Pastor Jeremy M. Thomas
Fredericksburg Bible Church
107 East Austin
Fredericksburg, Texas 78624
830-997-8834      jthomas@fbgbible.org
A0831 – August 3, 2008 – Acts 6:8-15 – The Arrest Of Stephen

Acts 6:8-15 Στέφανος δὲ πλήρης χάριτος καὶ δυνάμεως ἐποίει τέρατα καὶ σημεῖα μεγάλα ἐν τῷ λαῷ. 9ἀνέστησαν δέ τινες τῶν ἐκ τῆς συναγωγῆς τῆς λεγομένης Λιβερτίνων καὶ Κυρηναίων καὶ Ἀλεξανδρέων καὶ τῶν ἀπὸ Κιλικίας καὶ Ἀσίας συζητοῦντες τῷ Στεφάνῳ, 10καὶ οὐκ ἴσχυον ἀντιστῆναι τῇ σοφίᾳ καὶ τῷ πνεύματι ᾧ ἐλάλει. 11τότε ὑπέβαλον ἄνδρας λέγοντας ὅτι ἀκηκόαμεν αὐτοῦ λαλοῦντος ῥήματα βλάσφημα εἰς Μωϋσῆν καὶ τὸν θεόν. 12συνεκίνησάν τε τὸν λαὸν καὶ τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους καὶ τοὺς γραμματεῖς καὶ ἐπιστάντες συνήρπασαν αὐτὸν καὶ ἤγαγον εἰς τὸ συνέδριον, 13ἔστησάν τε μάρτυρας ψευδεῖς λέγοντας· ὁ ἄνθρωπος οὗτος οὐ παύεται λαλῶν ῥήματα κατὰ τοῦ τόπου τοῦ ἁγίου [τούτου] καὶ τοῦ νόμου· 14ἀκηκόαμεν γὰρ αὐτοῦ λέγοντος ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ὁ Ναζωραῖος οὗτος καταλύσει τὸν τόπον τοῦτον καὶ ἀλλάξει τὰ ἔθη ἃ παρέδωκεν ἡμῖν Μωϋσῆς. 15καὶ ἀτενίσαντες εἰς αὐτὸν πάντες οἱ καθεζόμενοι ἐν τῷ συνεδρίῳ εἶδον τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ ὡσεὶ πρόσωπον ἀγγέλου. (NA27)
Acts 6:8-15 Now Stephen, full of grace and power (dunamis, potential energy, power, strength, has the potential to do work, capacity to put into action) was doing (3SIAI) great wonders and signs among the people. 9Then some of those from what was called the Synagogue of the Freedman, and of the Cyrenians, and the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up (3PAAI) and argued with Stephen. 10But they were not competent (ischuo, inherent strength; 3PIAI) to resist (oppose, refute, stand one’s ground, all 14 uses in middle sense) the wisdom (skill sophia) and the Spirit by which he was speaking (3SIAI). 11Then they secretly bribed men to say, “We have heard (1PPerfAI) him speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God.” 12And they stirred up (3PAAI) the people and the elders (presbuteros) and the scribes (grammateus, experts in the law), and coming upon him they seized (3PAAI) him and brought (3PAAI) him into the Sanhedrin (operation confusion, riotous), 13and they put forward (3PAAI) lying witnesses to say, “This man never stops (3SPAI) speaking words against this holy place and the law, 14for we have heard (1PPerfAI) him saying that this Jesus of Nazareth (derogatory???) will destroy (3SFAI) this place (the Temple) and will alter (3SFAI) the customs that Moses handed down (3SAAI, once for all aorist, the complete unchangeable law) to us.” 15And staring at him, all who were sitting down in the Sanhedrin saw (3PAAI) his face as the face of an angel. (Author’s Translation)
Acts 6:8-15 And Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people. 9But 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. 10But they were unable to cope with the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking. 11Then they secretly induced men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.” 12And they stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes, and they came up to him and dragged him away and brought him before the Council. 13They put forward false witnesses who said, “This man incessantly speaks against this holy place and the Law; 14for we have heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us.” 15And fixing their gaze on him, all who were sitting in the Council saw his face like the face of an angel. (NASB95)

Alright, because we’re involved at this point in the Book of Acts in the geographic transition, we want to go back and get the large scale overview of and understand some of the lessons so we don’t lose the forest for the trees. Acts 1:8 is God’s program for the Church, the church is not to remain confined to the city of Jerusalem but it’s to go out, so that in Acts 2-7 it all starts in Jerusalem but it’s going to go out and the interesting thing is that it’s not going to go out because the apostles have such positive volition to Acts 1:8. They are happy remaining in Jerusalem and they have no plans to move an inch outside that city. They were having tremendous success such that Acts 6:7 reports that a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith. So this looks, at first glance like success, but we’re going to see that it’s not the area of success the Holy Spirit is interested in developing in the larger scheme. So, as is so often the case when believers just sit around the Holy Spirit has to force something to happen, so He forces the issue starting in Acts 6. What the Holy Spirit has in mind is His program of Acts 1:8, that we want the witness to go out to Judea and Samaria. And the way He gets this underway is one of the strangest operations in the Bible, he’s going to use a church dispute involving the widows of the Hellenistic Jews. He’s going to use a church fight to bring it about, so that the apostles are not aware of what’s going on here but the Holy Spirit is going to get His work done whether they know they are cooperating with His program or not. So it’s a providential work of the Holy Spirit that causes the witness to break out of Jerusalem into the regions of Judea and Samaria and to the rest of the world. To carry out this task you have the Hellenistic Jews, who better to use than people who are part of the international community, who speak the language, who know the culture. This is a fascinating text on missions methodology. You notice that the native Hebrews aren’t the instruments for the missions, Stephen and Philip were not native Hebrews. So obviously the Holy Spirit is showing us that the natives were not the best choices for missions. And the reason is because they don’t have the background, they don’t know the culture outside the land, they’re not from those regions, they’re sort of “the stay at home kids” and the last thing on their mind is Acts 1:8, heading off into the pagan Gentile world, they like to stay safe near Jerusalem. So the Holy Spirit, to get the right men going out of Jerusalem, works in a church fight involving bickering women and when the apostles choose the seven deacons they choose seven international Jews, they’re all Hellenic. Oh you might say, “That’s going to cause a problem, you don’t set up committee with such an imbalance, shouldn’t they have chosen some native Jews too?” And the answer is no because the biblical philosophy for solving problems is not “What sounds practical?” It’s not an issue of pragmatism, the issue is true spirituality, who are the most spiritual, who will be able to solve the problem with skill, and apparently the Hellenistic disciples were the men who had the greatest wisdom to handle this kind of thing, so that’s who they chose, as long as the men are spiritual they’ll solve the problem in a spiritually discerning way, without cultural bias, and apparently they solved it because this problem never recurs. So the near term goal of the apostles is to solve this problem and the seven solve the problem, they are successful in their first training ground assignment so that later on they can handle larger areas of ministry. And that’s precisely what God the Holy Spirit has in mind, these seven men are going to be the ones who move out of Jerusalem with the witness of Jesus Christ, taking Him out to the rest of the world.

Now Stephen becomes the focus here for the rest of chapters 6 and 7. We said he was a Hellenistic Jew. He was more cosmopolitan in his outlook and so he, along with other Diaspora Jews, was asking a different set of questions when he came to the Scriptures. While the Hebrew Jews were all tied up around when Jesus was going to return and establish Jerusalem as the center of the world they were concerned with questions like, “What is Jesus’ relationship to North Africa, Asia, Cilicia, and so forth? Does Jesus and what He did on the cross have any relevance for us? We’re from Roman cities out there? So Stephen, just by asking these kinds of questions of the word of God is going to make an astounding breakthrough in doctrine. He’s going to become the first great theologian. In fact, after studying this passage quite carefully I’m convinced that if Stephen had not been killed under the auspices of Paul it would have been Stephen who wrote the NT, not Paul. Stephen was the man who began a startlingly new application of the Word of God and Stephen was able to see an application of doctrine that no one else saw because of his Hellenistic background. Stephen therefore thought in terms not of the soil of Palestine but the soil of Rome; Asia, Bythynia, Cappadocia, Cyprus, Alexandria. Stephen had all of this background and it was this background that prompted him to come to the same word of God that the apostles had and ask different questions and get different answers, interesting answers. And this is why as you study the word of God as a Westerner, your theological heritage comes from Europe and that means the questions you ask of the Scriptures are driven by this heritage.This is why when I saw a commentary done by South African theologians that has tremendous interest for me. Why you ask? Because those theologians are asking different questions of the text and getting different answers that I, with my western approach, may not be asking and that means fresh insights, fresh applications of the word of God. You have this ability too, I don’t have infinite experience. Some of you are lawyers, fishermen, doctors, homemakers, artists, musicians, mechanically minded individuals, and when you come to the word of God you run across things in your field of interest and you ask questions I never dreamed of and by doing that you can make distinct and significant contributions to the understanding of Scripture just by asking your interesting questions. So you all have something to contribute in the study of the word of God.

So Stephen was a man we find with new questions and he was getting fresh insights and that meant a breakthrough for the church. We come to verse 8, And Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people. Now if you have a concordance you can go back and trace the signs and wonders happening in Acts, this is Luke’s point, he’s linking these together in a strand, so turn back to Acts 2:22, this is Peter’s first sermon on the Day of Pentecost and he says, “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs…” so this is a historic reference to what Jesus Christ being proven by the miracles that He was the Messiah, this was before the cross, now turn to 2:43, this is after the cross, “Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.” Notice the hands of the apostles, this wasn’t every Tom, Dick and Harry, this was the apostles, now 4:30, this is in their prayer after they’d been released from the civil authorities, “while You extend Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders take place through the name of Your holy servant Jesus.” So they pray to continue in civil disobedience accompanied by these signs and wonders and that prayer is granted in chapter 5:12, “At the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people;” Again by the hands of the apostles. Now in 6:8 for the first time we have a non-apostle doing miracles and this is because he’s been authorized by the apostles, they laid hands on Stephen and the other six. So the fact that he’s now doing miracles doesn’t mean he just got the Spirit, he had to be full of the Spirit just to qualify to be chosen. So he already had the Spirit, why he’s able to do wonders and signs now is because once again it authenticates the apostles. The apostles put these men in charge of the task so when the people start seeing them do the same signs the apostles do it authenticates them once more as God’s generals. So these seven men have come down through history with a special title, they are called apostolic legates. They were emissaries for the apostles, official deputies who extended their ministry. So we see Philip in Acts 8:6 doing signs and wonders. 

So Stephen is doing these miracles and the group he was doing it among were the Hellenists. Remember, Stephen administered food and finances to the Hellenistic widows. So his major ministry was not to all Jews but to the Hellenic Jews. And this controversy that’s going to explode in a few verses begins with a Hellenist. And we have to understand all this background to appreciate some of the things that the first martyr of the Christian church faced.

You’ll notice in Acts 6:9 that after he did this for some time and in the midst of it he ran into a storm of protest. 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. Now the Talmud tells us that at this point in Jewish history there were 480 synagogues in the city of Jerusalem. They were labeled much like we label our local churches, there’s the First Baptist Church, The Lutheran Church, First Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, Bible Church, they all had their names and the synagogues had names and in verse 9 one of the names of the synagogue was given, the Synagogue of the Freedmen, the Jews who met here had been slaves in the past but got their freedom or they were descended from them, and this group consisted of Cyrenians and Alexandrians. Now the Cyrenians were from Northern Africa, what we call modern Libya, this was a Hellenized city that gets quite a bit of attention in Scripture. You’ll notice as early as Matt 27:32 when Jesus Christ was carrying his cross they nominated someone to help him out, that was Simon from Cyrene, he came from this city in North Africa, and what that event communicates is that the seeds of the gospel were being planted that day as a set up for later ministry. There’s a plan here that the Holy Spirit is working. Turn to Acts 2:10, the Jews from the Diaspora who gathered for the feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem and witnessed the tongues incident and Peter’s first sermon, there were those from “Cyrene.” And when they went back to Cyrenia they’d carry some more seeds of the gospel. Then we see people from Cyrene in Acts 6 arguing with Stephen. Now at this point apparently some of them are going to be converted because when we turn to Acts 11:20 what do we find? “But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus.” Now we’ve got Cyrenian preachers all the way up in Antioch. And lastly Acts 13:1, this one’s pretty fascinating, you’ve heard of Paul and Barnabas, how about this guy, “Lucius of Cyrene,” apparently he was one of the top Bible teachers with Barnabas and Paul. Putting this all together what you see is a tremendous principle of the work of the Holy Spirit in preparing certain people for the gospel, it may start off small with just a seed here, a seed there but when you put all the references together you start to see the pattern of the Holy Spirit working to prepare and reach people with the gospel. Stephen was brought into this preparation in Acts 6:9. 

Who else is a part of that Synagogue of the Freedmen? Alexandrians, they were from Northern Africa too, Egypt, this was one of the greatest cities of the ancient world, founded by Alexander the Great, and thus called Alexandria, an intellectual center, had one of the largest libraries of the world but it was unfortunately burned by the Saracens, but one of the great believers of the NT, supposed by some to have written Hebrews was from Alexandria (Acts 18:24), you know him as Apollos, and we think that the first missionary to travel to Alexandria was John Mark. So there’s some seed planting going on in two major cities of North Africa. So it’s interesting that from the start the gospel went into North Africa but it must have been met with negative volition because it didn’t spread too far, rather it ended up spreading deep into Europe. 

So our next two groups in v 9 are in the direction of Europe, the Cilicians and those of Asia, thee are the doorways to Europe. So you have Asia, now Asia is not the continent you think of, Asia was a Roman province in western Turkey. Asia is first mentioned in Acts 2:10. So again there is a group present from here on the day of Pentecost. And they heard the word, some of them may have been a part of the 3,000 that believed, then they went back home and started planting seeds. This is an important region that later will house the seven churches of Revelation (Rev 1:4, 11; 2-3), Collosae, Hieropolis and so forth. So obviously the gospel is going to make inroads here. Paul’s going to spend 2 ½ years at Ephesus so that the word of God is eventually heard by all Asia (Acts 19:10, 26, 27), that’s about 350,000 people, no minor ministry. So the gospel is going to make tremendous inroads over here later on. Despite the gospel’s success over here you had large groups of Jews who caused problems for Paul (Acts 21:27; 24:18) but he also had some friends to help him out, these are called the Asiarchs (Acts 19:31). So we see great persecution of the church in Asia, and thus which way do we see the Christianity developing, in the direction of the persecution, right on into Europe, so these from Asia are some of our spiritual descendants. 

Now the other group Stephen was arguing with were from Cilicia, right here in SE Asia Minor, and this is a prominent region because the chief town in this region was Tarsus and that’s where Paul was born (Acts 21:39; 22:3), Now if you just back off and look at these four regions you see a very obvious strategy of the Holy Spirit, He’s wanting to move out of Jerusalem, He wants to go south, he wants to go north and west, so what does He do, He works through this church fight to get Hellenistic Stephen out. So here’s Stephen fighting with Hellenistic Jews from those regions, these people are the bridge to Europe and Africa.

Let’s go back to Cilicia. These people from Cilicia are arguing with Stephen. Who’s the chief character we said from Cilicia? Saul, later called Paul, Saul’s his Hebrew name, Paul is his Greek name. So he’s chiefly known as Paul since his ministry was chiefly to Greeks. Now, when you get to chapter 8:4 and Stephen has just been stoned they’re all casting their garments at the feet of a young man named what? Saul. See, Saul was the head bully in this organized effort to rid the world of this new Messianic movement. So Saul is an instrument here in confining Christianity to Jerusalem. Always a strategy of Satan, operation quarantine. So Saul thinks he’s killed Christianity here because apparently Stephen was making the deepest inroads, he was the biggest threat to the gospel getting out. And as best I can tell these two had been going at it in this Synagogue of the Freedmen. Where was Saul from? Cilicia. What synagogue would he have attended in Jerusalem? This one. So here you have Saul, a young rabbinic student, studying in Jerusalem at that time, getting his doctorate from Rabbi Gamaliel? Thus, the one actively disputing with Stephen was none other than Saul himself. 

And it says that as this disputing went on, verse 10, they were unable to cope with the wisdom the word “wisdom” means “skill,” they were not able to refute Stephen’s skill and the Spirit by which he was speaking. Now what you have here in the word unable is a power word ischus Saul and others didn’t have ischus, that’s a word that means “inherent strength,” they didn’t have it in themselves. Now in v 8 do you see another power word? Yes, it’s used of Stephen but it’s the word dunamis and this word means “potential power or ability.” Stephen had the potential ability to wipe these guys out. How? Where did the power come from? It did’nt come from Him, he was indwelled by the Spirit of God, so essentially what you have here is an argument between God the Spirit and these unbelievers and they just don’t have it within themselves to refute him. It’s the principle that no matter how much you study the Scriptures, no matter if you sit under the greatest rabbi in the world and you’re his best student, you still can’t defeat the Spirit of God who imparts divine wisdom. So let’s see what happens here because verse 10 is easy to slide right over, but if you do that you don’t get the point. There are two points here. First, put two and two together here; who was involved in disputing with Stephen at this point? Saul. And who won the argument? Stephen won the argument. Now from what you know of reading the NT, from what you know of Paul’s letters you know what kind of a genius Paul was. Paul was one of the most brilliant members of the human race. Paul was chosen by God to systematize Christian doctrine, develop it in a highly organized system. Paul was a genius, but verse 10 tells you that Stephen was an even greater genius. So conclusion: if Stephen had not been stoned to death, Stephen would probably have been the one to write the NT. Stephen who, we’re going to see, developed the concept that Jesus Christ would reign outside the soil of Palestine, he saw very clearly that Jesus Christ could not just be the Messiah of Israel but had to be the Messiah of the whole world, the cities, the regions, the areas where he and his Hellenistic friends had lived all their lives. 

So Stephen is responsible for a lot of the New Testament indirectly. In fact, critics have stumbled over Acts 7, Stephens’ speech because they can’t figure out “Why is it that Luke spills the most ink on Stephen’s speech?” Why not devote the most ink to Peter or Paul? Why give it to this unknown deacon who only lasted a few months and got stoned to death? What is so significant about Stephen, his ministry, his message and his death? What is significant is that Stephen was the one who made the break. Stephen led the charge of taking the gospel out of Jerusalem. For the second point notice the phrase, they were unable to cope, and turn to Luke 21. The situation is that they were having debates and Stephen would say, “Alright bring your guy forward and I’ll give my side and you give your rebuttal. Then you give your side and I’ll give my rebuttal,” and student after student after student would stand up there and go at it with Stephen and Saul got up there and he’s been studying with Gamaliel, the greatest living Jewish scholar, and still Saul couldn’t refute Stephen, no one could refute him because he had such a superior understanding of Scripture, they just kept getting beaten and beaten and beaten, one after another. Apparently the guy who was the greatest living scholar at this time was Stephen, he had put it all together. How did he do this? In addition to his background and these interesting questions he was asking of the text we have Luke 21, verse 14, here’s some parting instructions given by the Lord Jesus Christ to his apostles, “So make up your minds not to prepare beforehand to defend yourselves; for I will give you utterance and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute.” and the word “resists” is the same word in Acts “cope.” The point is they couldn’t handle Stephen in a debate over Scripture because Jesus’ prophecy was being fulfilled in Stephen. Now don’t get the idea that Stephen never studied the word, this just mystically came out of his mouth, that’s not the idea in Luke, the idea is that they weren’t to go premeditating debates, you know, “If they say this I’ll say that,” they didn’t do that, they were just teaching and training in the word, teaching and training in the word and this disciple Stephen was able in this situation to put all of it together in a framework that was undefeatable. He had such a handle on truth that he was able to connect this passage with that passage, that doctrine with this doctrine. He could see the implications of this truth over here with that truth over there and these were amazing links never seen before and when he began to string these truths together into a total framework it was like a barricade that no one could break down. That’s what Jesus means when He said, you don’t worry about preparing a few slick comebacks, I’m going to personally help you get the Scriptures together into an impenetrable defense. So Jesus Christ personally worked in the mind of Stephen who had stored away Scripture after Scripture, years and years of study, and the Lord Jesus Christ linked it all together in his mind so when the time came Stephen just opened his mouth and the framework of doctrine came out and he was like a one man army and they’d come at him from this angle and he’d blow it away and they’d try to flank him and he’d demolish that, it was a brilliant defense, so brilliant that in v 11 they have no recourse but to resort to violence. See, that’s what you do when you can’t win an argument. All of a sudden it’s going to get physical.

Now, why such a harsh reaction to Stephen? We have to start disciplining ourselves to ask questions of the text, “Why was it that Stephen got such a violent reaction? What was he saying?” I mean you can hack people off by yelling at them but you don’t just go out and stone someone because they called you dirty names. Stephen must have really got under these people’s skin to get this kind of reaction. The only way to illicit this kind of response is to demolish the foundations of their faith. That’s what really gets to people; that’s what Stephen did. Stephen was able to pull off, somehow, in his generation what Christian evangelists have not been able to do in our generation. And that is he made the gospel a threatening message at the deepest level of their souls. He pulled the carpet out from under the way these people thought. He shattered the belief system and this hurts people. He wasn’t trying to hurt them, he was gracious as he did it. It’s just that when all was said and done what they’d been believing for years and years and years was wiped out. 

Now the only thing I can compare this to in modern times is when you see these creationist/evolutionist debates. When I was at Texas Tech we had Dr Michael Behe come in and argue against Dr Carr, one of my professors my senior year, and after the debate was over there was time for Q & A and one guy was getting his Ph. D. in Geology and he wasn’t very happy about the debate and he says, “But Dr Behe, you’ve undermined the whole science of geology.” And Behe calmly and with poise just says, “Oh, did I do that.” And it’s funny in a way but in another way what had happened to that geology student was devastating, here’s a guy spent 100’s of thousands of dollars to get his Ph.D. and in 45 minutes the whole thing is wiped out. That’s what Stephen was doing to these guys, just shattering their worldview and that will get people very upset. 

So in v 11, they make sure this is never going to happen again, we’re going to get this guy, we can’t get him in the debate but we’re going to get him nonetheless. Then they secretly induced men to say, they paid them off, they bribed men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.” So what was it that got under their skin? Two things, we can gather two ideas that Stephen dropped that got them all upset. But I want you to know that whatever Stephen taught was not the problem, the problem was their interpretation of what Stephen said, they were misrepresenting him and then they come along and with a few words and nuances they get everybody in a frenzy.

So let’s see what the questions were that Stephen was asking throughout this episode and then we can better understand the reaction. Stephen was asking two questions. He asked these two questions of himself and I might add this is anticipating chapter 7 but I hope by the time I get through chapter 7 you’ll be convinced that in fact these were the two questions that Stephen was asking. The first question Stephen asked was: is God’s word limited to Israel alone? Is the Torah of Moses confined to the land of Israel? That was the first question. We live 20 centuries away from this so we’ve lost the impact of the question; I’ll try to give you the impact of the question as we go on but just take it right now that that was one of the questions that Stephen was dealing with as a Jew from outside the land. The second question he asked which triggered even more emotion is: what good is the sacred temple now? What good is the law of Moses now? That’s the second issue and you couldn’t ask for two more touchy items.

I want you to understand that if the charges of 6:11, if their interpretation of Stephen’s teachings were correct then they were right to kill him. So Acts 6:11, Then they secretly induced men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.” So it goes back to Stephen’s two arguments, against Moses which would be against the Law of Moses or the Torah and blasphemous words against God which would be touching on the place where God was worshiped, the Temple. So they secretly induce these men, meaning they bribed them to go out on the streets of Jerusalem and start spreading this about Stephen. Why are they doing this first? Earlier something was different; remember before when the two persecutions hit, the first persecution the Christians got off with just a warning. The second persecution was more intense; what happened to Christians then? They got off with a beating. Now in both those cases, as the Christians responded to the Sanhedrin, who protected them? What was their protection? What prevented that persecution from exploding into mass murder? There was only one factor and lest we forget it, turn back to Acts 4:16, under the doctrine of civil disobedience we remember that there was a factor that operated to protect them. What was that factor, 4:16 What shall we do with these men? For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place through them is apparent to all who live in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. The public, now verse 21, When they had threatened them further, they let them go (finding no basis on which to punish them) on account of the people, because they were all glorifying God for what had happened. Acts 5:26, the second persecution, Then the captain went along with the officers and proceeded to bring them back without violence (for they were afraid of the people…What, then, was the protection factor for those Christians during those first two persecutions? The protection factor was their political popularity with the people. It was sheer popularity that protected Christians. So in Acts 6:12 we have Satan’s very clever move that prefaced persecution number three, this persecution would be different than persecution one and persecution two because in persecution three Satan destroyed the Christian’s popularity. And they stirred up the people, and the elders, see, it’s so easy to misrepresent Stephen’s words, “He speaks against the Torah? Oh really? The Christian? Christians speak against the Torah. Damn them! And thus ended the popularity and that’s why on the human level Stephen is going to be murdered. Stephen has lost the shield of population protection and he goes down. It’s always this way, it’s happening in our day, Christianity is falling on hard times, and you just watch when you get a riot started against Christianity or a false interpretation of Christianity, somebody will go down. 

Acts 6:13, They put forward false witnesses who said, false not in the sense they made up these charges but false in that they manipulated what he said. Stephen said one thing but they twisted it. But it’s so easy to get the mob interested with just a few little nuances. The greatest people today that do this, of course, are the media, the TV news anchors, who are able to smear a man’s character, from coast to coast, with a few words on national TV. There’s nothing new about this strategy, same old story, ruin the reputation. So they “set up false witnesses, who said, “This man incessantly speaks against this holy place and the Law; and now they’re explicit, here is Stephen’s two points, “against this holy place,” the Temple “and against the Law,” the Law of Moses, Torah. 

Acts 6:14, for we have heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us.” Now we know that’s not what Stephen taught because Stephen was following Jesus’ teaching and Jesus never taught that. Turn to Mark 14:58. And notice in v 57 we have the same situation, false witnesses but here against Jesus, but the same point of doctrine, it has to do with temple, and the false charge is in v 58, “We heard Him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands.’” Now turn to John 2:19 to see what was really said, “Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Now, did Jesus say He was going to destroy the temple? No, He said “if it were destroyed He would rebuild it.” But obviously he’s talking about a different temple, not the physical temple. But the Jews are still thinking the physical temple and they said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” And then v 21 John clarifies, “But He was speaking of the temple of His body.” Now, obviously Jesus and Stephen were both talking about the resurrection. That’s the central issue in the early church, the resurrection, the resurrection, the resurrection and so obviously Stephen was teaching this and saying look, the temple was Jesus’ body, He was God-incarnate and you killed him but God raised Him. So you can see how subtly they misrepresented what Stephen was saying, it’s very deceptive, but deception is a powerful tool with the masses and now it’s resonated into the Sanhedrin again, such that Stephen is on trial before them. 

And verse 15, a very strange verse, it says And fixing their gaze on him, something about Stephen, it caused everyone in the room to stare at him, and he began giving his defense and finally they will interrupt him down in chapter 7, before he could finish he was cut off, but while he was speaking, at least until he wrecked their whole framework they didn’t whisper, they didn’t talk with their neighbor, they didn’t look around, they concentrated on one thing, the man’s face. And apparently, since Luke wrote this, Luke must have talked to somebody who was there. I wonder who was there? My guess is it’s Saul, Saul was either in there or he got this from Gamaliel his teacher.  

And all who were sitting in the Council saw his face like the face of an angel. Now that doesn’t mean Stephen had a sweet little face and they were just admiring him. Nor was it a face of a ferocious angel. What it means here is that you have the face and the face is how you identify someone in Scripture. And the identity of a person in particular is related to the eyes of the face. You’ve heard the saying, “You can see it in his eyes.” What are we saying, we’re saying that when you look into a persons eyes you can see something of the truth of the matter. You can see whether they are honest or guilty, the eyes tell all. The eyes are where you peer into a persons soul. And so what this is saying is that when they peered into the eyes of Stephen they could see something of an angel. One of the characteristics of angels is that they are poised, they are so focused on their mission because basically they are emissaries, they carry messages and they are very obedient in their work, they are poised and here’s an emissary of the apostles, Stephen the deacon and he’s completely focused, he’s poised with authority, he’s very intense in his demeanor, and this grabs their attention, all eyes are on Stephen. 

So they are putting Stephen on trial as blaspheming against the Law and blaspheming against the temple. But when Stephen gets done he is going to have completely reversed the charges and say “No, there’s blasphemy against the Torah and blasphemy against the temple, but it’s not me, it’s you; you’re the ones that are doing it.” And so he completely will turn the tables by the time his sermon ends. 

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