Take your Bibles and turn with me to the book of 1 Timothy chapter 3. Just a couple more weeks, hang with me and we will kind of be finishing up what we've been doing as a sub-study, getting ready for our church business meeting, talking about various aspects of church governance. So we're talking today about ministers. In a couple of weeks, we'll get back to the Book of Romans. I'm looking forward to finishing up that study. Last week, we handed out a brochure that I hope you got. If you did not get it, make sure there are some of these in the foyer. It's on church government. We'll be referring to this not so much in the message today as probably again a little bit next week with the business meeting where we just talk about eldership, we talk about the commitments of the elders to the church, we talk about the congregation's commitment back to the Lord and to its elders, and we give you some statements in there about how we see the scriptural truth concerning eldership and church government. And so it's just kind of a succinct little statement to accompany are the documents that we have that can help you understand why we do what we do and how we view the Scripture as we study it today. Today, as I said, we're going to look in 1 Timothy chapter 3. We're going to be talking about ministers, this word deacon. We've talked about elders, so here we see in this text as well there's mention of this group, these individuals called deacons. And just as he did in the beginning of this chapter when he gave a list of qualifications for those who are overseers in the church, he gives a list of qualifications for those who serve in the church. Let's read them together, and then we're going to look to the Lord in a word of prayer. Likewise, so think of the word likewise in the same way, just as what we've said about the elders previously, likewise, Deacons, they must be dignified, not double-tongued, not telling one person one thing and another person another, all that kind of stuff, not addicted to wine, not greedy for dishonest gain, and they must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. Let them also be first tested. Then let them serve as ministers, if they have proven themselves blameless. Their wives, where we could just as easily say here, and I'll explain this in a minute, just women, the women likewise must be dignified. Not a slanderer, but sober-minded, faithful in all things. Back to the deacons. Let deacons each be the husbands of one wife, managing their children and their households well. For those who serve well as ministers gain a good standing for themselves. and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus. Join me in a word of prayer. Lord, open our eyes. Lord, I'm reminded of the story of the disciples on the Emmaus Road. They were distraught. They were discouraged. Their Lord had been crucified. They didn't know what was going on. They heard the rumor that Jesus was risen from the dead. They didn't know what to think of it. And then, Lord, you sat down with them and you broke bread and you opened their eyes. Lord, we need you to open our eyes. Lord, if you do not do that by your Holy Spirit, We miss it. And so, Lord, open our eyes today. Lord Jesus, have first place in our vision. Lord, may we be your hands. Lord, may we be your feet. May we be your eyes. As we Lord, we give you control, and we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Last week, we looked at this verse. The beginning of the book of Philippians, the apostle Paul is writing to the church at Philippi. The church at Philippi was one of those churches that Paul was especially attached to. You clearly see that in the New Testament when he writes about it, his love for them. One of the guys in this church was a jailer that was converted on the night when Paul and Silas were in prison and Paul and Silas had been beaten and they had been shackled. And in the middle of the night, they were singing praises to God, and an earthquake came, and all of the doors were thrown open, and a guy comes in, and he falls before them, a jailer, and he says to them, Serge, what must I do to be saved? What a question! Right out of the blue, in the middle of an earthquake, what do I gotta do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you'll be saved. He's one of these saints. Paul and Timothy, same with his whole household. That very night, it tells us the apostle Paul baptized him. Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and the deacons. So this is the set of which these are a subset. It's all the saints. And those saints include a group of people, in plural, who are overseers, and a group of people who are deacons or ministers. And so, we talked about this, that the church is composed, number one, of saints. Now, when we say saints, we're not saying that everyone in here who knows the Lord always acts like a saint. This is a descriptive word that describes your position in Christ, that if you are in Christ, you are a saint, you are what is called a holy one, you have been set apart unto God. And so we are talking about the saints, we are talking about every individual in this room who is a member of the body of Christ, every individual is a player on the team. And together we are seeking to advance the mission and the purpose The church, mission being building people. Remember we talked about that? Purpose being we exist for what? God and for his glory. And it's very important we understand our purpose. We're here for the glory of God. And our mission, we're here to build people. The church is composed of a group who are called the overseers. This is a group of men who are spiritually mature, and they are called to oversee the work of the church. Then he mentions this group, deacons. These are like team leaders who lead his servants the work of the church. I want to take some time and talk about these guys. And as we do so, let's think about a goal. You know, what we want to do is we want to foster, as we've talked about over the last couple of weeks, a culture in this church, a culture where teams are mutually supporting one another, not competing with one another. But we are mutually supporting one another in our zest and in our zeal to advance the mission and to fulfill the purpose of the Church. That is our goal. We do so under Christ, and we do so in submission to qualified leaders. And that's an important thing that we notice in the text of the Scripture so many times. Well, God tells us as believers to be in submission, to follow. And so these are our goals. Last week, we talked about the overseers, didn't we? We went through all of the qualifications in a nutshell, looking at some truths about them, looking at some things that we are to think about. And one of the things we talked about was these questions. When you're looking at men who are going to be overseers in the church, and you look at these kind of qualifications, I would submit to you that a lot of these things still hold true to this group of people that we call the ministers, because they are to be blameless. And so we see things about how they think and how they act, how they respond. You know, how does a man respond when he's under pressure? Life is a pressure cooker at times, isn't it? I mean, I suppose even if you're retired, I'm not there yet, and your life is on the RV park, you have days where things don't go perfectly right. Maybe there was a divot in the wrong place on the green, I don't know. When we first moved here years ago now, we were keeping our horses up by Star Valley Ranch. We came off, this isn't in my notes, I got to do it quick. We came out to this big ranch up in Cody, and I brought all my horses down and my Blue Heeler dogs. And we could find nowhere to live, so we rented this place on Star Valley Ranch for a little while. And Victor Roland graciously let us throw our horses in his pasture. But Victor Roland's fences were not very good. And I'll never forget, I mean, we were here like a week, and it was like 1 in the morning. And we got a call from somebody at the ranch, and they were not happy because all of my horses were out in the golf course. So I imagine the next day somebody had a lot of fun on the golf course. That was a way to get broke into town. What did that have to do with pressure? How does he respond under pressure? Things don't always go well. Both Satan and the Lord, the Lord orchestrates trials in our life, not to cause us to fail, but to reveal the gold, to refine the dross. Satan is seeking to destroy us in trial and temptation. He's seeking to undermine your faith, and things happen in life that are less than stellar and less than good. Ask Pastor Matt, your car's been breaking down. You have your set of issues. I had a week. I mean, I had a week. You know, it's amazing. Last week, I was preaching on this one. How does he respond under pressure? And I think somebody heard me preach about it because I had a week of pressure. My bailer blew up. And then everything I touched on Monday broke. Have you ever had one of those days? I mean, it was just one of those days. Everything. I'm like, oh, Lord, really? I took care of it all, and by the end of the week, everything's good, and I'm up and running. But pressure comes. I was coming into church the other morning, listening to the Christian radio station, and there was a song on the radio that's one of my favorite songs. I won't sing it. I'll try to get in his, what's the word I want? Cadence, by Johnny Diaz. You've probably heard it. Alarm clock screaming, bare feet hit the door. It's off to the races, everybody out the door. I'm feeling like I'm falling behind. It's a crazy life. 90 miles an hour, going fast as I can, trying to push a little harder, trying to get the upper hand. So much to do in so little time. It's a crazy life. It's ready, set, go. It's another wild day. When the stress is on the rise, In my heart, I feel you say, just breathe. Just breathe. Come and rest at my feet. And be, just be. Chaos calls, but all you really need is to just breathe. Third cup of Joe just to get me through the day. Want to make the most of time, but I feel it slip away. I wonder if there's something more to this crazy life. I'm busy, busy, busy, and it's no surprise to see that I only have time for me, me, me. There's got to be something more to this crazy life. I'm hanging on tight to another wild day when it starts to fall apart, and in my heart, I hear you say, breathe. Just breathe. Come and rest at my feet. And be, just be, chaos calls, but all you really need is to take it in, fill your lungs. It's the peace of God that overcomes. Just breathe. Let your weary spirit rest, lay down what's good, and find what's best. Just breathe. Life's a pressure cooker. When pressure comes, How do we respond? How do you respond? How does a person respond to personal attack? How does he deal with conflict? Is he a person who is seeking to control himself, or is he always a controller of others? These are the kind of things we ask when we think about those who oversee in the church. Now, when we look at the text that we're studying today, there are some questions that we ask about a deacon. When I read those verses to you, if your brain was here, if you're just breathing and you're sucking wind today and you were noticing some things, I imagine there were some questions in your mind. Maybe something like, what is a deacon? What does he do? Who are the women? He mentioned women here. Who are the women? Let's think about these things this morning. Now, what does he do? Let's think about some church backgrounds. If you've been in different churches, maybe you have seen deacons doing different things. There are various denominational practices. For instance, in the Roman Catholic, the Orthodox, or the Anglican churches, a deacon is a person who is a helper to the priest, leading the parish, Many times, the diaconate is a first step into the priesthood. And so that is the way they understand what a deacon is and what he does. If you're a Protestant, if that's been your background, maybe like a Lutheran or Reformed, you will see that a deacon is someone who is maybe responsible for charity, works of charity in the church. If you come from a Baptist background, you probably think of a deacon as something like a lay leader who assists the pastor in a committee function, maybe similar to like a school superintendent and a school board. And so in Baptist polity, typically there will be a single pastor, and then there will be a group of what is called deacons who are assisting the pastor in a committee way. So those are kind of the different ways that people who are in this room, you may be thinking of this. So when I talk about deacons today, depending on what your background is, you may be thinking of something very different than maybe what I'm thinking about, or maybe about what the other person down the pew is thinking about. But what I want us to do is step back from what our experience has been, and just ask some questions of the scripture. What does the scripture say about this guy? What does he do? Who is he? What is a minister? To do so, let's begin by asking this question really briefly. Who are the women? You will notice with me, he says this very clearly. This is a word from God. When he says in verse 11, women or the women or their wives. Likewise must be dignified, not slanderers. Now, why do I use the word women and not wife? Here's why. In the Greek language, the word for man and the word for woman is the exact same word as the word for husband and the word for wife. And so, the way you determine whether or not he's talking about a wife or he is just talking about a woman in general is to see it in its connection to the context. So, the word itself doesn't tell us whether it's a wife or just a woman in general. Here, Traditionally, most times, people have determined or interpreted this to speak of a wife. But it would be clear that it is not exclusively a wife. And the reason I would say that is there are widows and single women who would fit into these qualifications as well. And so I'm gonna expand it in our thinking that is bigger than that. He's not just talking to wives, but he clearly also is talking to wives. So I would say he's talking to women in general, and wives in particular, and he's saying that if you serve the church, these are some things that should be true of you. Now, one of the things that I think is interesting is, There, when you look in verses 1 through 7, in verses 1 through 7, when he talks about elders, he does not draw a parallel to the wives of the elders there saying that they are co-pastors. In other words, my wife is a wonderful godly woman, but she is not a co-pastor of the church. Neither is Trish. Neither is the wife of any elder. They're not co-pastors. That's not in the text. But when he comes down here and he's talking about those who serve the church, we would also say that then the wives of the elders are going to fall into that part of the list. Okay, so he puts them there. He also doesn't deal with them separately. Notice that. He has dealt with the male deacons, and then he talks to the women, and then he comes back to the men. So, he sandwiches the women in the middle. Now, before I go any further, I don't got the time to deal with this much today because I got a lot of territory to cover, but let's just say this, we are rigorously complementarian in our understanding of the Scripture, which means we believe that the genders, by the way, there's only two, Right? Only two. Let it go out on the internet. There's only two. Okay? Men and women are co-equal before the Father. And we are equal inheritors of the grace of life. And yet we see in the scripture that there is a headship that men are to lead and women are to follow their lead. Now having said that, women, let me just say something that sometimes gets missed. We value you. For who you are as created in the image of God, you have a pivotal, let me just say that again, pivotal role to play. in the propelling forth of the message of the grace of God. You are important to us. We said last week, I talked about the men in the church and how the strength of this church in many ways is the strong men who are here. But I'll take that a step further and I'll say this. One of the reasons this church is full of strong men is because there is a whole bunch of godly women who are pushing their guys forward. Women, keep it up. Okay. Notice Romans 16. We're going to be studying Romans 16. We'll explain this in greater detail then, but he says, I commend to you our sister. Her name was Phoebe, and she is what? A servant. That word is the word diakonos. She's a deacon, she's a minister of the church in Sancria. By the way, Dave, you did a great job on all those names today. I just thought of that because I saw Sancria here. I think I'm saying it right. Who knows? Nobody's going to judge me if I don't get it right. So why so much understanding? Why are there so many different ways of doing this in all the churches? Why so much misunderstanding? Number one, let me just explain this real quick. I don't got a lot of time, so I got to do it real quick. There was a very unfortunate compromise to dodge a bullet that was made in the early history of the English church. That had to do with the English family of translation. We're going to start with William Tyndale. When we get to the King James Version in the 1600s, they plagiarized about 70% of Tyndale. Not really plagiarized, but nevertheless, they use it. So this started all the way back with William Tyndale. In the English family of translations, there were political compromises made in order to not confront church practices of the day. And so, the way they dodged a bullet was they transliterated rather than translated when it came to controversial concepts. And we still have inherited that in our virgins. So, for instance, here's two infamous ones. The word baptism. The word baptism comes from a Greek word, baptizo, which comes from a root, which is the word bapto. Anyone want to tell me what it means? Dictionary definition? It means to dunk. That's what it means. There's no dispute of that. William Tyndale, who is translating, and same with the King James translators, for the king, are looking at what the Church of England does, and what are they doing? They're not dunking. They're doing what? Sprinkling. Rather than lose their head, they said, guys, let's come up with a new English word. We will come up with a word called baptism. And so they transliterate instead of translate. La Riada. is a transliteration from the Spanish. La riada means a catch rope. But when you're going to rope something tonight at Cowboy Church, you don't say, go get my catch rope off my saddle. You say, go get what? My English word, lariat. It's a transliteration. That's how we got the word baptism. If they had translated the word, our English word would say what? They took the guy and they dunked him. That's what he would say, because that's the definition. They did the same with this. The word diakonos, dictionary definition means to serve or to minister. Most times in the New Testament when you come to this word diakonos, it will be translated serve or minister. But, whenever it speaks of what they think of as the office in the church, rather than translate it, they transliterate it, and they say, deacon. That way, whatever denominational background you come from, you can read that word, and you can fit that word into your meaning. So they don't tell you what it means, they simply use the transliteration. That's the way most translations do that today. So we have an English word that was coined rather than spark controversy. It's important you understand that. Translators and translations are not perfect. They're only as good as the people who do them. Dictionary definition of diakonio means to serve. It means to minister. That is the concept that we see in this word. Now, there are two words that are linked in the New Testament. One is the Greek word doulos, which is one who is in bondage. He is a bond slave. That is focusing on his state. That is his condition. He is a slave. Diakonia focuses on the function or the work. He is ministering, so he is a slave who is ministering. So Paul called himself many times a slave, didn't he? That was his favorite self-designation. He said, I am a slave of Christ. And so a slave of Christ is doing a work, and that work is the work of ministry or service. That is what the minister does. He serves. Let's trace the word. Number one, it is applied to the work of angels. It tells us in the book of Hebrews, angels are ministering spirits. They are sent forth to minister to those who have inherited eternal life. Think about that, my friend. There are angels at work in the world, in the unseen realm, in the spirit realm, who are sent from God to minister, to serve us. on our way to heaven. It's applied to the work of angels. It's applied to the work of Jesus. Jesus Christ came to serve. He didn't come to be served. He came to serve. It's also applied to the mutual ministry of believers in the body, that we serve one another. Those are kind of the uses of that word. I want to compare Philippians chapter 1 and Ephesians chapter 4 for a minute. And what I want you to see this morning is this. This is important that you make a note of this. Because when we think about church government and we think about deacons and we think about elders, when we think about these guys, we don't want you to think about that. We don't want you to think about an office in the church. We don't want you to think about a governing committee, okay? When we think about deacons, we are not so much talking about an office in the church as we are talking about the work of the church. We are talking about the ministers as being those who do the work, who are doing the work. So think with me, Ephesians chapter 4. He personally gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers, and some to be deacons. Does he say that? No. Here he's talking about offices in the church. He's talking about governance in the church. He gave some to be apostles, he gave some to be prophets, he gave some as evangelists, he gave some as pastors and teachers, and he doesn't say deacons. He's not talking about office here when we talk about deacons. So what does he say? These people in these offices have this role. They are to train who? Remember we talked about these people, the saints, in the work of what? Diakonia, ministry. They are to train the saints to do the work of ministry. For what purpose? For what mission? We've been talking about mission to build up the body of Christ until we all reach the unity of the faith and the knowledge of God's Son into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ's fullness. I want us to think then about a diaconate that is more task-specific than it is a committee. So, think with me of Acts 6. And I want to think about this. We are talking about men and women who are set apart by the church to do ministry. When we think about people who are leading the ministries of the church, what kind of things do we want to be true with them? We want them to be blameless. Not perfect, but blameless. We don't want them to be gossips around town. We want them to be dignified. We're talking about task-specific roles in the church. Acts 6 is a great illustration of that. In Acts 6, this was read to us, the 12, summon the whole company of the disciples. Remember, some of the widows have been feeling slighted in the daily distribution of food. The ones who are feeling slighted are these people who are Hellenistic. That means they come from a Greek culture. They have not held firmly and rigidly to the Pharisaic traditions of Judaism. And they are feeling slighted. Whether or not they truly were is beside the point. They are feeling it. So the Twelve summon everybody. And they say, it's not right for us to give up preaching. to handle these financial matters. So select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of spirit and wisdom, and we can appoint them to this duty. We will devote ourselves to prayer and the preaching ministry, and the proposal pleads the whole company, task specific. Now, we went through these verses talking about gifts. In 1 Peter chapter 4, as we've been going through the book of Romans, he talked about everyone having a gift. We are to use it to serve. That's the word, to minister. What word we're seeing here. And then he says, if anyone speaks, it should be as one who speaks God's words, if anyone serves. It should be from the strength that God provides. So, he's saying there are people who serve the church, who serve the church by speaking. There are people who serve the church by serving, task-specific. 1 Corinthians chapter 12 says there are different gifts, but it's the same Spirit. There are different ministries, but it's the same Lord. There are different activities, but it's the same God who activates each gift in each person. Now here's the major distinction. I hope we get this as we bring this to a conclusion this morning when we're thinking about the deacons. When we think about a bishop or we think about overseers, we are talking about someone who oversees the ministry. We are talking about this kind of thing, manager. When we talk about a deacon or a minister, we are simply talking about someone who does ministry, whether it be a man or a woman. Here, we are talking about governance and oversight. Here, we are talking about service and work. Now, hopefully the guys up in this part of the list are willing to work as well. But nevertheless, we are talking here about a role. The role of the bishop, the role of the elders, is to oversee what is happening. The role of the ministers is to do it. So what is a New Testament deacon? What is a New Testament deacon? Let's try to answer that in one little statement here. A New Testament deacon is someone who is appointed by the church to perform a specific ministry for the church for the edification of the body. A deacon, let's go through it again, is someone who is appointed by the church. They have been given authority and responsibility. They are appointed. to do a specific thing in order to accomplish a certain goal, the edification of the body. So, we would say a deacon is like this. It is a minister of put anything you want there, the nursery. It is a minister of transportation. It's a minister, so it's somebody who's overseeing that. So what we're trying to build is a structure where there will be a governance within this church, where there'll be a plural group of elders who will oversee. There will also be a group that have been appointed to lead various ministries. They're team leaders. Whether or not they like the term, they're a minister, right? So they're a minister of the nursery, and they lead that. And they report back to the elders, but they lead the group who are under them. And so it's kind of a structure. So what I want you to think about is, when we think about the deacons, we're not talking about governance. We are talking about leadership of individual tasks within the church. reporting back to the elders that which is being done. I'm just going to close with this passage, because I want us just to think about the importance of being a servant. Jesus called all his disciples to them. They've been having that argument. Who's the greatest? Those guys were kind of intriguing to me because they were willing to argue about things openly that most of us only think. We don't say it. You know that those who are regarded as rulers, gentiles, dominate them. The men of high positions exercise power over them. It must not be like this among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. Whoever would be first among you must be a slave to all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. There is nothing that you and I do nothing that is as great as stooping to serve. I still have it indelibly imprinted on my mind when in spring of 2017, the doctors here said, you got 30 days if they don't figure this out. My wife loaded me up. We're going to go to the Mayo Clinic. They said, you'll never get in. It's going to take you too long. Stay here and die kind of thing. My wife said, no, we're going. Loaded us up. They got us in that day. We were in the emergency room. I remember Matt didn't know if I'd come back, except in a box. It was in the emergency room. Amy got a call from a doctor in the clinic who said, I think I know what's wrong. I think we can figure this out. I want you to come to the clinic. Sent me over there the next day. Things were not good. I had a feeding tube. It was not good. I go in the clinic and everybody's looking at me like, what's wrong with that dude? Because it was not good. Took me into a room and there were about 10 physicians who came as a team to look at me. And one of those physicians was the top guy in his field who had pioneered a technique that they were going to use to take a, they don't call them specimen in your mouth, what do they call those things? Biopsy. And I'm laying on the gurney, just slobbering, drooling, not able to control that in any way, wracked with such pain. that I could hardly stand it. And this doctor come over to me, best guy in his field in the nation. And he got on his knees in front of me, took a tissue, and wiped my mouth. And he looked right in my eyes, like this far away, and he said, we're going to take care of you. I'll never forget that. One of the best doctors in the country. And he got on his knees and he said, I care. It put the fight back in me. People, people don't care what you know until they know how much you care. Let's pray. Lord, you have given to us a high and lofty responsibility to represent you. Lord, we don't represent you well when we parade our stuff before men. Lord, we represent you well when we stoop and we clean a toilet, when someone's sick, or behind the scenes, when no one else knows. We go to someone's house, and we mow the lawn, because they can't. Lord, for some reason, we think that it's doing the big things. that are so impressive. Lord, they don't impress you. Lord, help us to be a church that simply serves when no one else knows, only you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Would you stand as we sing our closing song? ♪ Oh, be merry, be sanctuary ♪ ♪ Pure and holy, hard and true ♪ ♪ With thanksgiving, all we owe it thee ♪ ♪ For the glory of the Lord God is done ♪ ♪ Come, I call thee, hear Him say ♪ ♪ Make the servant well done ♪ ♪ O prepare me to be sanctuary ♪ Heavenly Father, Lord, I would imagine that there are people here today, Lord, who wonder what role they have or what part they have in a church like this. Lord, I think all of us, truthfully, have asked that question. And yet, Lord, you call us out. Lord I pray Lord that you would help us all to look for opportunities of service Opportunities of loving others around us and encouraging them Or we we all have gifts that you have given us. I Because of your spirit who dwells us, Lord, we we have. We have a part to play. And so, Lord, we pray, Lord, that you would help us help us to do our part in this body. Help us to encourage, help us to live out this faith that you have so graciously given to us. Lord, we pray Lord that you would be glorified through our thoughts and our actions and our service to you and Lord as you remind us Lord, may you use these bodies and may they be acts of worship as you say in Romans chapter 12 May you use us to bring glory to yourself that we may prove what is good and right and what the will of God is I Lord, we thank you that you love us and you care for us. Lord, help us to be obedient to what you've called us to do. Help us to go into the mission field now before us to serve you well. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.