Establishment of the Diaconate

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You'll turn with me, please, in your Bibles to the sixth chapter of the book of Acts. Acts chapter 6.
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Acts chapter 6. It's very good to see
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Dr. Barth with us this morning. He has that, what time of day is it anyway, look.
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Which some of us only know by about one -third. But good to have him here this morning.
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So, Acts chapter 6. If you have been with us in the preceding portions of this series, we are not working through the book of Acts, it looks like that at the moment, but we are following the contents of an early papyrus of the
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New Testament called P45. It was written around the year 220. And if it contains any portion of a chapter in the
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New Testament, then we are covering that. We've done that in John, and now we are in the book of Acts because P45 contains portions of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts.
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It is the only gospel manuscript we have from the ancient world that has that combination.
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And so, we started in Acts chapter 4, and we have now moved into Acts chapter 6.
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You may recall a number of weeks ago that we finished up looking at chapter 5 and Gamaliel's advice.
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We saw that that advice was not exactly what we could apply in many situations, but that it had been given at that particular point in time.
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It's another one of those incidents that gives us further confidence of the historicity of the
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New Testament text. That is, we know there was a Rabbi Gamaliel. We have record of him outside of the
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New Testament, and we have some understanding of where he stood and what he believed from other sources.
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And so, it's just one of those things we note in passing that places the text of the
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New Testament in its historical context, which is very important today in light of many people who would tell us that the
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New Testament does not possess that historical pedigree. But we're still in the early, early period there in Jerusalem.
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We have a primarily, well, a completely Jewish or Jewish proselyte church.
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And those days are about to come to an end, and that is what is introduced to us.
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The first portion of chapter 6 introduces us to a certain individual,
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Stephen, but in a different context, and it is an important context for us, though I must confess, for most
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Christians, it probably would not be considered to be all that important.
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If you are like me, I was raised in the church, and I was raised within a primarily strict fundamentalist camp, and we didn't generally have an interest in looking outside of our own camp at why people did things differently.
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We just assumed it was because they were going to hell. So, if you assume that, you just don't necessarily take the time to ask the question, well, why would they do that?
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So, I remember I was already in seminary. The first time
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I was really faced with a challenge to think through why is it that we do church the way we do it, and specifically, why do we have the officers and the priests and people in the church?
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Now, in my context at that point in time, you would have a pastor, and if it was a really large church, which
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I was at, then you would have a huge staff underneath the pastor, and they were all pastors of this and pastors of that.
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And then you had deacons, and the deacons, especially in smaller churches, would pretty much function as an elder board.
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They would vote on things, and certainly in my experience as a younger person,
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I had seen where deacons had kicked out the pastor. It would be the deacons who were the ones that would choose who the pastor would be, and so the pastor would serve basically at the behest of the deacons, and very often what ends up happening in a situation like this is you end up with a powerful group of families who are deacons, but they control the church.
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That's where the power is, and the pastor serves at their wishes up until he preaches that sermon they don't like, and then he's looking for a new job.
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And then when you get divisions amongst the deacons, that's when someone wants to change the carpeting color.
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That's when the deacons meet out church afterwards, and after a few bloody noses and black eyes, the color of the carpet is determined by Victor.
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You may chuckle a little bit, but the reason us older folks are chuckling is because we all know this is exactly how it's happened for a very, very, very long time.
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And so I remember when I was first challenged, I don't think it's somebody who walked up to me and said, you know, that's not the way to do things.
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I think it was just simply in studying the New Testament and going, elders, elders, hmm, and then you read
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Titus, and you read Timothy, and here are the qualifications for the elders, and here are the qualifications for the deacons, and they are different, and they're distinguished from one another, and, huh, these elders are the ones that are accountable for teaching, and rebuking, and discipline, and the deacons aren't supposed to be in charge of that.
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They have a different task. And I kept seeing that elders and bishops, well, they're the same thing, and, huh, they're in the plural all the time.
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There's more than one, and the apostles go around, and when they strengthen the church, and they establish the church, they ordain elders in those churches.
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And, huh, I wonder what this is all about. And so you start digging in, and you start being willing to be challenged a bit on these issues, and you go, huh, my traditions don't seem to quite match up with the
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New Testament. And some of you know that a number of years ago, I was invited to write a portion for one of those multi -views books, five views on this, four views on that, whatever else it might be, and it was on church governance.
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Wow, that was exciting. But it is, in a sense. And I remember that the fellow who wrote the single pastor defense started off saying,
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I sort of figured the New Testament more strongly teaches that there's a plurality of elders, but I've been asked to defend this views point, so I will.
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You know, it's like, okay, all right. It would have been nice if they had found someone who actually really did believe that.
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And amongst the group, there was those, I defended the plurality of elders perspective, and then there was the now -since -past
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Dr. Raymond wrote the section from the Presbyterian perspective, and to be honest with you, we were the only two debating.
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Everybody else just stopped doing their thing, but he and I's presentations were absolutely maxed out, max number of words in response to the other guy, and that's where the debate was going on between myself and Dr.
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Raymond. So, what we have in Acts chapter 6 is the establishment, the first glimpse we have in the primitive church of what eventually we see in Paul's writings is what we call the diaconate, the office of deacon.
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And this comes out really, really plainly when you read the narrative in the original language, because that term, diaconos, just simply means a minister, one who serves others, and the term's used all the way through here.
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And so it becomes very clear to us what is going on here in the early and primitive church.
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So, chapter 6, now at this time, while the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint arose on the part of, and now we encounter a translational issue.
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Literally, a grumbling, that's my favorite word that I have mentioned to you a number of times out of John chapter 6, but here it is again, gungus -mooing.
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I think that is the greatest Greek word to describe grumbling. Are you gungus -mooing?
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Yes, I'm gungus -mooing. So, gungusmos, a complaint, a grumbling, and it's literally, of the
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Greek ones against the Hebrew ones. Now, your various translations will try to,
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Hellenistic Jews, Hellenos is the term for Greek, in Greek.
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So, the Greek Jews against the native Hebrews. Well, these are all still
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Jews, but you have proselytes and you have those who were born into the
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Hebrew nation, in essence. And so, you have those who've come from outside, and now they've been converted, and you've got the others who've been converted, who were born as Jews, and there is a complaint, a grumbling, on the part of the
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Greeks against the Hebrews. Because their widows, that is the
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Greek widows, in the diakonia, the diakonia, the service, the ministry, their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food.
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We saw earlier that there in the church in Jerusalem, they were pooling their resources, they were taking care of the poor amongst them, and especially the widows, there was a provision being made for them.
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And the complaint is that the native Hebrew widows are getting what they should get, but the
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Greek widows were not. So, we'll go back to that and dig into it a little bit more in a moment.
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So, the twelve summoned all of the disciples, the fullness of the disciples, you could say the congregation, but it's just simply the full number of the disciples, and said, it is not desirable, it is not a good thing for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables.
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Therefore, brethren, select from among you seven men of good reputation, literally martyrs.
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Obviously, that means they weren't used to the term martyr the same way that it has developed over time.
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Select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we may put in charge of this task.
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But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. The statement found approval with the whole congregation, and they chose
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Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch.
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And these they brought before the apostles, and after praying, they laid hands on them.
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The word of God kept on spreading, and the number of disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.
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And so here we have the beginning of chapter six, and obviously the almost paradisical situation in the early church could not last forever.
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I mean, up to now, you primarily have pressures from outside, but the reality is you put a bunch of sinners together and there's going to be some problems that are going to develop.
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And so the first internal problem here is, well, you've already seen,
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I'm not trying to minimize Ananias and Sapphira, that was certainly a problem, but I'm not sure that it was the result of the natural fellowship of sinners with one another.
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There's questions as to Ananias and Sapphira's spiritual state. But here you get an understandable situation.
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The church is seeking to do something, to provide something for the widows, to take care of them amongst the people.
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And so what has happened is that there is an overlooking of some of the widows in the daily serving of food.
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Now, why? Well, we're not told. Some might speculate and come to the conclusion that there was some type of favoritism going on.
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I would struggle with that as being the reason at this point in time.
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I think personally, if I was to speculate as to the reasoning, it might have been a language issue.
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You have some who are more comfortable in the
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Aramaic language, maybe the Greek widows, speaking
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Greek as their primary language, were not as good in Hebrew, and hence maybe couldn't hear instructions as well, couldn't follow instructions as well, needed someone to translate.
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I mean, having just been over there, we were very blessed to have a guide, a very intelligent guide,
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I think I mentioned him to you, who obviously was completely fluent in modern
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Hebrew, and I think you just need to have someone like that to be able to get in and out of the places properly and stuff like that.
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It's not that... It seemed almost universal that everyone there understood
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English. That was pretty... Amongst the
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Jewish people, anyways, everybody understood English. I walked into...
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It was on Shabbat, on the Sabbath day. You can't get food worth nothing. And I walked into an
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Arab falafel house. And the young Arab kid there that was serving spoke perfect English, so I didn't have any problem ordering or anything like that.
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So... But there wasn't any English back then. And so, was it a language thing?
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When you speak the minority language in the majority group or something like that, could that have been what was going on?
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We're simply not told. And there's nothing in what the apostles say that gives us an indication that they were condemning any kind of sinful attitude on the part of anyone in the church.
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And so I think we are out of our bounds if we attempt to make accusation that, well, here you've got some kind of thing going on where, well, if you don't speak
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Hebrew as well as I speak Hebrew, then you're not going to get as much food type of situation. I don't see any reason to assume that this actually existed.
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But there is a problem that has developed and it's brought to the attention of the
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Twelve. And I would imagine that there is a meeting and there is a discussion, you know, we need to get more people involved in such a way that will allow us, there's a tremendous pressure upon us to be providing to the people, teaching in regards to the
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Word of God. I mean, this is, we stand upon the shoulders of giants of generations after generation after generation.
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We have an entire language and vocabulary that has been developed for us over time.
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They didn't have that at this point. They are still wrestling with, you know, the teaching that they received from Jesus only a matter of weeks ago, months ago maybe, after His resurrection.
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And there are lots of questions being asked and they're probably having to spend a lot of time talking to one another and dealing with these questions and going, what about this, what about that, so on and so forth.
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And so, they're under a tremendous amount of pressure. And so they say, it is not desirable for us to neglect the
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Word of God in order to serve tables. Now, we live in a day where people have not been taught to think properly in categories.
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I blame, you know, the Internet is the greatest source of data and information everywhere, but it is also absolutely corrosive to wisdom.
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Wisdom and maturity of thought. And a lot of people these days, if Peter tweeted, it is not desirable for us to neglect the
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Word of God in order to serve tables. Can you imagine the hashtags in response? We love servers.
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Service is good. Don't put down servers, you know, and all the rest of this type of stuff, which he's not doing.
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It is not, there is nothing in the statement that says there's something wrong with serving tables.
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But there is a necessary, it is necessary for us to think in proper categories and to recognize that there can be certain callings that have a higher importance in the overall scheme of what someone's been called to do than something else.
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And it's the apostles who have been taught to minister and teach the Word of God and to explain this message of life in Jesus Christ.
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And it is a lesser priority to serve tables.
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And so it is not desirable, it is not a good thing, a proper thing for us to neglect the
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Word of God. So that is a very high calling, is the ministry of the
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Word of God. And it's only the proclamation of the Word of God that is resulting in this huge group we're gathering together called the church, which then leads to the necessity of having to serve tables to take care of the widows and the first wives.
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So it's just a matter of having to think in the proper categories, which
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I find, again, in our day, to be one of the major problems that we face with so many people who struggle in this very area.
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And so there is a high priority for the apostles.
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They will not neglect the Word of God for anything else, even if it is a good thing, even if it is a proper thing, even if it is a necessary thing.
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This is the most necessary thing in their calling. Jesus had been ministering to them, teaching them these things, and now he's entrusted these things to them, and they need to pass these things along.
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That is of the highest priority. Therefore, brethren, so speaking to the whole group of the whole congregation, therefore select from among you seven men of good reputation, seven men, like I said, who are martyrs, who have a proper testimony, and the term that is used is andros, men.
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It's not a... Andros is even more specific than anthropos is, which get anthropology.
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And so, specifically, the instruction from the apostles is to pick from amongst you seven men full of spirit and wisdom.
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And so there is to be an examination of their lives, their relationship to God, and they need to be wise, because the fact of the matter is dealing with issues like this in the church, where there can be emotional attachment and emotional investment and things like that, takes a lot of wisdom.
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Takes a lot of wisdom. And so the congregation is told, select from among you seven men, good reputation, full of spirit and wisdom, whom we may put in charge of this task.
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Now, I'm not going to invest a tremendous amount of time on this, but this is one of a number of texts that would need to be brought into our view in asking the questions that come up in regards to the apostles.
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You have living apostles right now. We do not have living apostles today, despite how many people want to call themselves that.
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There are certain requirements as to what an apostle is supposed to be. And so when the transition takes place from the apostolic period to what we would call the normative period, well, there's a transition, because apostles die off over time.
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So there's a transitionary period. And so what's the relationship of apostles, then the elders, bishops, overseers, they're all the same thing, they're used interchangeably by Paul and by others in the
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New Testament. What's the relationship of authority in the church at that point, and then these men, the deacons, those who are to serve?
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What about that? Well, obviously we have Titus and Timothy to give us a lot more information about that, but we also have the rest of Acts.
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And we're going to see later on, since P45 goes well into Acts, all the way to chapter 17, we're going to see later on that one of the ways that Paul strengthens the churches that he's already founded is making sure they have this solid organization within them.
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And he applies and he ordains elders, bishops for them.
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But it is interesting that though they're selected by the whole congregation and out of the whole congregation, whom we may put in charge of this task, not whom you may put in charge of this task.
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So the overall overarching authority of the apostles is still seen.
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It's not compromised. But you have the congregation participating in the selection of these office holders who are then placed in that position by the apostles themselves.
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So there is a lot of discussion. It doesn't happen a lot in the church, because like I said, most people in the church just sort of go with whatever the church does.
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But there is a lot of discussion in the literature of exactly how things are to be laid out.
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And this would be one of those texts that would be relevant to our study of that subject. So they will be put in charge of this task that is providing the food for the widows.
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So they are serving tables, literally. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.
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And again, that doesn't mean that deacons can't study the word, can't pray, that kind of mindset, no.
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But there is a proper and appropriate, notice it says the statement found approved with the whole congregation, there is a proper and appropriate recognition of the supremacy, the centrality, the necessity of being devoted to prayer and the ministry of the word on the part of the apostles.
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And while we can, I think appropriately, step back and go, man, this was a very unique time period.
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Very, very unique time period. You have a situation here where what must it have been like for the apostles to be trying to answer all of these questions?
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They had probably tried to ask as many questions as they could during Jesus' ministry to them after the resurrection.
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But people can come up with questions you never, ever, ever thought of before. And they can be very, very challenging.
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And as they're now having more and more people coming into the fellowship, that's more and more people from more and more different backgrounds who have a little different take on things and hence may hear what you're saying differently and so they'll ask questions and you're, at first, you struggle to even know where that came from and so you have to ask more questions and that makes you go back and I'm sure they're having to spend a lot of time together in prayer and in conversation with one another.
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And I'd imagine that conversation would be something along the lines of, yeah, you know, I had a brother ask me about this and I'm really not sure how to answer that.
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And then maybe one of the other apostles would go, well, remember when we were walking from Capernaum to Nazareth at one time and we asked this question, remember when
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Jesus said this, might that shed some light on this? Well, let's pray about that, let's consider that, let's look at what the prophet said.
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I mean, you're bringing all of this together at this point in time and I imagine it would be pretty much a full -time task for the apostles to be engaged in this kind of work.
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And while we don't have that kind of apostle today, it certainly was very, very important at that time that they be able to devote themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.
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And so, similar to what you have when God's wisdom is given to Moses, with the people in the wilderness, you can't be judging the people day and night, this is a huge number of people, you need to find some other men and you need to set up basically a rudimentary legal system, even while we're here in the wilderness and that type of thing, and that's what's going on here as well.
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And so they say this to the congregation, the statement, found approval with the whole congregation.
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Now, again, the unity of the church is great because I've been in situations where no statement would have found approval with the whole congregation, including the sun is up.
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Now, there might be some folks in some congregations, when everybody gets crosswise where it doesn't matter what you say, there's going to be disagreement and division at that point in time, that's not what's going on here.
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We have this kind of proper fellowship at this point, and so the statement finds approval with the whole congregation.
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So what do they do? Well, we don't know how long this takes, it must have been a fairly short period of time, I would assume.
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We don't have any evidence that they established a committee to do this because then it would be finished somewhere around Acts 28, if you did it that way, but somehow these men are chosen, and you will notice, and this is why
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I get the feeling that there was some kind of language barrier issue that isn't just brought out, but do you notice something about the names?
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They're all Greek, and so it seems that on a functional level, what is done is the choice is made so that there can, because there's a specific need here, the specific need is to make sure that all the widows are treated fairly.
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And so the fact that you end up choosing men who, and we can't know, as you know,
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Saul is Paul, and Peter is Cephas, and so is it just that the
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Greek versions of their names are given here, or was that the normal name they went by, did they have
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Aramaic or Hebrew cognates, just as most of the disciples did, but they're just not given to us because of who
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Luke's writing to, so give the name that would be most easy to understand, and so you don't have to interpret each one, and I don't know,
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I don't know, we're not told. But they all have these
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Greek versions which would possibly indicate to us a facility in the language that would allow them to make sure that overlooking that was happening before wasn't going to happen anymore.
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Many people have made a huge deal out of, they all chose
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Greek names, and people with Greek names, and so this was the church dealing with early divisions, it's sort of hard to substantiate that in light of the fact that we know, and most of us can name, the extra names that people had back in that day.
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Because Greek had become such a lingua franca, because of Alexander's taking over of the whole known world a few centuries earlier and spreading that language, it functioned then similarly to the way that English does today in that area, and so these are some of the questions that we have.
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But Stephen is the first listed, and he is specifically described as a man full of faith and the
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Holy Spirit. A man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. Now the problem is here that you all have already cheated, you know the rest of the story, you know what the next two chapters are about anyways, and so you're thinking ahead, and when you think ahead, sometimes you rush past what is being said in the story right now, it's just human nature, it's just how we function.
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But it does strike us that Stephen, who we know is going to be the first Christian martyr, and we know he's going to preach a long sermon, and we know that sermon's going to be very straightforward, and it's going to raise some difficult questions.
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When you deal with critics of the
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New Testament and the doctrine of inerrancy as often as I do, you have had to deal with a few things that Stephen said more than once, because since he is going to give us pretty much an entire recapitulation of the history of the people of Israel, when he puts things somewhat differently than what we have in other texts of Scripture, well those are going to be primary places that people are going to go to try to allege contradiction in the
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Bible. And so we're going to have to deal with some challenging texts from Stephen's sermon, though I want to try to avoid chasing so many of those rabbits or chasing the rabbits so far, that we end up losing the cumulative effect of what
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Stephen did, which then resulted in his being murdered and martyred for the faith, which of course
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Luke then uses as his introduction to a man named
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Saul. So, you know, I can't help but think of the very famous words of Tertullian a few centuries later when he says the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
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You have a clear illustration of that in what happens with Stephen and then with the
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Apostle himself, who likewise becomes a martyr after a very long and fruitful ministry.
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So it's not surprising to me that when Stephen is introduced, he is introduced first, he's put the head of the list.
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This is a practice that is going to be picked up by the early church, and martyrs are always going to be put at the head of the list of anything they were involved in, that they gave their lives and they, that's how they're listed.
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He's put the head of the list and he is identified as a man full of two things, faith and the
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Holy Spirit. Faith and the Holy Spirit. Now you would think that someone who is full of the
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Holy Spirit can be full of faith, because saving faith is the work of the
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Spirit of God. But we may call Stephen the first martyr, but I would think that one of the highest compliments that is given to Stephen in the text of the
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New Testament is this line. The very first introduction that he is given is that he is a man full of faith and the
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Holy Spirit. And it is interesting to me, as you know the story, that as he is receiving the death blows of the rocks, as he is being martyred, he is granted to see into the heavenly realms while yet still alive, at least briefly, here upon this earth.
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And certainly his bold witness, knowing what could be coming toward him, it is foundational that first and foremost a martyr be full of faith and the
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Holy Spirit. And so we do live in a day where there are modern
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Stephens. I mentioned to you at some point in the past, because it's only been a couple of months, at that time 135
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Chinese Christian ministers, faithful men full of the
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Holy Spirit, who had written a document and signed their names to the document.
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And that was a document that not only held out the hope of salvation to the
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Chinese men who make up the government, but likewise proclaimed the judgment of God upon anyone who would stand opposed to the
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Lordship of Jesus Christ. And these are not Chinese men living somewhere else.
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They live in Beijing and many of them have been arrested and many of their churches have been closed down.
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These are men who made this testimony fully aware of what the cost might be.
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And this happens a lot and it's happening a lot in our day.
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It's just that Stephen gets to be the first one. Stephen's name is the first.
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We do not have a complete martyrology. The martyrology of the church today we might look back upon and we can't necessarily tell whether someone who was martyred in the name of Christ was a true servant of Christ or whether they were not.
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We can't see into their hearts. But someday we will know, because if the book of Revelation tells us anything, they are known to God and they are especially honored of God.
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And we cannot underestimate the comfort that that reality has brought generations of Christians who have faced martyrdom in their experience and continues to bring to this very day.
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When we read from the Revelation as we are reading right now and we sit there and I couldn't help but think about it as I was reading it.
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I came from the old Hal Lindsey days and so those scorpion things, well it looks like a helicopter to me, maybe you know stings with the tail and up at the front and got guns up front and guns in the back.
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You know all this kind of stuff we are really really missing the point of how that text would have and does continue to this day minister to so many in its message of faithfulness in the face of great judgment, martyrdom, the world system, whatever else it might it might be.
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And so the story of Stephen is not one we should just simply look at and go ah yes
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Stephen. He continues to have relevance to us even to this day and as we will spend a fair amount of time together digging into his words, it is best to begin to recognize that he was a man full of faith and the
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Holy Spirit and of all the descriptions that could be given to us, of all the descriptions that you might want to have honestly inscribed upon your headstone someday, would not full of faith and the
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Holy Spirit be about the best you could ever hope for. That would indeed be a wonderful testimony.
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Let's pray together. Our Grace Heavenly Father once again we thank you for your word and how it ministers to us and we do thank you for men of old who were full of faith and the
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Holy Spirit. We thank you for Stephen and for the entire army of those who have followed in his footsteps since that day long ago.
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Lord if you call us may we be found faithful. May we join those ranks.
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We sing that song, we say those words, but Lord we know that we need now to be men and women of faith filled with the
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Holy Spirit if we would ever hope to join their throng. And so conform us the image of Christ, work within us your will.