The Book of Acts 6:1-15 - Deacons appointed & Stephen before Council

Today is the 20th, and we're going to cover chapter 6, which is about the deacons and about Stephen. We're going to see a new person introduced here today. So basically, this chapter can be divided into the first six verses talk about the appointment of deacons. That's what we call them now. They are not called deacons in the chapter. And I want you to take note, these deacons, I include Wayne in this too, are not, let's see, some churches view deacons as sort of, hey, these guys, they're kind of, there's the spiritual, then there's the deacons. But you look at what we're going to see here, and the deacons were men, These guys were walking with the Lord.

It's really impressive. And then verse 7 is kind of like a summary. There are handouts back there if you want to look at them. The summary is a short summary. Remember when we had the survey of the class, there are summaries throughout the book of Acts, and this is one of these summaries. It's a one verse summary of how things were going with God's work. And then the last part is, this is the start of the section on Stephen.

He's brought before the council. And I'm not sure we pointed this out. Maybe we have, but I thought I'd just reiterate it again. The council is really the Sanhedrin. Do you folks remember what the Sanhedrin is about? They're a pretty important body in the Jewish community. Not to belabor the point, the high priest is the head of the Sanhedrin. There actually are 70. The high priest puts 70 men. I'm not sure they all were there every single time we see the council. What's interesting is the root word is council in the Greek. I mean the root word is Sanhedrin, but like in the translations, they bring it across as the council.

Interesting. So anyway, whenever you see the council with this capital C, at least in my... What does the King James have? In chapter six, what does King James render? Six, eight. Like a place where they have the word council. What is that? Well actually it would be, it's not actually until late, it's not actually down in, it probably won't be in, oh actually 15. 15. I have the council. Okay anyway I don't know why. I'm the king, I have the new council. Okay interesting yeah. So anyway but it's the root word is Sanhedrin which is this body of, Headed by the high priest and 70 other men. It's called some places the Supreme Court. So they have ultimate rule in the nation of Israel.

With that in view, could I get someone to read the first six verses? You can read it in your Bible or off the overhead. These days when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there rose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists. because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. Then the Twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, ìIt is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom you may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to ministry of the word.

And the saying pleased the whole multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith, and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Procorus, Macanter, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas, a prosel type from Antioch, whom they set before the apostles. And when they had prayed, they laid hands on them.

Great. Thanks, Bob. Thanks for reading the tough words. Those names. OK. All right. So basically, it says, now at this time, And actually, that seems to point back to the previous chapter, or it could be rendered, in these days. And that's kind of a phraseology that's used in other parts of scripture. Now in these days, something happened. So what was happening in these days? If you look back to, and it seems like, we kind of talked briefly, Bob talked briefly about the last verse in the previous chapter, it seems like it's, That verse could actually be in this chapter. Remember that chapter divisions aren't inspired.

That was done at a point in time. The previous chapter in verse 24 says, And every day in the temple, from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as a Christ. So it's in chapter six starts in our division now at this time. And so it's a time when they were every day in the temple from house to house. They were they were teaching and preaching Jesus Christ. So that's kind of neat. OK. All right. So. All right. So what. Look in here.

Does everyone have disciples in verse 1? What do you think disciples implies here? It says now at this time, verse 1, while the disciples were increasing, Later on it says it was good with the disciples, once they selected these men it was pleasing. What do you think that implies, the word disciples in this context?

Think of the context of the new church. What can I replace disciples with there, do you think? Believers, obviously. I would say new believers, because of course it behaves like being taught. Right. So it seems like they're referring to this body of believers. It says, and the disciples were increasing in number. We know the apostles, there's 12, they're fixed. They're not going to change that number. But disciples, followers of Christ, In this context it seems like it's speaking of the believers there at that time. You know the Greek translation Roger is pupil or learner.

Okay good. Yeah that's perfect. Perfect yeah. Yeah that fits I think. Because we talk about discipling others. Right. Teaching others but that doesn't quite fit. It's the learning part. Yeah I think. In the next version it differentiates between the twelve and the disciples. It does. There is another key right there. It differentiates between the twelve, and they are called the twelve many times, or the apostles.

So that is good. Just a little thing that you might overlook a little bit. Complaint by the Hellenistic Jews against the Native Jews. Who are these Hellenistic Jews? I know because I spent some time looking at this. Mine says, Grecians. Right, right. Exactly. So they were the Greek? They were, in my understanding, they're Greek speakers.

We might have believers now today that are, they speak Chinese. And it seems like that these Hellenistic Jews, You know, just like you might expect, their native language was Greek. Even though they were Jewish, their native language was Greek. They tended to associate with their, they had their own synagogues, which we're going to see shortly here. And they met together. So when the new church came along, we had Greek speaking believers and Jewish Hebrew speaking believers. And they were now together, right? Because they're now, they're meeting together.

So that's where this issue kind of comes up. Because their widows, and their, I believe refers to the Hellenistic Jews, widows, their believers will be overlooked in the daily serving of food. So that was the complaint. And who knows why that happened, but it did happen. So they were complaining that their widows, and we see that the idea of overlooked is to neglect, There is no indication that this was discrimination, I don't know, and it doesn't say. I don't want to read the original lines because it's not there.

But we do know that in scripture, the care for the widows is something that is paramount, is brought out in scripture. Like in 1 Timothy 5.3 it says, honor the widows who are widows indeed. And it says in the James passage there, it says, This is undefiled religion to visit the orphans and widows. So care of the widows is something that the body of believers is all about.

So that seems to be the point here. So that's verse one. So verse two says, so the twelve summon the congregation. of disciples. It's another kind of key right here. The congregation, you could easily put congregation of believers, congregation of Christians or whatever, congregation of believers.

Instead, it is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. It's not fitting, not desirable, not fitting. We should neglect God's word. Neglect here is the idea of to forsake in the sense of abandoning. And actually, that passage in Peter is probably maybe a little bit too strong. If you read that passage in 2 Peter, he talks about the fact of forsaking the right way and going astray.

And I think what's being spoken of here is the fact that they're saying our time is better spent You know, our ministry is to give out God's word and to pray. We're going to see that's the two ministries they talk about. And what they're going to talk about here, and at first it seems like in order to serve tables, you might think, well, don't they have a little, you know, they could probably handle that, you know. Let's go back and look at Acts. Let's look at how the apostles were right at the core. I think it's better to have distributing food. They were not only serving the food, but they were getting the food to the table, so to speak.

Can someone read Acts chapter 4, verses 34 and 35? There were no needy persons among them, for from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, got the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need. Okay, it's the last part of verse 35 that kind of strikes me here is the fact that they were involved, this is talking about monetary stuff, They were involved in distributing and seeing the need. They were involved in the whole process.

If you kind of extrapolate that to what's going on in this situation, it seems like the serving tables included getting the food to the table. I'm not sure it meant going to the market and shopping for it but I mean it seems like, That's more the case than just saying, serving tables seems a little bit not as significant as getting the food out, getting the food to the table. Like Ingrid, I mean, when I say Ingrid, that's easy. All you got to do is put the food in the table. She says, well Roger, I spent three hours preparing this food. That's more than just serving the table.

Thoughts or comments? We are going to cover the whole chapter today. It seems to me also, I read this in the Served Tables and we put that in our modern context of going around it, but then I think of when Christ turned over the tables of the money changers, it was the one person standing behind the table that the people came to and as the money is laid down at the feet of the apostles, It's very likely, you know, we've got Bartholomew Thaddeus and a couple others sitting at a table, serving that table as people come and say, you know, I need money for such and such or I need food for whatever else. And we've got, you know, Peter looks over and says, hey Bartholomew, can you get over there and preach to us?

You know, sorry, I've got time. Exactly. Whatever. You guys take care of, you know, whatever else. And they're, they're administering this, this table of collection. Exactly. And they decide, you know, hey, we can't, you know, it's just right. And, you know, I, I'm with you on that. I agree. It seems like they decided to have elders, deacons to distribute the brain. Well, don't get ahead of them. Well, somebody. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's really cool. We guys walked in a little bit. I'm just amazed at the qualifications of these deacons. I mean, they're not second class. Believers, Stephen is an incredible man. We're not going to get into his sermon, but when he gets to his sermon, it is just incredible. We appoint as deacons today. Even the qualifications are the same. Exactly, the qualifications are the same. That's very important.

Therefore the brethren selected among them, seven men of good reputation, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we may put in charge of this task. So men of good reputation. So let's look at the idea of well-spoken of. It's literally well-spoken of.

Kind of comes across in some other passages. Can someone read Acts? We haven't got there yet, but Acts 10, 22. This is about Cornelius. And they said, Cornelius the centurion, a just man and one that fears God, and a good report among all the nation of the Jews, was warned from God by a holy angel to send for thee into his house and to hear words of thee.

So I was focusing on that. There's a lot more there by the fact that he was well spoken of. A just man. A just man, well spoken of by the entire nation of the Jews. And then we'll see actually in in 6.2 there, this is about Timothy, a very similar phrase. Timothy was well spoken of by the brethren.

So this idea of good risk to get well spoken of, that's one aspect of what they're looking for. The second aspect was full of the spirit. And I kind of looked at that as as control by the spirit, pull the spirit, control by the spirit. I kind of thought of a very familiar passage, walk by the spirit, in Galatians 5.16, walk by the spirit. And then the third one is full of an implied full of wisdom, full of wisdom implies wisdom. It seems like that implies not only it could be practical wisdom, but it implies that they have they have spiritual wisdom.

And I know we studied this back in the James passage there. Well, could someone read that James 317? that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Great, thank you. So this wisdom has practical implications really. It's God's wisdom and it says it's the wisdom from above.

So these men were full of wisdom, good reputation, full of spirit, controlled by the spirit and full of wisdom. And they would be put in charge of this task. So we go to 4. So with those men in charge of that task, then the apostles, they would devote themselves to prayer.

We devote ourselves to prayer. And we have two things, a prayer and the ministry of the word. So we see once again, we see the fact that early in the book of Acts, these are all with one mind continually devoting themselves to prayer. What's this prayer like?

I'll never forget what I asked Miles about some years ago. He said, Bob, that's a good question. That was his answer. Right. Well, you know, you know, it's with other, you know, Pauline, you know, scripture in terms of pray always and all things, you know, kind of steadfastly and continuously. Are they on their knees with their heads bowed? I don't think so. I think that comes along with being mindful of God all the time. Exactly.

Well, in another passage it says pray without ceasing. That's a tough one if you take that. That means that you're always that's your lifestyle. You're not you're never you never think of yourselves as as well. Now the time for prayer another time not for prayer. It's you know it's identification.

And then there's a passage in Acts 2.42. And I kind of cut and paste. I took the last part and kind of jammed it with the first part here. And so they were continually devoting themselves. And they give several things. And the last one of those is prayer. And we're going to see the other one is down in the next grouping, the ministry of the word. So they were devoting themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.

And basically what's interesting is the body of believers in Acts 2.42 were continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching. So I was kind of flipping it around. If they're continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching, what are the apostles doing? They're teaching.

So if you flip that around, if the body of believers there, the 5,000 plus are The apostles are busy, and if you look at Peter's sermon, if that's just a little glimpse of what he was telling them, there's a lot involved there, and probably a lot of questions. These are brand new believers, steeped in Jewish tradition, lots of questions. What about this? Do we have to obey the law? Without Paul, it would be... The Lord had to be guiding him, that's all I have to say. Lots of questions, I'm sure.

And they were teaching the people. So the two ministries we see that they wanted to focus their time on was prayer and the ministry of the word. Obviously this is used today. That's why we tried to divide that out so that the elders can focus on the ministry of the word and the deacons, which are no less spiritual, can focus on other things. What's interesting here is that we look at this list of men. They select it out from the numbers.

The first two, Stephen and Philip, both are going to show up. We're going to highlight those two men coming down the road here. As we go through, we're going to spend a good amount of time on Stephen. Then after Stephen, we're going to look at Philip. So those two men and the rest of the men, what's interesting is here, it says, Stephen a man full of faith and controlled by the spirit. What's interesting is, this is not my observation, I think this is from Chester McCauley.

The other names there which are hard to pronounce. They're more Greek like, Hellenistic. What's interesting is, it seems like that a lot of these men that were Hellenistic, they kind of came along, they were part of the solution. They're the ones that complain, but they're part of the solution. That was not my observation, but someone else's. I thought it was kind of interesting. It's sort of like if I say, hey we need to clean this room up. I say, well, see Ingrid, have a good time cleaning up.

So they were part of the solution. It seems like they were part of the solution, which is kind of interesting. OK, having prayed to lay their hands upon them, they blessed them. That's kind of a picture in the Old Testament where they would lay their hands on them. Okay, so now six, six, seven.

Okay, so now at this point, that's a description of the selection of these men to take care of the distribution of food. So now we move to this, this verse is one of these summary verses. At the first of the class I went through, we looked at all these kind of situated throughout the book of Acts maybe, At strategic points, there will be summary verses. And this is like a summary verse.

The word of God kept on spreading, and the number of the disciples continued to increase. Once again, kind of linking disciples with believers to increase greatly in Jerusalem. Notice this in Jerusalem here. Later on, we're going to see it's going to be other places. And a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith. So first of all, the word God kept spreading or growing. The number of disciples increased in Jerusalem. And then lastly, I kind of thought this is kind of interesting. And I'm kind of thinking about this a little bit. It literally means that word many there is the idea of a crowd or a multitude. So there are quite a few apparently of the priest. And I was looking at, I think it was Constable.

He was pointing out that, you know, I was talking about the Sanhedrin. There could be common priests, like Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. He's noble because of scripture, but in terms of he wasn't the high priest, he wasn't even in the running I don't think for that. There were plenty of priests that were lower echelon, And apparently, somebody like that man could be one of the ones that came to know Christ. We're not told that, but just kind of interesting thoughts.

So there were priests that were part of the Jewish system that believed in the message that Peter and John brought forth. You bring up a very good point. When we think about the temple, the tabernacle, we think about the high priest and maybe one or two other guys helped him, is what we're doing. And then you think, well, the sons of Levi, Kohath, Morari, and all these hundreds of thousands of people that must have been there, what are they going to do? And so, yeah, only one of Levi's sons' family were the priests, but as you mentioned, Zacharias, was of the course of Abiyah and his family. So there were lower echelon guys that weren't in the spotlight and I guess if they believed.

We're not told any of this. We're not told about recriminations. part of the hierarchy of the establishment believing. They're nervous enough. What we're going to see now, unfortunately, is going to move from just flogging these men and kicking them out They're going to murder, Stephen's going to be murdered. And you have to think, the priests are there helping with the sacrifices. Well, there is no more sacrifice for sin. I can't, in good conscience, go and serve in the temple anymore. That's all speculation, but it creates any number of difficulties. It's impressive with that statement that many of the priests are a crowd or a multitude believing. I mean, that's significant. OK, cool. All right, so now we're going to move to the...

Sorry, before you go on, I think it's relevant to point out here, what's their obedience to? Well, you know, Peter, he was preaching. Who are they in terms of man? Their obedience is to the faith. Don't you think? I think that's profound. They're not obedient to anything but the faith. That's what we're called to today. Why are we obedient to? We're obedient to the faith.

I can identify with that a whole lot. Peter's message is, he went back and he brought in all the Old Testament. He justified, this is our Messiah. Look what you did to our Messiah. His argument was flawless. And that's what we're going to see. Stephen's argument is going to be flawless. I mean, there's no problem with Stephen's argument.

We're going to see shortly here. But, you know. But I mean, tying in what James said, I mean, you know, the sacrifice is no longer being obedient to the faith, right? That's history at this point. That's good. OK, good. OK, so what we're going to see here, and this kind of points out that scripture was divided into chapters in a certain way.

But what we're going to see, starting in the middle of this chapter, we're going to see this begins three significant events in the life of the church. Starting in verse 6-8 through 8-3, we're going to see that Stephen's going to be martyred. So that's one person. Then we're going to see Philip, the ministry of Philip in 8.4 through 4.40. And then we're going to see Saul of Tarsus, Paul, starting in 40 ends chapter 8 and 9.1 begins chapter 9, obviously. At the end of that chapter, we're going to see the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.

So just because we have these chapters, you can see as far as looking at significant events, this is a little bit better delineation, I think, than just, you know, if you go by chapters, you've got multiple things happening there. Okay, so we're going to start today, we're just going to look at just the verses in chapter six for right now, and then we'll spend the next two weeks looking at the rest of Stephen's ministry and his martyrdom. Okay. Alright. Okay. One more section to read. Would someone like to volunteer? I will. Which one? It will be 6-8 through 15. Okay. And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. Then there arose some from what is called the Synagogue of Freedmen, Syrians, Alexandrians, and those from Sicilian Asia, disputing with Stephen.

And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke. Then they secretly induced men to say, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. And they stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him, seized him, and brought him to the council. They also set up false witnesses who said, this man does not cease to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs which Moses delivered to us.

And all who sat in the council, looking steadfastly at him, saw his face as the face of an angel. So it says, Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people. So Stephen, as we saw before, was one of the seven men appointed, back in verse four, for the distribution of food.

But his ministry is interesting. He did that, but then he has this teaching ministry too. So he's a busy guy. So basically, full of grace and power, that's a phrase that we see that's talked about in terms of actually of Christ and of the apostles. Many times we'll see attributes of Christ or ministries of Christ, and then we'll see the apostles doing that same ministry. Like healing, Christ healed, and then we see Peter healing, right? He healed the lame man.

And we'll see other aspects of that. So we'll see aspects that Christ would do, and aspects that the apostles would do. So if you look in Luke chapter 4, and this is where Christ goes into the synagogue. And in 21 it says, and he began to say to them, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

And all were speaking well of him. Yeah, it's very interesting. That's what was spoken about earlier. And wondering at the gracious words. I was kind of homing on gracious words. The idea that it says, full of grace. And full of grace kind of implies that it has gracious words which were falling from his lips. And they were saying, is this not Joseph? Is this not Joseph's son? So they marveled.

Christ that that he had gracious words a word of words of grace so that's one of the attributes of Stephen full of grace and there's a other one in 433 is talking about the Apostles and it talks about in that case look at that acts 433 talks about they had power great power and we see that Acts 4.33, and with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all.

So that has power and grace in that as well. Okay, so full of grace and power, that's one aspect. Then if you go back, we already talked about these, but Stephen's resume is pretty amazing. Full of grace and power, full of faith in the Holy Spirit, full of wisdom and good reputation. That's quite a list. For a man that agreed, I'll serve and I'll put the food out.

Performing wonders and signs. As we've seen quite a few times in Acts, the signs are this word for attesting miracles and we know that the Jewish mindset is that they, To validate God's working, they just had to have a sign. Signs were part of their lifestyle. They expected to see a sign. That's why when someone came along, a sign or a testing miracle was kind of expected to validate he was from God. In Acts 22 it talks about Christ performing wonders and signs.

And then in Acts 2.43 it talks about the apostles were performing wonders and signs. And also in 5.12. So we see this combination of these attesting miracles and wonders are strange things.

That combination of words flows through passages that talk about the work that Christ did. and the work that the apostles did. Validating who they were. So Stephen was performing what the apostles performed, what Christ performed. That was validating that what he was doing was from God.

That's obviously where some of the rub comes. Some people think, well we got to do that today. They try to incorporate, well I'm going to do that today. Unfortunately, they don't see that this ministry, this great signs and wonders was going to gradually fade out. As Paul comes in on the scene, as we get more scripture written, we see that begins to fade out. Now we see the opposition.

Men from the synagogue of the freedmen. So I borrowed something from Constable here. It says the freedmen were Roman prisoners, Jewish Roman prisoners or descendants of such, who had later be granted their freedom. And there was some from Cyrenia and Alexandria, some from Assyria and Asia. So they were from different places.

And let's see here. I just kind of went back and kind of reviewed. I saw a count, like in Jerusalem alone, there were over 300 synagogues in Jerusalem. That's a lot. There was some count that either Constable had or somebody else had. So there were a lot of synagogues. Apparently these guys had their own synagogue.

They're in opposition to the message that Stephen and Peter were proclaiming. They're going to go against that message. They're going to use any means they can. They're not going to use logic. They're going to try to shoot the messenger. They do literally do that. It's pretty ugly here later on. Stone the messenger.

Did you get the idea that these guys were hanging out in Jerusalem? It seems to me that there was some history there that related to Rome. The Libertine or Freedmen. There was a whole section that a constable had, a page. I didn't really search out exactly where they were hanging out.

Something to do with Pompeii that they were actually... Oh yeah, you're right. Something about Pompeii. I didn't really research that. Prisoners in Pompeii and then they built a synagogue independent from the free-born Jew. In other words, people who had not ever been imprisoned.

Right. And I just didn't know whether you thought from your reading that this existed in Jerusalem also, but these guys are in Jerusalem, presumably. Yeah, they are. I didn't actually search. I didn't search that out. I don't know. I know there's more information, which I didn't. I saw it there. Did you sense that this is a different group of Jewish men than the traditional Jewish synagogue in terms of what they represented? Are we reading too much? I don't know.

The same kind of criticism they're bringing forth, don't you think would have been brought forth by the council? Well, actually what's going to happen, we're going to see the council, they're going to use these men as, okay, you brought this, we're going to jump on this, and we're going to get people to lie, to make up charges, and it's amazing how similar that is to the charges, actually Ingrid asked me a question after on Friday, we're going to kind of answer, about the blasphemy, that they're going to charge Stephen with blasphemy, just like they charged, just like they claimed the Lord Jesus with blasphemy. It wasn't blasphemy, but they're going to make that charge.

There's an element here I think of unity that has not been seen before in Judaism where we have the Jews and we have the Samaritans and they're very much in opposition to each other even though as the woman at the well said we have the same ancestry why can't we have the same place of worship and such and here we have the synagogue of the Libertines which is very separate from a Jewish synagogue.

Here's Cyrenians, here's other nationalities of the proselytes. And now these folk who are outside of the main of Judaism are now having an impetus in uniting with traditional Judaism against the cause of Christ. Whereas, you know, the council would say, you guys are... They weren't even real Jews.

But now they're taking their word and building off of that. It's just opportunistic. They're saying, oh hey, somebody came. Now we can come up again and we can hammer these guys again. The people really riled up. Then they are going to touch on some of the key points in Judaism. The temple and Moses. You speak against the temple of Moses. They are claiming that he did that. He never did. They are going to claim that he did. You are in bad shape. You start talking about that.

I find it interesting too. What did they say about Christ? here's the same story comes up again just in terms of today I mean I read this morning the road to Emmaus again he pointed out the law of the prophets and ingrained in these people. Exactly. Moses is such a key person in the life of Israel, I know.

I'm kind of reading through here because I'm looking up that word wisdom, which is Sophia, God-given, and what I was noticing is that the apostles were full of wisdom and knowledge, but it doesn't say that about these people. No, I don't think so. They weren't full of wisdom.

No. All right. So let's let's look you up here. Are we right? No, it's fine. Actually, we're doing this. We're talking about what I want to get to, which is perfect. Oh, OK. This is cool. So they they rose up and argued, disputed with them. Well, this is really cool. But they were unable to cope. And the word copious is to stand against resist. They could not contradict. They could not contradict the wisdom and the spirit that was from Stephen.

Actually there is a cool passage here in Luke 21.15.

So if you have your Bibles turn to Luke 21.15 and this is what Christ said. And Christ said here, I will give you utterance and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute. So this is being fulfilled right before their eyes. When we have God, and I was kind of thinking of us here in this day and age, we have God's word and it can't be refuted really. It really cannot be refuted.

But men will refute it. They will lie about it. They will make up stories. Men will try to change the subject. Isn't it interesting? You guys try to share with somebody the subject. Either they are going to come to you or they are going to try to change the subject. They do not want to hear it. They do not want to hear about the message of the Lord Jesus Christ. They want some other message. So basically they couldn't stand or resist their message. So what do they do?

They secretly induce men to say, secretly induce to say, to introduce underhanded, secretly induces underhandedly put forth by collusion. And actually it even means, I found one other thing, it even means a bribe. So nothing would stop them. And boy, do we see that in today's world. Just with the normal reporting of the news, people would do all kinds of things to get their idea across. So basically, secretly induced.

So here's part of what we have heard him, Stephen, speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God. And basically, if you look at, real quickly here, This is what we're talking about. Turn to Matthew 26. In Matthew 26, starting in verse 59. Now the chief priests and the whole council kept trying to obtain false testimony against Jesus. Right here.

So what were they doing with Jesus? They wanted to get something that wasn't true about him. They had an end. They wanted to put him to death. in order that they might put him to death. So this is the same picture that unfolds here. They wanted some evidence. It didn't matter if it was true or not. They wanted evidence so they could say, we're going to put him to death. Same scenario.

And they couldn't find any. Where's the verse 60? And they did not find any, even though many false witnesses came forward. But the latter of the two came forward. and said, the man stated, I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days. So, you know, and we know from other passages he was talking about his body. And so it's all explainable, but they don't care about that.

So it's a very similar picture is here. And they stirred up the people, three groups, they stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes. So these These men from the libertines, from the freedmen, they were stirring up the people, the elders and the scribes. To agitate, cause commotion or confusion. And they dragged him away and brought him before the council.

And then what they do, if you read carefully, it says the council, So here we go again. The council, same as we read back with the Lord Jesus, the council put forth false witnesses. Same scenario, they do the same thing again. They bring forth these false witnesses who said, this man, Stephen, incessantly speaks against the holy place, the temple. And number two, this man, Stephen, incessantly speaks against the law, the law of Moses. For we have heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, would destroy this place, the temple. And then also, secondly, and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us. So they had to find somebody to say, if you speak against those two things, you're worthy of death, basically. Roger, just a quick point.

Do you think they had not heard of the resurrection? Well, remember, see, I'm trying to think, well, when you think the word of God. So are they denying what had happened or are they were they. Well, you know that they never know why. I've thought and I've heard, you know, let's talk about it. It seems like that they never they never could question the resurrection. They didn't have any good. They didn't have good evidence. They would have brought it forward.

They had to go back to these these, you know, This line here that he said he would destroy the temple in three days, that's used in all through the gospel, and it's used in Acts. That thing comes back over, that was reused and reused and reused, a false claim. That's one of the things they hung their head on.

I think that they well knew of the resurrection, but they also well knew of the council's decision, as is commonly reported to this day, is what the gospel says, that the disciples came and stole his body. And so they were going to err in one way or the other. It's either, well, I believe what I know to be true and get kicked out of the synagogue and possibly dead, or I just go with what the synagogue said, what the council says, that the disciples stole his body. And so I think that's how it then became commonly reported, is that when it came to this point, they said, well, everybody knows that the disciples took his body, even though they were very well aware, I'm sure, of the fact that these 500 folk that saw Christ at once, or me, lying about my testimony here, which is more reliable. But I'm going to fall back on the fact that the council said the disciples took his body, and I'm going to keep my job and my position, and whatever else. It's kind of like, don't confuse me with the fact that... Yeah, I mean, it's again... It's the old man, it shows up. Like on the road to Emmaus, are you a stranger? Have you been paying attention? Channel four. All right. So I went down to Malaysia. What? Right. OK. So I decided to do I decided to take a little bit of the next person because that kind of fits here.

So the final verse of the final two verses are actually. and fixing their gaze on him, and all who were sitting in the council saw his face like that face of an angel. The high priest said, are these things so? That reads a little bit rough. So I like the Weiss translation. It says, all those sitting in the council, having gazed intently upon him, saw his face as if it were an angel's face. Then the chief priest said, these things, are they factual, as has been stated?

And with that, we're going to see the start of Stephen's defense, his message, which is going to take up almost all of chapter, in fact, almost the entire chapter 7. So the gaze intently, if you look through scripture, you'll see that phrase used in a variety of places, like when the Christ was in the temple. I'm sorry, in the synagogue.

And he read the scriptures. All eyes were fixed on him when he was reading the scriptures. When he ascended into the heaven, into the sky, in the first chapter of Acts, they gazed intently to him in the sky. And remember, we had Peter. He fixed his gaze on the lame man. He looked at him, gazed intently at him. So that's the same word. The high priest, most people think, is Caiaphas. OK, here's a little point.

This is the third time Peter and John went before the council of the Sanhedrin the first two times in Acts 4.15 and 5.27. And now Stephen is now before the council. So this is the third time that part of the body of believers there have been brought before the council. And there's actually going to be a fourth time. Paul's going to be, I believe, the fourth time. We'll see that down the road. Okay, so that's basically it. Good questions. Any final thoughts? Sure, now yes.

I was just reading in my study Bible. It says, it was in first century synagogues that the Christian faith began taking hold. Paul and other missionaries never rejected their Jewish faith, but rather saw Christ as the fulfillment of all they had been taught in the synagogues. Wasn't that Peter's message? Peter made his case. He said, this man, and he went back to the Old Testament and showed how Christ was a Messiah.

Yeah, because in my mind, I guess I was kind of thinking of it as one or the other, you know, Jewish or Christian, but actually, it's kind of like, I could see how they wouldn't prevent them from coming into the temple. Because I was thinking, why would they still let Christians in the temple? You know, one thing to think about, I'm a little bit, sometimes, you know, remember there's only one temple, right? I mean, it was Harris, the Harris Temple, is that right?

Yeah. So there's only one temple and eventually it's destroyed. So the synagogue is really the place, these 300 plus, that's where they're meeting. That's like the temple, there's only temples for, certain time period. So I'll say temple when I mean synagogue. I'm not trying to be too picky here, but I think it's important to say the synagogue is a normal meeting place for most Jewish folks. The temple, if you had a temple, that was wonderful because that's the only place you can sacrifice. You can't sacrifice in the synagogue.

Maybe we should cover that. Actually, we have a little review session coming up down the road. Maybe we can review that a little bit. The temple is the normal meeting place. Sorry, the synagogue is a homing place. I can't get it right. But the temple is there, you know, there are only temples for certain time periods. Originally it was a tabernacle, right, in the wilderness. And that became a temple. The member of David said, I want to build a temple for you, Lord. And the Lord said, no, you can't do that. Your son will build it for you, for me. So anyway, so it's not like just keeping your heads.

The synagogue is the normal place where they hang out. That's where Jesus would read. So actually, if you think about it, that works out kind of nicely for the new church. They could still kind of hang out if there's a synagogue that was mostly believers. This is not scripture, Roger. This is me thanking you here. They could mostly kind of hang out there, and they'd probably get a little opposition. But if you go into another synagogue that was unbelievers, you might have a hard time. I don't know. Go ahead.

Some of the custom of the day is the Greek or the Roman. Trying to remember from my history, you know, where the. proletariat would get together. I mean, that was a common where they would go to the city center and talk about politics, discuss other things. And we see that with Apollos, I believe it is, where they use outdoors, not even just synagogues.

And so I can't imagine how much of that is going on. You know, you have the synagogues, but you also have the outdoor. And for these freedmen to Oh, we didn't know. I sincerely doubt that one. I'm sure, you know, so many believers in so many different cultures, they were using synagogue, they were using outdoor, you know, I'm sure it translated into so many different cultures and so many different aspects that the message of Jesus Christ I'm sure it was everywhere you turned.

If 5,000 people in Jerusalem were believers, the message was there. In addition, they said they were house to house. So not only were they meeting, they were going house to house. Like today, the message is there, the words are there, if people want to listen.

It's fascinating though, I think we tend to think in our American, where we go in the church doors, and we have our little message, and then we go, you know, it was slightly different, you know, ethnic wise, and they didn't exactly do everything, they did a lot more. The other thing is we think we have the Bible. Many people think the apostles couldn't read. Only certain people could read. So having people to proclaim the message was vital. That's why the apostles' job being out there with the word of God was important.

They verbally spoke that. Okay, let's close in prayer. Footsteps are coming. We thank you, Father. We thank you so much, Lord, for this day. We thank you for the blessings we have. We pray for Vern, the message ahead, Lord, just for your will to be accomplished and your word to be clearly heard. In Christ's name, Amen.