Synagogue of Freedmen vs. Stephen

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Once again, if you'll turn with me, please, in your Bibles to Acts chapter 6.
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We will continue with where we left off this morning. The Acts of the
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Apostles, chapter 6. This morning we worked through the establishment of the first deacons, and we finished off by looking specifically at the description of Stephen, the first of those that are chosen.
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He was described as a man full of faith and of the
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Holy Spirit. These were brought before the apostles, and after praying they laid their hands on them, which again, that action of laying hands upon individuals, very much going back into the
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Old Testament and Jewish tradition at that point, but in this case what it would be would be an indication of the apostles' acceptance and setting apart of these individuals for the work of what we would call the diaconate.
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Would that develop some more in the future? I mean, once the deacons are established in the church, say in Ephesus or something like that, would they only be dealing with widows and things like that?
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No, I think there would be an expansion of their duties at that point, though it would not certainly in the apostolic period ever be anything relevant to buildings or things like that because they didn't have buildings, didn't have church buildings, could not have church buildings, and even once church buildings began to be had, they were very often either borrowed or temporary, certainly during the
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Great Persecution between 260 and 313, any of those buildings were in grave danger and many of them were torn down, burned, similar to what we're seeing in various countries around the world today as well with churches then.
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And so it wasn't just that the deacons dealt with property issues, but they engaged in ministry and service to the saints.
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This was what they were involved in doing and the apostles set them aside, prayed for them, and laid their hands upon them.
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And once again we're told in verse 7, the word of God kept on spreading and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.
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Now certainly this must have impacted greatly the thinking of the
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Jewish leadership and the Sanhedrin as a whole. They could not be ignorant of the fact, even if it wasn't being discussed openly, there would be the discussions, did you hear about so and such and such a person, such and such and such a priest?
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He's following the way, he's believed. And I can assure you that just as the apostles were busy studying the word of God, praying, ministering the word of God, and developing the theology of the church in response to the challenges that they were receiving, this is probably the very same time period where what is today known as the anti -missionary movement would have begun.
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Jewish apologetics is generally identified as the anti -missionary movement.
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Judaism is not a faith today that seeks to proselytize, but there are a number of people involved in anti -Christian defense argumentation, shall we say.
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Probably the best known individual today in the English -speaking world would be Rabbi Tovia Singer, who is very, very active.
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And this would probably be the period of time where the argumentation begins, and it is interesting that by the middle of the second century, when you read people like Justin Martyr in his dialogue with Trifo the
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Jew, you already see the outlines at that early period of pretty much the argumentation that would take place today.
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So each generation has had to deal with this, obviously now we view it as almost a specialty area of evangelizing the
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Jewish people. But this was the very birthplace out of which the church comes there in Jerusalem.
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This wasn't some side issue. This was everyone who was being evangelized at this point until you have the beginning of the outreach to the
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Gentiles. And so obviously there was a compelling element to the argumentation of the church based upon primarily those
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Old Testament texts. There's no New Testament, there's no Gospels, none of that. Penn has not touched parchment to begin the process of writing the
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New Testament at this particular point in time. And so these are people who are interacting with the
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Jews, with Jewish priests, and they are demonstrating who Jesus is solely on the basis of the text of Scripture itself.
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And it is interesting to speculate how did they have much in the way of the text of Scripture themselves.
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It's not like those scrolls were, it's not like every Jewish person was running around with a set of the
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Scriptures. Those scrolls were huge, they were extremely expensive, almost all the access that you had to those was in the synagogue.
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And this may have been why there is very early on, very, very early on, a preference on the part of the apostles for the
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Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Greek Septuagint. It would not be something that the
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Jews would want to be sharing necessarily with this upstart group being their
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Scriptures. And that may be why as well, we just do not find
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Christian scrolls of the New Testament. The Christians always wanted to use the
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Codex form, the book form that we use today. And that was extremely unusual at the time.
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Could find its origin even at this early period of time, because when many of your priests are becoming obedient to the faith, there is going to be a negative reaction.
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There is going to be an apologetic reaction. There is going to be, something's going to happen, and we know exactly what that is here in Acts chapter 6, and it's only going to get worse from there.
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One other point of speculation, because it's only one verse, we can't exactly build much out of it, but we know that when
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Jews come from James to Antioch, and this is related to us in Paul's epistle to the
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Galatians chapter 2, when we go a few chapters later on down the road to Acts chapter 15 in the
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Great Jerusalem Council, there are Jews who are very strongly demanding that Gentiles must first become
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Jews before they can become Christians. Now when it says these priests are becoming obedient to the faith, the question immediately arises exactly what does that mean, and what was the ramifications of that in regards to the orthodoxy of these particular individuals, and of course, we need to recognize that some of the key subjects, some of the key issues in relationship to justification, things like that, had not even been raised as yet.
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These topics were not being debated. They were going to come up over time, and they would come up over time, and then answers would be given.
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But that's just sort of a one verse commentary on the continued growth there in Jerusalem of the faith, and then the spotlight, shall we say, switches over, or shall we say back, to Stephen, once again reminding us that he is full of grace, and instead of it was faith and the
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Holy Spirit, here is, and Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people.
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Now, generally, wonders and signs would be miraculous exercises of power, was this casting out demons, was this healing people?
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We're not told. It's rather interesting to simply have the assertion that he's doing these things.
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We're not told what these things were, what the context of them were, we're just simply told that God was with Stephen in a particularly powerful fashion, and that these signs were being done among the people, which could be amongst the
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Christian people, but probably not, probably amongst the people there in Jerusalem, so these were public signs.
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And that's what then leads to the conflict that we start seeing brewing in verse 9.
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So, Stephen is doing these miraculous things just as the Apostles are, which he was not doing prior to the
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Apostles setting them apart and laying hands upon them. There may be an emphasis there upon the unity of the work of the
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Spirit, that people aren't just running off doing their own things. But some men from what was called the
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Synagogue of the Freedmen, including both Syrians and Alexandrians, and some from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and argued with Stephen.
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Now, who is this? It would be wonderful if someday, in some digging going on in Jerusalem, if they come across a first century structure and find within it a plaque or something along the lines that says something like, the
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Synagogue of the Freedmen. Everywhere you dig in Jerusalem, and pretty much everywhere in Israel, you end up running into something historically significant, which significantly raises the cost of living, because you've got to stop and bring in the antiquities folks, and then they've got to do all their digging around and get out what needs to be gotten.
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When we visited the first century synagogue at Migdal, which was
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Mary Magdalene's hometown, which means it was, since Jesus preached in the synagogues in Galilee, that probably was a room that he preached in.
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Once they had realized what it was, the people that had the land that was trying to build the building just had to completely redesign the building, and as goofy as it looks, and it does look goofy, they have covered the synagogue and just cut that out of the first floor and built everything around it.
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Doesn't look real great, to be honest with you. It looks a little bit weird, but that's what they've got to do, because almost everywhere you dig there, you'll run into some kind of really important historical thing.
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They have discovered synagogues in Jerusalem, which you might go, well, of course, why wouldn't they?
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Why wouldn't they? Because of the temple. The temple was the place of worship.
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There were synagogues prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, but they were not the central part of the worship as long as the temple was in existence.
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Much of the liturgy and life of the Jewish people was focused upon the pilgrimages to the temple and going up to Jerusalem and things like that.
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It was after the destruction of the temple that the synagogue then takes on further significance in the life of the
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Jewish people, for obvious reasons, because there's no place to go to any longer, and no sacrifices to be offered.
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But synagogues did exist. Synagogue simply means to gather together, so it's just an assembly hall, and at this point it would be a place of teaching, of instruction from the
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Word of God. Down front you'd have the seat of Moses, and the person who would be leading the study or reading from the scrolls would sit by the seat of Moses.
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We visited one synagogue, I think it was about a third century, third or fourth century synagogue from, it wasn't
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Bethsaida, Chorazin, Chorazin. They can't find a first century one, which I sort of wonder, given the curses of Jesus on Bethsaida and Chorazin, if that might be why.
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But be it as it may, the place for the storage of the scrolls is still there, and it's right next to the seat of Moses, where the person would sit, and so the scrolls would be very easily transported to that individual, and we read of Jesus being handed scrolls and things like that in the synagogues.
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But who are these freedmen? Well, it seems that the most logical way of understanding who these were, well there's two ways of understanding it.
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You could spiritually and religiously view them as proselytes to Judaism, and hence they've been freed from paganism, whatever the hell.
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But the term had such a strong meaning at that time, it was simply people who had been liberated from bondage, liberated from slavery.
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If you were a freedman, then you actually had your freedom, and you carried documents around that demonstrated that that's what you were, lest you end up being returned into slavery.
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And so this particular gathering was made up of primarily foreigners,
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Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and Alexandria, by the way, even at that time, absolute important center of learning, scholarship, the library in Alexandria, which
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Christians eventually burned, while the wonders of the ancient world. And so Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and some from Cilicia, and Asia.
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So this is a, this seems to be a place where you had individuals who were from the diaspora, they were from outside Jerusalem, and they gathered together, and again,
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I'm speculating here, I'm reading between the lines, but in my experience, people who have joined a religion and are a minority in that religion tend to be extremely zealous to sort of make up for the fact that they're looked down upon by many others within that religion.
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So I've seen, for example, converts to Islam that were more Muslim than the rest of the
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Muslims were, because they didn't look Islamic, they weren't raised in that way, and so they,
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I think they're trying to prove something. And it's speculation on my part, but you'll notice that they basically want to rise up and argue with Stephen.
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They see that what Stephen is saying is a fundamental challenge to the reality of their faith.
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And in fact, if what Stephen is saying is true, they cannot simply continue with the status quo, they cannot continue with Judaism as Judaism has always been.
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If Jesus was the Messiah, and if there was an empty grave, then they saw what that meant, and so they rise up and they argue with Stephen.
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Maybe these are just the young guys who like to do this, maybe these are our Twitter warriors or Facebook warriors, you know, something along those lines, but we're going to discover that there's a lot of brave people behind keyboards, but in real life, it can get very, very different, and it did in this situation.
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And so we have these Jews, and they seemingly also, given his name, maybe he was a
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Greek, and so they felt more at home in engaging him, or he could engage them better because of the language issues, again, we're not specifically told, but they rise up and they argue with Stephen, and this is sort of the very beginning of the apologetic effort of the church, because now you have what
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Paul's going to be doing, and what Peter's going to be doing, you've got this disputation taking place in public.
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However, we're told, they were unable to cope with the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking.
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Now, there had been the promise, I think it's Luke 21, where Jesus promises the disciples when you're cast out of the synagogue, when you're brought before kings and those in authority, you will be given the words to speak, you will be given wisdom, the spirit will be with you, and so this is somewhat of a fulfillment of that, they were unable to cope with the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking.
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Of course, we would recognize that any wisdom that any of us has is a gift from God, but this would seem to be a special supernatural manifestation, that the spirit of God was working with them to not only do signs and miracles, but now when he is faced with challenges, he is given a supernatural wisdom from the spirit that these individuals, who probably would have been quite knowledgeable, were not able to refute.
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When that kind of thing happens, there's got to be a response.
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And when you cannot win honestly, well, I know this never happens in our day, but when you can't win the debate honestly, you try to win it dishonestly.
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Now we don't find this at all shocking or surprising because, sadly, this is far more the normative way of things happening in our culture today than any other.
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Here, they secretly induced men to say, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.
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Well, who would have ever thought of something like that? Well, given that it had been that very same type of accusation that had been used against Jesus only a matter of weeks earlier, months earlier, and this is going to come up again in the not -too -distant future,
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Paul is going to find himself in chains for a very lengthy period of time, witnessing to Roman soldier after Roman soldier, because of the exact same accusation, not only in Jerusalem, but in Caesarea, and then on a ship, and on islands, and finally in Rome itself, this accusation, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.
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So I can imagine, now we are not told yet, where's
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Paul in all this, or shall we call him Saul? He's going to be there in chapter 7.
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He's going to be there, and they're going to lay their cloaks at his feet when they're stoning
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Stephen. Cilicia, hmm, Tarsus, hmm, connection.
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Did Paul know the men of this synagogue? Did he know the men who had been arguing with Stephen?
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In all probability, yes, and hence, when the accusation is lodged against him years later, we have heard him speaking blasphemous words against Moses and against God.
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You think that might have echoed in his ears? You think that might have said something as to what these people's true intentions were in regards to him?
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Had he been involved in this? We're not told. We're not told. He just appears, and it's unlikely that he just happened to be visiting
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Jerusalem that day. He was a student of Gamaliel, so he's around, and has he traveled since the resurrection and is now there in Jerusalem?
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We're not told. One of those things that maybe in the eons of eternity we'll have plenty of time to ask about, but we're not told.
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But it is interesting to look at the form of the accusation and then realize that's going to be used over and over and over again, and what it means to those who are making the accusation.
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So they secretly induced men to say these things, and they stirred up the people.
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The elders and the scribes, and they came up to him and dragged him away and brought him before the council.
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So here we go again. Now did they come up to him while a debate was going on, while an argument was going on?
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Did they wait until a later period of time when he maybe was alone, didn't have a bunch of fellow believers around him so that they didn't start a battle in the streets?
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We're not told. They just approached him, they come up to him and dragged him away and brought him before the council.
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They put forward false witnesses who said, this man incessantly speaks against this holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this
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Nazarene Jesus will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us.
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And so once again, you take half -truths, and if you identify
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Jesus as the Messiah, there's going to be a discussion of fulfillment, doing away with old things, all sorts of stuff like that.
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And so you take partial truths and then you twist them and you turn them and you take them out of context and you add other things.
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Wasn't there an element of truth though? Matthew chapter 24, we'll destroy this place, well this says
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Jesus will destroy this place. Well, what were they trying to key on there? What was the element here?
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Had they heard the same thing that Paul was going to say in Acts chapter 17 on Mars Hill when he tells the
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Greeks, it's by Jesus that you're going to be judged, that he is going to be the judge at the end of time.
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Or that Jesus had prophesied that Jerusalem would be destroyed and that the Christians should flee.
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Don't know. But the assertion is, in essence to say, well these are the descendants of the people who
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Jeremiah had said to centuries and centuries earlier, the temple, the temple, the temple, all you speak about is the temple, don't you realize that God's going to take you away from this place?
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And they continued in their belief that as long as the temple existed, that they had
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God's favor. But also notice, we'll destroy this place and alter the customs which
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Moses handed down to us. So evidently, automatically, even at this time where you have the people meeting in the temple and they're dressing as Jews and they're meeting at the
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Jewish times of worship and all the rest of the stuff, you can't start preaching the gospel without the ramifications of what fulfillment means coming out.
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And so they're taking elements of this and stringing it together and doing it in such a way that they know the counsel before which these things are going to be heard and so what's going to be most offensive to them.
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It's going to change and alter and morph and get different once you're no longer in front of the
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Sanhedrin. Once you've got to deal with Romans or even
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Jews who are sympathetic to the Romans and under Roman control, then that's going to sort of change the nature of the accusations you make and eventually, once you get to Rome, it's just sort of like, what are all these people arguing about anyways?
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I really don't care too much one way or the other, but these accusations are meant to be the most offensive in the sight of the
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Sanhedrin, the counsel before which the charges are going to be heard. And so Stephen is brought in and the chapter division is unfortunate.
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Once again, we know who was responsible for this.
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We are thankful for Robert Estienne Stephanos and his insertion of verse divisions.
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It helps us so much to find what everyone's talking about, I realize that. But maybe it's just because chapter seven is so long and it was just sort of like, okay, this is going to end up being a small book.
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We got a guy divided someplace and so this is where the division takes place because it's sort of a cliffhanger and fixing their gaze on him, all who were sitting in the council saw his face like the face of an angel.
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Now what does that mean? Does that mean his face was glowing? Does that mean his face had some kind of supernatural aspect to it?
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Most people have never seen an angel, so I'm not sure that it's a illustration that communicates a whole lot to any one of us.
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I've not seen an angel. I've seen little children that I said looks like an angel, but I really didn't know what
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I was talking about when I said that. It's just something you're supposed to say when you see little kids. Um, so evidently what is being communicated here is that there is a serenity and a supernatural authority that is emanating from Steven.
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And the only thing that I can see that would explain why the scripture wants to explain this to us is because this is not going to turn out well.
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This is not going to turn out well. And this is the beginning of Hebrews chapter 11 for the
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Christian church. The noble saints and martyrs and prophets of old suffering for their faith and losing their life in the process.
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And so sitting in the council saw his face like the face of an angel.
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God was with him. And maybe the whole point here is that when you see this and then you see him dying and agonizing death in the near future,
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God did not abandon him during these things. And in fact, that vision he's going to have of the heavenly places as he is leaving this life is simply the continuation of this being filled with the spirit, filled with grace, filled with power, filled with faith.
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Here is a servant who is being consumed for his Lord. His is a short and brief, but very bright ministry.
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And so they look upon him and the high priest chapter seven makes a mistake, makes a mistake because he says to him, well, he has to say to him legally, but he says to him, are these things so well,
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Stephen was clearly a frustrated preacher. He had a lot to say, and he's going to say many things and he is going to demonstrate a mastery of scripture and he is going to do what the apostles have done.
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And once again, if you, if you wish to, uh, before the next time we pick up at this point, if you wish to read through the story, do so with one particular thing in mind.
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If your translation does not make it clear, um, then, then market, watch the little teeny tiny font notes, but see how much citation of scripture, the old
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Testament scripture, the Tanakh, um, Stephen weaves into his commentary.
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It is, it is a commentary on the history of the people of Israel drawn from their own scriptures.
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And so it, this is what results in the action is that he is going to bring to bear a tremendous accusation.
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Now we saw exactly what happened when the apostles did that in brief compass and they became furious, but a camellial said, well, well, well, well, well, well, well.
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So already, um, Stephen has clearly heard the apostles doing this.
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He's capable of doing this by the spirit, bringing the scriptures to bear. And when you do in this context, there is going to be shockingly a strong condemnation of Pharisaic Judaism, sort of hard to miss that.
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If you've listened to Matthew chapter 23, if you're going to be faithful to Jesus's message, there's going to be no way around these things.
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Stephen is well aware of that. And so he is going to lay a very solid foundation, but in laying that very solid foundation, he likewise lays the very solid foundation for the judgment that is going to come against him.
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And so backing up to verse 15 from chapter six, that very short little chapter,
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God was with Stephen as he stood before these men.
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God never left him. It was God's purpose that Stephen give this testimony, give this biblically based presentation and then seal his testimony with his blood.
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That's not an accident. That's not God out of control. That's God perfectly in control, accomplishing his purpose in this situation.
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Do we pray that God would deliver people from persecution? Of course we do.
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Does that mean God will always do so? No, it does not. No, it does not.
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Let us close our time in a word of prayer. Our grace,
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Heavenly Father, we once again consider these words. We consider the conflict that took place back then.
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We realize that it is one, a conflict that must continue as long as the gospel is proclaimed in this world.
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And so we ask once again for faithfulness. We ask for strength.
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We ask for those who this night experienced persecution for the sake of the gospel, that you would strengthen them, that you would be with them, fill them with power as you did
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Stephen. Those who languish in prison, those who feel abandoned,
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Lord, that you would be with them in their service and ministry to you.
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But as we have opportunity, Lord, may we be faithful witnesses just as Stephen was.