[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Expound, a
verse-by-verse study of God's word. Our goal is to expand your
knowledge of the truth of God by explaining the word of God
in a way that is interactive, enjoyable, and congregational. [MUSIC PLAYING] Father, we thank you
for the word of God that does the work of God in
the hearts of the people of God by the Holy Spirit of God. Father, we are here asking
you, as the good physician, the great physician, to
do surgery on our hearts, to work in our lives, to remind
us of truths long forgotten, unknown perhaps by some, that
need to be reaffirmed tonight in this place to us. As we consider, Lord,
prepare our hearts as we share together at
your table in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, you'll remember
from last time that we discovered that God has
some incredible mathematics, that at first the Lord
added to the church daily those who should be saved,
acts chapter 2 verse 47. The Lord was adding. Then as we continued to
read through this book, we saw multitudes coming. So we saw that the Lord not
only adds, but he multiplies, that his work was spreading
so rapidly that there were multitudes of people in
the early church that was at one time only 120 people. So the Lord adds. The Lord multiplies. But then last
week, we discovered the Lord is also sometimes in
the business of subtracting. Anaias and Sapphira were
eliminated from the church. They were subtracted from
the church by the Lord. So the Lord adds. The Lord multiplies. The Lord subtracts. One thing he never does in
his math, he never divides. That's the devil's work. And he employs people
to do it, but we're going to see division
here in this chapter. And then we'll see how
the Lord corrects that through his church and
then continues to add and continues to multiply. But we're in Acts
chapter 6, and we have a very interesting case
of church life and church leadership. I love church leaders,
but I know that no church leader is perfect. You know that too. No church is perfect. But I heard a story
about four leaders of a particular denomination. They all went together to
a conference of some kind, a leadership summit. And while they were there, the
emphasis at this conference was on being real with each
other, baring our souls, confessing our sins, being
honest, getting to know one another. So at a coffee break, these
four leaders over coffee started talking
at a deeper level. And the first one
said, brothers, I just need to tell you that I
have a particular thing I struggle with. Even though I am a
leader in a church, I struggle with drinking. I know I shouldn't do it. My congregation would be
shocked if they found out. I even preach against it. But every now and then, I
just feel like I need a sip. And they were
giving him their ear and they were trying
to sympathize with him. And the second guy
said, well, brothers, I need to tell you that I have
a problem with gambling. Whenever I travel, I
have a strong temptation, and I have lost a lot of
money in gambling situations. The third one hung
his head and he said, I have a struggle
with my income tax, being honest at
the end of the year and reporting what I brought
in and fudging with the numbers because though I
know we should pay our taxes to the government, I
also struggle with my finances. And I could use a
little extra money. And so I've cheated
on my income tax. The fourth guy in that
little circle of leaders was strangely silent
the entire time. And so all three of them
afterwards looked at him. And he said, well,
guys, I've never been attracted by alcohol. I don't struggle with
that, never have. Gambling is not appealing
to me whatsoever. I pay all my income taxes. But I do have a vice. My big vice, my big
problem, is gossip. And I just got to
tell you, I can't wait until this conference is
over so I can tell everyone about you guys. [LAUGHTER] Ouch. Nobody's perfect. No church is perfect. No leader is perfect. There's only a perfect
God with a perfect son who gives perfect salvation
to imperfect people, and that's us. And we discover that truth
here in this chapter. And let me just say, I am very
thankful for the book of Acts. I'm thankful that we have
a record, an honest record, of the earliest weeks, months,
and years of church history and how it unfolds. And the reason I
say I am thankful is that it doesn't
pull any punches. It doesn't gloss over
any personalities. It tells you straight up
who these people were, where they excelled,
and where they failed. For example, we have already
read about the suicide of one of the apostles. Judas killed himself. That is honestly
portrayed in this book. We have already
discovered the elimination by God, the judgment
of God, on a couple, a notable couple in
the early church, Ananias and Sapphira, his wife. Later on, we're going to
read about two leaders, Paul and Barnabas in chapter 15,
getting into such an argument that they have to split
company and go in two entirely different directions. So it's a very honest rendering. Now we have another
problem here. The problem is a
complaint of one group against another group. And the complaint
brings dissension, brings division in the church. As I mentioned
earlier on, division is seen in this chapter. I've told you before
that little truth, that whenever you turn the
lights on, the bugs come. And whenever the light of
the gospel shines brightly, Satan will send his bugs,
and you'll get bugged. He'll make sure that you do. And if you are preaching the
gospel, teaching the word, raising up leaders-- you have
a vision for another country-- you're going to get attacked. It comes with the territory. So far, we have watched Satan
attack the church, first of all by persecution. He's always done that. He's done it since day one. He did it in Jerusalem. A law was passed that it's
illegal to preach the gospel. Peter and John
didn't seem to care. They just said, you
know, you're going to have to figure out
if it's OK to do that. We're going to
obey God, not you. And they kept doing it. They got arrested. Angel sprung him out of jail. They went back and did it again. But persecution
against the church was the first tool
Satan employed. It didn't work. It didn't work. In fact, it backfired. It grew more. It went from addition
to multiplication. So he tried another tactic-- corruption, hypocrisy,
Ananias and Sapphira lying to the Holy Spirit,
in effect lying to God. That didn't work. God eliminated them,
purified the church, and the church grew,
as we saw last time. It was the end of that story. But now he employs
another tactic. The Bible says, we are not
ignorant of his devices. He will always employ
one of these devices. And here we see that
division, that dissension in the early church. Whenever there is a church that
is complaining, backbiting, quarreling,
disagreeing, arguing, one group against another group,
the message that they preach is so watered down
it is ineffective. The world can't hear it. The church needs to be
purified, cleansed of that. And we'll see how the Lord
does that in chapter 6 through organizing by the
early church leadership. Now, I know we haven't
even started yet. But again, there's only
15 verses, so stay calm. I mentioned organization. I just want to say
a word about that here because the
problem that existed in the early church
of chapter 6 was fixed by the Holy Spirit
leading the leaders to organize the church in a different format
so as to solve the problem. Why is that important? It's important because
sometimes, people think that organization is bad. I don't believe in
organized religion. I'm suspicious at
organized religion. I hear that term, and I
hear it in a scornful way-- an organized religion,
ooh, that's bad-- as if to imply they would rather
have disorganized religion. But some would. Some think that if you organize
anything the Holy Spirit is doing, it's wrong. It's of man. It's evil. But as I read my
Bible, I discover my God is a very organized God. And he says, let everything
be done decently and in order, in an organized fashion. And the more people you
have, the more organization is necessary. The church is both an
organism and an organization. Now, an organism is something
that is life and life-giving. It's living, moving, expanding. But unless you organize an
organism, you have a problem. You could have a cancer, or
you could have just a blob. So the organism
must be organized. And God is organized. That's why we have sunrise
and sunset every day, or the revolution of the
Earth around the Sun, to be more precise. But we call it a
sunrise and a sunset. And we can program that. We know exactly when it's
going to happen tomorrow and when it's going
to happen in a month because we have observed an
orderly, organized universe. On the other hand, you
can organize things too much as if to say,
well, Holy Spirit, we're going to
form our structure, and we expect you to just sort
of follow what we've organized. Now, what do you do with
organization is the only time you need to change
the organization is if there is a need or a demand
that the organization will solve the problems within. And we're going to see
what the problems are. The first is growth. So in those days, verse 1, "when
the number of the disciples was multiplying"-- please note that-- "there arose
a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists because
their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. Then the 12 summoned the
multitude of the disciples and said, it is not
desirable that we should leave the word of
God and serve tables." The church at one time had
120 people in an upper room. Life was grand. It was awesome. It was simple. They waited on the Holy Spirit. He moved. It was just, let's see what
the Lord's going to do next. The problem came when
it started growing. Now, I know. I've heard it a
lot over the years. Well, that's a good
problem to have. I remember hearing that
when our church at first started growing and
growing and growing. People said, man, wish
we had those problems. That's a good problem to have. It's a good problem, but
it's still a problem. It still needs to be addressed. And I can recall
back when the church was growing so fast, so large. There were so many
people that we were finding ourselves not ready. We didn't prepare any
infrastructure or organization yet. We were just reacting
to the growth. So the number of the disciples
that says we're multiplying. Part of the problem that is
created when the group gets larger and larger, I can think
of a couple complications. Number one, there
is a perceived-- and I underline that word--
perceived lack of concern. Oh, it's so big. They don't care
about me anymore. That's just-- it's
going to happen. People are going to
automatically think that large means
not able to touch the individual, impersonal. There's a perceived
lack of concern. And another problem is
there's an expectation that comes along with this that,
well, you're a leader. You've got to
personally fix this. You yourself have to be
the one pastor to fix this. And I love this story because
the disciples fix the problem. They address it head on,
but they're really not going to be the ones fixing. They're just going to be the
ones ratifying, going, amen. I like that. Good idea. Good choice. But there's a perceived
lack of concern, and there are expectations
that come with it. I can hear some of the
original 120 members of that upper room congregation
murmuring to each other, it's not like it used to be. Unless I get there early,
somebody takes my seat. I like the orange carpet better. Who likes orange carpet? Who knows. All sorts of complaints
going around, but this is one in particular
we're told in verse 1. There arose a complaint, a
murmuring, against the Hebrews by the Hellenists because
their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. So there's internal conflict. And it's one group of women
against another group of women. It's in the women's ministry. No, I'm not impugning. I'm not indicting. I'm just noting that
in the early church, this was the case. One group were arguing
against another group. "Then the 12 summoned the
multitude of the disciples." Now notice the word "disciples." It's the very
first time the word is used in the book of Acts. It's used a couple hundred
times in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's used 28 times
in the book of Acts. It's used for the
first time here. Organization at the very
beginning was very simple. There were apostles, and
there were disciples. Now, back in the gospels, the
disciples that followed Jesus, there were lots of them. But Jesus chose 12 of them
to become his apostles. You remember those stories. But the organization in the
nascent part of the church, there were disciples, which
means learners, students, and there were
apostles designated as sent-out individuals. So there were the
apostles, the 11. Judas was gone. One was added. So you really have a
book of Twelve Apostles, and you have a
group of disciples. So this is the first
time it is mentioned. It won't be the last time. You'll read about
it again and again. But notice that they
were complaining because the widows
were neglected in the daily distribution. It seems that in
addressing the poor in the church, the
poverty that was existing in the early church at Jerusalem
that we described reasons about last time-- so many of the jobs
were temple-related. Many of those early
messianic believers lost their employment. So to address the
issue of poverty, the early church would give
out a daily food distribution. Well, one group thought
another group was getting more than they were. The Hellenists-- I'll
describe them in a moment-- thought the Hebrews-- I'll describe them in a moment-- were getting the better
end of the stick. They, the Hellenists,
were getting less. Now, there were two types of
Jews back then in Jerusalem. There were what's
called the Hebrews. These were Aramaic-speaking
local Jewish men and women. They read the Hebrew scriptures. They spoke some Hebrew in
the liturgy of their worship, but they spoke daily Aramaic,
the language of Jesus, the language of the
Near East at that time. They held tightly
to no translation, just the original
Hebrew scriptures. But there was another group
called the Hellenists. They were primarily
Greek-speaking Jews of a group known
as the diaspora. Have you heard of the diaspora? It means the dispersion. The Jews that had been scattered
all over the world, that's the diaspora. If you're not living in Israel,
you were part of the diaspora. You had been
scattered elsewhere. So many of these scattered
Jews stayed scattered. Many of them came
back to Jerusalem. When they came
back to Jerusalem, they congregated with
people like themselves. They spoke Greek. They had a Greek
background, background of different cultures. And they congregated together. They had their own synagogues. The Hebrew had their
own synagogues. The Hellenists had their
own special synagogues. They didn't read from
the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament, but
from the Greek translation called the Septuagint version. That was their version. Well, you can just
see that there's going to be a conflict
because the Hebrews speaking in Hebrew-inclined local
Jerusalemite Jews always felt that they were
a cut above those who were the Greek-speaking,
worldly, from other places Jewish people. So there was always
this tension. They had their own synagogue so
they could worship separately. But now they're called together
in one church, one fellowship. Both messianic Jews,
both believers in Jesus, but both very different
backgrounds, now they're put into one church. And whenever you have
different people in one group, you're going to have problems. And they had problems-- a perceived lack of
concern and an expectation that the apostles need
to fix this problem. So the 12 summoned the
multitude and said, it is not desirable that
we, we the apostles, should leave the
word of God-- that is teaching the scriptures. That's what we're called to do. The Apostles' doctrine, Acts
2:42, they were big on that. That was first on
their four-tiered list. We don't want to leave the
word of God and serve tables. Now, the tables
need to be served. The apostles
recognized the problem. They're meeting it head on,
but they're just saying, we're not going to be the
ones to do that personally. Therefore, verse 3,
"seek out from among you seven men of good reputation
full of the Holy Spirit in wisdom whom we may
appoint over this business." Now, before I get
into that part, let me just for a moment
concede that there really was a problem of a lack of concern. Let's just imagine there was. We don't know that there was. We just know one group
said there was, right? They made a complaint. But let's just say
there was a problem and the Hebrew-speaking
Jewish widows were getting preferential treatment
and the Hellenists were being short-changed. Let's say that was a problem. If that was a
problem, the problem was made much worse by the
complaining about the problem. Can you agree on that part? You may have a problem. And OK, we understand
there's a problem, but we're going
to try to fix it. But it's not fixed yet. And so you start talking
about it to other people. You start spreading bad
seed, bad words, bad ideas, and inferior motives that
may not be there around. And you know what? Did you know that
God hates that? I don't mean he just
doesn't like it. He outright hates that. In the Book of
Proverbs chapter 6, there's a list of
seven things God hates. Don't do it now, but I commend,
sometime, go look at Proverbs 6 and look at, even memorize, the
seven things that God hates. It says six things the
Lord hates, yea seven, are an abomination to him. And last on the
list, he who sows discord among the brethren. God hates that. So there may have
been a problem. They made the problem
worse by murmuring. And the word "murmuring"
or "complaining" is a very interesting
Greek word, [GREEK].. See, you laugh at that
because that word is an onomatopoetic word. That is, the word sounds
like what the action was. It sounds like you're
complaining, [GREEK].. So they spread that bad
seed around the church. So here's the solution. "Seek out from
among you seven men of good reputation full of the
Holy Spirit and wisdom whom we may appoint over
this business." You do the finding. We'll do the ratifying. You select them. We'll say yes to it. Problem needs to be fixed. Go fix it. Bring the solution. Bring the people to us that we
may appoint over this business, but we-- here's their priority. "But we will give
ourselves continually to prayer and to the
ministry of the word." I smile when I read this because
I'm so proud of these apostles, I want to go in the room
and pat Peter on the back and grab John and go, man,
you guys have grown so much. And if I would've done
that, they'd look at me and go, first of
all, who are you and what are you
doing in our story? And second, what do you
mean we've grown so much? And I would say, well,
guys, do you remember back when Jesus was feeding
the 5,000 or wanting to, and all you could say is, send
the multitudes away, that they may get food in the
villages around here? Remember that? That was your solution,
send everybody away. And do you remember when
that Canaanite woman brought her little daughter who
was demon-possessed, and the apostle
said, send her away? She's crying after us. Boy, they've grown a lot. Can you imagine the early
church coming to these apostles and saying, we need help, man. One group is getting
preferential treatment, and the apostle saying, go away. Find your own food. But they've grown. Now they're facing
the problem head on, and they're coming up with
a good solution to it-- not send them away,
let's fix this issue. Let's get people who
can fix this issue. Now, here was their problem
back in the gospels in those two stories I brought up. When they said, send
the multitudes away because we don't have
enough food for them, the problem the disciples,
the apostles, had back then is they saw themselves
as manufacturers rather than as distributors. They thought, well, we have to
come up with this food thing. We don't have enough food. Send them away. Jesus wasn't asking them to come
up with food on their own, just to distribute what he
was going to manufacture. So they should have
just said, ah, OK. I don't know what you
have up your sleeve, but we're here to
serve whatever you say. But they saw
themselves as the ones responsible when they
weren't doing anything. Jesus was doing all the work. They just had to distribute it. Now they get it. Now they see themselves as
distributing whatever provision the Lord has brought
into their hands. And so they set
their priorities. We're not going to leave the
word of God and serve tables. We want to give ourselves
continually, verse 4, to prayer and to the
ministry of the word. I love their priority. We're not going to leave the
word of God and serve tables. I'm going to speak
candidly to you. Over the years, I have seen many
a church leave the word of God and serve tables, starting
out as a Bible-teaching church, after a while,
saying, you know, people don't really want
to hear Bible-teaching. They don't really want
to hear deep Bible study. They don't care about Greek
words and Hebrew words and syntax and
context and history. They just want to
have a pep rally. So I'm going to change-- let us change as a church and
start preaching a social gospel and having pep rallies
instead of giving the meat. They set their priorities. We're not going to leave the
word of God and serve tables. We're going to give
ourselves continually to prayer and the ministry of
the word, those two priorities. Churches, I have seen,
leave the word of God. I've seen pastors
leave the word of God. And it's easy to do. Here's why. It's not easy to study
all day and teach. It's not all day to pour
hour after hour into the text and get the bearing of the text
and the meaning of the text to make it plain
and understandable. It takes a lot of work. And I remember J Vernon
McGee, when I asked him-- I've told you this before. I said, why don't more pastors
actually teach the Bible? And he just said,
because they're lazy. And it's easy to get lazy, and
it's easy to get distracted. There are so many things that
get involved in the church. So when we first started this
fellowship, I did it all. I led the worship along
with Laura and a few others. I kept the books
for the corporation. I did the counseling. I did studying for Bible
studies and was newly married and had a full-time job. Something had to give. And as the organization
grew larger and larger, more had to give, and more had
to give, and more had to give. And you just have to specialize. But one thing you
can never give up as a pastor, at least, the
word, the word, the word. Preach the word, Timothy. The instant, in season
and out of season. [APPLAUSE] That was their priority. I had a homiletics professor,
Dr. Nat van Cleave, who said to us one
evening in our class. He said, if you
preach for one hour or teach for one hour
to a group of 100 people and you are ill
prepared to do so, you've just wasted 100
hours of God's time. As you can see, I've
never forgot that. That stuck with me. It's like ugh,
arrow to the heart. OK, ugh, pull it out. Make that a priority. So that was the stake
they placed in the ground. So did you notice the
qualifications in verse 3? I know I'm moving slowly. First of all, seven men. Why seven? I don't know why except-- well, it's the number of
completion and perfection. No, there's a more
fundamental answer than that. It seems that the
early church, when it came to organizing things,
because they didn't know what to model their
organizational structure on, they were organizing
the early church based upon the model
they saw in Judaism. In Judaism, in any community,
all of the public affairs were done by a group
of seven elders. Seven men were
selected from the town, from the community, who
had integrity and were notable and noteworthy. And they were in charge of
gathering together and settling disputes and settling
issues within the community. So it seems that they
were simply modeling what they knew in Judaism. I can't be sure
because we're not told, but that seems to be
what they were doing. But notice, "seven
men from among you." Don't go outside and
hire people you don't know who have a good resume. Get somebody from your own
church who has been with you. They understand the
philosophy of ministry. They're part of the fellowship. They get it. And "full of good
reputation," so they have to have been there a while. They have to have been able
to be observed, to be watched, to be involved in some capacity. And as others watched them,
they developed a reputation, and in this case,
a good reputation. Notice next on the list,
"full of the Holy Spirit"-- you know, you can have all the
other previous qualifications. If you don't have this
one, it's worthless-- filled, controlled by,
managed by the Holy Spirit, a person who's spirit-led. And wisdom, you
know what wisdom is. You can be smart and not wise. You can have a high IQ. You can have a degree. You can have several degrees. You can have a PhD degree,
but God will give you the third degree
if you're not wise because knowledge is one thing. Wisdom is the right
application of that knowledge. So all of that is observable. They're wise in their
transaction and decisions. "Whom we, the apostles, may
appoint over this business," you select them. We'll appoint them. We will give ourselves,
verse 4, continually, over and over again as
a priority, to prayer and the ministry of the word. And get this-- the saying,
please the whole multitude, that's unusual. And they chose Stephen,
a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit. You'll read more about
Stephen in the next chapter. And Philip, you'll read more
about Philip in the chapter after that. Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon,
Parmenas, and Nicolas, you won't read anything
more about them-- A proselite from Antioch whom
they set before the apostles. And when they prayed,
they laid hands on them, point of
contact, recognition. "Then the word of God spread." I love that description. "The word of God spread, and
the number of the disciples multiplied. There's God at it again. He's been adding, subtracting,
multiplying again. They multiplied
greatly in Jerusalem. And a great many of the
priests, the Jewish priests who served in the
temple structure, were obedient to the faith. Now, something to make a note
of with those names, all seven names are Greek names. So who was complaining? The Greeks, the Hellenists,
the Greek-speaking, Septuagint-oriented, Gentile,
country-oriented Jewish believers. So what a beautiful way and
grace to solve a problem. The Greeks are complaining. All the ones in charge of
the problem and distribution will be Greeks. Love that. It's like affirmative
action, New Testament style. They set before the apostles. They laid hands on
them, and they prayed. And the word of God spread,
et cetera, et cetera. Now, verse 7, I just
want you to notice it because there's a mark. There should be-- you might
even put a little pencil mark between verse 7 and
8 because verse 7 ends one section of the book of Acts. Verse 8 begins a
whole other section. Verse 7 is a summary
statement given by Dr. Luke, the author
of this book, which he gives throughout
this book when he wants to sum up or conclude or give
you some kind of a field report on what God has done. He gives a summary
statement and then moves on to another section
and another section. So in chapter 2 verse
47, praising God and having favor
with all the people, and the Lord added
daily to the church, those who were being saved. That's a summary statement. Then there's a
whole other section, and it's ended by this
summary statement. There will be another
one in chapter 9, another one in chapter 12,
another one in chapter 16. God does a work. He sums it up neatly in
one little principal form. And that's what verse 7 is. Now, verse 7 ends the
witness of the gospel in Jerusalem, not for good, not
historically, but primarily. Remember the
outline of the book. Chapter 1 verse 8, you
will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria,
and the uttermost parts of the earth. We have seen the witness in
Jerusalem in these chapters. Now there is a shift,
and the gospel's going to go out
throughout Judea, Samaria, and then to the uttermost
parts of the earth. So the next three events are
those introductory events. What three events? The first martyr,
Stephen, will be killed. Saul of Tarsus will
be there witnessing it because they lay his clothes at
his feet and he's observing it. Philip goes and spreads the
gospel to Gaza and to Caesarea. Then Saul of Tarsus
gets saved in chapter 9, and that becomes the
catalyst to bring the gospel outside of Judea,
Samaria, and he'll take it to the uttermost
parts of the earth. So Luke is following
his outline. Chapter 7, see it as
a summary statement. Or verse 7 of chapter 6
is the summary statement. Verse 8 begins this. 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
the Freed Men, Cyreneans, Alexandrians and those from
Cilicia and Asia disputing with Stephen. We know that in Jerusalem,
there was one big central place of worship known as the Temple. Temple structure,
sacrifices were done there. Priests worked there. Enormous amount of
activity was there. But not only that, but because
of the captivity in Babylon, there developed the institution
known as the synagogue. You never read about synagogues
in the Old Testament. Suddenly they appear
in the New Testament. That's because they develop
between the Old and the New Testament in captivity. By the time we get to the New
Testament, they're everywhere. Jesus in Capernaum went
into the synagogue. He went into the synagogue and
all the cities around Galilee. The Talmud tells us--
the Jewish writings tell us that at this
time, there were 390 synagogues in Jerusalem alone. So think of the synagogue back
then as sort of like churches today. Each synagogue had
its own flavor, its own kind of emphasis,
own style of people that were from different parts. And they just sort of got
along and saw things that way, their own little cliques,
their own little groups. You know how people
do that today? It's like, I don't like
church because my friend goes to this church. I'm going to that-- all of that happened in
the synagogue, 390 of them in Jerusalem. The Synagogue of
the Freed Men was the synagogue comprised of
ex-slaves, freed slaves, or the family members of freed
slaves, hence, freed men. We know that Pompey, the
general of the Romans, took an enormous amount
of different people from North Africa and Asia
Minor as his personal slaves in the city of Rome. They eventually
were freed in Rome, and a lot of them,
who were Jewish, made their way here
back to Jerusalem. They established a synagogue. Again, you're told
where they come from, North Africa, Cyrene,
Alexandria, Egypt, and also from Cilicia. Now, who comes from Cilicia? Saul of Tarsus. Tarsus was a city in
the province of Cilicia. So no doubt, here is a synagogue
that Saul of Tarsus, AKA Paul the Apostle, that
was his synagogue. Even though he wasn't a freed
man or the relative of a freed man, because he will say, I was
actually born a Roman citizen, free-born, nonetheless because
of the family ties to Cilicia, this was probably the
synagogue he went to. So he's going to be
there that whole time Stephen is he going to give his
message in the next chapter. I'm just setting
you up for that. And verse 10, "they
were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit
by which he spoke." Again, he's filled
with the Holy Spirit. That was one of the
conditions to be a deacon in the early church. That's what these men
were, servants, deacons. They couldn't resist the
wisdom by which he spoke. Then they secretly
induced men to say-- so they fabricated a story-- we have heard him
speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. And they stirred up
the people, the elders, and all the scribes,
and they came upon him. And they seized him, and they
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. Does this sound familiar? Does this not sound an awful
lot like the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin
when they made up stories and because Jesus had made
this statement when he said, destroy this temple,
and in three days, I will raise it
up again, speaking of the temple of his body. They misinterpreted
that on purpose to mean, I'm going to destroy the temple. So they came up with a
threefold fabrication. He's speaking blasphemous
words against God, blasphemous words against
Moses or the law of Moses, and blasphemous words
against the temple. That's what it says
here, this place. 4 verse 14, "we have heard
him say that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and
change the customs which Moses delivered to us." That's the accusation. Now, that's going to set
you up for chapter 7, because after hearing
the accusation, the high priest in verse
1 of chapter 7 will say, are these things so? That's all the opener he needed. He now launches into a-- well, there's 59 verses after
verse 1 in the next chapter. He goes into this incredible
historical witness to share the gospel
based on Jewish history to that nation in Jerusalem. Some people say, well, I'm
waiting for an open door. I want to share my faith,
but I haven't seen it-- the Lord has opened the door. This dude would take
a crack in the window. Are these things so? That's all I need. Voom, and he goes with it. But look at the last
verse of chapter 6, verse 15 "And all who sat in
the council looking steadfastly at him saw his face as
the face of an angel." You know why that's noteworthy? Because they said
Stephen is speaking against not only God, not only
the temple, but against whom? Moses. When Moses came down from Mount
Sinai having received the law covenant of God coming
down to the people after having intimate concourse,
communication with God, he comes down. And the Bible says, his
face shone brightly. I mean, these Jewish leaders
should have looked at Stephen and thought, oh my word. This is just like what we
read about happened to Moses. It's happening to this guy,
because that would show them he's not against Moses. He's like Moses. This dude is shining
brightly like Moses was when he had that
intimate contact with God, the face of an angel. All the high priest can
say, are these things so. And it's an incredible message
that he gives, the longest one in the book of Acts. But we're out of time, so we
have to wait until next week to look at it, and we will. But as we close our
bibles, we open our hearts. And the band's going to come. I'm going to end this in prayer. And we're going to give
you the opportunity to get up, find the
nearest table near you, take the Lord's Supper
right here in the front or go back to your
seat if you wish. But take it with a friend. And maybe you don't know the
person you're sitting next to. Get to know them. But just in the next
12 minutes, 13 minutes, let's take the Lord's
Supper together and come to the table, the
table of commemoration, the table of celebration,
as we take together. Heavenly Father, thank
you for the example of how the first church dealt
with an issue of growth, an issue of conflict, and
how in grace they came up with the right kind
of organization that pleased the whole
multitude, and the word of God spread. Lord, we thank you for
the power of your word. We thank you for the
power of the gospel truth. We thank you for the
church, because we realize the only institution,
the only entity Jesus promised to bless, was the church. He said, upon this rock,
I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will
not prevail against it. Thank you for that
promise, Lord. We're just one little expression
in this great, big town. We pray, Father, that
as we gather together at the Lord's Supper, we pray,
Lord, that as we contemplate and as we celebrate that we
would honor you and do this in remembrance of you, but also
looking forward to the time when you're going to come back. We do celebrate the Lord's
death until he come. Thank you, Lord, that these
elements speak of a work that we didn't do,
but a work, Lord, that has been done
for us, and a work that we enjoy the benefits of. In Jesus' name, amen. [MUSIC PLAYING] For more resources from Calvary
Albuquerque and Skip Heitzig, visit calvaryabq.org.
