Let's turn again to the Bible, this time to the book of Romans, chapter 16. We've been in the book of Romans for some time, a wonderful book of the Bible. We'll come in close to the end until we see there's a different sound at the end of the book. Romans 16, I'm going to be reading from verse 1 to verse 7. Please give your attention to the Word of God. Romans 16 on page 950. I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Sincrea, that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a patron of many, and of myself as well. Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life. to whom not only I give thanks, but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Abinathus, who was the first convert to Christ in Asia. Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you. Greet Adronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me. I have a friend that I read the New Testament with, and when he first read this book, what actually he wanted to comment on to me was this chapter. Probably the only person to read the book of Romans and want to start by commenting on chapter 16, but his comment was this, what a leader Paul was. Here he is, a world historical figure, really, you could say, and with some awareness of it. And he writes and he says thank you to this one and to this one and to this one. And he doesn't say the same thing about each one. He has something distinct and unique to say to each person. In other words, he lived out what we talked about last week. He took the gospel and he loved personally. He didn't see masses of people or ideas or ethnicities. He knew individual people. And he said, greet this one, and greet this one, and greet this one, and greet this one who is this, and greet this one who has done that. It's individualized. A sign of his care and his personal love. Can we detect some wise strategy here? Well, of course we can. This is, by the way, not a bad idea if you want to convince a church that you haven't been to yet that they should support you when you get there. It's not a bad technique to point out how many supporters you already have there. That's true. But that doesn't make it insincere. That doesn't make it fake. You can tell. There's too much warmth and detailed knowledge there. It's a genuine, warm way of talking. And so, again, I exhort you to love personally. One of the things that always strikes me about little kids is how slow they are to learn names. I had this last night. Who am I, I say to some little nephew. Yeah, your uncle's somebody. Well, never mind me. Who's this cousin over here? Well, if it's one of the fellow Grumauld cousins, they know. But if it's one of the Elvis Parke cousins, I don't know. Yeah, you're kind of one of those family people I see twice a year. You want to encourage to know names a little more than that. Yes. Of course, it takes work to learn names. I'm so bad, actually, at getting names in my head. The nicest woman in this neighborhood made fun of me for how bad I am at learning people's names. But you have to work at it. It's a way of loving people personally. And especially if you would be a leader, you want to remember that without followers, You're not a leader, you're an eccentric. And those who would follow you are just as worthy in God's sight as you are. And so you ought to love them personally, and thank them personally, and recognize them as he does here. Now I'm going to say that the main point of these verses that we've read is this, that we ought to seek first the kingdom of God in all the relationships of life. We take that phrase from our church membership vows. All of you who have become members here have vowed that you will seek first the kingdom of God and all the relationships of life. But what's interesting about this passage is what it tells us about what kinds of relationships we can anticipate having. Particularly if we are women, this is an instructive passage on what kinds of relationships can I anticipate having as I seek first the kingdom of God. Because the first thing he says here is, help Phoebe the deacon. Chrysostom says, great preacher, way back, see how many ways he honors her, how many ways he gives her dignity. He calls her sister, and it's no small thing to be sister of Paul. Are we to think she's actually his sister? Well, no. She's from Cenchrea, and he's from Tarsus. Very unlikely they're related. No, he's honoring her Christian faith by calling her sister. And then he goes on and he calls her deaconess. I'll come back to that. And you'll notice that while she's the first at the head of a list of names, she's different. Because everyone after her, it says, greet them. And that means that they are part of the church in Rome. It's as if I wrote to you and I said, greet Emma for me. Greet James for me. But she's different. It doesn't say, greet her. It says, I commend her to you. Now, what's going on here? Well, most likely, first of all, she's the one who actually brought Paul's letter to the church in Rome. You didn't have mail service back then. If you wanted to send a letter, you not only had to figure out how to find paper and somebody who could write, you then had to find someone who would actually go to that city for you and take it. So you see, most people weren't writing letters at all. But some people were. And that may well be what's going on here. He realizes that she has business in Rome, perhaps. And he said, oh, while you're going to Rome, can you take this letter for me? But he doesn't just give a name. He says, our sister. He leans on their shared Christian understanding. Not just my sister, but our sister, your sister, therefore. because you are believers and so is she." Then he speaks with Christian confidence that, of course, you will greet a sister in a way worthy of the saints. She's a diakonon of the church. That is, she serves the church in Senkrea, that's in Greece. It's the east port of Corinth. And a port would have lots of people coming and going, and needing to stay overnight, or stay for a week, or stay for a minute while you go up to Corinth, or you get the next ship to go somewhere else. It's like living at the airport. And back then, the hotels, you didn't want to stay in those hotels. There weren't that many. So it was very useful. And so she'd been a patron of many. She'd taken care of many, many people. So he says, she has been a help and a patron to many. And now it's time for you in Rome to reciprocate for her. She's helped many people, maybe a couple of you in Rome. Please, whether she helped you or not, reciprocate for her. One point there that we've noted before is that those of us who pride ourselves on giving help may nonetheless, no, will someday ourselves need help. And we should be neither too proud to give nor to receive help. Here's Phoebe. She gives help. She is a patron of many. But now, for whatever reason, she is in need of help. And so it will be for us. We can be the strong one. We give help. But one day, maybe soon, we will be in need of help ourselves. Now, I said that she's a deacon of the church. And Christian system agrees. Now, why do we say that? You'll notice that word servant there. Phoebe, servant of the church at Synchraia. And the word behind that in the Greek is diakonos, which is, well, it's a word that has a number of meanings. First of all, in diakonos, you hear deacon, I hope. It's a word that can mean waiter, as in, I'm John, and I'll be waiting on you this evening at the restaurant. It's a word that, therefore, can expand its meaning to mean servant, generally. It's a word that can mean a religious official in a temple. And of course, then it's a word that becomes a technical church term. As in, in this church, we have elders and deacons. Our deacons are Emil and Bob. The question is, when you hit this word that Phoebe is a diakonos of the Church of St. Croix, which of those various nuances for this very broad word diakonos do we mean? Do we mean that she is generally very helpful in the Church of St. Croix, as everyone should be? Or does it mean that, in fact, she is officially recognized as a deacon, an official servant of the church in St. Croix? Well, any time you come to this kind of question, a fair number of people get tense. And they get tense because this kind of ground has been a battleground for nearly 60 years. It's been a battleground between those who say a woman can do anything a man can do, and probably better. And any restriction on women is only a result of chauvinism and should be swept away. And so therefore, obviously, if men can be deacons and elders and pastors, so should women. And on the other side is those who say, now wait a minute, this is not how it has always been done. The Bible gives authority to men in the church, and so church office in the church should only be for men. So you have two sides that tend to blur clear thinking. Not only do you have two sides, but you have two different kinds of text to reckon with. We read 1 Timothy 3. That's an instruction text. That says a deacon should be like this, and this, and this. It lays out the rules. And here in Romans 16, we have a descriptive text. It describes how things were. As it says, thank this person for this, and that person who did that. We get a description of what they did. And it's characteristic sometimes of what might be called the liberal side to use the descriptive side so as to erase the instructive side. The correct use of the Bible, of course, is to read the whole thing and to figure out what it means all together. They inform each other, the instructive and the descriptive. They're not to be said against each other, not if it's all the Word of God. So we read 1 Timothy 3, the instructive text. talking about deacons. And in the middle of that paragraph, we came, in verse 11, to where it said, their wives, footnote. And if you read the footnote, the footnote says, or wives, or women. Because there's no there, there, in 1 Timothy 3.11. It simply says, gyneke. And gyneke means women. Except it means wives, in particular. as in my woman. The word yunaki means women, or it means wives. There's no question what the word means. It has this somewhat broader semantic range. And when you translate it in English, you've got to make a decision. Do I understand this to be women or to be wives? Now, the office of deacon began as a way of distributing food to the widows in Jerusalem. And the name means servant, the basic meaning of the word deacon. And the reference to the deacon and the wives in the following verse makes it awkward to think that these are the same people being talked about in verse 11. And so our denomination says that what's going on there in 311 is women who are deacons should likewise have the same kind of character as men who are deacons, with this exception. We don't expect a woman to be the head of the house, so we don't look at her performance as head of the house the way we would for a man, when we consider the man to be a deacon. So that's how we answer that question. What is this doing here in 1 Timothy 3.11? Where again, the there is not there. If the there was there, it would be easy. It would be what you read there, their wives. But it's not there. So that is the instructive text, telling us this is how you're to do it. Now you come to Acts 16, and you meet Phoebe, a diakonos of the church. The only time we get that phrase, she's the only diakonos of the church. Which makes it hard to interpret. Any time you only have something once, you don't want to make too much out of it. But at least it does seem noteworthy that you have it this time. And so you have an exegetical close call on women deacons. Because you have two words in two places that can have either of two meanings. First Timothy 3, is Gunneke wives or women? And Romans 16, is it deacon in the sense of servant? or deacon in the more technical sense of an officially recognized church service called a deacon. So this is an exegetically close call, and any honest describer of this issue has to acknowledge it's an exegetically close call. Our denomination understands it to be of women deacons. If our denomination changes its mind, no one should be too outraged. It's a close call. So we look at that and we say, deacon of the church, diakonos of the church, sounds formal. Also, she's given very weighty praise. She is commended. She's given a blank check. Help her in whatever she may have need from you. And this sounds like how he commends his fellow workers, Timothy, and Mark, and Epaphroditus, and other letters. Finally, any time you read the Bible, it is good to cast an eye on the practice of the most ancient church. Now, by the time you're 1,000 years after, the practice of the church is not going to be based necessarily on the Bible. But in the first century or two, they were in touch with the people who wrote it. And the ancient church had deaconesses. I'm Los Chrysostom, and I read this. Let me see. I commend to you our sister, Phoebe, a deaconess of the church in St. Croix, being a deacon of the church in St. Croix. Now, to bring it back to you, as you seek the kingdom of God, and all the relationships of life. What kind of relationships can you expect to be in? Well, if you are like Phoebe, you may be a patron of many. If you are in a position to help those who are coming and going, you can expect to be patron of many, including of people like Paul. You can expect to serve the church, because that's obvious. And you can expect, perhaps, to be recognized as a deacon. That is how he goes on. He says, greet Prisca and Aquila. Prisca is just short for Priscilla. It's like Jenny and Jennifer. He says, greet Prisca and Aquila, the same people we were reading about back in Acts 18. Now, who were these people? A couple that get mentioned here and again throughout the Bible. We've not read all of the references to Priscilla and Aquila. Aquila, we're told, was a Jew from Pontus, that is to say, from modern-day Turkey. So he's a diaspora Jew. And he grows up, and two things happen to him. He becomes a tent maker. So that was what he did for a living. He made tents, which again, I don't think we should just think of backpacking trips. I think we're talking about more like or serious living quarters kind of things. And he marries Priscilla. And at some point, he or they move from Turkey all the way to Rome. And at some point in there, they become Christians. So two people moved halfway across an empire. They're tent makers. They're in the capital city. They become Christians, and the emperor kicks all the Jews out. And them becoming Christian doesn't mean anything to the emperor. They're Jews. So they get kicked out of the capital at the instigations of Crestus, says the Roman historian. That is to say, the Jews are probably having enough riots and disagreements about whether Jesus is the Christ that the Roman emperor said, enough of whatever your problem is. Get out of here. So they go to Corinth. And while they're in Corinth making their tents, raising their family, doing their business, the apostle Paul comes through. And they let him stay with them. In fact, they They take him on as a temporary worker, because he knows how to make tents. And he's out in front of his support team, so he needs to earn his living. And they give him a lot of flexibility. He's making the tents, and he's going out to preach. And he's making the tents, and he's going out to preach. And when support comes and catches up to him, they let him just drop the tents and preach full time. And then they end up leaving with him to go back to Turkey, but not back to where he's from, but to another great big city called Ephesus. So there they are in Ephesus, and Paul leaves them. And into the synagogue comes a very eloquent professor named Apollos. And this Apollos guy is preaching about Jesus, but he doesn't have all of the story about Jesus. And so it says, Priscilla and Aquila call him aside and explain the way of God to him more accurately. And Apollos is important because then he goes on back to Corinth and helps out the church in Corinth. That's how much we've covered this morning. But you know, here we are reading Romans. He's sending the letter to Rome. And what does he say as he writes the letter to Rome? He says, greet Prisca and Aquila. Where are they now? They're back in Rome. They started in Rome. They went to Corinth. They went to Ephesus. That is to say, they started in Italy. Actually, he started in Turkey. Then they were in Italy. Then they were in Greece. Then they were in Turkey. Now they're back in Italy. And not only that, but look at what it says. And greet also the church in their house. In 1 Corinthians 16, it speaks of the church in their house, but that would be in a different city. And then in 2 Timothy 4, once again, it says, greet Prisca and Aquila, and they seem to be back in Ephesus. You're talking about a couple that moved around a lot. And wherever they moved, They had a church in their house. Otherwise, you have here what we might call a missionary church planting couple. That would be our current terminology for what they seem to be doing. Part of it is probably due to their business. They're tent makers. Now, if you want to make a tent, I'm not picturing a little old-fashioned sewing machine here as being enough space for you. You're going to need a fair amount of space for your tents, for your materials, and so on. And that means, of course, that once you've acquired this space, you could push it all to the side and open up space in your house for church. Kind of be like if we don't have this building anymore and Vince, the mechanic across the street here, were to say to us, well, you know, I'm not using the bays on Sunday. You can set up chairs in here if you want to. It's the same kind of thing. Wherever they go, there's a church in their house. We don't know if church considerations drove their many moves. or if business considerations drove their many moods, or maybe a combination of these. But wherever they went, they had a church in their home. And their missionary labor also meant personal danger. Notice what he says, they risked their necks for my life. You know Paul was dragged before the governor in Corinth. You know Paul faced a riot in Ephesus. Somewhere in there, they risked their necks to make sure that Paul would be okay. And so he says, and so all the churches of the Gentiles thank them, because they've hosted many churches, they've saved Paul's life, they've instructed Apollos, who's been a great teacher. Let's bring it back to you. What kind of work can you anticipate doing as you seek first the kingdom of God and all the relationships of life? Well, if you're like Priscilla and Aquila, you can risk your neck. to deliver a brother in need. You can house a church, or a prayer meeting, or a small group. You can correct someone, taking him aside when what he teaches is not fully accurate. And I'm belaboring this because there is a kind of piety that reads the passages to women that talk about bearing children and keeping house. and then deduces that this is all that women are supposed to do. And as we can see, that is an over-reading of the instructive passages. That's the proper use of the descriptive passage. We say, no, wait a minute. To say that women must bear children, well, yeah, men can't. And we need children. So please, women, bear some children. It's the only way we're going to go on around here. But to say that is not to limit women to the bearing of children and to the raising of families. The Gospels, of course, also said that women supported Jesus and ministered to him and were last at the cross and first at the grave. Now, there are some differences between men and women in church office, and we come to that next in this passage. It says, greet my beloved Eponatus, the first convert to Christ in Asia. Greet Mary, who's worked hard for you. Greet Adronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners, well known to the apostles. They were in Christ before me. You'll notice again how he varies his praise. Now he's running through his list now. Phoebe's in her own category. Priscilla and Aquila he's got a special relationship with. Now he's running through his list, but he still has something different to say. It's not just like, say hi. He can say something different about each person. Greet Eponatus, the first convert to Christ in Asia. Now is that simply a historical factoid? Well, there's a little bit of that. He's the first convert to Christ in this region of Turkey that they called Asia. But that also means, if he's still a believer, that he's hung in there as a Christian in a dicey environment for a long time. He has persevered in the faith. And it is worth noting and imitating those who've shown perseverance. So we're saying, greet this guy, who has continued as a Christian for a long time, and of course, through a move from Turkey to Italy. Greet Mary, who has worked hard. This is one of the few maybe Jewish names on this list, although not necessarily. She has worked hard for you. You know, hard workers are often overlooked, if they're the kind who just put their heads down and work hard. But without them, dishes pile up, buildings are filthy, things don't happen. Yes, hard workers are to be recognized. And so Mary here is praised for her hard work. And then Adronicus and Junian, who we'll have to talk about in a little more detail. Adronicus is obvious. That's a guy. Junian is tougher, because it's Junian in the accusative case, and it's a guy or a girl. Probably a girl's name. All right? So then you're like, OK, so probably husband and wife, although it could be brother and sister. And you say, OK, now what else does it say here? And it says, they are well known to the apostles. Sorry, apostle is not one of those words with multiple meanings. It can be technical, an apostle, an authorized representative of Jesus, or it can mean simply a messenger. And then a really interesting decision is the preposition that comes in front of apostle. Preposition n, which is used more in Greek than any other preposition. You start with in, and then you see if it works. They're well-known in the apostles. What do you mean, in the apostles? How can you be well-known in, well, it's one of those other meanings, the nuances of the word. So as you can see here, it says, well-known to the apostles. But you might look it up and say, oh, it could be well-known among the apostles. Now, what good is that? Well, if you think that women should be preachers, you've got a verse. They're well known among the apostles. And if a woman can be an apostle, she can definitely be an elder. Here's why you have to go back to what I was talking about with the two kinds of texts, the instructive texts and the descriptive texts. The instructive text on Deacon is hard to Parse, unikithi. It's not hard to parse on the elders, where it says that only men are to teach and to rule within the church. That's clear. And so to take a clear instructive text and oppose it with a very iffy way of reading this text is not a good procedure. Even if someone says, well, just look at Romans 16, you'll notice Phoebe is singled out for high praise. Whereas Andronicus and Junius, you never noticed that before. That's just buried in there. So to sum it up, there is no reason here to overturn the clear instruction elsewhere about women and pastors and elders. Once we've gotten over that, let's praise these two now. What do we hear about Andronicus and Junius? We learn that they were Paul's kinsmen. Perhaps that does mean family here. It sounds different. and that they were in Christ before him. I think that's fascinating. When Paul was a persecutor and a hater of the Christians, it would appear that he had Christians in his family. And not only that, but if they're well known to the apostles, that would have been that they were in Jerusalem or close to it when the apostles were there, which is when Paul was persecuting the church. And so here he is, he's persecuting the church, he's a zealous young Pharisee, he's got family members, cousins probably, something, who are believers in Jesus. But then what do we learn about them? We also learn that they were my fellow prisoners. Yes, Paul's a man who went from putting Christians in jail for being Christian, and voting to execute, to being one of the Christians put in jail and let out, and put in jail and let out. And on one of those times, he was put in with the family members that he had despised before. Don't give up praying for your unbelieving family members. Paul had been the last guy who would have become a Christian by looking at them. But maybe his family's praying for him. And be prepared for some unusual twists in your life. You know, we all try to map out our lives. Yeah, this is what I'm going to try to do, and where I see myself. And you know, schools kind of push this on you. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Are you at a job interview? Where do you see yourself in 10 years? You say, well, I don't see the future, and you don't either. Planning is a good thing, but. He prepared for some unexpected twists and turns. And notice how he deals with this family tie. He acknowledges it. He's happy for it. But he doesn't make them the most important people in that church. They're just somewhere in this list. They're not first. They're not last. They're in the middle. And so it is that we should really value and be happy when we have family who know the Lord, as he has here. And yet we shouldn't then close the family doors around the family and say, I got all I need. I got family, which is Christian family, too. So I'm good. No, you see here how his doors are open very, very widely. Because we're to seek first the kingdom of God in all the relationships of life. And we're to honor our brothers and sisters. And so what kinds of relationships can you anticipate having? Well, you don't know. But you may, like Phoebe, be a patron of many. You may risk your neck to help someone who is in great need. You may be a fellow prisoner, even with someone you don't expect to be imprisoned with, but imprisoned by. You may have a church in your house. You should be a servant of the church and a hard worker. There's a wide range of possibilities open to all of us. Now Chrysostom preached 1,600 years ago and more. And he did not preach in an environment where he was worried about a feminist movement. So do you know what he did with this text? He played up the women in it to goad the men to do better. He said, what are you men going to live up to these women? Look at how wonderful these women are. Look at their Christian service. And when are you men going to live up to these women here? Live up to Phoebe, and to Mary, and to Priscilla, and to Junia. That's what you do when you read the Word of God. And you're not worried about things being overtaken one way or the other. We're to seek first the Kingdom of God and all the relationships of life. And there's a wide range of possibilities for what those relationships may be. Let us honor our brothers and sisters, especially those who have persevered in the faith. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We pray that you'd help us to hear you speaking in the scriptures and to respond in faith. We thank you for those who have worked hard for us. And we pray that we would imitate that. We thank you for those who have been patrons to us. And pray, Lord, that you would help us both to receive and to give help as we have need. Help us, Lord, to endure, whether it is danger, whether it is imprisonment, whether it is great effort and work for those who travel on and we don't see again. Help us, Lord, to serve you in all these different ways. And we pray, Lord, that your Spirit would be with us, guiding us, strengthening us, and knitting us together in love with our brothers and sisters. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.