God's House Rules #11 - "Gospel Order in God's House #6" (1 Timothy 3:8-13)

Alright, if you have a copy of God's Word, and I hope you do, take it and turn with me to 1 Timothy. 1

Timothy. We are continuing the series that we have been in for the last few, well, a couple of months now,

I suppose. 1 Timothy, and we are in chapter 3 this morning. Regular service is resuming for our regular visitors.

You know that we slowed it down quite a bit for a number of weeks to take some time in 1

Timothy 3, verses 1 -7. That's not the text today. The text is 1

Timothy 3, verses 8 -13. We are moving on in our study of 1 Timothy, so 1

Timothy 3, verses 8 -13. The page number is right, though. It's still page 1052 if you've got one of the

Red Bibles we give away. So, 1 Timothy 3, and verses 8 -13, 1

Timothy 3 and verses 8 -13, page 1052 in those Red Bibles that we give away.

If you're able to do so, can I invite you to stand with me out of respect for God's Word as we come to the preaching of it?

1 Timothy 3, our text this morning is verses 8 -13.

Brothers and sisters, these are God's words to us this morning. Deacons, likewise, should be worthy of respect, not hypocritical, not drinking a lot of wine, not greedy for money, holding the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.

They must also be tested first, and if they prove blameless, then they can serve as deacons.

Wives, likewise, should be worthy of respect, not slanderers, self -controlled, faithful in everything.

Deacons are to be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households competently. For those who have served well as deacons, acquire a good standing for themselves and great boldness in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

Pray that God will bless that reading of His Word and give us understanding of it as we come to it. Allow me to pray, ask for the Lord's help, because we always need

His help when we come to His Word. So we'll pray, we'll seek that help, and then we'll study His Word together. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we ask that as we open up the Scriptures this morning, that you speak to us. I pray that you would grant us not just open ears and open eyes, but open hearts as well.

May your Spirit use this portion of your Word to do the work that He designed it to do when

He gave it. May we be encouraged, challenged, edified, and above all, may the

Lord Jesus be glorified. That is all that we long for, that is all that we seek to do.

So be with us in that mission. And Father, as we pray for ourselves, we pray for our friends at Creekside Bible Church up in Rogue River.

Thank you for our sister relationship that we have in the gospel and the same doctrinal commitments.

Thank you for Pastor Lucas and the leadership there. Pray for them, especially as they enter into this season of transition with one of their pastors moving on.

And pray for them as they adjust to a new normal, that in all of this you would be glorified in that.

Pray for Pastor Lucas as he continues to minister your Word there. Thank you for just the fruit that the ministry there is bearing, and pray that that would continue.

Bless them even as they worship now, and be with us as we worship through the hearing of your Word. We ask all this in Jesus' name and for His sake.

Amen. Please be seated. The story is told of a pastoral assistant in a church who was asked to lead a training session for new deacons at a rather large urban church in the

Northeast. During the training, the assistant had the idea to call a local restaurant school.

And the reason that they felt the need to call the school was they had an inkling that it might be helpful to ask that school one particular question.

The question they asked was actually quite a simple one. It was, what do you look for in a good waiter?

What do you look for in a good waiter? Apparently, as the story is told, the person on the other end of the phone hesitated for a moment and then said, a good waiter is someone who notices what people need and gives it to them before they even know to ask.

A good waiter is someone who notices what people need and gives it to them before they even ask.

The assistant was quite perplexed and said, well, what happens when you only know about the need when they tell you?

And the restaurant school owner basically said, then you just meet the need.

You just meet the need. Because at the heart of good service, yes, ideally we'd like to be able to predict needs before they happen.

But sometimes you can't. The reality is, though, the heart of good service is very simply seeing a need and meeting that need.

And while that might be helpful in the restaurant world, I would like to argue that our God actually infinitely cares that needs are met.

Have you ever thought about that? God cares that your needs are met. In fact, the Bible says this much.

Psalm 103 is a psalm of praise to the Lord. And one of the things it says in that psalm is that he daily,

I grew up in the King James Version, all the way it puts it, it says, he daily loatheth us with benefits.

The language being that everything that we need, God graciously gives to us might not be everything you want.

That's a whole other conversation for another sermon. But God definitely gives you everything that you need.

God cares that needs are met. And this morning, as we come to 1

Timothy Chapter 3, verses 8 through 13, we're going to see another manifestation of how

God meets the needs of his people. We're going to see one of the ways that God has designed for practical needs to be met in his house.

This morning, as you can see up on screen there, we are in part six of kind of what has become a miniseries within our study of 1

Timothy. It's actually the final part of that miniseries. We've been thinking about this theme of gospel order in God's house, gospel order in God's house.

Now, we started this teaching all the way back in December in Chapter 2, verses 8 through 15.

And if you can cast your mind back, those of you who were here, if you weren't here, let me bring you up to speed real quick. I said that this whole section has one really big idea looming over it, that as you come to this section in 1

Timothy and Chapter 3, verses 8 through 13, there's one big idea that looms over it.

And the idea is this, that God's house has a definite order to it, and the house flourishes when it follows that order, that God's house has a definite order to it, that God's house has structure to it.

I made a comment in the Sunday School Hour, for those of you who were here, that we live in an age that is anti -authority, and I think part of that is we're anti -order.

We're kind of just like, yeah, just do what you feel. Does that work? Yeah, we'll do that. God doesn't operate that way.

God has not made the world that way, quite frankly. God has actually made the world in the kind of way that it has order, it has structure, that things are supposed to be in certain places, and I would argue people are supposed to be in certain places.

God's house follows a definite order, and the house flourishes, the house thrives, not when it tries to invent its own order, but when it follows the order that God has given.

And if you've been following through these messages, there's kind of a logic to this. Allow me to kind of make it a little bit more obvious for just a second, and I'm going to use technology to help me out here.

So, in chapter 2, verses 8 to 15, we saw the beginnings of that order, that men are to lead in God's house with women submitting to that leadership.

So, there's a role that men play in the house of God, and there's a role that women play in the house of God, that men are to lead in God's house with women submitting to that leadership.

That's kind of the big picture. You can kind of think of this like a funnel, so the head of the funnel is this big idea that men lead in the house, women submit in the house.

But as you come to chapter 3, verses 1 through 7, where we just spent the last month, the funnel gets a little bit tighter because you see, it's not just men in general who lead in God's house.

The second thing I'd like you to consider is that not all men lead, only qualified men lead.

Sorry, just because you are a man and you have a pulse does not qualify you for leadership. Not according to God.

Only qualified men lead. And how do they lead? They lead through godly example and the ministry of the word, through their life and their teaching as Paul is going to tell us later on in this letter.

So men are to lead in God's house with women submitting to that leadership, but the reality is not all men lead, only qualified men lead through their godly example and through the ministry of the word.

That's what we've got to so far and this morning we're going to close out this section. We're going to round all of this out with one more group that Paul addresses.

So Paul has addressed men and women generally. He's addressed elders as those who lead in God's house under the leadership of the great leader, the great shepherd of God's people.

And this morning we're going to round that out with one more group in the life of the church. The group known to us as deacons, saw that in the beginning of verse 8.

If eldership, I think I said this at the beginning of our study, I definitely said it last week. If eldership suffers the pain of being misunderstood, if the ministry of elders suffers from being misunderstood, the ministry of deacons, or to use the technical term, the deaconate, the ministry of deacons might not,

I don't think it suffers the pain of being misunderstood. You know what the pain I think it suffers? I think it suffers the pain of being often neglected, that we just don't really think about it much.

Well, I put it to you that nothing in the Bible is worthy of neglect. If God, I want to be careful how

I word it. But if God felt it important to tell us about something, we should probably know a little bit about it.

Not a whole lot, but just a little bit. And actually God's word says a little bit about this subject of deacons and their role in the life of the church.

So this morning, I want us to show some love to this topic of the subject of deacons in the life of the church by considering what

God's word has to say to us about the ministry of deacons. In the worship guide there, you'll see an outline that you can kind of follow along with as we navigate through this this morning.

The passage that we come to this morning is going to lay out, I think, one central reality for us as we think about gospel order in God's house.

Here's the one big truth that I think is going to come to us from this passage this morning. Hey family,

God's house is served by faithful people of character who reflect the great servant, the

Lord Jesus. That's my big idea this morning. That God's house is served by faithful people of character who reflect the great servant, the

Lord Jesus. One more time, God's house is served by faithful people of character who reflect the great servant, the

Lord Jesus. Well, just who are these faithful people of character?

How can we identify them? And why is it important for us as a body to be thinking about these people?

If this is true, that God's house is served by faithful people of character who reflect the great servant, the

Lord Jesus, if that is indeed true, well, who are these people?

How can we identify them? And why is it important for us to even care?

Well, that's what I want us to consider this morning and to help us ask and answer those questions I want you to, for the rest of our time,

I want you to consider with me three features of the ministry of faithful servants in God's house.

So what does it look like to be one of these men and why does it matter? I think there are three features from this passage that are going to help us in understanding who these men are.

Or should I say people more on that later, but now I want you to consider with me.

First of all, let's start with just the identity and function of deacons, the identity and function of deacons.

So again, the verse eight, first couple of words, the deacons, likewise, deacons, that's an interesting title.

In fact, it's a very rare one in the Bible. Did you know that this word deacon only appears, at least translated as deacon in our

English Bibles only twice? It's here. The other place, Philippians 1 .1

Paul says, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers, which remember we said overseers, pastors and elders, same group.

So you have the elders, overseers, pastors, and deacons. Those are your two times the word deacon as a title appears in your

New Testament. So kind of like we hit last week, we're thinking about being able to teach, the label itself might not be the best way to help us figure out what this means.

But what if there was a text? What if there was a place we could go to in the Bible that while it doesn't use the label deacon, it describes the function of a deacon?

In fact, what if this text was the first place we saw it? Just what if?

Well, thankfully, there is no what if here because the Bible does have that. Take your Bible, turn with me to Acts chapter six.

Acts chapter six, if you've got one of the red Bibles that we give away, page 971, Acts chapter six, as you turn there, let me give you some context.

Acts chapter six. In Acts chapters five and six, you have an interesting narrative within the book of Acts because in Acts chapter five and Acts chapter six, you basically got three attacks of the enemy upon the church of Jesus Christ.

You probably have read Acts five and six, maybe you haven't noticed this. Let me kind of pull this out for just a moment, help to give some context to where we are.

So in Acts chapter five, verses one through 16, you have the story of Ananias and Sapphira. As this church is growing, everything seems to be positive.

I would argue you have the first attack of the enemy. He tries to bring in corruption and sin. And you see an example of that through the behavior of Ananias and Sapphira.

You remember that story, they come, everyone is giving to the church's needs.

And as they're giving to the church's needs, they don't want to look like they're not giving. So what did they decide to do?

They gave some of what they had, but not everything, but pretended like it was everything. And God himself enacted a form of church discipline that day, a very permanent form.

So you see an attack coming into the church of corruption and sin. And then verses 17 to 42 of Acts five, you have a second attack that comes.

If the devil can't corrupt the church, well, he'll just try to persecute the church. And so you see the apostles once again in the crosshairs of the religious leadership.

And the end result of that is quite interesting. God miraculously intervenes. And as he does so, the gospel goes forth.

So you have corruption and sin, you have violence and persecution. But then you get to the text we want to look at for just a moment,

Acts chapter six. As one writer put it, the devil's next attack was the cleverest of the three.

Having failed to overcome the church, either by persecution or corruption, he now tries, here's the word, distraction.

Pick up with me in Acts chapter six, hopefully you're there by now. Acts chapter six, verse one. In those days, as the disciples were increasing in number, there arose a complaint by the

Hellenistic Jews. The Hellenistic Jews were Jews for whom Greek was their first language. So he says there arose a complaint by the

Hellenistic Jews against the Hebraic Jews, those Jews who actually Aramaic was their first language.

So you have these, within this early church, this tension between these two groups that's forming. Why? Versus the complaint arose that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution.

Acts chapter two tells us that this early church had, as it was growing, people who were seeking to meet the needs of others in that church.

And it becomes apparent that between Acts chapter two and Acts chapter six, this got somewhat systematized. That this kind of had some order and structure put around it, which is a good thing.

And so that this order and structure took the form of a daily food distribution for those who are unable to provide for themselves.

This is a good thing. We don't want to bash the apostles or the early church for doing this. This was a wonderful thing, something to be commended.

But somewhere in the system, something had gone wrong. I would argue,

I think what was happening here wasn't intentional. I think you have a language barrier. I think that's why

Luke points out you've got people who speak one language, people who speak another. If you've ever traveled anywhere where English is not the first language, you know firsthand just how much chaos can ensue when there is a failure to communicate.

And while I don't think this was intentional or nefarious on the part of one group or the other, it's such a problem that grumbling and complaining starts.

The word that's used for complaint there, it's actually an interesting word. It's not complaint in the sort of formal sense. It actually carries this idea of an utterance made in a low tone to show displeasure.

Almost like, you ever been so annoyed? This happens, as some of you know, I have a love -hate, actually

I have a hate relationship with driving. This happens, oh thank you, someone reminded me of my phrase.

It's a necessary evil heavy on the evil part. This happens to me a lot when

I'm driving. Like I'll be driving, someone cuts me off, someone doesn't. My wife will tell you one of my big irritations when driving is when people don't indicate.

Like, I'm not a mind reader. Like, I don't know where you're going. It's this wonderful thing. It comes, let me not start.

I'll be here forever. And sometimes when that happens, I'll be in my car and I'll just be like, idiot.

You ever done that before? Where you're just kind of like mumbling to yourself in a low tone to show how unhappy you are, even though nobody's listening apart from you.

Sometimes it is a little loud. Yeah, it depends. Well, that's the word that's used here.

That it's not a out and out, that it's kind of a low murmur that starts among the church.

That's a good word for it actually, grumbling. That's an aside.

It's kind of sad when that happens in the life of a church, ain't it? It doesn't matter what the reason is.

If the response to a problem is let's start grumbling and complaining, that's usually not a good sign. And I think you get a sense of what the complaint was from what the apostles say in verse two.

Acts 6, verse two, look at verse two with me, says the 12th summoned the whole company of the disciples and said, it would not be right for us to give up preaching the word of God to wait on tables.

Do you know what I think the complaint was? Try this on for size and see if it works. I think the complaint that was going around was, why aren't the apostles doing something about this?

Not a new complaint in church history, by the way. When something goes wrong, what do we generally do? We expect the people in charge to do something about it.

The complaint seems to be, why aren't the apostles fixing this? Don't they realize this is a problem? And the apostles say, well, it's a problem.

But again, notice their response in verse two. It would not be right for us to give up preaching the word of God to wait on tables.

So how do they propose a solution? Look at verse three, say, brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the spirit and wisdom whom we can appoint to this duty.

They don't say, guys, it's not that serious. I mean, in my opinion, it wasn't all that serious, but they don't say that.

They recognize, okay, we might need to deal with this. But catch it.

The apostles is to say, we aren't going to deal with this. They don't say nobody should deal with it.

It's just not we should deal with it. They acknowledge the need. They just don't take that need as their personal assignment.

Someone needed to do it. Just not them. So look at verse three. Brothers and sisters select from among you seven men of good reputation, whom we can appoint to this duty.

Verse four. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.

They recommend the body identify men and appoint them to deal with this situation. Why? Because catch this.

They already had a ministry. Their ministry was how did they define in six for prayer and the ministry of the word?

I love the order of that, by the way. He doesn't say ministry of the word and prayer. Before they could talk.

I think I've said this phrase before. I heard it from a guy in college. He said that before we talk to people about God, we talk to God about people.

Love that. So the apostles recognize that. That we are called to prayer and the ministry of the word.

And since we're called to prayer and the ministry of the word, this administrative and mercy ministry, important and necessary as it was.

It couldn't take priority over their ministry. This needed to be someone other than catch this.

The job of the word workers. Remember that phrase from last week? So they, the church, they picked seven men.

They commissioned them in verses five and six. And Luke is a very clever writer.

Luke, who wrote the letter of acts or the book of acts, I should say. Look at verse seven.

Look at how he describes the fruit of the church making this decision. Verse seven. So the word of God spread the disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly in number and a large group of priests became obedient to the faith.

As these men commit themselves to the work that they are called to and other men step up to take care of this very present and very real need.

What's the end result? Gospel ministry thrives. Why? Because those who are set apart for the ministry of the word are able to, if I can use a modern expression for a moment, they're able to stay in their lane.

And as a result, the word is unleashed for the good of God's people. This is almost universally considered.

Some people debate it, but by and large, most people consider this to be at least the origin story of the office of deacon in the church.

That this ministry comes as a result of identifying material and practical needs and meeting them.

But notice something. It's not just that they met this need and they saw this need, excuse me, and they met it.

As they do so, do you notice that God uses their ministry to preserve the unity of the church? If this wasn't dealt with, you would have had a fracture in the church between these

Greek speaking Jews and these Hebraic Jews, these Aramaic speaking Jews. You would have had a tension in the church and who knows what could have happened.

For God in his great wisdom steps in, gives the apostles the wisdom they need to ensure that whatever the problem is, it doesn't have to be a problem.

So not only are they identifying and identifying material and practical needs and meeting them, but they're also protecting and preserving the church's unity as those needs are met.

And how do they do that? They do that through supporting word work.

Again, the deacons aren't the ones doing the word work, but their labor ensures that word work can be focused on.

It might be good for us to, at this point, define what a deacon is. A good definition might help us here.

Here's a definition that I would like to run with. Deacons are people set apart by the church and its leadership for the purpose of meeting practical needs in the life of the church.

Simply put, deacons are people set apart by the church and its leadership for the purpose of meeting practical needs in the life of the church.

It's not that the practical needs are unimportant. We can't just say, well, as long as we come to church and we hear the

Bible preached and we sing some songs and we have the Lord's table, everything else will be fine. We don't need to worry about how the lights get turned on.

We don't need to figure out a place to meet. We don't need to figure out all of the structural things. It's not that those things are unimportant.

They are. It is simply that in the economy of God, in the household structure of God, which is what the word economy means, in the household structure of God, He has appointed certain people whose role it is to meet those practical needs so that those who are tasked with the spiritual needs of the body can focus on the spiritual needs.

This might be an obvious statement, but for a moment, allow me to say something that might go against what I seem to observe is treated almost like a conventional wisdom today.

You'll encounter people who often kind of tell you as a pastor, you need to be not just a preacher of God's word, not just a shepherd of souls.

You need to be an administrator. You have to be hands -on involved in all of that. I want to say this. Actually, I might put it to you that a church is hamstrung.

If that's chapter six, it's true. A church is hamstrung in its mission of making disciples, which is every church's mission.

A church is hamstrung in that mission when its leaders are overtaken with non -spiritual and administrative needs.

So remember last week, we talked about elders. We said that the primary work of elders is word work. If that work is primary, here's the question that I have.

Does church culture generally support that? I got curious this week and decided to go hunt down.

As some of you know, I studied to be a journalist, and so I know how to find new stories when

I need to. Exactly 30 years ago, 1995, the

LA Times did a study of clergymen, people in ministry. Of course, it's the

LA Times. We may debate exactly who they spoke to, but nonetheless, they did a study of clergymen.

This was in 1995, and they asked the clergymen a number of things, how do you spend your time each week?

The interesting thing that came out of this study was that they found the average clergyman spent 33 % of their time in administration.

And in fact, whoever commissioned this study did a stroke of genius because they then asked a follow -up question.

If you took Sunday out of the mix, how much time do you spend in administration? The number went from 33, a third, to 50, half.

That was in 1995. The man standing in front of you was four years old. The man standing in front of you is now 34 years old.

I can only imagine in 2024, where expectations are sky high, just how much time the average pastor spends in administration.

Here's my question. Does that reflect what we see in Acts chapter 6? Here's the thing.

Could a pastor say that in 2024 and get away with it? I don't think he could.

Here's a question that's, I think, deeper than that question. Could it be that the ineffectiveness of so many ministries that we see today, could it be, just by some stretch of the imagination,

I could be wrong, but could it be that the ineffectiveness of so many ministries could be due to not being able to focus on the thing that actually grows

God's people? Could it be that there are expectations?

Remember I talked about this when we talked about elders, the cultural frame versus the biblical frame? Could it be that the cultural frame has built into it so many, in my opinion, unnecessary and unneeded expectations that a man cannot actually focus on the ministry he's called to, which is prayer and the ministry of the word, which is more than just preaching.

Go back to last week's message. As I was preparing this week,

I realized I'm not the only one who's thought this, which is usually a good sign because I'll be honest, I lean a little bit crazy sometimes.

If you haven't noticed, I lean a little bit crazy. I already acknowledge that. So when

I hear somebody else, especially somebody of some pedigree who says something similar, I'm like, okay,

I'm not entirely crazy. One of my favorite Bible teachers was the Anglican pastor,

Dr. John Stott, who's gone home to be with the Lord now. In his commentary on the book of Acts, on this very section, he says this, it's kind of a long quote.

He says this, in particular, it is vital for the health and growth of the church that pastors and people in the local congregation learn the lesson that all

Christians are in ministry. True, pastors are not apostles, but the apostles were given the authority to formulate and teach the gospel.

Why pastors are responsible to expound the message, which the apostles bequeathed to us in the new Testament.

This John Stott, by the way, he was really smart and wrote like someone who's really smart. So bear that in mind.

Nevertheless, it is a real quote, ministry of the word to which pastors are called to dedicate their lives.

The danger for the apostles was not that they were too busy for ministry, but that they could be preoccupied with the wrong ministry.

Instead of concentrating on the ministry of the word, which would include preaching, counseling, and training, the danger was they could become overwhelmed with administration.

Sometimes in the life of a church, this is the pastor's fault. He wants to keep all the reins in his own hands. And let's be honest, there are some pastors who are like that.

I believe we have a phrase in our modern parlance, a control freak. So sometimes it's not the church culture that encourages this, it's the pastor who just likes being a control freak.

But Dr. Stott says, and sometimes the people, and sometimes it's the peoples, they want him to be, again,

John Stott has a smart people moment. He's the one, I had to look this word up. A general fact totem. I said, uh, what?

A fact totem apparently is a guy who does all kinds of jobs. Dr. Stott, I love you.

Why not just say that? In either case, the consequences are disastrous.

The standards of preaching and teaching decline since the pastor has little time to study or pray. And the lay people do not exercise their

God -given roles since the pastor does everything himself. For both reasons, the congregation is inhibited from growing into maturity in Christ.

What is needed is the basic biblical recognition that God calls different men and women to different ministries.

Then the people can ensure that their elders are set free from unnecessary administration in order to give themselves to the ministry of the word.

And the people will discover that God has given them the gifts in deacons and develop ministries appropriate to those men, end quote.

Again, I said it's a long quote, but let me just summarize. Dr. Stott basically says pastors need to, in some cases, let go of things.

Let other people take care of those. And the thing instead of is not let go of things and do nothing is let go of some things and lay hold of things you're supposed to do.

When we do that, the church thrives. I think Dr. Stott was 100 % onto something.

The first time we see this ministry in the book of Acts, it's designed by God to be a protection against other things encroaching on the needed work of the word.

There will always be the temptation, whether from outside or from within to do something else.

You know this in your own life. There's something important that needs doing.

It's semi -urgent, but what do you do? You find, do it.

You find some way to put off doing it. Our closet collapsed a few weeks ago.

Like my side of the closet. Everything that was in there just came down in the middle of the night. So I'm like, we probably need to fix that.

So find a solution. Like, okay, found a closet organizer, found some industrial shelving.

That's my job tomorrow, pray for me. But it was an interesting thing happened.

The thing arrived and then my mind started going to all the things I could use my Monday to do. Mondays are usually my day off.

I don't do church on Mondays. My mind started going to all the things I could go do instead of the thing that I need to do.

Thankfully, my friend Dale Thacker says that sometimes you tell your emotions to shut up. I had a moment like that.

I said, no, no, no, we're going to do this. So I woke up Monday morning and said, cool, let's go get this thing fixed. We all know that tyranny in our own lives where something else important or unimportant can happen where you don't take care of the thing that you must take care of.

And so what did God do in his mercy? He gave a ministry to the church that ensures that those who are called to word ministry as their primary work, that they can actually focus on that to the good of God's people.

But let's be clear though. It's not then that, okay, God just says, all right, so basically we need some people to do groundwork around here.

So let's find some people, you know, warm bodies who can do stuff and let's just put them in place.

Yes, I would argue that the ministry of the deacon is primarily in scripture there to take care of those practical day -to -day needs.

But I want you to notice something that God in his word actually has something to say about the kinds of men you put in place.

You even see in Acts chapter six, look again at Acts six. I should probably attend that, that might have been helpful. Notice what the apostles tell the people.

Acts chapter six, verse three, brothers and sisters select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the spirit and wisdom whom we can appoint to this duty.

The apostles don't just say, just find anybody. I'm gonna go like, that would be my temptation.

Just find somebody and take care of it. The apostles don't do that. The apostles say, no, no, no, find men of good reputation, men who are full of the spirit and who are full of wisdom.

Interesting, that language of full of the spirit and wisdom ties back to the old Testament when the tabernacle was being built.

It's interesting, tabernacle, a practical need, a very practical need. God doesn't tell

Moses, go build the tabernacle. He gives Moses the designs to build the tabernacle. And this is, oh, by the way, there are two men,

Bezalel and Aholiab. I have filled them with the spirit and wisdom. Same language that's used here.

See, when it comes to finding these men, okay, we've talked about the identity and function of deacon. The identity, they are men who are set apart by the church.

Their function is that they take care of the practical needs so that those in spiritual leadership can take care of spiritual needs.

Okay, fine. How do you know you found these men though? Is it just technical ability?

Is it previous work experience, age, a winning personality?

See, the temptation in a moment like this is to hear something like this and say, okay, then we need to get really pragmatic here.

Thankfully, God hasn't established a pragmatic office. He's established a spiritual one. We've seen the identity and function of deacons.

I told you three features this morning. Secondly, I want you to consider would be the qualifications for deacons. The qualifications for deacons.

So come back with me to 1 Timothy 3 and verse 8. What qualifies a man to be a deacon according to Paul?

Verse 8, deacons likewise should be worthy of respect, not hypocritical, not drinking a lot of wine, not greedy for money, holding the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.

They must also be tested first. If they prove blameless, then they can serve as deacons.

Jump down to verse 12, another qualification there. Deacons are to be husbands of one wife, managing their children and their own households competently.

Notice anything about those qualifications. Do they sound familiar to you?

Almost like a list that we just spent a month looking at. That's the point.

You caught it, you read it in verse 8, but I hope you caught it. What's the second word in verse 8? Deacons likewise.

Like who? The guys in the paragraph right above this one.

You see, you don't just appoint people to be deacons, you appoint the right people to be deacons.

There are qualifications that come to this work. And the qualifications are really not that much different.

For that of an elder, which means everything I said about elders applies here, where the two agree.

Including, remember what I said at one point? That these qualifications are not some special sets of qualifications that only super saints can achieve.

And you know, we mere mortals can only marvel at those people who can somehow meet this super standard.

No, this is just ordinary, everyday, spirit -empowered, gospel -fueled Christian living. Since we've spent a whole month treading this ground very recently,

I'm not going to spend too long. Allow me to just simply summarize as we walk through this list. So Paul says they are to be worthy of respect.

Same thing as respectable. Remember what we said that was? Living in the kind of way that enlists genuine respect from people.

Living with excellence. Not hypocritical. I would argue that's a parallel to having a good reputation.

That they're not one thing privately and another thing publicly. Or they're not one thing to one group or one thing to another. That they have a good reputation.

That they are not hypocritical. People can't say, he's like this when he's with me. Wait, what? No, he's like this when he's with me.

Like elders, they are not to be devoted to much wine. That they can't be addicted to wine or by extension, any substance that would dull their thinking.

They're not to be fond of dishonest gain. Again, what did

Paul say about elders? They're not to be lovers of money. Same idea. They're not driven by money or the desire for it.

And they're to manage their own households well. They are to model faithful leadership in their homes.

The list is really not that much different. The only major difference in the list relates to the word.

While elders are called to proclaim the word, they are required to be able to teach.

You know what Paul says in verse nine? In verse nine, he says, they are to be holding the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.

They're not necessarily required to teach, but they are required to have a strong grasp of the faith.

Now, does this mean that deacons could not teach? No, they're wrong. They have the ability and they have the opportunity.

Yeah, they can. In fact, one of the men that they pick in Acts chapter six, Philip, he preaches to the

Ethiopian eunuch. Acts chapter seven, arguably one of the, in my opinion, one of the greatest sermons ever gets given by Stephen.

Stephen is a deacon. So, they can.

It's just not a requirement of their office. But just because he's not required to teach, that doesn't mean he has no responsibility when it comes to the word of God whatsoever.

A deacon should be a man who knows the truth, a man who is devoted to that truth, and a man who lives out that truth in sincerity.

That's why Paul says, holding the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.

Deacons are not merely unpaid labor in a church. There are some churches that treat their deacons that way, but I don't think that's a spiritual way to look at it.

No, these are spiritually mature men who meet needs in the body through practical service fueled by the truth of the word of God and the gospel being the center of that.

Just like you want God -focused, gospel -centered, Bible -saturated elders, you want

God -focused, gospel -centered, Bible -saturated deacons. I said before and I'll say again, you can't at this point succumb to the siren song of pragmatism.

Yo, let's just pick guys who work and who will get the job done. No, you want men who are, catch this, a blessed combination of truth and character.

And all of that in the Spirit's power. And as that happens, they serve for the

Savior's glory. And since everything

I said about elders applies, allow me to make a point I made in our thinking about elders and deacons.

You don't get these kinds of men without an environment that fosters them.

These men don't just come from nowhere. If you're in a church, catch this, if you're in a church where people only come to consume, they only show up to serve, they only are present for the perks, if that's your church culture, can

I put it to you, you're not gonna find these kinds of men. You'll never find servant -hearted men to do this kind of work.

That would be like planting apple seeds and expecting basil plants, or basil, you guys say. No, that doesn't work.

You planted apple seeds. You're gonna get apples. I'm thankful that Redeeming Bible Fellowship isn't that way.

I thank God for the work of His Spirit through His Word, where I believe that He is cultivating in us a servant -hearted culture.

But that is not the case everywhere. Quite frankly, we are in the middle of a culture that promotes kind of a spiritual consumerism.

I was talking to a pastor yesterday, we were at a funeral, and we were having some lunch afterwards, and he was talking about just some of the challenges that he's encountered in gospel ministry.

He's been in the Valley about as long as I have, actually, about eight years. And he noted just this,

I've told some of you, you've noted the same thing. The kind of just, I go to a church, I'm not happy at this church, because this church doesn't meet this particular need

I have. So I'm here for a few months, and then I go somewhere else. And then I go there for, I might be there for a year, maybe. But then that church starts meeting my needs in a particular way.

So then I just bounce and go somewhere else. Kind of like me when I go shopping and I want a particular ingredient and I can't find it in one store.

Go to Freddy's, Freddy's doesn't have it. Okay, I'm gonna go to Walmart. Walmart doesn't have it. I'll go to Safeway. Safeway doesn't have it.

I'll go to Albertsons. Wait, Albertsons are owned by the same company. Okay, nevermind. We just kind of do that. I can't afford market of choice.

We have to kind of avoid that kind of spiritual consumerism. I thank

God that that's not the case here. And one of the things that I pray for regularly is that Lord keep it that way.

I always say, I can't control what happens out there. But I'm responsible for what happens here.

And I pray that spiritual consumerism, this kind of, I come to church to be served. I pray that that never becomes our mindset here.

That we come first and foremost to worship our great and glorious Savior Jesus.

And with the sun in our eyes, we are then able to look outward and see who can I serve. You don't have that kind of culture.

You don't find these kinds of men. All right, we've talked about the identity and function of deacons.

We've talked about the qualification of deacons. In fact, verse 10, let me not skip this verse 10. Know what he says?

They must also be tested first. And by the way, I think the language of also there is talking about the fact that elders need to be examined and tested.

And he says, well, deacons need to be tested too. They must also be tested first if they prove blameless, above reproach.

Oh, there's that language again. Nothing that you can say about them that sticks. If they prove above reproach, blameless, then they can serve as deacons.

So we thought about the identity and function of deacons. We thought about the qualification of deacons.

You'll notice from just looking at the verses up on screen, I skipped a verse. So look at verse 11.

Verse 11, wives likewise should be worthy of respect. Slanderers, self -controlled, faithful in everything.

Here's a question I asked this week, and I'm going to ask the question and we're going to answer it together. What about the women?

What do we do with verse 11? I struggled with where to put this in the flow of our passage, because it's something, if you read it, it sounds a bit like an interjection.

Like he's making this point about qualifications, qualifications, and then, oh, random line in verse 11.

And then back to qualifications in verse 12. Now, the question

I ask, which is the question I always ask when I notice stuff like that in the text, why here and why now? And so that,

I told the guys in our training group yesterday, I had to kind of break homiletical rules for a moment and kind of just find somewhere to put this.

And so this became its own section. You notice it doesn't have a Roman Yule behind it because it is kind of an aside, but we do need to deal with it because it's in the text.

So what does Paul mean here in verse 11? I'm going to put it to you that really you have two options and I'm going to do my best.

I'm going to lay out both options as fairly as I possibly can. But there are two options about what's happening in this passage.

To make this a little bit more visually interesting, I use some pictures of doors to illustrate this.

So behind door number one, Paul is talking about the wives of deacons.

That's one way you can go with this. So the Christian standard Bible, the Bible I preach from, the

English standard version, the New King James version, they all go with the option of translating the word here as wives.

And there are a few reasons why they may choose to do that. For one thing, the word is translated wives earlier in the chapter.

So remember chapter three, verse two, elder is supposed to be an overseer, should be the husband of one wife, same word.

So that's one reason he's supposed to be the husband of one wife. If the word is wife there, well, it should be wife here.

Another reason people go this way is that Paul explicitly says that women cannot lead or teach.

So these women clearly cannot be exercising an office. So it's talking about wives.

Another argument that gets made, but Paul doesn't use the word for deacons here. He just says, even if you say it's women in the general sense, he just says women or wives.

He doesn't attach the word deacon to their work. Zooming out big picture, another reason people go this way is, well, we look at Acts chapter six, where we just read.

The seven, as they become known, even in the book of Acts, the seven are all men, women aren't picked.

So what's happening here? That one view is to say that Paul is talking about the wives of deacons and the fact that the wives of deacons are going to assist their husbands in their work of service.

Behind door number two, however, you have those who say, well, this passage is talking about women serving as deacons.

So if the argument is on one side, it's talking about the wives of deacons. Door number two says, no, this is about women who are actually serving as deacons.

Here is some arguments for that. So the word literally means women.

Everyone agrees that for the most part. So the New American Standard and his little brother, the

Legacy Standard Bible, they both translate the word just as women.

Those who take the view that this is talking about women serving as deacons will point you to the fact that in verse 11, you see that word there?

Wives likewise. It's a logical connection to what just came before.

But what are you talking about just before deacons? Another argument that gets made is that if this is about the wife of deacons, why are there qualifications for deacons wives, but not for elders wives?

You know, there's nothing said about the wife of a elder in our previous passage.

At best, it's implied because he's part, she's part of the household, obviously. But hey, there's explicit qualifications given for the women who are mentioned here.

Well, if it's the wives of deacons, wouldn't you expect to see something in the greater office? Another argument that gets made here is that the qualifications that are mentioned in verse 11 are near identical to the ones for a deacon.

There's only one difference. They're not to be a slanderer, literally a gossip. On top of that, those who take this view, view number two, they would make a point that if we think about folks behind door number one, these folks, they would say are making an assumption that's not proven by the text.

The assumption is because deacons hold office in the church, that they are leaders in the church.

But technically, even Acts chapter six makes this point. Deacons are not elders.

At best, they are assistants to the elders. Finally, if you want to zoom out big picture,

Romans chapter 16, I don't have time, but I'll read it to you. Romans 16 one, it says, I commend to you. Paul is writing. He's wrapping up the letter to the

Romans. It says, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant. The word for servant is the same word for a deacon, who is a servant.

And those folks who take this view would say, or deacon. In fact, some of your Bibles, if you look at that really tiny print that you need glasses to read, it will have a little letter or something.

And it will say, or deacon of the church in Cancria. Here's this lady,

Phoebe, who is specifically tied to a local church as a servant, or they would say, or deacon of that church.

And we can't say, well, Phoebe's a man because it clearly says our sister, Phoebe. Paul didn't live in 2024.

There were only men or women. Yes, there still are.

Those are your two options though. Paul is talking about the wives of deacons, or he's talking about women serving as deacons.

So I guess the question some of you are probably wondering is, well, Kofi, where do you land on this? Cause I had to land somewhere.

Personally, I think door number two makes the most sense. For a few reasons. Number one, the view that says that these can't be, uh, the women mentioned here.

And I think that I love the CSB, but I think it gets it wrong. I think the new American standard is right. Just translate the word as women. Those who say that, okay, the women here are, can't be deacons because deacons are leadership.

I'm sorry. That's a flawed understanding of the office of a deacon. A deacon is not a leader in the church.

Elders are leaders in the church. They are the ones who, remember we did that big picture of Christian leadership in week one of our study of 1

Timothy 3, 1 -7. They are the ones who are committed the rule of the church. They stand before that.

Remember that Greek word? They stand before the church. That's not given to deacons to do.

That's given to elders to do. Yes, deacons hold office in the church, but they are not leadership in a church.

So that's the, I think that's the first problem. I think if you clear that, actually, you don't really have a problem with women serving as deacons because they are simply serving in the church.

On a more practical level, there are areas of service where women are at an advantage in service where men aren't.

So let me use a rather, I hope humorous example. Do you want me planning your baby shower?

Tiffany, do you want me planning your baby shower? No, actually there's one aspect you probably do.

The food. I will make a meatball slider that will rock your world.

Trust me. Like you probably want me to manage the food.

You don't want me to manage pretty much any other aspect of that. There are other ways in which

God has gifted women to serve in ways which men can't. Can I pause for a moment?

Sometimes in church culture, we treat women like they're second -class citizens. That's not true. Yes, they may not be called by God to exercise leadership in the church, but that doesn't mean that they are useless.

There are lots of areas where women can serve where I can't. There are perspectives that women bring to the table.

My wife is a good example of this. There are perspectives that Laura brings to the table about things that I don't, that I don't often see.

Why? Because that's how God has made us. I'm a man. Everything to me is a project to be solved.

Men, talk to me. Am I on the money here? Like, you know, the whole thing, women want you to listen.

Men want you to solve things. Give me something to solve. If you're going to tell me about something, you're telling me for me to do something about it.

I have to work really hard. I feel like I'm a good listener generally. But I have to work hard at being a good listener.

Give me something to do. I can do that. Sometimes this is going through something.

She needs a sympathetic ear to someone who says, I understand. Sometimes, let's be honest, men, we aren't good at that.

And there's not a flaw. It's just the way God has made us. So I think there's a textual reason or theological reason.

We kind of confuse the office with leadership. I think there's a practical reason. I think there's a historical reason too.

Actually, you look at church history. There's a long line of not just weird, quack people, but faithful people.

And there's historical record of churches having women serving as deacons. So let me give you some examples.

There was a governor in the Roman world. His name was Pliny the Younger. He was governor of a region.

Actually mentioned in the New Testament, the region of Bithynia. He wrote a letter to the emperor Trajan in the year 111.

This is an empire -wide persecution was happening at this point. This is the letter.

Pliny was not a Christian. But this is a letter he wrote to the emperor Trajan in 111, talking about basically, you told me to make life hard for these

Christians. I did it. This is what he says, quote, Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses.

And this tells you his view of the Christian faith. He says, but I discovered nothing else but depraved excessive superstition. That's how

Rome viewed Christianity. John Chrysostom, I've mentioned him in our study of First Timothy, the golden mouth preacher.

He said this, quote, Some have thought that First Timothy 311 is said of women generally, but it is not so.

For why should Paul introduce anything about women to interfere with his subject? He is speaking of those who hold the rank of deaconesses.

John Calvin, I think we all agree John Calvin was no liberal. John Calvin, deaconesses were appointed not to soothe

God by chantings or intelligible murmurs and to spend the rest of their time in idleness, but to perform a public ministry of the church toward the poor and to labor with all zeal, assiduity, which

I don't know what that word means. I didn't check this week, but I'm guessing has something to do with zeal and diligence in offices of charity.

My historical hero, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, he said this in a sermon, It would be a great mercy if God gave us the privilege of having many sons who preach the gospel and many daughters who are all eminent in the church as school teachers, deaconesses, missionaries, and the like.

Some of you have a MacArthur study Bible in the room. If you read his note on this passage, he takes the view that he's talking about women serving as deacons.

In our camp, theologically speaking, we rightly believe that men and women function in different roles in the life of the church.

But I will put it to you that this is a role that I believe that women can and should hold in the life of the church.

Now, for what it's worth at Redeemer, we have two deacons, both of whom are men. But that was not a statement of where I landed on this issue, because I think this is probably the first time

I've publicly spoken about where I land on this issue. But I do think it's a conversation for, especially those of you who call this church your church home, who are covenant members of this church, might be good for us to have a conversation about this at some point.

But even if we don't, I personally think as I've studied this and I've studied this for a while, I think this makes the most sense of the text and of the history of God's people.

That women can serve in this office if we rightly understand what this office is. That deacons are not kind of...

Some of you would have come from church traditions where this was the norm, where deacons basically functioned as elders. You have a pastor and a board of deacons and the board of deacons kind of are the ones who actually have power over the...

Well, if that's how your deacons work, yeah, probably they should all be men.

They should also just either be made deacons or sat down, that's a whole other conversation. But if you rightly understand that, okay, these are not leadership in the church, they are assistants to the leadership, meeting practical needs so they can focus on the spiritual needs.

All of this, I think, comes together. All right, I'm almost done. I've got just one point and I'll be happy here. We talked about the identity of deacons, the identity and function of deacons, we talked about the qualification for deacons.

Why should somebody want to do this? I mean, we might understand wanting to be an elder, but is there any payoff to being a deacon?

Is there any benefit to being a deacon? Paul might have something to say to that. Consider with me, finally, as we conclude this morning, the reward for deacons.

The reward for deacons. Look at verse 13. Paul says,

For those who have served well as deacons acquire a good standing for themselves and great boldness in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

Is there a payoff to being a deacon? Absolutely there is. And Paul actually says there's a twofold payoff for being a deacon.

There's a benefit that comes from the family of faith, from God's people, and there's a benefit that comes from God himself.

As far as the family of faith goes, as people serve, as deacons, excuse me, serve the people of God, they acquire for themselves, you see the language he uses here?

A good standing for themselves. Literally a good reputation.

As they serve, their service is supposed to elicit respect from those in God's house.

As I studied this this week, my mind went to two deacons from my own past. Let me tell you a little bit about them.

One was called Reg. One I know simply as Mr. Hunt. I got to know

Reg because he was the man on the door every Wednesday night at Bible study. He was one of the deacons.

And every Wednesday night you see Reg. By the time you see him you say, evening fella, evening.

That was his greeting of choice. I don't think there was a kinder servant in all the world than Reg.

One year, it hit me just how much this man did. At our church, they took communion very seriously.

And so if you were in membership at the church, they would write you a communion card that basically gave you admission to the

Lord's table. And, you know, these cards would be handwritten with the names of the people who were partaking in communion.

And so one year, you know, it's usually had an amount about December, January. I see

Reg and Reg goes, I wrote your name today. What? Because here

I write all those. Our church had hundreds of people. He was handwriting, very beautiful handwriting, the names on every single one of these communion cards.

That day it hit me, I was like, dear Lord, this man serves. Always, I told you, every

Wednesday without fail, you see him at church. Serving. And always with a smile.

It was an old, very much an older man when I met him. Never complained about serving.

Always happy to do. Then there was Mr. Hunt. I'm 34 years old, married with two kids and a mortgage, and I still can't call that man by his first name, even though I know what it is.

I mean, he probably wouldn't mind. I just can't do it. Just out of the respect I have for him. To this day, he's still

Mr. Hunt. Mr. Hunt was another deacon at the church. He served in a lot of ways.

Our church used to have a, the church I was at at the time, used to have an annual conference every year. People came from all over the, actually the world, not just the

UK. And he would be the one to organize that. Talk about ministry with excellence.

I learned that from him. Making sure there were stations throughout the building where people could get water if they needed.

Made sure that was done. You could pay and have lunch. He was making sure all the lunches were put there. There was never food running out.

He's, at some point, manning registration tables himself. He was a liaison for our church.

Our church supported a number of overseas pastors who had studied at the church, which meant he was on planes a lot.

In fact, one of the first times I met him, he told me about his visits to Ghana. We share a mutual love for a non -alcoholic drink called

Supermall. But he'd traveled so many places, tireless in serving the

Lord, serving the Lord and doing the Lord's work. But yeah, he liked to work.

But that man had one of the most tender hearts for Christ I've ever seen. On a few occasions, he would fill the pulpit on Monday nights.

And when he would fill the pulpit, he could never do without his voice breaking at some point. As he talked about the

Lord Jesus. I learned more from,

I started calling Reg, Uncle Reg, towards the end of my time at the church. I learned more from Uncle Reg and Mr.

Hunt than I did from some pastors at that point in my life. Quite frankly, if I can be a tenth of those men,

I'd have done some good on this planet. Mr. Hunt isn't a deacon today. Uncle Reg is home with Jesus.

But there aren't a lot of people in this world that I would gladly say I'd take a bullet for. I would for those men. Their faithful service.

Everyone in the church knew, these men, and they weren't the only ones, they were just the ones

I knew personally. But these men, not there for real. Men of conviction, men of character, men of faithfulness.

They earned a good standing with me and I suspect countless others. Not because they were great men.

I mean, I think they were actually. Mr. Hunt had a, has, he saw life, has a very active sense of humor, as does his wife, who is absolutely hilarious.

His son is actually a good friend of mine. But it wasn't because they were great people or they had winning personalities.

It's because they served Jesus and we could all see it. Paul says that a faithful deacon will acquire a good standing in the presence of God's people.

He also says, did you notice it in the passage? That they get for themselves great boldness, literally assurance in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

Now let's be clear, he's not saying that your good works give you assurance. That's as the old song says, my faith is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. That's the ground of our assurance. That's the objective truth that we plant our feet on and we rest our weary heads on in this tiresome world.

But out of that reality of what Jesus has done for us, in those people, you will see the fruit of good works.

And where best to see that then in those who are specifically set apart for the ministry of serving the body in practical ways.

Those who are the most committed to Christian service in the life of a body are often going to be some of the greatest demonstrations of the work of the

Spirit in the life of a believer. As servants in God's house, catch this, they reflect the greatest servants of all.

Because it's kind of interesting, I don't have time to read it because I've overshot my time this morning already. Um, Romans chapter 15, verses seven through nine, if you're taking notes, the

Bible refers to Jesus as a servant. Want to guess what the word there is?

Word for deacon. The Bible that says that Jesus is the great shepherd.

He is, 1 Peter 2, 21, the shepherd and overseer of our soul. Also says that Jesus is the great deacon, if you will.

That through the service of giving his life, Paul's point in Romans 15 is that he brought Jew and Gentile together in one new humanity.

Catch this. Deacons, when they serve well, they are a reflection of the ministry of the great servants.

The one who came to serve, not to be served. The one who gave all that he had right down to his own life.

The one who even now, catch this, have you ever thought about this? Jesus serves the church in a sense, that he's

Ephesians one, that he has ordered all things for the church. In the church, elders might reflect the authority of Christ, but deacons reflect his humility and his service.

And I put it to you as I close that when you have these two offices functioning as they should, elders leading the church by their example and by the ministry of the word, and deacons supporting the work of those elders by serving the practical needs of the body.

When you have those two married together, that is how the body thrives.

And I think we can all agree, we want a body that thrives, right? Well, if you want a body that thrives, you need not just elders, you need deacons as well.

Let me pray and we'll come to the Lord's table. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness to us.

We thank you for your word, which reminds us that it is a good thing to serve.

That as Jesus himself said, the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for men.

Father, we thank you for the deacons we have in our body who tirelessly serve our body in so many ways. Pray that their ministry would be a great reflection, a pale reflection to be sure, but a great reflection nonetheless of the great servant, the great deacon, our

Lord Jesus, who gave of himself so that we who are far from him could be born into relationship with him.

You with us as we come before your table now, and we ask all this in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen.