Dennis Tuuri

# Acts 6:1-7 Sermon Transcript

in the book of Acts found in chapter 6, verses 1-7. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Acts 6, first 7 verses.

And in those days the number of the disciples were multiplied. There arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the day in the daily ministration. Then the 12 called a multitude of the disciples unto them and said, “It is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables.

Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost 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 Steven, a man full of faith, and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch.

Whom they set before the apostles. And when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them, and the word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly, and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. Please be seated.

We thank God for his word, and pray that he would illuminate it to our understanding. Acts 6:1-7, a set of verses that can be somewhat controversial.

There’s questions about these verses. Trying to figure out how I should start my sermon today. And I thought of Reverend Jordan when he preached on Joseph, you know, at family camp. Remember the first thing he said? Said Pharaoh was hungry. I thought today we could start off by saying the Hellenist widows were hungry. They didn’t have enough food. And you’ll see why I think that a valid analogy later on, but I think it might be good just to point out as we begin working with this text that it’s a difficult one in some respects.

One of the central issues of difficulty with these seven verses is what is going on in terms of the implication for the church of Jesus Christ? Is this a perpetual office that is being established? Is it the office of deacon? And are deacons what some churches think they are a separate office from elders or are they apprentices to elders? Elders in training. There are several questions like that in this text. And you know what? I’m not going to answer any of them. At least not today. We’re going to spend four weeks. That’s what I’ve planned so far in the providence of God on this text.

And probably I hate to do that because these are only seven verses. I’ve tried to cover pretty much an incident in the text or a chapter in the text a week, bogged down already in these first few chapters. But there’s so much going on here and really in a way I’m kind of giving you the wrong example by spending four weeks on these first seven verses because these first seven verses that we’ll talk about in a few minutes really are preliminary to a much larger text of scripture found in the rest of chapter 6 and all of chapter 7 and that’s the martyrdom of Steven.

This is really an introduction to that story. So that’s the main emphasis really and this is only a sideshow so to speak, a way of introducing us to the martyrdom of Steven ultimately and we’ll see more about that in a couple of minutes. But I think it’s a good opportunity for us. We’re in the context at RCC of maturing in our institutional structure in writing and considering bylaws and then getting congregational input, review of those as the elders move to adoption of them.

We’re in a process here where government’s very important indeed. Also, there have been questions about government raised in the last year or two relative to Reformation Covenant Church with implications for many churches in the area. So, I thought it’d be good to spend some time on these verses relative to institutional polity of the church. There are some implications of that here for us, but I don’t really want to get into that this week.

Next week, I’ll talk about deacons. And then the following week, we’ll talk about qualifications for officers, which are given to us in this text as well. And then the fourth week, I plan on talking about ordination and the verse here where it talks about the ordination of these officers, a laying on of hands. These things are very essential for an understanding of church polity and the body of Christ.

But I think even more essential is what we’re going to talk about today and that’s an overview of these first seven verses. We’ll go through each of them individually and then I’ll draw some things at the end and toward the end—the message really is titled “The Organization of the Church: You Could Say the Army of God for the Feeding of the World.” That’s the big message here I think in this text as well as introducing the martyrdom of Steven.

So we don’t want to get so sidetracked by some of the controversial issues that we don’t see what God wants us primarily to see from this text. So, let’s go ahead and deal with the text and let’s first of all remember—or let’s in verse one—it says “and in those days.” So, we have an introductory phrase that links this to what just happened. And so, we’re seeing a very rapid recitation of events. I don’t believe that there are long numbers of years that we’re looking at here in a synopsis account.

I believe these events were happening very quickly in the life of the new church, a new in the sense of reformed and reorganized after the work of Jesus Christ. But in any event, this first phrase takes this text and places it in a proper context of what we’ve been discussing. And the first thing then we should do is remember what we have been discussing. What we’ve been discussing is the persecution that’s been going on.

And that’s one of the main themes throughout these first chapters of Acts—is the increasing persecution. I thought it might be good just to remember a little bit about what we said last week about persecution and suffering. By way of review, Matthew Henry interestingly enough in actually here in Acts 6 says that the Christian church like the infant Jewish church in Egypt, the more it was afflicted, the more it multiplied because we read that “in those days the number of the disciples were multiplied.”

Matthew Henry says that “in those days” relates it back to the persecution that just followed. And so the persecution is seen in the multiplication of the church. And he says it’s just like the church in Egypt—the more affliction was placed upon them, the more they multiplied and grew in strength and power. And that I think that’s a good correlation because what we see here as one of the big pictures I think is that Jerusalem, the Pharisees and Sadducees were now Egypt and we’re seeing a deliverance from the persecution of what were now Egyptians.

The Egyptians in Hebrews is not a matter of race ultimately. It’s a matter of faith. See, so these—the church, the false church that crucified Christ was Egypt now for all intents and purposes and they are undergoing great affliction like the church did in Egypt but it’s preparatory for God leading them out of Egypt out of the apostate fallen church order and into the establishment of a new church order.

So there’s a transition going on here that’s very important to see. Now we’ve seen the same thing in the life of this church. We’ve seen that persecution for instance by the state board of education against homeschoolers doesn’t result in the diminution of homeschooling. Homeschooling has risen remarkably over the last few years. All that the persecution by the state board of education did three years ago was to strengthen the homeschoolers and their knowledge of their separateness from the political systems and structures that are apostate, that are not obeying the word of God.

And all it did was cause them to grow. The affliction was used by God to cause them to grow and exercise victory over the state board and over the state system. These are important lessons in our lives. You saying that happened 2 or 3 years ago? Yeah, this happened 2,000 years ago. God said it’s worth recording. And when he does those sorts of acts of deliverance, teaching us big principles that persecution and suffering is anticipatory to victory.

We want to mark them and note them well in our lives and pass that information on to our children. Now, it has a correlation to our own personal lives as well. You know, I’m at least a strong postmillennialist, eschatologically optimistic. I think that all the enemies of the church would be defeated eventually and the whole world will be Christianized. Does that mean we won’t have enemies? We won’t have problems.

No, it doesn’t mean that because where do the problems we see in the world originate from? Our hearts, our own sinfulness and wickedness. And we know that Christians, as long as we’re in this body, still practice sin. That’s why we have a daily or weekly confession of sin. You should have daily confession of sin to God. But the model is being set here for us and we come and confess our sins. The point is this: your sins bring suffering to your life.

And some of you may this last week or this last month be experiencing great suffering, torment of soul, despair, depression even because of things you’ve done wrong. But you need to realize that the suffering even for the sins that you’ve committed, if you’re a child of God, it’s to the end that you would see victory in those areas as you grow in Christian maturity. And so if you’re in the midst of a difficult time in your marriage, at your job, in your own personal relationship, whatever it is, you should take great hope out of these opening chapters of Acts because the persecution and torment that you might be going through now as a result of your own sin even is intended by God not to punish you but to chastise you—there’s a difference—to discipline you in righteousness and to cause you to grow so that suffering is anticipatory to the victory you have. So it should give you a great hope.

The scriptures are full of hope for us and it’s important that when you come here to church on Sunday you hear the hope of the gospel message. It is good news to you and everything in your life is good news to you as you’re a child of God and he uses it for your well-being.

Now, let’s remember one—I thought it’d be good just to remember what we said last week about suffering. You’re going to have suffering if not today, tomorrow. If not tomorrow, this week, if not this week, then next month. You’re going to have suffering in this life. And it’s important that you remember, we didn’t touch all the bases. We said some things primarily we’re quoting from Calvin that suffering does for us.

And I thought last night as I was going to sleep or trying to go to sleep, I thought about ways to review this and I thought you could think about how where you look. Remember we said the first reason that God brings suffering into ourselves is to look away from yourself to not trust in yourself. So the first look is away and to God to trust in him and not yourself. And so God shows us the weakness of our own flesh and of our own abilities to cause us to look away from self to God.

But then secondly, he wants us to look at ourselves from his eyes because remember we said the second purpose of suffering is to demonstrate the virtues and graces that he built into the life of his people. So you look away from yourself in terms of trust. You look back to yourself with the eyes of God, seeing the grace that he’s caused to grow, which should be an encouragement to you. You look back when you’re in suffering times.

You meditate on your sins of the past because suffering is connected to those often times. It’s that chastisement I’ve just been speaking of. But you also look forward and you recognize that one reason God causes you to suffer is you don’t sin in the future so much, that you don’t fall into what Calvin called wantonness—his sin of being so blessed by God, you’re like that horse that’s just feeding in the pasture all day and forgets that he has a master and a rider who will ride him in various places.

So you look forward recognizing that the one of the reasons for suffering is the grace of God to keep you from future sin and then also you look up you look up to heaven because you get too attached to things on earth. Earth is good. Earth is one of the things we give God thanks for but we can get too attached to it and our life is in eternity with God not this temporal existence we have—the three score and 10 what’s given to man.

So we look away from ourselves to God trusting not us but him. We look to ourselves seeing God’s grace evidenced in our lives. The second purpose is suffering. Third purpose—chastise him for past sins. We look at the past and we confess our sins. We learn the lessons. We look forward to the future and thank God for present suffering that keeps us from sinning in the future. Then we look up to heaven and recognize that we don’t want to grow too attached to things on earth.

And those are all reasons for our suffering. And I would encourage you to use that model. If not, you know, other models are great, too. But there’s one model you can use to help you remember when in your times of suffering how to deal with them correctly. Well, the church understood this. The New Testament church that we’ve been reading about, they grew as a result of their afflictions. So, we know that they understood how to respond to them correctly.

Let’s read now about this next incident in the book of Acts then and go on from the context now and actually consider these individual verses.

Verse one: “In those days, the number of the disciples was multiplied. There arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.”

This sets up the context. This is the incident. These were the things that happened that led up to what we’re going to read in the next six or seven verses. And it’s important to know that God gives us this information for a very important purpose. First of all, we have to get a little bit of knowledge of what’s going on here.

First of all, he tells us that there was a murmuring—a lot of disciples were multiplying, church is growing bigger. There was a murmuring, a discontent for whatever reason of the Grecians against the Hebrews. Now, this doesn’t mean Greeks in the sense of non-Christians against the Hebrews in the sense of Christians.

What it’s talking about here are people within the context of the body. This is a murmuring or disputing amongst the Christians at the church in Jerusalem. And there were two groups here as this text tells us. There were the Grecians—what some of your texts may say is the Hellenists, as opposed to the Hebrews. This is not, well, what this is describing first of all is a difference in language. You remember at the time of the day of Pentecost, there were Jews there from all over the world.

And Jews who lived in other portions of the kingdom of God, other portions in other countries had essentially over time gone away from their Hebrew language origins and had now spoke Greek and that’s why it says Grecians here—they were Greek-speaking Jews and these Greeks, you had so you had Greek-speaking Jews and you had Hebrew and Aramaic-speaking Jews during the time of our Savior and during the time of the first church and the Greek-speaking Jews used a different scriptures even; they used the Septuagint which was a Greek translation of the Old Testament.

So they read it in not in the Hebrew language. The other people, the Hebrew or Aramaic speaking Christians could read the Old Testament text in the very Hebrew and Aramaic it was written in. So you had really two different things and really kind of two different cultures. And God in these very first days of the church shows the impact of the gospel. Remember we said that salvation was extended to all the earth in a sign on the day of Pentecost—a picture was all the earth being saved.

And here we have two different cultural groups of Jews who were converted. And so you had tensions amongst these two groups.

One commentator says that the Aramaic-speaking Christians were more likely natives of Palestine and thus their widows would not have been overlooked or their widows would have been well-known. Their widows would have extended contacts in the context of the community in which they lived. As opposed to these people that had come into the area, converted, stayed in Jerusalem because of their conversion to Christ, they would not have extended contacts in the community so they would have a more difficult time receiving assistance.

Also, the same commentator said that many devout Jews who lived outside of Palestine settled in their old age in Jerusalem so that they could be buried near the city. When their husbands died, few women were capable of supporting themselves. Thus, they depended on the benevolence of religious groups for survival. It would have been easy to overlook the widows of Greek-speaking believers, not because of any ill will, but simply because they were not known to the overburdened leaders of the community.

So that’s what we’ve got going on here—two kinds of cultures. So you can see why there might be some problems.

The text goes on to tell us that their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. What’s the daily administration? We don’t know exactly. It somehow has involved the distribution of either funds or actual food. And it’s connected later in the text to the term “table” in terms of a dining table. And so the daily ministration appears to have been food and somehow either the food directly or money was distributed on a daily basis to those who were needing.

Remember too that the term “widow” in the scripture is frequently a summary term for all those classes of helpless people, the fatherless, the stranger, etc. Here I think it’s specifically related to widows, but it stresses their inability to provide for themselves. This is not a problem. This is not sin on their part. It’s just because they’ve widowed—husbands are dead, no source of sufficiency.

This daily administration could be based upon the synagogue system of the time. Quoting from another commentator, he said that there was a routine custom in the synagogues. There were officials who were known as receivers of alms. Two collections went around the market and round the private houses every Friday morning and made a collection partly in money and partly in goods for the needy.

Later in the day, this was distributed. Those who were temporarily in need received enough to enable them to carry on. Those who were permanently unable to support themselves received enough for 14 meals. That is enough for two meals a day for the ensuing week. There’s a weekly collection. So they give enough meals for the week. The fund from which this distribution was made was called the Kupah or basket. In addition to this, there was a house-to-house collection made daily for those in pressing need. This was called the Tamhui or Tamhuy.

The point is that there were already a model in the synagogue of a weekly collection and a daily collection and administration for those in pressing need. And that’s probably what’s going on here in some form. So we have this distribution for the care of the needy. We have the problem between the Grecians and the Hebrews—that is, the two different language groups represented in the church and as a result two different geographic areas represented, two sets of contexts etc that could have produced a problem.

And then the other thing we might notice in this text is that there was a problem. Now that’s significant because this is the early days of the church. We have apostolic preachers of the word here; we have tremendous demonstrations of miracles and powers in the context of the church; we see tremendous victory. As we said before, they interpret their contemporary events based upon the Old Testament Acts relative to Psalm 2 for instance.

This was a strong, vibrant, growing church. A church that some people see at its zenith. And I don’t think it was at its zenith in terms of what the church will become. But it certainly was a very strong well-established church. And the point is they had problems even in the context of what I suppose at this point in time was the best church we have recorded in the scriptures. There are problems. Problems are not something that means that the church isn’t doing what it should.

In fact, these problems specifically say that the church was doing what it should. It was growing and it was trying to minister to the needs of its people. And as a result of that, these problems occur. So problems should never be a cause of discouragement in the church. That’s the way it works.

Now, it’s interesting here that this is relatable to us in the 20th century. Most churches now, particularly in the last 10, 20, 30 years, this church is no different—are comprised of people from various cultures and even language groups in some cases. And these various backgrounds that we all have will and have in this church and will in all churches produce some tension between people as they seek to become more and more a community that’s bound together in unity.

And so the cultural differences, the language differences that evidently in some way contributed to some problem in the church of Jerusalem here indicates to us as well that don’t be surprised when problems exist and tensions come about from people with widely diverging backgrounds. Now, as the culture continues in America to go downhill, we’re going to see more and more people coming into the church from really unchurched backgrounds, totally from real pagan backgrounds. And you have to learn to deal with that correctly.

You can’t get upset about that to the end you’re saying, I don’t like this church anymore or the problems are so big. Let’s just get out of here. No, the problems were addressed to God’s ordained officers in the church and they then found a solution to the problems. And so we should expect problems from varying cultures in our church and we should say that those problems are given that the church might be matured. That’s what’s going on here in the book of Acts—the church is maturing, going from glory to glory and what happens here is an internal problem just as an external problem of persecution. This internal problem is part of God’s means for maturing them.

And so tensions within the context of the church are made by God for the purpose of maturing us. So they should—we should be aware that they’re going to happen and we should have hope that the correct resolution means maturity.

Secondly, in terms of application to us, notice that the problem here is a food problem and people frequently have food problems. Cultures have throughout. I’m thinking of a particular song now by Leonard Cohen that was sung by a man at the inauguration, one of the inauguration balls for Mr. Clinton, talking about democracy and how it’s coming through the kitchen—through people complaining about who’s going to serve and who’s going to eat. He was talking about male-female relationships, but really he was taking male-female relationships and talking about them in the context of the act of preparing and eating food.

And really that’s what an artist does. He boils things down to their essentials. And our community life together really centers around—in terms of our homes, food is a big part of it—and cultures, food is a big deal. And so food becomes a source of problem and difficulties where some of these things we’ve just talked about, these tensions will probably surface.

This reminded me last week of a couple of comments I heard just this last week. We had a visitor here last week from another city. He’s actually an officer in the church in this other city. And he said that he’s been trying for quite some time to get their church to have meals together the way we have meals together. They just don’t want to do it. And he said as a result, we just don’t know each other. People come, they hear a sermon, they go home, they don’t see each other through the week that much. And so they don’t know each other and they’re really not together. They’re just kind of static as a community.

And he told me, and I’m not making this up, he told me that if there’s anything you change in your church, don’t change the meal. Always keep the meal in place because that’s what’s going to give you—and he was speaking as an officer in a church. He understood the need for community. You see, that’s what’s going to bring your community together closer and closer.

And I told him, well, that’s true, but it also can be source of great tension. Just the logistics of putting out a meal every week is problems. People different ideas of what they like for food. That’s a problem. People have to enter into community when you eat together. And that’s a problem. I’ve seen people who came to this church and moved on primarily because of the meal. You know, if you’re not doing good with God, you don’t particularly want to be around his people a lot.

And so, the great temptation for us when we’re struggling in our relationship to God is not to be around people. If we can come and sit fairly anonymously in the pew and listen to the sermon, that’s okay. If we got to do a little bit of small talk out in the foyer, that’s okay. But I got to sit for a couple hours down here with folks and interact and people are going to go up and ask me things, that’s a little more difficult.

So food can be a problem. I mentioned two comments I’d heard this last week. Another comment was from the Cumlies. They’re attending Christ the Sovereign in Seattle. They’re moving down to Sheridan here for the next few months. and they’re going to come here and at least visit. It’s a long drive, but the thing that really attracted them and another couple as well to Christ the Sovereign was the meal. They don’t want to go someplace just to hear a sermon and go home.

They want community. They have a thirst for community and they want to spend time together with God’s people on the Lord’s day apart from just hearing a sermon. So they also—the meal is a very important thing to them. Food is an important source of community and it can bring people together.

I think now—I don’t know, you know, maybe I’m completely nuts here. This is no prophecy, but as I was reviewing the Jordan Mr. Jordan’s tapes talking about the three forms of history—a tribal kingdom and then empire—and how America is basically breaking back into a tribal situation. He said the churches have to be good tribes again and provide community at that level. As we go beyond the alienation of people one from another in the context of this culture, people are going to want the elect of God, particularly community. And that community, they’re going to want to spend time together around a meal.

And so food can actually be an attraction to people as the agape was in the first century of the early church but it is a source of problems as it was here in verse one in the book of Acts of chapter 6.

One other point of application I want to make here for us from just this first verse is that some people need more help from the covenant community than others do for some reason. We can speculate as to why. We don’t know the reason why but apparently the apostles said yeah the Hellenistic widows—they need help. They need more help than do the Hebrew widows for whatever reason. So, we’re going to get some guys appointed.

Now, it’s interesting that all seven of the men appointed to take care of this business have Greek names. Now, some people say that proves nothing. They’re right. It doesn’t prove anything. But if you look at this—is what God’s trying to instruct us with these few verses. And as verse one tells us, we have a Hellenistic problem. And then we go on to find out the guys appointed to take care of the business have Hellenistic names. I think we can put one and one together and get two, which is to say that these men were particularly qualified to help that particular people who needed help.

Now, the application is this. In the context of our church, some of us are more like the Hebrew widows. We’ve got well-established connections in the community. We’ve got extended family. Maybe some of them are Christians. And some of us are more like Greek widows, Hellenistic widows. We don’t have extended roots in the community. Our families have forsaken us. There’s just nothing there really. And those women need more help and those women are likely to be overlooked as the other group are pretty, you know, satisfied with where they are.

This group may be overlooked and so it’s important for us not just in the sense of you know women but in the sense of all of us at the church to think about each other a little bit and see who needs more help and then to try to take care of that help in whatever way we can find to do it.

I read a Table Talk this last week. It’s a publication of Ligonier Ministries, R.C. Sproul’s group. This is put out by him and there’s a daily devotional thing in there and I read one of them this last week. These are now being written by Jim Jordan by the way. I think in a couple months that’s going to change. Right now he’s writing these. And so Reverend Jordan wrote that talking about Hebrews, how we’re supposed to encourage each other to faith and good works as we see the day approaching etc. He said that we should study each other. Said husbands should study wives, wives should study husbands. We should study each other.

What does he mean by that? He meant that if we’re going to encourage each other, we got to know who we’re encouraging. And not the same person as I am. You have different background, different complexities, different—you’re a different person. So, I’ve got to get to know you if I’m going to be able to encourage you correctly. And husband should study wives ’cause not only is the wife a different person, she’s a different sex.

And that means you’re real different from you. Women are real different from men, the scriptures say. So, we should study each other. Indeed, the first responsibility of a husband this first year of married life is to learn how to—’cause he doesn’t know how to—cause his wife to rejoice. That means he’s studying her and he’s taking steps that would cause her to be happy. And so what I’m saying in the context of the local church, we should do the same thing.

We should have a little bit of study of each other. Think about each other. Particularly people that you see have a particular need in the context of the church that isn’t being met.

Okay. let’s move on to verse two.

These texts you are just full of stuff for us that’s very important. Verse two: “Then the 12 called a multitude of the disciples unto them and said it’s not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables.”

You know so we have the situation come up in verse one and now the apostles say it’s not good for us to leave the word of God to serve tables. This is very important here. This talks about the division of labor concept as it applies to the early church. It is a proper way to think. When you think in terms of division of labor, the apostles aren’t saying here that this thing is not important enough for us to deal with.

There’s no belittlement of the problem. All they’re saying is it’s not our problem to fix. We want other people to be called by—we think that other people are called by God to fix this problem. That’s—now let’s figure out who they are. We can appoint them over this business. So there’s a division of labor principle talked about here.

Now, it’s interesting because you remember the context for this is they had this common purse. That doesn’t mean they lived communally. It means that some people would sell their possessions. They didn’t have to give it to the apostles. The apostles would administer that fund to people in need. And that’s where this daily ministration probably came out of is that common pot. So, the apostles were already doing this. They’re not saying that we have nothing to do with ministering charity. They’re saying the problem now is sufficiently large enough to where we want other men to do this.

They were the ones who held the pot before. They were the ones who oversaw the administration of grace. And now they’re saying, “What? This job, it’s a good job. We’re happy that we have done it. But now it’s distracting us. We’re going to spend all our time worrying about that stuff and organizing the church here in terms of ministration of service of food and we’re not going to be able to do what God has really called us to do, which is dedication to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” So he said it’s not meet that we should leave the word and serve tables.

Division of labor is being talked about here. Now again, we have application in our church from this particular text. This is why—whether we call them deacons or whether we appoint people to work on a mission team or whether we ask somebody to coordinate a Reformation night, whatever it is—these are all jobs that if not done by the rest of the body are done by the elders. And so you can help the elders, Richard and myself, not to be distracted from the word of God by thinking through ways along with us to take care of particular problems or particular things that should be done in the context of RCC.

You can keep us from wasting time. That’s really the essence of the matter here—is time. By seeing the responsibility for the body to see to certain things as well. And whether we call whether this involves the selection of officers or not is secondary to the basic principle here. The principle here is there are very good things in the church that may happen, but they’re not the province of the elders. They’re called to focus upon the word of God.

They can do many of those things, but when they get to be distracting for them, then no, that’s not a particularly good thing to do. The second point of application is your tithe. It’s interesting, I didn’t look up the verse, but I remember from my studies in the past that there’s a passage, I believe in 2 Chronicles, that tell you about the restoration of the tithe in terms of support of the Levites.

And what you always see in the Old Testament is when people no longer give the Levites the tithe, they then start getting distracted from the word because they’ve got to provide money for their sustenance which then distracts their time element from the study of the word of God. And there’s a verse in Chronicles, I try to look it up for next week, but they say specifically, you know, we don’t—we want to attend to the word and that’s why the tithe is given to the Levites that they can focus upon the word of God.

So that’s important too.

Okay. Verse three: “Wherefore, brother, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.”

So there’s a process for us. We’ll talk more about this in the weeks to come, but notice that verse three does give us a process for fixing this problem. They tell the congregation, look ye out amongst yourselves men to do this stuff. There’s a process. The process involves two things. It involves investigation of who’s qualified to do this thing. And then it involves their selection.

And I think by implication, the word doesn’t mean vote here. I think by implication, this word is tied to other words in terms of lexicology—the lineage of the word itself—to words that do mean vote. So I think the two-fold process for the congregation to select these guys is investigation and then voting or selection.

So, we have a process. We have qualifications listed in this verse. Men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom. We’ll talk more about the qualifications in weeks to come. Have a process. We have qualifications. And then we have a second part of the process: “that we may appoint then these men over this business.” We have the double witness spoken out in verse three that the congregation and the sitting officers both witness to the calling of these men to particularly perform these functions.

And so, the double witness participation of the sitting officers is also affirmed in this verse. We’ve got a lot of things in this verse that are very applicable to church polity. And one final thing I want to mention here is you’ll see it says there, “Wherefore, brethren, look out amongst yourselves men of honest report.” Now, I don’t want to stretch that too much, but it is true that the male term here is used.

It doesn’t say sisters, it says brethren. Now men are representative of the entire congregation. So this is in essence them also saying wherefore congregation of the Lord look ye out these men and choose them. But the fact that he does say brethren here is significant. I think throughout the scriptures we have clearly the guarding and ruling functions in any society, church, state, family being performed by men.

And so when we go to—when we meet in October which will be the next meeting to look at the bylaws—and if you have discussion over why it is that we only want men to vote at heads of households meeting, this is one of the verses why. Wherefore brethren do this thing. It’s the brethren at RCC who perform the task of guarding the church against problems and ruling the church in terms of voting. And so we believe—I believe that it’s appropriate that this happened in church elections that only men vote.

Linsky in his commentary on this quotes from Genesis 1:27-28 and also Genesis 3:16. Now, those two things are the creation account. The man is created first. The woman comes out of man. She’s to assist man in his calling and dominion. And then Genesis 3:16 is God’s statement to the woman that the man shall rule over thee. Men are to rule over women. That’s the way it works.

And sometimes that’s reversed, but it’s never a good sign that it’s reversed in scripture. It’s a sign of the abdication of responsibility by men. That’s why women rule. It doesn’t mean the woman’s incorrect, it usually means the men have the problem for not leading. I’ve mentioned this book many times, “Passive Men, Wild Women,” and that’s what America’s become. That’s so—women lead in this country increasingly.

Anyway, Linsky goes on after quoting these verses to say that it was—for the—it was made the apostolic practice for this very reason. He’s saying the practice was in the Old Testament clearly that men had the votes in congregational meetings, in the assembly, etc. based upon the Genesis accounts. And this was also made the apostolic practice for this very reason. In 1 Timothy 2:12-14 where Paul says he doesn’t allow a woman to rule over man—she’s got to submit.

Linsky goes on to say, “Today the point has become controversial. But exegetically, neither the apostolic practice itself nor the grounds on which it rests, God’s creation and thus nature and the condition produced by the fall admit of any sincere controversy.” Now, he just—going to—there’s no sincere controversy about this, man. We’re the ones who voted. We all know that it’s only controversial today because the church has abandoned Christianity by and large, moved away from it.

I’ll tell you another reason why it’s not a practice in many churches today and that’s because of corporation laws. Many churches first thing you want to do is incorporate for whatever reason and you know the state doesn’t look real favorably on corporations that it has a part in that don’t allow women to vote. I think clearly the scriptures do teach that men should be the ones who vote in congregational meetings.

We can spend more time on this later perhaps, but it is important to see the implication in this text with brethren selecting out these leaders. I also believe, by the way, that men should be the only ones who vote in civil elections as well. Now, you’re really going to be wondering what’s wrong with me. But it’s the same principle based upon the Old Testament scriptures, the clear example of men and then continue on into the New Testament.

Okay? And we have application of that of course in our day in our present day consideration of our bylaws. Now, it is interesting here we could talk why are there seven men picked in verse three, why pick out seven men of honest report? Some people think that’s because there were seven nations supposedly represented according to tradition on the day of Pentecost. So, it’s a man for every nation. Some think there were seven sub-churches in the context of the early church.

There might be 7,000, you know, there were heads of thousands in the Old Testament polity system. Could be there were 7,000 roughly families here. Conservative estimates put the number of Christians at this point in time between 20 and 25,000. A lot of Christians. So there might well have been 7 thousands in terms of heads. Remember the thousands in the Old Testament were extended households, houses of the father. So there might well have been 7,000. That may have been the reason for the selection of the seven.

And there’s another reason I’ll get to in a couple of minutes as well as we look at this. But in any event, there were seven men picked.

Verse four: “We will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

This is very important because now we see it’s not just the word, it’s prayer also. If they don’t want to be distracted from prayer—prayer is used here according to J. Alexander Linsky and other good exegetical commentators—prayer does not primarily refer here to the private prayer of the apostles. It refers to the performing of public worship, is characterized as prayer throughout the New Testament and Old Testament as well. So they’re saying we want to lead in worship; we want to devote ourselves to improving the liturgies of the church, the worship of the church; we want to be focused upon that. They also of course are focused on personal prayer but prayer here primarily means worship.

And then also to the study of the word of God. But it doesn’t say study. It says “to the ministry of the word.” Now that’s the same basic word that’s used in terms of service or ministers, the ministration of the poor. So what they’re doing in this text—this text is quite important because it draws a correlation between two ministries: the ministry of the word and the ministry of the table, the ministration of grace and the practical deeds of the church.

And it doesn’t say that one is ultimate over the other. It says they are called to the ministry of the word. Now, the word informs the ministry of grace. You know, you don’t just administer grace in whatever way seems good to you. You administer grace, extension of grace according to how the word instructs us. And so, that ministry proceeds in chronological order here. And throughout the church, the ministry of the word will always precede the ministration of grace because grace has to be founded upon the word.

Okay? But the point is here that both things are called ministries, services related to the term deacons. They’re all deacons in a sense here, okay? In the sense of being servants or ministers. You have deacons of the preached word, deacons of the table as well. Not these—not the elements of the communion, but rather the daily food. And so, we have equal importance here. And you see this drawn out. And they’re going to do this continually.

We want to continually devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.

Okay. Verse five: “The saying pleased the whole multitude. And they chose Steven, a man full of faith, and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip. And then it lists the other men as well. Philip Steven is listed first because this text is anticipatory of the martyrdom of Steven. He’s listed first. It said that he was the one who was full of faith and the Holy Ghost.

It doesn’t mean the other guys weren’t. They all had to be according to these qualifications, but it stresses Steven as the pre-eminent mention here because he’s going to be martyred for the faith. Second mention is Philip who also then fulfills a significant role in the book of Acts as we shall see. The next people we don’t ever read about again. We don’t know what happened to them. We don’t know what their particular ministries were, but we can assume they did them well.

Now the last phrase there says Nicholas was a proselyte of Antioch. Now, some people think that this may be that the rest of them are proselytes of Jerusalem. And the Nicholas, his distinction is not so much being a proselyte, but a proselyte of Antioch. In any event, these seven Greek names do show a correlation between what’s going on here and the particular problem amongst the Hellenistic widows.

Let me quote from Jim Jordan in relating to this from the sociology of the church. This is very thoughtprovoking stuff. “Why do churches assume that all the elders must be acceptable to and rule over the entire congregation? This is not the pattern seen in the Bible according to Acts 6. If a congregation is several subgroups, each subgroup should select its own leader or its own elder rather to be elder over that particular subgroup or house church. These elders over tens or twelves will meet together to compare notes and to settle judicial cases.

But it’s not necessary that the elder over the poorer people be regarded as socially perfect in the eyes of the upper class people. Paradoxical as it may seem, such a decentralized structure will not lead to greater divisions, but to fewer problems, for people’s needs will be more effectively met and suspicion will disappear.”

So, Mr. Jordan certainly thinks that these deacons were elected over the particular group of Hellenistic widows and those families to represent them in the ministration of food and I think that the evidence is strong that’s the case.

Okay. Then verse six: “whom they set before the apostles. When they had prayed, they laid their hands on them.”

We’ll talk about who they are in that text when we get to ordination—not now—but in any event there is this process through prayer and the laying on of hands. These men are set apart to office. And we’ll look at that when we talk in ordination.

Verse 7: “And the word of God increased, and the numbers of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly, and a great number of the priests were obedient to the faith.”

And this is very interesting. The blessings of God, of course, they did things right and good here. God is telling us, he’s putting his imprimatur, so to speak, on their actions in a very marked way. He blesses them with the increase of the word here and the impact of the word in their lives. And then the last thing, the last clause here is very interesting to me, and I don’t know what to make of it totally yet, although I have some ideas which I’ll share in a minute.

“And a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.”

Why mention the priests in this narrative? It could just be to show the inroads into the institutional church that exists—of the Jewish church—thus setting us up for the increased persecution against the church. They’re losing priests now, not just the common people. They’re losing their own men. And the priests were important people.

They were the ones who understood the word of God more. They were given order to study of it better. They knew the liturgies. They knew the sacrifices in the temple. They were intellectually prominent and they were socially prominent because of that as well in their status in the church. So these were important men being added to the church.

It is important—earlier Dan Drinkwater was talking to me about something he had read in Reverend Jordan’s book about how it’s important to see that we don’t always just want to work from the bottom up. God works from the top down frequently and here we have priests who are the top so to speak of the social and church structure and God has conversion of then—men these men as well as the church grows and matures but priests are mentioned here and I want to mention one other reason why I think priests are mentioned as we move on now to a consideration of the overview of this text.

We’ve gone through the specific verses. I’ve laid out what we’re going to do here in the next three weeks. Going to talk about this deacon thing. We’re going to talk about the qualification statements and what that means. And then we’re going to talk about ordination for a week and look at the importance of that all relative to church polity. But let’s look first of all in terms now I’m moving from a specific reading of each verse. Now I want to talk about this theme of what this text really is important to tell us.

Okay. And I want to quote first of all from J. Alexander Linsky…