Acts 6:3, “Seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business."

How does a church give careful attention to critical, sensitive needs in the church, without elders having to abandon their God-given task of continual devotion to prayer and the ministry of the word? This exposition of Acts 6:1-7 and 1 Timothy 3:8-13 provides the compelling, Biblical answer which shows the biblical role, responsibility, and purpose of a deacon.

So, we're here talking about deacons and we're here talking about deacons really for one reason it's because God cares for his people. He cares for his church and so he's created offices for the church so that people would be shepherded well so that the needy in the church would be cared for well and so that his people would have the benefit of the lavish care that he that he desires for them. We should we should just rejoice that there's an office of Deacon because it means that there's a great and mighty God or real chief shepherd in the church and he's not dispassionate at all for one second about the care of his people but he has given explicit instructions and commandments about how they should be cared for. So this is really a topic that should just cause us to rejoice at the goodness and the kindness and the mercies of our God towards his people. If you grew up in the church you may be familiar with deacons as an executive board.

They make decisions, they hire pastors, and they fire pastors. If you want an opinion you go to the pastor, if you want the church's position you go to a deacon because they have a church government function. Or that's one end of the continuum. On the other end, you may have grown up in a church where they have deacons and they are masters of the weed whacker and they are building maintenance and grounds crew and janitorial staff. I have a good friend from St.

Louis who was searching for a home for his family, a church home for his family. And they were at their third Sunday at a particular church. And he was actually approached by the pastor who said, would you be interested in being a deacon? He was very taken back on this. This was Sunday number three and he was not a church membership yet.

He said, I'm not a church member. Well, why would you be interested in me as a deacon? And the pastor said, well, I've noticed that you have a snowplow to go with your pickup truck. And that's really a skill set that we could use. And to that, I would just say, welcome to the modern world of deacons where the scriptures governing this office of the church have been cast aside and deacons are now either a governing board for the church or at the other end of the continuum they do menial tasks that are needed in the church.

I'd like to submit to you that wherever those ideas came from, they didn't come from the Bible. But the Bible has given us what deacons ought to do and what type of men they ought to be, and so that's what we'll be exploring today. This is an area where the inerrancy of Scripture and the sufficiency of Scripture has been cast aside for ideas. So our big task today is just to check our baggage at the door on deacons. Our understanding from the churches that we grew up in or what we might have seen in the past.

Take a fresh look at the actual text of scripture that would direct us about deacons. I do want to commend a book to you. It's by Alexander Strauch and it's called Minister of Mercy, the New Testament deacon. What I love about the book and what I love about Alexander Strauch books in general, there's a companion book about elders as well, is that he deals with scripture. He doesn't put forth his viewpoint and go on a hunt down for texts that might support it.

He starts with the text and derives what he wants to say from the text of Scripture. My personal view is every deacon, every deacon ought to have that book on his shelf and it should be well read. You should have been through it cover to cover multiple times because he deals so carefully with the text that it's very helpful. Here's what Alexander Stroup says in the introduction of this book. He says, my heartfelt burden is to help deacons get out of the boardroom or the building maintenance mentality and into the people-serving mentality.

Deacons as the New Testament teaches and as some of the 16th century reformers discovered are to be involved in a compassionate ministry of caring for the poor and needy. The deacons ministry therefore is one that no Christ centered New Testament Church can ever afford to neglect. Christians today must understand the absolute necessity for and vital importance of New Testament deacons to the local church so that the needy, poor, and suffering of our churches are cared for in a thoroughly Christian manner. This is a man matter dear to the heart of God. Let's begin our time in prayer.

Father, thank you that you care more for your church than we ever will and that you've given us one example of your lavish care for your people that you would give the church men who fit a certain mold to to care for her, to labor in her, to exhaust themselves so that your church would be well ordered so that the needy in our churches would be cared for through the mercies of Jesus Christ. God, we pray that it might be so. We pray that these things would be on an increase in our churches and that we would be blessed by obeying you. We ask your help to understand and apply the things that we find in your Word in Jesus' name, amen. So today we'll be looking at the two texts of Scripture that speak most directly to the office of deacon.

The first is in Acts 6 and you might want to put your finger there. The second will be in 1st Timothy 3. In Acts 6 verses 1 through 7 we see the life of this fledgling church, fledgling New Testament Church in Jerusalem. In Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit comes, he falls upon those who are gathered and People begin to gather around out of curiosity because many nations have converged on Jerusalem for Pentecost and There's this group of people and they're speaking and these people from all these different nations are hearing them but only in their own language so that they can be understood by all the different languages that are represented and people began to gather because of this curiosity and Peter seizes the moment and he preaches this wonderful powerful sermon that we can find in Acts 2 and people are pierced to the heart and they they call out to Peter what shall we do men and brethren what shall we do what what should we do to be saved? And that day the church grows from a hundred and twenty people to over 3, 000 people in a single day.

Bam! Megachurch just like that. The Holy Spirit shows up. A powerful sermon, an anointed sermon is preached by Peter and we go from 120 people to over 3, 000 in a single day. In Acts 6, several chapters later, we see in verse one that there's a complaint.

So we're seeing a shift. We're seeing a shift from the beauty of the life together that we see in Acts 2 to problems with growth in Acts 6. So let's let's read that text together. If you've got your Bibles we'll be reading from Acts 6 verses 1 through 7. Now in those days when the number of the disciples was multiplying there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution.

Then the twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said it is not desirable that we should leave the Word of God and serve tables. Therefore brethren seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. And the saying pleased the whole multitude and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch, whom they set before the Apostles, and when they had prayed they laid hands on them. Then the Word of God spread and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith.

In Acts 2 we have all things in common. We have the breaking of bread from house to house with gladness and simplicity of heart. And in Acts 6 we have complaining. And can't the honeymoon of a new church be a short honeymoon? And there's trouble and there's not just any kind of complaining but there's complaining over a legitimate failure in the ministry of the church.

There's a daily distribution for widows, that's good, but there's a big gap. The Hebrew widows are being cared for, the Greek widows are not being cared for, and people are mad about it. So when we come to this text we should understand the sensitivity of where we are in the circumstance. And it's a two-fold sensitivity. One, it deals with money or at least it deals with a share of resources.

And so you know what happens when share of resources is the issue and who gets what. So that's the first sensitivity. The second sensitivity is the nerves are already raw. The opportunity to handle this right from day one has already come and gone and people are mad. And so it's a really volatile, sensitive situation and this is a challenge that you wouldn't want to just randomly pick people to handle.

This needs to be handled by people of cut from a certain cloth. And in verse 2, the 12, and I'm just going to call them functional elders, they're apostles and the church in Jerusalem is different than any other church since then in that these men who were leading it had apostolic authority. But what we see of these men is that they're leading the church in the same way that elders lead churches in other. So we can prove that some of them were elders, were they all elders? It doesn't matter.

The point is is that they're functioning as elders in the church in Jerusalem. So the twelve, the functional elders of this church, the men responsible for leading the church in Jerusalem bring the church together and they outline the problem. And here's the problem statement. It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables.

Now, this is incredibly wise. Have you ever gone to fix a problem and you find that the solution that you implement creates a larger problem than what you were trying to solve? It's the law of unintended consequences. And I am the worst at just rushing to solution and implementing solutions that create a bigger gap than the one that I just plugged. And the danger for that really existed here, but they're so wise.

They don't do that, because they understand that the problem's not the problem. The problem is a symptom of what the real problem is and so they don't fix the symptom, they go to the heart of the matter and they fix that and then they find that the symptom is also addressed as they go to the root of it. And they understand that what the church needs is not fed widows. It's the church needs God. Now, widows need to be fed.

And the church has an accountability for that. But the church doesn't need that more than anything. What the church needs more than anything is God himself. And what can church leaders do about God himself being a grand vision of God being set before the people? Is it feeding widows?

Well, maybe an aspect of that, but no. It is prayer. It is falling down on their faces before God to seek the Lord that he would fall upon the people and it is the ministry of the word that they would study the word. They would learn it. They would memorize it.

They would meditate on it and then they would preach it with power and authority. That was what the church needed more than anything, even a solution to a ministry failure problem. And the twelve understand that these two things, prayer and the ministry of the word, has to be their priority and so in verse four they say this, but we will give ourselves continually to prayer in the ministry of the Word. We will give ourselves continually without interruption about food distribution, but give ourselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the Word. And at the same time there's an acknowledgement that there are other very important needs in the church that also require devotion.

So while prayer in the ministry of the word is central to the church and central to the leaders of the church, It's not that we can just ignore everything else and think that it's all good if we just focus on prayer in the ministry of the Word, but that there are also very legitimate things that need attention and devotion in the church. Have you ever come across the little pamphlet called Tyranny of the Urgent? It was written by Charles Hummel And it was really popular in the 80s and 90s. And I haven't seen it for a while, but I think it has a really valuable message. The message is this.

There are urgent things, and there are important things. And the urgent things have to be done right now, but they're not quite as important. That would be things like having breakfast. The reality is if you skip breakfast, lunch is coming, we could all do without a meal. But there are important things like the Word of God.

Many times the important things can can just be put off because they're not urgent and had to be attended to this minute but they're really important and the reality is when you put the urgent in competition with the important many many many many times the urgent wins out and this is true of every elder team in every church that ever was. There can be this competition of urgent things that just need attention this minute, but the elder team ought to be working on prayer in the ministry of the word, but the reality is, you know, we could pray later, we could get to sermon prep later. And so As soon as we handle the urgent thing, then we're going to go work on the important things. Well, here's the problem. Here's the thing about urgent things.

It's like playing cards. As soon as you lay down the urgent thing, you just have to pick up another card. And so any thought that I'm just playing down, I'm going to get to the end and there's not going to be any more urgent things is a disconnect from reality. There's always a picking up of the next urgent things and then all of a sudden it's Saturday and we haven't prayed, we haven't prepared and we cheat the things that we ought have been continually devoted to. And so I want to submit to you that the effectiveness of any elder team is directly tied to having or not having a team of qualified deacons who are functioning properly.

Your elders cannot function at a high level unless you have deacons who are functioning properly because of this very thing. The urgent things in a church and there's always a dozen of them at any one time. There's always a dozen urgent things that are competing for wanting to crowd out the important so that prayer is neglected, so that the ministry of the word is neglected. So God here is giving us separate complementary ministries in the local church. Separate, they're different functions.

Elders are going to go do this, deacons are going to go do that, but they're complementary. They fit hand in glove. They need each other. They work well together. So elders are going to give continual devotion, uninterrupted devotion to prayer and to the ministry of the word, and the deacons are going to apply themselves to serving people in sensitive areas that need to be handled by Christian men whose maturity has been verified.

Whose maturity has been verified. Here's what happens in a church where this isn't understood. Critical functions in the church compete for resources. If you don't understand this in your church you'll find that limited resources are being competed for And so we've set up prayer in the Ministry of the Word versus mercy and benevolence in our churches as if either one of those things is negotiable. Now we might say one is more important than the other and I think that's what's being advocated in this passage.

It's most important, it's paramount that prayer and the ministry of the word gets attention in our church but that doesn't just because it might be paramount doesn't mean that the other is a negotiable as if we don't need to take care of the needy as if benevolence doesn't need attention and devotion in our churches. So the diaconate then, which is just a fancy way to say group of deacons, the diaconate then is not a step on the career path to elder, it's a separate complementary function in the church. It could be, I mean deacon could become an elder, but it doesn't have to be. It's a separate ministry that supercharges the eldership by allowing them to be devoted to prayer in the ministry of the word. Did you get that?

It's a separate ministry that supercharges your eldership and if a church has an eldership that's not functioning properly and they need to troubleshoot this is one area where they should go and say are do we have deacons and are they functioning properly? If the answer is no you might have found your problem. Does that mean that elders won't serve, ever participate in benevolence or that deacons won't ever preach in the church? No, it doesn't mean that at all but it's a matter of devotion. This group is devoted to these things, this group is devoted to those things and they complement each other, they need each other.

So then the Apostles in verse 3, returning to the text, the Apostles in verse 3 say this, they say, Therefore brethren, Seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom who we may appoint over this business." So they give a charge to the people, they call them together, and they give them a charge. And this is a really helpful example of how leaders should work with the members in a church. There you have two extremes here that need to be avoided and they avoid both of them. One is the leaders just say how it's going to be and that's the end and you go I say you do and problem solved. Well, maybe not.

And the other extreme is, hey what do y'all want to do? And we just have a group think and anybody who's been in corporate America for long enough to have participated in these group things and know the solutions, the crazy twisted warped solutions that come out of group things, know that that is not the answer either. But what we see here is that the leaders engage the congregation, They don't give them a blank check. They continue to direct it. They're present at the beginning.

They're present at the end, but there is a working together towards the solution of the problem. So they say, go find certain men who look like this and come back with those men. If we're satisfied we're going to put our hands on them, we're going to put them, going to install them into this ministry. So they say seek out men who fit four criteria. Seek out men who fit four criteria.

Number one, they're men. If you're looking for men who fit criteria, then criteria number one is men. Number two, they're of good reputation. Number three, they're full of the Holy Spirit. Number four, they're full of wisdom and we're actually going to go spend time in 1st Timothy 3 which talks much more specifically about the characteristics but when we go there we could map every one of the First Timothy 3 qualifications back to of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit, full of wisdom.

And so we've been given the headers here and we get that we're given the next layer of detail in 1st Timothy 3. They also name a specific number, it's to be seven. Is that a magic number? Does every church have to have seven deacons? I don't think so.

This is one instance and one instance does not a pattern make. So I don't think there's an argument to be made that all deacons have to be seven. I think they asked for a number that was enough to do the work. That's what we should have in our churches and to the extent that they're qualified enough to do the work. In the following chapters in Acts, if we were to follow this through to Acts 7 and then Acts 8, we'd find out a lot about the caliber of men that they installed in Deacons.

Acts 7, Stephen preaching one of my favorite sermons in the New Testament and then being killed for it. Acts 8, Philip being dispersed being chased by persecution into Samaria, preaching the gospel and baptizing there, the story of the Ethiopian unit and him being saved through the ministry of Philip and him being baptized is there. And when you read Acts 7 and 8 and you think about a weed eater wielding deacon, you just it just shakes your sensibilities because you say why do they need to be these disqualified if all they're going to do is cut the church lawn. Why do we need these character qualifications? And that disconnect should make us wonder and redirect us that deacons are for something other than making sure that the paint job on the on the church is in in good repair.

Verses five through seven we get the we get the conclusion the approach pleases the whole multitude. Remember we started with complaining it's hard to get from complaining to everybody's happy. The whole multitude is happy but that's what's happened here. And They choose seven men and the apostles pray and lay hands on them. This shows us the seriousness of what is being done, that they're being installed into an office and it's a critical office, that's what you do when you're praying and laying hands on somebody for something.

It's not for lawn mowing. Then verse seven, you get this beautiful picture of the outcome in verse seven. Then the Word of God spread and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. It worked. Had a really volatile situation that needed to be handled by men full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom and this bomb is diffused and the ministry of the word is on the rise and this just tells us the Apostles were right to say it is not right for us to leave the Word of God to wait on these tables.

Not diminishing the need for the tables to be waited on, but knowing that the Word of God was the thing that the church needed the most and verse 7 proves it out then the Word of God spread and the number of the disciples multiplied. Now let's go to 1 Timothy 3. 1 Timothy 3. Here we find qualifications for both elders and deacons. We're going to skip right over the elders and get right to the deacons, but this should be well-worn pages in our Bibles.

They're so important. 1st Timothy 3 and we'll start in verse 8 and we'll read through 13. 1st Timothy 3 verse 8. Likewise, deacons must be Likewise, deacons must be reverent, not double tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy for money, holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience. But let these also first be tested.

Then let them serve as deacons, being found blameless. Likewise, Their wives must be reverent, not slanderers, not temperate, faithful in all things. Let deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well. For those who have served well as deacons obtained for themselves a good standing in great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus." The passage the text starts out with, likewise deacons must be, deacons must be like this list. They must be men like this.

Paul is giving an imperative and these qualifications are not optional. If a man is to be a deacon he must be this, this, this, this. And then as we skip down to verse 10 he says, Paul says, but let these also first be tested, first be tested. First, it's prerequisite. In other words, we don't have deacons before we're sure about the qualifications.

We're sure about the qualifications and then we install them as deacons. These are prerequisites And then be tested. We have indication here of a deliberate official evaluation of men against the qualifications before they would serve in this capacity. It's a prerequisite and it's an official evaluation against these qualifications. Here's what Alexander Stroud says, I think it's really helpful.

Shepherds and deacons hold positions of sacred trust. They direct and care for the family of God. They handle problems, money, and needy people. They have access to people's homes and the most intimate details of their lives. They have access to people who are most vulnerable to deception or abuse.

Thus, they must be men of proven integrity. That is what 1 Timothy 3 is saying. They must be men of proven integrity. And we're given here in 1 Timothy 3, nine different qualifications. You might be able to number them differently, it doesn't matter, we'll talk about them and you number them however you like.

I say it's nine. Number one, found in verse eight. A deacon must be reverent. The NASB translates this men of dignity, they're men of dignity, They're serious about serious things. They fear God.

The Lord's Prayer begins with reverence. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Deacons get the first line of the Lord's Prayer. They hallow the Lord as God in their hearts. They hallow the name of the Lord.

They are reverent. Number two, also in verse eight, not double tongued. Not double tongued. Deacons know what's going on in the church. They know what's going on with the most sensitive stuff.

The only people who might know a little more, and that's debatable, is the elders in the church. The last thing you need is a man in that position with two stories. One to your face, Another story to everybody else because they know all the sensitive stuff. You do not need a double-tongued man. If you put a double-tongued man in that office, you think you're solving a problem, caring for benevolence, and you are creating a problem 10 times larger than the one you're solving.

They are not to be double-tongued. They're to have one story to your face and pointed in the other direction. Number three, Also verse eight, not given to much wine. Not given to much wine. Proverbs 30 verse four and five says this, it is not for kings O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes intoxicating drink, lest they drink and forget the law and pervert the justice of all the afflicted.

Where you say, well deacons aren't kings, what in the world does this have to do with that? The point is when leaders drink, when people in an office are given to much wine, it's the poor and the downtrodden who suffer. That's what we see in Proverbs 30. So while it's important that nobody be given to much wine, there's a particular risk associated with a deacon who drinks too much because the poor and the downtrodden suffer and they're there for the poor and the downtrodden. We should also note that this is a prohibition of abuse, not abuse.

They're not to be given to much wine, much wine. So while it's not a prohibition of use, it is a very important prohibition of abuse. Number four, not greedy for money. Also in verse 8, not greedy for money. The office of deacon is a money handling job and boy do we see the importance of that in John 12 where Judas is complaining that the perfume has been wasted on Jesus.

How could you waste that expensive perfume when it could have been given to the poor, given to the poor. Obviously Judas defines himself as the poor because we find out that he's been skimming and he's not really worried about the poor at all, he's just sorry for the loss of money from from the purse. Paul talks about this a couple of chapters later in 1st Timothy, 1st Timothy 6, and we won't go through that in detail, but he it's the one that starts out godliness with contentment is great gain. A deacon needs to be somebody who has godliness with contentment. He's not greedy for money.

And the reason is, also reading from that passage, but those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare. Those who desire to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and then a couple phrases later for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. And so there's two points to a deacon not being greedy for money. One is it's a money handling job. The other is that greed is a gateway sin.

Where you find a greedy man, you'll find a man who's also caught up in many other many other sins, maybe not on the surface, but you'll find them when you start digging. Because the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierce themselves through with many sorrows. Number five, verse nine, holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience. The holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience. Sound doctrine, the mystery of the faith and holding to it sound doctrine sound life with a pure conscience.

A deacon is a man who is a marriage of sound doctrine and sound life. These are the men who God has put to care for his church. Isn't this beautiful? Doesn't this encourage you about God's love for the church? Number six, blameless.

Verse 10, blameless. NASB translates this beyond reproach. Here's a man who's above reproach And here is a qualification that kind of collects all the others up. And it serves as a standard. Is a man greedy for money?

Is a man given to much wine? What's the standard? Above reproach serves as the standard. It's the master qualification that collects all the others up and tells you whether they're qualified or they're not qualified. That often is the question, where's the line between qualified and not qualified?

Here it is, above reproach, which just means a significant charge wouldn't stick. If we said, that man doesn't manage his household well, he's disqualified, everybody else would say, Nah, that's not true. And the accuser would just have to sit down because he can't get any traction with his accusation because the man is above reproach. He can't be reproached. Number seven.

Here's an interesting one, the character of his wife. The character of his wife is a qualification for a man to become a deacon. She must be reverent. We've already said that for the husband. She's got to be just like her husband.

She's got to be reverent. He hallows the name of God. She hallows the name of God. She must not be a slanderer. Very similar to not being double-tongued.

Those are cousins. Same reason, husbands and wives talk. Wives are going to be, without a doubt, the wife of the Deacon knows more about what's going on in the local church than almost everybody else there and if you have a malicious talker in that position, watch out. She must be temperate. Temperate means balanced, stable, free from debilitating excesses.

She's even-keeled. This is a temperate woman. She's an even-keeled woman. The Jason Dohme translation of this is not prone to freaking out. The wife of a deacon should not be prone to freaking out.

She is temperate. She's even-keeled. And lastly, she's faithful in all things. I think this is a really important one. The wife of a deacon must be faithful in all things.

Her husband is taking on extra workloads. So guess what? She's taking on extra workload and so she must be faithful in all things. Why does Paul mention the wives of deacons and give them character qualifications? Well we've already mentioned one.

They're exposed to lots of sensitive information in the church. Here's another one. And this is speculation, but I want to speculate it. And it comes from Proverbs 31, this chapter about the ideal woman. This woman in Proverbs 31 is extending her hands to the needy, and that's really what her husband ought to be doing.

And there are many instances where it's not only appropriate, but also essential in the life of the deacon that he have his wife at his side in his ministry. Here's Proverbs 31 20, she extends her hand to the poor, yes she reaches out her hands to the needy. So there's many times where you got sensitive things going on in the church, maybe sensitive things related to women, and boy is it a help for a deacon to have this woman who is of similar character quality to him at his side to help in that work. Number eight, verse 12, the husband of one wife. The husband of one wife.

Literally translated a one woman man. There's lots of debate about whether this includes never divorced or not. I'm not gonna break it down here. There are different views on it. My view is it the text does not demand that never never divorced be a part of that.

The literal translation is a one-woman man and don't you know that when you see that in a man. Don't you know a one-woman man when you see him? His eyes are not wandering. He always conducts himself with absolute purity in his dealings with with the opposite sex and he is he is above reproach in that category. So at a minimum we'd say he has a faithful monogamous marriage assuming he's married.

He has a faithful monogamous marriage, but he is a one-woman man. By the way, just on this topic, whatever you decide it means to be a one-woman man and how that relates to divorce, you carry that over into the qualifications of elders and you carry that over into the qualifications for widows who are eligible to be supported by the church in First Timothy 5 because the widow has to be a one-man woman. So just a switching of the genders but the same ordering is what you find here. So it matters a lot where you come down on that because it affects elders, it affects deacons, and it affects the eligibility of widows who fit the other criteria in terms of being eligible for support. Number nine, ruling their children and their own house well.

By the way, there's lots and lots of overlap between the qualifications for elders and deacons. It's not perfect overlap, but there's lots of overlap. And here's one area of overlap. A Deacon must rule his children and his own house well. And this goes to the principle of being proven faithful with a few things to be given responsibility for more things.

These are men who are tried and true. You can look at their wives and their homes and know that they'll be faithful in the church because they've been proven faithful in this place so then they're given more responsibility in the local church. Being a deacon is labor. It's hard work. And I will tell you this.

We didn't really talk about my background. I am a former elder at Hope Baptist Church. I am a former deacon at Hope Baptist Church. And I am a current elder at Hope Baptist Church. I was one of the founding elders along with Scott Brown and then a couple years into it we needed deacons and the number of men desiring the work wasn't a big number and ever since, ever since reading this book about ten years ago I have always wanted to be a deacon.

I thought this is fantastic. It's misunderstood. It's not properly functioning in most churches today and I would love to be a deacon. I never thought for one second it would be a demotion to go from being an elder and a deacon because I've always seen them since reading this book as being complimentary, separate but complimentary roles. And I can tell you that when I went from an elder to being a deacon, my workload didn't drop off one little bit, not one bit.

I was working on very different things, but I was working as hard as ever. And it was a blessing, but it was not a year off by any stretch of imagination. So this is labor. It's going to take time and effort, And if a man doesn't have his home in order, then he has clear explicit direction from the Bible about where he should be applying his time and his energy. So we might think, this is punitive, you don't have your house in order you can't be a deacon the maybe a larger point is that if you don't have your house in order you have no business being a deacon your time and your energy ought to be focused at home because that is your primary calling there we have the nine qualifications Now we move to verse 13 which is my favorite verse Because it talks about the reward of serving well.

For those who have served well as deacons, obtain for themselves a good standing and great boldness in the faith, which is in Christ Jesus. Those who have served well obtain a good standing and great boldness in the faith. Being a deacon is something to be aspired to. We should be teaching our sons that it is great to be a deacon. Not second best any other office in the church, but it is a wonderful, essential, God-blessed office in the local church.

We should have our sons wiggling at the thought of being a deacon in a local church someday. They wiggle about everything else. They might as well wiggle about this. A deacon who has served well has good standing with God and with man and he has great boldness in the faith. Going back to Acts 7 and 8, Stephen and Philip, did these men have good standing?

Did they have great boldness in the faith? Yes. These are the kind of men that we need as deacons in our church. The work of deacon is hard work and so serving well requires sacrifice. When we look at verse 13 and we get all happy about what the rewards are, to qualify for the rewards you have to serve well and that's going to take a lot of labor.

We shouldn't underestimate what it means to serve well. Here's something that Charles Spurgeon says about serving in the local church. He applies it to the position of pastor but everything that's said here could also be applied to deacon so we'll use it here as well. Spurgeon says this, we are all too much occupied with taking care of ourselves. We shun the difficulties of excessive labor and frequently behind the entrenchment of taking care of our constitution, we do not half as much as we ought.

A minister of God is bound to spurn the suggestions of ignoble ease. It is his calling to labor and if he destroys his Constitution I for one only thank God that he permits us the high privilege of so making ourselves living sacrifices. May God give us men and women in the church who understand this, who desire to be living sacrifices. And they will not baby their constitutions and do half as much as they ought, but they will pour themselves out for the local church. In conclusion, three points.

One, the local church needs deacons. Not board members, not men with weed whackers, but real New Testament deacons of proven Christian character to care for the needy in the church. It will supercharge your elders. Deacons are an elders best friend. This is what's so hilarious about deacons in some churches hiring and firing pastors.

They should be the pastor's best friend if they're functioning in the role that God gives them through the New Testament text. Firing pastors, man, that'll be carrying that pastor on their shoulders. This is an office established by God for blessing the local church. God, through deacons, is giving lavish care for his people. It's a separate and complementary ministry to the eldership and it allows both groups to devote themselves to important needs of the church so that we're not setting up competition for limited resources where one or the other has to be the loser and one or the other is the winner, but that we're treating both mercy and benevolence and prayer in the ministry of the Word as non-negotiable in our churches.

It will increase the ministry of mercy in our Church. Is that okay with you if we have more ministry of mercy in our church? It will increase the ministry of prayer and the word in our church. Is that okay? Would you like to have 50% more?

What's the impact on our church if we have 50% more prayer? If we have 50% more of the ministry of the word, if we have 50% more of the ministry of mercy and benevolence in our church, what does that do to a local church body? I don't know what the answer is. I know the direction, though. It's good.

We should desire it. One caution, and this is a really, really, really, really, really important caution. You get these deacons and they're chomping at the bit and they're hard workers and they're qualified and they love the people of God. They can create an atmosphere in your church where everything's just taken care of because Deacons are on it. Everybody else can just come and be blessed.

If you want a miserable congregation full of people, create an environment like that where you can just come and be blessed. You don't ever have to do anything because the deacons will take care of it. They're on it. Spirit filled men, we're just going to let them do all the work. No, no, no, no.

The deacons are there for these sensitive things that require character qualifications. They're not there to just do all the work in the church. They're there for a specific subset. Now they may preside over these other areas like mowing the lawn, things like that. They may preside over many other things to make sure that they're done, but you've got big problems if you create a culture where the deacons do all the work of service in the church.

Do not do that in your church. You will find miserable complaining people. When people are not investing in the local church and they can just come listen to a sermon and go home and never have to plug in never have to give anything of themselves to the local church they'll be miserable and then they'll be after you don't do this to yourself church leaders. Number two, process is important. If we went further in 1st Timothy 5, we'd get to his admonition where he says, do not lay hands on anyone hastily.

There are character qualifications attached to this for a reason and we dare not rush through that and just say, yep, looks good to me, rubber stamp that sucker and get him into his ministry. We dare not lay hands on anyone, so process is important. We need to identify men who have a good reputation for mature Christian character and who are full of the Holy Spirit of wisdom, Holy Spirit and wisdom, and as a consequence they meet these other they meet the layer down when we start talking about not given to much wine etc etc. That's just the fruit of something. 1st Timothy 3 is the fruit of being full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.

It's the proof points. Lastly, this is just another proof of how lavishly God cares for his people, that he would put something in place so that the needy would have someone there of proving character to give attention to them to devote themselves to this duty. God loves his church. He's given so many beautiful practices and even offices so that his people would be cared for as he desires them to be cared for. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for giving us Acts 6. Thank you for giving us 1st Timothy 3 to help us to understand the office and the qualification of deacons. Thank you, Lord, for caring for your church. You bled for her, died for her, and your care continues to this day through many means. One of them being men set aside to devote themselves to caring for the needy in our churches.

Thank you, Lord, for understanding, knowing all these things, and making provision for your people so that we would be under the kind intentions of your will for us. God, I pray that you would help us to understand how we can be faithful to you in all these things. In Jesus' name, amen. For more messages, articles, and videos on the subject of conforming the Church and the family to the Word of God, and for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website, ncfic.org.