Dennis Tuuri

One of the reasons that I chose the songs that we’ve sung so far this morning, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” whose refrain comes out of course from the book of Revelation, and then “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” is to give us a sense of the historic import of what we’re doing this morning. What we do in the ordination of officers in the church is of long-standing tradition and of God’s command and authority of course for 2,000 years.

But I want this morning to help us understand that it has an even greater heritage and history than 2,000 years in a general sense. So we’re going to begin this morning by looking at an overview of the office of deacon in the scriptures. From there we’ll move on to the implications of that office in terms of service, of course. That first point and the second point will be ordination and its relationship to service.

And then the third thing we’ll do is try to draw some implications for our church. It does no good to come to the scriptures just for intellectual curiosity or excitement. We must make application of the faith to our particular circumstances that God and his providence has put us into. And what we’re saying this morning, although probably not new to most of you, has implications that maybe you haven’t thought of.

And if you have, you need to be reminded again as I do, I’m sure. So first we’re going to look at the overview of the office of deacon. Sometimes with an office or a term in the New Testament that’s used in rather a cryptic sense and not fully developed for us, it helps to look at the Septuagint to see what Greek words they translated Hebrew words into. However, in this particular case, it doesn’t do us much good.

I mentioned the book of Esther on your outline and the Greek word diakonos is used in, for instance, the eunuchs that serve the king in the book of Esther. So I’m sure that we don’t want to make much application from that today. But the Septuagint then, and it’s particular, doesn’t help us. We look at the New Testament and again here commentators have noted that there isn’t really a lot of information on the office of deacon, which is rather strange if you think about it.

Now the word diakonos or servant is used in a general sense, for instance, of waiters of a meal in John 2:5 and 9, of Paul as a servant of the church in Colossians 1:25, of Christians in general as servants of the master Jesus Christ and of Christ’s people in John 12:26. These references are all on your outline. Again in Mark 9:35, of Christians in general as servants of the master and his people, and there are many other such general occurrences of this term.

But the term is only used in reference to a specific office or function in the church in two places: Philippians 1:1 and 1 Timothy 3:8 and 12. In both these cases, and only in these cases, the Vulgate decided to use a transliteration for the term instead of translating the term into a word such as “service.” And so they have “deacon”—in the Vulgate, they transliterated that term instead of translating it in only those two occurrences.

Both of these occurrences of course should be familiar to us by now—that they are used in conjunction with bishops or overseers of the church. Elders, bishops, overseers are fairly general terms for the same basic office or function. You might have noticed by now that I haven’t mentioned Acts 6. Some are reluctant to see in Acts 6 the establishment of the office or function of deacon. But I believe that this establishment is almost certain.

Repeatedly the secular term deacon—the Greek term used here is used to describe one who waits at table. Okay? The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, in summing up some of this extra-biblical sightings and use of the word diakonos in the Greek, says the following. If the inscriptions—these inscriptions in which the secular use of the term is used—if these inscriptions teach us anything, it is that the original meaning of diakonos, “to wait at table,” persisted. In accordance with the saying and example of Jesus, early Christianity made this the symbol of all loving care for others. Here is the root of the living connection between ethical reflection on service in the community and the actual diaconate.

Again, the persistent sense of waiting at table is reflected in the fact that the Christian office had its origins in the common meal at the heart of the life of the community that we see recorded in Acts 6. And of course, that’s just what’s talked about in Acts 6, with the selection of the seven to assist the apostles in waiting at table.

The very word that the word originally meant in the secular use in the Greek terms. And so I think it’s rather obvious that in Acts 6 we have that establishment of the office or function of deacon, even though the term isn’t specifically used there. I ought to point out, of course, something that’s rather obvious: that in Acts 6, benevolences or administration of widows specifically is the context of the selection of those assistants or men who would administer things, so that the apostles could devote themselves to the study of the word and to prayer.

And benevolence is certainly an important part of the deacon’s function. It’s important, of course, to realize that we all have responsibilities in terms of helping those in the midst of our community that have not the physical means to care for themselves—through no fault of their own, but through the providence of God. It’s a very dangerous thing in a church that teaches the importance of God’s law and blessings and cursings in relationship to that law. That’s a very dangerous sin that is quite easily a temptation to us, and that is to think that our own hand obtains wealth for us.

That somehow, because we obey God’s law perfectly and we work hard and we do all the right things, that God therefore blesses us. There’s certainly some truth to that. But God’s blessings are the result of his grace and mercy shown to us. It’s the shed blood of Jesus Christ that gives us life itself. And it’s God’s supernatural blessings that really flow to us as we attempt to walk in obedience to his law.

What I’m saying is that it can be a Pharisaic-like pride that enters into our accumulation of wealth as God prospers us. And we must never allow that to happen to us. That’s precisely the sin that Israel fell into so often. To think that their own strength, their own hand, obtained that wealth for them, they turned their back on God as a result of it.

But one way that God, I’m sure the one way that God has given us to avoid that temptation is to turn around with an open hand to those in our midst who are less fortunate or who have specific needs at specific times in their lives. If we fail to have that open hand of grace extended forth to our neighbor, then we fail in the very first instance that God gives us to teach us that we have received the open hand of God and blessing to us. And we can enter into what is so often the caricature of Christian reconstruction: dominion and prosperity theology—not based upon regeneration and the power and gift of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God, but upon our own power.

Well, I want to leave benevolence behind. Though I think that’s the context of the selection of the men in Acts 6, it’s only the context. I think that the office has far broader implications than that.

Now there are certain aspects of the work of the diaconate that can be guessed at from the qualities required of the men who fill the office, and we’re going to go over those qualities here in a couple of minutes out of 1 Timothy 3. Many have concluded from the paucity or scarcity of information in the New Testament or in the Septuagint versions that from this information we must look to the development of the office in the post-apostolic church for directions in understanding the term of deacon.

Well, of course, if you just look at the New Testament and then the Septuagint and the Vulgate and look at the early church—how the church itself administered the office of deacon in the first couple of centuries—you leave behind one great source that God has given to us. You leave behind the rest of the Bible. Okay? You leave behind the Old Testament. We don’t want to make that mistake this morning. We want to look at an inspired record that will assist us in understanding the office of deacon, not at the uninspired history of the church in the first couple of centuries.

For understanding of the term, history is important, and looking at the church and how it viewed office is important, but it’s not inspired. And we like to go to the entire word of God instead of having a short Bible as we attempt to understand the office of deacon in the New Testament and any possible correlations it might have in the Old Testament.

Acts 6 I believe should properly be seen in conjunction with Numbers 11, and this is, as I said, review for most of us this morning—hopefully. Numbers 11: we have the establishment of 70 officers for Moses to assist him with the administration of the people.

Now, let’s turn to the Old Testament and to Numbers 11 and then also to Deuteronomy 1. In Deuteronomy 1, we read Moses reciting the history of the people in the wilderness and what God had done for them and the various ways in which God had worked. In Deuteronomy 1:15, Moses said, “So I took the chief of your tribes, wise men and known, and made them heads over you, captains over thousands, captains over hundreds, captains over fifties, and captains over tens, and officers among your tribes.”

The persistent sense of waiting at table is reflected in the fact that the Christian office had its origins in the common meal at the heart of the life of the community that we see recorded in Acts 6. And of course, that’s just what’s talked about in Acts 6, with the selection of the seven to assist the apostles in waiting at table. The very word that the word originally meant in the secular use in the Greek terms.

And so I think it’s rather obvious that in Acts 6 we have that establishment of the office or function of deacon, even though the term isn’t specifically used there. I ought to point out, of course, something that’s rather obvious: that in Acts 6, benevolences or administration of widows specifically is the context of the selection of those assistants or men who would administer things, so that the apostles could devote themselves to the study of the word and to prayer.

And benevolence is certainly an important part of the deacon’s function. It’s important, of course, to realize that we all have responsibilities in terms of helping those in the midst of our community that have not the physical means to care for themselves—through no fault of their own, but through the providence of God. It’s a very dangerous thing in a church that teaches the importance of God’s law and blessings and cursings in relationship to that law.

That’s a very dangerous sin that is quite easily a temptation to us, and that is to think that our own hand obtains wealth for us. That somehow, because we obey God’s law perfectly and we work hard and we do all the right things, that God therefore blesses us. There’s certainly some truth to that. But God’s blessings are the result of his grace and mercy shown to us. It’s the shed blood of Jesus Christ that gives us life itself.

And it’s God’s supernatural blessings that really flow to us as we attempt to walk in obedience to his law. What I’m saying is that it can be a Pharisaic-like pride that enters into our accumulation of wealth as God prospers us. And we must never allow that to happen to us.

The ministration of large numbers of people—that is, the burden of the people in the administrative sense. Now it’s very important that we also note in passing that Numbers 11 records grumbling of people over food as the precipitant of the provision for men who we can assume from the text would then assist somehow the distribution of the massive amounts of flesh that God would provide for his people.

Moreover, the grumbling and resultant weeping in verse 4 of Numbers 11 is specifically occurring—God tells us in his divine word here—with reference to the mixed multitude at first and then to the Israelite members of the covenant community. Remember, there are mixed multitudes that came out of Egypt. That’s really important to remember for a whole variety of reasons. It completely shatters the whole myth of racial lineage from Abraham.

But in any event, it’s important for our consideration here to see that in Numbers 11, God establishes officers. Those officers are—the reference to the establishment of those officers is grumbling over food first on the part of mixed multitudes. And God then, after the establishment of the 70, gives a tremendous amount of flesh to the people to eat. And we can assume that if that was why God gave Moses these 70 men, that they assisted somehow in administration of that flesh to the people.

The birth of the people is the phrase used there, which refers to the administration of the people in the physical sense there. Now, the Acts 6 account records the establishment of those to serve, to administer the food provisions of the early church, to assist the apostles and then later the elders by serving at tables, so that they—the officers, the elders rather, and the apostles—might more effectively do the service of the word.

That’s specifically what we’re told in Acts 6. The precipitant of this establishment of office of deacon is again a murmuring and complaining over distribution of food, and once again it originates with the mixed multitude, as it were, with the Grecian converts in this case, as opposed to the Hebrew converts.

Now we’ve mentioned this in passing before, but the idea that somehow here what was going on was God was catering to a particular racial or cultural group by appointing people of that racial or cultural group is ridiculous. It’s just a denial of the body of Christ. The whole point is people are brought into one group now. And so these seven were to assist not just the Grecians, but were to assist in the entire distribution of the table itself—the common meals they would have together in the early church.

And by doing that administration of that particular function, they would then relieve the eldership—the apostles originally and then the eldership—so that they might effectively serve in the ministry of the word, while the deacons were serving in the ministry of the table or administration.

So we have Exodus 18: establishment of judges teaching the word. Numbers 11: the establishment of officers administering the physical requirements of the covenant community. And then we see a correlation of that in Acts 6, where you have apostles who would then become, in terms of office, elders. Those elders administer the law again, teach people to judge correctly amongst themselves in terms of that law.

And we have the giving of another office to the church—the giving of the office of deacon, like the Numbers 11 account, in the context of a food problem and a physical distribution to meet the physical requirements of the covenant community. Now, while these two scenarios are not by any stretch of the imagination identical—okay—the common problems associated with each is the need for godly administrators to assist the covenant community in their physical requirements.

Numbers 11, Acts 6—officers, deacons—and to alleviate men who were called to other functions of any distractions from their particular function. The common provision in both settings is spirit-filled men to do the work that is absolutely essential for the proper functioning of the community. There is no hint of neoplatonism here in this account. In either of these accounts, there’s no hint that the physical concerns of the community are somehow inferior, not important, or imbued with some kind of neutrality in terms of how they are to be met.

Quite the reverse. The Numbers 11 account tells us specifically that the 70 administrators were godly men, first of all. And it says that the spirit of the living God, for empowerment and enabling for their proper function, came upon them. God took of the spirit that was upon Moses and put it upon those 70 to indicate that they were spirit-filled men, that the task they were going to do was a spiritual task in spite of the fact that it dealt with physical provisions.

There’s no hint here of superior and inferior offices. There’s a hint of a differentiation of function. No neoplatonism, no neutrality in the physical functioning, but an enablement by the living God for the power to do their job correctly and according to God’s word and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Without that, we have nothing.

The Acts 6 account tells us specifically that the men selected by the congregation and appointed by the apostles must be full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom. Spirit-filled men are required to administer the tables. The tables are not unimportant. The physical requirements of the covenant community are essential for the proper functioning of the body.

Now I read Deuteronomy 20:1-9 and we’ll return to that now. Deuteronomy 20, verses 1-9: we have the inspired word of God giving us a specific task that the officers that were created originally in Numbers 11 and then were perpetuated as, as we saw from Deuteronomy 1, they were perpetual officers as they went into the land.

Deuteronomy 20, we have a specific function of those officers. Okay? The priest address them first. We see in Deuteronomy 20 another very important aspect of the calling of the officer in the Old Testament and correspondingly then the function of the deacon in the new. We see here again the officer assisting those appointed to minister and sacrifice, prayer, in the ministry of the word.

In this case, in Deuteronomy 20, the priest, after the charge to the people is given by the priest—okay, in verses 2 says the priest shall approach, speak to the people, the charge in verse 3 and verse 4—that God is with them. After the charge to the people given by the priest, the officers then move in to administer the army of God. They are specifically told to perform this administration in strict accord with the requirements of the law in relationship to combatants.

And we went over some of the details of this law a couple of weeks ago. We talked about the year of exclusion and some of the things that are taught there. And it’s quite important we remember those things. The point I’m trying to make is they came in to administer, and that administration was according to the word of God in terms of combatants.

As I said, we talked at some length about these exclusions of service two weeks ago, but the excluding of these groups of men from the ranks of the army is not the central thing that’s going on here. The excluding of those people that were not to be combatants in war, were not to go out to war for those reasons mentioned there, must be seen in context with verse 9 of the text.

Verse 9 says, “And it shall be when the officers have made an end of speaking unto the people, that they shall single out men that shouldn’t go out to war. Now they’ve taken the people out that were not supposed to be part of the combatants. That they then shall make captains of the armies to lead the people.”

That’s what they’re doing here. See, they’re going to make captains to lead the people into war. They’re going to administer the army of God. Well, now we know that God’s pattern, not just in the church but in society and in the army, is tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands. These officers could not create heads of tens and thousands and then weed out men who are to be excluded. Could they? They would have improper management.

Then, according to God’s word, they had to pair it down first to the actual valid combatants and then administer and make these captains over tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands in terms of the army. You see, that’s what’s going on. They’re administering the army of God. And the exclusion of combatants is just part of that process.

So we see from this overview of the office of deacon in the New Testament and office in the Old Testament the correlations of some of the functions between those two groups. The officer was given, and so the deacon must also be seen as given in terms of administering the people of God, first and foremost. Benevolences is part of that. But administration is the primary calling, and that administration is for the purpose of service—for the purpose of going out in war as an army of God.

But let’s turn now to the act of ordination itself and get more implications for service out of that. Again we’ll start with the New Testament. A very important consideration this morning for what we do is ordination and what is symbolized or taught us by the word of God explicitly relative to ordination.

In Acts 6, God tells us quite distinctly that the people—the congregation, as it were—selected the servants of the tables, and that the apostles then appointed them to the task, and that finally they were prayed over by the apostles and that hands were then laid on them. Verse 6 is the culmination of this process when they set before the apostles—or whom they set before the apostles. These are the men that they had chosen to be the deacons or the servants of the table, which is what the word deacon means, after all.

Verse 6—”whom they set before the apostles. They obviously, as reference here to the congregation, they’ve selected seven men of God-filled, holy spirit-filled men for the task. And they then appoint these men and set them apart for that task. And they set those men—they, the congregation, before the apostles. And when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them.”

Okay, there’s three references to the word “they” in verse 6. Now some may wish to reduce the laying on of hands here to the apostles, but this is not clearly and plainly induced from the text. It’s inferred by the presentation of the men to the apostles. Okay? What people would see here is that the congregation presents these men, the men are then transferred to the apostles, the apostles pray with them, and then the apostles lay hands on them.

But it need not be seen as one or the other. If you’re going to make a choice—is it the congregation or is it the apostles laying hands on?—you would have to say that it was the apostles. They were the last reference in the text. But we don’t have to draw that distinction. Okay? It need not be seen as one or the other, but of both confirming in sign and ceremony what had occurred with the two-fold witness of the man’s fitness for office by congregation and apostle.

We’ve got a two-fold witness here to this man’s calling on the part of the congregation and then on the part of the apostles. Either one can veto the decision, if you want to look at it that way. If you have a two-fold witness to the fitness of these men to office, and God gives us a sign—the ordination, laying on of hands—that we would assume would correctly image that two-fold witness, okay? And so we wouldn’t have to see it as one or the other, but as both.

And here, as we have done earlier with other portions of the deacon’s function, we must look to the whole scripture for understanding this particular act. The imposition of hands doesn’t begin in the New Testament. It begins in the Old Testament. But we’re going to properly understand what we’re going to shortly do up here, let’s turn back to the separation of the Levitical order itself in Numbers 8 to understand what’s being taught with ordination.

Numbers 8:10 and 11. You read there: “And thou shalt bring the Levites before the Lord, and the children of Israel shall put their hands upon the Levites, and Aaron shall offer the Levites before the Lord for an offering of the children of Israel, that they may execute the service of the Lord.” Okay, here we see the Levites ordained for the imposition of hands to their special service to God and to God’s people.

Now, in verse 12 of the same chapter, we note that the Levites are to lay their hands upon sacrificial animals, thus identifying themselves with that animal. Now, the animal had obviously done nothing wrong, had it? This animal wasn’t being put to death for its own sin—nothing wrong, of course—but the Levite himself was identifying with the animal as it were, and the animal was thereby identified with the Levite.

In the same way then, the people of Israel had laid hands on the Levites, not to charge them in isolation from themselves, but in identifying themselves with the Levites. Identification is taught by the imposition of hands. Therefore, where the Levites are given a special function in office—okay?—yet it’s not given so as to remove the requirements of the rest of God’s people from holy living according to God’s holy requirements.

Just the reverse. That was therefore signified by God when he instructed the imposition of hands as the means of ordination to function and to office. He was teaching them, and is teaching us now in Acts 6, what we’ll do this morning with the ordination of special officers of function in the church: that these officers are given so that we all may function more fully in accord with God’s requirements of all of us, the people of the church.

And in a very real sense then, when you come forward—the men of the church come forward as heads of covenanted families—when you come forward and by imposition of hands here in a few minutes affirm and confirm Roy’s special calling of administrative service, you are also thereby identifying with him in your own general calling of serving God in your administration of your household and in every other sphere in which you are called to move by our sovereign God.

Like the officers in the text in Deuteronomy 20:9, Roy will now serve not to do the work for you, but to assist and serve you that you may better perform the work of service yourselves. Okay? And so he’ll appoint captains over various church ministries over which he has administrative jurisdiction in his church so that the war might be then waged—waged successfully. Okay?

What does all this mean for us? Then we have to apply this to our own situation here. The first point I want to make in terms of application has to do with responsibility and accountability. I want to just talk about a couple of things that happened in the last week.

First of all, while we were down at Caledon, Howard gave me a letter from the OCA—Oregon Citizen Alliance. They were going to have an educational coalition meeting this past Saturday, yesterday, and I had not known about this. This was the beginning of the week I found out about it. All day long meeting to talk about an educational proposal that they had come up with, authored by a man who they have appointed as their director for educational issues in the state of Oregon.

And of course, it’s an issue that’s near and dear to our hearts. And so we thought we ought to be there. But then we looked at this proposal, and in essence, the proposal seemed to indicate that their primary thrust was going to be to try to correct the public school system—to try to clean it up.

So I got back and thought, well, I don’t know if we should have somebody there or not. And I called up the director of OCA and I asked them about this proposal, what they wanted to do long term. And I was told they don’t know what they want to do long term with the public school system, but they know what they want to do short term, and that’s get control of it and clean it up. And after we get control, I was told, then we’ll figure out what to do with it.

I suppose maybe I should have done like some people do—say, turn the tape off at this point—but this is not private information really. This nobody would argue with this. The account is—I’m telling it anyway.

Now, why do I bring all this up? I actually then was called Friday night late by the man who wrote the educational proposal and asked to sit on a panel. I decided it would be worthless to go because we didn’t agree on things at the phone, and I didn’t think I wanted to go there and just, you know, try to get a shot against what they were trying to do.

But I was asked in God’s providence Friday night to go and be on a panel and to be able to talk ten minutes. And of course, I couldn’t pass that up in good conscience. And the only reason I bring this up is that what I said in that ten-minute time, any man probably from this church—most of you, it should be all of you—could have said. Talk about the funding of the public school system—it really was the first inroad of socialism in this country. Talk about parental responsibility to teach children—just some very basic things that are real obvious from the scriptures.

And yet the conservative movement is just populated with people that do not understand the basic issues involved in public education. They just don’t get it yet. Now, this church is different. As I said, just about any man from our congregation could have gone down there and made a good presentation as to why it’s a complete waste of time. I think Reverend Rushton—he said it was like pouring perfume in the sewer, I think, is how he described—an attempt to clean up the public school system.

The point is too, you know, that it’s their sewer. I mean, it’s not like it was a godly institution that they then perverted somehow. You know, the whole government-run school system was created to do this particular task, and they’re doing it quite well. People talked about the great traditional schools that are in evidence in some parts of the nation. And I brought up the fact that in the 1800s people understood that the public school systems were bad. And I’m sure that the school systems in 1800s were far more traditionally valued, had more traditional values in place of them than what they have today in any part of the country.

But in any event, you understand those issues. You understand the issues relative to education of your children, the responsibility of parents to oversee and pay for their children’s education. We were down there, of course, at Caledon talking with Reverend Rushdoony, and he—the last day we were there on Monday, I guess it was, before we left—it was obvious that every day the trip got better, the interaction became better, and it was a great visit. It couldn’t have gone any better, unless I would have brought a tape recorder. Sorry, I didn’t.

But he commented that we were an unusual group of men because we could track where he was going real quickly. He said with a lot of people, you get so far with them and the iron gate comes down and we don’t want to go any further in terms of the implications of what’s being talked about. We were like that. He said we’re a remarkable group of men that we could follow this through.

Obviously also talking to Dorothy Rushdoony just as we were leaving the house—how encouraged it was to them to see a group applying the faith and understanding these things. And again, there were six of us down there, and I could take six people next year and six people the following year, and they would have the same reaction. It’s not limited to those six men and women that went down this time. You’re a remarkable group of people.

You understand the implications of the scriptures. We have a knowledge of what God requires of us in them. The third incident I wanted to mention briefly was that I had a talk with an old friend of mine down there, Saturday evening, when I was away from Caledon and staying with my brother Mike. And we were talking about the problems with the country and how people are just sort of not taking responsibility for themselves and have a slave mentality, et cetera.

And we were critiquing things real well, and I pointed out to this friend of mine, “Well, you can see that, can’t you?” “Yeah, I can see that. Sure. What’s the implications for you then? If you can see that, and 95% of the country cannot see that—they’re enslaved and they’re in chains and bondage of thoughts and ideas that have been taught to them from their very earliest days—what are you supposed to be doing for those people?”

You see, God says that to whom much is given, much is required. And I hope I got across to this particular individual that he has a responsibility to use the knowledge that hasn’t been gained by his own strength. It’s been given to him by God, that kind of discernment.

Now we stand as beneficiaries of God’s grace in this congregation. We have a tremendous group of men and women here, and God didn’t give us this knowledge to just titillate us intellectually or to give us, you know, a sense of our own knowledge and ability to critique what goes on in society around us. That’s an important part of what we do. But he gives us that knowledge to hold us accountable for its use.

Failure to apply the faith that God and his grace has given to this group in a remarkable fashion—both in quantity and quality—to the people of this congregation, failure to apply that faith that God has provided so graciously in the small things of life—service at tables, food, heating of the building, for instance, the other physical requirements of the institutional church that we have here—and then extending out into our own needs and requirements in our own administrative areas at home and in our jobs.

Failure to apply the faith that God has graciously provided us will bring judgment from God. We won’t get to heaven and he’ll say, “Gosh, you guys sure had it figured out good.” He’ll say, “Why didn’t you apply it? I gave it to you for a reason.”

Remember Psalm 78. We’ve talked about that psalm before. Psalm 78 talked about the importance of teaching our children, and then it says, “The children of Ephraim being armed and carrying bows turned back in the day of battle. They kept not the covenant of God and refused to walk in his laws and forgot his works.”

We’ve been armed. There’s no doubt about that. This congregation has been armed, I would venture to say, better than any congregation perhaps in this whole country. But all that means is that we have to go into battle with it. See, we don’t stop now. We must apply it in everything that we do.

I know this isn’t anything new to you, but we all need to hear this occasionally, don’t we? We’ve got to apply this faith. And we’ve got to apply it by understanding the application of God’s law. We’ve been armed with the law of God. Again, given that by God’s grace and understanding that it must be our guide. And it then must be our guide, or we will be judged for it.

And we’ve been armed by understanding the covenant and the nature of the covenantal relationships we have with God and then in terms of the created order as well. And specifically here in the context of the covenant community, God has armed us. We must use the weapons that he has given us for warfare for him. We must go into battle, each of us—not just sending forth a couple of men to do the work, okay?

Responsibility means accountability. That should be first on our minds today as we ordain Roy to be a deacon. Secondly, we must understand that God accompanies commitment to these sorts of things with testing. And specifically there are two areas in which this testing will probably take place in the context of our institutional church.

First, dissension. This is personal testing here that we’re going to go through. There’s no sure way to kill a church, to kill an army of God that is supposed to do battle for him and to cause it to fall into disrepair and not do what’s right, as to see dissension—not in doctrine but in practice. It’s a tremendous temptation that Satan will throw in our way, and God will use to test our faithfulness and commitment to each other and not just to him—to him and then to his people.

Dissension in practice among the brethren. What we’re attempting to do here at Reformation Covenant Church in terms of building a godly covenant community is filled with tremendous possibilities for problems, hurt feelings, bruised egos, toes stepped on. The list goes on and on and on.

Reconstructionists are thick-skinned individuals, tough people, rugged individuals because they had to be in most of the churches they came out of. Most of us came out of a church situation in which nobody liked us. Most people didn’t like us. Some of them actively disliked us and tried to spread rumors and gossip about us. So we had to get pretty tough and be able to wield the sword pretty well.

But now we come together into church, and we’ve got to now leave that rugged individualism that says the only person that’s important is me and the care of my family. We’re in the context of friends now in the king, not enemies anymore. We’ve got to mold ourselves into a covenant community. That’s tough to do. And it means interaction with each other. And interaction means the possibility for dissension—not over doctrine primarily, but just over hurt feelings, not accepting each other, not having the grace to forgive each other, et cetera.

We must recognize that our Lord has called us together into a body, and all parts of the whole organism of Reformation Covenant Church must grow in grace, truth, and service.

Second area of testing—we don’t know when it will come, but it will come, and we talked about it again at Caledon—is the judgment of God against this nation. This has great importance to the work that we’re ordaining Roy to this morning in terms of the diaconate. You know, I and Scott and Reverend Rushdoony have said repeatedly over the last few months, talked about the terrible economic crisis we’re headed for.

That was interesting. We got to Caledon. It was a beautiful day, 70 degrees out. And the first thing we tell Rushdoony—gosh, this is great weather, isn’t it? And he went into a ten-minute talk on global cursing that God is doing. And I heard Dorothy Rushdoony the next day when we out to lunch, commenting to somebody. She said, “These idiots come down here and say what great weather it is. The grass is dying. God’s cursing us.”

And Jerry Moore said, you know, he enjoyed the weather too. I guess he said, “I guess I just don’t have the long-term perspective that Reverend Rushdoony.” You think about the implications of that kind of changes in weather. Well, there will be judgment from God upon us. And Otto Scott and Reverend Rushdoony have pointed that out. But they’ve also pointed out the fact that what you need most in that kind of situation—a depression or whatever we’re going into—isn’t gold, although that’s important, and food.

The most important resource, they both said—and these are people who’ve seen it happen, lived through it—the most important resource you can have is a community, a group of people, a church. That’s what they were talking about. A covenanted community that works together to assist each other when we have problems.

Now, while I can and the eldership of the church can knit us together around a common set of beliefs, a doctrine, and orthodoxy, we must also be knit together as a community in service—in waiting at tables, as it were, in doing the functions listed on the sheets of paper that hopefully you picked up earlier—of waiting on each other and assisting each other materially as well as spiritually. And particularly so as we see the day of God’s wrath against this nation approach.

If we don’t move as a church from orthodoxy to orthopraxy in terms of service, then we will also suffer the judgment of God. So what’s our response to all this? We’re going to have testing. We’ve got increased accountability because God has given us a tremendous amount of knowledge and understanding of things. Our response, I think, should be prayer.

First, we should pray for Roy. 1 Timothy 3—if you ever think you don’t know how to pray for Roy, just turn to the qualifications and how he’s supposed to administer his office. Start praying through them. These things are not, you know, these qualifications are for all of us who consider these things in terms of ourselves as individuals. You’ll notice that these things are not necessarily easily had in full sense.

It’s the grace of God that will give us the ability to walk in accordance with these requirements. In 1 Timothy 3:8-10, it says, uh, “Likewise must the deacons be grave, not double-tongued. Boy, you know, that’s a tough one, isn’t it? I mean, the tongue—the Bible says—he control his tongue can control his whole body, control all his affairs. We can’t do it perfectly. Pray for Roy in regards to that.

Pray for him in terms of being grave, not given to much wine, not greedy, a filthy lucre, holding the mystery of the faith and a pure conscience. Then in verse 12, ‘Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children, their own households.’ Well, pray for Roy in regards to these things specifically—each of these qualifications and other qualifications also that apply to the eldership up in the first portion of that passage, which also most of them apply to the deacon.

Praise specifically through these lists of requirements occasionally for the officers of the church. Pray that Roy will be able to administer his office effectively within the confines of God’s word.

You know, Howard asked what some people thought was kind of a funny question—I guess it was probably just late by that time—but you know, I think what—if I understood Howard’s question at the heads of households meeting—was all about: look, what are you going to do when you have functions that need to be done and people don’t volunteer, and then people resist when you go and approach them about those functions? How you going to do it? ‘Cuz really, that’s what Roy is doing, right? He’s going to appoint captains over the army of God in these specific areas.

And what if they don’t want to be appointed? What if they don’t think that’s what they want to do? And what if they say they’ll do it and then they don’t do it? Wow, these things are hard and can be potentially very dangerous areas. Pray for Roy that he’ll be able to wisely work with people to get them to do these things correctly and effectively. That’s really the essence of his job.

Doug H. has brought up a point at the meeting, and I think all of us who read the newsletters—one of which I got this morning from one of the other reconstructionists. All of us who seen the newsletters and the controversies and the problems within the so-called reconstructionist camp realize that again, as I said earlier, people have had to be rugged individuals and you can tend to be a bit pugnacious and combative. And all of us are that way in this church as well.

Pray for Roy in that regard—that he’ll be able to be gentle with people and yet firm in doing his job correctly. These are—it’s not difficult to realize what you should be praying for. The difficult thing is to make sure you do it occasionally and hopefully on a regular basis. Pray for Roy’s wife. Pray for Pam. 1 Timothy 3:11 says that the wife—and the implication here, I think, is the wives both of deacons and elders—but the wife of the deacon says, “Must be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things.” Qualifications required of the wife.

And again, nobody’s perfect in all these things. So pray that Pam would continue to move toward excellence in all these areas. Pray for my wife that she’d continue to move toward excellence in all these areas. Women are important in the work of the church. And it was interesting for us—we could talk about this more tomorrow night—to see Dorothy Rushdoony and her importance of what she’s doing at Caledon.

She’s an important part of that team of Reverend Rushdoony and his wife. She assists him in his work, and she does it very forcefully at times. She’s a good wife. You know, Proverbs says, “A good wife, who can find one?” Well, he’s found one, and I found one in my wife. You know, God works through means. And I don’t think there’s anybody here who knew me prior to the year or two before my marriage to Chris, but believe me, she had a rough fella to work with.

I won’t tell you how rough. Be a little embarrassing to me. But she’s a godly woman, and she’s helped me dramatically to change my life around, to turn it around, and to start working for God in all things. And she helps me on a weekly basis. She supports me. She helps me understand the implications of what I understand intellectually, put it into practice. She helps me in that way.

If you appreciate what God has done with me in this church, then you must realize you must appreciate my wife, because she is a tremendous part. She is the primary means, outside of the word of God obviously, that God has used in my life to correct the problems that have plagued me growing up undisciplined and out of the faith for most of my earlier life.

Our wives are very important. Pray that Pam would be able to assist Roy. And I’m sure she’ll be able to, but pray for that, you’ll be able to do it. Pray for my wife. Pray for the wives, the officers. Important part of that team. Pray that they would be able to help us do what’s correct.

And again, just use these qualifications that are put forward here in case you don’t know what to pray. Pray for these things for each of us. Finally, pray for yourself. This isn’t just about us. Pray for yourself that Roy or I or anybody in church comes to you to encourage you, to exhort you to a greater faithfulness than perhaps you’ve evident in a particular area.

Don’t strike back because we don’t approach you in just the right way or because you sense that the other individual is trying to do whatever they’re trying to accomplish in your life fairly clumsily, perhaps, or not necessarily the best possible way they could approach you. Thank God that we have people in this church who have a sense of the responsibility to each other in the body, to encourage each other. And don’t worry necessarily about the way in which that’s done.

Sure, pray for the dull to clear that up a little bit and improve their personalities. But and the same with you. Don’t let your personality hold you back from encouraging people to faithfulness in this church. We must encourage each other to do what’s right. The Bible says it’s required exhortation, encouragement to the be faithful, and to go out of our way to befriend people and to do what’s right by them.

We need encouragement to do that. When Roy or I or other people in the church encourage you in that way or to a particular task, ask. Pray that at that time when testing will come to you in terms of obedience to the faith, you’ll respond correctly and under the spirit of God, realize that you’re part of the army of God. We need exhortation and encouragement to move outside of our little spheres of sometimes selfishness and to serve others.

This church—basically what I’m saying this morning is that this church doesn’t have a two-man army: Dennis and Roy. Now, this church is the army of God in this area, uniquely equipped by God to teach, to preach, and put into action the message of the crown rights of King Jesus over men and nations. Deuteronomy 20:9—we are that army, equipped by God to go out. We’re an army moved by the Spirit of the Lord, a spirit of might, power, and victory, and one that is marked most importantly by service.

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