Servant Leaders

1 Timothy 3:8–13 AV

Likewise must the deacons be grave, not doubletongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre; Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. And let these also first be proved; then let them use the office of a deacon, being found blameless. Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well. For they that have used the office of a deacon well purchase to themselves a good degree, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.

Introduction:

I have all my life grew up in Baptist Churches.

And the standing line in most baptist Churches is that the only kids worse than the preachers kids are the deacons kids.

Now, Independent Baptists bring up all kinds of characterizations; some of which I do not hold too.

When I was 18 years of age and I entered my second year in Bible College, I walked into my dorm room only to learn that one of my roommates, who is now a very close friend, was a deacons kids, and of course, I was a preachers kid.

Many Independent Baptists are Arminian in their theology; of which I am not..as you well know.

And then my other roommate said upon the first day of arrival, “the only people that I hate more that preachers kids and deacons kids.”

Well, needless to say, he did not last long in our dorm.

But for many people the word “deacon” conjures up all kinds of things; and a lot of it is errant philosophy.

Most people have this idea of a deacon as rather austere men that are really the ones that lead the Church; they somehow represent the authority in the Church.

And I hate to admit it, but I have seen on some occasions where things that should not be in the Church were allowed to be because that is the way that the deacons wanted it.

In a lot of Churches, the Deacons have someone came to be the spiritual leaders of the Church, and in many cases they are the ruling body of the Church so that even the Elders are employed by and serve at the pleasure of the Deacons.

In some Churches, the name “deacon” is something that people try to attain because it carries some badge of honor and respect in the church and in the community.

Deacon is a marvelous word.

It is the word “διάκονος” and literally means, “servant, one who renders service, an attendant”.

This Greek word is used 29 times in the NT and 18 of those times it is translated “servant”.

Matthew 20:26 ESV

It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant,

John 12:26 ESV

If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

Romans 13:4 ESV

for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.

1 Timothy 4:6 ESV

If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.

That gives you an idea of how this Greek word is translated.

Now, 7 of the 29 times, it is translated “minister”.

1 of the 29 times it is translated “attendant”.

Never is the word ever translated to mean “leader”.

You say, ‘Well, Pastor, if the deacons do not lead then why are the qualifications so high for them as the Elder?”

And you would be exactly right on that.

Many of the qualifications that you have for the Elders, you also have for the deacons, there is no lessening of the Spiritual standard.

Just like the Elders, Paul instructed Timothy that for the Deacons they are to look at the man’s personal life, character, home life, leadership capability and commitment to the service of the Lord in the Church.

Now, you remember your Church History you will remember that the deacon originally came to be because of a dispute in the distribution of food to the widows in the Church.

So, there original intention was never meant to be just leaders, but Servant Leaders.

Abd the reason, I believe that the qualifications are do close to that of the Elders is because; although they are servants, they are a group of people set apart for the word of the minstry; therefore, they need to be the highest quality of people.

Just to give you an idea of the type of service they render; you remember in the Gospel of John chapter 2 when Jesus was at the wedding in Cana.

Remember when they ran out of wine and Jesus had given some instructions.

Evidently Mary was either the wedding planner or some relatives were the ones getting married because they came to her with the instructions from Jesus and she said:

John 2:5 ESV

His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Now, the word “servants” there is the word “διάκονος”, these people were just waiters at a wedding.

And in the Church, they are set aside waiters for the service of the Lord and since they are set aside they are given strict qualifications for the job because they are aside and appointed by the Church.

There is another verse that I want to bring to your attention.

Peter’s mother-in-law, you remember, was very ill.

In Jesus healed her the Bible says:

Luke 4:39 ESV

And he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her, and immediately she rose and began to serve them.

That is the same Greek word “διάκονος”.

So, again, I want to emphasis to you that Deacons do not run things, the head of the Church is always Christ, they are but set aside waiters for the Church, yet with strict qualifications.

Now notice this verse in .

Romans 12:7 ESV

if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching;

Now, the serving there is the same Greek word “διάκονος”, so there is a special spiritual gift of serving.

I guess you could say that they are a cut above the rest in that they are uniquely designed by God to serve.

So I would say that a person with the designation of deacon in the Church that does not have the aptitude to service people, is not gifted to be a deacon.

I believe that being a deacon, is a spiritual gift just like that of an elder; which also answers why the qualifications are so high.

Well, the only discussion that you have in the Scriptures on deacons in here in .

Now, it is important to point our that those people that are deacons are not deacons because they do all the work, but because they are to model the proper kind of service for everyone else.

Just like elders, deacons are the models of spiritual virtue, they stand with the Elders in a serving capacity to the Church.

You say, “well, I thought all Christians were to be servants?”

Yes, they are, but deacons are uniquely gifted by God for the task.

Understand this as well, there is no place in the NT until you get to 1 Timothy that even mentions deacons.

You say, “What about ?”

Most people who have advocated the “διάκονος” in the Church have turned to as the birth of that job.

However, they are several things to note:

I want you to remember this; that out of the seven men that were chosen by the Church for the word there, none of them are called deacons.

Acts 6:1 ESV

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

Now, this was about passover time, the number of the disciples was multiplied in excess of 20 thousand people not believed, many of them were pilgrims, they have come into the city.

They have believe in Christ.

So you have a lot of foreigners on their hands, Hellenistic Jews.

There were two kind of Jews, Palestinian Jews and non-Palestinian Jews.

There were the Jews that lived in the land of Palestine and those who had been scattered who lived out in the Greek world.

But at passover, the pilgrims all came in so you had both Palestine Jews and the Hellenists, so they were all together there.

So what happened was, as they were all there, this huge group of Christians now in the multiplying Church, there is a murmuring going on.

Well, it is a little comforting to know they did it even in the early Church,

So there arose a murmuring and the murmuring basically came from the non-Palestinian Jews against the Palestinian Jews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution of food.

They were trying to serve all of these widows and there might have been several hundred by this time.

The Church, by the way, had gotten that from the Jews.

The Jews had a very strong commitment to the care of the poor and the needy.

In fact, they had a very sophisticated means for doing this.

Every Friday in every Jewish community some men went around the market place and around the houses and they collected money from everybody to give to the poor and needy.

They got all the donations that they could.

This was then distributed to those in need by committees of no less than two people, for obvious reasons, they did not want anybody stealing the money.

And when they went to the poor of the community, they would only give them enough for fourteen meals, that is two means a day for seven days.

And if they already possessed a week’s food in the house, they could not get anything.

This distribution was called “koopa” which means “the basket”.

In addition to this, there was a daily collection of food from house to house for those who were in an emergency situation and needed food for that very day and is called “tamwi” or “the tray”.

And they went around offering this to people in need.

Well, the Church coming out of Judaism picked up on this.

The Jews did not even emphasize one person giving to another in need, they emphasized giving it to the synagogue, let the synagogue disseminate it so that the responsibility is in the hands of wise men who were doing it properly.

So here they have the responsibility.

And then there is an argument going on in the Church because the Hellenistic Jewish widows done feel that they were getting a fair shake in the provision of food that is being distributed.

How do they solve it?

Acts 6:2 ESV

And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.

John MacArthur Sermon Archive Qualified Servants for the Church—Deacons, Part 1

Now here is a line of demarcation. Some people in the church need to be doing the Word of God and other people need to be taking care of the business. That line of demarcation does stand when you get to the pastoral epistles. We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do and we’ve got to find somebody to do the rest. It was not the Apostles’ priority to leave the Word to serve food.

They have have got thousands and thousands of people.

Remember this, they are all new converts, they are from all over the world and these twelve men are trying to get them all discipled before they leave.

They had a tremendous take on their hands and they really did not want to bet stuck trying to figure out how to bring equity and parody to the matter of food distribution.

So, they wanted to get someone else to do that.

Acts 6:3 ESV

Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.

Notice that they were appointed to a specific task.

There is no office hear, there is no on-going function here.

We are going to get them to figure out how to do this task; one task.

Acts 6:4 ESV

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

The only usage of the term “διάκονος” here is in reference to the Apostles.

Nowhere does it call these men deacons.

And I do not think that it is the intention of the Spirit of God to establish some kind of ongoing order here.

I do not think that these seven men chosen were deacons.

Acts 6:5 ESV

And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch.

Acts 6:6 ESV

These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

So, they were ordained to the minstry or service of the business of caring for the widows and the distribution of the money and food.

You say, “well, if they are not deacons who are they?”

John MacArthur Sermon Archive Qualified Servants for the Church—Deacons, Part 1

They’re just some men chosen for a specific task. Honest so they could handle money, full of the Spirit and wisdom so they could discern where the needs were. They were seven men chosen for a one-time crisis, not necessarily installed into a full-time office.

John MacArthur Sermon Archive Qualified Servants for the Church—Deacons, Part 1

Another interesting thing is all seven of them have Greek names. If they were an ongoing group of deacons for the church at Jerusalem, it would have been a little bit strange that they would have all been Greek Jews. But if they are appointed for one specific task to relieve Greek Jewish widows, then it makes sense that they would choose Greeks to do that. That would move toward equity.

So, as we come to , it is about 64 A.D. and the Church has been around alone time; 30 plus years by this time.

Christ being crucified just after 30 A.D.

It has grown and developed; and Paul is writing to the Church at Ephesus.

It has grown and developed and it has had it leadership training by Paul for three years, according to .

It is a well developed Church.

John MacArthur Sermon Archive Qualified Servants for the Church—Deacons, Part 1

It had become very apparent in that church that they needed not only teachers of the Word who were the overseers and elders, leaders of the church, those with the authority, but they also needed implementors, and administrators and workers to carry that out. And so by now there is a growing number of people who rise to places of official service. And what Paul is saying to Timothy here is, “Look, you can’t just let anybody do that.”

There is no direction of job here.

“Well, what did the Deacons do?”

They did whatever the Elders directed them to do.

But not everyone would do this task.

Well, next Lords Day we are going to look specifically starting with verse 8 digging into the characteristics of deacons.

MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Panorama City, CA: Grace t