“1 In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. 2 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. 3 Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them 4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.” 5 This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. 6 They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. 7 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.
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We are going to look at three similar promotions. These are attempts to promote certain virtues or behaviors. By a show of hands, I want you to pick out the real one. Again, two of these will be fake and one of them will be real. It is your job to choose the real one.
First, we have the following. The caption reads, “remember to take each of your 23,040 breaths today and every day.” This is from the AMA, the American Medical Association. The AMA was worried that not everyone was breathing enough so they put this together to help us remember.
Second, we have this picture of a dessert. It comes from Weight Watchers and reads, “we know it is hard, but try to eat fattening foods too.” Weight Watchers is worried that I lack the willpower to eat whipped cream and chocolate.
Third, we have the following picture of a dad and his daughter. The caption reads, “it only takes a moment to make a moment. Take time to be a dad today.” This is put out by the government as you see in the .gov domain name. This is government promotion reminding fathers to act like fathers.
So, by show of hands, who thinks that the AMA spent money promoting breathing? Who votes for Weight Watchers promoting fattening foods? Who votes for the government promoting fatherhood?
The answer is the fatherhood promotion. Now these three promotions are all similar in that they should all be unnecessary. The AMA doesn’t need to remind us to breathe. If you have trouble breathing, you don’t need to be reminded that breathing is essential. If you don’t have trouble breathing, you never think about breathing. It is an unnecessary promotion. We certainly don’t need to be reminded to eat fattening foods. I can do that without any reminders.
Billboards promoting fatherhood should be unnecessary. Fathers shouldn’t need reminders to act like fathers. The government shouldn’t need to use shared resources to remind dads to make moments with their children, and yet our society is at such a place that fathers do need to be reminded. We are at a point culturally where it seems necessary to purchase billboards to tell fathers to take an interest in their own children.
Now I’m not against this fatherhood campaign. I’m all for fathers taking an interest in their own children. I’m simply saying that it shouldn’t be necessary but yet it seems to be. It is necessary because men have been abdicating responsibility. This is nothing new. You see it in the Garden of Eden. Moses implied that Adam was with Eve during her entire conversation with the serpent, and yet the man never stepped in. Men are prone to take their hands off the wheel. Men are prone to abdicate responsibility. I know this temptation and if you are a man, you know it too. There is a reason that the men’s ministry that swept the nation decades ago was named Promise Keepers. It called men to step up and keep their promises because they had abdicated responsibility.
This abdication of responsibility is all over the culture and it has long since entered the church. Curiously very few men today aspire to responsibility in the church. Far too few men aspire to be deacons. Far too few men aspire to be elders. Far too few men aspire to be ministers. Years ago I didn’t want to be a minister. When a college roommate told me he was thinking about becoming a pastor, I thought to myself, ‘that is the lamest job in the world.’ I changed my mind, but it took me a while. I know the temptation to avoid responsibility.
One of the reasons I took the call to this congregation was because of a sense that the men of this congregation wanted to take responsibility and I am glad to say that has been the case in my experience here. I want it to be the case for decades to come. I don’t want this church to ever come to the point that we need to promote the office of elder or deacon to men the way that the government apparently needs to promote fatherhood in hopes of merely sustaining our culture.
The purpose of these next three sermons and weeks of adult education is to lay out the call to office and the expectations of the offices. The council wants this congregation to be familiar with what elders, deacons, and pastors do. We want men familiar with what elders, deacons, and pastors do because unfamiliarity leads to anxiety and we don’t want anyone anxious about these offices by reason of unfamiliarity. We want the pattern that we see laid out in Scripture. We want that for the men who will serve. We want that for the health of this church.
Of course, Christ’s desires matter far more than our desires. We hope our desires conform to his. I hope your desires conform to his. Christ makes his desires for his office bearers clear in Scripture. He calls us because he wants us to join him in his work. Christ calls deacons to join him in his work. That is the claim for this first sermon focusing on office bearers: Christ calls deacons to join him in his work.
We will see this in three points. First: practical matters. Second: men of Spirit and wisdom. Third: church on the move. We see the practical matters at hand in verses 1-2. We see that deacons are men of Spirit and wisdom in verses 3-6. We see the church on the move in verse 7.
First: practical matters. Deacons were first called because of practical needs. You see the need in verse 1, “In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.”
Grecian Jews were Jews who primarily spoke Greek. The first century was a rather cosmopolitan time. Some Jews spoke Greek at home. They worshipped in synagogues that spoke Greek.
Hebraic Jews were Jews who primarily spoke Hebrew or Aramaic. They worshipped in synagogues that spoke Hebrew. The Hebraic Jews could speak some Greek and the Grecian Jews could speak some Hebrew, but they were divided by language. Each group had their own way of doing things. There were differences among these groups.
When I served in Worthington, we had two Ethiopian groups in our church. They worshipped separately. They could both speak the same official language of Ethiopia, but they had their own languages, which they preferred to speak and hear. This was the language they spoke at home. This was the language in which they dreamed. This was the language of their heart. Greek was the language of the heart of these Grecian Jews. Hebrew was the language of the heart of these Hebraic Jews. They were different groups who had different practices and personalities.
There were differences between these two groups and these differences didn’t simply go away as a result of coming to Christ. We can be naïve in that regard. Coming to Christ doesn’t erase cultural differences or gender differences or political differences. What it does is give us a unity that is more important than those differences.
Now the Grecian widows weren’t being cared for as well as the Hebraic widows. This care was a matter of life and death. There were no pensions in those days. There were no Roth IRAs. There was no social security. These widows had no means of income. They were dependent upon family and, then as today, some families took this responsibility more seriously than others. Some widows lived day to day on the charity of others. In other words, they lived by what verse 1 calls, “the daily distribution of food.”
Christians who had more than they needed shared with those who didn’t have enough to live on. As Acts 2 puts it, “All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” The disciples had enough to distribute but they had a distribution problem. The Grecian widows were going hungry.
Perhaps they were going hungry because the apostles simply knew the Hebraic widows better. We all tend to give the most attention to the people we know the best. You know your own needs. You know the needs of your loved ones. I dare say that you don’t the needs of the person three pews in front of you or behind you nearly as well. The apostles may simply have been completely ignorant of the needs of these widows. The church had recently grown by over 5,000 people. That would create assimilation problems for us too.
The apostles called a church meeting to address the situation. They did so because they saw themselves as responsible. They believed that the entire community was responsible to care for their members in need. Responsibility is part of the DNA of this community of Inwood. Over Christmas, I had breakfast with a college roommate who is now a doctor. I was telling him about Fellowship Village and how it came into existence. He was very impressed that this community made that commitment to take care of their own. You did so because you had the sense that you were responsible to care for these people. As we will see, the office of deacon consists in carrying out that same responsibility.
The apostles called a church meeting to make clear that this need was important. They also made clear that they already had responsibilities that made it impossible for them to do justice to the daily distribution of food. As they said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.”
Now waiting on tables is not unimportant. Giving food to widows who need it daily is not unimportant. Don’t read a sense of superiority into the apostles’ words as if they thought they were too good to handle this situation. Read their words with a sense of being overwhelmed by their responsibilities. They were busy with teaching and counseling. If they put that aside to handle this important problem, they would be doing a disservice to the church. It is also true that if these deacons put this daily distribution of the food aside for other responsibilities, they would be doing a disservice to the church.
The apostles and deacons had different roles that they each needed to fulfill as acts of love towards others. These tasks were so important that if they were neglected the church would suffer and the same is true today although the offices are different. Our church order wisely says that “[the offices of elder, deacon, and minister] differ from each other only in mandate and task, not in dignity and honor.” The church order ends by making it clear that “no office-bearer shall lord it over another office-bearer.”
Each of us needs to take that seriously. Deacons are not junior elders. They have a different calling from that of the elders. If the elders don’t fulfill their calling, the church suffers. If the deacons don’t fulfill their calling, the church suffers. Neither the office of elder nor the office of deacon is less important than my office. No office bearer has ay business saying, “well, I’m just a deacon” or “I’m only an elder; I’m not the pastor.” You were called by Christ to join him in his work. He took that call seriously and he wants you to take that call seriously.
The apostles turned over the practical responsibility of the daily distribution of the food over to the deacons so that the apostles could, in their own words, “give their attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”
Now the division of labor is a bit different today because we have ministers and elders rather than apostles. What does remain, though, is people with practical problems and a church in which practical problems will arise. This is the domain of the deacons. Now these practical matters will often be discussed in full council because they touch on the spiritual welfare of the church or because they require a wider assembly for wisdom, but there is a great deal of decision and execution that can and should be done by the deacons because this is their domain.
Now if you are a deacon or called to be a deacon what you need is a heart that cares. Ask yourself, ‘if I was part of that first century church, would I want to be sure those widows had enough to eat?’ Ask yourself if you would want to be part of the solution. Do you want to be part of the solution in this time and place? That is the call of Christ for the deacon.
The apostles called this church meeting to raise this need. They laid out two important qualifications for these deacons and it is to them that we turn our attention in our second point: men of Spirit and wisdom.
The apostles didn’t merely raise the problem of the widows in need. They offered a potential solution. That is proper practice especially in church. Anyone can see problems. Offer potential solutions. The apostles offered theirs in verse 3, “Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”
Now the number of deacons can change. They had seven. We have six. What cannot change is that the men who serve are to be men of the Spirit. It only makes sense that a deacon should be a man who is born of the Spirit. This is one reason that the office is limited to those who have professed their faith, which is our public sign of making the faith your own.
Now, a man with no spirituality about him can count and collect money. A man with no spirituality about him cannot be a deacon because there is far more to being a deacon than counting and collecting money. Deacons are to be moved by what moved Christ. No man without the Spirit will be moved by what moved Christ.
Deacons need to be men of the Spirit. They also to be men of wisdom; “choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom.” It took wisdom to distribute resources fairly. If you’ve ever tried to distribute desserts fairly among your children, you know that distributing resources fairly takes wisdom. If you’ve ever tried to distribute money among people, you know that distributing resources fairly takes wisdom. Deacons will and should face questions that require wisdom. If they don’t face such questions, then they will wonder why they are serving in the first place.
The church chose seven men for this important task and it seems that these seven men were all Grecian Jews. Remember there were Hebraic Jews and Grecian Jews in the early church. The Grecian widows were not receiving the food they needed from the common fund. The church as a whole chose seven Grecian Jews to oversee this fund. They didn’t set up a fund for Grecian Jews run by Grecian Jews and one for Hebrew Jews run by Hebrews Jews. They had one fund and they chose seven Grecian Jews to oversee it. Now these Grecian Jews were responsible for the care of the Hebraic widows as well.
These deacons were not appointed as representatives of their group. They were appointed for the sake of the whole church and that is the case today. No office bearer in this church is elected to represent the interests of his group or family. Each are called to join Christ in his work. It is Christ’s work that matters. You are called to adopt his vision as your vision. You are called to love this church as Christ did. He laid down his life for it. He laid down his life for us.
He knows we function best. We see that in our final point: church on the move. The deacons handled the practical matters of the church. The apostles focused on preaching and teaching. We see the result in verse 7, “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.”
More and more men and women left sin for grace. Even some of the priests who were charged with caring for the Jewish widows came to see the truth of the gospel by the care of the Christians for their widows. The church did what it was supposed to do, and it grew.
Now we need to be careful of a one to one correspondence here. It is very possible to have faithful office bearers and a shrinking congregation. There are any number of variables at play. We must, however, take this trend in Acts 6 seriously. A church which teaches and spreads the word of God and wisely handles the practical needs of its members is in a prime position to invite men and women into grace.
You are called to be part of this positioning. If you are born again, you are called by Christ to build up the church so that others might be born again. You are called to build up the church so that you and others might be strengthened in the faith.
If you are a deacon or called to be a deacon, you have a specific mandate to position this church. Ask yourself how we can care for our members in such a way that others will want to become members. Ask yourself how we can handle our shared resources in such a way that people will want to share resources with us. You were not called to fill a slot on the diaconate. You were called by Christ to be eager to do what is good. As Paul told Titus, Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.”
Jesus died so that you could live a life full of eagerness to do good. Serve in such a way as to make a difference. Amen.