Deacons Likewise Must be...#4

Do you ever have times in your life when you think, that's going to be hard? Something you've got coming up. Well, that's how I felt this week about this sermon. We're back in 1 Timothy. We haven't been here in a while, but we're back to 1 Timothy. And this is going to be our last sermon on the qualifications for deacons. And you might wonder, well, why is that? Why have you been dreading this or anticipating this or anxious about this? And it's because I see that what the text says and what we need to interact with is, very difficult in our time and in our age. And so my prayer that we would be attentive to God's word has been a prayer first for me throughout the week because there are difficult things in our lives. And when we have them, I think oftentimes we go, I don't want to do that. But sometimes you think, I have to, that is what I have to do. And so we prepare ourselves. And so I felt like, I think the prophet Amos felt, do you guys know what Amos means? We like meanings of names at my house.

We have a son named Amos and we named him Amos because Amos means burdened with a message. And so you think of Amos' life in ministry when he was prophesying and it would have been a difficult time. And it's because he was prophesying hard things to people who didn't want to hear. And my prayer has been that I would love the things that God has to say and also that you would love the things that God has to say, even if they are hard things. And so I hope that as we study his word this morning, you'll have... softness in your heart toward what God has said. We're going to be talking, as I said, about deacons and their qualifications. And I want to remind you, because we've been away from it for a while, that what elders and deacons are called to, the qualifications that they're to meet, are not just for them. These are the sorts of things that all men ought to aspire to. All men ought to say, that's the kind of man I should be. These are the requirements for all godly Christian men. And when it comes to officers, you're putting together particular giftings for...

for each office, along with a judgment of whether or not these men meet those qualifications. Because this is what's necessary for them to be able to serve the church faithfully. One of the things I've wondered about with regard to deacons is in Acts 7, the apostles were really particular about how many there were supposed to be. They didn't say, appoint for yourselves men full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, as many as you can find. He said, we want you to appoint seven of them. And I've wondered, how did they come to the number seven? Why did they pick seven deacons? It's kind of arbitrary. There's no reason given for it. And so what I've come to believe is that seven deacons were enough to do the work that needed to be done. But I'm also convinced that if they had needed ten, they would have had ten men who were qualified. And so for those of you who aren't deacons or aren't going, I really, really want to be a deacon, I want you to think what you want in your church.

that's healthy and that's growing is you want an abundance of men who are qualified for office. That's the kind of man you want to be. And then you want to entrust the calling that God places on your life to him and to his time, right? It may be that you have men who are qualified that the church doesn't need to be officers at that point, and that's okay. That's okay. It's good to have qualified, helpful, godly men in a church and solid Christian families. And so I don't want you to think, Well, this is about deacons and I'm not a deacon. This is about men and I'm not a man. I want you to think this is what godly Christian men ought to be like. And we ought to want that for ourselves. We ought to want that for your husbands. You ought to want that for your sons. You ought to want your daughters to marry men like this. So our text this morning is 1 Timothy 3, verses 8-13. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word? This is the word of the Lord and is eternally true.

Deacons likewise must be men of dignity, not double-tongued or addicted to much wine, nor fond of sordid gain, but holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. These men must also first be tested, then let them serve as deacons if they are beyond reproach. Women must likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things. Deacons must be the husbands of only one wife. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. I know it's been a while since we've studied the deacons, but this is our fourth sermon and our final sermon on the qualifications for deacons, which means that we're down toward the end of the qualifications. We've gone through...

Verses 8 through 11, today our task is to focus largely on verses 12 and 13. And so verse 12 and 13 have to do with a deacon's home, with his house, with his family. And then verse 13 has to do with the reward, the reason, the benefit, the blessing that the deacons receive if they serve well. You would think if you asked a man to, we want you to do this work. It's going to be hard work. It's going to be difficult. It's going to require sacrifice of you. And if you said, and that's the end of it. We just want you to do this hard stuff. You'd understand a man saying, like Abram, woohoo, great, sign me up. When can I start? But in God's mercy and his kindness to us, as he lays out the work of the diaconate, at the very end, he gives us.

the blessing, the reward that those men would want. Now, some of you may look at that as we come to it, and you may say, well, I don't know if that's all that valuable. And some of you might look at it and go, that's what I would have. That's what I want. And for men who are going to be a deacon and to serve well in that office, they have to take hold of that reward and that promise from God and say, that is what I'm working for. I want it. We're going to come to that. But first, we're going to start with verse 12.

It starts out by saying deacons must be the husbands of only one wife. And this is something that was required also of elders. And so if you've been here back into probably the late summer, early fall when we were doing the elders, you remember that we talked about this at some length. We had a whole sermon on it. And so here it shows up again with the deacons. And so I want us to... to give our attention to it again. And it may seem strange that so much of the qualifications between elders and deacons, there's quite a bit of overlap. And this is one of those places we find overlap. And so you wonder, why didn't Paul just say, officers ought to be like this? But he took the time to say, elders need to be the husband of one wife, and deacons need to be the husband of one wife. The repetition, I'm convinced, of these qualifications is supposed to impress upon us the importance of these qualifications.

So what does it mean to be the husband of one wife? Well, at this time and in this particular context, it would have meant that a man didn't have more than one wife, meaning he was not a polygamist. Now, in our day, we might think, well, that's a strange thing to say. That's not legal in our country. And I'd say, you're right. It's not legal in our country. But I'm convinced that within most of our lifetimes, you're going to have a question of, is that your only wife? And people are going to ask it with a straight face and it's going to be a sincere question. And that part of your Christian testimony is going to be saying, yes, and that's because I love God and because his design is that not only one man and one woman instead of one man and one man, but one man and just one woman will be a Christian testimony. And so it's important that when we read this, we say this is what must be true of our

the men who lead us and keep watch over our souls. They have to be committed to living according to God's word and according to his truth. And you might think, well, there's all this pressure and if everyone's doing it, what's the big problem? And then say, the problem is God said no. That's the problem. And if you need a bigger problem than that, then I don't have one for you. Because there isn't a bigger problem. And so first, the husband, he must be a husband of only one wife. It means that he cannot have More than one wife. It's profound. The word in Greek literally means, could be translated into meaning a one-woman man. That his heart and his affection, his desires and his commitments are to just one woman. Can't have more than one wife. What else does it mean? Well, it means that he ought not to be in the habit of changing out one wife for another.

You actually have to consider the question of divorce, and that's a hard issue to talk about. I would say generally, though, that divorce men are not generally the kind of men you want leading the church. And I realize that can be a bit of a difficult thing to say, because 50% of divorces in the church and outside of the church end in divorce now. And so to say that men who lead the church ought not to be divorced, that it is a question that should be asked. you're ruling out half of the population of men just from the get-go. These men, you have to address this issue with them. Now, it's been our practice. None of our officers at this point have, we've not had to face this issue yet, but inevitably in the course of our life as a church, this question will arise at some point. And it's a question that as a church we're committed to asking.

What is your past? Have you been married before? What were the circumstances of your marriage? What were the circumstances of your divorce? And considering the answers to those questions in light of whether or not that man ought to become an officer. And we have to be very careful with this because there's this welling up inside of us when that sort of question gets asked of, that's not fair for you to pry into somebody's life that way and to make judgments about them based on their past and what they've done. And I say, there's going to come a day. when all of the secrets of our hearts are going to be revealed and laid bare for all to see. And we benefit in this life to live in the full knowledge of that and to not organize our lives in such a way as to say, no, my life is private and no one has any right to know about it. We do harm to our souls and we put them in danger if we say, no, my privacy is my privacy and no one will ever know about the details of my life. I can tell you that if we had a man,

who seemed otherwise qualified for office. And we said, so have you been married before? And he said, what's that have to do with it? He's probably not going to make it through the rest of that interview with flying colors because it actually does matter. It does say something about the man. You would say, well, what were the circumstances of your marriage? What were the circumstances of your divorce? Where were you at spiritually? What do you think about it now? And if he's defensive and thinking, this is none of your business, I think you aren't going to make it as an officer. Because he has to know that the secrets of his heart are all going to be revealed. And that if God calls him to serve as an officer in the church, he's going to have to lead and he can't have hidden things in his life. And this is very common in the church, that things that go on in our past are less pleasant.

experiences in our life are just hidden. Now, I'm not arguing that they should just be made public for everyone to know all of the time. But there is a time and a place when our pasts need to be brought up for review. And this is one of them. When a man's coming under consideration for office, what does it mean that he be the husband of one wife? Well, we do absolutely need to know if he's been divorced. And there will be men who have been divorced and we say the circumstances of your divorce are such that you're not fit for office. You don't meet this requirement.

There may also be times when we find man who has been divorced and the circumstances of his divorce are such that we would consider putting him up for office. But I can tell you that if we do that as a church, you all will be made known of his circumstance. We're not going to hide, oh, he's divorced, but we're not going to tell you. Because then what happens when you find out in five years? Why didn't they tell us? What else haven't they told us? We just want to avoid all of that. So transparency, right? You'll all know. And you'll be free to ask questions such as you have them. So the man can't be a polygamist. The question of whether he's been divorced is a real question. Now, if you were here when we preached on this passage about elders and that they'd be the husband of one wife, the question of singleness came up. Can a single man serve his office? Because it says he's supposed to be the husband of one wife. So on the one hand, you could say not more than one wife. And on the other hand, you could say at least one.

He needs to be married. Does this require that a man be married? And I said, well, I think there's a real good, I think marriage is a very good test of a man's character and competence. I think it's very helpful when men are married. And yet you have both Paul and Jesus not married. And so I don't think we can lay down a hard rule and say the man must in every circumstance be married. Though we'd be less inclined to put a man forward who is single. Now here's a question for you. When I asked about a single man, when we were preaching on this about elders, and I said, if you had a single man who was otherwise apparently qualified, but he wasn't married, would it raise a flag in your head? And you guys said, yeah. And I said, what flag? And you said, well, is there something wrong with him that's not apparent? Like, does he have a third eyeball hidden under his ball cap or something?

And I said, you're right. That's a good general suspicion. Now, is there a good particular suspicion? And at that point, everyone kind of went, I don't know. And I said, there's a very particular suspicion that should be asked of single men. And what I said was, you ought to ask if they're homosexual. And all of you guys went, and all the air went out of the room. Now, some of you went, because you thought, that is not an appropriate question to ask. That will be uncomfortable. And I say, Yeah, I know. It's kind of my job. But some of you went, because you thought, why didn't I think of that? And that's a good question for those of you who had that. Why didn't you think of that? And what I would contend is the reason you didn't think of it is because you've been trained not to think of it. You've been trained to pass over that in your mind as being an issue. And what I want to spend some time now talking about is the nature of that issue. It is an issue. So let me

explain this in a couple of different ways. If we had a single man, would you want to know if he had a pornography addiction? Oh yeah. And you'd want to know, and if he did, you'd say, I don't think that guy's fit. I think he actually doesn't meet this qualification. And all of us would say, that's a good thing to ask. We don't want men who are full of sexual debauchery leading us. And I say, right, right. So now as Christians, what we have to do is come to the presumption. of this requirement. What is presumed by a deacon or an elder being the husband of one wife? What's presumed about him? Anyone want to guess? Anyone willing to say it? Sexual purity, yes. He has heterosexual desires. Can we say it? Can you hear it? You have to hear it. If a man is single and seemingly otherwise qualified for office, the minimum bar that that man must possess is a desire to get married to a woman. Now I can tell you that in my preparations for this, no commentaries talk about this at all. Why? Because it wasn't the battle of their day. It wasn't the fight of their day. It wasn't where the culture was putting pressure. If you were to read Calvin on this text, he goes on and on and on about how the Roman Catholic Church has eviscerated the office of deacon from anything biblical. And he just goes on and on and on about it.

makes fun of them at length, mocks them for their practice of what they have deacons. He calls them comedians. They dress up in all their funny garbs and they walk through the church. They're the little sycophants of the priests. This is what he calls them. That was the battle of his day. And so he spends a good bit of time talking about that because that's what his people were facing. We're not facing that. What we're facing is the question of whether or not sexual desires matter. And so we have to look at them and say, What does God's word say? And what it says here in terms of office is that the men ought to be the husband of one wife, which presumes that they have heterosexual desires. And I know where some of your minds are going, and you're like, well, but what if they repent? And I say, we'll come to that. But first, let's establish the rule before we talk about the outworking of it, okay? This text requires that he be the husband of one wife, not of one partner, not of one spiritual friend.

And certainly not of one husband. He's to be the husband of one wife. Now, depending on how abreast of the conflict in the society you are, you may think that this is, yeah, this is pretty normal. Like, yeah, that makes sense. Or you might be like, ah, can you be quiet? You're going to get us in trouble. You're going to get yourself in trouble. No one's going to come to our church if you say this. And what I want you to know is that there's real pressure on the most, conservative Bible-believing groups of Christians in our day to flinch, to blink real hard at this point, and to miss it. So we can't, and we won't, okay? When I say spiritual friend, how many of you are familiar with this term? I bet a third of you, maybe a quarter of you. This is what's being put forward by conservative Christian evangelicals as what to do with those who are tempted.

with same-sex attraction, is that as long as they don't act on their desires, that's okay. That as long as they don't copulate, as long as their body parts don't come together, that's all right. Obviously they can't get married, but they can have friends, live in partners. And you should be sitting here going, I don't think, I think when two people who are attracted to each other, whether it's a righteous attraction or a... or a perverse attraction. I know what happens when two people who are attracted together spend a bunch of time together alone. And it's not what would be described as friendship. And this is the hard blink of our day with regard to this issue. You won't look at it. You blink at it. We go, huh? Well, here's the way. And I say, we can't do that. We can't do it. God's intention for those who rule over the church, but remember, not just those who rule over the church.

his people, most especially those who rule over the church, is that they would tell the truth about God. And there's something of a lie in homosexuality. It's not God's design. It's not his intention. It's not what pleases him. And he is not indifferent about it. And so we have to be mindful of what God says. And we have to submit ourselves to what God says. And in some ways, it's easy for me to say it here because none of you have stood up and started yelling at me or cursing at me or storming out of here. And so that makes it easy enough for me to say it. And I know some of you are upset with me, but that's all right. I care more about your souls than your approval, and you have to know what God says. And so I have it easy comparatively because I can stand up here and say it to you, and half of you are going, thanks for saying that.

But if you go out into your workplace and you say something like what I just said, the cost is very high. In many ways, the cost is higher for you than it is for me to believe what God's Word says because I get to say it here. Nevertheless, homosexual desires are not simply not God's best for you. They're a perversion. They're an abomination. They are not the sort of men that you want leading you. They're corrupting. And you might think, what if they repent? And I say, good. We should want them to repent. Amen? We should want them to repent. Now, before we just go, what is repentance? Slow down. What does repentance look like? And you think, man, you're from one hard question to another, and this isn't any fun. And I say, I know. I know. What is repentance? Let's set aside.

Let's set aside homosexuality and let's just ask about a heterosexual man. What is repentance? Do you want a man who's full of lustful thoughts for women leading you? A man who you think might be looking at your wife when she's not paying attention? Do you want that kind of man being your partner? Oh, we're all like, no, no, we don't want that. And I say, oh, so you actually care what goes on in his head. You actually want the judgment to reach of that man's character and his faith to reach into what he thinks. And you want to know, do you fight at that point?

Because I'm not willing for you to just not go see prostitutes or commit adultery. I want you to be pure. So I care what you think about and I care what you're attracted to and I care where your heart's at and what your mind wanders to. It matters to me. And I say one of the difficulties of our day, one of the things that's most hard is that we've taken particular sins and we've set them in a category and we've isolated them and treated them as though they're special. And there's a way in which they're different from other sins. And yet there's a way in which they're just the same. And we as God's people would do better to say, you're just a sinner. It's just sin. It's wrong. It doesn't please God. And you will face God's judgment for it. Just like I will for all of the sins that I commit. It's not special. It's not protected. It is particularly perverse. And Jesus can save you from it. Okay? And so,

part of what I want to do this morning is to take a sin that's supposed to be off limits and say, well, there's nothing that can be done for them. And I say, if there's nothing that can be done for them, then there's nothing that can be done for you. Okay? It's not some special sin that is untouchable. It is a sin. And it is possible for Jesus to heal them of it, to bring them to repentance for it, and to give them strength to fight against it, just like you and I have to do every single day if we call ourselves Christians. Okay? So, our desires matter. And if we want to see repentance, which is what we want to see of all of the men who rule over us, because not one of them is perfect. Not one of them is perfect. Calvin said he could have given you angels to preach to you. He could have sent perfect beings from heaven to rule over your spiritual well-being, but it was God's design to humble you, to give you sinful men to rule over you. And yet here he sets forth...

qualifications for those sinful men. And you think, man, this is just a mire of difficulty. And I say, you're right. And this is how God brings glory to himself. That he gives sinful men the responsibility and the love to care for his sheep, his people, his children. And those men have to be of a certain character. So is a man, if that's the sort of sin he's tempted by, is he just disqualified from office? What do you want me to say? You want me to say yes, then we don't have to think about it anymore? You want me to say no, so that we don't have to wrestle through it? And I say, you know, it's the work you do with every other sin in a man's life. You judge their repentance. So am I saying that there's no possibility for this type of a sinner to hold office in the church? No, I'm not saying that. But I am saying that his repentance would have to be judged. And the repentance...

would be judged to the extent in his life that it would be judged in my life, in my own sins, in your own sins, even as they pertain to your sexual temptations. They have to be judged. And if a man came and said, well, I won't go out and I won't meet men at bars and I won't go home with them. I won't live with them. But my desires are such as they are. And I've made peace with that. I'm just going to have these desires until I die. I'd say no to the man. And I wouldn't have a hard time saying no to him. Because if I said that about my sins, you'd all throw me out on my ear. And you should. What would repentance look like for a man tempted toward homosexuality? Here's one of the things that's very uncomfortable. I want you to know. It's not unreasonable to ask if he can marry. And maybe even to really push him and encourage him to get married. And you go, well, how's he going to do that? He doesn't attract it to women. And I say, you've believed the lies if you think that homosexual men don't find women attractive.

It's not true. It is true of a very small percentage of them. And those men shouldn't get married because they're not able to fulfill their conjugal duties as a husband. They also shouldn't be pastors because there's something broken in them. There's something very messed up that they need help with, that they can still be saved, but they should not be the people, they should not be leading. But the truth is, if you were to bore into the data about homosexual temptation in men, the vast majority of men who are tempted homosexually can still find women and do still find women attractive and would be able to fulfill their conjugal duties as a husband. So it may be that you would say to a man who really wants to fight and to be done with this, be pure, fight your temptations, and find a wife.

Now you might think, well, what about the poor woman? You'd have a woman marry a man like this? And I think, come sit in premarital counseling with me and talk to the heterosexual couples and talk about their sexual pasts and see if you would have them marry any of the people you know. This is the trouble we have. And we always in our minds have this sort of sin partitioned off as though it's just untouchable and special, and I want you to know it's not. It's just not. They're the kind of people, especially Jesus, would have spent time with. And we ought to. calling them to repentance and to faith in Jesus, just like we do, just like we need. They're not some people who are beyond the reach and the hope and the power of God. But if we believe that they are, then we've joined with their condemnation and saying, there's no hope for you in this world. There's hope for me because I'm not tempted by the kind of sins you are, but too bad for you. If that's the kind of God you serve, then I say, you don't know Jesus Christ. You just don't know him.

No sin has befallen to you except that which is common to man. There are no special sins. We could say all the same stuff about racism. Another hot button issue in our society. It's not what shows up in our text. Oh, white people will just be forever racist. No. And black people are racist too. It's kind of a problem of us. We don't tend to like anybody who's not like us. And so if I can get you simply to see that there is an assumption. about a man's desire in this qualification, and that those men who are tempted otherwise than is natural, that their sin is salvageable, that the men who struggle in those ways are savable, then you will have come a long way. And that would be good. Because that's going to be the first step in you actually loving people who are tempted in ways that you're not. We have to be careful. There's so much talk of homosexuality LGBTQ and all of these things, that you would be inclined to think that there's a lot of people who are afflicted or find themselves with these temptations. And I'd say to you, that in itself is a lie. If we were incredibly generous with the percentage of the American population that is actually tempted at any given point, not throughout their whole life, but at any given point, with all of these sorts of sexual perversions together,

If we were really generous, we would set it at just under 10%. And one of the things we have to learn in our own lives is the likelihood of something and how we ought to respond based on likelihood. If I told you that you had a 50% chance of dying tomorrow, and if you gave me a million dollars, you wouldn't die tomorrow. You'd probably be pretty inclined to give me the money to find it, right? If I told you that there was a 1 in 10 million chance that you were going to die tomorrow, but if you gave me a million dollars, I can guarantee you wouldn't, would you be as likely to give me the money? You all say, no, that would be stupid. I say, okay, what if it was 1%? Oh, what if it was 2%? What if it was 5%? What if you had a 2% chance of dying from the flu? Would you give me a million dollars if I could promise you wouldn't?

You'd be like, that's a lot of money. It's only 2%. I know it's my life, but this is what you should be thinking. You should be running some sort of a cost-benefit analysis in your mind and being like, at some point, the risk is so low that we don't order our lives around this small percentage, this small danger. Because what we don't want to do is sacrifice the normal way of life on the altar of the abnormal. the things that are very unlikely, very rare to happen. The same thing is true when you come to sexuality. You need to see that less than 10% of the population, if you include all of the LGBTQ+, all of it, it's less than 10% of our entire population. Even though it's talked about quite a bit, even though there's lots and lots and lots of pressure to accommodate, We are being asked to accommodate an extreme minority. This is what you should say when there's a question of transgenders being able to use the bathrooms. You'd say, no, the vast, vast, vast majority of children don't have this problem, and we will not compromise the safety of the vast majority for the extreme minority. You say, well, what about the extreme minority? I say, well, then just put in a single-stall bathroom for them.

if you're really concerned about it and you don't want them to have to go into the other bathroom and have trouble, that's a reasonable solution. But don't put them in a bathroom they don't belong in because you're endangering the masses for the sake of the few. So we have to learn to think this way as Christians. And we have to learn to think this way when it comes to the sexual temptations that people, the people that they face. You're inclined to think, this is a big, huge, growing problem. And I say the statistics don't support that. They don't. Historically, the homosexual population in America has been 3% or less for decades and decades and decades. It has not grown. It has not changed. You'll have people who will pop into it and say, I'm tempted that way. And then a year later, they're not. John's seen this firsthand. Some of the people that hate him and got him fired aren't transgender anymore. But here he is, lost his job for it. You have to learn what the truth is.

Because that's the first step in you being able to love people. Now, what's that have to do with deacons? We've gone far afield. Well, I think it's necessary that we go far afield to get our heads screwed on straight. When we talked about this as elders and everyone kind of went, when I brought up the question of whether they're being homosexual, I was glad that you were shocked. That you were like, why didn't I say, what? Because I want you to think biblically. I want you to ask normal questions. Some of you guys are familiar with like, What people would call gaydar. Like you just have this sense like something's wrong. And some of us are being like, you shouldn't say that. And some of you are like, you shouldn't talk about that. And I'm saying, that's God's kindness to you that you have a sense when something's wrong. Something's not as it should be. And I want that turned on in you as Christians. And not for the sake of you going, boo, hiss, you terrible person, get out of here. Not for that. That's what you do when you don't know what else to do. What I want you to do is be able to say something's wrong.

that Jesus can fix. Come over here. Let's talk. But that only comes from you having your head screwed on straight. In this context, it would be especially difficult. Could you imagine if we as a church put forward a man who was late in the loafers and his whole affect was kind of soft and you were kind of like, I don't know. I mean, he's a nice guy and I like him, but I don't know if I trust him to keep... I don't know. You just have kind of a feeling. Could you imagine you being put as a congregation in that position? That'd be awful, wouldn't it? We're trying to protect you from it, and all I'm trying to do is tell you how and why we would protect you from it. And so if there's a man who's tempted that way, and if his repentance is true, then I see no reason for him not to be able to be in office. Having said that, I'll tell you, I think it would be exceedingly rare that you would have that circumstance. When I talked about divorce, we were all like, yeah, that's a real big issue.

Yeah, no, there should be a really high bar for men who've had that sort of trouble in their past. And I say, yeah, I know. So don't be scandalized, please, if I say the same thing about men who are tempted to homosexuality. There's a pretty high bar for them. Because we want the men who lead us and who keep watch over our souls and who serve us to be the best men. So that's a husband of one wife. Deacons also have to be good managers of their children and their households. Again, there's a presumption here in children and households of taking on responsibility. That's what children in the household are. You tell people, when you buy a house, you're buying work. When you have kids, you're signing up for sleepless nights. Do it. Sign up for it. It's good and it's worth it. Do both of those things. But what you want to see in those things is a man who's willing to take on responsibility. And there's always issues with this. If you were to talk about having children, it's a presumption that they have children. They have to be married and have children. And I say,

The Lord opens and closes wombs and you'll find that some people haven't been given that blessing. And it's a grief to them, both to the husband and to the wife. And it's the sort of nakedness in a family that ought to be covered and not just exposed for ridicule because it's a painful thing. If you were in Sunday school, I read to you Proverbs 30, 15, and 16. And one of the things that's never satisfied is what? A barren womb. It's a constant pain. And so my point in bringing this up is not to exacerbate the pain of those whom God has chosen in his will not to give children to, but rather to say, you want men who are willing to take on responsibility and who love children and who trust God to give them children in his time and in his way. And you want to bear with them in their weakness because it is a real burden.

But if, on the other hand, you had a man or a couple who had chosen on purpose, no, we won't have children, we have other intentions for our lives, and children are seen as a hindrance to that, not the kind of guy you want to be a deacon. Because if he's not willing to take on responsibility in his own personal life, much less will he be willing to take you on and care for you. So you want men who take on the responsibility, as they're able, of children and households. And so deacons, similar to elders, are held to a very high standard. We've looked at just the last couple of requirements for them. And then we have verse 13, which is the end of this passage, and it says this, Now one of the things you'll notice is that that's very vague. What does it mean? I'm not going to take a bunch of time telling you what it means because it's not specific. But I will say this.

Those who've served well as deacons will obtain for themselves a high standing. What does it mean? It means simply this. Men who are faithful, people realize it and they trust them and they honor them and they respect them more. The opposite is true as well. You could rewrite this verse in the opposite and you say, those who have not served well as deacons will not obtain for themselves a high standing or will obtain for themselves a low standing. Now, have you ever known a man who, through his behavior and his fruits, at work or at home or a relative or whatever, who has gained for himself a low standing? Bet you do. And that's what's going on here. Men who've served well as deacons, who have loved the church of Jesus Christ, who have seen and attended to her needs, will have the love and the affection and the support and the honor and the respect of the people around them. That's what they'll have. Even though a deacon's work largely is something that's...

done behind closed doors because of the nature of their work, they will have the love and the affection of the people that they care for. They'll obtain for themselves a high standing and great confidence. Deacons, what this means is that deacons will mature in their faith. The closer you get to God's work in people's lives, the more amazing it is. That's one of the greatest benefits of being a pastor or an elder is that you get to see up close and personal what goes on in people's lives and how God works in them. Ways that are not known to everybody because it's probably in a lot of cases not appropriate for it to be known to everybody. But those who are closest to it get to see the kindness of God to people and it strengthens their faith. That's why one of the things that I tell people and I've heard other pastors say is one of the sweetest things that a pastor can have is to hear the repentance and the confessions of sin of their people.

It's one of the sweetest things they can hear. Why? Because that's the work of God in their life. That's sweet. It's often painful and usually messy, but it's very sweet. And so deacons, because of the nature of their work in helping the poor, could you imagine being one of the deacons in Acts 6 having to go and feed all of the widows who were upset about food? And you got to be the person who came and who said, no, this is for you. God bless you. It would strengthen your faith. You would have great confidence in the mercy and kindness of God to see those women, having been cared for, then come to peace with each other. They'd grow in their faith. They'd have confidence in the work and in the mercy and in the grace of Jesus Christ. That's what's held out to deacons as a reward, to see God work intimately, to be a part of it. And they get to see it if they serve well. And it's a blessing to them, and it's a blessing to us. So we have to pray for our deacons, that they meet these qualifications.

that they're faithful in them, that they persevere in the work, and that God raises up more men who are qualified, both for office as deacons and as elders, and as pastors. This ought to be our heart's desire. It's what we need. And when I say we, I don't just mean our church. I'm saying this is what God's people need. Any good faithful men who are willing to love God's people. Let's pray.