Deacons: Qualified

May 10, 2015                          Notes Not Edited

Deacons:  Unqualified

Acts 6:1-7, esp. v3

SIS—Deacons must be “qualified” but that does not mean they must be perfect.

Let me begin this morning with a quote I came across in my studies in regard to the kind of people God uses for His work.  Somebody said,This is good enough to bear repeating, “God does not call people who are qualified.  He calls people who are willing and then He qualifies them.”

This is the context in which the Bible speaks about the “qualifications” for men who would be appointed by the leadership of the church to serve as deacons.  In many discussions about seeking those to serve in this very important mission work, the perspective seems to set standards by which men who would be willing to serve in this office might be “disqualified.”  One such major criterion disqualifying a man from serving as a Baptist deacon has been the matter of divorce.  In many churches, if a man has been divorced, regardless of the past circumstances or present situation, that man is forever “disqualified” from serving as a Baptist deacon.  I will discuss this more at length in my next sermon on “Specific Qualifications.”

My purpose this morning is to show from Acts 6 and other texts the “General Qualifications” for serving as a Baptist deacon.  But, in all our discussions in regard to any qualifications we must keep the matter of “grace” foremost in the discussion.  Deacons do need to meet certain Biblical qualifications, but they need not—indeed, will not—be perfect.  The same grace that God gives to “qualify” us to become “children of God,” God gives us to become “servants of God.”  From the start of salvation in this world to the never ending finish of salvation in the next world, and ever place in between, we are a work of God’s grace.  As we quoted a moment ago, “God does not call people who are qualified; He calls people who are willing, and then, He qualifies them.”

Keeping this in mind, I can say will Biblically based confidence, that every man in here can become qualified to serve in the important position as a deacon in our church.  And, once again let me remind us, that every believer—man or woman, deacon or not—is to participate  as a diakonos, or servant, in the Kingdom of God through the Church.

Now, let us read Acts 6:3 that gives three “general qualifications” that are necessary in the life of any man who would serve as a deacon.

1.  He must first and foremost be a SAVED Man.

In verse 3, let’s examine the phase, “from among you.”  This teaches what might seem obvious:  the men to be selected to serve in the important position as “deacons” would be “saved men” from among the members of the church.  What is undoubtedly obvious is that they were to be from “among the members of the church.”  What is not obvious, however, is that this alone would guarantee they are “saved” men.  We must ask the question, “What does it mean to be saved?”

Let me begin that discussion by first stating what it “does NOT mean” to be saved.  Being saved does NOT mean, having your name on the membership role of a Church.  Being saved does not mean being a “long-time prominent” member of a church.  Being saved does not even mean being active in the ministry of the church.  It does not mean, giving significant contributions to the church.  In fact, being saved has nothing to do with the church.  Church membership only becomes important “after” a person is saved (which we will discuss a little bit later).

The fact of the matter is that many people who have their names on a church’s role, and even attend regularly becoming prominent leaders in the church, are not in fact “saved men.”  We fool ourselves and put the ministry of the church in jeopardy if we assume that church membership equals salvation.  This is what is called “salvation by works,” as opposed to salvation “by grace.”  The Bible tells us:

^{Eph. 2:8} For you are saved by grace  through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— ⁹ not from works.

The cold hard fact of church membership is this:  many people who are members of a local church are not saved.  This is such an important matter that the Bible has an entire book devoted to the issue.  In the Book of Jude we read from the NET Bible:

^1:4 For certain men have secretly slipped in among you—men who long ago were marked out for the condemnation I am about to describe—ungodly men who have turned the grace of our God into a license for evil.

No one can declare conclusively who is truly saved and who is not with absolute certainty.  However, we are not left without any measure, or test of true faith.  Here’s what Our Lord said,

^{Matt 7   15} “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing  but inwardly are ravaging wolves.  ¹⁶ You’ll recognize them by their fruit.

While unsaved people will not necessarily all pursue the office of a prophet, all unsaved people carry the message of their master, who is the Devil.  Their roots are evil and therefore their fruit will likewise be evil. 

More than a few—in fact many—churches have been destroyed because unsaved men have become deacons in the church and assumed the power of the position with no  regard for the function.

2.  He must be a SANCTIFIED man. 

Examine the phrase, “of good reputation.”  The original word translated here is packed full of meaning.  It is related to our word, martyr.  It speaks of a depth of conviction that penetrates to the very life-force of a man; a depth of conviction that is witnessed by many.  When someone is willing to go to point of being a martyr for the faith, this man’s testimony is unquestionable.  We would say this man has a genuine “Christian testimony, or witness.” 

Being saved does not automatically mean one is sanctified, in the sense that a person gives unquestioned evidence or testimony of their Christian life.  In other words, a sanctified person’s “walk matches his or her talk.”  A sanctified man is a “separated man” who is “in the world but the world is not in him.”  Paul teaches us in 2Cor. 6:

¹⁷ Therefore, come out from among them

and be separate, says the Lord.

The word for “be separate” literally means to “amputate, or sever.”  It is very strong language to give a very strong warning that Christians must eliminate all the worldly influences that are humanly possible.  This is not done by simply eliminating worldly habits but by instituting spiritual habits.  This is a second aspect of salvation related to the first aspect of regeneration, but separate from it.  True regeneration—being saved, being born-again, becoming a follower of Christ, or however you express it in words—true regeneration is followed by measurable sanctification.  Sanctification means to be “set apart, or separated” for the exclusive use of the Lord for His purposes and glory.  Sanctification does not mean we are “removed from the world.”  Sanctification means we are “in the world but we are working to keep the world from being in us.” 

Think of your life as a follower of Jesus Christ as being like a ship in the ocean.  The ship fulfills its purpose by being in the ocean.  There is nothing wrong with the ship being in the ocean, but there is a big problem if the ocean gets into the ship.  A deacon must be a “sanctified” man separating himself from the world, while serving God in the world.

3.  He must be a SPIRITUAL man.

Verse 3 says a deacon must be, “full of the Spirit.”  It is important to explain what this means in relation to being “saved and sanctified.”  In a sense, a saved man is always a “spiritual man.”  In fact, the very essence of being saved is being “united with the Holy Spirit.”  Unless God’s Spirit has “come into” (united, transformed) a person’s spirit, that person is not saved.  Theologically, we say that the Holy Spirit is the “Agent” of salvation.  One cannot be saved unless one is filled with the Holy Spirit.  The Bible says (Romans 8:7-9),

For the mind-set of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit itself to God’s law, for it is unable to do so. ⁸ Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. ⁹ You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God lives in you.  But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.

Some denominations talk about getting filled with the Holy Spirit (or baptized in the Holy Spirit) as something secondary to regeneration or being born-again.  The Bible teaches that being filled with God’s Spirit IS what makes a person saved.  So, all saved people are spiritual people. 

When one begins to talk about, “sanctification,” or “being full of the Holy Spirit,” the Bible has something else in mind.  Here’s an analogy which is biblically incomplete but may be helpful.  Let me set before you an empty glass.  That glass represents an unsaved life.  Nothing is in it but emptiness (or air for those of you who suffer from scientific Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).  If I pour in water to one third of the glasses capacity, then I would say I filled the glass with with water though I did not fill it up to its full capacity.  It has water in it, and the content is “all” water, but it is not “full.”  If I continue to fill the cup with water it will become “full,” and if I continue even further, it will be running over.

This is what our text has in view with the phrase, “FULL of the Spirit.”  This is something of the same quality as regeneration or being “saved,” but through the process of “sanctification,” the measure of our faith becomes a matter of “fullness.”  Jesus may have been implying this very situation when He declared, and I’ll paraphrase (John 10:10):

 A thief comes only to steal  and to kill and to destroy.  I have come so that they may have life and have it “overflowing in a strangely sufficient and superfluous exaggerated manner” (fr. περισσός).

Christians should be so “full of the Spirit” that we appear as “drunken men to the world.”  Paul describes this in Ephesians 5:18:

And don’t get drunk  with wine,  which leads

to reckless actions, but be filled by the Spirit,  which can be translated, “be continually being filled with the Spirit.”  It is an

ongoing, continually intensifying experience.

A drunken person is controlled by the alcohol, and the more the fill themselves with drink, the drunker they get and the more controlled they are by the alcohol.  They no longer control their words and actions but the alcohol is in control.  Many drunks lose all fear and inhibitions.  Should they get drunk in a zoo, they have no fear or inhibition to jump the fence and go wrestle the gorillas. 

I was tempted to put a joke in here about “drunken behavior,” but theirs nothing “funny about drunkenness.”  Yet, it is a descriptive metaphor of what it means to “full of the Spirit.”  It means the Spirit is in absolute control of our words and actions and we lose all fear of the world and all inhibitions about being God’s witness to a lost and hostile world.

4.  He must be a SENSIBLE man.

Choose men not only full of the Spirit, but also full of wisdom.  This means that all deacons must be “educated” men.  That education, however, need not be limited to only the hallowed halls of institutions of higher learning, but can (and must) include the wisdom that can only come from the “School of hard knocks.”  The word, wisdom, comes from the Greek word, sophia, which you will recognize in our word, philosophy, which means, “the love of wisdom.”  Originally the idea of wisdom was more closely related to the idea mastery in a particular skill (TDNT)—we might roughly call this, “street smarts.”  During the classical period the idea of wisdom (sophia) became more rigidly restricted to theoretical or intellectual learning.  By the time of the New Testament, these two ideas were again reunited and a “wise man” was someone of capable intelligence and proven experience. 

Recall that in our last examination of Acts 6 we learned that the primary duty of a deacon is to be a “problem solver.”  Solving problems in church, which can at times be quite complex, requires wisdom—the ability to comprehend a problem and to apply the truth of God’s Word in a strategic, sensible solution to the problem.  Now, a deacon is not expected to be able to accomplish this on his own with the help of the Holy Spirit, the brotherhood of the deacons, and the support of the pastors.  Deacons must be wise enough to collaborate with others and offer sensible insight toward a solution.  This is one reason we will see that a deacon “must also be tested first” (1Tim. 3:10).  When it comes to wisdom there is no better teacher than experience—even if that experience involves pain.  Pain seasons a man and builds wisdom.  As someone wisely said, “Whatever doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”  It also makes you wiser.  A deacon must be a man a SENSIBLE man, “full of wisdom.”

There is another component to “wisdom,” that is even more important than “experience.”  This gives us our fifth quality for a deacon. 

5.  He must be a SCRIPTURAL MAN. 

Think back to last week’s lesson in which we discussed the primary reason the office of deacons was established in the first place.  Verse 4 of chapter 6  says the deacons would serve as problem-solvers in order that the apostles (pastors, bishops, elders) could

⁴devote ourselves to prayer and to the preaching ministry,

and verse 7 declares,  So the preaching about God flourished, the number of the disciples in Jerusalem multiplied  greatly, and a large group of priests became obedient to the faith.

Nothing is more important in the life of any church than that every member be fully grounded in the Scriptures.  The Scriptures are the very life-line of the Church connecting us to Yahweh, Our Lord.  We cannot know anything with any degree of certainty apart from the Scriptures.  Without a solid foundation of the Scriptures, all human understanding is mere speculation.  For almost 15 centuries since the birth of philosophy at the time of Thales, and continuing to this very day, man has been searching for the “arche.”  The “arche” is the single source of being that explains everything that is, was, or ever will be.  In our day the search continues but with more scientific sophistication and a different name.  Since Einstein this search for “ultimate being,” has been called the T.O.E., which stands for the “Theory of Everything.”

In 15 centuries man’s search has turned up more questions than answers and man—unguided by Scripture and unaided by the Spirit—is no closer to discovering the Theory of Everything than was Thales in the 6^th century before Christ.  The reason is simple:  without the revelation of God in His Scripture we can know nothing that is certain.  Even with the Word of God, there remain many mysteries, but with the Word of God we know—with absolute certainty—the Theory of Everything.  Genesis 1:1 states it with profound simplicity:

In beginning, God.  Three simple words:  beresith Elohim bara.

The great theologian of our day, now gone to glory, by the name of Carl F.H. Henry, once stated:  As the late Carl F. H. Henry reminded us, “Divine revelation is the source of all truth, the truth of Christianity included; reason is the instrument for recognizing it; Scripture is its verifying principle.”

God declares the all-encompassing, foundational nature of Scripture:

^{2Tim 3:6} All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Man is proud and arrogant in his intellectual quest believing he is discovering the great truths autonomously, apart from God.  Yet, if God choses not to “reveal a thing,” it remains hidden in the Mind of God.  Only when God reveals a matter can man “know” anything that is more than mere speculation.  Deuteronomy 29:29 says,

²⁹ The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law.

It is absolutely imperative that a deacon be fully equipped with a continually deepening knowledge and devotion to the Word of God.  Deacons must be Scriptural men, or the church will be as Jesus spoke of the religious leaders of His day, “the blind leading the blind” (Mt. 15:14).

All of Christ’s followers must be SAVED people, SANCTIFIED people, SPIRITUAL people, SENSIBLE people, and SCRIPTURAL people—but the deacons must exhibit these qualities in even greater measure.

Deacons must be qualified, but that does not mean the must be—or even can be, perfect. 

As we have already heard from a wise man, “God does not call those who are qualified, but those who are willing; and then, he qualifies them.”

Is God calling you to be a deacon?  Are you willing?

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^* Special thanks to sermonnotebook.org for insight into this passage