they know, doesn't matter what's in their head. It doesn't matter how intelligent they are, and it doesn't matter their age. [00:32:54] Carnality is the mark of spiritual immaturity. [00:32:58] That's what this says. I have fed you with milk and not with meat for hitherto. You were not able to bear it neither yet now are ye able. [00:33:07] In other words, you should be further along than this. [00:33:11] That's what the widows were. They're older. They should have matured, but they hadn't. [00:33:17] Verse three for ye are yet carnal. For whereas there is among you notice envying. Why did they get they got stuff and they didn't get anything. To me, that's envying and strife and divisions. Are ye not carnal? And walk as men? For while one of one saith, I am of Paul and other, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal? The divisions themselves are evidence of carnality, which is spiritual immaturity. Don't you see? So these widows were like so these widows there were Grecians, there was the Jews that lived among the Greeks, and then there were Hebrews. And that's a little bit of a difference. That culture was a little bit different. You know what they did? They took that difference between them and they magnified it. And then once they had magnified it, you know what they did then? They started to assume that the reason they were being neglected is because they were Grecians and not Hebrews. Well, they're not bringing me stuff because I speak Greek and I don't speak Hebrew like them. They see what they're doing. They hate me because that they don't know if any of that's true. They're assuming and when we do that when we do that, that's wrong. [00:34:32] That's wrong. One Corinthians 13, verse four and five. Listen to this charity suffereth long. [00:34:42] What does that mean? That means you might be neglected, but you endure it, you bear it and is kind. That dictates your response, the tone of your response. Charity envies not. It doesn't look at whatever goods are being given to one widow and envying and saying, why are they not doing that for me? That's not according to love. [00:35:10] Charity vaunteth not itself, that's self centered, is not puffed up, arrogant, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked. Listen, if you or I am easily offended, we're not walking in love and it's also carnal. [00:35:32] And then look at this one charity thinketh no evil. You know what that is? Assumption, judging the motives of people. [00:35:42] Why did they say that to me? Well, they said that because of this we do that all the time. We presume to know what people are thinking and we have no idea. But you know what? By presuming that we're actually creating a problem. But see, if we have love to them as a brother, as a sister in Christ, when we have love to them, we choose not to think evil. We choose not to think their motives are ill. We choose to think their motives are good unless proven otherwise because we love them. [00:36:19] But see, that's the difference between being mature and immature. Spiritually minded, carnally minded, right response, wrong response. Even if the complaint is legitimate, we can't read into the motives of people because when we do that, the problem actually gets bigger in our own mind. [00:36:48] All of this happened in chapter six, verse one of Acts. [00:36:51] They read into the motives of those doing the administration and decided, well, they're neglecting us because we're grecians and not Hebrews. [00:37:00] And the truth is it was probably just an oversight because there were too many. [00:37:05] It was a simple problem. [00:37:08] And besides that, notice how they divided along the lines of their differences. [00:37:14] They're both Jews, they both worship the same God. Furthermore, they're Christians and yet they're finding all the little ways they're different and magnifying that like they're totally different, saying, well they're over here and I am of Apollo. And Paul says plainly, one Corinthians, chapter three are you not carnal making these divisions and strives and expanding the fault lines between you so that there's all these groups and clicks and all that. And Paul says, you're carnal, you're immature, you haven't grown up. Grow up. You're old, you're a widow and yet you still haven't grown up. Grow up spiritually. That's what's happening. [00:38:00] So listen, I'm closing. [00:38:05] We know that there are always going to be problems inside of a church. Not just a church, there'll be problems at your work, but whatever. But specifically in the church, there are always going to be issues where you have to when you interact with people, they're going to say things that bother you, you're going to say things that bother them. You might not even know it, and they might not even know it. Usually that's how it goes, doesn't it? We have no idea. What we said bothered them, and then they bothered us, and we brood over it, and well, they probably said okay because of that. Listen, the things I've read to you should govern our response so that legitimate problems don't turn into other problems that are even bigger than the original. [00:38:46] Let this be the way we govern our interactions with one another in the church, out of love, primarily out of our own walk with God and spiritual maturity. So really, whenever you have a problem that is caused primarily by our own spiritual immaturity, the problem is not the problem. The problem is us. [00:39:11] But we're still babies. [00:39:14] We haven't grown up, and we haven't learned. See, one of the things, one of the marks of spiritual maturity, as we've seen, is that you handle problems correctly. It's not there aren't problems. It's that you handle them spiritually. [00:39:32] You handle them according to the spirit rather than according to the flesh. And when you do that, the little problems remain little and usually go away. [00:39:44] Usually go away. It amen. [00:39:49] It got quiet. Second half of this message I don't know. [00:39:54] Let's pray.