The
Persecuted Church: The Cost of Discipleship
Acts 6:8-15
Introduction: This week we heard the story of a lifeguard who saw a swimmer in distress and went to try to rescue him. The rescue swimmer lost his life in the process. In this case he was willing to save, but he gave his life in the process. Jesus gave His life, and in the process He accomplished the rescue, the salvation, of all who will come to Him in faith. And He sends us to be His witnesses. The Greek word for "witness" is the word from which we get the English word "martyr." We come today to the story of Stephen, a witness, and the first martyr of the early church.
Context: The context
in Acts 6 reminds us that even the church will have moments when internal
conflicts can threaten to bring division and so disrupt the mission God has
entrusted to us. In this case, the
matter was related to physical, financial needs, the Greek speaking widows
being overlooked in the distribution of food.
The radical generosity of the believers in the early part of Acts is a
feature of church life that stands out. Initially
there were no unmet needs among the Christ followers because the radical,
cheerful generosity of those that had means was extending the love of Christ to
those who would have been in genuine need. There is no indication that the
apostles didn’t think this situation, which was brought to their attention, was
important. Quite the contrary, they addressed it immediately and effectively.
It could have brought disunity and
division to the church and that that would have disrupted the church’s mission.
They empowered the people affected, to choose spiritually qualified people they
knew and trusted, to address the situation. We see a couple of principles, 1) we
should make every effort to strive for the unity of the body, and 2) we should
be sensitive to the needs of people around us. We should have compassion when we see genuine needs
within or outside of the church. What would Jesus do if He walked through
our streets and saw people needy or hungry or hurting? Giving a drink of water in the name of Jesus
is something we want to do, but that isn’t, or should be, the last word. Meeting
needs in the community is important, but the essential heart of our mission
must be sharing the truth that will meet their deepest need, the Gospel of
Jesus Christ.
Most importantly, God
is glorified as His story is shared with the world, and the message of His
grace is proclaimed. God created a world that was good, human rebellion brought
suffering and death and separation from God. God chose a people to whom and
through whom He revealed His covenantal love, his holiness, and his
righteousness. He made a way for sinful humans to be reconciled to God by
sending His Son in human form, without sin, to die as our substitute and then
to raise again the third day. He is the Way, the only way, the truth, and the
life. The message that we need saving is not what people want to hear. The
truth that God’s way is the only way is offensive and so is easily rejected,
its not the affirming and inclusive message that the world wants.
The
Big Idea: Though preaching Christ may
bring offense it must be at the heart of an effective ministry.
I.
God works in and through His people
(8). “And Stephen, full
of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people.”
Remember the context, Stephen had been chosen
to serve by the people (cf. 6:5). He was recognized by his peers as someone who
was full of the Spirit and of wisdom. So he was selected to have a part in the
ministry of distributing food and other material needs to the Greek speaking
widows. This was an important issue, it was a need that had to be met and a
situation that potentially could have divided the church. The church responded quickly and
effectively to this need. But ministering to the physical needs of people is
not the “be all and end all” of ministry.
Why are we in the world? God has a mission that He is accomplishing
through the church, and the heart of the mission is proclaiming Christ,
crucified and resurrected, as the one and only means for reconciliation with
God.
Stephen was selected as one of the seven, an
important work that would meet needs and maintain the unity of the church. But God
had other work for him to do as well (6:8). The context makes it clear that the
ministry of Stephen here was carrying out the mission Jesus had spoken of in
Acts 1:8, “You will receive power when
the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be witnesses to me, starting in
Jerusalem…” Jesus had said that “…you will receive power when the
Holy Spirit comes upon you…” The presence of the Spirit was the source of the
power to minister in the name of Jesus. The people chose seven men to take
responsibility in one area of ministry so that the apostles could continue
their primary ministry of prayer and preaching the Word. Jesus said He has chosen us to bear fruit,
and through that God will be glorified.
One of the most encouraging
things about our church family is that virtually every member is involved in
some way in the working together of the body. We seem to have learned well that
Christianity is not a spectator sport, it is something that requires our
participation. When it comes to soccer, I might better stay in my chair and
watch so I don’t hurt myself, when it comes to the Christian life there are no
“couch potato Christians”! But beyond serving on committees and volunteering to
fill needs in the church, it is also true that every one of us needs to embrace
our calling to be his witnesses.
Whatever we are doing in the church is important and necessary, but we
are also called to have a part, in the place where God has placed us, to
testify to His amazing grace. Though preaching Christ may bring offense it
must be at the heart of an effective ministry.
II. God’s work in and through His people may
provoke hostility from those who are close to us (9-11). So Stephen was ministering in the power of
the Spirit, and we read,
9 But
some men from what was called the Synagogue of the Freedmen, including both
Cyrenians and Alexandrians, and some from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and argued
with Stephen. 10 But they
were unable to cope with the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was
speaking. 11 Then they
secretly induced men to say, "We have heard him speak blasphemous words
against Moses and against God."
“BUT…” begins verse 9. Stephen was
serving faithfully, in the power of the Spirit carrying out the ministry God
had given, but the preaching of the truth will often offend someone, and so it
does here. There were synagogues in and
around Jerusalem where diaspora Jews from various linguistic and cultural
backgrounds who had returned to the area could come together for community as
well as for reading and study Scripture.
Stephen had been chosen along with others to minister to the needs of
some Greek speaking widows in the community and this may have gotten the
attention of Greek speaking Jews. People they knew, who had come to believe in
this Jesus, they must have been learning their doctrine from this guy! So they “rose up and argued…” with Stephen.
The word argued has the sense of “debated” with him.
Notice
that they encountered Stephen and were “…unable
to cope with the wisdom and Spirit with which he was speaking…” Have you
ever had an opportunity to speak to someone about the Lord, you sensed an open
door, maybe even a receptive heart, but you were afraid that you would not know
what to say, or that you would say the wrong thing? If our heart is right with God, we can’t go
wrong by telling what God means to us or what he has done for us. Just accept
that you don’t have to know everything and you don’t need to be able to answer
every objection. Just admit that you don’t know everything but that your life
has been changed by the One you do know, Jesus. We are not being asked to be
“expert witnesses,” only witnesses called to tell the truth about the One we
know.
There
was false testimony that Stephen was speaking against Moses and against God.
Moses anticipated the coming of Christ, Jesus is God, God the Son, God incarnate.
Jesus himself said He had not come to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but
rather to fulfill.
To
charge blasphemy was to set up a situation that could result in capital
punishment. Blasphemy merited death. So
inducing men to falsely charge blasphemy reveals the hardness of these hearts. This
was no investigation or objective seeking of truth. One of the great delusions people have, and
one that we sometimes have about unbelievers, is that they can be objective,
neutral, honest judges of the evidence. As
surely as the leaders had hated Jesus, as certainly as the disciples were
mistreated for speaking the truth about Him, other faithful followers, like
Stephen, will be opposed by unbelief.
Even so, though preaching Christ may bring offense, it must be at the
heart of an effective ministry.
III.
God’s work and His Word may be misunderstood and misrepresented by those who
don’t know Him (12-15, 7:1). We see
next the lengths to which the opposition goes.
12 And
they stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes, and they came up to him
and dragged him away and brought him before the Council. 13 They put forward false
witnesses who said, "This man incessantly speaks against this holy place
and the Law; 14 for we have
heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the
customs which Moses handed down to us."
15 And fixing their gaze on him, all who were sitting in the
Council saw his face like the face of an angel. 7:1The high priest said, "Are these things
so?"
This
charge may sound familiar. It is something that false witnesses had also said
about Jesus (Mt 26:61, 27:40; cf. Mk 14:58, 15:29). False
witnesses spoke against Jesus as He was examined saying,
"This man said, 'I am able to destroy the
temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days’" (Matthew 26:61).
Even as he hung on the cross some mocked,
"You who
would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you
are the Son of God, come down from the cross" (Matthew 27:40).
In both cases, the witnesses
are described as “false,” i.e., they did not accurately portray what Jesus had
said about the Temple. A couple of
obervations:
·
Jesus did
speak against human traditions and rules that were added to the Law, but He
also said that not one jot or tittle of the Law would be done away with. It’s
clear He valued the teachings of Moses. He said “If you believed Moses you would believe me, for he wrote of me”
(John 5:46).
·
The Temple had an
important role in the history of God’s people: it was the meeting place between
God and men, it was the place where sacrifices were offered. The disciples
still went to the temple, but they went to preach Jesus, the One who reveals
the Fathers.
Jesus
did say a couple of things about the “Temple” that were misunderstood. In the
Olivet discourse (Mt 24; Mk 13) He predicted that Jerusalem would be sacked and
the Temple destroyed. Historically we know that happened in AD 70 when the
Romans razed the city. So He didn’t say
HE would destroy the Temple, but simply predicted that it would happen. Perhaps
more importantly we read near the beginning of John’s Gospel, in John 2:19,
something Jesus said about a Temple being destroyed. There He said,
"Destroy this temple, and
in three days I will raise it up."
Notice there, Jesus makes no statement
about destroying the temple himself, but says when some of his hearers would do
that, He would raise it back up in three days.
But the context clarifies that Jesus was not talking about the physical
temple, but rather was predicting His own death and resurrection. The saying of
Jesus was misunderstood then and even his own disciples didn’t get it until
after the resurrection.
The Temple was the
place God had chosen to manifest His presence in the midst of the people. It
replaced the Tabernacle which was the holy place in the midst of God’s people
in the desert. The “house of God” motif goes even further back, to the vision
Jacob had in Genesis 28 of a ladder going up to heaven on which the angels of
God ascended and descended. Jesus is the revelation of the Father, the one
mediator between God men, the only way into the presence of God (see John
1:49-51). He said, “Tear down this
Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” They could kill him and lay
his body in a tomb, but three days later He arose. His death and resurrection
rendered the temple obsolete, since sacrifices were no longer necessary, and
since the way into the holy of holies was opened through faith. Seated at the
Father’s right hand He sent the Spirit to indwell the New Testament church.
Notice
that there is no sense of honestly, openly, investigating what Stephen was
preaching, and seeking the truth together. The simple fact is that fallen
humans are not “neutral” about spiritual things. They are not “open-minded.”
They have been blinded by the enemy, they are spiritually dead, they are unable
to understand the things of the Spirit, they are at enmity with God. Because
that is true, they will not be won merely by our careful and logical
presentation of the facts. We need a miracle. We need God to open their heart,
we need the Spirit to lead them to repentance and faith. There is mystery here
since God has chosen to work through us, through the foolishness of the message
preached, to save those who believe. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the
word of Christ.
The
question in 7:1 was not a search for truth, it was a search of an opportunity
to condemn. As they had already done with
Jesus.
What
is God saying to me in this passage?
Though preaching Christ may bring offense it must be at the heart of an
effective ministry.
What
would God have me to do in response to this passage?
1.
Whatever we do in the name of Christ, whether it is feeding the hungry,
visiting the sick, comforting the hurting, the most loving thing we can do is
to seek to share the truth about Jesus. Stephen had an important ministry to
see to the needs of the Greek speaking widows, but then he also sought to
preach Jesus.
2. As we think about
the church, and about following Jesus, this section of Acts is not something
that really resonates with most American believers. We are thankful for Voice
of the Martyrs and other such ministries to let us know what is going on in
other parts of the world, but it seems like it’s a long way away. Biblically,
if one part of the body suffers, we all suffer.
3. When it comes to our
calling to be His witnesses, do you ever feel like you just can’t do it, you’ll
say the wrong thing, no one will listen? The same God that went with Stephen,
the same Spirit that empowered him to speak, is with you and in you. You
already care about the people in your sphere of influence, not allow God to use
you to share Christ with them.
Not every rescue swimmer comes back safe, unscathed. They are not required to come back, they are called to go out. Because our great Rescuer has paid the price and defeated death in the resurrection, we are called to urge those we go to, those around us, to look to Him for their deliverance. He will never fail.
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