Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word podcast. Whether you’re a first-time listener or you’ve been here before, we are grateful for this time together in God’s Word. Let’s get you started with today’s chapters six and seven together, as Paul unfolds about a young leader in the Christian church named Stephen, who boldly confronts the Sanhedrin and pays for it with his life. Let’s listen in. Acts chapters six and seven: The First Christian Martyr. I’m going to do something we haven’t done to date in this podcast series, and that is cover Acts chapters six and seven together, because they are one running narrative.

As I’ve mentioned before, the chapter and verse divisions in our Bibles were not put there by the original writers, like Luke didn’t put chapters seven and the verses down. This all happened later to make it easier for people to navigate around in the text. Neither Acts nor any of the other biblical writings originally were broken down into chapters and verses. Usually those who made the divisions in our Bibles chose a pretty good place to do so, but in this case, maybe not so much. When we hear the word martyr today, at least in a religious context, we think of people who have been killed for their faith, for their deep beliefs. The root of the word actually means witness.

But so many of the early witnesses to Christ’s life and resurrection were killed for spreading the gospel, so the term came to mean and to connote someone who gave up their life for their belief. Over the centuries, sometimes it’s been at the hands of violently anti-Christian governments, as was with a case, for example, with the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, killed by the Nazis during World War II. Or Wang Zhiming, a pastor and evangelist, killed in China during the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s. There have been far too many over the centuries, dating back to the violent persecutions during the Roman Empire years, when many of the apostles were martyred, as well as early church fathers like Justin and Polycarp.

Maybe the most head-scratching instances of all have been when terribly misguided religious people gain secular power and then kill those whose faith they don’t understand and whose influence they fear. Some of the saddest yet most inspiring stories like that occurred during the Middle Ages. During that dark period in Europe we call the Inquisition, the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy sought out and tried to kill people like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale and Martin Luther and several others. What was their crime? Translating the Bible into common languages so that people like us could read it for ourselves. At that time, the Roman Catholic Church had great sway over secular governments in Europe.

They carefully controlled access to the Bible and insisted that they alone were the filter of truth to God’s people. They had an official version of the Bible in Old Latin that virtually no regular people could read. Even if they could get access to one, they couldn’t read it. But some scholars within the Roman Catholic Church, who did and who could, believed deeply that the Bible should be in people’s languages, in vernacular, as we call it, in languages people used every day. Some of them took on the power of the institutional church and the puppet states that they controlled to accomplish that goal. John Wycliffe, as I mentioned, he died of natural causes before they could kill him, but they martyred many of his associates at Oxford College who carried on his work of translating the Bible into English in the middle part of the 15th century.

Forty years later, religious authorities dug up Wycliffe’s bones and burned them to be sure everyone knew they considered him a heretic for having crossed their religious authority. A generation after his time, William Tyndale took up the dangerous challenge, and he did get most of the New Testament translated into common English. For his efforts, he was captured, strangled, and then burned at the stake by the Catholic King Henry VIII. You know, one of the most fascinating details in church history is that Tyndale’s pyre, the wood that he was burned upon, was stoked with manuscript sheets from Wycliffe’s banned Bible. Those who witnessed his burning say that as he died, he was praying out loud, and many people heard him say, Lord, open the eyes of the King of England.

And it was, in fact, that same King of England who later changed his mind and authorized the translation and publication of the Bible in common English, for the first time making it legal in his realm for commoners like us to have a copy of the Word of God in a language they could understand. These Christians I’m talking about were great heroes of the faith, in my estimation. Anyone who is willing to lay down their life to share the Word of God has unique and special rewards awaiting them in heaven, I bet. In the last book of the New Testament, the Revelation, believers in the early churches were promised by God, if you are faithful, even to the point of death, you will receive a crown of life. Today we’re going to see when the sad but sometimes inspiring chain of martyrs who died for sharing their Christian faith actually began.

As chapter six opens, Luke tells us that a problem was brewing among the rapidly growing Christian community in Jerusalem. Some of the Christians were Jews from other places who had stayed on in Jerusalem to be part of the early church, as we’ve discovered. Apparently, some of them began to feel that their widows were not being treated the same as the native-born Israeli widows, as far as having their needs met from that apostles’ benevolence fund we talked about. They felt that some of their group were being slighted. You know, racial and ethnic tensions are nothing new. This complaint was brought to the apostles.

The apostles’ ministry was primarily spiritual oversight and teaching and praying for the people, and that was taxing enough, demanding enough. There were, I’m sure by now, well more than 5,000 members of this rapidly growing Christian community. The apostles didn’t feel that it was right or appropriate for them to take time away from teaching and prayer and leading to administer a food distribution program. They needed help, so they decided to ask the congregation to choose seven men they all respected and trusted for their faith and good character to oversee this practical area of ministry. And Luke lists for us here the seven men who were chosen.

It’s interesting that all the names he lists here are Greek names, suggesting that all of those chosen were from among the Greek speakers, that is, the out-of-towners, the Jews from the dispersion who had come to Jerusalem and decided to stay on after the day of Pentecost. Some see in this piece of the story the origin of the church office of deacon, which means servant. And that’s reasonable, since the term deacon, as I said, comes from a root that means to serve, and that’s what these men’s role was: to serve as administrators over this food and supplies distribution of the Christian community so that everyone was treated fairly. But I don’t think the purpose of this section is necessarily to set down for us a pattern for church government. The apostles were just developing needed roles out of necessity and entrusting them to people they could delegate responsibilities to.

That’s what all good leaders do. I think a more likely reason Luke recorded this background information for us is because he wanted to introduce to us two of those men who were chosen to solve this food distribution problem, and he is now briefly going to turn the spotlight on these two men in his narrative. At the same time, I believe he is underscoring an important theme in Acts for us here, and we should take note of this. That is, when the church is problematic and having issues, it kind of grinds to a halt. But when those issues are solved and the church is unified, it grows and advances. That’s what happened here with the whole Ananias and Sapphira problem, and also these people complaining about not getting their fair share from the benevolence fund.

They kind of lost their unity for a while and their focus for a while, and things ground to a halt. The Holy Spirit wasn’t as free to work in a church that was not unified. Unity is essential for the Church of Jesus Christ to advance, and good leadership that people trust is essential for unity. We see that illustrated here very clearly, don’t we? Fortunately, the apostles’ solution of allowing the people to select some trusted men to administer this food distribution problem, that worked out very well and unity was restored, and the early church continued to prosper, we’re told. At the end of this paragraph, Luke says, The number of disciples continued to increase in Jerusalem, and even a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.

Even priests who worked at the temple were becoming Christians? I’m sure that got the attention of Caiaphas and the rest of the Sanhedrin, which might explain something drastic that happened next. One of those seven men who were selected by the church for this new administrative role was a young man named Stephen, and he’s described as a man full of the Holy Spirit and faith. Stephen was a Hellenistic Jew, that is, one from the dispersion, not native to Israel. We can deduce that because it sounds like he had been boldly preaching in some of the synagogues in Jerusalem that were made up of Greek-speaking Jews, people not native to Israel. And God’s hand was really on this young man, both in word and deed, we’re told.

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. But they were unable to cope with the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking. Stephen was visiting these different synagogues, and all of these places are from outside Israel, so these are Jews of the dispersion, and he is sharing his faith in Christ there. When he was questioned about why he believed what he believed concerning Jesus, he had great answers. They found it hard to argue with him. By the way, that’s what all Christians are supposed to be able to do.

That is, have reasonable answers for what we say is our faith. Stephen could explain why he believed in Christ, and he could do it powerfully and effectively, so effectively, in fact, that he was too persuasive for the leaders of these synagogues. Rather than allow him to continue to win people to faith in Christ right from their Jewish synagogues, some of them incited a mob to silence Stephen, and they dragged him before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish High Council. It’s interesting to read the charges that they brought against him. Essentially, they were the same very false charges that were brought against Jesus. Stephen’s accusers told the council members, He incessantly speaks against this holy place, referring to the temple, and against the law of Moses.

For we have heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses has handed down to us. To the men who made up the Sanhedrin, who were entrusted with keeping the traditions and holding this society together, these accusations sounded serious. And as chapter 7 opens, the high priest who chaired the council that day asked Stephen to answer these charges. Then most of this chapter forward is devoted to Stephen giving the Sanhedrin essentially a history lesson. Which I’m sure they appreciated, especially since the underlying theme of Stephen’s speech was that history has a bad way of repeating itself. Just as the nation of Israel in the past had not responded to godly leaders and prophets God had sent them, Stephen charged, that is happening again right now.

You men are stiff-necked and always resisting the Holy Spirit. You are doing the same things your forefathers did. Which one of the prophets did your forefathers not persecute? Stephen asked them. They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, he was referring to Jesus, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. Stephen was the one on trial, supposedly, but he was boldly turning the tables on the Jewish religious leaders that day.

He accused them of stubbornly refusing to listen to God, to accept Jesus whom God had sent, and of denying the obvious work of the Holy Spirit that had been done right there in Jerusalem before their eyes, not only by Jesus, but even more recently by his apostles. Verse 54 says, Hearing Stephen’s accusation, the high council members were cut to the quick. He was definitely fearless to have spoken truth to power like he did. His audience, made up of priests and elders and Pharisees, were literally grinding their teeth in anger at the audacity of this young man. His last words in the council chamber that day, as he gazed up toward heaven, were, Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. They didn’t see what Stephen saw.

They were blinded by unbelief and rage. They covered their ears. They rushed him, pushing him and dragging him from the temple precinct hearing room, and then outside of Jerusalem’s walls, and there they stoned him to death. This wasn’t a judicial sentence being carried out. This was an act of mob violence that occurred. Almost like Jesus’ own execution, Luke was told, when Stephen went down on his knees under the hail of rocks, he was praying, Lord, receive my spirit, and don’t hold this sin against them.

That means the people were throwing rocks at him. I can’t help but hear in that an echo of Jesus’ words from the cross, Father, I commit my spirit into your hands, and on behalf of his killers, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing. Many have commented how that elsewhere in Scripture, in many places, it is said that Jesus, after having finished his work here, ascended to heaven and now sits at the right hand of God the Father. But Stephen says, as he was going down under the stones, he saw Christ standing. One commentary that I like suggests Jesus was standing, giving a standing ovation, that he stood up in honor and appreciation, ready to welcome this brave young champion of the faith home to heaven. I like that thought.

But that day, Stephen became the first Christian martyr. I mentioned a moment ago that Luke must have been told the details of this ugly scene by someone who was there, by an eyewitness, even his exact words as he was stoned to death. I feel sure that there was an eyewitness there who passed this information along accurately to Luke. Notice he writes at chapter 6, verse 58 and following, When they had driven him, that is Stephen, out of the city, they began stoning him. And the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul. Remember, Stephen originally got into a tangle with men from the synagogues of the Greek-speaking Jews, one of which Luke said was the synagogue of the Cilicians.

Saul was a Cilician, a Hellenized Jew from that Roman province, from the city of Tarsus, which was located in what is today southeast Turkey. Saul’s family was among the thousands who had been displaced from Israel some time previously during one of the dispersions, but they, like so many Jewish families, jealously guarded their heritage. Interestingly, Saul was an exact contemporary of Jesus, but their paths never directly crossed during Jesus’ public ministry years. While Jesus was growing up in a little village near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, Saul had a very different upbringing in the large cosmopolitan Gentile city of Tarsus in Cilicia. This was a thriving commercial center. It also had large communities of Asians, Greeks, and Syrians, as well as Romans and Jews, which explains why Saul was multilingual and understood different cultures.

Tarsus was an important center of education and philosophy in the ancient world too, so he was exposed to the most advanced thinking of that time. His father was a businessman, we learn, and theirs was a family of some means. Importantly, he was born a citizen of Rome. Unlike our day, Roman citizenship was not normally a right of birth. Citizenship in the Empire of Rome was a privilege, either bestowed because of some important service to the Roman emperor or to some important high official, or it was purchased at great price. So Saul’s father, or grandfather perhaps, someone in his family, had in one of those ways gained citizenship for their family, and Saul was born with that great privilege of being a Roman citizen.

But Saul of Tarsus was a Roman on paper only. He was schooled at his local synagogue. He was immersed in the Torah and the interpretations of the Talmud. But because of his sharp mind and gifts, and his father’s means, and the local rabbi is probably encouraging this, at the age of about 12 or 13, he was sent to Israel, to Jerusalem, to rabbinical school, and not just to study with any rabbis either. Saul was sent to study with Rabban Gamaliel, a man we just met. You know, in all of Jewish history, only seven teachers of the law were given the honorary title Rabban, meaning great rabbi, and Gamaliel, who we’ve already met, was one of them.

That opportunity for young Saul was equivalent to a Greek boy being the personal student of Aristotle or Plato. It was an extraordinary privilege. Saul was a student of Gamaliel through his teenage years, and in that rigorous intellectual and religious environment, he excelled. He learned to think, to debate, to persuade. Above everything else, he learned meticulously obedience to the law of God. Saul not only understood the lessons, he scrupulously applied them.

As far as his personal discipline, both as a student and as a Pharisee, he outstripped his peers. Looking back on that period of his life, he later wrote, I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries, being extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. Extremely zealous. Nothing could more aptly describe the mentality of that young man. He was very sure of who he was and what he believed, and he lived it out zealously. The younger and more radical Saul, unlike Gamaliel, sensed that the old ways of Judaism must destroy this rapidly growing malignancy called the Way.

Those claiming Jesus was the Messiah, and if they didn’t, they could be destroyed by it. So understand, Saul, at the point where we first meet him here, was a zealous traditional Pharisee. He was just as zealous for Judaism as young Stephen was for Christianity. They both were young idealists who could not imagine any middle ground, any room for compromise between the old order that Saul was immersed in and this new faith in Jesus as Messiah that Stephen completely embraced. Either Jesus was the promised Messiah or he was a fraud. Either his death on Calvary was the deserved end for a blasphemer or it was the killing of the sinless Son of God.

Either Jesus did rise victorious over death and the grave or that was a dangerous fabrication of his lying followers. These two young men were locked into polar opposite mindsets when it came to Jesus and what was going on at that point in Jerusalem among his followers. According to the traditions of the Pharisees, the witnesses to blasphemy must be first to cast stones against the accused. So as this violent scene closes in Acts chapter 7, Luke tells us it was Saul giving his full approval who held on to the coats of those witnesses so they could better hurl their rocks at Stephen. They laid their robes at Saul’s feet, and he egged them on as they killed the first Christian martyr under a hail of stones. Imagine that.

But as we will soon see, one of those two men, so zealous for their faith, will switch sides. And I’ll give you a clue: it won’t be Stephen, because at the end of this chapter, his dead body is under a pile of rocks, and his spirit is already at home in heaven with Christ. Not Stephen. But there is coming a dramatic turnaround in the life and in the heart of this fellow, Saul of Tarsus. Stay with us as this fascinating story of the early years of Christianity continues to unfold on the pages of Acts. Read ahead if you’d like into chapter 8.

That’s where we’ll pick up the story next time. Until then, this has been Paul for Share the Word. Thanks for listening. Thanks, Paul. You know, I am grateful every day, knowing that I, for one, along with so many of you, are able to praise and worship God and share God’s Word without experiencing the physical suffering and the price so many, like Stephen, who stood firm in their beliefs and their faith, they stood firm even at the cost of their lives. We send our prayers to all of those places and those that even today endure the suffering as followers of Jesus Christ.

From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.