Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Acts 6:1-8

Sermon text is Acts 6:1-8. We’ll try from this text to understand more of God’s law for us relative to the polity of the church with implications for the state and family as well. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Acts 6 beginning at verse one.

And in those days and 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.

Then the twelve called the 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 yourselves 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 Stephen, 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.

And Stephen full of faith and power did great wonders and miracles among the people.

We thank God for his word and let us pray now that he would give us understanding of it. We’re going to spend four weeks tentatively. That’s my plan. We spent one week last week considering this text. We’ll spend three more weeks. Today we’ll look at the office of deacon. Next week we’ll look at the qualifications for office as enumerated in this text as well as other places of scripture. And then finally we’ll look at ordination.

It seems good that as we watch the church in the book of Acts mature and grow in service now in Acts six in an organizational structure that we contemplate that a little bit here at Reformation Covenant Church as we grow and mature in the adoption of a constitution over the next three or four months.

I might just mention by the way that your announcements for today indicate a congregational household meeting scheduled for October 27th. Please make every effort to be at that meeting if possible. We may even adopt the first draft of the constitution. It won’t be all of it, but the less controversial portions, the portions that were thought through.

Just for your own information, again, there are basically four phases to the adoption process. So we’re probably looking at heads of households meetings once a month for the next four or five months as we move through and give you time to read all the material we’ve produced.

But in any event, we have this parallel going on then that we’re growing institutionally as the church in Acts grew. So it seems good to consider office, the office of deacons specifically today.

Now, what I’m going to do, and I don’t have an outline, I apologize for that. But first of all, we’re going to talk a little bit about this text being somewhat mysterious—the difficulty of the text relative to office specifically.

Secondly, after that, we’ll consider the brief scriptural evidence that there are only two offices in the New Testament church. And then we’ll make a correlation thirdly between the office of deacon and the Old Testament office of officer or shoterim. And so we’ll look at the second of those two offices, the office of deacon and the implications of this text for that office.

And then finally we’ll draw a correlation from then based upon the correlation between the deacons and the New Testament church, the shoterim and the Old Testament. We’ll see then a correlation between the deacons as they prepare the church as the army of God for service.

So the first point will be the mysteriousness of the text. Secondly, we’ll talk about there’s two offices. Third, we’ll talk about the deacon specifically and then fourth, we’ll talk about the deacon relative to the army of God.

Now, don’t let these terms confuse you when we talk about deacon or elder. It is a confusing thing. You know, it’s an interesting fact that God we can be a little upset that he doesn’t give us more details, more overt details relative to the institutional church in the New Testament. But if you think about it, you can get upset about that on a whole wide variety of issues throughout the Bible. Men have argued in terms of the completed canon for nearly two thousand years about applications of various texts.

And one of the reasons for that is our own sinfulness—our ears are plugged up. But another reason is that God doesn’t just lay everything out there for us. He is mysterious. He doesn’t reveal all of who he is to us at every moment. He keeps back a lot of that and he wants us to work and to prove our tenacity as it were to seek out truth. Gold is not found on the surface of the earth. Usually it’s found down below the earth or it’s found in riverbeds and it’s got to be dug out.

And much of the scriptures are that same way and I think that one of the implications of this I think should be that no matter what you think in terms of whether you agree or disagree with what I do with this text today and the two offices of the New Testament, I think you have to recognize that for two thousand years the church has had different opinions of these texts relative to office. There are different polities.

Polity is a system of organization of the church or anything but we’re talking about the church here specifically. And I think one of the things that people have to do if the church as an extended body of Christ is going to mature and grow over the next millennium as it has for this last millennia is to accept some of that diversity with a great deal of humility on our part.

And so what I’m saying is I want to prepare you that although I’m going to give you what I think is the best understanding of this text, there are other interpretations of it and that’s good. It means that the church is still maturing in its understanding of this and it should produce in us a desire to respect people with sincerely held differences of beliefs relative to the organization of the church.

Now this text is not an easy one. It’s easy in its basic thrust which we dealt with last week. The organization of the church, the maturing in service for the feeding of the world is by way of extension of the Greeks and the Hebrew Christians that had converted. Remember, these weren’t Greeks. They were all Jews, but they were Hellenistic Jews and Hebrew Jews in terms of language and culture.

So the basic thrust of the text is clear. But what’s not so clear is who these guys were, these seven men. Were they deacons? Were they presbyters? Were they deacons who had become presbyters?

Let me just read you a few commentaries here. This first one is from J. Alexander. He says, although the word deacon, the title deacon is not used in this passage, nor indeed in the whole book of Acts, yet the judgment of the church has in all ages recognized that as the institution that this is the institution of that office, the continuance of which in other places and in later times is inferred from 1 Timothy 3, Philippians 1, and Romans 16:1.

So Alexander says, “Well, it doesn’t use the title deacons here, but the whole church understands that’s what it is.”

And I’ll quote from James B. Jordan. Jordan said, “The Bible actually teaches by the way only one office in the church, the office of ruler, priest, king, prophet. The church ruler guards the sacraments priestly. He rules kingly and he teaches prophetic. The only other office in the scripture is the office of ruler in the state. Each elder should have a diaconal assistant and the deacons should assist the elders generally in their work. This would be more obvious to us if we lived in an age in which job training was by apprenticeship instead of by university education.

Some of the great in the Bible who later became elders are Joshua, Elisha, the twelve apostles and the seven deacons of Acts 6.”

Well, I don’t know how he knows all seven deacons later became elders, but there is in the text the development of this text. I read verse 8, which I didn’t read last week specifically because in verse 8 we read that Stephen full of faith and power did great wonders and miracles among the people. And then there’s the persecution that comes. Stephen preaches, his sermon is recorded for us in Acts 7. Philip is later called Philip the evangelist.

So these men baptize, they preach, they evangelize, and it sure seems like they’re elders. In any event, Jim Jordan thinks that what we’ve got here may be deacons, but only deacons in the sense of apprentice or assistants to elders. Now, so he says there’s one office basically.

So really you could say that these men are being ordained as presbyters or elders and there are good conservative solid episcopal men who would agree with that as well. What we have here is really the institution not of the office of deacon but of elder. Remember we have apostles is all we have here which are different than elders. We’ll see later in the book of Acts at the council of Jerusalem you have apostles and you have elders separate.

So these men might well have been elders and the thinking is that the church is getting ready here in the providence of God for the persecution and the dispersion. As Greg Skipper pointed out to me last week after the talk that the church is really prepared for the dispersion then the apostles stay in Jerusalem the rest of the church leaves the persecution and now they have these elders already in place who will guide and direct the church as it goes out.

So Jim Jordan thinks that’s true that we have elders here but really they’re elders in training and that there’s only one office.

Let me read from Lenski now, a Lutheran commentator usually quite sound and he says the theory that all offices in the church flow from one central office and really constitute parts of it finds no support here.

You see this is the text that Jim Jordan has just used to say there is only one office and Lenski is saying it that finds no support in this text. Says this theory has led to such notions as that when the janitor rings the bell sweeps the church lights the lamps he’s only substituting for the pastor the apostles have a different view stating clearly what the obligation of the Christian ministry is. Other tasks may arise but these are extraneous to be turned over to other hands.

In other words the apostles were saying we’re supposed to pray and minister the word. We did this other stuff for a while helping with the distribution to those who are less who are vulnerable economically vulnerable or community but that’s really extraneous to their office. They can turn it over to somebody else. The apostles were not delegating a part of their divine office to others. They could not. They were relinquishing tasks that were not a part of their office that were instead interfering with that office.

To be sure these tasks too need to be performed but this necessity does not make them a part of the divinely instituted office of apostles and pastors.

The selection of the men for this task is left to the congregation. If these men were to serve as assistants to the apostles in their apostolic work, the selection would have been made by the apostles. Additionally, other commentators have pointed out that if what we have here is assistants to the apostles who would then become elders and deacons would assist them, you’d think we’d have twelve of them because we got twelve apostles instead of seven.

Well, I read all these not to confuse you, but to show you that this is a somewhat mysterious text that needs to be dug out. What is going on here? And I don’t think we should have the hubris that would say that we can dig it out definitively and correct men of the past two thousand years and say we know what the next two thousand years of the church should say on this matter.

Indeed one commentator in the Protestant Reformed Church says that really there are at least five different views of what’s going on here in the book of Acts relative to office. He says first of all the view that the Protestant Reformed churches of America hold which is and most churches do—that these are deacons. This is the office of deacon being instituted in Acts chapter 6.

But he says secondly the second view is that the very opposite of the first and that is that the service to which these men were appointed involved no ecclesiastical office at all. They had a problem. They took care of the problem that was short-term. So there’s no office at all being created here. That’s another view held by good Bible-loving Christians.

A third view is that the function of the seven is the same as that of the elders mentioned in Acts 11. In that case these were elders to whom the additional task of the daily ministration was assigned and that’s the view that some of the episcopal commentators would hold. This is the office of elder being instituted in addition to their elder functions they had this daily administration assigned as well.

A fourth view is a rather closely allied view in the words of this commentator saying that the office of the seven included that of elders and deacons. And in a way that’s what Mr. Jordan is saying. He’s saying there’s one office elders. Deacons are assistant elders. Elders were assistant apostles. And so really you have elders and deacons both being spoken of in this passage.

Finally, the fifth view is that the service of the seven was only temporary and that their appointment was while in office an emergency measure for that special occasion. So not good and confused over what this text means.

Let’s say something that one of the reasons why this can be confusing is when we start using the term deacon or the term elder. No title is given to the office created in Acts 6. I think there is good reason to believe it is the office of deacon. But I think that the fact that no title is given helps us to remember that the important thing being pictured for us in Acts 6 is not necessarily the institution of an office with the title, but the institution of a function that will be of perpetual usefulness and need in the church.

You’re always going to have people that need assistance in terms of monetary assistance. You always have administration of the church matters that will draw those men who are devoted to studying the word of God and praying and leading in worship services away from those tasks. Those things are ongoing concerns and so we have here a function that’ll be ongoing whether you call them deacons, elders, assistants to the elders, elders as assistants to the apostles.

No matter what you call them, nonetheless, this function is required.

Now let’s talk about the two offices in the New Testament church. And I’m sure you’re aware of this, but there are only two offices really explicitly laid out for us in the New Testament church. So if we’re going to look at the office created in Acts 6, it’s got to be one of these two or maybe both together. These two offices are the offices of elders and deacons.

Now this is in the consideration of our constitution at RCC. One of the explanatory notes to our system of government says that we differ from many Presbyterian denominations today who hold to three offices. They say there are deacons, there are ruling elders and teaching elders. Now they would some say that’s really only one office but really they have a different set of qualifications, a different set of duties in Presbyterian denomination.

The minister is a member of Presbyterian, not the local church. The ruling elder member of the local church. So there really three different offices being portrayed here. But I think the scriptures are real clear. We’ll just go through this real quickly that there are only two offices in the scriptures.

This is seen there’s only two sets of qualifications in 1 Timothy 3. In 1 Timothy 3, he says that there are qualifications for the office of overseer or presbyter and then he lists a separate set of qualifications for the office of deacon. So we have only two sets of qualifications not three.

Secondly, there are two functional categories listed in 1 Corinthians 12 and here in Acts 6. Acts six makes a differentiation between two sorts of ministries or services worship and the study of God’s word and administration of the poor which I think stands for the administration of all those responsibilities in the church that would draw the elders or the apostles away from study of the word.

There are only two functional categories listed for us in Acts 6 and also in 1 Corinthians 12.

And I might just mention here that if you look at and just take this, we won’t look at the text now. In Hebrews 13:7 and also in Exodus 18, there are only the two functions rather of ruling and ministry of the word are combined in those texts. And I think that, you know, in terms of polity that the Presbyterian denominations make a mistake to split off ruling from the ministry of the word.

What happens then is we take two things that really belong properly together and they become splintered apart. In Exodus 18, the tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands are selected to help Moses with the judging of the people. And it says that Moses will teach the statutes and ordinances to those men so they can administer cases. The clear implication is that teaching and ruling are combined together. And the way the thousands will help the hundreds and the way the hundreds will help the heads of fifties, the way the heads of fifties help the heads of tens and the heads of tens will help the individual households is not simply by making judicial decisions but primarily through instruction in the word of God.

That’s how rule is normally accomplished in the church. It’s only when people become recalcitrant and disobedient to instruction that formal disciplinary action is involved and we call it formal disciplinary action because when you make a disciple you’re disciplining them right—that’s what discipline means. Its root is to disciple or teach. So teaching and ruling are combined in Exodus 18, they’re combined in Hebrews 13, etc.

In any event, okay, there are two office positions also foreshadowed in the Old Testament. We looked last week at Deuteronomy 1. Deuteronomy 1 says that Moses says, “I created two offices for you. I created judges and I created officers.” Remember, he takes the accounts from Numbers 11, Exodus 18, the seventy, and then the heads of the tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands, combines them together in Deuteronomy 1.

And so, right in the Old Testament, we have a foreshadowing that there’d only be two offices in the New Testament. And we have two essential offices that Moses created or recognized that God had given the church in the wilderness in Deuteronomy 1.

Later in Deuteronomy 16, we have explicit instructions that there are to be judges and officers in every city of Israel. They go into the land. The two offices then correlate, I believe, to the two offices of the New Testament—the elders and deacons.

And so in churches, in our communities, we have elders administering the word and leading in worship. And we have deacons who assist them in that task. And in that assisting also perform that administration.

See, in a way, it doesn’t matter if you think of the deacons as apprentice elders or assistant elders or as a totally separate office. Their function is pretty much the same. And the scriptures are clear. If Steven and Philip migrate into these positions of being evangelists, preachers, baptizers, the scriptures are clear that you will have deacons who migrate into doing the function of elders and so and so really the title of the offices can get us confused but the function should help us to understand the clarity of the passage in front of us.

So in any event so there are only two offices in the New Testament church the elder and the deacon. And what is the deacon?

If the scriptures tell us there’s the second office of deacon as they do in at least two explicit places, the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and the heading in Philippians 1:1 where the letter of the epistle is delivered to the elders and the deacons to the overseers and the deacons as a formal office. What are these deacons?

The word is used in a general sense. Now you got the word deacon is really a transliteration of the Greek word. In other words, it’s not translated into a new word in our language. It transliterates the word diakonos from the Greek. And now that word is used in a special sense in office, but it’s also used in other forms to generally describe service in the New Testament.

For instance, it’s spoken of as waiters on tables of meals. That is in John chapter 2, John chapter 9 as well. Paul is a servant of the church, a deacon of the church in Colossians 1:25. Christians in general are called servants or deacons so to speak, servants, same essential Greek word of the master, the Lord Jesus Christ and of his people in John 12 and in Mark chapter 9. Many other such general occurrences are found in the New Testament.

The term is only used as I said before in reference to a special office or function in the church in two places. Philippians 1 and 1 Timothy 3. And here as we said the essentially they’re just transliterated instead of translated. Both of these occurrences are in conjunction, by the way, with bishops or overseers. And so that’s more evidence that the deacons essentially are assisting bishops or overseers or elders.

Now, some are very reluctant to see in Acts chapter 6 the establishment of the office of deacon. But to me, the establishment of that function is almost certain in this text. Repeatedly the secular term deacon is used in the Greek of the day to speak of those who wait on tables. And I’m going to quote from the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. It looks at this specific word that’s used that later becomes the title deacon in the church.

Says that the inscriptions, this is the inscriptions where this word was used in the Greek culture of the day teach us anything, it’s that the original meaning of this term was to wait at tables and that meaning persisted into the days of the writings of the scriptures. In accordance with the saying and example of Jesus early Christianity made this—that is the serving of tables—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 tables is reflected in the fact that the Christian office had its origin in the common meal at the heart of the life of the community.

So in a way it’s kind of nice that God has us sitting in here instead of over there—we’re sitting around the table and it’s a reminder to us that they sat around tables as we did with an agape with the communion feast etc. And so that the very center of their being was this table, the common table of the Lord. At the center of the function of the offices of the church is service, the extension of grace at the table.

But in any event, the term deacon itself, the two occurrences which used, the root word of that means to wait at tables. And here we have in Acts six specifically people being designated in an office to wait at tables. So it seems clear to me that Acts 6 tells us of the institution of the function and the office of deacons.

Now while certain aspects of the work of the diaconate can be guessed at from the qualities required of the men who fill the office, some have concluded from the sparsity of New Testament data that we must look to the development of the office in the post-apostolic church for directions in understanding these terms.

The point here is if you don’t see in Acts six what deacons are, where do we see in the scriptures what deacons are? We the elders being addressed in different ways. We can understand their function apart from Acts 6. Where can we see the function of the deacons described for us if not in Acts 6? I don’t know any place in the New Testament.

And so some people have said, well that’s true. So what we’ve got to do is look at the church, the post-apostolic church. What was the office like in the early days of the church? That is dangerous ground. That is uninspired ground. And the early church had deep difficulties in many different ways. They fell into quite bad heresy early on in the early church. It was not a golden age of the church.

Now, it is useful, of course, to consider what the early fathers did in terms of the church, but the very fact that these are uninspired writings should be a caution to us. Another caution is that when we read the post-apostolic church writers, we’re reading a language that we may misunderstand or misinterpret.

And let me give you an example of this. This is from Samuel Miller’s book, The Ruling Elder. He talks in here that in the early church the words that they use to describe deacons are also frequently used in the New Testament to express the public preaching and teaching of the gospel. When these same words are applied by some of the early Greek fathers and the corresponding verbs as well by the Latins to the deacon’s office, it has been hastily concluded that they were habitually preachers in the New Testament sense of the term.

But the truth is that everyone of the least degree acquainted with these writers knows these terms used by the fathers signify an entirely different matter.

Now what he’s saying here is that some people say that deacons are supposed to be preachers and really just elders because the early church fathers use terms that meant to preach. Okay, but let me go on to read what he says here about this word.

The deacons in the third, fourth and fifth centuries are everywhere represented as the common heralds or criers of the church. That is when any public notice was to be given when the catechumens or the penitent were to be called upon to come forward or to withdraw or when any public proclamation was to be made in the course of the service of the church, it belonged to the deacon’s office to perform this duty.

Hence, he was called the crier and was said to cry aloud or to make proclamation. It belonged to the deacons also to keep order at the doors when the service was beginning to see that the worshippers were seated in a quiet and orderly manner to stand around the communion table when it was spread and with fans made either of dried skins or peacock’s feathers to keep off the flies from the consecrated elements.

Okay, Roy. So, you see flies appear. You’re supposed to come and bat them away. What they did in the… Okay, the reason I read this is see some people read the church fathers think, “Oh, there are proclaimers. That must mean they were preachers.” But no, they were using proclaim in the sense where a deacon would make announcements or cry aloud to the people.

Later on, we’ll look at Deuteronomy 20 and the shoterim or the officers cried out to the people who are being prepared for war. If you’re cowardly, go home. If you have a wife, you’re in your year of exclusion, go home. They would cry that out. And so the deacons in the early days of the church would cry out such announcements as well. They’d yell out the instructions of the elders. Deacons would then be given out, communicated to the people coming to the Lord’s table through the deacons. And in that sense, they were proclaimers.

Well, the point is you can’t really look at the church, the uninspired church history for what the office is. I think Acts 6 is the key to what the office is. And Acts 6 is fleshed out with an understanding of the Old Testament officers as well.

And as we said last week, Deuteronomy 1 tells us there were various incendiary offices in the Old Covenant community. Moses appointed two primary offices or functions for the covenant community. These two functions were judges and officers. They were established and the record of their establishment is in Exodus 18 and Numbers 11 respectively.

Now we cannot draw a direct correlation between the offices thus established with that of elders and deacons. But we can draw very definitively I believe a correlation between the two functions described in the old covenant and the New Testament offices or functions of elder and deacon.

The judges were appointed in Exodus 18 specifically to assist Moses in teaching the people the requirements of the law. Applying that law to disputes and also judging between them according to the standards of that law. The officers are appointed in Numbers 11 specifically to assist Moses in the administration of large numbers of people who would otherwise burden Moses, the burden of the people in their administrative service.

Very importantly, we also note that Numbers 11 records the grumbling of people over food as the precipitant of the provision for men. And we can assume from that text assisted somehow in the distribution of the massive amounts of flesh that God would provide for the people shortly thereafter. Moreover, the grumbling and resultant weeping in verse 4 of Numbers 11 is specifically occurring with reference to the mixed multitude.

We talked about this last week. And so the Acts 6 account records the establishment of those to serve at table to administrate the food provisions of the early church to assist the apostles and then later the elders by serving at tables so that they might more effectively do the service of the word. The precipitant of the establishment of the office of deacon then in Acts six is again murmuring over food and once again originates with the mixed multitude the Grecians in this case as opposed to the Hebrews.

While these two scenarios are by no stretch of the imagination identical, the common problems associated with each is the need for godly administers to assist the covenant community in their physical requirements and to alleviate men who are called to other functions of any distractions from that 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’s no hint of neoplatonism here, a sacred-secular distinction that the somehow the physical concerns of the community were somehow less important or imbued with some kind of neutrality in terms of how they met. No, just the reverse. The Numbers 11 account tells us that these men received of the same spirit that was upon Moses, the spirit of the living God for empowerment and enabling for their proper functioning.

And in Acts six, the account tells us the men selected by the congregation and approved by the apostles must be full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom. Let me just mention also that the conclusion of the selection of the seventy and then they get filled with the spirit and you remember what they do after they’re filled with the spirit when God takes the spirit that was upon Moses put upon them they prophesy they proclaim God’s word.

And these definitely were administrators not teachers. The prophetic function was a validity validation rather that the spirit of God was upon them and that God’s word the prophetic word of God would be taken with them into their administrative task and so it is in Acts six the men are chosen they’re full of the spirit. The ordination is by the laying on of hands or the spirit of God through the apostles is symbolically not actually transmitted but symbolically transmitted to the deacons and that’s why I read verse 8. Stephen full of faith and power did great wonders and miracles among the people. It is evidence or demonstration that he takes the word of God into all that he does and that God has given him calling to that office.

Let me just mention here by the way that the Numbers 11 passage deals explicitly with the civil state. This is really the state. Of course, in the Old Testament state and church are frequently combined, but these are definitely civil administrators being spoken of here.

Let’s turn now then to just a short examination of who these officers were. And I want to just bring out a couple of texts. And the first time we come across the term shoterim, which is translated officer, is in Exodus 5. And in Exodus five these men were foremen of the Hebrews in their work of making bricks. See the correlation? They were administers, foremen, so to speak, organizing the people for the work that they had to do under Pharaoh in Acts 5. That’s found in verse 6, verse 10, and then verse 14 and 15 of Acts chapter 5.

Later, as we said in the Numbers account, these men are actually then called out by God. He says, “Take people who were known as officers of the people and he appoints them to this task of administration.” Later in Deuteronomy 1, we’ve we’ve referred to that before. We see the term officer explicitly used talking about that selection of men in Numbers 11. And then in Deuteronomy 16, remember we said that judges and officers would be ordained in each city, appointed in each city.

Deuteronomy 20, we’ll look at later, the function of the officers in relationship to the army of God. But any event, the Old Testament is replete with references to these officers. And the first use of the term and in scripture and interpreting scripture that’s important is the form and aspect described in Exodus chapter 5. These were administrators assistant so to speak to Pharaoh as he had the people of God make bricks for him.

Later on, there are biblical evidences. We won’t go through all of them, but there are biblical evidences that shows that these officers were administrators to the king. David had officers who would administer and help him in the administration of the people. Moses has officers or administrators in Numbers 11 who assist him. And judges also Joshua has officers who assist him in the administration of the people of God. These administrators fill church state as well as evidence in just the general community.

Let me just take a brief diversion here. And I want to quote a little bit from R.J. Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law where he talks about the importance of seeing in Numbers 11 what he calls a civil pentecost.

Pentecost, the coming of God’s spirit upon his people. Let me just read from Institutes of Biblical Law. Here the first Pentecost was the civil Pentecost at the ordination of the civil authorities found in Numbers 11. The meaning of this event is generally neglected because the law as a whole is neglected. Moses here as the representative of Christ the king immediately mediated the gift of the spirit that this was not an exceptional event is made clear by the anointing of Saul who also prophesied.

That’s in 1 Samuel 10. The fact of prophecy was not their officer calling either with the seventy elders or with Saul. They were civil rulers. The spirit-filled witness of the prophecy attested to their office that is that it was of God’s ordination. The two civil Pentecosts came at the start of the two forms of civil government in Israel. The commonwealth and the monarchy.

Okay. What he’s mean here’s here we have the commonwealth. Okay. And then in the monarchy later with Saul, the institution of the monarchy is also seen with the descent of God’s spirit upon the first king Saul and is prophesied. The ordination of others was by an anointing. The early church saw its continuity at the church Pentecost by its rights of coronation. The form of the rights still remains although the faith is gone.

And I’m going to read now sections from the coronation and the one where reading here is the oath required of Queen Elizabeth II in England. And the purpose for me in doing this is to show you how important Numbers 11 is not just in terms of church polity and the deacons and the administration of people, but this is explicitly related to civil magistrates as well. And it shows the spirit of God, the word of prophecy, the prophetic word of God filling their office.

Let me and this is understood in years gone by. So far removed from it’s controversial in the church today. One of one of the controversial things about our church, we believe in the in the sense that we believe God’s law applies to civil magistrates and that is their function. But this is not new and novel in the history of the church.

I’m going to read from the coronation oath required of Queen Elizabeth II. Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the law of God and the true profession of the gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof as by law established in England?

And will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of England, and to the churches that are committed to their care and charge, all such rights and privileges as by law as by law do and shall appertain to them or any of them.

And after this oath, the moderator of the general assembly of the Church of Scotland brought to the queen a Bible, saying, “Oh gracious queen, to keep your majesty ever mindful of the law and the gospel of God as the rule for the whole life and government of Christian princes. We beseech you or we present you rather with this book, the most valuable thing that the world affords. Here is wisdom. This is the royal law. These are the lively oracles of God.”

After the anointing which cited the anointing of Solomon, the presentation of the sword of state followed with the archbishop of York receiving it from the Lord great chamberlain, presenting it to the queen with these words as he gave her the sword of state. Receive this kingly sword brought from the altar of God and delivered to you by the hands of us the bishops and the servants of God though unworthy.

With his sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity. Protect the holy church of God. Help and defend widows and orphans. Restore the things that are gone to decay. Maintain the things that are restored. Punish and reform what is amiss and confirm what is in good order. That doing these things you may be glorious in all virtue and so faithfully serve our Lord Jesus Christ in this life that you may reign forever with him in the life which is to come. Amen.

And then when the orb with the cross was given to the queen, the archbishop declared, “Receive this orb said unto the cross, and remember that the whole world is subject to the power and empire of Christ our redeemer.”

Numbers 11 is an important text. It teaches civil magistrates their responsibility to be filled with the spirit of God to the end of proclaiming his word. Proclamation being understood as the performing of his word in relationship to the duties of Christ the King that he has given to them as well.

And you see when we see the spirit of God filling the men who are going to be deacons and when we see the installation of office, the laying on of hands of the apostles, and then we see that Stephen immediately is recorded as doing miracles and signs and wonders, great things, demonstrations of God’s presence with him. It tells us that the office of the deacon or the office of the apprentice elder or the office of the elder as he’s serving first as assistant to the apostles, no matter what you call this office this function that pertains to the church, the administration of the temporal affairs of the church, those things that would distract men who are given to call to preach the word, to study the word, to administer worship, that the other men who are called to assist them.

This is a high and holy calling before God. And you could probably trace a correlation between the diminution of the office of deacon, its understanding of its importance, of its spiritual quality, of its importance to the proclaiming the gospel of Christ through the acts of service, charity and administration that they perform. You could probably see in relationship to the diminution of that office also the diminishing of the concept of the civil magistrate being empowered by God to proclaim his word and what they do and say.

You understand the correlation? Deacons today are seen as guys who just handle charity for the church. Maybe the church building and it’s not seen as a spiritual task. The scriptures couldn’t be further away from what that implication of that is. The scriptures are clear. The office of deacon and administration. I don’t get don’t get hung up over the term assistant to the elder, whatever you want to call that function that’s being described in Acts chapter 6 is a holy calling to God.

And that’s why God as well, I believe in the text goes on to talk about Stephen, not just the doing of miracles and signs, his great sermon delivered in Acts chapter 7 in response to the persecution that came upon him. Philip’s work as an evangelist and baptizer. It puts God’s stamp of authority and power upon that function and says these are important men in the congregation as important as the preachers of the word.

Well, in any event then I think that the office the function that described in Acts chapter 6 correlates back to Numbers 11. There are many similarities there. There were complaints by a mixed multitude, the blessing of God and multiplying the people was the reason for the problems with food, administration and then there was a divine enabling for the task and the blessing of God upon it. And so we have the same thing in Acts chapter 6.

All those correlations relate one to the other.

Let me just read a couple of quotes. Now what I’m arguing for is that Acts chapter 6 tells us the establishment of what I believe is the office of deacon. There is possible migration from the deacon to the men that they do assist the elders indicated by the men that are chosen in the text. But now you may ask yourself, well Dennis, if that’s true that Acts chapter 6 tells us the function of the deacon, why are you presenting the function broader than simply a charity function?

In other words, in Acts chapter 6 there tables. They’re ministering to the widows that were neglected. And so, isn’t deacon’s primary job then the administration of church benevolences? No, I don’t think it is their primary job. And I don’t think it is because of this correlation to the officers in the Old Testament. Their functions are much broader than simply administration of benevolences. They involve administration of all things that would distract the judges from their duties.

And without going further into it, let me just read from two other commentators who would agree with me. I think it’s important. Actually, I’ll read from three here. The first one I’ll read from is Bannerman and his Scripture Doctrine of the Church. What I’m positing here while not prevalent in practice even among Presbyterian churches today. Nonetheless, in the history of the church was not an unusual position to hold.

Bannerman wrote this in the Scripture Doctrine of the Church. He said that the use of the term table in Acts chapter 6 that it is a the natural and scriptural symbol for the whole temporal requirements of a family. And so Bannerman says to serve tables means to attend the whole temporal affairs of the church, the family, the household of faith.

Note in this context the requirement of the deacons listed for us in 1 Timothy 3. Remember what one of the requirements is? They must be husbands of one wife ruling their children in their own houses. Well, they’re going to serve at the house of God and the table means all the functions of that house temporal functions.

Bannerman also said in the Scripture Doctrine of the Church he talks about the reason that there were seven deacons and he relates this to the institution of the local Sanhedrin commonly called the seven good men of the city to these men were entrusted all matters pertaining to public property. These were men of good business acumen. In other words, Bannerman says that in the context…