DEACON = SERVANT

The Joy of Gathering and a Church Anniversary Celebration

Guys, as people are coming in, we've got some more chairs over here behind the curtains, and some of the guys can start helping out with that if we need some more seats. But I'm so grateful that you're here today.

This is a special Sunday. Every Sunday is special, isn't it? Every Sunday when we get to gather with the saints, as we mentioned the writer of Hebrews saying, do not neglect the gathering of the saints for the purpose of encouraging each other, more and more as we wait for the return of Christ.

But today is a unique Sunday for us as a church, because today essentially marks our three-year anniversary as a church. Amen. That's right. We started in our home, in the living room, on September 20th of 2020.

In the perfect time to plant a church, right? Right in the middle of 2020. But we started there not knowing what God had in store, and God has just proven himself faithful. When he calls you to something, he brings the people, he brings the resources, he brings the opportunities, because Jesus is building his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

And we are so thankful to him, and so as we gather today, we just have a lot to celebrate. Also, and we'll be talking a little bit more about it here in just a moment, today we get to introduce new deacon nominees to the church.

We're also celebrating, we have a three-year anniversary, deacons getting ready to be implemented as a church, but we're going to celebrate the fact that God has provided a new location for us. If you had to park out here, you know exactly what we need.

We need parking, we need a space to meet. And so God has provided that, so what a celebration. But we also have this morning, as you're going to see, we have two baptisms. We have, yes, we are seeing people saved.

God is doing the work that he said he's going to do. He said, I have an elect from every tribe, nation, and tongue, and I will call my people. I will gather them, and we're just simply the mouthpiece to share the gospel, and God is saving and doing a great work in our midst and around us.

But we're also going to be implementing a new member, acknowledging a new member to the church today. We got a lot going on today, don't we? And we're starting a little late, so just plan on being here for the day, I'm sorry.

But it's going to be good. For Quintinia Feast, we've catered in some food, so we're going to be bringing in some food. So many of you wives, let's be honest, the women, right? You didn't have to prepare crock pot this morning for food.

So you're kind of a morning off, right? That's good. Praise God. Well, hey, welcome. First off, as I do every week, I want to welcome all of our covenant members. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for being here and bringing your gifts, for what that writer of Hebrews said, to encourage the body, to encourage the saints.

Thank you so much. We love that you are being obedient to the Savior, while worshiping Him together as a church. And as I said the past couple of weeks, and I'll just continue to say it, in here, you are loved.

Amen? You are loved. Out there, you are despised. In here, you are loved. Because Christ loves you. And so we are together in this. So thank you for being part of this body, and welcome for being here.

But I also want to say welcome to our guests. Thank you for being here. Some of you are regular attending guests, and some of you, this may be your first time. If you don't mind, I didn't bring one of the cards up with me, but in the back, we have a Connect card.

If you wouldn't mind filling that out, at the bottom of it, we have an area where you can write a prayer request. Which, by the way, even members, if you just want to grab one and jot down a prayer request, if you've got something you want us to pray for, do it.

Utilize those. But we want to be able to pray for you. We want to get to know you. And maybe let you know a little bit about what it means to be a part of this covenant body, and maybe answer some of your questions.

But thank you for being here. We look forward to getting to know you. But the idea is that all of us, covenant members and guests, that today we would grow in the knowledge and love of the triune God.

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, three in one. Because that's why he's called us together, as we encourage and grow in that great love. Well, I'm going to go ahead and hand this over to Adam, because we get to celebrate this wonderful picture of the gospel in baptism.

About a week and a half ago, I've been talking to my son-in-law, and he expressed that he wanted to be baptized. And he expressed it, a faith in Christ. Well, we went to Pastor Nathan right off, and Nathan asked him, when you stand before God, and God says, why shall I let you into my kingdom, into my heaven?

Well, Justin prayed about it, and thought about it, and got back with Pastor Nathan. Apparently, he expressed that Jesus Christ is the only reason why I would be able to be allowed into your kingdom. So, while we're baptizing here today, if you want to go ahead and help in the water.

This is a beautiful picture, as Pastor Nathan just said. And the picture it's painting is, if you look at Galatians 2 .20, Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I that live, but it is Christ that lives in me.

The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God. So, it's personal that Paul says that he died for me, and that's what he expressed to Pastor Nathan, that he believes that Jesus died for him, rose again on the third day, so that he was vindicated in his resurrection.

And now, that's what the scriptures say, that when you put your faith in Christ, you will be justified when you believe in Christ. So, if you'll kneel down here, I'm very grateful that, I'm hot too, that today I get to baptize my son-in-law.

Cover your mouth. I now baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Welcome.

Now he gets to walk in there and say blah.

Yeah, if you step out on the concrete, you're bound to end up on the floor. So, that's why we've got a mat out here. Well, hey, God is so good. I have been praying over the past three years as a church plant.

God saved people. And I'll be honest, for the first couple of years, he just didn't see any evidence of an outward expression of people being saved. We had people come from other churches that were already Christians coming to the church, and that was awesome.

But I desired, I longed to see the work of the Holy Spirit awakening in people. And so, as we've been able to see that, and Justin, as Adam just expressed all of that, but we also have seen it in our brother Andy here.

Most of you recognize Andy. He's been around now for a few months now. He's been coming on Wednesday nights and coming on Sundays. And Andy, at the beginning, just had a lot of questions, didn't you? Just questions of what is this about?

What does this look like? But he kept coming. And you could tell it seemed as though God was just preparing the soil, preparing the soil. And just recently, in the past, what, three or four weeks? Yeah, in the past three or four weeks, he was meeting with his roommates, the guys that he lives with, and they were just like, hey, what are you waiting on?

If God's working in your heart, run to Christ. And Andy has called out to the Lord, and we've been talking. I asked you a hard question, and Andy, I guess you're very analytical, right? So you really wanted to answer it right.

So he took some time, but eventually he came to me, and he's like, it seems like it's not a complex answer. It's Jesus. It's Jesus. I get to be in the presence of God because of what Jesus did for me.

Nothing that I do. Not my surrender over to him, but what he has accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection. And so let's go ahead and step in here real quick. Andy, I'm going to ask you, brother.

Once again, is your faith in the finished work of Christ and Christ alone, and nothing of your works, only of his?

Yes.

And it is my pleasure, brother, to baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, buried with Christ, raised to walk in newness of life. Amen.

Amen.

Hey, brother.

Amen. Amen.

I want to turn the mic off before I walk in front of the speakers and shock everybody with the feedback. Man, what a good day already. Hey, we could just stop right now and just go ahead and eat, right?

We've worshiped, haven't we? Praise God. Well, let's go ahead and officially start our service. Let's stand for a call to worship this morning with our read and our response. It's a compilation of verses from Psalm chapter 40, verses 9 through 11, and then 16 and 17, where the psalmist says, I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation.

Behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O Lord. I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart. I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation. I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.

As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from us. May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. May those who love your salvation say continually, amen. And all God's people said?

Amen. Amen.

Amen.

Man, let's go to that great God in a prayer of adoration before we begin to sing today. Lord, Lord, we come to you right now. We ask that we may rejoice and be glad in you, Lord, because of the great salvation that is yours.

It was yours to give, it was yours to provide, and you accomplished it. God, you loved us. You loved us before you created us. And Jesus, you sought after us, you came after us, and you purchased us by blood ransom.

And Holy Spirit, you now seal us and work in us, sanctifying us and growing us and molding us more to the image of our wonderfully beautiful Savior. So I pray this morning that you are honored in our worship.

I pray that we would worship you in spirit and in truth. I pray that as we sing these wonderful truths, that they would penetrate into our hearts and into our minds, making us a people that are doers of the word, not just hearers only.

Be honored in our lives, God, in Christ's name, amen.

I praise you so much for calling me here below. And forevermore, you will be mine, and I am yours. We love you and we praise you, and we thank you for this awesome worship service. Lord, we pray that you are pleased this morning as we worship you.

Lord, as we prepare to take up this morning's offering, Lord, I just pray that you would bless this offering. Bless the one who gives in obedience to you. We love you, we praise you, and we ask all these things in your name and Jesus' name.

And all of God's people said, amen.

Amazing grace. That's why we get to stand here and worship him in spirit and truth, because of that amazing grace.

Amen. Amen.

The Office of Deacon in the New Testament

Well, today we're going to be taking a break from our study through Ephesians that we've been in over the past few months to take a look at one of the two offices of the church that the New Testament prescribes, the office of deacon.

Being a young church, as we're just now celebrating our third year together, we do not yet have anyone residing in that position. It's something that we're having to grow into, just like everything else.

One of the slogans around here with me and Pastor Jeremiah is, crawl before we walk. We have to remind ourselves, slow down for a moment. It's Christ building this church. We've been careful not to just put someone in that role as a simple placeholder, which, I'll be honest, is a very tempting thing to do, especially in the context of a church plant.

With all the work that goes into this, most of you that have been along for this ride, any more than just a few months, you know what all that involves and takes. And so it has been a tempting thing to establish deacons, people to come alongside that seemingly have skin in the game, right, that have responsibilities.

But by the grace of God, we've been patient. We've been patient to wait on the Lord to raise up the right men, to raise up the men that he wants in this particular role. And hopefully after today, you'll begin to understand why we've been so cautious, why we've been patient in the pursuit of filling this particular office.

Because we weren't just waiting for the right men to be raised up. We were, but that wasn't it. We've also been waiting for you. We've been waiting for us as a church, as a whole, to have really a firm grasp of how important it is to align ourselves as a church, as a whole, with what Scripture teaches and not with our traditions of how it has always been done.

That's always a tempting default, isn't it? Well, this is the way church has always been done. This is what a deacon has always been. This is what a pastor has always been. That's the way we need to establish it.

But we want to make sure that we have a firm grasp of, no, we're not making any moves. If that tradition is not in alignment with Scripture, we're going to throw it out and start over. And so that's why we wanted to do this.

We needed to be patient and wait on the Lord. And the reason is because you play such a massive role in all of this, in these men being established into this office. We see that pictured, actually, in Paul's greeting right at the beginning of his letter to the church at Philippi.

Right at the beginning, he says, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi. And then he pinpoints two offices with the overseers and the deacons.

Notice Paul acknowledges these two distinct offices. Overseer, which is just another phrase for pastor in the New Testament, and deacons. However, he doesn't just write to them. Notice that he's writing to all the saints that are in that church.

Every one of them. The church is not simply pastors and deacons, office holders, doing everything while the church goes along with it. That's not how the church functions. Paul calls all the saints to participate in holiness and in obedience within the church life.

You see that? He's writing to all the saints. He's identifying the two offices because they play a distinct role, as we're going to see today, with the office of deacon. But he's calling all saints to live this godly life and to be a part of this process.

So you are responsible to make sure that how and what this church, 12 .5 church, does is in accordance with God's word and not based on, grounded in, or in any way, man's opinion, man's tradition, or man's preference.

It's all about what God has prescribed. Amen? That being said, open your copy of God's word to 1 Timothy 3. 1 Timothy 3. This letter that Paul wrote to his protege, Timothy, his namesake, right, is one of what is referred to as the three pastoral epistles that we see in the New Testament.

Timothy had been assigned to establish church structure within the church at Ephesus. He's sent there on mission for a purpose of establishing what needs to be set up. So Paul is essentially counseling him on matters of church leadership, proper worship, establishment of elders and deacons, those offices.

He's informing him how to combat false teaching in the area. Essentially what's happening is Paul is pastoring him as to how to pastor, which is why we call these the pastoral epistles. And I want us to start reading at the beginning of the qualifications of an overseer at verse 1 of chapter 3, leading us into the qualifications of a deacon.

And the reason I want to do that is because I want to set the groundwork here because I think this will help us distinguish between the two offices and how they connect together. So look with me there, chapter 3 of 1 Timothy, starting in verse 1.

The saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.

Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into the snare of the devil. Deacons, likewise, must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain.

They must hold to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience, and let them also be tested first. Then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless. Their wives, likewise, must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things.

Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their households well. For those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

Here we have the qualifications of both overseer elder and the deacon. So before we dive into this, let's stop and let's go to the source and pray that God would give us wisdom, the Holy Spirit would illuminate our minds to be able to see what he is calling us to here.

Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you once again. We thank you for your word. We thank you that it is clear and true. Lord, help us to see it. God, help us to lay aside all of the traditions and maybe some of the bad habits and wrong perspectives when it comes to this office of deacon.

God, I pray that we would seek to do it in accordance with your word. Father, give me wisdom as I speak this truth. And God, I ask that it not just be information to the people, but today this information about the body, about the office of deacon, I pray that it would be saturated in Christ with a gospel-mindedness.

Lord, help us all to look to the ultimate goal of why you're setting all of this in place. Give us wisdom in Christ's name, amen. Well, I have four things that I want us to see about deacons today. As a matter of fact, up on the screen, I actually have bullet points today for us to follow.

And the first one is deacons are not leaders. First thing I want us to see is that deacons are not leaders. Many denominations and traditions tend to blur this distinction, I believe, by treating the deacons as some sort of a de facto elder board, or treating the deacons as some sort of a board of directors, at least.

They have a lot of power. You've probably seen it specifically in like Baptist type of churches and backgrounds, where deacons kind of rule the roost. They make the decisions. You've got your pastor, or pastors, hopefully, but they have to answer to this group of deacons.

They give an account to these deacons, and these deacons hold them as an employee of sorts. Or at least, they seek to counsel with and get the deacons' input before any decision. So you see how they're kind of a de facto elder board, and or just simply a board of directors that help make decisions within the church.

Yet in Scripture, we see no such thing. We don't see them making any kind of leadership decision whatsoever. There's nothing to this in Scripture that we can see. Look back at the passage that we just read.

Look back at the beginning, verse 1, when it talks about the office of elder. It says, if anyone aspires to the office of, and the ESV translates it, overseer. Okay? Translates it well. Because overseer is what?

It's an elder. It's a pastor. That's what he's talking about. He's talking about the position of an elder. And this is translated overseer because that is the purpose and the meaning of pastor-elder.

It's someone that is overseeing the flock. That is keeping the things that God has called from Scripture in account and in accordance with the church. The church is staying in alignment with this. Look down at verse 4 and 5 actually there.

An overseer, he must manage his household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. Why? Why must he manage his household well? Look at it. For if someone does not know how to manage his household well, how will he care for God's church?

You see it in the qualification of an elder and overseer. The overseer's job is to care for God's church. That's his job. And he has to do that in alignment with Scripture. But look down at verse 8 when we introduce the deacons.

It says, deacons likewise.

Right?

So now we're talking about the deacons. And so we have some comparison here. We have some qualifications that we'll go over in a moment that are very similar. But look down at verse 12 and 13. Look at 12.

Paul says a similar thing about them that we just read about the overseer. He says, let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their household well for those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves.

Notice he doesn't talk about them managing or caring for the household of God. He just refers to them as in service. So there's a difference.

Right?

We also see Peter only referring to the elders in regards to oversight over in 1 Peter 5. If you want to flip over there with me, you can look at the first two verses of 1 Peter 5, or you can jot this down.

Peter's calling the overseers, the people that are managing the church here, he's calling them to do their job, essentially. He says in verse 1, So I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder. Now, he's an apostle, but he's essentially in that similar role of overseer, and a witness of suffering of Christ as well as a partaker of the glory that is going to be revealed.

In verse 2, he says, shepherd the flock. What does he mean by this? Lead the flock. Care for the flock. Love the flock. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight. Notice he doesn't refer to the deacons.

Why not?

Paul had referred to the deacons when writing to the church at Philippi, right? He acknowledged the two offices. Why would Peter not acknowledge the two offices that are leading oversight and caring for the church?

Because it's not the deacon's job for the oversight. It's the elder's job for oversight. Paul told Timothy later in 1 Timothy 5, verse 17, he says, let the elders who rule well, right? The elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor.

But he says, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. That's actually one of the most obvious distinctions within the qualifications of our passage in 1 Timothy 3.

Right?

Because in verse 2 he says, therefore an overseer must be above reproach. He goes on list and at the very end he says, able to teach. We don't see that qualification talked about with the deacons, do we?

Why is that? It's because they don't hold a position of leadership. Preaching and teaching is shepherding, is leading, and there is no call to the office of deacon for that. It doesn't exist. So what is it?

What is this office of deacon? If it's not to lead, if it's not how we've seen it before, you know, pastors come and go in these typical Baptist churches. Pastors come and go, but the deacons are here.

And they're in control, and they have all of the structure of the church. They lead, they take care of everything, but that's unbiblical. That's not what we see in the New Testament. They're not leaders.

Well, what do they do? Well, that leads us to the second thing I want us to see. I have it on the screen. Deacons are servants. Deacons are servants. You know, we actually get this word deacon from the Greek word diakonos.

Okay?

You can hear the word, right? It's one of the few Greek words that sounds kind of like our word, doesn't it? You can remember that, diakonos. This word simply means servant or minister. Now, we think of minister, of course, in the terms of, well, a minister is a pastor.

Well, no, that's not the meaning of the word. A minister is someone that cares for someone, that serves someone. We see this word being used in that most simple form all throughout the New Testament, okay?

And this is where some confusion sets in, actually. In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul says, what is apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believe. Diakonos is in the Greek. It's the same word for deacon.

Is Paul saying that him and apollos hold the office of deacon?

Well, no.

They don't hold the office of deacon. For sure, Paul doesn't hold the office of deacon, right? It's simply meaning that they're servants of Christ, that they are ministering to the body of Christ in service.

That's all this word means. And not understanding this has led to much confusion about passages like Romans 16 .1. A lot of people bring this to the table, where Paul says, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a diakonos of the church.

Confusing, right? The ESV translates it servant, not deacon. But it's the same word in the Greek. And this leads many to believe that women can hold the office of deacon. Even though this contradicts what we read in 1 Timothy 3, doesn't it?

Completely contradicts it. Referring to the qualifications of a deacon in verse 11, he says, their wives likewise must be dignified, right? Talking about the deacons, the people who are qualified to this office.

Their wives likewise must be dignified. Now, I will admit here. I'm going to give you some insight on some grammatical stuff within the text. The ESV actually adds a word here. The word is there. That very first word you see, if you have an ESV with you, is there.

Their wives. This, mind you, is not uncommon. Don't think for a second, oh no, they're adding to scripture. This is a common practice, because you've got to understand, translating from Greek to English requires readability.

If you ever look at a Greek lexicon and try and read word for word, it's so unbearably confusing, you don't know which way's up. You have to put some words in there to fill in the context, all right? But the confusion comes in with what Paul means by this word that he used for what we translate wives.

This word can also simply mean women. It's the same word being used elsewhere when just referring to women. We have to identify it, though, within the context. That's just how Greek works. We have to understand it within the context of reading.

Leading some to read it like this, women, likewise, must be dignified. Thinking that, it must be referring to either women deacons or women who help the deacons in some way. Now, I'm not convinced of that.

I don't hold to this. It seems to me that the ESV translators, they got it right in adding the word there and then translating the word wives, because it is used for wives elsewhere, but women and wives, depending on the context, okay?

But I think they got it right because of what Paul says next in verse 12. Look at it. Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their household and their own household as well.

Now, wife here is the same word, right? But in the context, we see that, well, husband is before it, so it has to be meaning wives, which means that they must have been talking about the wives of the deacons in the previous verse because this is a qualification.

They must be the husband of one wife, but also in the context of this, there's very little confusion because what are they called to do? They're managing their household well, and we know that leadership within the home is whose responsibility?

The husband's. The husband leads. The husband leads under the headship of Christ. The head of the house is the husband, so you're confirming to us that Phoebe did not hold the office of deacon. That's not what Paul was saying.

Paul was simply pointing out her tremendous God-honoring life of service to the church, right? This is all it means. So we must make a distinction between every Christian who serves, as they should, mind you, because diakonos is service, and every Christian that serves, we have to make that distinction from them and the office of service, the deacons, while maintaining the purpose of that office.

Here's the kicker, which is its namesake, servants. Are you trekking with me? I feel like I'm getting some. We're having to deal with some grammar and stuff here, so I apologize, but I want you to really grasp that, okay?

We have to make a distinction between just every Christian who's called to serve, diakonos, and the official office that the New Testament lays out of men who are qualified to that office, which is an office of service.

They are servants in an office, which we have to remember, right? That office is about service, period. So a deacon is a servant. Remember that passage that I read at the beginning in Philippians, the first verse, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who were at Philippi with the overseers and deacons.

All the saints are called to serve within the church, yet Paul is sure to acknowledge the distinct office of service, right? Every Christian is called to serve. We're on the same page, but yet he still calls out that distinct office of service, the deacons, in connection with the office of overseer, mind you.

So what does this look like practically? What are we looking at? If we have two offices, we have one that leads, and then one that is servants that serve, how does this play out within the life of the church?

What is the reality of it? How do we make this fit? Well, that leads us to our third thing that I want us to see about deacons, which is that deacons are assistants to the elders. Deacons are assistants to the elders.

As a matter of fact, turn with me over to the book of Acts, chapter 6. I want us just to look at how and why the office was established. Acts, chapter 6. If you're not familiar when you're turning there, just look just past the Gospels.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts. This is the Acts of the apostles, the early church. In Acts, chapter 6, starting in verse 1, he says, Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, disciples, don't get confused.

We're not talking about the men that followed Jesus, the 12 guys that followed Jesus. Those are apostles at this point. Disciples are anyone that comes to Christ, that comes into the church and is baptized and brought into Christ as a disciple.

This is growing. You've got to realize the Pentecost has happened. Thousands of people are just coming into the church all at once. As they were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

There's a lot here. Don't get lost here. Hellenists, this is a group of Jewish people who don't speak Aramaic. As a matter of fact, their native language is Greek. In that culture, the Arabic-speaking Jews kind of looked down their nose at the Greek-speaking Jews like, Oh, yeah, you're kind of a half-breed.

You're a part of us, but you're not full. They're called the Hellenists. There's a divide that's always going on there culturally. But a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

Now, this is interesting. Being a Christian back then was a little different than us today. It meant losing everything for the most part. You didn't just come to Christ and your neighbor high-fives you and says, That's awesome.

I'm glad you were baptized. Or, I'm not a Christian, but good for you. No, it was you lost everything, your family. You were dead to them. You lost your business. You lost your ability to make money for the most part in a lot of cases.

Specifically, back then, widows didn't have Social Security to rely on. They were destitute. So the church, what did they do? They had a daily distribution. They were providing resources for the needy.

They were coming along and saying, Hey, there are physical needs within the church. There are true, actual needs that have to be met. We can't just meet them with spiritual needs all the time. We have to meet them with physical needs to care for them.

After all, that's what Jesus has called us to do. Look at verse 2. And the twelve, and this is the apostles, summoned the full number of the disciples and said, It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.