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The Spread of the Word of God
The Spread of the Word of God Acts 6:1-15 Key Verse: 6:7 “7So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.” In last week’s passage we saw that the persecution of the early Christian church began in earnest. The apostles were arrested and thrown in jail, but this could not stop God’s word from continuing to spread. God sent his angel to free the apostles and give them the message that they should go stand again in the temple courts and tell all the people the full truth about the new life that is found in Jesus. The apostles obeyed, and this filled the Jewish leaders with jealousy and indignation – in fact some of them even wanted to kill the apostles in order to stop them from proclaiming God’s word. However, God used one highly respected teacher of the law, Gamaliel, to calm the Jewish leaders and spare the apostles and the early Christian church from this terrible fate. However, the apostles were still flogged and sternly ordered to stop teaching in the name of Jesus. The flogging had the opposite effect on the apostles than the Jewish leaders had hoped - the apostles left the Sanhedrin rejoicing that they were counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the name of Jesus and they preached the word of God every day, both in the temple courts and from house to house. Through this we learned that the word of God could not be stopped by the plans of men. The spread of the truth of God cannot be stopped at all because God is almighty. In today’s passage we see that the gospel message continues to spread even as problems begin to arise in the church itself and the persecution from outside groups increases. May God bless our study of Acts 6 and help us to see how His truth can prevail over any situation. First, problems arise within the church (1). In the previous chapters we saw how the Jewish leaders responded to the preaching of the gospel message. They responded by throwing Peter and John in jail and threatening them for healing a crippled man in Jesus’ name. Later they threw all the apostles in jail and flogged them for continuing to teach the people in the name of Jesus. Yet, in spite of all the efforts of the Jewish ruling class, they could not stop the spread of the gospel. Look at verse 1. “In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.” The day by day preaching of the apostles in the temple courts and from house to house was producing fruit. The number of disciples was increasing. Here, the new believers were called disciples, because the term Christian had not yet been coined (that would happen several years later in Antioch). I actually prefer the term disciple even more than the designation Christian. A disciple is a person who learns from another and being a Christian is really a life of learning from Jesus. Therefore, every Christian is really just a disciple of Jesus. The number of disciples was increasing day by day, but a side effect of this was that the unity of the early church was suffering. In Acts 4:32 it says that, “All the believers were one in heart and mind…” Now, however, we see that this is no longer the case. The Greek Jews among the church began to complain that the Hebrew Jewish widows were being treated better than their widows. We have no idea how true this complaint was, because Luke doesn’t give us any details. What we do know is that the distribution of food would have fallen under the responsibility of the apostle because, as we learned in chapter 4, when a believer brought an offering they would bring it and lay it the apostles feet. This would make the redistribution of that offering a responsibility of the apostles. As the church grew, we can imagine that more and more offerings were being brought and the task of redistributing these among the believes would be increasing. As this responsibility grew and took up more and more of the apostles’ time, their responsibility to preach the word of God and pray for the church didn’t decrease at all, so it is possible that the complaint of the Grecian Jews had some merit. The real problem was not the complaint itself, but the division that it could cause. The church is made up of fallen human beings, and Satan will use any opportunity he can disrupt the work of God in the church. He had tried to do this before using Ananias and Sapphira, however this attempt had failed. Now Satan was trying again using human jealousy to bring about the division. Something had to be done and done quickly. Second, the establishment of the first church offices (2-6). This problem needed to be solved quickly or it could result in a permanent split of the church into Grecian and Hebrew sects. This is exactly what Satan wanted to happen, but the apostles were full of the Holy Spirit and so had the wisdom of God on their side. What did they do? Look at verse 2-4. “So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, "It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.” First of all, they called all the disciples together. This is important because the church was not their own little personal kingdom. They didn’t want to look like, or actually be, the personal dictators of the church. This was a church-wide problem, so it needed a church-wide solution. It would be up to the members of the church to choose their own church officers. The apostles’ positions (with the exception of Matthias) had been appointed by Jesus when he chose them as his personal disciples. Having been chosen by Jesus, they had been given a very specific role by Him to be the ministers of His word. They each had a personal conviction that this ministry, given to them by Jesus Himself, was far more important than anything else. They couldn’t let a worldly concern like the distribution of food get in the way of their God given mission, yet at the same time they realized that this problem needed to be dealt with. They knew that they had been chosen by Jesus for their ministry, but they also knew that Jesus head chosen each of the other members to be a part of His church. Now the church needed officers who could oversee an important function of the church, and it was the responsibility of all the members to choose those officers. The apostles gave clear instructions for the choosing of the officers, but they let the other members decide who those people would be. The members were to choose seven men who were known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. Verse 5 tells us that the apostles’ plan for dealing with this problem was accepted by the people and they chose seven men: Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. Three of these men stand out in the history of God’s church – two for being great warriors of faith and one for not such a good reason. Stephen, the man full of faith and the Holy Spirit would become the first Christian martyr as we will see shortly. Philip grew from a deacon (overseeing the distribution of food to the needy) into an evangelist, one who baptized others into the faith and a co-worker with Paul as he was on his way to Jerusalem (Paul stayed at Philip’s house when he was at Caesarea). The third one that we might have some information about is Nicolas from Antioch. Luke not only mentions where Nicolas came from, but he mentions that Nicolas was a convert to Judaism. It appears that Nicolas was a seeker of God. However, it is very likely that one of the earliest heresies in church history was named after this man, which would indicate that he was not only one who held to this belief, but was indeed the one who proposed it. If you look at Revelations 2, John calls out this heresy by name twice. First, he commends the church of Ephesus for hating the practice of the Nicolaitans and then he rebukes the church in Pergamum for tolerating some of their members who held to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. The heresy had to do with having everything held in common by the members of the church including their wives, but that is not the lesson we need to learn here. The lesson is that we must be very careful when choosing people for positions of authority in the church and once such people are chosen, we as church members, must keep a close eye on the doctrines they teach and hold to. Sometimes even those who appear outwardly holy are not truly saved – their hearts may not be transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit. Once the seven men had been chosen, they were brought to the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them. In this way the apostles established (or ordained) them in their new position. Third, the word of God continued to spread (7-15). Now let’s look at our key verse. “So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.” The church was beginning to feel real persecution coming from the Jewish ruling class and they were showing signs of division among their own members, yet the word of God was spreading. In fact, it was not only spreading, but Luke says the number of disciples in Jerusalem was increasing rapidly and, what is even more amazing, a large number of priests were putting their faith in Jesus – perhaps Gamaliel was one of these. This was great news and it must have been a great encouragement for the apostles in spite of all the problems that were beginning to pop up around them and within their own members. This seems amazing, but Isaiah tells us about God’s word in Isaiah 55:11: “So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” This is the confidence we must have in preaching and teaching the word of God. We are not speaking words of a human origin, we are speaking the very words of God that will accomplish the purpose for which He sends them out. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are around us. If we remain faithful to God’s word, He will work through us to accomplish His purposes. This is His promise. The word of God simply cannot be stopped. One of the seven, Stephen, was truly full of the Holy Spirit. Look at verse 8. “Now Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people.” Stephen was not one of the apostles and in fact, it is very likely that he wasn’t even Jewish (he and all the seven had Greek names which would indicate that they had chosen Greek believers to oversee the problem that revolved around the Greek widows). He was, however, full of the Holy Spirit which gave him God’s grace and power and enabled him to perform great wonders and miraculous signs among the people. Undoubtedly, the things Stephen did and said were attracting many people to the faith. However, where there is a great work of God, Satan is not happy. He will do whatever He can to stop it. In this case he used the members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen. Look at verse 9. “Opposition arose, however, from members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called)--Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria as well as the provinces of Cilicia and Asia. These men began to argue with Stephen.” Who were the members of this synagogue? They may have been called the Synagogue of the Freedmen because, like Paul, they all may have received Roman citizenship. In fact, it may be that Paul was a member of this synagogue since he was from Tarsus, a city in the region of Cilicia, and we know that he was present and approving of the stoning of Stephen. Luke tells us that they were Jews from the diaspora – Jews who at one time lived outside of Israel – and most likely they had faced several forms of persecution because of their religious traditions in those places. This may have caused them to hold onto their Jewish religion and traditions more strongly than those Jews who spent their entire lives in Jerusalem or other cities in Israel. Maybe this was the reason they opposed Stephen so strongly – they felt that his teaching threatened their treasured Jewish traditions. Anyway, they began to argue with Stephen about this new faith centered on Jesus. Verse 10 tells us that they could not stand up either to the wisdom with which he spoke, or the Spirit by whom he spoke. Clearly Stephen was winning the argument, so you might think that these men would join Stephen in his new faith. However, instead of joining Stephen in his faith, they plotted and scheme to find a way to silence him. Their hearts had become hard and their spiritual eyes and ears were completely shut. They felt that they needed to silence Stephen, because if he were allowed to continue speaking with such wisdom and with so much Spirit, more and more Jews would abandon the traditional faith of Israel. They got together some men who were not afraid to give false witness against Stephen. Then they stirred up the elders and teachers of the law and when they got Stephen alone, they seized him and brought him before the Sanhedrin to be tried. They brought forward those false witness who claimed that Stephen always spoke against the holy place and the law and that he said Jesus was going to destroy the temple and change the customs handed down by Moses. It is interesting that these men were not ashamed to break the Law of Moses, which they claimed to be protecting, by producing false witnesses. Didn’t they realize that this could not be pleasing to God? It didn’t matter to them. All they were interested in was silencing the word of God and protecting their precious traditions. The same thing would happen again, in the 15th and 16th centuries when the rulers in the Catholic church would resort to large scale murder just to protect the traditions and their positions of authority in the church. These, and other examples, should put us on our guard today. Human beings are weak and many of us are addicted to the things of this world, especially to power and authority. We shouldn’t be surprised if others resort to lies and deceit, to try and stop the truth of God from getting out if their positions of authority are threatened by it. In fact, I believe this is happening on a large scale in the church today. I believe that there are many ministers out there preaching a watered-down version of the gospel, which is really no gospel at all, just to protect their positions and grow their churches to make their positions even stronger. This is leading many people away from the true gospel of Jesus and making it far more difficult to preach this gospel in public. These days, people don’t like to hear that they are hopeless sinners, in desperate need of repentance, and wholly dependent on the grace of God alone. They don’t like to hear this because they have been lied to by so many preachers who tell them that they are OK, that God loves them just the way they are and He wants to bless their life abundantly with no repentance required. This is a vicious lie that will lead to the destruction of many. I believe God has called on us to preach the true gospel to everyone we meet with the firm belief that we preach the word of God which will not return to God empty, but accomplish the work He intends. Finally, I want to look at verse 15. “All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.” All the people sitting in that trial were looking at Stephen and even though people were saying terrible lies about him, Stephen showed no concern at all. In fact, Luke says that his face was like that of an angel. Perhaps it glowed as Moses face did when he descended the mountain of God. We don’t know exactly what he looked like, but even his face at that trial was a witness against the people who were bring charges against him. Once again, they should have repented and accepted his testimony about Jesus, but, as we will see, they did not. Never-the-less the word of God continued to spread, and it was about to spread a whole lot farther. Ironically, it was the very men that wanted to stop the spreading of the gospel of Jesus who ensured that it would spread far beyond the walls of Jerusalem. Today we learned that there is nothing that can stop the spreading of the truth of God. I believe that God has called each of us to preach His word simply and clearly, and we must do this with absolute faith that God’s word will not return to Him empty but will fulfill the purpose for which He sent it out. |
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