Set Aside to Serve | Acts 6, 1 Timothy 3

So reading from Acts 6 and we're going to start at verse 1.

Hear the word of the Lord.

In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among

them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the

daily distribution of food.

So the twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, it would not be right for us to

neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.

Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the

Spirit and wisdom.

We will turn the responsibility over to them and we will give our attention to prayer and

the ministry of the word.

This proposal pleased the whole group.

They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit.

So Philip, Procarus, Niconore, Tymon, Parmenes and Nicholas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism.

They presented these men to the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them.

So the word of God spread.

The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly and a large number of priests became

obedient to the faith.

I'm reading from 1 Timothy 3, 8-13.

In the same way, deacons are to be worthy of respect, sincere, not indulging in much

wine and not pursuing dishonest gain.

They must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.

They must first be tested and then if there is nothing against them, let them serve as

deacons.

In the same way, the women are to be worthy of respect, not malicious talkers, but temperate

and trustworthy in everything.

A deacon must be faithful to his wife and must manage his children and his household

well.

Those who have served well gain an excellent standing and great assurance in the faith

in Christ Jesus.

Good morning everyone.

If we haven't met before, my name is Michael.

I am pastor here of Grace Christian Church.

It's absolutely delightful to have you all with us.

And just a note for the parents, after the sermon we would ask you to collect your little

ones but they'll be waiting at the top of the stairs for you because we need them to

be signed out.

So we want them to witness what will be happening in our midst this morning which is a very

special thing that is happening in the life of our church.

Before we get into the texts that we have before us this morning, would you please pray

with me in asking God to help us understand them?

Father God, we thank you that you have gathered us together for another week to come around

your word, to be edified, to be lifted up, to be shown Christ.

And this morning Lord we ask that as we are looking at a particular subject, a particular

office that you've given to the church, we would ask that we would all see the hope that

we have in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We ask for this in His name and for His sake.

Amen.

It is great to have you on this very special day where we will be ordaining Dave Dunstall

and Joel Gritter as our new deacons.

Now before we go ahead and lay hands on these men, I thought that this would be a good opportunity

to have a look at why we have this very important office in the church in the first place.

And I want to do this because we don't primarily want to gather together today to ordain these

men, though it's a very exciting thing to do.

No, we primarily want to give glory to God who is doing His continual work among us here

at Grace Christian Church as it is He who makes Himself known through this particular

office and the servants that He raises up to take it.

So if you have your Bibles with you this morning, it would be handy to have them open at the

passages that were read out by the lovely wives of these men, being Acts 6 and 1 Timothy

3, and I'm aiming at just two things for you to understand before we ordain our deacons

this morning.

Two things.

The first thing I want you to see is what is a deacon?

And the second thing that I want you to see is what does a deacon do?

That's right, two very simple points that I want you to understand before we ordain

Dave and Joel.

What is a deacon and what does a deacon do?

So with that said, let's pick our texts up.

Sorry, if you have your Bibles with you this morning, we'll look at our first text being

Acts 6.

These are the words of the Lord.

In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among

them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the

daily distribution of food.

So the twelve gathered, all the disciples together and said it wouldn't be right for

us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in order to wait on tables.

Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the

spirit and wisdom.

We'll turn this responsibility over to them and we'll give our attention to prayer and

the ministry of the Word.

This proposal pleased the whole group and they chose seven guys and you heard those

names wonderfully read out for us just before.

I won't go through them again.

They presented them to the apostles, they prayed for them and they laid their hands

on them and we read, so the Word of God spread and the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased

rapidly.

Church, the first thing that I want you to see here is that a deacon is a person who

has been raised by God and recognised by the Church to physically serve others.

That's what deacons are raised up for, it's to physically serve others.

And I want to have a look at the context of Acts to help us understand this role a little

more clearly.

You see, something incredible had happened in the early Church.

Acts tells us that after the ascension of Jesus that the Holy Spirit was poured out

and Peter then delivered one of the most powerful sermons to which around 3,000 people were

saved and then added to the local congregation there in Jerusalem.

So what you have is a picture of an absolute explosion of people on a tiny little group

of disciples that needed to get themselves in order quick smart.

Think about it.

Jesus started off as a lone rabbi in Galilee, he then collected people from little Jewish

villages to be his disciples but by the time you get to the end of his earthly ministry

and crucifixion he's all but abandoned by a few people.

Granted after his resurrection he appears to over 500 people but then we're told in

Acts 1 in that first prayer meeting in the upper room that there was only about 120 people.

So that growth of 3,000 in just one day is absolutely awesome.

I mean we've seen wonderful and beautiful growth here at Grace Christian Church in just

the last year.

But imagine if you will for a moment if we went from this little flock here this morning

to an added 3,000 people in just a day, you could imagine it.

We'd be needing to have a think about all the various things that go along with it.

And that was the same here with the church in Acts.

They were overjoyed that the Lord had added so many to their number that in fact we read

that they praised the Lord with glad and sincere hearts in Acts 2.

It was an occasion and an occasion for celebration but as we know and have experienced on such

a minute level here more people mean more work.

It's inevitable.

Now something that I want you to keep in mind here, we don't all come from the same walks

of life and that was no different in the early church.

There were some who were very wealthy so that they could sell all that they had to help

others and others needed to be helped.

Because not everyone who was saved into the church was materially well off.

And so we read that there was very generous people in the congregation who knew that about

their new found brothers and sisters in the Lord.

And they wanted to help them.

They wanted to help them practically and make sure that they were taken care of.

But there was a problem.

And that problem was the sheer number of people who were being added to the church daily.

Now hear me loud and clear this morning.

The problem wasn't the people in and of themselves.

People being saved and added to the church is awesome.

Bring it on we say.

Yes and amen.

Now the problem was that some in the church were starting to be neglected because of the

incredible rate of growth.

It's as we read here.

The problem of neglect in this particular context was between two groups of widows.

We don't have all the time to go into this this morning but it seems that the Hebraic

or Jewish Christians who lived in Jerusalem were keenly aware that they served a God who

deeply cares for widows.

We see that all through the Old Testament.

And they must never be neglected by God's people.

So the Christians who had that background in Judaism were on the front foot of making

sure that those with no husband who were coming into the church were looked after by the church.

However the Hellenistic Jews, those that most likely didn't live in Jerusalem who were Greek

speaking, well for whatever reason they didn't receive the same treatment.

They were being overlooked.

And so we see a problem.

And that problem was a great need for something to happen to meet those specific needs.

There was growth and that's absolutely amazing.

The Lord, He loves to add to His church.

However the church was keenly aware that looking after the vulnerable, no matter how big the

church gets, no matter how quick it's growing, is also extremely important to the Lord we

serve as well.

And they had to do something about it.

So what we see is that the apostles, they gather all the disciples together to sort

this problem out.

Now notice it if you will, the problem wasn't that the church was being neglected spiritually.

But some were being neglected physically.

But there is a real danger here that I want you to see.

They were in real danger at this moment in time of neglecting the Word and prayer so

that people could be physically looked after.

That was a real danger but notice instead of just continuing to focus on spiritual matters

and ignore all the physical needs among them, the apostles, those who were responsible,

who were ordained and tasked for feeding and leading the flock of God, they looked at holding

the two things together.

But it's simply those who were responsible for serving the church in the ministry of

the Word understood that they couldn't leave.

No, they shouldn't leave that great responsibility in order to meet the needs of those among

them physically, though they knew that physical needs should never be neglected.

And this is incredible if you think about it.

On the one hand, it lets you know how important, how vitally important the preaching of the

Word for the people of God is.

But on the other hand, it tells you that people's physical needs are important to our God too.

And so the leaders appeal to the church for godly men to take on the task of looking after

God's people in a physical sense so they could continue looking after God's people in a spiritual

sense.

What we have here at church isn't an either or situation.

And this is important for us to note and apply here at Grace Christian Church, because we

have to be very, very careful of not leaning one way or the other.

I mean, if we were all about serving the community of Armidale and making ourselves the best

community centre that this city has ever seen at the expense of neglecting the Word of God,

then all we're doing is simply turning ourselves into a Christian fun centre where we don't

actually have any good news to tell people or to disciple people in.

Waving people to hell whom we've fed, clothed and warded.

Is there great need in our community?

Absolutely.

And does God care about great needs in our community?

Absolutely.

But not at the expense of His Word being neglected, because we are told it is the gospel that

is the power unto salvation for everyone who believes.

And that faith, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word.

The Word's preached, it's vitally important for both the people of God and the community

around us.

But for a moment this morning, let's think about this whole situation from the other

way around.

Notice that the apostles don't say, you know, people's souls, they're so much more important

than their bodies and we're just going to leave them to do the best they can do because

we need to preach the Word.

That's not what we see here.

And so we must be aware that those churches are called to keep our doctrine pure and hold

fast to the truth of the gospel, that we don't in the doing neglect meeting people's real

physical needs with the people that we're responsible for.

Neither one of these scenarios that I just gave is biblical when it comes to the church.

In other words, it's not an either or situation.

It's a both and.

Both and.

We proclaim the gospel with boldness, we disciple people in the Word of God, however at the

same time we give our lives to make the gospel known among our own people and those out there

in our community with all we are and do.

It's a wonderful picture that's set out for us here.

And that's what we see here.

The apostles say we're going to give our whole attention to the preaching of the gospel and

to prayer, but we know there are real physical needs among us.

And so we're going to raise up a whole class of offices in the church whose fundamental

job is to serve those real physical needs.

It's a wonderful picture of the church in action.

Not just in Word, which grows the church, which matures the church, but indeed which

shows the people of God tangible love.

It's a wonderful picture.

Brothers and sisters, deacons are a vital part of that picture.

They're a vital part of the ministry of the gospel in this world.

They're specific men chosen by God and confirmed by the people of God, chosen to meet the needs

of the people so that the Word of God might be proclaimed with boldness and without hindrance.

There's so much more than waiters.

No, God wants us to know that these men who were raised up for this position, they're

spirit-filled men, men who are full of his wisdom, men that hold fast to the truth of

the gospel and meet certain Christ-like qualifications.

Paul clearly lays them out for us in our next text, if you have that before you, in 1 Timothy

3.

In the same way, deacons are to be worthy of respect, sincere, not indulging in much

wine and not pursuing dishonest gain.

They must hold, keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.

They must first be tested and then, if there's nothing against them, let them serve as deacons.

A deacon must be faithful to his wife and must manage his children and his household

well.

Those who have served well gain an excellent standing and great assurance in their faith

in Christ Jesus.

Now, I hope you've seen this morning as we've looked at Acts, certain men are called aside

to function in the role of deacon.

However, the way in which that service is carried out varies from time to time and even

from church to church because not all situations are the same for all time.

I mean, we don't have an Acts 6 situation on our hands just yet.

I'm speaking hopefully, of course.

But in saying that, the qualification for deacon, that's permanent for all time.

And it's here in these verses that I've just read out that we have those qualifications

spelt out for us.

In other words, what we have here is what the church, we, the church, the people of

God are to look for in a man who would serve us in this way.

We're going to have a look at this list in just a moment, but I just want you to have

a couple of things on your radar before we dive into it.

First, you might notice that the whole thing begins with in the same way.

Those words, in the same way.

And what Paul is doing here, he's focusing us in on just like the elders, the deacons

are to reflect the character of Christ as well.

In other words, like elders, deacons are to be godly, self-controlled Christian men qualified

by their desire to serve and by their embrace of the Christian faith and their proven character.

They desire to serve.

That's important, but notice this, they're also characterized by a life that is being

shaped by the work and the grace of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

And it's evident for the church to see.

If I was to say that simply, there's a list of qualifications that the deacon is to have

on their CV so that the church can see the grace of God at work in his life and recognize

them for the role.

Second, there's also a difference with the elders in that deacons aren't set aside to

lead the church or teach.

That is a role that is reserved for elders.

As we've seen this morning, the deacons assist the elders so they can be given over to prayer

and preaching while the deacons meet the practical needs of the people.

I think what Paul's giving us here is a picture of two ordained officers in the church working

together to serve the church in both word and deed.

I like to think about it, it's going to fall a bit short, but I like to think about it

like a footy team where each guy has a different role on the field.

It's not like the elders are on the sidelines screaming at the deacons to go and kick a

goal and the congregation is just cheering on from the stands.

No, each person in the game is ordained in their position, working together to get the

job done.

To put that another way, elders and deacons work together in complementary roles for the

church.

The elders lead the people in their position while the deacons serve the people in theirs.

I think we're meant to have a picture of two ordained officers working together to serve

the church in word and deed.

So with that said, let's have a quick look at the qualifications.

First, the deacons need to be honourable men.

That means that they're genuine, authentic men that are not given over to gossip or slander.

We also want to see that they're self-controlled, meaning they don't flip out in anger or have

a problem with addiction, so as to hinder them from displaying the glory of Christ and

the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives, both in and outside of the church.

Second, they're to be a sacrificial giver.

What I mean by that is that they're not looking to the office to pursue dishonest gain.

We had a look at this in Acts 6 just before, didn't we?

The role, it requires that these people are going to have some part in the distribution

of the funds.

And so we don't want someone who's in that role, who's looking for personal gain, walking

away with something in their own pockets.

We're all called to be generous people.

God wants you and me to be generous people, which means that the deacons will have a certain

amount of responsibility with our money that is given in order to help other people.

We want to be able to trust these men and see that this money, these gifts, these sacrifices

are used in the best, most God-honouring way.

Third, they're to be devoted to the Word of God.

Now, as I said before, that doesn't mean that they need to teach the Word of God, but it

certainly doesn't mean that they shouldn't teach the Word of God either.

In fact, in that list of men's names that were written, read out for us just before

by Kayla, one of the men went on to be what is known as an evangelist.

And the scene is that he wonderfully explained the truth of the gospel from the scriptures

to a man who had questions.

And so we want men who aren't just in love with people and serving them, but in love

with God and wanting to know Him more and more so that when, not if, but when the opportunities

present themselves, that they're able to lead people to Jesus in the right way, in a truthful

way.

Church, we all need to know the Word of God.

We're all called to share the Word of God with others.

This includes the deacons.

However, we're not expecting them to get up from week to week and open the scriptures

for you.

Fourth, and certainly not least, there to be a good husband, a good father who leads

his children in a godly way.

I want to hit on something important here.

Does this mean that we are looking for all these qualities in a man with perfection and

without sin?

Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

Because if we were looking for perfection, we wouldn't actually have any deacons or elders

at all.

In fact, if Paul wanted this perfectly figured out, the church would have gone without elders

and deacons for 2,000 years if it was required that we meet all of these qualifications perfectly.

Church, we're all in the same boat when it comes to sin.

We're all in the same situation when it comes to pouring our heart before God when we fall

short and when we make mistakes.

The Bible isn't asking for a perfect man here, but it is giving us things to look for in

a man that by day by day, season by season, that they are looking more like Christ our

saviour.

We are not looking for perfection here at Grace Christian Church.

It's not the point of what Paul has said, but it is to say when we raise up leaders,

we want men who are working with the grace of God to reflect the glory of Christ as best

as possible.

And so we have these things given to us so that we know what to look for in certain men

among us whom God is raising in our midst to serve us in this way.

Church, I began our time this morning by telling you that I essentially wanted to answer two

questions.

Those two questions were quite simply, what is a deacon and what does a deacon do?

Well, let me, as we've gone through these two passages and as we bring them together,

let me try and summarise what I think we see.

Deacons are godly men raised by God for a specific role, whom are confirmed by the people

and ordained by the elders so that they might meet physical needs of the church and thus

support the elders in the ministry of the word.

To sum that up and put it as simply as I can, deacons are specific servants that serve in

a specific way.

You may have noticed that I also began our time this morning by saying to you that we

just didn't want to come together today to ordain deacons.

No, we want to glorify God who is doing his continual work among us here at Grace Christian

Church by making himself known through this office and the servants that he has raised

up for it.

And so I want to leave you with a very specific scene that happened that was recorded by the

apostle John.

You might already know the story towards the end of Christ's earthly ministry, he washed

his disciples' feet and then he said to them, I'm going to give you a new commandment, love

one another.

However, what does he go on to say?

Our Lord goes on to say, love one another as I have loved you, because by this love,

everyone will know that you're my disciples.

I want you to hear that.

We as the people of God are to live and to serve and to love one another, not just in

word but in like manner as to our Lord.

And by doing this, by working this love out, our Lord says we will be witnesses to the

world around us that we are truly disciples of Jesus Christ.

This is a phenomenal grace that comes from the work of the Holy Spirit.

We are all sorts of people from all sorts of places, from all sorts of walks of life.

We come from different backgrounds, different economic circumstances, different experiences,

different nations, different cultures, yet we all have one Father in heaven, one Spirit.

We are all gathered in the one Lord Jesus Christ because of the unmerited favour, the

unmerited love, the grace of God alone.

Which means if you look around right now in this room, in this very place, in this very

congregation there is a bond that ties us together, a bond that by God's Holy Spirit

unites us all.

Which we are to work out in love and service to one another.

Brothers and sisters, the deacons, they take this command and they work at making that

kind of love visible in the life of the church.

They're men who are raised up among us, who lead us in showing us what tangible love to

the congregation looks like so that the world might sit up and pay attention.

Our Lord makes it clear love always expresses itself out in real tangible ways and that

is the gospel if we think about it.

The gospel isn't God saying I love you alone but serving us, serving us in that he came

to the desperate, to the needy and washed us wider than snow in his own precious blood

and then clothed us in the righteousness of his perfect work.

The love of God for his people is tangible and in God's kindness he raises up deacons

to give us a picture of that kind of love among us that we are all, as the church, all

of us are working out.

As I've already said, the role of the deacon is vital to the fellowship of believers and

it complements and supports the elders ministry of prayer and preaching the word.

We are so, so blessed that God, God, the living God has given us these men to help lead us

in this, lead us in these physical needs among us.

Let's pray and then we'll stand and sing.

Can you please go and collect your little ones if they're downstairs and then I'll ask

the elders come up and help lead me in ordaining Joel and Dave.

Thank you, team.