What kind of church work is deacon service?

What kind of assembly work is deacon service?

W.E. Vine (Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words) states that "deacon servants" and "bondservants" are servile workers. From the way these words are used in Matthew 22:1-14," TARGET="_blank">Matthew 22:1-14, he further suggests that their description as "bondservants" indicates their relationship to their master, whereas "deacon servants" indicates their relationship to their work. In Matthew 22," TARGET="_blank">Matthew 22, the king’s bondservants (verses 3, 4, 6, 8, 10) represented their master, invited the guests, and received mistreatment that was actually directed against the king. In verse 13, the king gives his deacon servants the work of executing his judgement.

With that distinction in mind, we note in the epistles that administering funds (Romans 15:25, 31;" TARGET="_blank">Romans 15:25, 31; 2 Corinthians 8:4, 20; 9:12)," TARGET="_blank">2 Corinthians 8:4, 20; 9:12), preaching the gospel (1 Corinthians 3:3;" TARGET="_blank">1 Corinthians 3:3; 2 Corinthians 11:8;" TARGET="_blank">2 Corinthians 11:8; 1 Timothy 1:12)," TARGET="_blank">1 Timothy 1:12), and teaching believers (Ephesians 3:7;" TARGET="_blank">Ephesians 3:7;1 Timothy 4:6;" TARGET="_blank">1 Timothy 4:6; 1 Peter 4:10)" TARGET="_blank">1 Peter 4:10) are deacon work. In addition, Mark and Onesimus (2 Timothy 4:11;" TARGET="_blank">2 Timothy 4:11; Philemon 13)" TARGET="_blank">Philemon 13) gave personal deacon care. Phebe performed some deacon work, probably personal care consistent with a sister’s role.

Deacon service in the assembly can therefore be personal. Some, like the house of Stephanus, addict themselves to serving the saints as deacons (1 Corinthians 16:15)." TARGET="_blank">1 Corinthians 16:15). They labored and helped the apostle with his work (verse 16). Hospitality and other "support work" in spreading the gospel is deacon work. Assembly believers who preach the gospel, minister the Word to other believers, and who open or teach in Bible Readings serve as deacons. Someone administering special funds for the assembly likewise serves as a deacon. Overseers, however, guide the assembly (Hebrews 13:7, 17, 24)" TARGET="_blank">Hebrews 13:7, 17, 24) in distributing funds.

D. Oliver
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Do overseers receive to or put away from the assembly?

Do overseers receive to or put away from the assembly?

Answering this may be repetitious, but necessary. While a meeting of overseers an assembly meeting (Acts 20:1 15:6)," TARGET="_blank">Acts 20:1 15:6), the elders do not act on behalf of the assembly. The "church of the living God," not the elder is the House of God (1 Timothy 3:15)." TARGET="_blank">1 Timothy 3:15). The elders are the leaders (Romans 12:8;" TARGET="_blank">Romans 12:8; 1 Thessalonians 5:12;" TARGET="_blank">1 Thessalonians 5:12; 1 Timothy 5:17;" TARGET="_blank">1 Timothy 5:17; "rule means "lead," W. E. Vine) are guides (Hebrews 13:7,17,24," TARGET="_blank">Hebrews 13:7,17,24, AV mg.). As men of maturity in devine truth, they lead the assembly in carrying out the Word of God. They are responsible to know the relevant facts of the case; for the good of others, they may be wise not to share some of what they know. They do not come to spiritual decision through popular consent, but, by the character and evident fairness and the fear of God, they bring the assembly to a scriptural consensus. The assembly follows their scriptural guidance and administers for God. Oversee have the weighty responsibility of knowing God's Word and ways and of then guiding the assembly to act for God. This is not guesswork. Overseers need and deserve the prayerful support fellow-believers.

D. Oliver
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Sell Your Christian or Bible Website WTB

WTB - Want to Buy - Christian Website or your website based on the Bible, Sunday school, prayer, Bible study or related topic.

If you have a website that has been useful for sharing the Bible with the Internet audience but now find it difficult to maintain, please contact us at using the Contact link on the left.

Information we would like to know about your site:

1) Costs. How much are you asking to sell your site for?

2) Value. A website is valuable not for it's design, but for it's traffic. We are interested in buying a site that has some value in its assets such: established time online (more than one year), has some traffic (100 or more visits per day), some quality inbound links from other internet sites (such as dmoz or yahoo directory), some subscribers in a mailing list, and some search keywords that are in the first 10 results of Google, Yahoo or Bing (MSN).

3) History. Tell us about your site. Why and when did you create it? What makes you decide to no longer operate it?

GospelHall.org is a Christian website whose mission is to share the message of the Bible as God's Word. Any websites that we aquire are operated on this understanding.

Shad Sluiter

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How does a husband meet his wife

How does a husband meet his wife’s needs spiritually?

This is the most important aspect of a husband’s responsibility as the head of his wife (Eph 5:23)." TARGET="_blank">Eph 5:23). Christ is the head of the Church. As such, He has fully devoted Himself to her complete spiritual blessing (v. 27). Christ is fully able to accomplish this, whereas a husband does not have this capability. In his measure, however, this is his goal. While Christ takes complete responsibility for the Church’s condition, a husband will only give account of His own condition at the Judgment Seat of Christ. He will be responsible for how he contributed to his wife’s spiritual maturity, but she will be accountable for her own spiritual condition. No one can force another to be saved or to make spiritual progress. By force, a husband can at most produce an appearance of spiritual growth; this is only self-serving and lacks glory for the Lord.

Since he is dependent on the Lord for the spiritual growth of his wife, a husband is wise to first of all pray specifically for this. If his wife is not saved, a saved husband obviously has this responsibility, but it is equally relevant if his wife is saved (1Pe 3:11, 12)." TARGET="_blank">1Pe 3:11, 12).

Reading the Scriptures with his wife contributes to her receiving nourishment. Sharing with her the food that he is enjoying from the Scriptures is also important.

Perhaps most important is recognizing that a husband will have little ability to meet his wife’s spiritual needs if he is not meeting her needs in every other area of their life together.

D. Oliver

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How can believers be united today?

How can believers be united today?

We can fulfill three responsibilities: to love all believers (1 John 4:21);" TARGET="_blank">1 John 4:21); to be separate and "touch not the unclean thing" (2 Corinthians 6:17," TARGET="_blank">2 Corinthians 6:17, cited from Isaiah 52:11)," TARGET="_blank">Isaiah 52:11), meaning the religious system; to call believers now, as God will call believers when He judges the religious system, "Come out of her" (Revelation 18:4;" TARGET="_blank">Revelation 18:4; compare with Isaiah 52:11)." TARGET="_blank">Isaiah 52:11). Our testimony will be unified only when believers gather to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ (Matthew 18:20)" TARGET="_blank">Matthew 18:20) and practice the God-given pattern of Scripture (Acts 2:41, 42)." TARGET="_blank">Acts 2:41, 42). Not mystified by the foggy confusion surrounding us, we can humbly, yet confidently, follow the clear guidance of Scripture that gathers believers to Christ alone. This assurance and our love for other believers require us to point them to Gods Word, so they likewise will hear, "This is the way, walk ye in it" (Isaiah 30:21)." TARGET="_blank">Isaiah 30:21).

D. Oliver
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What is the main thrust of Matthew 18?

What is the main thrust of this passage?

"For" at the beginning of verse 20 indicates that this verse provides the reason for the previous teaching.

How does the Lord provide for the protection of His "little ones?" Is there a place where righteousness reigns? What authority does it have? How will it be able to make right decisions?

The church (v. 17) is the place where His own find ultimate protection. There they can be preserved, corrected, and restored to Him (vv. 15-17). The church is to be a place of impartiality where justice prevails. It has divine authority (v. 18). Obeying His infallible Word and humbly depending on God for guidance (v. 19), it carries out God's will.

The reason for this is because He dwells there ("there am I"). This is not merely stating that He is present when believers are together. The church (v.17) has the character of the House of God (1Ti 3:15)." TARGET="_blank">1Ti 3:15). This is the place of His administration, the "gate of heaven" (Gen 28:17)." TARGET="_blank">Gen 28:17). Here heaven and earth are united in carrying out the will of God (Mat 6:10; 18:18)." TARGET="_blank">Mat 6:10; 18:18). When the King reigns on earth, He will be the One in Whom this administration centers (John 1:51)." TARGET="_blank">John 1:51). Anticipating that, He administers through His own, by His Word, on behalf of His own where two or three are gathered to His name. Here He protects His own and maintains heaven's righteous standard.

This verse is a powerful statement, giving God's view of an assembly.

D. Oliver
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Why is Joseph

Why is Joseph’s genealogy given in Matthew's Gospel, instead of that of Mary, seeing that Joseph was not the father of the Lord Jesus?

There are, as is well known, not one but two genealogies of Christ in the Gospels. In Matthew 1" TARGET="_blank">Matthew 1: His royal descent is traced from Abraham, through David and the kings of Judah, down to Joseph, His legal, though not His actual father. But in Luke 3" TARGET="_blank">Luke 3 His natural descent is traced from Mary’s own father, Heli, through a different branch of the Davidic family up to Adam. The phrase, “Being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph,” which is parenthetically inserted in Luke 3:23," TARGET="_blank">Luke 3:23, really answers the questions asked above. For since He was supposed, or legally reckoned, to be Joseph’s son, it was necessary that there should be what might be called an official genealogy, through him to David and Abraham, as well as that through His mother, in order that all objections to His claim to be “Son of David” should be silenced. In Matthew’s Gospel Joseph is prominent, and in Luke’s, Mary, not merely in the genealogies, but in the entire narrative, which in each case is as it should be, in view of the Jewish character of the former, and the Gentile character of the latter.

W.R.

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Are the bread and the cup symbols or types?

Are the bread and the cup symbols or types?

Types point to Christ and to His coming kingdom. He fulfils the types. We no longer have the "shadows," but the "very image," the substance which those types foreshadowed.

When the Lord said, "This is my body" (Luke 22:19)," TARGET="_blank">Luke 22:19), He did not indicate that the bread became His body, so that believers were eating His literal flesh. Nor was He intimating that the bread was a type. He did not say, "My body, which will be given." The bread did not point to a body in the future; the body of the Lord was present in that upper room. In addition, God communicated specific details about types, as He did, for example, in the meal offering (Leviticus 2)." TARGET="_blank">Leviticus 2). Luke uses the generic word for bread when He recounts the Lords instituting the Lords Supper. The Lord suggests nothing about its ingredients. He described neither the bread nor the contents of the cup as typical. They are merely symbols, or emblems that remind us of the physical body and blood of the Lord. As we partake of these, we express our fellowship, the communion of the blood and body of Christ (I Corinthians 10:16)," TARGET="_blank">I Corinthians 10:16), and we declare the Lords death (I Corinthians 11:26)." TARGET="_blank">I Corinthians 11:26).

D. Oliver
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Do we pray to the Father or to the Son or Holy Spirit as well?

PRAYER TO THE LORD JESUS
Is it scriptural to pray to the Lord Jesus Christ continually in a Breaking of Bread meeting, and for a believer to confess privately to saints that he does not believe in praying to the Father in such a meeting, seeing that we gather there to remember the Lord?

I believe the custom referred to, though doubtless many godly persons are addicted to it, is due to a defective view of what the atoning death of Christ entailed on the other Persons of the Godhead. It is true that our Lord Jesus alone suffered directly for sins on the cross. There the Divine judgment fell on Him; there He was forsaken of His God. But who can estimate what it cost the Father “not to spare His own Son”?—nor should we forget that it was “by the Eternal Spirit that He offered Himself without spot to God.” It seems clear that to limit our worship, or nearly to limit it, to the Lord Jesus is to come short of His definite purpose, communicated by Him in revealing the Father. Far from desiring that His own should concentrate on Him their worship, He indicates the contrary. “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.” (John 4:23)." TARGET="_blank">John 4:23). By so doing we do not set the Son on one side. “At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” (John 14:20)." TARGET="_blank">John 14:20).

Again, to maintain that we ought only to worship the Lord Jesus, because we are gathered to remember Him, seems to embody a fallacy, Does not the very act of breaking the bread lead us to the Father? As the Son is revealed to our souls in His love and preciousness, we adore the Father for such a gift; “Through Him we both (i.e. believing Jews and Gentiles) have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Ephesians 2:18)." TARGET="_blank">Ephesians 2:18). One of the greatest needs of our hymn books to-day is, I submit, that God would raise up Christian poets, to add to them more hymns of the type of our departed brother Deck’s, “Abba Father, we approach Thee.”

W.H.

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What is an evangelist? What does an evangelist do?

An evangelist is a person who is dedicated to the work of teaching and preaching the gospel message. That is, he is teaching how that Jesus' death and resurrection is God's answer for your sins.

The word "evangelist" comes from the greek word for "gospel" or "good news". An evangelist is the messanger of good news.

The word is mentioned two placed in the New Testament.

Acts 21:8" TARGET="_blank">Acts 21:8 And the next day we that were of Paul's company departed, and came unto Caesarea: and we entered into the house of Philip the evangelist, which was one of the seven; and abode with him.

2 Timothy 4:5" TARGET="_blank">2 Timothy 4:5 But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.

Unlike other works mentioned in the church, such as overseer or deacon, there are no qualifications listed for someone to be an evangelist. Everyone who is a believer of Christ is an evangelist in the sense that he/she should be able to tell others about Christ and his salvation.

1 Peter 3:15" TARGET="_blank">1 Peter 3:15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.

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