Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text today is Acts 6:1-7. You can follow along on the outlines or notes or from your scriptures. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Acts chapter 6, beginning at verse one.

Now in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. 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. 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 the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch, whom they set before the apostles, and when they had prayed, they laid hands on them.

Then the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your most holy word. We thank you for this wondrous day when you come to distribute great gifts to your people. Give us, Lord God, the gift of knowledge. Help us to understand the implications of this text for our church, for our families.

We thank you, Lord God, for it and pray that your Holy Spirit would illuminate our understanding. Change our lives, Lord God, by the power of the word of the Savior through the Holy Spirit’s ministration. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, we’re going to have a ritual here this morning. Many of us were at a ritual yesterday. We live in a culture that kind of doesn’t know how to do these things anymore. And if we’re not careful, the influence of the culture is they become less and less significant. Ritual, ceremonial actions become less important as a culture moves away from Jesus Christ.

We have a ritual at the climax of our worship today. Yeah. Every Lord’s day, we go through a very simple and yet profound ritual, the meaning of which cannot be ever really fully comprehended, I suppose, in mortal minds. But it’s a ritual nonetheless. And we come together to go through a liturgy, things that are routine, things that are basically the same week to week. And yet there’s diversity in the bringing of the word and in various songs that are sung, but it’s a ceremony.

Today, after the preaching of the word and the offering, we’ll have a ceremony where we ordain Jeff Conn as a deacon and then we install Jeff Conn as a deacon here at Reformation Covenant Church. The distinction, the distinction will be presented to you in visual imagery and that the elders will lay hands on Jeff ordaining him to the office of deacon and then the heads of households, the men representing the member families of RCC will then join us on the platform and will lay hands, maybe through other men laying hands, but the congregation then being led by the elders will install Jeff in this particular church.

So there’s a two-fold process to this ritual or ceremony. And it’s attended with a degree of ceremonial action, this laying on of hands, a ceremony that goes back 4,000 years or more. And the Levites are ordained to replace the firstborn of the tribes. The firstborn of the tribes lay hands on the Levites as their representatives. You know, they laid hands on the sacrificial animals representing the worshipper.

When the animal is transformed in those rites and ascends into the presence of God, it represents the people through identification by laying on of hands. God’s hand of power should be observed in the ritual ordaining Jeff to office. There’s a there’s a mantling, almost. We could say not almost, there is a mantling of a man ordained to either the office of elder or deacon is garbed with office.

Now we are in the Sundays of ordinary time. There’s a little explanation of that in the Sunday school handout for this quarter but it doesn’t mean common, you know, not important time but after the six months of celebration of the ministry of Jesus Christ beginning at Advent in the liturgical year and ending with the Ascension of Christ then we have Pentecost and the Age of the Church is represented in ordinary time, ordinal, numbered time, first week after Pentecost, second week after Pentecost, third week after Pentecost.

So this half of the church year focuses on the work of Jesus Christ through the church. The first half of the church year by way of ceremony or ritual focuses on the ministry of Jesus Christ portrayed in the gospel accounts. And then the second half of the church year, which we’re now in, ministry of the church in counted time, counting the time after Christ and then that’ll end at the end of October or November rather and in December we start Advent again and focus again on the work of Christ.

Well, Ascension of course was where we talked a month ago now about Jesus Christ changing his robes again being unrobed for his work on the cross to redeem humanity and then robed with power and glory. His enemies are made part of his train we read about in the scriptures and sing about in some of our songs. And so Jesus ascends with renewed clothing and then garbs his church with garments of power and authority through the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost.

And we now dwell in these garments. Clothing is important. Clothing is a ritual action. It’s not simply practical. There’s a ritual involved in it. It represents things to us. Don’t want to be overly dwelling in the minutia of life. But there is a routine of being raised up from the death of sleep and washing and putting on new garb, authority and power to do your vocation in your day. Clothing is important in our day and age.

Moving away from Jesus Christ, moving away from the sacraments, moving away from the ceremonies of ordination, the culture moves in ignorance of these things and clothing becomes just one of those things you do. We still have the remnants of an understanding of clothing and what some of us participated in yesterday at this church, a wedding service. The bridegroom and the bride, their clothing representing the glorious robes of salvation and joyous righteousness.

Isaiah tells us and when people come to a wedding they acknowledge the formality of the wedding by their attire being, you know, a little geared up from ordinary labor attire. When we come into the presence of the King and Lord’s day worship we want to model that kind of sense of the importance of this day of the wedding feast, pre you know at least picturing this of the Savior and the bride at the supper which the scriptures tell us is this wedding feast.

And so the garments that we wear are important. They’re meaningful. We live in a culture that no longer understands ceremonies and makes fun of them and mocks them. And when they do this, the culture demeans itself, makes itself a light thing, throwing away the weightiness of some of the very ceremonies that add weight and depth, beauty, and mystery to our lives.

So we kind of garb Jeff today with a mantling and office. And you’ll be charged to think of him in terms not of his personality, but of his office when we ordain him and then install him at this church.

I’m wearing a little tiny white robe today. Wading in at the shallow end. Next week, white shirt and maybe white pants. Well, we’ll see. White, the garments of salvation, the whiteness of the robes the elders wear and the Book of Revelation, you know, it’s a reminder to us that all of our clothing is in essence a picture of the righteousness of Jesus Christ and a call to act out our lives in consecration of them to the person and work of the Savior.

The text we have today informs us in terms of the ritual that we go through in the ordination of deacons. Now, the word deacon isn’t used directly. The phrase serving tables has this word deacon kind of in it there. But we think this is a description of the installation of the deacons that we read about in a couple of other places in the New Testament.

And so this text informs what we’ll do here in a few minutes. And in the sovereignty of God, this text also, I think I’ll try to help us to see how it informs us as well a little bit about some of the work going on in our families and how fathers and husbands should act honorably in their office, in their garb of office, in the home and family in connection to this text as well.

So, let’s go through a quick overview of this text. Much of this is familiar to some of you. The same text is what we looked at last October when we ordained Roger Payne and installed him and then when we installed not ordained recognizing previous ordination, we installed Elder Shaw at this church. But we’ll review it quickly. It’s an important text to look at when we ordained deacons particularly observations on this text.

Well, first of all, you’ll notice the structure. This is the same structure I gave you last October. And it’s a little bit different from some of these particular bracketed structures or chiastic structures in that it begins and ends with a reference to multiplying clearly kind of bracketing this off as a section and has a center point I think where it moves into the primacy of word and sacrament. And then beyond that, it has kind of a parallel two-step kind of thing on either side of the middle where the elders are saying, “Well, this is what ought to happen.” And then after this brief center of devotion to the ministry of the word and prayer, then it happens that way.

So the congregation is supposed to search out from among them as this congregation did a couple of years ago, men whom would be considered then by the elders to ordain to office. And you put people the way this was happened. Remember Roger and Jeff weren’t chosen by the elders. They were put forward by the congregation by the submission of ballots. Some of you weren’t here then some of you it’s been so long you’ve forgotten but that’s what you did and the officers of the church looked at those names began to evaluate and and train and see if indeed the Lord God would call these particular men to serve in this office.

So this is what we went through and I want to draw some observations now on this text using the structure a little bit to help us to see these observations.

First of all then as a church matures so what’s going on is you know the opening verse multiplication is happening. The church is maturing. And as a church matures, there is to be a two-fold, a two-fold division of labor to accomplish her tasks. And there are some related New Testament texts.

Philippians 1:1. The address is given to the saints at Philippi, but also to the elders and deacons. Separate office, two offices that are addressed in Philippians 1:1. 1 Timothy 3 begins by giving qualifications for overseers or elders. But it moves then by the last half of that section to describe the requirements, the character qualifications, the basic character qualifications for the deacon. So the church is maturing in Acts 6 and as a result there becomes a two-fold division of labor and this seems to be the basic idea of how New Testament church government is given to us in the scripture.

Now, if we take Acts 6, Philippians 1, the address, and then 1 Timothy 3, the qualifications for deacons, and this is where the, you know, deacons are in the New Testament text. What we’ll see is we’re spanning geography, okay? From Philippi to Timothy’s work amongst the Gentiles and book of Acts here associated in Jerusalem, we’re spanning geography.

The writing of these three different portions of the New Testament span a considerable period of time, probably a couple of decades, spanning geography, spanning time, and we’re spanning the work of God amongst the Jews specifically, and then the outreach ministry to the Gentiles as the gospel spreads. So these this two-fold division of labor is given to us over time, is what it was for a while over geography and over culture seems to indicate some degree of permanence of this understanding of the two-fold division of labor.

As a particular congregation matures and develops, this is what we can expect it to look like. Two offices, two-fold division of labor. This doesn’t really surprise us if we know our Old Testament.

What we read in the Old Testament is the same thing. Turn, if you will, to Deuteronomy 1. And I know for some of you this is review, but you know, Paul said it’s good that I repeat these things and it’s good we repeat them here. Deuteronomy 1:9-15 there’s instructions given here by Moses and he says at that time I said to you I am not able to bear you by myself multiplication of the church in the context of the wilderness requires a division of labor.

The Lord your God has multiplied you, multiplied you. Behold you are today as numerous as the stars of heaven. May the Lord God of your fathers make you a thousand times as many as you are and bless you as he has promised you.

Note the correlations. He’s multiplied and blessed them. Moses wants them to keep being multiplied and blessed. Acts 6, God has multiplied the church. They do this thing and the word of God multiplies and spreads. Same thing links up here. How can I, Moses said, he said to God, bear by myself the weight and burden of you and your strife or to the people rather. Choose from your tribes wise men, understanding and experienced men. I will appoint them as your heads.

Okay. Same thing they’re choosing out. They know, you know, out of a couple million people, Moses doesn’t know them all. They know them. Let me know who they are. He says, “And I will appoint them as your heads.” They put them forward. He evaluates. The elders evaluate and then ordain and appoint as their heads. And you answered me, “The thing that you have spoken to do is good for us to do.” And here’s the line. So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and experienced men, and set them as heads over you. commanders of thousands, hundreds, 50s, commanders of tens, and officers throughout your tribes.

Now, you know, you may not know Old Testament history that well, but what Moses is doing here is conflating. He’s bringing together two separate accounts given to us in one in Exodus 18 where Jethro advises him on how to hear cases and the other in Numbers 11 where there’s a problem with distribution of food, a problem arising amongst the mixed multitudes. Very similar text to our Acts 6 text.

The point is this. As Moses summarizes this action, he says that because God has blessed you, so that God might bless you, I appointed a two-fold division of labor. I appointed these judges, elders we might call them in the New Testament, men to rule and govern and teach the word of God. Judges were to understand the word and apply the word and in applying it teach people the word. And then I appointed officers separate group.

The officers is a reference to Numbers when the food had to be administered. These were administrators of food. These are not elders. These are what we might call Old Testament deacons, Old Testament administrators, meant to administer people in a very simple thing, the distribution of food. So that the Jews and the Greeks of their time, the Egyptians, the mixed multitude, wouldn’t come to blows over things.

You see the correlation to Acts 6. Twofold division of labor is what God causes to bring to pass in the church in the wilderness and the church in Acts 6, the church in Jerusalem in the New Testament. And so, I think that’s a pretty good case for telling us that normatively the same thing will be true of us. God will as the church multiplies have a two-fold division of labor. This same thing is repeated in Deuteronomy 16:18.

You shall appoint. So now he said what God did in the wilderness. Now what should you do in the future as we enter the land? And he says you shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that your Lord your God has given you. Twofold division of labor that God’s people may be prospered in the land they enter into.

So you know the deacons are a division of labor principle from the elders. Two different kinds of officers in the church. Some that rule and teach and govern and others that administer.

Officers in the Old Testament text, deacons in the New.

Secondly, the purpose of the deacon as described in Acts 6 is to relieve the elders. Now, it’s the apostles in the text. This points forward. The elders will follow the apostles to relieve the apostles and then the deacons to relieve the elders so that they may attend to the ministry of word and prayer.

This is the central thrust of the text. If we look at the structure right at the center is what it’s the elders being able to attend to the word of God and prayer. Now prayer is used in the book of Acts to refer not just to personal prayer for the congregation but to refer to the liturgy the prayer of the church is really the service of the church the worship of the church. So the elders are to attend to studying and teaching the word of God to leading the congregation in prayers, liturgical, ceremonial actions in worship.

This is what the elders are to do. That’s their job description preeminently. And as a church multiplies, local congregation, more and more administrative tasks will tend to distract the elders from their central ministration, which is the word of God and prayer.

And so this is very critical. This is what goes on in this church. God provides us this building four or five years ago. Now the ministries of this church start to expand some. Church starts to multiply some and we need more deacons to help administer the many tasks now that the elders are called to do.

You know we’re starting we are overseeing now Elder Wilson and I are on the session of Reformation Covenant Church. We’re still prominent members of the session of Trinity Reformed Reformation Church in Salem with Cory Sariah and we’re also pro tem elders with Jack Phelps III of Covenant Bible Church up in Anchorage, Alaska and we may we may be involved in a church plant in California serving as pro tem elders two of us.

So you know the mission of the church is expanding. We’re trying to help people get established in other churches mature them and that takes work. It takes work on the part of the elders to serve as elders for these churches that are starting to mature on their own.

We’re involved in this confederation of Reformed evangelicals. Right now, I’m a member of the Constitution Committee of the CRA to review the Constitution, bring recommendations back. Sounds menial and clerical. It’s not. We’re having an ongoing discussion as I speak this last week about the office of bishop in the New Testament. We’re studying the scriptures. We’re praying about how this confederation should form itself in terms of its polity and making it conform to the word of God. We need time. I need time. The elders of the church need time to study the word in this area. It’s not clear. It’s not easy. Church polity is a difficult matter. Time to do that stuff.

We’re trying to get there’ll be assistance to a school being established in the context of our midst an academy. I should say some classes this fall. Very excited about it. Then maybe you know more classes full academy couple of years important ministry for the education of our children that all of their lives might be formed in the context of an understanding of God’s word and men that can take junior high and high school kids and maybe do stuff that mom and dad can’t.

We’re trying to get this off the ground. It takes study of the word of God and how we apply it to education. If we’re going to be of assistance, the elders to King’s Academy, we’re developing musically. He had a duck at camp. Where are we going with all this music? What’s going on? Is all we’re going to ever do is sing parts anymore. Are we going to sing the old songs or not? Well, we’re studying a lot about what music is.

Next week, I’m going to preach on the today and the importance of song and music in the life of the church and in the life of the school for that matter. You know, if we don’t have music instruction starting up this fall in King’s Academy, I’m going to be a sad guy. Now, I’m sad about things. That’s okay. But I’m praying that somehow as we begin King’s Academy with an idea that man is man is worshiping man that we begin to implement what we believe that singing, understanding music is as important as a knowledge of English, physics, history.

You see, this takes study of the scriptures. Mo, I talked about Tabernacle of David stuff. I’ll talk a little bit about that next week. Again, the scriptures have a lot to say about music, but it takes men who can give time and effort to that.

We’re doing this whole benevolence program now with Love, Inc. training is this week. Benevolence opportunities open up in the context of this community. I’m trying to build relationship with the other churches in Oregon City. Not being a tiny little sectarian church, but acting in cooperation. God has blessed us in many ways over the past few years with that. This building provides all kinds of administrative details. You see that the elders have a lot of things going on that can distract us if we’re not careful if we do any of this administrative stuff that can be really given over to a second office. You see, we’re going to be distracted from the word in prayer.

You have to understand this because you know in some churches, you know, the elders are encouraged to say, “Well, we don’t want to be distracted from people and from serving the benevolence needs of the church by studying the scriptures too much. This is the unspoken and sometimes spoken message of some churches. It reverses what we read in Acts. It says the study of the word of God, you know, you know it well enough. Just spend half an hour looking at the text and get before us and teach the word.

I can’t do that. I have to tell you what I believe the word of God says. And it is not at all obvious in many cases how that word of God develops and is presented to us in the scriptures. I would venture to say that without men who have been specifically given to a study of the word, you wouldn’t know about Deuteronomy 1, the two offices relating back to Exodus and Numbers. You need men to study the word.

And you know, you don’t want to think in terms of the elders. Oh, they’re studying the scriptures too much. Praise God if they’re studying the scriptures a lot. Praise God if they’re attending to the liturgy of the church. Praise God if they want your prayer requests from the prayer meetings so that we can bring before God you as a congregation by family and by individual.

This is our job. This is our job. And we can do that job through this division of labor through adding more deacons to relieve the elders of administrative responsibilities that might otherwise distract us.

Third, and the particular task in Acts 6 that the deacons are to relieve the elders of is described in the phrase serving tables. Okay, so the apostles somehow are involved in the overseeing of the serving of tables and now they’re going to ordain a separate office, these initial deacons to serve tables.

What does it mean? Once more, if you don’t have men who study the word of God and read the writings and can pour through the internet and books to find out what good godly men have studied about the text, you’re going to miss this. Cuz today, most people think, well, it means the food tables. You had these Greeks and the Jews and they were widows were being, you know, overlooked or whatever it was. And so the apostles were serving the tables, the food tables. Now, you guys to do it. But that’s not what the word means.

If we let the scriptures interpret the scriptures, where the tables are talked about in another place is in John’s gospel as we saw when Jesus overturns the tables of the money changers. Table here is usually in the Greek language of that day, a bank, a place where money and resources are kept. It refers probably primarily to money tables, the financial constraints.

Can you imagine? a church of several thousand families and the amount of revenue that might be pouring through that church and the need to control that money and then make sure that some of that money is used to help in the aid of widows who need help from the church. Huge administrative task. Apostles say we’re doing too much financial stuff and we need some deacons to oversee this matter so that we don’t get distracted from studying these scriptures.

Okay, so serving tables and good men I mean going all the way back to Matthew Henry talks about this serving of tables as having a primary reference to the economic administration of the church. So today in the province of God, we’re ordaining a guy. This is what he’s going to be called to do. And don’t be upset by that. If we have a deacon here who’s primarily given to the benevolence ministries of the church, and we do, and it’s taken now, then don’t be upset if one of these deacons is primarily given to the financial needs of this church because that’s what the text says we’re supposed to have is guys so that I don’t have to worry having financial reports produced every month so the elders know where we’re going and what resources we have to devote to what ministries so that Chris and John and I don’t have to worry about the first draft of the budget.

We can look at what the deacons recommend to us and then adjust it according to the priorities that we see but we’re not all bogged up trying to figure out the profit and loss statement for the church. So this is the specific function of this division of labor and this office.

Now there is certainly a benevolent aspect back to what Acts 6 talks about because the presenting problem, okay, the presenting problem is one involving widows who are supposed to be assisted by the local church. So the deacons have always properly been understood as being the administrative hands of the elders in fulfilling the benevolence task that the elders say the scriptures call us to do. So the elders inform the deacons about the finances, the elders inform the deacons about benevolence, and the deacons then administratively care for these things or the hands and arms so to speak of what the elders see the word of God has called us to do.

So there is that aspect that’s the task.

Fourth in evaluating this we are not to apply Greek categories. This is not spiritual work on the part of the elders as opposed to temporal work big T or non-spiritual bodily work as on the part of the deacon. That’s our tendency, right? You know, one of the most important things Chris Schlech said at camp last week, I hope you heard it, is that the Greeks thought that the body was a trap for the soul.

So, you know, any day I’ll be released. I’ll get out of this body. I’ll fly to heaven and be what I was really designed to be, a spirit without a body. That is not what God has in mind for you. Christians do not go to heaven in that sense. Now, we do for a period of time, until the resurrection, the general resurrection, we will be separated from our bodies. That is not a natural state. It’ll be okay. Jesus will be with us. We’ll be with him. It’ll be all right. But it won’t be as good as what happens then when we receive our new bodies. That’s the idea.

You see, the idea is not that the body is bad and we want to be released and we’ll be able to fly away finally in spirit form. No. The bodies are grand and glorious things. They’re God-given things. They’re good. And the new body will be very good. That’s what God wants us to see.

Now, you see, so our tendency because we have this idea of heaven, disembodied spirits eternally, which we will not be. Okay? That’s not it. And I’m sorry if this is news to you, but it isn’t it. We’re going to be with our bodies, new bodies, but bodies. Well, because that’s our tendency to think of heaven as angels sitting on a cloud playing a harp. Our tendency then is to think of our bodies as okay and maybe there’s some joy involved in them but you know essentially they’re temporal they’re not spiritual and money you know and that financial administration stuff well that’s you know required because of our you know the state we’re in but we’ll be freed from all considerations that’s not the idea we should bring to this text.

I think rather what we might think about this text as is protological office elder and eschatological office deacon. What I mean by that is the elders study the word of God, form the patterns through the liturgy and prayers of the church and assign the deacons specific tasks to be those hands and arms again to accomplish benevolence, financial administration, administration of the building, help the people that are sick, all those sorts of things. The administration act, the hands and arms of the one body that the elders are initiating things and the deacons are carrying out the administration of those things.

Okay? You know, uh we don’t want to think of this as spiritual and temporal. We might want to think of this as eschatological or protological. That mean big word first things the study of the beginnings of things. Protological. How do things start? They start with reading the scriptures, worshiping God in prayer. And that then God blesses and we apply the faith out in our areas. We begin with worship, right, in the great commission.

Then we move out to do this stuff. And so the elders are protological. They’re forming tasks, objectives, and missions of the church based on Jesus’s word to us, articulating that to the church and to the deacons. And the deacons then are assisting the elders and making that stuff happen. You see, that’s kind of the idea. Protological, eschatological.

Fifth, the deacons are set over this task. The deacon does not necessarily do the detail work. The text tells us find these guys that we can set over the task. Not guys that will necessarily serve the tables, write the checks, set up the distribution of alms funds, or set up literally tables. No, these are deacons who are to be set over these tasks. Now, Deuteronomy 20. Turn to Deuteronomy 20 and we’ll see, I think, a good picture of how this works.

Isn’t it a lot cooler in here today than it was yesterday? It is up here. Must be down there.

Deuteronomy 20:1-9. When you go out to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them. For the Lord God is with you who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. So they’ve been multiplied out of Egypt. Now they’re going to multiply in the land.

And when you draw near to the battle, the priests shall come forward and speak to the people shall say to them, “Here, O Israel, today you are drawing near for battle against your enemies. Let not your heart faint. Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them. For the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you the victory.” So they bring the word of God protologically. They come to the host and say, We study the scriptures. God’s going to be with us. God is going to give us the victory. We’re going to go on the march. We’re going to multiply and spread now into the promised land or into whoever opposes us. So, the priest comes through and preaches the word.

The priest comes to you today. The word of God, the word of Jesus about Acts 6 is this. We’re priests up here. Like I said four weeks ago, the Old Testament priests. Now, Aaron’s different. He’s a picture of Christ, but the rest of the Levitical priests that they were simply representatives of God to the people and the people to God. Well, that’s what we are. The elders are of the church in worship. The priests go through protologically.

Doesn’t end there though. Verse 5. Then the officers shall speak to the people saying, “Is there any man among you who has built a new house? He has not dedicated it. Let him go back to his house. let he lest he die in battle and another man dedicated. And is there any man who has planted a vineyard and has not enjoyed its fruit? Let him go back to his house lest he die in the in the battle, and another man enjoy its fruit. And is there any man who has betrothed the wife and has not taken her? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her.

And the officers shall speak further to the people, and say, “Is there any man who is fearful and faint-hearted amongst you, let him go back to his house, lest he make the heart of his fellows melt like his own?” And then when the officers have finished speaking to the people, then commanders shall be appointed at the head of the people.

So, what’s going on here is the priest comes through protologically and he’s given instruction. We’ve got the case law and they encourage the people and the officers, the deacons we can say, then take over and they organize those troops and they start making specific exemptions. Who’s been just recently married? Okay, you’re mustered out. Who’s fearful? You’re mustered out. They start doing the detail work to apply what the priests and the word of God says. And they then organize the army of God. They don’t do all the task. But they prepare that army through their organization of the army of God.

In the same way protologically the apostles set the direction eschatologically the deacons fulfill that action and organize the church for her ministry and work. One of the prime tasks we’d like to see the deacons accomplish by the end of the year is mustering the troops at RCC and saying who’s got ministry some ministry in the context of this church and who would like to do what here? Line people up the gift of officers to the church are to enable the work, the ministry of the church to be performed. You’re the ministers. We’re a nation of priests and ministers. That in part that means jobs in the context of the local church. Not overburdensome ones, but some job in the context of the local church. Deacon’s job is to take the directives of the elders as they see what Jesus wants this church to do the next few years.

Look at the troops, instruct the troops, organize those troops, and appoint commanders over, you know, washing dishes or whatever it is and do that the work of the church might be accomplished. The deacons are set over this task.

Sixth, a proper understanding of this two-fold division of labor in the church informs our understanding of husband wife and parent child relations in the home. This model of a two-fold protological eschatological division of labor in the context of the local church people that start things and the deacons who make sure they’re completed to the end of a task.

Eschatological doesn’t refer just to the end times. It refers to end points of particular tasks. So the deacons make sure that table administration, that financial administration is accomplished you see, according to the principles and truths that the apostles have set out.

Well, this two-fold division of labor is what God gives us in the home. The Lord God gives us a husband as the head of his wife. And as the head of his wife, he initiates, he sets the direction and establishes the general tasks that the household is to accomplish. And the Lord God has given that husband a completer, a finisher who brings things eschatologically to their end point that he desires and that’s known as a wife. So the husband kind of initiates, he initiates the relationship, he seeks the bride, the bride completes that process. But in the way families are to run, same thing’s true.

And you know, in most households that I deal with, pre marital counseling and marriage counseling. This very model in Acts six is pretty appropriate because most wives are much better at controlling the purse strings to make sure the husband’s task that he’s laid out for the household is actually accomplished. He sets the goals financially, but in most households that wife is usually more gifted in various ways to actually do that financial work to make sure the husband’s goals are accomplished. So there’s the husband is the initiator, the wife is the completer.

It’s interesting to me that in the Proverbs, you know, we’ve talked about this before, but over and over again in Proverbs, we hear father and mother being talked about, but we don’t hear mother and father. It’s always listed father and mother. For instance, in Proverbs 1:8, fear the Lord at the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. My son, hear the instruction of thy father, forsake not the law of thy mother.

Okay, now I know it’s covenantal headship sort of stuff. But that’s the point. The father is instructing the child, giving the word of Jesus to the family to accomplish particular goals and tasks as a family or for the son individually. And the mother is then, you know, commanding the son, the law of the mother to fulfill that instruction so that the instruction reaches all the way through to completion. She’s a finisher. You see, the husband’s an initiator and the mother is kind of a finisher in terms of this and you see this throughout the Proverbs over and over again. Father and mother, father and mother, father and mother.

You know, a particularly interesting text along this same line. It’s found in Proverbs 23:22. Hearken unto thy father that begat thee. Despise not thy mother when she is old. Do you see that chronological eschatological? The father is identified as the one who started the process and as the process is brought to a completion, the mother is old and the child is to be being still finished then in relationship to a proper reverence of his mother when she’s old. Dad is probably dead. Dads die earlier. So there’s this beginning and ending. The actual order of the text emphasizes over and over again in Proverbs that dads are kind of we could say protological, women are eschatological.

You know, Adam is the beginning of things and he’s given the task but he needs someone to help him to make sure the task is carried through to completion. So I think that Acts 6 informs us about the particular mantling. Jeff won’t wear a robe, but Jeff will wear this mantle, this garment of the office of deacon. And he’ll do that so that the elders can fulfill the robes that they’re wearing. Robes of studying of the word of God, leading the church, praying for the church, and prescribing the liturgy of the church that forms it and then that word of God becomes the basis of their instructions and the deacons do the task that would prevent us from that study and also that then implement the policies of the church.

This is what this little ritual and ceremony with Jeff today will involve. This is the ritual fathers father day today. This is the ritual for you. You’re an initiator of your children. You begat the son. You given instruction to the son. The wife is to complete that task.

I think a lot of dads, I know I’ve fallen into this sin. Well, they’re babies. They’re one or two, you know, when they get a little older. Then I’ll pay more attention to the children. You see, I don’t know how to relate to them as babies. Well, that’s wrong. Fathers are initiators of these things. The father’s role is vital in developing the direction of his children. Just listen to some of these verses from John’s gospel about the father and the son.

The father loved the son has given all things into his hand. Fathers, have you given into the hand of your son and your daughter yourself? Are you spending time with them? That’s what you’re garbed, robed, mantled with the office of father to accomplish is the self offering of who you are primarily in reference to your children. Do that. See that as your calling when you robe up tomorrow morning, when you put on your garments, think of your fatherly garments and be dedicated to giving your child little or old you and who you are.

John 4, the father knows that it was at the same hour in the which Jesus said unto him, “Thy son liveth and himself believed and his whole house.” Now, this is talking about a father, not God the Father, but a father who prays to Jesus for his son who is near death. Fathers, the robe and mantling you’re given to is like the elders. You’re to be praying. You’re to be bringing your children before Jesus Christ every day praying for those children.

John 5 it says, “He that seeth the father, excuse me, the son does nothing of himself, but what he sees the father do. For what thingsoever he does, the father does. These also doeth the son likewise.” Dads, you’re supposed to be showing your son what you do and what he should do. And if you’re always doing things away from your children and don’t include them in your task, And then when they grow up to be men, they aren’t really all that great at doing the tasks they’re called to do. Well, why? Because you failed. You have an image, the heavenly father who shows the son what he does and therefore the son does what the father does.

Conversely, if you show if you allow sin in your life, you’re going to be showing that to your sons and the eschatological development of your beginning of showing him sin will be sin probably on his part or at least strong temptation in that same area. Fathers, you are robed with the authority and power of initiators and initiate you will do. Good or bad, you will teach your child about the nature of God their heavenly father.

The father loves the son. John’s gospel says and he shows him all things that he does. And then it we read in later in John’s gospel that Jesus says for the works which the father has given me to finish the same works. That’s what I do. Jesus says the son says I do the work that the father gives me to do. The father gives him his time. He self offers his person to him. He shows the son what he does and the son does what the father does. But the father also assigns specific tasks to the son.

Our robe and garment and mantling is to assign specific tasks. These deacons are going to try to ask you. They won’t just do it by fiat, but they will assign tasks to of the congregation and we should see that as the mantling of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the elders and the deacons who then instruct us in some things that maybe we should be doing both in our homes and in the church. So over and over again in the gospels the father is portrayed as initiating the development of the son.

Fathers when you are robed in men as you watch Jeff being ordained to office and as you participate in that process. Reconsecrate yourselves to put on the robing and mantling of fathers. Giving yourself your time, showing your children, your sons, and your daughters who you are and what you do, giving them particular tasks, giving them everything that you have. The father has put all things into the hand of the son. That’s your job. When you leave this earth, you would have transferred and matured your children.

See that through wives, mothers, see your task as completers and finishers of the establishment of the protological work of the fathers in the context of the home.

What’s the end result of all this in the text? Well, the end result is the gospel. The gospel, Jesus is victorious. The gospel is the ascension of the savior king to the right hand of God the father. All enemies are being put under his footstool. And when we obey the dictates of this two-fold division of labor in the church and in the home, the end result is the word spreads. People are converted, the kingdom becomes were manifest. Maturity happens to the church and to the home. Victory, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the result of a proper understanding of clothing and mantling of the office of the deacon in the church and the office of the father in the home.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for the victory that is ours as we read and study and apply his word in our lives. Thank you, Lord God, for deacons. Thank you for thank you for fathers and mothers. Equip us, Lord God, that we might accomplish your tasks in this world. Not to hold ground, Father, for you, but to advance the kingdom. That we indeed might see the word and the gospel of Christ spread in the context of our homes, our neighborhoods, this church, and the other churches in our region.

We ask this for the purpose of Christ and his kingdom, not ours. Amen.