Acts 6:1-7--Seven Chosen to Serve

Acts 6:1-7
English Standard Version
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Seven Chosen to Serve
6 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. 2 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. 3 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. 4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 5 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. 6 These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

7 And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

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We have now reached a fundamental turning point in the history of the early Church.  I won't spoil everything but the choosing of these seven men is an important step for the church.  These are the first deacons of the church where the word "deacon" comes from a Greek word meaning "a servant who waits tables" (we'd call them a waiter or waitress in our culture, but in those days that was typically not a job that a freeman would do).  The apostles now had so many people to take care of on a daily basis that they need others to delegate duties to that don't rise to their level.  While that sounds like an issue of pride to say that something doesn't rise to your level, it is actually a biblical principle from back in the Torah that is now being applied to the church (see Exodus 18:13-27 and Numbers 11:16-30).

The qualifications of a deacon are somewhat laid out here, but are laid out more clearly laid out by Paul in 1 Timothy 3:8–13.  Since it is a short passage, I'll quote it here so that you can see that these were the kind of men that the Spirit chose to assist the apostles with taking care of the Body of Christ, that is, the Church.


1 Timothy 3:8-13
English Standard Version
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Qualifications for Deacons
8 Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain. 9 They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. 10 And let them also be tested first; then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless. 11 Their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things. 12 Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well. 13 For those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

So, what historically led to this need?  Remember that there are many that lived in and around Jerusalem coming to Jesus ever day, but there were not many wealthy people joining and there were many people that were poor and unable to provide for themselves.  We saw recently that the Church took care of every member by those who had much selling what they had and laying it at the apostle's feet so that they could help provide for those who had nothing or didn't have enough to feed their families.  Specifically there has been food distribution put in place to take care of the widows, as it was the responsibility of the husband to get a job and take care of his family, but if the wife lost her husband and was unable to remarry, then the Jews were supposed to take care of them.  However, the Jews seemed to have stopped doing this (Jesus spoke out against this during His ministry) and the Jews were not inclined to give any aid to the Church for fear of the Sanhedrin, as they could expel Jews from being able to worship in the Temple and any synagogues.  We'll see them try to use this tactic more than once in the New Testament.

So, the apostles have stepped in to fill this need for those widows who were under their care, but this task was becoming too great for them to handle on their own and it was becoming a source of conflict, so the apostles decided to draw clear boundaries for what they would be responsible for and what things would be delegated to other faithful men that would be chosen to take care of things like the food distribution to the widows.  The apostles encouraged the church to pick out men from among them to represent them who met the qualifications given (much like how that LORD encouraged the Twelve Tribes of Israel in Numbers 11 to be involved in the choosing of the 70/72 Elders of Israel--side note that this is where the Sanhedrin came from as they thought they were the modern-day version of these 70/72 Elders).

Like the apostles, we only end up getting additional details in Acts about a couple of the deacons.  So far with the apostles we've seen a little more on Peter, James, and John.  For the Deacons, we're only going to get additional details about Stephen and Philip.  In fact, Stephen and Philip will become the next two main characters in the book of Acts, not for their waiting tables, but because these two become great evangelists (I can only assume the same is true for the other five men that were chosen, but we don't know for sure) and they started taking the gospel to the areas outside of Jerusalem.  It seems that the apostles might send them out as their "advance team" sometimes to get things started and prepared and to send word back to them when things were ready for them to come (Jesus had done this several times with His disciples, sending them out ahead of Him to all the towns and villages and asking them to come back with a report of which were open to the gospel and which towns were hostile to it, yet Jesus knew as soon as He sent them away which cities would not respond well and He cursed those cities before even hearing the reports of the disciples).

We see one additional verse at the end of this passage that says that the Church continues to grow in numbers, despite the persecution, and we even start to see some of the priests becoming obedient in the faith.  This is a big deal.  We have seen Levites coming to faith in Jesus as Barnabas was a Levite, but so far we have not yet seen any of the sons of Aaron coming to faith.  It would be interesting to see those priests more fully understand their ministry of pointing people to Christ, but they probably wondered at some level why they continued to offer sacrifices of atonement when Jesus had died once to make atonement for all sins in all places in all times.  Imagine people coming to bring their sin offerings and guilt offerings to the priest and the priest sharing the gospel with them of how their sin and guilt could all be laid on Jesus and they no longer would need to sacrifice these lambs, bulls and goats on a regular basis and that Jesus' blood was enough to cover their high-handed sins of rebellion for which there was no atonement under the Law--death was the only option.  Jesus took that death that we deserved and gave us His righteousness so that we could positionally be treated like Him by the Father.  "He who knew no sin became sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21).  What great words it would be to hear the fulfillment of the Old Covenant come out of the mouth of the priests.  This however is not going to sit will with the Pharisees and Sadducees and the chief priests who make up the Sanhedrin.  We'll see next time that they respond by arresting Stephen.  There will be a sham trial put on by them much like the one that Jesus went through and they will murder Stephen by a different means but in very much the same way that Jesus was murdered--Stephen will even say very similar words as Jesus said, but with some key differences.  We'll get to those passages over the next couple of days.