Lesson 182 – Spiritual Gifts, Early Church Activities

© Charles A. Clough 2001

Charles A. Clough
Biblical Framework Series 1995–2003

Part 6: New Truths of the Kingdom Aristocracy
Chapter 2 – The Earthy Origin of the Church

Lesson 182 – Spiritual Gifts, Early Church Activities

13 Dec 2001
Fellowship Chapel, Jarrettsville, MD
www.bibleframework.org

We covered the first two events in the Church Age which was the ascension and session of Christ. We’ve talked about Pentecost and the baptism of the Holy Spirit and tonight we begin a new event where we’re working with how the church, during the book of Acts, became a separate entity from Israel. It’s wise to trace this through a series of things. It’s not just one event that happened, it’s a series of events. So that’s why in the notes you’ll see that there’s a series of steps, page 59, “Step One: Spiritual separation.” Also on page 59, “Step Two: Recognition of God’s Worldwide Plan,” then on page 62 “Step three: Inclusion of the Gentiles in the Church, then page 64, “Step Four: Official Recognition of Gentiles in the Church.” This goes on for a step or two more.

The idea here is to show that things did not happen instantly as far as the church’s existence. There’s a lesson in this, and it’s one that we’re not always conscious of when we talk about spiritual gifts, when you hear Christians, and we all do this from time to time, nostalgically remember the early church, and a lot of it is fanciful because if we don’t think about this carefully we think that the early church was some sort of idyllic time, and that we have to get back to that time. When, as a matter of fact, the time of the early church is not something to get back to, that’s going backwards in history. History goes forward, not backwards, and the early church being part of the body, there’s a growth process which we’ll see in the next chapters as the church matures through history.

In the book of Acts we have Israel gradually decreasing and the church gradually increasing, even though the church and all the work positionally occurred on the day of Pentecost, it took decades to work out in practice. We’re going to look at a section in the book of Acts, Acts 6-7, because I want to move on to Stephen and what happened in Acts 7. On page 59 of the notes, we won’t spend much time on step one because I think we’ve belabored the point about Pentecost. The idea there is that the church positionally was separated right at that point. So here we have Acts 2 and what we’re going to look at now is a follow through and we’re going to go out further in time and look at Acts 6-7, because at that point a major thing happens. While positionally nothing changed, at Acts 6-7 everybody was regenerated, just as they were in Acts 2, everybody was saved by trusting the Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel really hadn’t changed. But there was significant growth.

Why I’m stressing this and belaboring it is this: we have talked about the work of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, we’ve used the acrostic RIBS plus the intercession of the Holy Spirit, plus spiritual gifts. That all occurred right here, the first time in history that every happened, simultaneously, instantly, and supernaturally. But the problem is that in spiritual gifts, these gifts are given to the entire historically body, not just to a contemporary segment of the body that exists. The fallacy in thinking through these spiritual gifts is that you have to have all the gifts in every generation. That’s fallacious; you don’t have to have all the gifts in every generation. If some of those gifts were essential to get the church started and grounded, once the foundation is laid, you no longer have to have it. That’s why in Eph. 2:20 it refers to the foundation of the church as the prophets and the apostles, as a past event. Heb. 2 refers to those wonders and signs of the apostolic era as a past event. Is this denigrating supernaturalism? Some people would say oh, now you’re saying that the Holy Spirit isn’t as powerful today as He was then. No, that’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying that the church is a unified body; it’s not separated into generations. So if a gift was given to the church back here, it was given to the church for all time. In other words, the body can’t be divided into generational segments. An apostolic gift given in the first generation of the church was given to the whole church. And similarly down through history gifts have been given that propagate in their effect historically through time. We’ll see one of those effects tonight.

Turn to Acts 6 we’re going to spend quite a bit of time in the text. This is not a class in exegesis or expository presentation, but tonight we’ll get into that a little more than we usually do. By the way, the church from Acts 2 to Acts 6-7 is primarily in Jerusalem. Remember Jesus said “you will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the world.” Has the church witnessed in Samaria and the uttermost parts of the world up to this point? The answer is no. The church is still confined to Jerusalem, yet the Lord Jesus Christ said this church will gradually expand; I will build it so the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and it will go out and you will make disciples of all nations. That is a prophecy of what will surely occur. It’s not just an admonition to do it, but it’s also a prophecy that it will be done. Now if it will be done and God works all things after the counsel of His will, then He is going to work history out so that happens, whether people want it to happen or not, whether Christians want it to happen or not, it will happen.

The book of Acts has a series of events that shows you how the Holy Spirit works in spite of Christians, because the Holy Spirit has a bigger job here than what we think is going on. We haven’t got a clue half the time of what really is going on. That’s why when we dealt with the intercession work of the Holy Spirit we said He makes intercession for us with unspeakable speech, speech that we can’t hear, not because we couldn’t hear it if it were audible, but speech that we’re not permitted to hear. There’s secure communication going on between the Holy Spirit who is indwelling regenerate natures of believers in history, and He’s got a secure com link with the Lord Jesus Christ sitting at the Father’s right hand. And part of that secure com is because it prevents other ears from listening. What do I mean by the “other ears” that might be listening in? The god of this world. The god is this world is surprised by things that the Holy Spirit does through the church; he’s surprised by things that can happen in your life. Satan is not omni­present, Satan is not omniscient, he can be surprised, and part of the surprise is that the Holy Spirit indwells us; He partitions us, for you on this day about that thing in your life, very specific. And He petitions the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ who goes to the Father, the Trinity, the same order, and that is unspeakable. That is not shared with you, with me, with anybody else. That’s a private secure communication between the indwelling Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ for our sanctification. And it’s done so that God retains the initiative in history.

In Acts 6 we’re going to watch for our case study. Think about this situation, step two, the recognition of God’s worldwide plan. It was not recognized up through Acts 5. How do we know it wasn’t? Look at the quote on the top of page 59 from Dr. Ladd’s theology of the New Testament, here’s what he says: “Acts outlines the steps by which the church gradually broke with the synagogue and became an independent movement. In fact, one of the central motifs in Acts is the explanation of how a small fellowship of Jews in Jerusalem, to all intents and purposes hardly distinguishable from their Jewish milieu, became a Gentile fellowship in the capital city of the empire, completely freed from all Jewish practices.” It was an amazing historical transition. It occurred within thirty or forty years. It only took three or four decades for the church to separate out from Israel. Now what caused that separation?

It didn’t happen overnight. Some observations from the text in Acts 2; notice what the Christians were doing. Often these are cited as evidences of what we have to get back to, etc., and there are some good things here, I’m not negating the good things. But, if you notice in Acts 2:42, “And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. [43] And everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. [44] And all those who had believed were together, and had all things in common, [45] and they began selling their property and possessions, and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need. [46] And day by day continuing with one mind in the temple,” where? “In the temple.” Now why did they go to the temple? Because that was what Jews did, that was the cultists, remember we said what the temple is, that was the place where Jews worshiped God. So they had not separated from the synagogue, they had not separated from the Jewish community at this point. They were indistinguishable if you were a sociologist studying the situation at this point in time.

The irony is, of course, they didn’t realize it, but they had become temples of the Holy Spirit in their bodies. In fact the local church is a temple of the Holy Spirit; we know that from 1 Cor. 3. They had become temples of the Holy Spirit but here they were going to the brick and stone temples built. Again, they didn’t realize the difference. So in Acts 6 something happened, and there are a number of interesting historical notices, if you look in verses 1-2 of Acts 6. “Now at this time while the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint arose in the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews, because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food. [2] And the Twelve summoned the congregation of the disciples and said, ‘It is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. [3] But select from among you, brethren, seven man of good reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom ye may put in charge of this task. [4] But we will devote ourselves to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.’ [5] And the statement found approval with the whole congregation; and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicolas, a proselyte from Antioch. [6] And these they brought before the apostles; and after praying, they laid their hands on them.”

This passage is usually referenced in average sermons when we start talking about the office of the deacon, and that’s correct, this is where the office of the deacon came up, but that’s not the way we’re going to work on it tonight. That’s nice to know that the office of deacon arose, but some­thing else was happening here in the larger and the grander scheme. In the first place in verse 1 it says “while the disciples were increasing a complaint arose.” Who is the complaint and who were the protagonists in this complaint? There were two groups of Jews, notice no Gentiles here. Both of these parties are Jews. One are the Hellenic Jews, the others are the native or what we would call the Palestinians. By the way, just to inject a historical note about the word Palestinians, throughout all of history the noun “Palestinian” referred to Jews, not Arabs. That is a modern use of the word “Palestinian.”

Hellenic versus the natives; both are Jews. Let’s look at the Hellenic group. Who are the Hellenic Jews? What does Hellenic mean? Greek, Greek Jews, Jews who had come from outside Palestine. These are Jews who are part of a larger community which we call - and has been called - the Diaspora, i.e. the dispersed Jews. Who are the dispersed Jews? The Diaspora are the Jews living outside the land. When did the Jews start living outside of the land? Let’s go back in the Old Testament. We’ve gone through the framework, we’ve gone through the various events of history, and you recall that we have the King’s discipline, i.e. God the King ruled His nation and began historically to discipline the nation when the nation rebelled against Him, He would rebel against the nation. What happened here was that the kingdom declined from the golden era of Solomon, the kingdom was divided, they had a civil war, the kingdoms were in decline, and then we have this event, the exile. What happened to Jews in the exile? They were exiled and moved physically to Gentile lands, in particular Assyria and Babylon.

When the restoration occurred after seventy years of the exile, when they got down to the restora­tion, that was a partial restoration. All the Jews were not restored. Jews remained in the Gentile lands. And their descendants now, centuries later, are all over the Mediterranean. This is interesting because it shows you something about how the Holy Spirit works. Let’s look at a time line. The Holy Spirit, this is the time of 586 BC, here you have the exile, the Jews go into exile, some of them come back in 516 BC - some come back. The rest of them remain outside the land, and they gradually spread all over the place. They start businesses, they start trading, they start moving all over the place. But now look what’s been created here, something new in history has been created that wasn’t there before. What has God done here? Here’s the time of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now centuries later the gospel occurs; the gospel is announced in Palestine, not in the Diaspora, it’s in Palestine that the gospel is announced so new revelation begins to happen in the land, not outside of the land.

Remember when we were dealing with the life of Christ, what did Jesus say about where the disciples should go in His day? Go not where? Stay in the house of Israel, go not to the Gentiles. So the Lord Jesus Christ must have been a dispensationalist right there. Obviously He didn’t want the disciples to go outside of the land; He wanted them to stay in the land. Why? Because the gospel was addressed to the Jews in Palestine, to the national entity of Israel.

Meanwhile, these people are spreading all over the world. As they spread and as they establish their businesses, what do you suppose these Jews in the Diaspora are doing? What they had to have done, for example they moved into the Aegean area and established trading? What would they have to do with their language? They’d have to learn Greek, they’d have to learn Persian, they’d have to learn Aramaic, they’d have to learn Latin, they’d have to learn Phoenician, they’d have to learn Ugaritic. So after centuries now we have Diaspora Jews living in other countries by the thousands who have a unity among themselves. Here’s a Jew in Greece, here’s a Jew in Syria. How are these two people linked? They’re linked by virtue of their genealogy, but they’re linked because of their Jewish practices. They kept the Torah; they kept the memory of the temple. These people are linked, this guy living over here, say in Greece and another one in Syria, these guys are closer together than a native Greek or a native Syrian. They are culturally connected but they are diversified geographically and linguistically. But they share the Torah; they share the Word of God.

What does that suggest that God is doing historically to set things up here? He’s got a cadre of witnesses. He’s got an enclave of vehicle for taking the gospel out into that world. Also prior to the Lord Jesus Christ God did something else to prepare the world for the gospel. He had a group of people invade Palestine called the Romans. And everywhere the Romans went the Roman army engineers followed them. And the Roman army engineers were, as Georgia Tech says, one hell of an engineer. These guys made aqueducts, roadways that are still used today. Isn’t that amazing? How much of our stuff is going to be used ten, fifteen centuries from now? These guys built roads that are the basis of roads today.

In fact in 1948 the Egyptian armored columns were driving toward the heartland of Israel to destroy it, and they came up along, and if you visualize a map of the land here, here’s the eastern end of the Mediterranean, here’s Israel, here’s Egypt, here’s the Nile, and this is all sand over here in the Sinai. You can’t take armored vehicles through sand. So historically every invasion between Israel and Egypt for centuries upon centuries, whether it’s chariots in the ancient world, whether it’s armored personnel carriers or tanks today, they all follow this same route. So in 1948 the Egyptian armored column was moving north in a pincer move to destroy the Jewish colony and wipe it from the face of the earth.

The Jewish army had - I believe he was a full colonel at the time, he might have been a general in the Israeli Reserves - who was a very excellent archeologist, who had done a lot of exploring down in the Negev, down in this sandy area. And he found a Roman road right across here; nobody knew it existed except him and his students, because it was under sand, buried under dunes of sand. But that road, stone emplacements that those Roman army engineers had put there, were so strong that they could sustain a tank moving across it. So the Israelis at night gathered an armored column. The Egyptians hadn’t got a clue, they were so confident that they would never be struck in their right flank that they never put any guards out, did no recon - nobody, no armored column is going to come across sand. So in the morning… very big surprise, all of a sudden Jewish tanks show up. Where did they come from? They came across an ancient Roman road built by the Roman army engineers.

So the Roman roads were all over the Mediterranean. Guess who traveled on those roads and brought the gospel throughout southern Europe, within a matter of two or three decades? The Christians. So independently of spiritual and religious things there were sociological things, there were political things, there were military things, all of history was being worked according to the counsel of His will. All the foundations were laid. By the way, did the church have a fund raising campaign to supply the roads? No, the roads were supplied by the Gentiles. And by the way, did the church have language schools to train? No, normal Jewish businesses for 400 years created those linguistic contacts. Do you see what I’m getting at here? When God went to pull off the gospel it wasn’t just the Holy Spirit working in the church. It was God working all around the world, setting it up for the propagation of the gospel.

Now the Diaspora, one of their cultural links besides speaking Hebrew, being able to read the Torah, was that they would come back to Jerusalem periodically? Why would they come back to Jerusalem? Because there was a temple, and they would come back for the holy days, Passover, and who was there at Pentecost from many lands? The Diaspora Jews. So, all these people come back periodically. One of the reasons that they would come back was that they loved to be buried in Jerusalem. And history tells us that they would come back, and the men, in those days were dying earlier than their wives, just like they do today, wives are tougher, and the men would die off and leave their widows around Jerusalem. So all of a sudden we have a large community of widowed people. They’re there because their husbands came back to die in the city.

So, the collection in 6:1 are these Diaspora widows who have come back. The problem is that they come back out of different lands. They come back from Syria, they come back from Galatia, they come back from Greece, and they’re not quite the same as the Jews who live in Jerusalem, natives who were raised there. They aren’t the same as the Galileans, they are kind of different. So now we have a cultural difference inside the church. And that’s the sort of thing that’s in verse 1. The deacons don’t start until verses 6, 7 or 8; we’ll get to the deacons. We’re just looking now at the cultural divisions and schisms right from the start in the church. They don’t care for one another.

It also is interesting, it says “in the daily serving of food.” Clearly the early church had a daily poverty program or a hunger program for those widows; they believed in taking care of them. What’s so interesting is that the Jews outside of the church had a charity program too. Jewish records tell us of two kinds of poverty programs that they ran. One was every Friday private charity boxes would be distributed, the Jewish population, the poor, would be given enough money for fourteen meals, two meals a day for the next seven days. That was a poverty program that Jews ran. By the way, they were the only people in the world that ran poverty programs because that’s the effect of the Word of God, to have compassion. And the strangers who also were poor were given daily food. However, in verse 1 the implication is that the serving going on there, that particular welfare program is being ran internal to the Christian community because obviously the complaint is inside the church.

So what does that tell you is happening culturally here in verse 1, without going into verse 2, right away what do we know? That the church is beginning to separate out, it’s beginning to take care of its own, it’s beginning not to rely on the poverty programs of the large culture around them. It has already, probably within weeks and months created its own welfare program. This has been the mark of the church wherever it’s gone. In America, we Christians in America kind of don’t see this because the Christian idea of welfare had spread outward to the secular state. So we’ve grown up in that environment so we always associate welfare programs with the government. But if you want to think abut it, next time someone tells you about the open-minded Oriental religions, ask yourself in the nation of India, who introduced orphanages and hospitals? Everywhere the church has gone, medicine and poverty programs have gone with it.

And here’s an obvious case that by the time of Acts 6:1 we have the rise of this ministration of daily food. But the poverty program isn’t going too well because there’s a natural cultural problem, people just don’t like to mix from different cultures and that’s what’s happening. So it’s interesting that when they go to solve the problem, notice the priority in verses 2-3. It’s clear by verses 2-4 that the apostolic priority is not on the welfare program, it’s not the driver behind the welfare program, which is what? The ministry of the Word of God. And so the apostles, in spite of the fact that they have a political and sociological problem inside the church do not permit that program to interfere with the ministry of the Word of God.

Another lesson about priorities in the church: the priority is the ministry of the Word of God and all the programs come later. That does not say the programs are bad, it says the good will not become the enemy of the best. So right from the beginning there’s an advocacy for the primacy of the ministry of the Word of God over all else, including poverty and taking care of people. And it’s not that they’re indifferent, but it’s the priority.

The next observation to make is in verse 5. If you look at verse 5 very carefully, names are given. What’s interesting about those names is they’re all Greek. So the deacons that are being appointed here seem to be Diaspora deacons, deacons from the Greek speaking world. By the way, just because they spoke Greek doesn’t mean that they all came out of Greece. Do you know what the lingua franca was? The business language at the time was Greek. So the fact that they speak Greek doesn’t necessarily mean they literally came from Greece, they could have been from Galatia, they could have been from a lot of different places because a lot of different places spoke Greek. I mean, where in the world today can’t you see a Coca Cola sign? Everybody knows certain basics—McDonalds, Coca Cola—it doesn’t matter if you’re in Afghanistan, Japan, China or Russia, everybody knows Coca Cola and McDonalds. English has become the lingua franca of our world, but Greek was the lingua franca of that time. So these men had Greek names, not necessarily implying they were all Greeks, but definitely showing they weren’t native Galileans. So now we have a community, a group of Jews who have this generally more cosmopolitan type of background.

We come down further and we see Stephen apparently was one of the great ones of this early group of deacons, he performs many of the wonders and signs, which apostles were doing, so although he wasn’t an apostle he was a man in whom the Holy Spirit was working mightily in a way like an apostle. It says in verse 9 that he had a little problem. When he was ministering the Word of God, and apparently he was involved in the poverty program, but he was also teaching. “And Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people,” presumably along with the poverty program but also he was ministering.

In verse 9 it says, “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.” Look again in verse 9 and ask yourself, do you suppose that’s a native Jewish synagogue? Or is it a Diaspora Jewish synagogue? Clearly it’s a Diaspora Jewish synagogue. These are Jews from outside the land. What is the Holy Spirit doing here, what’s He telling us in Acts 6? That another set of Jews besides Peter, Paul, John, and the native guys, the Holy Spirit is now beginning a work in another group within the overall Jewish community, He’s stirring people up. And they were so upset by what Stephen was doing, the arguments began, they began to become disputing, and it says [v. 10] “they were unable to cope with the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking.”

So even though he was a deacon, even though he was with the poverty program, he was involved in lively public debates, and nobody was able to answer him. Remember that little observation because later on in the martyrdom of Stephen there’s another guy watching him, the guy that writes the rest of the New Testament. Yet here no one was able to take Stephen on. Stephen was doing something that Peter wasn’t doing. Stephen was doing something that John wasn’t doing, James wasn’t doing, Mark wasn’t doing, [and] Matthew wasn’t doing. This guy was really stirring people up in the Diaspora community. The Diaspora community wouldn’t know Peter from a hole in the ground, probably wouldn’t have respected him either, he’s just a local boy, don’t bother with those guys, they don’t know anything, they haven’t been out in the world.

But one of their own, who had been in the world, who had been well-traveled, who knew multiple languages, when one of those guys becomes not just a Christian but he becomes an articulate Christian who knows the Word of God, all of a sudden, now we’re going to have some arguments. Now we get stung, now we feel the incendiary nature of the gospel, the upsetting power of an interventional God. Now we see all this. In verse 11, they can’t answer the man so they’re going to set up some traps. Doesn’t this look familiar? When was the last time in the Bible we read about setting up traps? For the Lord Jesus Christ. “Then they secretly induced men to say ‘We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.’ [12] And they stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and dragged him away, and brought him before the Council. [13] And they put forward false witnesses who said, ‘This man incessantly speaks against this holy place, and the Law.” [14 ‘for we have heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us.’”

Watch verse 13. The charge is two-fold. The charge is that he speaks against the Torah and he speaks against the temple. We don’t know because we don’t have tape recordings of what Stephen was doing to irritate these people, but I think if you use your sanctified imagination you can guess why they might have made these charges. Why do you suppose they interpreted the gospel to be against the Torah? Why would that be a charge against the early Christian preachers? These guys, they’re attacking Moses’ Torah, they’re attacking the Pentateuch. What must have they been saying that the enemies of the gospel would turn around and make that charge? What were they salvation was by? By grace through Christ - that you don’t come to God through keeping the Torah. So the fact they’re angry and they’re interpreting the gospel as anti-law, or antinomian, the charge here is immediately that the gospel of grace is antinomian. You still hear that charge. This goes back to the first century, that’s exactly what the charge was in the first century.

Next it says that he speaks against this holy place. What do you suppose was true about the gospel to lead observers to conclude that the gospel is anti-temple? What aspects of the gospel? They say it’s an attack on the Torah because the gospel is antinomian, it says you don’t have to keep the law to be saved. It’s anti-temple because remember what Jesus said to the woman at the well, the day is coming when you can worship Him anywhere, that God is with you and you will become a temple. So there must have been a realization on Stephen’s part that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit… the Shekinah glory, by the way, left the temple in 586 BC, that’s the book of Ezekiel that tells about all that, big episode where Ezekiel sits outside of Jerusalem, he sees the glory of the Lord leaving the temple and never coming back again. The only other Shekinah glory you ever see is the star of Bethlehem, which probably was not a star, probably was the Shekinah glory. Stars don’t just move and then stop. So the indwelling Holy Spirit is a replacement. Now the indwelling Holy Spirit is the center of attention, not the physical temple.

So whatever it was that Stephen was saying, he really raised a ruckus, and these are very, very serious charges against the church. This is where you begin to see the scheme and the schism begins to split between the Christians who follow the gospel and the Jewish community that insists on their traditional understanding of Moses.

In verse 15, there’s a description. It’d be interesting, Luke wrote this text; Luke is the author. Luke got most of his stuff because he was a traveling companion with Paul. Paul was present, he got involved in this incident, and it’s kind of intriguing to ask yourself whether the description of verse 15 was given because Paul saw it and he later remembered this. “And fixing their gaze on him, all who were sitting in the Council” that is the officials conducting this trial, “saw his face like the face of an angel.” What do you suppose that looked like, we’re not really told, the text just says there was something peculiar. These guys would haul criminals before them all the time. This isn’t the only Messianic movement that existed. There were religious nuts, there were criminals, there was corruption, there were all kinds of people hauled before this Council, and these astute observers see there’s something different about this guy Stephen.

Now Stephen begins his answer. We want to go through chapter 7 carefully. Chapter 7 is the first major apologetic as the church begins to leave Jerusalem. Peter’s apologetic, chapter 2, was given to people inside the city of Jerusalem, but now we begin to have a little rupture here. Now the tempers begin to flare and beginning in chapter 7, the whole chapter 7, is one narration of Stephen’s answer to the charge that Christians are antinomian and Christians are anti-temple and anti-institutional. Christians are revolutionaries. Here’s Stephen’s answer. We’re going to start with a preliminary overview of his answer. If you look on page 61 of the notes I’ve given an outline. We’re going to through it verse by verse, this is a tremendous passage of Scripture because it gives you a glimpse of what these wonderful first generation Christians were like, and how far they had come in their understanding of the Word of God.

Verse 2-16 I’ve divided as discussing the origin of Israel; verses 17-43, the origin of the Torah; verses 44-50 the origin of the temple. The text follows the accusation; answers are made to questions. And the accusation and accusational question is in verse 6:13; that is the charge that the Christian had to answer. So now we have an apologetic. And here’s an example of what an apologetic looks like. An apologetic is an answer, primarily in a court environment. It’s an answer to an accusation. It is a defense to a legal charge. [blank spot] Stephen recounts history.

Believe it or not, 25-30 years ago, when I was working with university students, this is the passage that started me thinking about the framework, because I started to study chapter 7 and I began to realize that Stephen’s apologetic for the Christian faith was centered upon one historical event after another, and I began to realize that in Acts 2 Peter’s defense was one historical event after another. And I began to realize from Acts 17 that Paul’s apologetic was one historical event after another. That’s what this framework series has been doing. The events that I have chosen were not arbitrarily chosen. I made a list up 30 years ago of every major speech in the Bible on a piece of graph paper and I logged the different events that were repeatedly used in these answers. And the events that you have been learning are the events that are used in these apologetics. You watch Stephen as he begins to use many of the events that we’ve studied. They become tools. Why are they tools? Because they are moments in space and time when God spoke and when God acted in a very important way. Not that He doesn’t act and speak other times, but there are certain highlights of His program. Stephen is going to give those highlights.

We’re going to start by looking at verse 1. “And the high priest said, ‘Are these tings so?’” Here’s the officer in charge, this is the authority. This is an official proceeding - this is not just a street gathering - this is an official gathering. We’ll call it an official inquiry, I don’t know whether we can call it a trial exactly, but it’s an official inquiry being conducted by the highest religious authority at the time, the high priest. No one outranks the high priest. And he’s the one that demands an apologetic. Stephen will answer him. And before Stephen opens his mouth, remember in 6:10 the background? It says they were unable to cope with the wisdom and the spirit of Stephen. So now we’re going to watch the wisdom and the spirit of Stephen.

When he gets through, not only do they have no answers for him, they are so angry that they don’t have answers that they resort to physical violence. And that’s always another thing to notice. Whenever Satan motivates physical violence against the church he’s already been defeated, because he’s so unable to meet the claims of the gospel by rational argument that he has to use physical violence to stop it. Physical violence is an admission of spiritual poverty. When physical violence has to be used to stop the gospel, it is already admitting that nothing else works to stop the gospel. Satan’s pulled out all the stops, he can’t falsify it, he can’t undermine its claims, so now he has to physically extinguish it. That’s always the case, and this is the beginning of church history and it’s been repeated thousands of times, it’s still being repeated today, in China, in the Moslem lands, wherever Christians are persecuted, mostly in Moslem lands, wherever Christians are persecuted it’s always the case that the persecutors have failed in their ability or they are unsure of themselves, they’re insecure people that resort to physical violence.

So the high priest demands an answer. Beginning in verse 2, this first section, verses 2-16, Stephen is going to remind his Jewish accusers of their own origins. “And he said, ‘Hear me, brethren and fathers! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran,” now it’s interesting he uses “the God of glory.” “The God of glory” was associated with the temple. And he says, you know, you people are always fussing about the God of glory and the temple; he says where did the God of glory first talk to a Jew? It wasn’t in Jerusalem; it wasn’t even in this land. So, I remind you that the God of glory started His program that you’re in from outside this land. So clearly Stephen right from the start shows that there is a worldwide horizon to God’s working, even in the origin of the Jewish nation.

Years ago I subscribed to the Jerusalem Post. This was from 1976, there was a letter to the editor, and it’s interesting, here’s what a Jew observed. There was a discussion about Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Here’s an astute thing, it reminds me of Stephen. To the editor of the Jerusalem Post: “Dear Sir, The phrase “Palestine as the cradle of the three monotheistic religions is being repeated ad nauseum by Christians and also by de-Judaized Jews. It should be critically analyzed from a Jewish point of view. This country is certainly not the cradle of Judaism.” Now isn’t that a funny statement to make, here’s a guy writing in the Jerusalem Post, and he’s a Jewish guy, [can’t understand name], any discussion about his lineage? “This country is certainly not the cradle of Judaism. Abraham recognized God in Iraq. The Torah was given in the no-man’s land of Sinai. The foot of the lawgiver of Israel never touched the soil of Canaan. Eretz Yisrael—land of Israel—was acquired by Israel. It did not beget Israel. Jerusalem became the holy city of Judaism in the late state of the history of Israel and Judaism, 800 years, in fact, after Abraham. Islam is the supreme achievement of Arabia. Islam had no roots in Palestine. It conquered Palestine. The prophet of Islam visited Jerusalem only in a vision.” Mohammed never visited the land. “Only Christianity originated in this country. The God of the Christians was born here, He lived here and He died here. The Christian church was first established in Jerusalem. So sum up, the two monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, do not have their cradle in Palestine. This country is only the cradle of Christianity.”

There’s somebody that knows their history. And you can well imagine that when Stephen opened his speech with verse 2, how that must have struck at the very foundation of this religious arrogance of the authorities. I remind you, says he, that this God that you speak endlessly of appeared to Abraham over there. Now by merely saying that, here’s this Diaspora Jew who has a consciousness of “over there” because he, like all the other Diaspora Jews have come from over there, have come from outside these nations, they’re aware of the outside world. And he’s saying the God of Israel spoke in the outside world, come on guys, get your horizons stretched out. Every once in a while you meet people that live in your neighborhood, you know, it’s a long trip for them to go down to Washington D.C and some of them never cross the state line in their lives. That’s the story of the Palestinian Jews, and along comes this Diaspora guy who’s been well-traveled, bilingual at least, maybe trilingual, and he says I remind you, let’s just get it straight from the start, the God of whom you’re telling the people around here that I’m violating, that God spoke outside the land to our father Abraham, of all people. Not just to any Jew, but to the original Jew.

Verse 4: “Then he departed from the land of the Chaldeans, and settled in Haran.” This is all Genesis, this is all history, and he is reminding them, they all knew this, it’s just that Stephen’s now taking what they knew, the chunks of history that they had known since they were boys, young boys, and he’s turning it around and now he’s going to hit them with it. “…And from there, after his father died, God removed him into this country in which you are now living.” So it’s land, but it’s not theirs. Verse 5, “And He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground; and yet, even when he had no child, He promised that He would give it to him as a possession, and to his offspring after him. [6] But God spoke to this effect, that his offspring would be aliens in a foreign land,” it’s all Genesis 15, it’s all the Abrahamic Covenant, and in fact verse 8 speaks of the Abrahamic Covenant.

So isn’t this interesting. Stephen begins his apologetic to Hebrew accusers by going back to their own origin and purpose. Watch what he’s doing, he’s using strategic envelopment. Here are his Hebrew accusers, but because they’re Hebrews they’re part of the Israelite nation. And what this guy is going to do, he’s going to say okay, I’m going to surround your argument with mine. Here’s my strategic envelopment, and the envelopment that I’m going to use on you is the terms of the Abrahamic Covenant. And I’m going to say that the Abrahamic Covenant defines you. And you guys can accuse me all you want, but I’m telling you and you know it because you’ve studied the Scriptures, I’m telling you that your very existence is defined by the purposes of God and the Abrahamic Covenant. What are the three things in the Abrahamic Covenant that we studied? Land, seed, and a worldwide blessing. Stephen has things together here. He knows where things are going to lead.

It’s interesting in verses 6-7 the aspects of the covenant that he’s talking about is the land and the seed, he doesn’t mention the worldwide blessing. But if you follow his argument, and we will continue this next week, if you follow his argument you’re going to see that by not saying that third thing in the Abrahamic Covenant, he doesn’t have to, because when he gets through this argument they’re going to realize… in effect here’s his argument. We Jews exist in history in order for a larger program toward the whole world, and where this exciting breakthrough in Stephen’s understanding occurs is after he gets done, after this speech is directed at his accusers, the Christians are listening to this, and what do you suppose they’re thinking about? One guy in particular is listening very intently to this, and who is the guy that finally broke the gospel out of Palestine? The guy who’s listening to Stephen. You see the importance of Acts 6 is that here is where Paul started in his theology. The New Testament is largely Pauline, but Paul started his understanding under this guy’s ministry. This is the man who [can’t understand word] Paul.

Question asked: Clough: The question concerns Jesus’ healing of the man in Luke, it’s also in Mark, maybe it’s in Matthew too, where Jesus says to this man who has a physical medical problem, “your sins are forgiven you,” and then He heals him also, in the context, however, being challenged. When you get into a passage like that, the way to sometimes understand it is to understand the argument of the Gospel. Luke, Matthew and Mark have brought a coherent argument. Let’s back up. Why were the Gospels written? We know why the Gospels were written, the Holy Spirit wrote the Gospels in order to preserve the history of the incarnation, so you can see what God walking this planet looks like. That’s the purpose of the Gospels.

Each of the four Gospels presents the incarnation in their own way, so there’s four different portraits of Jesus. That’s why, by the way, there’s these apparent conflicts between the Gospels, the whole idea of trying to synchronize the Gospels has vexed people and there are things we still don’t understand about it, but it’s because you’re taking a camera angle from four angles on the same subject. So when you get into a passage like that you have to ask yourself a larger question, why is this whole thing in the Gospel? Why is that event singled out, among dozens and hundreds of events possible? John says that if he had recorded every event the world would be filled with the books, probably a little exaggeration but John’s point is that there’s a lot missing here, and “these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ.”

So the Gospels in one sense—each one becomes an apologetic for the Christian faith. In the case of that man, clearly the Sanhedrin, the opponents of the gospel don’t believe the claims of Christ. And the claim Christ makes was a stunning one, if you think about it, for a Jew. Now it could have passed as kind of a cavalier religious callous remark to a Gentile audience, but not to a Jewish audience. Why do I say that? Jews are monotheists. What is inherent in monotheism about forgiving? Who can forgive in monotheism? God. Therefore, what was Jesus doing when He said “I forgive you?”

See, the only person that can forgive something is the one who has been offended. So when the Lord Jesus Christ says I forgive you of your sin, what He’s also saying is that it was your sin that offended Me. That’s a pretty potent statement when you let it roll down, think about it and chew on it for a while. That is a pretty powerful statement. But the statement has a problem with it, an apologetic weakness, if you will, and that is that if you were in the Sanhedrin listening to Jesus make that claim that He can forgive sin, the problem is that you have no way of checking out the authority of that claim. There’s no way you can go on a teleporter up to heaven and check the books to see if the sins have been erased. So for you, while you can appreciate it, it’s a stunning claim. The problem you would have is in verifying that claim.

Therefore, I believe the reason Jesus heals the guy, the guy might have had a sin problem but that wasn’t the issue there, the issue was okay, you don’t believe this, that’s all right, I can heal too, let’s try this one. And this is why He says, counterpoint to that in John 3, if I tell you earthly things and you don’t believe, how are you guys going to believe if I tell you heavenly things? In other words, here I’m making these claims where you can check Me. Is this guy genuinely healed? Check him out. There’s a verifiable claim. The claim to forgive sins is not verifiable. So Jesus Christ links the unverifiable claims, forgiving sins, with verifiable claims that He can miraculously heal, and it’s an accommodation, in one sense, to the finiteness of man, but it’s a powerful apologetic. He says no difference, I can forgive sin, I can heal people, one’s a miracle and the other one is, one you can check, one you can’t but I’ll do both just so you can see.

Question asked: Clough replies: Everybody has a sin problem. You can’t make inferences without checking it. For example, in John 9, you’ve got the ultimate answer. Remember when I go through the categories of suffering, there’s deserved and there’s undeserved, and there’s five reasons why you can suffer that have nothing to do with your personal life. And you can sit there and contemplate your navel for the next five years and never come up with a rational answer to why did I get clobbered like this, because it isn’t related to just you, the world is interlocked. You may be clobbered in order to be a testimony to another believer who you don’t even know is watching you. So you don’t know all these things, and our data set is like this, it’s just a small, small part of the overall data set. And here we are trying to make these titanic inferences about what God is doing in our life when we only know this much. And that’s why we look like fools half the time when we do it.

In this case, sure the guy had a sin problem, and in fact, for all we know, he may have had some of the illness due to his own personal sin. It might have been deserved suffering, but in the argument of that approach, Jesus doesn’t make that an issue. He is doing this, not so much even with the guy; He’s involved with these people that are attacking His message.

Question asked: Clough: Yea, although probably if you had been there, there might have been some follow up. On the other hand, Jesus behaves in startling ways in the Gospels. And the only people that seem to recognize the startling ways are the unbelieving critics. I have learned more about observing the text of the Bible by reading attacks against it, because the liberals will see things in the text that I just… you know, I’ll be zipping along and never even see it. That’s why I always like to read the hostile criticism of it. And one of the criticisms of the Gospel accounts of Jesus is Jesus’ supposedly unbalanced personality. There really has been a whole string of criticism about that, that Jesus is not a normal person, He’s arrogant, sometimes He’s almost callous to people’s suffering, He name calls, He calls people fools, He calls this lady who is humbly coming before Him as why should I dump crumbs on the floor, so the dogs can eat it. He says these things that make you do double takes, because we have this image that a Christ-like personality is this bland harmless gooey sentimental romantic idea, and the Gospels don’t permit that. They challenge this whole concept of a romantic Jesus. Sometimes He was almost cruel, other times He drove men out of the temple. Not only did He drive men out of the temple, but He blocked public access. And of all the institutional buildings to do it, He picked the one that’s the center of the whole civilization. So try that on for size.

When you look at that, here’s the way I’ve kind of tried to digest it, because you can’t make excuses. The Gospel texts show Him, almost, for example, when His mother comes to Him and asks Him for things, He says what have I got to do with you, and you think holy mackerel, is that the way He talked to His mother. But under the leading of the Holy Spirit do you know why I think that particular thing happened? It was a warning against Mariolatry, because the heart of Roman Catholicism is that Mary has an “in” with her son, and it’s negated in that very text because she doesn’t have an “in” with her son, she gets no special treatment from Him. When she comes to ask Him for a favor He says I don’t have to answer that, I’m not going to do it. Now I’m over playing the point, but the idea is that Mary does not have an “in” with Jesus. Her relationship with Jesus is not a favored… she doesn’t have a higher relationship to Jesus than any other believer. Her sins have to be paid for by Jesus just like anybody else’s sin. She’s not immaculate. So this was a warning put into the Gospels

The way I’ve looked at is I’ve thought about these personality profiles, and there are whole psychological associations that generate these personality profiles that are employers are supposed to give to their employees and find out whether you’re imbalanced or not. Years ago, I don’t know whether it’s still true, but Minnesota Personality Profile, whatever it was, was one that was used in a lot of businesses and schools to see whether employees were stable. And one of the questions that if you answered yes to you were considered to be abnormal was whether you prayed and expected answers to prayer. That meant you were an abnormal person. Now what they meant when they said “abnormal” was the statistical bell-shaped curve. What they did is, they went around to calibrate this questionnaire by asking, say 400 people, what their answers were. So after you get 400 answers to this set of questions you do a statistical study and find out what the (quote) “normal” is. But the normal is really just the mean point; it’s just the mean of the bell-shaped curve. So what have you done? Think about it, you haven’t made a moral judgment here, what you have done is made a statistical calculation of the mean. Then you’ve gone along and said, you’ve made the additional ethical judgment that the mean, by definition, is the ethical right.

Well, Jesus doesn’t fit in the middle of the bell-shaped curve. That’s the problem. He does these things that jerk Him out on the wings of the bell-shaped curve in many areas, and then He becomes abnormal. Our quaint way of responding to this concept of psychological analysis is to turn it right around. Turn it around 180 degrees and reverse fire, and the answer is that Jesus is the normal one and all the rest of us are abnormal. That’s the problem. So what you have when you do one of these statistical profiles and you get a bell-shaped curve, that’s the average sinner. That’s what a fallen corrupt God-hating person looks like, on the average. Now draw your conclusions from that one, but don’t compare Jesus with that bell-shaped curve, because it’s not going to fit. So there’s a lot of things… the Gospels are a fascinating study of the greatest personality who ever lived. And you want to read it that way and don’t… because we’ve read it so much we get so used to it, we don’t get startled any longer by these stunning things that happen.

Just visualize, maybe to stimulate the juices in your imagination, imagine that you were given the assignment in 60 days to come up with a script for a TV show that would feature the cleansing of the temple. What would you do? What would you direct the actors that would play the different parts to do? How would you program the people sitting at the tables, the money-changers, that by the way were ripping everyone off, because who came to the money-changing tables in John 2? They were Diaspora Jews, besides Palestinian Jews that lived outside of town. So they all come to town, and what do they have to have to participate in Passover? A sheep, they have to buy something. What do you buy it with? Oh gee, I’ve got coins from Syria. Sorry, we don’t take Syrian coins here. You don’t. No. Where do I get the right coins? We have a little exchange over here, come on. And then it’s the rip off artist. That’s what these guys were doing. That’s what the money-changing was; it was an institution of corruption. And the point that angered Jesus, He was angry when He went into that temple, to see the fact that here was the picture of salvation that was supposed to be an example of God’s grace, and these jerks were turning it into something that would be rated on how much money you had. Which is exactly opposite to the whole concept of salvation. So He goes in there and He tears the place apart. He makes a whip, I mean, He’s got a weapon. I wonder if He’d get through a scanner at the airport. The point is that that’s the Jesus of the Gospels, and it’s not the Jesus of popular imagination, even among Christian’s popular imagination.

Question asked: Clough replies: Good question, she has raised the issue of why between Jesus’ resurrection and Pentecost, and what we read in Acts 2, the early Christians were sitting there going to the temple daily and worshipping, how come you didn’t get tension. I think the answer to that is given in Acts 4 because in Acts 4 the tension blows up. That’s when, remember Peter and John heal somebody, and when the prayers are being made about that next event, where it blew up in their face, there’s a remark made where… turn to Acts 4, you’ll see some interesting things where this tension does erupt. It’s simmering under the surface.

Acts 4:1 says “And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard, and the Sadducees, came upon them, [2] being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.” I think the answer is that the average believers probably weren’t doing any teaching as such, individually, they were just going to the temple to worship the Lord. So they weren’t… if you were the security force, think in terms of a policeman. From their point of view, they had a problem. Their problem wasn’t that they were theologically… they thought, it wasn’t that they were against Jesus per se, their problem to maintain order in the temple precinct. So anybody that became a disturbance was a threat to the security people.

Now the average believer walking into the temple worshiping wasn’t a security threat, because they weren’t talking, they weren’t instigating revolt; they were probably being quiet for themselves. Imagine going into the National Cathedral. We go in there, we sit down quietly in the pew and we pull out a Bible and read it or something like that. It’s not like the security guard gets upset because we do that. But notice they get quickly upset… look who comes in verse 1, that’s the whole security force that’s showing up, and they’re showing up because verse 2, “they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.” So there’s where they’re colliding with that other story, they put a cover story out, and now the cover story is being blown by these guys that keep bringing up the issue of the resurrection.

And I think we have to understand too that if we were on the scene, imagine if—what’s the name of that guy that’s in Afghanistan? [Someone answers, “Geraldo”]. Imagine if he were there reporting on the high priest’s reasoning why Jesus must be crucified. I suspect the story Geraldo would have gotten is that the high priests are looking out the window of the temple and who do they see, who in the sea of nations have their representatives outside his security force? The Romans, they had the Fortress of Antonio right across the street here. So here’s the Fortress of Antonio with Roman guards. You didn’t play games with the Romans. The Romans had had enough of this place because they remembered their history, that the Jews were always a trouble-making nation, because they had a revolt under the Greeks, the Romans knew that. The eastern side of the Roman Empire was porous and they had to secure the Mediterranean, if they didn’t secure that eastern section you’d have had all the people from Parthia and Persia and everybody else coming out and getting into the Mediterranean Sea and you know, becoming pirates, etc. They had to protect that eastern end of the Mediterranean. So from their point of view, they didn’t have time to get into all the theological niceties. They were just there to maintain order and kick butt if there was a problem. And they did, they killed people. So here’s the high priest saying man, all we need now is another disturbance. So that’s why the high priest says it’s better that one man die than the whole nation. Remember that, it’s in John, when he’s upset about that. That’s a political deal, it’s all political. But you see, John the Apostle, with his wonderful spiritual insight, sees that even behind that political intrigue was a greater truth, because in saying what the high priest had said, it’s better for one man to die than all, he was articulating a correct theology. That’s the irony.

When you see these things, that’s why it’s so neat to study history, because you see the hand of God, like we saw it with the Roman army engineers, you see the hand of God with all the forces that look chaotic and you begin to say holy mackerel, how does He do this, He pulls this off perfectly. That’s to me one of the tools God uses to teach me, is that I can move from there back to my personal life much better than I can sit and talk about my personal life. If I get the environment set and God can do that, then He can take care of this. So you go from the greater to the lesser. And that’s why history ought to be exciting for any believer, because you’re seeing His story unfold. The Bible gives you the key to it.

So I think that the tension was always there, it never went away, it was just that the average believer could waltz into the temple, say prayers, give alms, and hey, no problem. But then when Peter and John started witnessing, they started opening their mouth, it became a problem.

Question asked: Clough replies: The question is was Luke himself a Diaspora Jew. I haven’t really studied that enough to give you a definitive answer from just my reading. I don’t know because I’ve heard both sides, that he was a Diaspora Jew and that he was actually a non-Jew, a Gentile.

Question asked: Clough replies: That’s another how God, in His marvelous sovereign control, picked the author of Acts, who would be sensitive to spotting that event. Luke did research, we know he did research, he interviewed people. Before he wrote Acts as a second volume of his work, Luke being volume one and Acts being volume two, it says he did research, and scholars believe that he went back to a lot of the people, because he’s the on that tells all about how the women felt when they were pregnant. Why did he do that? What was his interest? He was a doctor, so when this virgin birth thing came up, well, hey, wait a minute here, I’ve got to check this one out. So who would have God have write? A medical doctor, go check it out, the ladies are still alive, ask them. That’s the same thing, I think that Luke probably because… at least even if he wasn’t a Diaspora Jew he certainly was well-traveled and he was knowledgeable in the Greek civilization. So he would have picked up on that immediately because he’s coming years later. Luke isn’t there in Acts 2, 3, 4 and 5. He’s been won to the Lord later, so he’s going back in time, probably talking to Paul, probably got the lead from Paul, say Paul, where’d this idea come from, how did you guys rethink the whole Old Testament like this. And I would imagine Paul said well, I’ll tell you what, where it first hit me was when I was standing there watching this guy get stoned, and I realized what he said. It’s all kinds of interactions of people, this guy talked to this guy who talked to this guy who talked this guy, but behind it the hand of God. It’s a neat story. Next week we’ll work on the rest of Stephen’s speech.