seekeroftruth
Well-Known Member
Acts 6:1 In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. 2 So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. 3 Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them 4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”
5 This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. 6 They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.
7 So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.
Since I'm biased about corruption in the church, and it appears these verses address it.... I went right to the commentary this morning. So, according to the commentary, this is about corruption of the church and how the leaders dealt with it.
We can say that with Acts 5 and 6, the good old days were over for the earliest Christians. They now had to deal with internal corruption, and now disputes and potential divisions. How they dealt with those things made all the difference.
The commentary goes on to explain.
The Hebrews were those Jews more inclined to embrace Jewish culture and were mostly from Judea. The Hellenists were those Jews more inclined to embrace Greek culture and mostly were from the Diaspora (from all over the Roman Empire).
i. To oversimplify, Hebrews tended to regard Hellenists as unspiritual compromisers with Greek culture, and Hellenists regarded Hebrews as holier-than-thou traditionalists. There was already a natural suspicion between the two groups, and Satan tried to take advantage of that standing suspicion.
ii. It’s important to remember that though the titles Hebrews and Hellenists are used, these were Christians, followers of Jesus. They were all from a Jewish background, but they had all embraced Jesus as their Messiah.
It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables: The apostles explained that they should remain faithful to their central calling, which was prayer and to the ministry of the word. It was wrong for them to spend their time administrating the practical needs of the widows.
This didn’t concern the actual serving of food and cleaning of dining tables for these widows. This speaks of handling the practical administration of the financial and practical details relevant to caring for the widows. “A ‘table’ at that time meant a place where a money changer did his collecting or exchanging of money. The deacons were elected to oversee the distribution of monies and provisions to the needy among the fellowship.”
Seek out from among you: The apostles (the twelve) spoke to the general group of believers (the multitude of the disciples) and pursued the solution with a lot of communication and input from among the people. They even asked those — probably especially those who felt wronged — to suggest men of good character to do this work.
i. This was a wonderful way to solve the problem. They didn’t throw the complainers out. They didn’t divide into two congregations. They didn’t shun the unhappy people. They didn’t form a committee and discuss the problem to death.
Whom we may appoint: The final decision rested with the apostles. They asked the congregation to nominate the men (seek out from among you), but the decision really rested with the apostles. This was not an exercise of congregational government, though the apostles wisely wanted and valued the input from the congregation.
OK then... The people picked Seven disciples to take over the financial administrative functions of the church. Peter wasn't going to hear about who got more food and whose land wasn't properly valued and who didn't sell off their land and who didn't care about the land. I feel like this is just a prelude to the next story in this Book.... So let me mention Stephen. Dr. Luke introduced him here as a Hellenistic Jew who Believed that Jesus was the Messiah. Stephen was one of the seven who were "elected" as a "deacon". He was one of those chosen to take care of the financial administrative functions of the church.
Anyway... this is about the choosing of deacons.
