Dennis Tuuri

A delightful day, a day in which to rejoice as God adds to the officers of Reformation Covenant Church. And to help us better understand that, let’s turn to Deuteronomy 20, verses 1-9 is the sermon text. Deuteronomy 20, verses 1-9. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

“When you go out to battle against your enemy, and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. So it shall be when you are on the verge of battle that the priest shall approach and speak to the people.

And he shall say to them, ‘Hear, O Israel, today you are on the verge of battle with your enemies. Do not let your heart faint. Do not be afraid, and do not tremble or be terrified because of them. For the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to save you.’ Then the officers shall speak to the people, saying, ‘What man is there who has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it. What man is there who has planted a vineyard and has not eaten of it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man eat of it. And what man is there who is betrothed to a woman and has not married her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man marry her.

The officers shall speak further to the people and say, ‘What man is there who is fearful and faint-hearted? Let him go and return to his house, lest the heart of his brethren faint like his heart.’ And so it shall be when the officers have finished speaking to the people that they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the light that it brings to us. We thank you for the joy it brings to our hearts. And we pray now that your Holy Spirit would illumine this text to our understanding that we may rejoice in it and apply it. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

The subject of church polity—the organization of the church, the structure of the church, how many officers, what do these officers do—is a matter of no small dispute and differences of opinion. With the Protestant Reformation, the world moved forward in its understanding of the word of God as it relates to various matters. But it also opened up considerations of different views of texts of Scripture and their application in many areas, including that of the institutional church. Coming from the Protestant Reformation, there are various theories of office or church polity that are held in different groups, and even within those groups there are differences of opinion.

So I want to begin today by telling you that as I understand the Scriptures, we think that there is a correlation to be made between Deuteronomy 20 and the office to which Bob and Takashi will be ordained today. But understand that this is my understanding of what the Scriptures teach relative to office. This is a period of growth and maturation in the context of the institutional church. And we pray and believe confidently that the time will come—one century, two centuries, maybe a millennium from now—when the church will mature in its understanding of polity and have one unified view of it. That time is not now.

Until we get the full witness of the church to the truth of these matters, what we say today is somewhat tentative. And yet it’s a vital portion of God’s word that has to be preached to and applied in the context of our lives.

I want to draw today some degree of correlation between these officers of Deuteronomy 20 and the office of deacon that we’ll be ordaining men to today.

The other caveat I want to make is that I don’t mean by this to make a strict one-for-one correlation. The Old Testament is filled with various offices, and all of those offices and men find their culmination in the office of the Lord Jesus Christ, coming as our Redeemer to redeem us from sin. He’s the ultimate deacon. He’s the ultimate elder. He’s the ultimate judge. He’s the ultimate prince of the people. And all the offices really find their fulfillment in him. So to try to make one-for-one correlations to the context of the New Testament office in a wooden fashion is really not what we want to do. But what we do want to do is look at these texts from the Old Testament to help us understand a little bit of what this office of deacon is.

And I want to begin by talking about the relationship of deacon to officer in the context of the Scriptures.

Now, one of the reasons why the historic church has differed in the last 500 years in terms of this office, and does today, is because it’s difficult to discern in the New Testament alone what this office is all about. The word that’s translated deacon is a general term for servant. Paul is a minister, and the word minister frequently is a translation of the same basic word that is transliterated into our word deacon—diakonos. So service or servant is the basic meaning of the term, and everyone agrees on that. In terms of an office, we believe that there is this office of deacons for two primary reasons.

One: in Philippians 1:1, we read in the salutation of that epistle to the Philippians, “Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus in Philippi with the bishops and deacons.” So he addresses the church, and in addressing the church, he addresses two officers of the church seemingly—the two officers that fill the function of the officers of the church: bishops and deacons. The word when you see it translated bishop in the King James or New King James means an overseer or a supervisor. It’s not the same word as elder. It’s episcopos, from which we get the episcopal church. Over—epi, over. Scope—see. And the word deacon is this word servant basically, but it’s addressed here as an office.

Additionally, in 1 Timothy 3, we know there are at least two sets of qualifications for offices. The bishops, again or overseers, are addressed in 1 Timothy 3:1 and following, and then in the later portion of the chapter, we have qualifications listed for this office of deacon. So we have good New Testament teaching, both in an address as well as these qualifications, that the deacon is the second office of the church. But what do they do? We don’t have information beyond what I’ve just told you and the general use of the term deacon in being a servant in the New Testament. We don’t have much else to go on.

But I do think we can look back to the Old Testament and see some important texts there that correlate this office back to certain functions of the officer in the Old Testament.

Now, in Deuteronomy 16:18, God says, “They should appoint judges and officers in all your gates, which the Lord your God gives you according to your tribes.” Judges and officers were two offices that were to be given or distributed in the context of each city. And it seems like, in terms of the New Testament church—at least according to the address to the Philippian church—we have two officers of the church, two office holders: the elders and the deacons. And we know from other texts that the elders are correlated to judges—they rule in the context of church court and disciplinary matters as well as dispense the word. So it seems like we have this idea, and I’ve chosen one verse (there are many of them that talk about the installation of two officers in the cities in the Old Testament), that makes us want to think a little bit about the second office of officers in relationship to the deacons.

In Deuteronomy 1:15, Moses says, “I took the heads of your tribes, wise and knowledgeable men, and made them heads over you, leaders of thousands, leaders of hundreds, leaders of fifties, leaders of tens, and officers for your tribes.”

Now, you may not catch it there, but he’s saying two different things. “I gave you these judges, these heads over tens, fifties, hundreds, thousands, and I gave you officers.” And what’s happening in Deuteronomy 1:15 is a conflation. He is taking two separate historical incidents in the context of his ministry to the people of God and conflating them—bringing them together into one description in this verse.

The two incidents are found in Exodus 18 and Numbers 11.

In Exodus 18, he can’t bear the judicial burden of the people. Jethro, his father-in-law, gives him great advice and says, “Set up judges over tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands.” And that becomes the organizing pattern of the people of God after the Exodus throughout the Old Testament and seemingly carried over into the New Testament as well. So in Exodus 18, “I took heads and I made them heads. I took wise men and I made them judges over you.” Those judges judged both in terms of rule, but they also judged by knowing the word of God and instructing the people in it—a definite correlation to the elders who rule by means of the word.

Additionally, in Numbers 11, Moses had a different problem. There was a problem of administration. He had these great numbers of people. They’ve been getting manna. They wanted meat. And he couldn’t administer the people. And he cries out to God and somewhat does some somewhat holy, semi-holy whining to God about the inability to administer the people.

And God then says, “Select seventy men who are officers of the people.” This is found in Numbers 11. And he takes those seventy men and fills them with the same spirit of Moses to be administrators with Moses, administrators of the people of God in the context of the wilderness.

So in Deuteronomy 1, he says, “You have judges from Exodus 18 that I gave you, and you’ve got officers from Numbers 11 that I gave you, and these are the two men that I appointed.” And then later in Deuteronomy, he says, “Wherever you go, these same two sorts of guys will be officers or office holders in the context of the Old Testament community.”

Now, Numbers 11 is an interesting text of Scripture. It correlates in many ways. There are many commonalities between it and the selection of the seven, which we believe to be deacons in Acts 6. It’s another reason why it’s difficult. We turn to Acts 6 for the role of the deacon, but the word deacon isn’t used there. And yet it seems like this is probably where the office originates from. I believe that’s true. But just so you’ll know, another caveat: if I get to heaven and you find you get to heaven and find out that those in Acts 6 were actually some kind of other function altogether than deacons, I’m doing my best here today to understand the Scriptures and give them to you.

In Acts 6, what do we have going on? We have a dispute about food. Let me actually talk a little bit more about Numbers 11.

In Numbers 11:4, we read, “The mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense cravings. So the children of Israel also wept again and said, ‘Who will give us meat to eat?’” The mixed multitude came out of Egypt—Israelites and Egyptians together. The people of God are not a race people. Racism is not taught biblically. The Israelites are combined both of those who descended from Israel from Jacob but also those who convert to the faith, and they’re all Israelites.

But there is this “mixed” multitude—the mixed multitude refers to the Egyptian element of the church. Now these are newer converts who saw that the Passover was coming, believed the word of God coming through Moses, and converted and came out with the people of God into the wilderness. So these are the Egyptians—these are the Gentiles, in other words. When it talks about the mixed multitude, the Gentiles have a problem with the food. You know, they’re not as disciplined as those who have been raised in the faith. Just like in this church, you know, people that are raised in a Christian household exhibit far more tenacity and submission to God in difficult times than those who are converted later.

Well, so here we have this mixed multitude complaining about food. And Moses then hears the people weeping throughout their families. In verse 10, he praises God. He says in verse 14, “I am not able to bear all these people alone because the burden is too heavy for me.” And he asks for God to help him to take care of this problem.

And in verse 16, the Lord says to Moses, “Gather to me seventy men of the elders of Israel whom you know to be elders of the people and officers over them.”

Okay? Elders of the people and officers over them. In the Old Testament, whenever we read about elders, we’re not talking about the office of elder in the church. It means the old men—the older, wiser men. Those who were officers of them, what’s that talk about? Well, when they were in Egypt making those bricks and stuff, they had appointed—they had selected men to rule over them, to help them and govern them in the production of what they were supposed to do in their vocation. Okay?

So it talks about these officers in Egypt when they lived there. So these men had already had administrative experience before the deliverance from Egypt. And Moses takes out seventy of these guys who were officers already, essentially by way of function. And now God ordains them to office. He says, “Go and meet me at the tent of meeting, and I’m going to take from the spirit that’s on you and I’m going to put that spirit upon them.” The Holy Spirit empowers them for their office of administration.

So Numbers 11 gives us this correlation. Moses doesn’t want to be distracted. He needs administrators to help him. Those administrators are given to him to help him by the providence of God.

Now in Acts 6, the appointing of what we believe are the deacons: we read that “in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplying”—now that’s part of the reason they had the difficulty in the wilderness: tremendous number of people out there, lots of folks multiplying in the wilderness. And in fact, in Deuteronomy 1, he talks about that: “You were multiplying, and God was blessing, and it was difficult, so I needed officers and I needed judges to help me.”

Multiplication is going on. The number is multiplying there arose a complaint, a murmuring, a grumbling, a disputing against the Hebrews by the Hellenists—the Greeks. In other words, the mixed multitude, the new converts. You see, not the Jews who were raised and understood that Christ is Messiah, these are the new converts, and they’re grumbling and complaining about the food because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. Big bunch of people together daily—they were feeding the people. They had, you know, a food and clothing ministry going on right away because as the day of Pentecost comes, all the Jews are there, and a bunch of conversions happen—a huge number of people. And now we’ve got widows having to be administered to.

Then the twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, “It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.” They exhibit the qualities of a mature, elderly, God’s spirit empowering life, and they’re going to be appointed by the apostles over the business—the food distribution.

“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 and they chose various fellas. Hands were laid upon them, and they’re put into office.

The point of these two stories is to show that Acts 6 seems to be, to a certain degree, a recapitulation, a retelling, as it were, a reworking out in the context of the New Testament church of what happens in the wilderness as they’re beginning to move toward the promised land.

What do we have? The commonalities I’ve given you on your outline. We have complaints coming. Not only complaints, but in both cases, the complaints are coming from a mixed group of people—the mixture, the Egyptians in the Old Testament account and the Greeks in the Acts 6 account. And this happens in the context of a multitude of the great blessings and number of people expanding. And these complaints that come from the mixed multitude in both accounts are matters of food—distribution of food and administration relative to tables, as it were.

And in both cases, administrators are what they need—not elders to teach and preach more. But now we need godly men to serve in the context of administering and organizing the people of God for the distribution of food.

And in both accounts, there’s of course a divine enablement—enoblement. Well, that too. There’s an ennobling of the men in the context of their calling and an enablement of the men for the work that they’re going to do by the filling of the Spirit, pictured in the Old Testament account where God takes the spirit on Moses and puts it on the men. In the New Testament, the apostles lay hands upon the deacons, and that is the transfer of power and authority for office to the deacons—a picture of God’s enabling them and enabling them in the context of their office.

And in both accounts, blessing happens. The people of God prosper in the wilderness, and the people of God then prosper in the context of Acts 6. So I believe these texts show us that there’s a degree of similarity between the function of this Old Testament office known as officer—shoterim in the Hebrew—and the singular shoteir—and this New Testament idea of deacon.

Now in the Old Testament, I list some verses here to show to you that this function of an administrative officer is not just found in the army. We read that in Deuteronomy 20, but it also is found in civil matters. And I’ve listed some texts for you there. Also, the Levites in the context of that priestly tribe, the priestly nation—the Levites have officers in the context of their work. For instance, in 1 Chronicles 23:4, we read, “There were 24,000 set forward the work of the house of the Lord, 6,000 were officers and judges”—those same two functions coming up again. So of the Levites to do the work of the Lord in the context of the temple (in the time of David and Solomon), that work is going to be performed by the Levites, and some of them are going to be these administrative officials who organize and administer the people of God, known as shoterim or officers in the Hebrew account.

And these are Levites in 1 Chronicles 23:4. Again, in 1 Chronicles 26:29, it lists some men and their sons who are for the outward business over Israel—for officers and judges. And then there were other men who were officers among them of Israel on this side of Jordan westward in all the business of the Lord and in the service of the king.

The point of all these references is that both in church and state—so to speak, both in the Levitical order as well as in the king’s administration as well as in the military as well as in the judicial branch—there were these administrative officials, deacons as it were, servants who assisted the judges or assisted the Levitic priests or assisted the local priests in doing synagogue services, the Levites, or assisted the civil administrators in their tasks. So this office is dominant throughout the Old Testament structure. This is our classical period that we’re trying to mine from it—ideas of who this, who these people were.

Now in another text, in 2 Chronicles 34:13, we read, “Of the Levites there were scribes and officers and porters.” So scribes, officers, and porters. The importance of that text is that the officer is not simply a scribe. He’s differentiated from the scribe in that text from Chronicles.

All right. So now we’re getting a picture that what we have throughout the Old Testament is this officer who is a servant, an officer who is an administrative official set apart, consecrated to work, enabled by the Holy Spirit to do his work, to administer the people of God. And so it draws up these contexts for us.

I won’t bother to look at these texts under “representational,” but if you bother—if you take the time to look these up in Deuteronomy and Joshua—what you’ll see is when the people of God come together in terms of renewing covenant or when the blessings and cursings of the law are read to them from Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, the officers and judges comprise, by way of representation, all the people of God. So they seem to be this fairly significant Old Testament office that is important for us. When we get around to the New Testament, we can say, “What are these deacons? Who are these fellas that arise in the context of a mixed multitude and complaints about food and then administer tables so that the elders are not distracted from their central task of ministering the word and prayer?” It seems like we can make this correlation to some of the functions of this Old Testament office to help us understand them.

And because of that, we can look at Deuteronomy 20 and draw out some implications for the text that I think can be appropriately applied to what we do here today in the ordination of Bob and Takashi.

In Deuteronomy 20, the people of God are organized for conquest. The deacon, the function of the officer in the Old Testament, has a relationship to the army that is distinct and organizational in structure.

Now, I’ve given you some verses there just in case you’re saying, “Well, it’s an army there. We’re the church today.” Yeah, that’s true. And I don’t want to create a false distinction between the Old Testament being fleshy and the New Testament being spiritual. They were the army, but we’re the army in terms of being the spiritual army. Now, there’s some truth to that, but there’s also some falsehood to that.

In the context of a Christian empire, you’re going to have to have armies. And so Deuteronomy 20, in its first use, is instructional about the actual armies that a Christian nation may have to field to defend itself against unchristian nations attacking it. So we don’t want to get rid of that application. But what we want to say is this: remember, this office of officer is found in the army, but it’s also found in the Levites. It’s also found in the civil arena in the Old Testament. So we can make application from what they do in the army in Deuteronomy 20 to what they do in other functions—other areas, the civil and religious areas—and thus make application to our situation today.

Additionally, the Scriptures tell us in Ephesians 6, we’re to be full armor of God as we go about warfare. In 2 Timothy 2, you’re to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ. It’s not difficult to correlate the army to the people of God in terms of analogy.

Additionally, while the officer serves in the context of a priest in Deuteronomy 20, it’s fairly easy to make a correlation between the priest and the elder of the New Testament church as well. You know this, I suppose, but in Deuteronomy 33, verses 8-11, are the blessings upon the tribe of Levi for their function in the theocracy. The Levites are said explicitly in verse 10 to “teach Jacob your judgments, Israel your law. They shall put incense before you and whole burnt sacrifice on your altar.”

And in Acts 6, what were the deacons to do? They were to let the apostles devote themselves to the word of God and prayer. Levi is to minister the word of God, put incense and whole burnt sacrifices, which is prayer. We read that today in our responsive reading in the psalm we sang—that prayers ascend as evening sacrifice.

So the priest and the elder definitely have a correlation between the Old and New Testaments. And so the officers who are assisting the priest in Deuteronomy 20 are very akin to the deacons who assist the elder in Acts 6. The apostle in both cases is not to be distracted from their primary work—to minister the word of God and to lead in worship and prayer for the people and to offer up incense by way of picture or analogy.

All right. So, having made these correlations, having said that we’ve got a lot more to go on when it comes around to deacons in the New Testament than just those 27 books, we can look to the other 39 books of the divine revelation God has given to us to understand some of the function of this office by correlating them back to particular administrative men who were given in the Old Testament setting in a very similar way to the Acts 6 calling, and then were perpetual officers in the context of their stay in the land—judges and officers being in every city.

We have much information to draw on, and we have a specific illustration here in Deuteronomy 20 of how the officer and the priest—read deacon and elder—go about doing their particular work in the organization of the people of God in the providence of God as the church of God moves forward into the history that God has created for her.

All right. What does the officer do in Deuteronomy 20, now that we’ve set all that up?

Well, it’s pretty simple really. The officer serves the priest through organization. He takes the law of God that the priest has articulated. He then communicates the implications of that law to the individual members of the army. And secondly, what the officer does is he forms up the army with leaders or heads over tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands in terms of the army structure itself.

So what this officer does is he takes the word that the priest has given—the law the priest has said. He then articulates that law in terms of organizing the people as an army and then helps them get heads over them who are of particular abilities to lead them as platoon leaders, squadron leaders, et cetera. That’s what he does.

And in this task, he’s helping the priest because if he wasn’t doing it—if he wasn’t, as a divinely ordained office filled with the Holy Spirit, ennobled and enabled through God to do that task—then the priest would have the responsibility to do that. And that would distract him from his primary work of ministering in word and prayer and worship.

So in a sense the deacon serves the elders in Acts 6. He serves them by not allowing the administrative tasks of the church to distract the elders from their central focus of studying the word of God, teaching the word of God corporately and one-on-one, what we call counseling—teaching the word of God one-on-one—and of ministering to the people in terms of offering the incense, the prayers, and in worship, and then encouraging the people of God to pray throughout the week as well.

Remember, this is the model we put before you: word and prayer. Today your life is to be filled with word and prayer as you go into the week. So the elders do that, and as the officer assisted the priest in organizing the army, so the deacons assist the elders in doing the organizational and administrative tasks of the church to allow them to focus upon the word of God and prayer/worship.

Now, the officer also can be said to be serving the army. What does he do? Well, he makes sure that they’ve understood what the priest has told them about the law of God and how it applies to their particular task. He tells them, “You know what, domestic life has priority over warfare. So if you got a wife, if you’re newly married, it’s your year of exclusion—go on home. You got a house you haven’t dedicated it—go home. You got a vineyard, you haven’t got the fruit of it—go home. That’s the most important stuff: domestic life.” The end result of the warfare we get into is so that we might indeed glorify God and enjoy Him in our domestic life.

So the deacon, Old Testament officer, serves the people by helping them understand the law of God and then by organizing them by way of platoon, squadrons, et cetera, so that they can effectively do the work of the ministry, so to speak, in this particular application of Deuteronomy 20—going to war and winning the war.

So the officer serves the army as well through organization, primarily by making sure that you’re not going to have someone who’s scared to death next to you that’s going to cause your heart to melt. It’s kind of interesting here because the priest says, “Don’t be afraid. God will be with you.” So he encourages the people to put away fear. And then the officer comes along and says, “If anybody’s still afraid, go on home.” You see, he’s not really doing that counseling thing, is he? He’s just telling them, “You’re frightened. Go home. You need to work more on your word of God. Go listen to the priest more, but for now, you can’t be with us.” So he just sorts it out, takes the qualified ones, gets them organized, and they go about doing their work. The others he sends back for more study or work.

All right. Let’s look again at the text specifically and think about this a little bit in terms of the officer assisting the army of God and draw out some implications, hopefully for your life directly.

Turn to Deuteronomy 20, if you will. And I’m going to make some applications, and I think they’re correct. I mean, I think that by way of analogy, it is an appropriate application to us today.

Verse 1: “When you go out to battle against your enemies.”

Okay. Number one: what that means is that whether we’re in an actual time of war or whether we’re being the good soldier that 2 Timothy said we should be and putting on the armor of God that we’re all supposed to do—whether we’re engaged in actual battle or just doing the normal warfare, the spiritual warfare of going about doing the good deeds that God has prepared for us—you should understand that you’re engaged. You are going out to battle, and you’re going out to battle with your enemies.

Now, ultimately it’s the enemy of the Lord, but don’t think that they’re not your enemies as a result. Your enemy is outside. Your enemy is inside. Your own sin is your enemy. There’s external enemies as well. The point is, before we get to how the officer is going to help you, you have to be engaged in the battle. You’ve got to want to be engaged, doing the work of the ministry in the context of being part of the army of God.

You know that little song we teach to the kids: “I may never march in the infantry, shoot the artillery, fly over the enemy, but I’m in the Lord’s army.” You see, that’s a good song to teach our kids, and it’s a good song to remind ourselves that we should be engaged positively in applying the word of Christ in a disciplined fashion in our lives.

“You go out to battle. You see horses, chariots, people more numerous than you. Don’t be afraid of them.”

You see, our natural tendency today—we see ourselves surrounded by those who are against us. And it’s easy to be fearful. But God says, “Don’t be afraid as you go about doing this work.” Why? “For the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” God is present with you. And that’s the reason why you don’t have to fear.

And let me suggest that the way God’s presence is going to be manifested in Deuteronomy 20 is that the priest is going to come through and remind you of this stuff. Then that officer is going to come through and remind you of the law of God. And they are representations to you that God is in the midst of you. Your officers should be comforting to you, and they should be encouraging to you.

When you go to the Lord’s table today, you see the officers—whichever ones are serving that day—and they remind you of what? Now, you don’t have to do it this way, but we’ve chosen to have them go out like the stream, the fiery stream that goes from the throne room, ministering God’s spirit to his people. And it’s a reminder to you that as they serve you, God is serving you today and giving you what you need and transforming you so that you might go out in the power of that spirit and transform other people.

You may take that model of the men that God has given you—servants, mature men (that’s what the two words mean: deacons and elders)—and you go as a mature servant of Christ, doing your work. God’s presence is seen through the context of the officers in the midst of the army.

“So it shall be when you are on the verge of battle that the priest shall approach and speak to the people.”

So here comes the elder today to encourage you. Here come the elders to remind you, to encourage you in the battle, and to say to you that God is with you. He says to you: “Hear, O Israel, today you’re on the verge of battle with your enemies. Do not let your heart faint. Don’t be afraid. Don’t tremble or be terrified because of them. For the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to save you.”

So you get the message every Lord’s day from the elders—by prayer, by the officiation of the service, by administration of the word and the sacraments—that God is with you. He’s got you engaged in this battle not to kill you, but that you might indeed have life in Christ and you might have victory. So you’re being organized for that purpose. “The Lord your God is he who goes with you.”

“Then the officer shall speak to the people, saying, ‘What man is there who has built a new house?’”

So now the officer comes along. He is the means that God uses to organize you and equip you for the ministry that you have been called to do. And today we’re adding deacons so that they can help organize you, see your particular giftings and abilities in the context of the spiritual warfare that goes on, and make sure you’re slotted in and understand what you need to do in terms of being organized as the army of God.

And the deacon or the officer in this context then says what he’s going to say to the people. He gives them all the qualifications. And then: “After he’s finished speaking to the people, they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people.”

See, the officer doesn’t do all the work. The army is going to do the work, but even in that, the officer doesn’t do all the organizational work. He helps assign men to have charge over particular areas. The deacons do indeed engage themselves in ministry, but really what they’re doing as well is organizing people under them to do the particular task that the church has been called to do in the context of this warfare.

So the deacons serve the elders by relieving them from administrative responsibilities. The deacons serve the congregation by bringing you to your full potential as a member of the army of God and doing the work of the service of the ministry that God has called you to do.

But ultimately, of course, the deacon is not your servant, and he’s not the elders’ servant. Throughout the New Testament, when the word deacon is used, men are called servants of Christ or servants of God. Ultimately, the officer is the servant of God. The officer, the priest—servants of God. And in their service to God, they serve His people. But of course, the result of this is that God is glorified, not the people.

That’s what we’re doing today, then, is simply ordaining men and seeing through the imposition of hands the transfer of the power of the Holy Spirit to these men to perform the task of helping to equip you through organizational abilities that they possess in terms of doing the work of the institutional church, and also equipping you in terms of your work in the rest of your life as well. And I’ll talk about that in just a minute.

The officer then moves the people to victory. This same pattern is given in Joshua 3:1. Joshua rises early in the morning. They set out from Acacia Grove and they come to the Jordan—he and all the children of Israel. They lodge there before they cross over. So it was after three days that the officers went through the camp. They commanded the people, saying, “When you see the ark of the covenant, the Lord your God, the priests and the Levites bearing it, then you shall set out from your place and go after it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it about 2,000 cubits by measure. Don’t come near it so that you may know the way by which you must go, for you have not passed this way before.”

Joshua says to the people, “Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” The Lord is leading you to victory. Joshua spoke to the priests, saying, “Take up the ark. Get going.” And then the Lord says to Joshua in verse 7: “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.”

The priests show the vision of the church. They take the word of God and through the administration of the word and prayer, they set forth where God wants us to go. They carry the ark of the covenant, as it were, before you. They set a direction. The elders move this way, and the officers then organize the people and help administer them to follow the lead of the elders of the church in the direction that we’re going. And that direction is victory. God’s going to do miraculous things.

But secondly, that direction is to the exaltation of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. God says, “I’m going to begin to exalt you, Joshua, in the sight of the people.” And He tells us today that God is going to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ, the greater Joshua, as we obey His instructions relative to officers in the context of the church.

The purpose of the work of the deacons is that Jesus Christ might be glorified in and through His people, through the giftings of organization and the enablements of the Holy Spirit that they’ve received to equip the people to minister.

Now, we’re going to do something a little different. This is the way we do it at this church. We’re going to have all the members—the male heads of households—come up and lay hands upon the deacons as we ordain them in a few minutes. Why do we do that? Most churches have just the ruling elders or the presbyters, whatever it is.

Well, in Numbers 8, when the Levites are first set apart for the work of the ministry that they’re called to, and these are officers and elders, right? Levites had officers as well as priests. All of the people of God—all the men, representationally I guess, through the men—lay hands on the first group of Levites to set them apart to office.

Now, it’s a very important thing to remember because what it reminds us of, again, is that you’re saying, “Deacons, we identify with you. You’re an extension of us. So we’re really called to perform the office of servants and mature men. And we’re ordaining these fellas that they might assist us so that we might be mature servants of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The implications of that method of ordination is in every believer’s ministry. The deacons, again, are not the army of God—they’re a help to the army. They’re part of the army, but their particular portion is organizing the people of God in accordance with the law of God. So that’s why we use the imposition of hands by the entire congregation as a picture of that. All of you, really, are being set apart to be assisted by these men in the performance of your tasks of ministry.

Let’s talk briefly, then, about some contemporary applications for us.

We’ve said that the Lord’s Day worship service is to be a celebration. You know, the idea of the army has to be tempered with the joy that God calls us to on these days of celebration. We can say that instead of marching to the future, we’re waltzing to the future. You know, waltz is a stylized march. In order to learn how to do the waltz, you have to learn how to march in time. And as you march, you add flair and joy to it, and now you’re dancing.

So marching for us really becomes waltzing because the way we’re formed up every Lord’s Day in terms of our organization, and we go about doing the work, is a joyous celebration that this army engages in when we bivouac here and get our instructions from the King of Kings and what we’re to do this week. So we come together to learn—not so much to march but to waltz—and our celebration is just that. It’s a joyous celebration.

And if we don’t have deacons, we can’t do this work effectively. If we don’t have deacons to help administer this celebration—you know, to make sure that someone’s doing the work of setting up the chairs, to make sure that the food’s being prepared, to make sure the sound system is working, to make sure that the sermons are being taped to give to those that are providentially hindered from Lord’s Day worship services, to make sure that in case something happens—you know, if somebody needs some special assistance health-wise in the context of our worship day—that someone’s there to help that person, to make sure that we’re all orderly as we get prepared to worship God, to make sure that all the seats we use are used correctly, to get you to the seats, to take care of the doors—to get them open and shut to particular people, to make sure, if necessary, if people want to disrupt this service, that they’re barred at the door.

We need all these things to go into our celebration of Lord’s Day activities. And God says that if the elders were doing that work, then they could not effectively do the work of studying the word of God, teaching the word of God, and leading and developing the worship service of the church. And so God says that as part of the way you learn to rejoice is by having officers placed in the context of your lives to help you in your celebration on a weekly basis.

But we’ve talked about these annual convocations as well, and we’ve tried to do that in this church. We have family camp—that’s a joyous celebration. We have Oktoberfest—that’s a joyous celebration—and other events. And again, there’s a whole ton of detailed administrative work that, if it were not for the enabling of men called to office to organize those events effectively, the elders would be distracted from their primary work of focusing on the word of God, prayer, the leading of worship and development of it.

And so when we add Bob and Takashi, it’s so that the workload of all of this that we do every Lord’s Day and the workload of the administration of the celebratory days and weeks we have in the rest of the church year at Reformation Covenant, those things may flow through and be more joyous and more celebratory through being organized efficiently.

How do we go about maturing these events by taking the various elements of joy and celebration we have as a church and mature them year by year? Well, that’s in large part, you know, the work of the elders to think through all of that, to apply the word of God to these events, and try to self-consciously help them mature and develop. But they really can’t do that work without getting feedback, input, and then help from the deacons to administer the people, to organize that army, as it were, so that joyous celebration can develop and mature and go further and further in God ministering and serving us.

So God wants us to have officers who will enable us to celebrate weekly and annually as well.

God also wants us to have officers to help administer benevolences. The historic church has always seen deacons in Acts 6 and then seen this in correlation specifically to the administration of benevolences of the church—the gift of food to widows. And so the deacons have that particular element that they…