This text this morning is from Acts chapter six, and we're reading the first seven verses. And beloved, once again, this is God's wholly inspired and inerrant word. Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the 12 summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up preaching of the word to serve tables. Therefore brothers, pick out from amongst you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we will devote to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and so they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicholas, the proselytite of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed, and they laid their hands upon them. And the word of God continued to increase, And the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you and we thank you for your word and we thank you for those deacons that were set apart even in this ancient time for the work in your church. And we thank you for the continuing work of the deacons that we see in the church today. Father, I pray that you would bless the reading of your word and that you would use this word to strengthen us in our faith. Father, I pray too that you would also use this word if there are those here who do not have faith to call them to faith. They might repent of their sins and turn towards Christ. Father, I pray that your mercies would be upon us and that you would do a work through this in Jesus name and that you would do it either in spite of me or through me. And so indeed we pray in Jesus name, amen. this is a passage of scripture that in terms of the government of the church is very important. So I wanna begin not by focusing so much on this early church government, but I wanna talk to you about our own church government just briefly. and then look back at the church government. My purpose in that is showing you some consistency in terms of what we're doing today and what we find being done in this early church that the apostles were forming, at least this early Christian church that the apostles were forming. So as we look at our church constitution, we see that there are officers in the church. In our particular church tradition, in our constitution, we recognize that there are four offices. There's the office of the elder, there's the office of the deacon, there's the office of the trustee, and then there's the office of the pastor. We have two elders, three deacon, six trustees, and then you have both Chuck and I serving respectively as me, both pastor in name and action. And right now Chuck, pastor in terms of the work that he does, recognizing the word pastor is just another word for a shepherd, but not necessarily so much in name for him. Four offices. Now these offices, if you've been around me for a little while, if you've certainly been part of church council conversations, you know that these offices go back to the German reform tradition. They go back to Zacharias Ursinus, who is the guy primarily responsible for writing the Heidelberg Catechism. And our Sinus not only argued for four offices, he actually argued for a fifth office. And that fifth office would be kind of an occasional office. And he would call it an evangelist. In our case, we would call it more of a missionary, somebody who's raised up in the life of this church and is called, and that call is recognized by the church leadership and confirmed, and we would, we would send and commission them off as an evangelist, or again, as a missionary to that call wherever else in the world that God happens to be taking them. And certainly we've been blessed with a number of people in the life of this church, even since I've been here in terms of still ongoing work, of people that have been called not just to a short-term mission, But it's a long-term ministry in other places overseas, long-term evangelistic ministries and things along those lines. So we celebrate that and give God praise for that. But somebody that was part of the German tradition would recognize that as an occasional office, something that may not necessarily be present always in the life of the church, but is indeed something that is to be set aside. Okay, so we have elders, deacons, trustees, and the pastor, again, with the option of an evangelist in there. And I think it's important for us to kind of start here recognizing that while we've kind of got a couple words here that aren't always gonna be spoken of, there's certainly some biblical roots here and some historic and theological grounds for arguing for the structure of government that we have. So why is that really important for us today? Well, first of all, probably foremost is a reminder to you that these men, these 11 men that fill these offices that are voting members of the church council, Chuck and I serve as advisors to the church council spiritually. So these 11 men who are on this church council, they have, and set apart by you for the responsibility of making decisions. Decisions that affect you, decisions that affect this church, decisions that affect the direction this church takes from a week to week and sometimes a year to year basis. So these men deserve your prayers. These men deserve your respect. They have a very difficult and important job in the life of the church. And so I think it's important for us to kind of be reminded of that, that this is not, you know, in terms of our church structure, something where everybody always gets their own vote on things. This is something where you vote for men to make the vast majority of the decisions on your behalf. Yes, we have committees and committees serve in particular areas where people are particularly passionate about, and both men and women sometimes serve on the committees. The reason for that is simply on the basis that these committees ultimately are servants of the council. So they are under the oversight of the council and the council ultimately has the right to affirm or reject what the committees say that they would like to do or like not to do. So again, it's important for us to be aware of our own church government so that we're aware of the things that get done. And again, these decisions get made either by the council as a whole or by portions of the council based on the kind of thing that's in question and the particular office that really has oversight of that. That's the first reason that's important, just to be reminded. Second reason it's important is because it's that time of the year. Some of you are gonna get the proverbial knock on the door, and you'll have somebody from the nominating committee saying something like, we have been praying about it, and we believe that you have the spiritual gift to serve as either an elder, a deacon, or a trustee in the life of the church, and we would ask that you prayerfully consider stepping up to that role or at least allowing your name to be placed on the ballot. Sometimes come January in terms of our congregational meetings, we have an election that can take place. And sometimes you'll be voting to affirm the person running for the open seat on the church council. But nevertheless, there is that election coming up. And right now that nominating committee is looking. So that being said, I would encourage you if they come and ask to pray about it and pray seriously about serving perhaps in that way in the life of the church. And if you're not asked, pray for them. Pray for the committee themselves because they sometimes have a difficult job and pray for those that they are speaking to because they need to prayerfully make that decision because it's a big decision to make. Third reason that it is important. is because again, this passage of scripture deals with what we would call the office of the deacon. Now, there are other passages in the book of Acts that deal with the office of the elder. And although the office of the elder, we don't really see kind of structured and introduced as much as this one, it's more of an assumed office it's gonna be. And I'm gonna get back to that idea as well. But again, here we see this office of the deacon really being established in the Christian context of the church. Now, the context of this passage is pretty straightforward. The church has been growing, and as a result of the growth, there's a problem. And we've seen problems in the life of the church. There's Annias and Sapphira that we've already seen really at the beginning of the previous chapter. And now we've got another problem. You see, there's widows and some of the widows are Greek and some of the widows are Hebrew. And it seems to be that the Hebrew widows have been getting some favoritism and the Greek widows have been left without and sometimes overlooked. And thus those who are of Greek extraction are complaining because Well, they're getting the short end of the deal. And so this complaint then comes to the apostles and that's verse one. Now, to understand the context of this complaint and what is going on here in terms of what the church is practicing, you need to understand a few things, both about the ancient cultures in general and also about the ancient Jewish culture. Because in ancient cultures in general, there was no such thing as government subsidies or Medicaid or Social Security or public welfare or any of those kinds of things that many times people really rely upon when they get up into their older years and are not able to work a job productively. And so we're used to resources being had that they didn't have back in those ancient times. In fact, the reality is it was your family's responsibility to take care of you. What if you didn't have family around? What if you didn't have family at all? then you are oftentimes in trouble. One of the things that has really struck me in the time that I've spent in Eastern Europe is the fact of how oftentimes there are widows on the streets. I mean, prior to the fall of communism, one of the I don't want to call it a strength of communism, but one of the things that was part of communism is there was certain provision made for those who were unable to take care of themselves. It wasn't necessarily the best provision in the world, but it was provision nonetheless. And when communism fell, that ended and many of the younger families hadn't been trained and taught to take care of their elders. And so oftentimes you would see these old women, and oftentimes you still see these old women on the streets selling, whether it be cigarettes or matches or dried fish or something along those lines, just trying to make a little bit of a living so that they can feed themselves and provide for their physical care. That's the ancient world in much of the world today. Ancient Israel was no different in the sense that it was expected that families would take care of their own, but they had a provision for those who were poor, those who were widows, those who were orphans and those who were aliens or foreigners traveling in their land who might not have family to provide for them. And this is part of God's law for the people. And you especially see this in passages of scripture like Leviticus 19. So for example, one of the rules was that if you happen to farm a field, that you were unable to, when it came time to harvest, you were unable to harvest that part of the field that was within arm's reach or sometimes even an arm and a little bit of a handsickle's reach, maybe four feet or five feet, from the rope. Okay, and so you could could farm the inner parts, but you couldn't farm that outer edge. That outer edge was meant to be left for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the traveler in your midst. In addition to that, you couldn't go back and glean. So if your harvesters were harvesting even in the middle of the fields and they dropped something, it had to remain on the ground. And there would be people who again, poor would come behind them and pick up those gleanings. In fact, sometimes for we have record of some wealthy and generous farmers who would intentionally leave things behind. We see an example of that in Ruth chapter two with Boaz. and him making sure that Ruth was well provided for. I mean, there were rules that kind of tied into all of that. Even as those rules developed, the rabbis began writing and they said, well, if the fields are getting larger because people are buying their neighbor's fields and things like that, and the edges then become smaller, they began to regulate and say at least 160th of that which you farm has to be not harvested. You have to farm it, but you can't harvest it. Again, that is a provision for the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the travelers that were within your land. Those were absolute minimums. In addition to that, particularly for wealthy landowners, a portion of your tithe, and remember we've talked about the tithe and then we've talked about if you kind of lay it out, it works out somewhere 25-28% of your harvest is what you tithe on, is what you tithe, excuse me. And a portion of that was given to the priests so that it could be given to the poor, the widow and the orphans and the travelers that were in your land. That's God's law. That's God's law for us people to obey, to provide for the needs of others. Make a couple observations about that. First observation I wanna make is that that law, that provision was not a handout. Oftentimes today we think about giving to the poor and it's always in the context of a handout. This was not done that way. That was not God's design for provision to be made. But in fact, you actually had to go and work to harvest and to glean from that outer rim and to pick up the gleanings that you had been left behind for your provision. People sometimes kind of think that that's kind of an odd thing, but here's the thing. That approach gives you the dignity of earning your keep. You have to work. Working is not a bad thing. We're designed to work. Okay? It's a principle that Christian churches throughout the ages have largely adopted in creating work for the poor. Not just always giving them a handout, but saying, okay, we're going to make sure you're taken care of for a season, but we're going to create a job for you. We're going to create an industry in which you can work and help you get to that point where you are you are providing for yourself. I think one of the problems today with many of the social welfare programs is they rob you of that dignity of being able to earn your own keep. Because there is dignity that comes from that. Secondly, I want to point out that the purpose behind this benevolence was not simply to address the question of poverty. It was meant first to give people a path out of their poverty, so if you work a little bit harder, you glean a little bit more, you have more than you personally need, and so you sell some of it to make some money to provide things that you need, and you slowly work your way out of your state of poverty. In addition, while preserving that dignity and work giving you a pathway out of that poverty, that created a context where even the poor could legitimately rejoice in the Lord when His festivals and times of celebration would come. Right alongside of the rich, right in the same community. You see, this is one of those things that enabled a certain unity within this community. is people could worship together and celebrate together and rejoice together because provision was made for them and they could all earn their provision and you would think differently perhaps than we would typically think today. In other words, those people who were poor were not looked down upon as burdening the society. but they had a place in society where they could work for their keep. And you oftentimes as a landlord would look for opportunities to minister to them, to bring them up out of their situation and maybe bring them to a place where they could have a job. Why is this important today? Well, first of all, while we're not necessarily under the Old Testament civil law, there are principles from which we can learn and from which our elected officials and those who make decisions, whether it's our local governments or state governments or federal governments, that they can apply in such a way that would better the way that we work as a government. I think it's important for us to be aware of as voting members of our communities and our society. And we can encourage decisions to be made that would be in accordance to God's law. And secondly, as the reality is, the church has historically understood that much of that law, particularly in the case of caring for the poor and the widows and the orphans and the travelers, belongs to us. It is not the state's responsibility to take care of the poor in our midst. It's our responsibility to take care of the poor in our own community. And we need to be prepared to do that. We need to be prepared to find ways in which we can care for those people in our midst that are in need. And how it would be arguably even best done. And so here in ancient Jerusalem, we're talking about the first century AD, the church is functioning in that same way. We've already seen this idea. People are even selling portions of fields and fields themselves and things along those lines to provide for the need. But now there's this distribution that is going on and the church is functioning much like those priests who would make sure that the poor had from their needs met. Okay, and so this church is doing this. And then again, we run into the case where these Greek widows were not getting a fair shake. I wanna make sure that you understand, this church is essentially doing what the Levites were doing. They essentially saw that as their continuing job and responsibility, not as a brand new thing, not as something that we gotta do, oh, as a second, oh, these poor people are coming to us. but they're seeing themselves as continuing that practice that you see going and being explained all the way back in Leviticus chapter 19. And certainly in other places as well. So there's a problem. In verse two, the 12 apostles, they gathered the church together. Kind of an early congregational meeting is being had. And they said, look folks, There's too much on our plate. We can't do, we're called to this, this work of preaching. Okay. A little bit later on, it'll be described as prayer and the ministry of the word, same thing, this work of preaching and this work of prayer and, and, If we're going to do this in terms of making sure that everybody gets a fair shake in terms of the distribution, we're taking away from the other. And the other is what we're called to be doing. So we have a problem that we need to address with respect to that. And they said, we think the best solution is that we need to raise up some men to oversee this work of distributing the food. That way we can focus on prayer and we can focus on the ministry of the word. We can focus on preaching and we can focus on teaching the people the word of God. And the congregation says, yes, amen. We think this is a great idea. And so seven men are appointed to that task. What's interesting here, I wanna just highlight for a moment, is the ratio that you find here. There's 12 apostles, 12 committed to praying and preaching. How many to hands-on ministerial care? Seven. 12 preaching and teaching, seven ministerial care. What's the big deal? Look at the ratio and ask yourself what the church valued most highly. how oftentimes we as the church get this turned around on its ear. We think, yeah, the pastor's gonna preach. Yeah, that's all nice and dandy. He can have a day or two to prep his sermons, but the rest of the time we want him out and doing ministry because that's what's most important for him to do. But that's not what you see modeled here for us. It is important to do hands-on ministry. It's important to make sure the poor and the widows are cared for and their needs are met and all of those kinds of things. But what's most important is prayer for the people and for the church. What's most important is teaching for the people in the church, for those of us called to a particular role. Now, I want to make a suggestion, and please, those of you men who are deacons, this is not meant as a knock or anything along those lines. I think you do a great job in what it is that you do. In fact, Tommy, at one point recently, referred to you as the ninjas of the church. because most of the work that you do is behind the scenes, and many people are not aware of the work that you do as deacons, and I commend you to continuing that as a practice. But that being said, just a thought for a minute. Nominating committee, congregation, as you are looking to have men run for the office of deacon, Why not, as a suggestion, as a thought, elect at least one man onto the board of the deacons that is retired from his regular vocational work. That gives him more time in his schedule to do actual hands-on ministerial care, what the deacons were called and designed and to do. In my humble opinion, the office of the deacon is easily the most rewarding and one of the most blessed offices in the whole of the church. Because you get to spend your time primarily ministering to people, caring for them where they are, as they are, in whatever they happen to be going through at the moment. Sitting with elders and caring for them, praying for them, but also engaging with people in the life of the church that are in real need. and coming alongside of them to help bring them out of that need, building unity in the church body. There's a lot that the deacons do, again, behind the scenes. And by doing that and engaging aggressively in that, that permits the elders to exercise oversight more intentionally. and for the pastor to engage in the work of prayer and preaching to which he is called. Again, that does not mean that the pastor's job is not to do caregiving. But as I've said many, many times, one person can be in one place at one time. The multiple people can be in multiple places at one time, and you can multiply the effectiveness of that work by engaging in it as well as a body. And so seven men are appointed to this task. And there's standards and there are qualifications that are listed for these men. The first is that they have to have a good repute. They have to have a good reputation and people need to respect them. Why? That should be kind of obvious. I mean, you're caring for people's needs. You're carrying and distributing food, you're distributing resources and finances and other kinds of things. If you have a bad reputation for not being reliable in situations like that, well, I mean... It should be obvious why you don't want folks like that as a deacon. They need to be full of the Spirit. They need to be born again believers in Jesus Christ. Their faith needs to be something that is testified to and that they live and they breathe in that faith that they have. And they need to be men of wisdom. Again, that's obvious, but it reflects this fact that these men who are being called are mature in their faith. They're not babies, but they have some maturity to themselves. And so seven men are appointed. We really don't know much about most of them, Philip a little bit and Stephen some, but we have Stephen and Philip and Prochorus and Nicanor and Timon and Parmenas and Nicholas, seven men set to the side. And lo and behold, verse six, what do we have here? "'We find the apostles laid hands upon them, "'and they prayed over them.'" Folks, this is an ordination ceremony. One of the things that you need to recognize and be reminded of is that this idea of ordaining somebody was practiced in the church all the way back at the beginning. And it was not just the pastor who was ordained, but it was the deacons and the elders who were also ordained to those roles. And so when we get to verse seven, the church grew. One of the themes that you see in the book of Acts is that when the church is doing what the church is supposed to be doing, the word of God is being preached and proclaimed faithfully. And now those who are poor in their midst are being provided for faithfully. The church grows because of the testimony that they have. It's something that is appealing. There's not marked by corruption, but it's something that appeals to people. But we're also told here, Luke gives us just a little bit of an addendum, if you will, and says, even the priests, even some of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith. It doesn't even say just became believers, became Christians. He phrases it in a very specific way, becomes obedient to the faith. I think the statement about the priest is important to us on two levels. First of all, it identifies them as separating from the system of doctrine that they had been a part of. They are leaving behind the various Levitical rules in terms of sacrifice and redemption and things along those lines and becoming born again, saved under Jesus Christ. And that's something to celebrate. That's something that is a big deal. And secondly, it's a reminder that being a Christian is not just about happy thoughts about Jesus. God expects something from us in terms of the way that we live our lives. He expects obedience from his own people. This is this idea that they are becoming obedient to the faith. God calls you and he calls me. to live in a certain way, not any way which we want, but to live in a very specific, in a certain way, in obedience to the word that he has given us through Christ Jesus, that is to be lived out in our faith. We usually think of this Christian church you know, in terms of all of these people running around and celebrating. But here we see in this language here, something that is being very specific to us and saying, yeah, they are celebrating. Yeah, they are worshiping. Yeah, they're doing all of those things, but notice they're being obedient. They're being obedient to the faith. The priest of anybody should understand the idea of obedience because they taught the law over and over and over again. We should understand that as well. All too often times in the Christian church, the law is ignored. The law is there for our good and is part of our sanctification process. Our job is to be obedient to that law. And so, We see the events, we see these deacons being raised up, and we recognize them as deacons because the work that they're being called to do is essentially the diaconal work that we still practice today. But I also want to close on one other note. See, we usually in Christian churches think of this new Pentecostal church here as starting from ground one and building something that is new with new offices and kind of reinventing faith and practice and things like that. And that's not the case. And we ought not understand it that way because I don't think that's how the apostles understood what it is that they're doing. You see, the terms that they're choosing, the term of elder we've already mentioned, goes all the way back to Exodus chapter three, where Moses is sent to the elders of Israel to tell them that it's time for their deliverance. Okay, and so even then there were elders ruling over the people and giving oversight as overseers in the people. And deacons too. If you go back and look at Numbers 8 verses 23 through 26, one of the things that you will find there are the rules respecting when a priest retires. At 50 years old, the priest was no longer allowed to serve in the tabernacle or then respectively in the temple once the temple is established. That doesn't mean that they kind of sat on their recliner and watched television all afternoon. They just were given a different set of tasks. They weren't responsible for the daily sacrificial work and the work in the temple. But they had really two options. One, they served as a temple guard. And so they would guard the walls of the temple and things like that. But secondly, they were oftentimes called upon to teach those who were younger and to be servants to and guides for those who were still serving in the temple. And in some of the Greek texts, These priests who are retired were called deacons. In fact, in their testamental times, there rose a role in the synagogue. Of course, people worship is spreading out now from the temple and all around the temple to the synagogues in each of the communities. And there was somebody in the synagogue whose job was to assist the rabbi or the Levite who was running the synagogue in the worship. And his job was to carry the scrolls, carry the word of God around and to say, okay, it's time to be read. And I'm going to put it away afterwards and make sure it's safe. And if you had somebody who was a traveling rabbi, it was time to read from the word. This assistant would come up carrying the scrolls and hand them to this traveling rabbi. Sound familiar? And this is what happened to Jesus when he goes to his own synagogue in his own hometown and they hand him the scrolls and he reads from the scrolls and says, this has been fulfilled in your hearing and hands them back. Well, that person that carried the scrolls and would have handed them to Jesus and would have taken them back from Jesus and put them away in the synagogue context was oftentimes referred to again as a deacon. in some of the Greek manuscripts. Point being is, these guys were not reinventing a term. They were not inventing a new, new term. They were taking terminology that was familiar to the Jewish people and applying that into this New Testament Christian church. Why? because they understood themselves not to be innovators, but to be as reformers of the coming of the Messiah. They understood themselves to be the continuing church from the Old Testament, which had gone astray and calling them people back to faith with the coming Messiah. That's important for us because the reformers took the same mindset and same attitude. And they said, well, look, What we're doing is not new, is not brand new, this Protestant church thing. But you, the Roman church, have gone astray. You've gone off the pathways and you are not holding to those things that the church has always held to. And we are just simply aligning ourselves back to the early church and seeking to reform. They're doing the same thing. that these early Christians were doing as the Church of Jesus Christ, the Christian church is being established here. And so oftentimes the language is so consistent and thus we have elders and deacons in the church just like they did in the first century church, just like they did in the Old Testament church as well. It's important because this Sunday is a Sunday that we set apart in the church calendar as All Saints Sunday. As we're reminded of those who have gone before us, not in terms of just in the immediate context, but across the history of the church that have laid the foundation, and not necessarily the foundation, but the framework, if you will, in which we live and function and breathe as a church. At church, the foundation is the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ as the cornerstone. But Peter describes us as living stones being built upon that, layer by layer, tier by tier, level by level, floor by floor, as this greater temple of Christ's body is being built up. And it's important for us to be reminded that we're not inventing something new. And we don't have the right to invent something new. We're not just going on on what we think is right in our own eyes. We wanna know how terrible that is when people start thinking that way, read the book of Judges, because that's the refrain that we find in the book of Judges. Every person was doing what was right in their own eyes and they fell into idolatry over and over and over again. but we're reminded that it's on the basis of something that has gone before us that we are established. And if we are going to be faithful and maintain our role or a position, if you will, as the true church in Jesus Christ, or as an expression of the true church in Jesus Christ, we must be, we must continue to be be consistent with those things and maintain them that have set before us. Yes, we can't live in the past. That's oftentimes the criticism for looking back at some of this church history, but we need the past to understand how we engage the future. So as we wrap up this morning, I want to set a couple things in front of you. It's important to recognize this and for what it is as the office of the deacons being established. It's important to recognize as we apply that to looking at our offices in our church. And I do encourage you to pray for those men who will step up and be on that ballot in January to run for these offices and serve you as a congregation in wisdom and in grace. I also think that we need to be reminded of what this church is doing in terms of trying to to continue the practice of caregiving and providing for the poor in their midst and remembering that that's our job as a church. And recognizing that one of the most important things that this church needs, all churches need, is not only the teaching and the preaching of the word, but prayer. prayer for the life of this church, that it might glorify Christ, glorify God in all that we say and think and do. Beloved, this is God's word, let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you and we ask that you be merciful to us because oftentimes we are guilty. Showing favoritism between one group or another group or throwing off the ratios and balances and turning them upside down in terms of what we want and what we expect in the life of the church. May everything that we do please you and be done in accordance to your word, in accordance to the example set for us by those who have gone before us. May this day, and we call all saints Sunday, be a day where we honor you and honor you for all of those generations that you've raised up to teach us. And may we learn from them as well. These things we pray in Jesus name, amen.