We need some deacons!
Acts 6:1-7 · Vern Peterman · Jun 11, 2017
Acts (2017-18), No. 21
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926559456883

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. As I walk up here, I have to be careful I don't slip on these eggs. So anyway, they're great to have up here, and it's great to have the kids up here too. We're in Acts of the Apostles, chapter 6, verses 1 through 7. And we want to caution you that today we're finishing an experiment. We've been trying some experiments with different formats in both the slides up front and the handouts. And so we're trying that and continuing that today. And we'll eventually make some kind of a decision here. So at any rate, just caution there's the experiment. And so in today's experiment, we will go back in time to late 34, early 35 A.D. And we'll get back here to June 11, 2017, I hope. That's our hope anyway.

So here we are, starting with Acts 6.1.

Now at this time, while the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews, because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food. This word, disciples, as Randy addressed in more summary form last Sunday, is now for the first time in the book of Acts. We're going to see that out of 30 times, this word, disciples, shows up three times in this passage in Acts, 30 times in the whole book of Acts. And when we get there, we're actually going to find that the word, disciples, ends in Acts before the end. And we'll look at why, because that's a fascinating account too.

Increasing in number, that word, those words rather, in number, is actually not in the original Greek. So it simply says in the original Greek, increasing. Elsewhere, as we'll get to it, that word in number is used. So it's assumed you understand that.

Then the other thing we talk about this Hellenistic Jews, that's of Greek language and cultural influence. Nobody's trying to imitate somebody named Helen. So Hellenistic means simply of Greek language and cultural influence. So one of the things that was happening is you had out in especially the Eastern Roman Empire, lots of Greek cultural influence coming from the time of Alexander the Great. several centuries before.

And so there were Jews who had been raised and brought up in that environment, then coming to Israel and living in Jerusalem or in various parts of Israel. And so those of that Greek influence were present there in Jerusalem, along with the native Hebrews. Those of primarily Jewish cultural influence, usually those who had been brought up in Israel and perhaps even right in and around Jerusalem. And so you had, they were all Jews, but you had different cultural and even language backgrounds for those.

And it could even be that they have a difficult time talking to one another. So depending on their particular background. The other thing is the daily serving of food. Remember that the apostles were having things brought to them, and then they had things distributed to various ones in order to share the resources that were brought to them. And it was all kinds of things.

So the apostles were kind of the central point of coordinating that. And so that's kind of the introduction to this situation that we see described here in Acts chapter 1. Now here we have kind of a mega slide, half page on your handout. What we're going to see, and we've already seen in the book of Acts, is in Acts 421, excuse me, 241. It says, so then those who had received the word were baptized, and that day there were added about 3,000 souls. So this is one way of stating the increase.

The next one, Acts 4.4, but many of those who had heard the message believed, and the number of the men came to be about 5,000. So you can imagine this tremendous increase and growth in the church, and it's called in different ways.

Here's Acts 5.41. And all the more, believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women were constantly added to their number. So this is a progressive thing, sometimes increasing by thousands in one day. Here in this passage here, the Word of God kept spreading, the number of disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith. So here we find another statement of the increase.

Acts 11.21 has a similar kind of thing. A large number who believed turned to the Lord.

Acts 14.1, and this is on Paul and Barnabas' missionary journey together, Paul's first. So in Iconium, they entered the synagogue of the Jews together and spoke in such a manner that a large number of people believed, both of Jews and of Greeks.

And that continues on in Acts 6.5. They were increasing in number daily. There's where it actually uses the words in number. Acts 19 20 so the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing so you have various expressions of this increase in this growth taking place and more and more being added to their number so what's expressed here in chapter 6 and more than one occasion there in the passage we're looking at now has been expressed before and will continue to be expressed as we go through the book of Acts It will be expressed, however, in different ways, and that's why we use different words, increasing, added, large number, growing, etc., in the terminology that's used.

Now, the apostles are delivering the gospel and thousands are getting saved, right? People are coming to the apostles and getting healed. Imagine the apostles, if you said, okay, your assignment apostles, twelve of you, is to just go around and heal people.

Could they keep busy with just that? Yes. All the time. If it was just that, but the reality is they got a lot more going on, right? And so the Lord made it such that people could just be in their shadow and get healed because that way they could get a lot more done, right? And they had a lot more to do besides just healing people. And then you have the apostles are standing up to the growing opposition from the leaders of the Jews.

And so that is certainly a disruption in their schedule, right? Sorry, honey, I can't make it home tonight. I'm going to spend the night in jail. I think, right? Until an angel lets us out. And then the Lord said, I can't come home. I got to go out and start preaching again. Right? So you can imagine that. So some have the nerve to complain, as we're about to see, about the inequitable feeding of immigrants. Who ever heard of such a thing? Anyway, so here's Acts 6, 2-4.

So the twelve summoned the congregation of the disciples and said, it is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may put in charge of this task, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.

So this, the twelve, is a term for the apostles, and as a matter of fact, that's a term that starts back in the Gospels, and we're going to see it as we go through Acts and even on into Paul's letters. That term, the twelve, got to be sort of shorthand for the apostles. They just say the twelfth, right, instead of the apostles.

So it's an alternate term. The congregation actually refers to a multitude of believers. It wasn't a term for the church or even the local church that caught on in any big way, but it's used here and we're going to run into it a time or two again. Here is reference to the disciples. It's now the second time in the book of Acts. And it's not the last time. We're going to see even in today's passage.

And he says, it's not desirable for us to neglect the Word of God. This is as opposed to what we're going to see farther down this passage here, devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. So this is, in order that we devote ourselves, here's what we're going to do, right? It is not good that we neglect the teaching of the Word in order to take care of this good thing. So the word of God here is actually in the Greek, the word of the God. So this is specifically the God, the God of scripture, the God that's being referred to here.

And then it says to serve tables. This is the verb form of deacon. Here's what's interesting, we actually put here as a title at the bottom of your handout, and in the bulletin, you know, we need some deacons, and yes we do. What's interesting is that term deacons is not actually used in this passage, but what is talked about is serving. And we're going to get to that some more, because this is a very important distinction, and one that we should pay some attention to here.

He said, they said, Brethren, select from among yourselves seven men of good reputation. This is a qualification among others. And so that was part one. So with reference to other people. Full of the spirit and of wisdom. So this is spiritual qualifications.

So not just a good reputation. But spiritual qualifications, and this is something that might be easily overlooked. Now wait a minute, aren't you just distributing food? Why do you need spiritual qualifications for that? Well actually, in serving the church body, and especially directing it, and in view of the fact that this had been initiated with some complaining, you need to have people who are actually spiritually minded and coming from a spiritual perspective distributing it.

This is not just somebody stepping in to do it for whatever reason. This is also the Lord's work through them, not simply, hey, I'll sign up for the list of good things to do. This is actually God's working through them in order to serve. that we may put in charge of this task. So this is an apostolic appointment. Even though the people were to select these seven men from among themselves, in the end it would be the apostles who would make the appointment and delegate this task because it was beginning to be too much for them. So he finally says, and we'll devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.

These are central to the apostolic stewardship. One of the things that becomes apparent here is really something all of us can do some thinking about, and that is, what stewardship has God given me? And the truth is, many of us have stewardships, plural, that the Lord has entrusted into our hands. If you're a husband, you have a stewardship. If you're a wife, you have a stewardship. If you're a mom, you have a stewardship.

As a matter of fact, Nancy and I pray for not only our kids' households, kids have been out of the house for a while, but also for our grandkids. There's a stewardship that we recognize there, right? We pray for the people of Holly Hills, right? So we don't forget you, right?

And so there's a stewardship there. We actually have a stewardship for one another here in the body of Christ. So that stewardship is central. And so these apostles recognize their stewardship. And guess what? As important as the serving is, they recognize their stewardship is not to be distracted, taken away from, by serving tables. It's not that it's a bad thing. The guys who are doing it are appointed by the apostles, and they have both reputation qualifications as well as spiritual qualifications for doing it.

Now, think about it. Here is an apostle's abbreviated job description. And I have this somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But bring thousands into believing the faith so as to become disciples, sometimes at a rate of thousands a day. So there's part one of your job description.

Is that all? Not even close. Teach those so that they all mature in the faith and do not remain spiritual infants. So the new ones you just got, like thousands a day, start teaching them. So you're still not done. Respond with unfathomable patience and joy to waves of persecution from the Jewish leaders.

Here you are trying really hard to do this job and working at it and going at it every day, and these guys come along and arrest you right in the middle of things. I mean, that's really disruptive. You can't even call home and call your wife and say, hey, I'll be late for dinner. I mean, it's terrible. Okay.

So, heal every illness and cast out demons. Right? Every illness that comes by and casts out all the demons, you've got to do that too, in the midst of everything else. Distribute food and other resources among thousands of believers in varying degrees and kinds of physical and other needs while it's changing scale and scope from day to day. This is getting bigger and bigger. So one day you might have 5,000 more people to handle all this distribution. So this is a huge job.

Now, the other is, kiss your wife goodnight as you roll into bed. So you can imagine, here's Peter, and he's coming home, right? But this time it's late at night, and the wife's got the lamp lit, and you've got a flame going there. So here's Peter, and he comes home, and here's his wife, and he calls her Milk and Honey. And she calls him Petey Sweetie. Right? So, here's Peter, he comes home, he kisses his wife goodnight, he's crawling into bed, and she says, well, how was your day, honey?

No. How was your day, Petey, sweetie? Right? And so, he says, it was great today. We had 5,000 people come to the Lord. Oh, Petey, sweetie, that's wonderful. Right? And so, Here's Peter and he's saying, yeah, it really is great. And they're all coming to lunch tomorrow, too. Right? Oh, right? Anyway, you get the idea.

So the term, the Word of God, does not always mean the same thing throughout the Bible. This is important for us to remember. As we see it, to not always just kind of drop in, oh, that's this. Well, we have to look at the context. It doesn't always mean the same thing.

In the book of Acts, the Word of God may refer to the gospel of salvation, and that is the content to be believed. So that's the Word of God. Also, the teachings of the apostles as the content of the Word of God grew throughout the book of Acts and in the time that followed. So you have that's also the Word of God. The teachings of the Word of God through the apostles came to be known as the faith.

We're going to see that when we get to Acts chapter 6 verse 7 in this very passage here. Here's Acts 6, 5, and 6. So the statement found approval with the whole congregation, and 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, a proselyte from Antioch. And these they brought before the apostles, and after praying, they laid their hands on them.

So this statement of the twelve apostles, the twelve, right? found approval with the whole congregation. Again, this word means the whole multitude. So you're not talking about just a small church congregation. This is the thousands, right? Listen to it. They chose Stephen. And by the way, that name Stephen in the Greek, this is the victory crown. This is the crown that's also a name for a reward that believers will get. Okay, so that's Stephen.

He was a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. Now one of the points we've made is Dr. Luke, especially the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, really likes to use this word full of, okay, and meaning it's total, okay, it's complete, right? Full of faith and of the Holy Spirit.

And then Philip, we're going to see him again as we get into the Book of Acts, and he's going to be mentioned finally in Chapter 21. We have the other names lesser known. Nicholas, however it says, is a Gentile convert to Judaism. He is a proselyte into Judaism who became a Christian believer in the Church of Antioch.

And then these they brought before the apostles. The apostles then praying, seeking the Lord's guidance here. And then finally, they laid their hands on them. Laying out of hands might mean several different things. As a matter of fact, if the Jewish leaders laid hands on you, it was probably not to bless you. But in this case, it was blessing and authority.

So we're going to see this again, and it's interesting, faith in the Holy Spirit is going to be reversed, but the same thing happens in Acts 11, 19-24. In verse 22 it says, Barnabas, in further description in verse 24, it says, and he was a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. So the same content, just simply reversed. And so this is a term that Dr. Luke likes to use, and we're actually going to take some time a little farther on to take a deeper look at what does it mean to be full of the Holy Spirit.

Now, so these seven men, the names Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, and Parmenas, they indicate these men were all likely Jews out of the Greek-speaking world. So, interestingly, in order to take care of the fact that what appeared to be a bias towards the native Hebrews, these guys all appear to be out of the Greek-speaking world. Nicholas is a Gentile convert to Judaism, so there wouldn't be a prejudice claim. And no, these guys are actually out of the Greek-speaking world.

And Stephen, of course, is a believer, and then his character, and his message and we're soon to find out his martyrdom. We'll take the forefront in the very next verse after this passage, Acts 6.8 through 8.2. Stephen's martyrdom will actually be very pivotal as we'll see in terms of what happens in the church. Now one question we could ask, is this passage the ultimate model for deacons? So this passage is inspired by God, given to us to see how the apostles held their assignment, the stewardship, by delegating this important task to godly men.

So while this passage has many great truths in it, the word deacons actually does not appear in this passage, nor does the full set of qualifications. The full set of qualifications for deacons is shown in 1 Timothy 3, 8 through 13. And so what we're going to see here, this is essentially proto-deacons, but not officially called deacons yet. We have here, for example, at Holly Hills, we have four deacons.

And so we have Wayne and Courtney and Bill and Phil. in the role officially as deacons, but the reality is a great many serve the church body. A great many serve, and in varying capacities, and a lot of it people don't necessarily even know that it's taking place. You have in your hand probably some handouts, including both the handout for this message, as well as a bulletin and whatnot. And so we have people quietly behind the scenes that work at making that happen. We have others, essentially we had a group go out and take the kids out. And so they're serving in various ways. So we have lots of people who serve in various ways. And that's the word that's used here. the verb, to serve.

The other truth that comes out, as we'll see as we go through the book of Acts, is that the Lord's a whole lot more interested in the action of serving than he is in the titles that people take on. Here's Acts 6-7, For the word of God kept on spreading, and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem. And a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith." This again is the word of the God here in the original language. It kept on spreading, or as we saw, they're increasing, added, etc. And the number of disciples, this is actually, it says the second time should be the third time in Acts. So this is the third time in Acts, third time in this passage. And then finally, increasing and added again, being used in this passage, and a great many of the priests, and I put in here, wow, and we're going to find out, wow, are becoming obedient to the faith. First of all, the word of God kept on spreading there, so as the gospel The content to be believed so as to be saved was the primary focus of the Word of God in this verse, Acts 6-7, as opposed to the whole content of Scripture.

That's confirmed by the number of disciples that was increasing in Jerusalem, which means that Jews were believing. In this case, it's Jews who are believing. We have, in the instance of Nicholas, a convert, a Gentile convert to Judaism. So, with rare exceptions such as that, it's Jews who are believing so far.

So there was a spreading of the gospel, even actually geographically beyond Jerusalem, but that's not the focus of Acts just yet. The growth of the number of believers, however, in and around Jerusalem was remarkable. people who lived in Jerusalem, those who came to Jerusalem, became believers and stuck around because of what they saw was happening, those who live in the surrounding area.

All those were part of what's included here in this description. Now let's talk about a great many of the priests. Just to get an idea, it has been estimated around 18,000 or more priests were operating there in Israel. These were organized into about 24 courses or subdivisions of this group of 18,000, so somewhere around 750 or more per course. We don't have any way to quantify a great many. How many is that? If we've got a number of 18,000, we don't know. But even if, let's say, and this may be off, would be a tenth, that would be 1,800 priests who had become believers by this time. And by the way, there were about 2,000 priests who lived in Jerusalem itself.

And so this time is about late 34, early 35 AD. The priests were all the tribe of Levi, but specifically in order to be a priest, they had to be sons of Kohath, that is, descended from Kohath, within the tribe of Levi. So those who were outside of that were Levites. And those who are within Kohath were included among the priests. By New Testament times, many of the priests, and actually some would say most of the priests, sided with the Sadducees as opposed to the Pharisees.

Now this is really remarkable, and this is why I put wow. Why would so many of the priests, most of whom were Sadducees, who did not believe in a resurrection, in a Messiah, or in miracles, suddenly decide to become believers in the crucified, buried, and resurrected Messiah. Why would they do that? That was completely against their background, upbringing, and beliefs prior to this time, for a great many of them. Why would they do that?

Well, it may have been that they heard John the Baptist point to Jesus and say, Behold the Lamb of God. who takes away the sin of the world. Or at least that got things started and got them thinking. It may have been they even heard Jesus teaching in the temple, because after all, Jesus did that often, and that would be right where they worked.

It may have been that on the day of Passover for the Sadducees, while they were getting ready to sacrifice the Passover lambs, that they noticed that the sky turned extraordinarily dark. And the record that we have is that the whole Eastern Roman Empire and even outside of the Roman Empire turned dark that day. That may well have gotten their attention since it was about noontime when they were supposed to start slaughtering the lambs. Can you imagine? We're just getting ready to start slaughtering the lambs by the thousands. and all of a sudden the sky turns inexplicably dark for three hours.

Why would that happen? That might get them thinking. It may be that they were serving in the temple that day, and about three o'clock in the afternoon, the temple veil, which is about, you know, yea thick, about the thickness of a heavy rope, that was very tall, got torn from top to bottom. And even if you weren't watching it, you would hear this horrific ripping sound. Right? That would most certainly get your attention. And even if you weren't on duty that day, there would be all kinds of talk among the priests.

Why did this temple get torn, temple veil get torn from top to bottom? Why did that happen? That may well have gotten their attention. You can imagine the priests discussing it for weeks if not months to come, especially as they tried to figure out, do we patch up the one that's torn or replace it? Moses has no law about how to fix this, right? Isn't that interesting?

It may be that they heard the apostles teaching, because after all, the apostles would often go teaching right there in the temple where the priests were. And you imagine the apostles preaching, and maybe they heard that. Maybe they heard the apostles saying, Christ was crucified and buried and raised, and we are witnesses of these things.

It may be that they themselves had seen the man who was born lame, who had been there for over 40 years, begging. By the way, the priests had to be at least 30 years old, which means that they would have all seen this lame man for decades. And Peter and John healed this man. Can you imagine that background?

About the words, obedient to the faith. Some folks might say, wait a minute, that word obedient, that kind of bothers me. That sounds like law. That sounds like something that I do. Well, let's take a look at that because the Greek words don't actually mean this is something primarily focused upon you. Here's why. The Greek word translated obedient actually comes in two parts.

It means to listen and place oneself under. That's faith. To listen and place oneself under, that's faith. The faith here is the message of the gospel. They listened to the message of the gospel and believed. That's what it means to be obedient to the faith. It's not signing up for any self-effort or rule of law.

I believe the gospel that I've heard, that Christ died for my sins, was buried and rose again. So what does this obedient to the faith mean to us? So the entry door for us, being obedient to the faith, is for each one of us to listen and to place oneself under the gospel of salvation. That Christ died for your sins, was buried and rose again. That's the entry door for obedient to the faith.

Do you believe it? From that point on, obedience to the faith is to come to understand what the Bible teaches. And of course, at this time, this is what are the apostles teaching, right? But for us, what the Bible teaches, especially including what the apostles taught, and to place oneself under those precious truths. So guess what that comes to?

As we put the illustration, facts, faith, and feelings, the faith in the Facts is like the train in the tracks, and the feelings follow. People will talk about, well, I want to feel close to the Lord. Well, we don't pursue the feeling of feeling close to the Lord. We put our trust in the Lord and the feelings follow. But we don't like the train, we don't just sit there and back up to wherever the caboose is going all the time, right? Faith in the facts is like the train in the tracks the feelings follow.

Randy has mentioned that we were once in a church that is actually a church that turned charismatic. It was not initially. It was a church that turned charismatic and one of the things that we began to hear is people began determining whether things were true or false based on whether they felt blessed. Instead of putting our faith in the facts, which is what the Bible calls for. Faith in the facts and the feelings follow, not pursuit of the feeling.

The other thing that comes out three times in this passage is the word disciples. So we go through the book of Acts, we're going to see that word disciple or disciples, singular or plural, 30 times. We've seen three of them in this one passage here. It's going to go from chapter 6 here, to chapter 21, where it's something for us to take a look at. Why does it suddenly stop being used in the book of Acts? You won't find it in any of the New Testament letters, but it's used in the gospel of John chapter 15. Hmm. Two things for us to make note of.

One, being a disciple as it is used in the Gospels has almost nothing to do with what it means here and for us in the church. Many believers make the mistake of seeing, oh, that's what a disciple is when they look at the words in the Gospels. That's not what is intended here.

Some immediate differences, for example, Disciples were only, in the rabbinic tradition, were only to be men, males. Disciples get called disciples, male or female. As soon as a person believed male or female, they were called a disciple in the Book of Acts. That was not the case in the Gospels. Only those who were invited and accepted by the rabbi got called disciples in the rabbinic traditions. Here, everyone who believed gets immediately called a disciple, male or female.

So jumping to the conclusion that whatever it says in the Gospels about disciples is true for us in the body of Christ, not the right conclusion. Being a disciple in the rest of the New Testament is all about learning and knowing Christ. Got that? Being a disciple in the rest of the New Testament is all about learning and knowing Christ. Now notice, what did I not say? It isn't all about learning about and knowing about Christ. I took about out of that. Why?

It's all about learning and knowing Him personally, directly. One of the places where we can describe that, where it makes a lot of sense, in John chapter 15, Jesus talks about the vine and the branches. He says, I'm the vine, the Father is the vinedresser, you're the branches.

John 15.4, he says, abide in me and I in you. And by the way, that's an imperative. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.

By the way, so what does that say? Can I produce fruit by my own effort? Can I produce fruit apart from the Lord? No. Not at all. Here's verse 5, John 15, 5, I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. Is that a little bit? Is that only a limited percentage? No. You can do nothing. John 15, 8, My father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit as a result of abiding. and so prove to be my disciples."

So as you go through the book of Acts, this is very important for us to keep in mind. When it refers to disciples, it's not talking about just people who learn a lot of stuff about Jesus. It's not talking about people who carry out self-effort. This is about dependence and intimacy and personal knowledge of Christ. That's what it's about.

We're going to see disciples again and again. And this is the message the Lord left us with. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you as we see these words, disciples, show up here. We thank you for what you have laid out here. And we thank you that what we have here is not just more and more stuff to pack into our brains, more and more stuff to learn about you. But it is knowing you, maintaining an intimacy with you and a complete total dependence upon you. We thank you for that. Thank you for your precious word. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.