Disciples and Decision Making in the Church. Acts 6:1
We move into a new chapter but it is not
really a new section in Acts. It is the conclusion, though, of the previous
section and really serves as a transition from the focus in
We learn a number of important things as
we go through these next seven verses. For example, we see an emphasis on
problem-solving here. There are some in the congregation who are complaining. They
didn’t really have a just cause but they had taken offence and there really was
something of a problem there that had to be dealt with, so we will see
something about the problem-solving technique of the apostles.
One or two things to point out.
We don’t see the twelve going to prayer prior to making this decision. In light
of verse four which said that they needed to give themselves to prayer and the
ministry of the Word it isn’t fair to say they didn’t pray about it. They did
pray about it but even though this is an era when direct revelation still took
place God was not giving them direct revelation to solve the problem. That sets
a pattern for all of us: God does not give us direct revelation to solve our
problems. He is not going to speak into our ear, He is
not going to give us a vibration or a feeling that we are making the right
decision. The issue is to take what we know of the Word of God, pray about it,
and then apply the Word of God to the best of our ability in the circumstances
and situations. That is how we develop wisdom. Wisdom comes from application.
That is what they do here. They go through a process where they bring the
believers together and explain the problem and say it is a priority issue. The
priority of the apostles is the ministry of the Word and prayer but the church
has grown so rapidly and there are so many people who have a need that they
just can’t cover all the bases, so they need to begin to expand the
administration.
The appointment of these seven is not the appointment
of the first deacons. The noun “deacon” [diakonos/diakonoj]
is not found here. The verb dikoneo
[diakonew]
which means to serve is found here but this isn’t the appointment of seven deacons. It is
a sort of prototype of what will develop later on in terms of the
administration of the church where there are two primary leadership groups, one
of which focuses on the ministry of the Word and prayer and one that focuses on
the administrative responsibilities of a local congregation. The group that focuses
on the ministry of the Word and prayer is the pastor or pasters—depending on
the size of the congregation—and the group that focuses on the administration
of the logistical details of the congregation will be known as deacons. How
that works really does vary from congregation to congregation, and the
Scriptures give us a narrow enough view for us to understand the division of labor within a congregation but a broad enough view to
where it can be applied by different groups of Christians and organizations
within different cultures. We have a culture in the United States and western
Europe that was heavily influenced by the organization of a corporation as that
developed coming out of the industrial revolution and going into the late 19th
century where was developed something that ran a corporation called a board.
That board would meet periodically and discuss the business of the corporation
and in this discussion they would set policy and decisions. They would meet on
a regular basis and keep minutes, appoint a chairman of the board. We don’t
have that in Scripture. That is how our culture from Scriptural concepts and
organized them.
In the early church we think the way they
did it was there were pastors and when there were physical needs within a congregation
the pastor appointed different men to be responsible for those areas. They
didn’t have a monthly board meeting, there wasn’t a
chairman of the board; that was all a late 19th century corporate
idea. It is not that it is wrong, it is just that it is
how our culture adapted the principles from Scripture to the way we organize
and run a church. Christians in
It is interesting that apparently the
apostles initially tried to do it all. They did the teaching of the Word,
prayer, and they were also involved in the distribution of food and necessities
to the widows in this new entity, the church. One day the apostles have this
meeting described here in chapter six and they said they were going to focus on
the prayer and teaching the Word and the ones who are going to distribute the
food and come knocking on your door to make sure you are being taken care of
are going to be these seven men. We wonder how many of those widows said they
didn’t want Philip, they didn’t want Prochorus; they
want John, they want Peter, they’re the apostles. We make fun of this because
this is how so many churches operate today. They put all of this type of responsibility—hospital
visitation, home visitation, whatever it might be—on the pastoral staff whose
responsibility should be teaching the Word and prayer, and others should have
the delegated responsibility to do hospital visits or ministry in other areas.
It is tough because there are certain denominations which have these kinds of
long traditions so embedded in their culture that it puts an unrealistic
expectation upon the pastor, and it is not a biblical expectation.
What is laid out here in chapter six is
just more of a prototype. As we go through Acts we will see as time went by
from the founding of the church in AD 33 up to the
time the book closes out around 62 or 63 that in that time there is more of a
refinement. There is more revelation given to specifically the apostle Paul in
terms of organization and administration of a local church but is starts here.
There is not an overt revelation from God as to how they ought to solve this problem
but we see the hand of God the Holy Spirit working behind the scenes. And that
is exactly how problem-solving should take place in a believer’s life. We don’t
face a problem and say, Lord tell me what I should do
here. He has already given us everything we need to know to solve any problem
that is in our life. What we need to pray for is wisdom and how we can endure
(James 1:8), and we need to pray that we might be faithful and endure in the
midst of that trial or particular testing. But God is not going to whisper in
our ear and tell us what the answer is. He says the test is for us to take what
we know and apply it to the circumstances, and in and through that behind the
scenes God the Holy Spirit is often working. We don’t sense it overtly, it is a
covert thing that is not obvious to us but when we look back on those
circumstances often we see that the Holy Spirit was really guiding us.
We also see here the involvement of the
congregation in making the decisions. When the apostles come forward and say
here is the plan that we have decided on and present it to the congregation we
are told in verse 5 NASB “The statement found approval with the
whole congregation; and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy
Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor,
Timon, Parmenas and
Nicolas, a proselyte from Antioch.” There is a question about “they chose.” Who
is the “they”? The nearest antecedent, the nearest noun that the plural “they”
would refer to is the noun “multitude.” So the best answer here is that the
multitude chose these men. Verse 6 reinforces this: “And these they
brought before the apostles…” This has to be the congregation. “…and after
praying, they [the apostles] laid their hands on them.” Laying hands on them was
an act of identification; it was a stamp of approval. They would be going forth
as an extension of the apostolic ministry. This is really important because in
2 Corinthians
All the way through to the first
missionary journey with Paul the major emphasis is that everything that happens
occurs under the authority of the body of the apostles in
This laying on of hands from the apostles
indicates an extremely close connection with the seven that they are an
extension and are the assistants to the apostles. So what they are doing in a
much more real sense than other assistants later on is they are carrying out and
identifying with the direct apostolic ministry and authority. Then in verse
seven Luke tells us that the Word of God spread. They go through an
organizational shift and this enhances their ministry, and the Word of God spreads.
The other thing to notice here is that two
other times Luke comes along and says something about the Word of God spreading.
The Word of God is the real change agent along with the Holy Spirit. It is not
their methodology. The Bible doesn’t emphasize the technique as the means by
which the church grows; it is the content of the gospel and the Holy Spirit. It
is the Word of God that causes growth. We live in an age today where as a
result of corporate expansions, salesmanship, many of the tools that are used
to build corporations and large businesses, are thought by many people that if
we just sort of baptize those techniques and bring them into the church they
can build a huge organization. Yes, they can. Those techniques are tried and
true but their products are the flesh, not the Holy Spirit.
An ordination pastor once said, “Always
remember that anybody with brains and energy can build a huge organization, but
that doesn’t mean God the Holy Spirit has anything to do with it.” There may be
a church of 25 people and God the Holy Spirit may be more involved with those
25 people than He is involved with any large church with 3000, 10,000 or 20,000.
That is the truth, and we have lost sight of it today because we have been so
infected with numbers and quantification as the standard for measuring success.
In 1 Corinthians 4:2 Paul says, NASB “In this case, moreover, it is
required of stewards that one be found trustworthy [faithful].” It’s not that
he have so many converts in a year, perform so many baptisms, but that he is
found faithful—faithful in ministering to the congregation through the teaching
of the Word. So we can see there are a number of important doctrines, key ideas
and topics that are embedded within these seven verses.
Acts 6:1 NASB “Now at this time
while the disciples were increasing {in number,} a complaint arose on the part
of the Hellenistic {Jews} against the {native} Hebrews, because their widows
were being overlooked in the daily serving {of food.}” The verse begins “Now at
this time” or “In those days.” This indicates a direct connection between the
events in chapter six and the events we have just seen in chapter five. In
Teaching is a term that relates to
explanation and instruction. Preaching is not what many people today think of
as preaching. Today the concept of preaching has been redefined in terms of a
rhetorical style, it is not what the Bible talks about
in terms of preaching. The verb for preaching is kerusso [khrussw] which means simply to announce something,
to proclaim something as true. It may very well include instruction and
explanation in the process of making the announcement or the proclamation. It
is not talking about a certain structure, a certain way to pace yourself through
the message, not about how to do three points in a poem, not talking about only
a 15-minute message because you don’t want to stress anybody’s attention spans.
These all go into modern homiletic theory today but this is not what the word “preaching”
meant. It wasn’t tied to a rhetorical style as it has become today. It was
closely tied though to the word “teaching,” which indicates explanation and
instruction. We have seen examples of that with Peter already as he went to the
Old Testament, quoted passages and showed how they were fulfilled by Jesus. That
was the point. As they were teaching and proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah they
were clearly showing how Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah were fulfilled
in Jesus.
So it was in “those days” right after that
trial where Gamaliel made the statement that if this
was not from God it would die out. Then we read the statement, “the disciples were increasing {in number}.” So it was a result
of the teaching of the Word of God that there was an expansion of the number of
Christians. The verse uses the phrase “the disciples.” It is important to
understand what this term means. It is a translation of the Greek noun mathetes [maqhthj]
which describes someone as a learner, a student, an apprentice, someone who
came to be taught by a specific teacher, a scholar or someone who followed a
respected teacher and was very closely identified with that teacher as Saul of
Tarsus was with Gamaliel. This is the meaning of the
word disciple. This is the first time in Acts that we see believers referred to
as disciples. The twelve are not referred to as disciples at any point prior to
this; they are apostles. There are numerous disciples. This word will now be
used 28 more times in 26 verses in the remainder of Acts, so it is a term that
is often applied to Christians.
The noun is used 28 times but the verb is
only used one time in Jesus’ parting instructions during the forty days between
the resurrection and the ascension. One of the things that is stated and
restated in each of the Gospels is Jesus’ parting commands to teach and to make
disciples. The one most commonly referred to is Matthew 28:19, 20 which is
called the great commission. NASB “Go therefore and make disciples
of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit,
Certain people we usually refer to as holding
to “Lordship salvation”—and a lot of times we just find that it is people who
are untaught or people who really haven’t understood the distinction between a
disciple and a Christian—think that becoming
a Christian is responding to Jesus’ challenges to become a disciple. A
disciple and a Christian are two different things. For a disciple teaching and
learning are at the very core of the meaning of a disciple. If you have a
disciple what do you always have with the disciple? The
master; the teacher. If there is a disciple there is always someone he
is learning from. In the Gospels where there is the mention of the word “disciple”
many times Jesus’ ministry was a ministry that focused on teaching, and we see
in a very broad sense that He teaches the multitudes. This is what He did in
the first two to two and a half years of His ministry. Matthew
Not all believers became disciples and not
all disciples were believers. The terms are not interchangeable. But there is a
second level of the word “disciple” which does refer to someone who was a
believer. This is seen in John 2:11 NASB “This beginning of {His}
signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested
His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.” This is a reference to Peter,
James and John and they are believing that Jesus is
the Messiah. So in this verse a disciple was a believer. As we read through the
Gospels we find that there are over 250 references made to disciples. We can’t read
through the ministry of Jesus Christ without recognizing that He wasn’t just
limiting His message to getting people saved. He was calling people to a commitment
in terms of their spiritual life. The normative position is for people to trust
in Christ as savior and then be completely committed
to growing to spiritual maturity. That is what God expects. It is not a
condition for salvation. Discipleship was earned; it was post salvation spiritual
growth. These ideas have to be kept distinct. Jesus was calling His disciples, especially
the twelve, to a higher level of commitment. And that is true for every one of
us. God doesn’t say, I just want you to be saved. He
wants every believer to pursue spiritual maturity. The highest will of God is
for every believer to achieve spiritual maturity and to glorify Him to the
maximum. But that is not what is required in order to be justified,
it is what is required to be a disciple in the fullest sense of the word.
We see a hint of this again in John 6.
Jesus is ministering to a large crowd, it is the time He gives the discourse
out by the
John 6:67 NASB “So Jesus said
to the twelve, ‘You do not want to go away also, do you?’ [68]
Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go?
You have words of eternal life.
So Jesus calls us to a higher level of
commitment, not for salvation but in terms of the spiritual life, to experience
everything that God has for us. But that is predicated upon our spiritual
growth and spiritual maturity.
Another passage that relates to this is
Matthew 11:28-30 NASB “Come to Me, all who
are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
In Acts 6:1, “the number of the disciples.” In this sense it is talking generally believers who are saved and justified but it includes a huge number, some of whom want to learn and are devoted to the teaching of the apostles, but whether they hang in there or not has yet to be determined.
So there was a large group of believers and now there was
an administrative problem. It is tough for twelve men to manage and administer
the needs of 25-30,000 – especially when there is a large
number of widows in the congregation and have needs that need to be
taken care of. The responsibility of the church in relation to widows is an
extremely significant one. But the problem here was between those who were
called Hebrews and those who were called Hellenists. The Hellenists were Greek
speaking Jews rather than Aramaic speaking Jews. But the term “Hebrews” as it
is used here in 6:1 is rarely ever used to refer to a language group, so that
is not the best solution. The second solution is that the Greeks related to
Gentile proselytes to Judaism as opposed to those who were ethnic Jews who had
converted to Christ. The list in 6:5 of the deacons
gives Greek names but most Jews had a Greek name and an Aramaic name so that
doesn’t mean anything. They were probably referred to by their Greek name
because they were going to be ministering to the Hellenist widows, so that would
be a more comfortable environment to be calling them by their Greek name. Another
option is that these were Jews from the diaspora who
were living in
The Hebrews would refer to the Jews who were native born
to
The twelve exercise real initiative and leadership here
in solving the problem. They come up with a solution and they will summon the
multitude to take care of it.