Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on August 10, 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
Foreign.
Chapter 3, verses 8 through 13. We’ll spend the majority of our time there today as we continue to look at the subject of deacons. There are two offices in the church, not the offices downstairs, but roles that people fulfill, elders and deacons. And we’re specifically talking about deacons because we will be electing some to that role in our October meeting. So we want to see what God’s word has to say about that.
Last week we were mainly in Acts, chapter six. I just want to read one verse from there because it speaks about the qualifications and the selection process at that point. Brothers and sisters, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the spirit and wisdom, whom we can appoint. Point to this duty and then to 1 Timothy 3. Deacons likewise should be worthy of respect, not hypocritical, not drinking a lot of wine, not greedy for money, holding the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.
They must also be tested first. If they prove blameless, then they can serve as deacons wives, or it can also be translated women likewise should be worthy of respect. Not slanderers, self controlled, faithful in everything. Deacons are to be the husbands of one wife, managing their children and their own households competently. And for those who have served well as deacons, acquire a good, good standing for themselves and great boldness in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.
May we pray. Heavenly Father, as we look at your word, we thank you that you give us instructions on how to carry out the ministry of the church in the way that is most advantageous to presenting your gospel to the world, to bringing glory to your name and lifting up your son. May we learn how it is that we should proceed and move forward, that we might live and act more accordingly to your word. It’s in your son’s name that we pray. Amen.
Just as a matter of review, we were talking about the difference of elders and deacons last week, and we said that elders serve by leading and deacons lead by serving. We also talked about the fact that, well, what does that mean the congregation does? It isn’t up to the elders and the deacons to do everything, because when the elders lead and the deacons facilitate, the congregation as a whole should be involved in doing the ministry of the church. And thus we’re having these ministry minutes because all of you should be involved some way in the ministry of the church. And we’re trying to open up doors that you’ll say, I never thought about doing that.
Maybe I want to be involved in that area. Elders serve by Leading deacons lead by serving. So we add two more statements today is that the elders serve with their words. The elders are responsible to make sure that we have accurate preaching and that our doctrine is correct in the church. And they do that by speaking, by sharing, by teaching.
Whereas deacons, on the other hand, the way they serve is not so much by their words, but they serve the body of Christ by their deeds and the things that they do. I’d like to read from the book called Deacons. Matt Smethurst wrote that and we have copies of it in the back. They’re $15 apiece if you would like to pick up one of those. It’s been very helpful for the elders as we’ve been studying this topic, to get us really much more in line with what it is that we plan to be doing with our deacon body in the future.
This is what Matt writes. By caring for the hurting, deacons function as Christ’s hands and feet to a world that needs his touch. As they discern and meet practical needs, deacons reflect the Savior who took the ultimate initiative to meet our deepest needs. Needs. And by acting as shock absorbers who both protect and promote church unity, deacons please the one who both prayed for it and bled to secure it.
Being a deacon is a high calling. We should never think that it’s any less than being an elder. All of us are part of the body of Christ. We are all significant. But when we go back to Acts chapter six, when we find the first real needs, why deacons were placed in their role.
The first thing is that there was a physical need. There were widows that needed more support and they were not receiving it equally in the body of Christ. So the deacons had to step in and figure out themselves. How are we practically going to meet the needs of all of our widows? But.
But because some widows were getting more attention than others, there was grumbling and there was division about it. So the deacons not only had to make sure that all the needs were being met equally, they had to make sure that everybody knew and everybody understood that the needs were being met equally. They were helping to maintain unity in the church. To do away with grumbling and to do away with the vision. It’s a very high calling that deacons have.
In Romans 15, we read that Jesus Christ himself was a deacon. For I say that Christ became a servant, or the Greek word is diakonos of the circumcised, on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises to the fathers. And so that Gentiles may glorify God through for his mercy. The role of deacon ultimately is that God might be glorified in all of this. If we go to Philippians, chapter two, we read about how Jesus was this deacon, how he was this servant, and it’s being like Jesus is what deacons are called to do.
Now that doesn’t mean that the rest of you are excused for not being like deacons. The deacons should be setting the example for the rest of us. What does it look like to serve? Because all of us should be serving. Let’s see how it is that Christ showed his servanthood.
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, and the answer is yes, there is encouragement, if there is any consolation of love, and the answer to that yes there is. If there is any fellowship with the Spirit, yes there is. And if there is any affection and mercy, all of these things come to us as gifts from Christ. Therefore, this is what we need to do. In response to those things Paul said, make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.
How is it that we can all think the same way? Well, if we have the mind of Christ like Scripture tells us to, and we are thinking, thinking the way Christ wants us to think, then we’re all going to be thinking the same way. If we love one another in the same way that Christ loves us, we are all going to have the same love for one another. And if the Spirit of Christ indwells us, then he is going to unite us all in the body of Christ. And if we have one purpose, that one purpose is in everything to glorify God, then we will be intent on that one purpose.
Being like Jesus. This is what it looks like to be a true servant. He goes on to say in verse three, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility. Consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interest, but rather to the interest of of others.
Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited, but instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. We’ve been talking about Jesus being a Diaconos, but he was also a Doulos. It’s a a different word for servant. And this particular word for servant means that they’re going to be a servant in a permanent relationship of servanthood to someone else. Think of others more than you think of yourself.
Think about how others people are going to be affected by things, put away selfishness and think of others. We’re all supposed to be like Jesus in this way, but when we think about putting people in the office of being a deacon or a deaconess, we need to especially look for these qualities. Jesus tells us there is great reward in being a servant. It’s not in being a leader, it’s not in being the top dog. Jesus said, the greatest among you will be your.
And here it is again will be your Diaconus, the one who serves you. So don’t overestimate the value of an elder and don’t underestimate the value of a deacon, because both of them are equally important as to how the church is supposed to function in the right way. In the book that’s available back there, it lists some common misconceptions. And if your name is mentioned here, I’m not pointing to you in particular, it’s just what was in the book. But the first thing that a deacon is not supposed to be is they’re not to be like Pastor in Training Peter.
Let me read a little bit about Pastor in Training Peter.
Deaconing is not training wheels for eldering. It is a different office with different aims, requiring in many cases different gifts. To take just one example, a man could lack the ability to teach and therefore he is unfit for eldership because according to First Timothy and Titus, elders have to be able to teach, they have to espouse, they have to know, and they have to be able to explain correct doctrine to the church. Nonetheless, someone can be a particularly spectacular deacon, even if they aren’t able to speak speak in such a way. So the question is, can Deacon Peter pursue pastoral ministry?
And the answer is, of course. But that shouldn’t be the reason why he is a deacon. Every shepherd must first be a servant. Yes, but not every servant is meant to become a formal shepherd. Diaconal service is too significant, it’s too glorious to be a mere stepping stone toward anything else.
The next person that is not supposed to be an elder necessarily is Toolbox Terrence. There is seemingly nothing Terrence can’t find a way to fix. And when it comes to tending the church’s buildings and grounds, his know how is unmatched. Wouldn’t Terrence make an ideal deacon? Not so fast.
I haven’t told you yet whether he is a mature believer. A deacon is far more than someone who knows his way around Home Depot. Does he know his way around the Bible? The next person is spreadsheet Sam Sam’s weekday morning routine is not complicated. He wakes up, he brews some coffee, he checks the market before hopping into the shower.
And I don’t recommend hopping in the shower. It’s not safe. Just stand there, heading to work at his financial planning firm. And on Sundays, it’s not uncommon for church members to gingerly approach him for some casual financial advice. Because when it comes to shrewd economic sacred sense, Sam is unrivaled in the church.
The question is, wouldn’t Sam make an ideal deacon? Again, not so fast. Because I haven’t told you whether he’s a mature believer. Spreadsheet wizardry is a welcome skill, but it’s not sufficient for holding an office in God’s home. Lets meet corporate Cliff.
Cliff started a company in his basement. Now it operates out of a skyscraper downtown. Obviously not in Lodi. It’s no secret Cliff has done well for himself in the marketplace. He’s got scores of employees and decades of business savvy.
Isn’t Cliff an ideal deacon? Once more, not so fast. I haven’t told you yet whether he’s mature believer. Executive leadership experience can be a serious asset, but it’s no indication of spiritual fitness. Pseudo elder Steve Basically, elders and deacons have separate but equal spheres of authority.
Elders govern the spiritual and deacons govern the physical. What does this mean practically? Well, it means that deacons can’t dictate what elders do with spiritual matters. And it means that elders can’t dictate what deacons do with pragmatic matters because that’s their wheelhouse. When deacons start to function either as leading shepherds, in other words, when they start to act like elders in guiding the whole congregation, or as they begin to act as a board of directors who are overseeing various staff and committees, the Bible’s job description for deacons has become blurred.
Further, any structure that encourages deacons to function as a counterweight to the pastor or the elders, like a second house of legislature that’s there for checks and balances when it comes to pastoral decisions, the deacons have overstepped their biblical grounds. The key is that all of these people have great skills, but if they’re not, what, mature believers, they shouldn’t be elected to office. So the bottom line is that character outweighs ability.
It would be better to have a deacon without any of those specific wonderful abilities if their character is what it’s supposed to be. So we go back to the qualifications in Acts and also in First Timothy. In Acts, we read that they are of good reputation, full of the spirit and wisdom. In First Timothy we read that they are worthy of respect, not hypocritical, not drinking a lot of wine, not greedy for money, holding the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And then wives or the women likewise should be worthy of respect.
Not slanderers, self controlled, faithful in everything. I just want to point out here that Paul mentions here about these women or the wives, because the word can be translated into either way. We believe in our church, our elders, from studying this, and it’s also in our bylaws that women can serve in the role of being a deacon. We have to understand a few things. In the Greek language, words are either feminine or they are masculine.
And the word diaconos for deacon is a masculine word. So if you just talk about a deacon in general in Greek society, they’re going to assume that that it’s a man. The only way that you can let somebody know that you’re really talking about a woman is to add a woman’s name or to refer to women along with it. So at the end of Romans, we have Phoebe, who was a deacon at a specific church. So we know that it was a woman serving in that role.
But if you were to walk downtown in the marketplace and say, my deacon came to visit me yesterday, in Greek culture, they would assume, assume that it was a man. But if you said, my deacon Phoebe came to visit me today, then you would understand that she was serving in the role. So we have here in the text that Paul is seeming to add in that it’s okay for women to be deacons, because when it talks earlier in the text about elders, it doesn’t mention anything about women being elders. It doesn’t mention anything about elders, wives serving. So we understand that all of these qualifications refer to both women and to men.
Let’s just look at it on a chart so that we can see this. In particular, they were all men in Acts 6. And it said that they were supposed to first off be of good reputation. They were supposed to be full of the spirit, and they were supposed to be full of wisdom. What does good reputation mean?
It means that everyone thinks well of them, whether it’s in the church or it’s outside of the church, people have a good reputation. If you have a leader in any position that has a bad reputation, it reflects upon the body, it reflects upon the business, and in the church, it reflects upon our Lord, it reflects upon the gospel. So deacons have to have a good reputation. They also have to be full of the Spirit and That means that in their living, in what they speak and in what they do, in their speech and in their actions, it’s evident that they are living a life that is in tune with the spirit of God. There’s no question that they’re not trying to follow what the Bible says.
These men and the women also should be full of wisdom. And wisdom means that you have a good understanding of God’s word and what God wants and you have common sense and you’re able to put those two things together to meet the needs at hand to make decisions about how to do things. You can have someone that’s very theologically astute and they have absolutely no common sense. I would not want them to be a deacon. But you also, we’ve seen earlier, they can have a lot of common sense and knowledge, but if they’re not biblically mature, they shouldn’t be in the role.
Now we come back to our other passage we’re looking at here. It talks about the men are worthy of respect and you also see it says that the women are to be worthy of respect. What does that mean? To be worthy of respect means that the person is serious minded. Doesn’t mean that they can’t joke and have a good time.
But you know, when they think about things and when they make decisions, they don’t make those decisions. Decisions lightly. And because they always give good advice and you know that they make decisions. Well, people respect these men and women and they come and they ask them for their opinions because they are respected. What does not hypocritical mean?
Well, to be a hypocrite means you change what you say depending on who you are talking to. That’s someone they come over and they explain something to Susie on this side today one way, but then when they talk to Sam tomorrow, they say something different because they want to please Susie and they want to please Sam. And in doing that, they start to kind of change what they’re saying. A person that is not hypocritical is going to say the same thing to every person. They’re going to live the same way every day.
Or when they’re in private, when they’re in public, or when they’re in church. All of their life matches, all of their speech and all of what they do matches. It doesn’t change based on the situation or the person that they’re dealing with. Not drinking a lot of wine, that’s pretty clear. Not being greedy for money.
They’re not materialistic. Again, that’s quite clear what these men and women are supposed to be like. Then it talks about holding the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. First they have to hold the mystery of the faith means they have to understand what the gospel is. They need to have an understanding of what God’s word says about how we are supposed to live.
But it’s not just a head knowledge. It says that their conscience tells them, I know this is what God wants. And my conscience tells me that I am living according to the way that God wants me to live. A person that serves as a deacon has a lifestyle that matches what they know about God’s word. Then he says, likewise the women worthy of respect, we’ve talked about that already.
They’re serious minded individuals who have character that just merits respect from other people. But it adds here, not slanderers. And this isn’t just for women, but it’s also for men. The word slander here, it’s the word diabolus. It refers to Satan himself.
It’s talking about him in his role as an accuser of the saints. As he was when he spoke to God about Job and he was trying to put Job down. He was accusing him of things that were not true. Someone who slanders is someone who doesn’t speak the truth about other people. Or maybe they just turn the truth a little bit.
They misrepresent them because they’re either wanting to hurt that person or they’re wanting to make themselves look better. There’s a word that starts with G and it ends with P. That puts it all together. Do you know what that word is? Gossip. A person that is a gossip should not be in the role of serving as a deacon.
The person is supposed to be self controlled. That means there’s moderation in all of their behavior, in all parts of their life. In the way they speak, in the way they act, the places that they go. Everything should be in moderation, nothing in extreme. And then lastly it just kind of sums it up.
They’re supposed to be faithful. Not just at church. They’re not supposed to be faithful in just some things. They’re supposed to be faithful in everything. Trustworthy in all spheres of life.
Character outweighs ability.
Where am I now? Okay, now verse 12. Deacons are to be husbands of one wife, managing their children and their households competently. So we add a third square up here. Husbands of one wife.
In this day it was possible to be a polygamist. A man could have multiple wives. But it was never true that women could have multiple husbands. So it’s Directly addressing men here that you can only have one wife. But it also refers to the fact that they need to be faithful to that one wife.
And a woman that is serving this role needs to be faithful to her husband. Their eyes should only be for their spouse. Their love should only be for their spouse. And not only should they know that, but it should be evident to the church. That man or that woman loves their spouse and they’re not interested in anyone else.
We can completely trust them them to be together. It also says managing their children and household competently. In other words, if their family life is not in respectable order, they shouldn’t be managing anything in the church. If they can’t manage a household of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 people, then how can they come and manage a much larger group of people? But it also speaks to a personal need here.
If someone isn’t managing their household right, you don’t want to dilute their time to spend more time in the church and have less time with their family. If things aren’t right at home, they don’t need to be so involved at church. They need to take that time and let the Lord instruct them at home and get things more in order there. Character in selecting a deacon or a deaconess always outweighs whatever their ability is. Now let’s look at the selection and ordination.
We go back to Acts, chapter six. Brothers and sisters, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the spirit and wisdom, whom we can appoint to this duty. The very first step in selecting and ordaining deacons is to give instructions. Instruction on what you are to look for. And that’s what the apostles did.
They said, this is what you look for. That’s what I did last week and I’m doing this week. We’ve got a book to help you to understand. We want you to be instructed on what the Bible says about choosing deacons. And then the next step is that the apostles look to the congregation and said, now you make recommendations back to us who.
Who you think fits this role. And it tells us in chapter verse 5 that the proposal pleased the whole company. They understood the instruction and they went out and they chose these men to serve. So we’re inviting you to spend time in prayer to think about who in our church needs to serve in this role of being a deacon. And it’s up to you to recommend those people to the elders.
There’s a sheet up here and they’re in the back. You can pick those up. We ask you to prayerfully Everyone consider who might be a good person for this role. It does say in the sheet that you need to ask that person, is it okay that I present your name? And above all, we encourage you to read back over the qualifications and make sure that you believe the person fits that.
So there was instruction in Acts, then the people made a recommendation and it tells us that then they had them stand before the apostles who then prayed and laid their hands on them. We call this ordination. It’s a public recognition that, yes, we are all in agreement that these people have been called to this ministry. We do it for pastors, we’re supposed to be doing it for elders. We’re supposed to be doing it for deacons.
And it’s like a doctor graduating and getting all their credentials that we ordained them. And they say this is someone who knows what they’re doing and we know that they’ve been called to it. It’s a formal recognition. But there’s a third step that isn’t quite so clear there in Acts. But we find it when we go back to one Timothy, and that’s one of examination.
They gave instruction, people made recommendations. But then it tells us in one Timothy they must also be test tested first. And if they prove blameless, then they can serve as deacons. So we’re asking you as a body to recommend people to the elders. And then the elders are going to examine these individuals and after being tested, they prove blameless.
Then they’re going to be presented to the church for ordination. Once again, I’m not pushing the book for you to have to get it, but if you want to understand this more it goes into it much more depth. We just made them available for you to read that. And today there are going to be some elders available in the classroom over here to answer your questions, if you have any about this. Matt, are you sticking around for that?
And Tom is here, Brad’s here. We got plenty of people to answer lots of questions. They will be. And Matt’s over here, too. I’m looking to see who’s here.
All of them go after them with their questions. None of them showed up to help me after the first service, so. So, you know, you be hard on the four of them. All right, May we close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the clear instruction that you give us.
Help us to be obedient to it to the fullest extent, that you might be glorified and that Jesus might be lifted up and that your Gospel would go out from this place to all ends of the earth that many might come to salvation through faith in your Son. It’s in his name that we pray. Amen.
Amen. Will you stand and sing a clothing song with us?