Acts
6:1-7 … Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a
complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were
being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full
number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up
preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from
among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we
will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the
ministry of the word.” And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they
chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and
Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of
Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their
hands on them. And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the
disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests
became obedient to the faith.
As a result of a problem with the distribution of care to
the Greek Jewish widows and the local Jewish widows the Apostles need to make a
change. They needed men to make sure that the distribution was fair. The Greek
Jews were viewed as outsiders by the locals and apparently at least thought
they were not being treated fairly.
Note that the Apostles were 12 in number and remember
that includes the Apostle Matthias who replaced Judas.
These are the first deacons. The word for “distribution”
in “daily distribution” is διακονία [diakonia, noun] and the word for serve in “serve
tables” is διακονέω [diakoneo, verb]. So these guys were the servants or
deacons. The root may have come from a word meaning to run errands like a
“gopher” in our language. They were in positions of responsibility in the role
of servants taking over something that the Apostles simply didn’t have the
calling to supervise.
1. Stephen. Luke says he was
a man “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit.” We will see him again in this and
the next chapter.
2. Philip. We will see him
again in Acts 8. Later in the book he is called an “evangelist” (Acts 21:8),
the only person in Acts to be so named.
3. Procorus. We know nothing
more about Procorus from the Bible, but tradition says he became a bishop of
Nicomedia and was martyred at Antioch.
4. Nicanor. We know nothing
about this man from the New Testament.
5. Timon. Nor of Timon.
6. Parmenas. Nor of Parmenas.
7.
Nicolas. He was from Antioch and had been a convert to Judaism.
They were elected by the Church and they were ordained by
the laying on of hands of the leadership and the Church was blessed and
continued to grow. These guys were very active and some will show up again
later. For example, Stephen appears in the next chapter of Acts and Philip
ministers to the Ethiopian Eunuch in Chapter 8.
I like the way in which the Apostles describe the problem
and the solution. They say that they can’t serve tables but they will serve the
Word. They can’t deacon the tables but they will deacon the Word. And this
pleased the whole gathering. We see two general areas of ministry or service
and that is in the Word including prayer as well as service to people’s
physical needs.
Boice identifies so principles of Church leadership in
these verses.
1) Division
of Responsibility (by spiritual gifting)
2) Plurality
of Leadership (elders and bishops … plural, not singular in Scripture)
3) Spiritual
Qualifications (Lead by the Holy Spirit and with mature wisdom)
4) Deaconal
(Servant) Ministry (an attitude that doesn’t say, “Lord you can’t wash my feet”
but rather says “Lord let me wash their feet”
Acts
6:8-10 … And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and
signs among the people. Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the
Freedmen (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and
of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen. But they
could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking.
Here is a deacon, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit
ministering with power and irritating those who were opposed to Christianity. The
“freedmen” were Jews freed from slavery in Cyrene in North Africa, then Cilicia
was Asia Minor (North Western Turkey) and included Paul’s hometown of Tarsus,
and Asia (Western Turkey). It is interesting that those individuals were not
from Jerusalem and they decided to oppose Stephen. Perhaps with the conversion
of a great many of the priests in 6:7 these Jews from outside Jerusalem felt
threatened in a home that was not as they had imagined it. However, Stephen had
the wisdom and the Holy Spirit so they were ineffective in arguing with him.
Acts
6:11-15 … Then they secretly instigated men who said, “We have heard him
speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” And they stirred up the people
and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and
brought him before the council, and they set up false witnesses who said, “This
man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, for we
have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will
change the customs that Moses delivered to us.” And gazing at him, all who sat
in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.
When they couldn’t survive a discussion with Stephen they
redirected their efforts towards stirring up the unsaved in Jerusalem by
spreading lies about Stephen. Then they used false witnesses as he was taken
before the council. Think of trying to teach Scripture or preach the Gospel
without addressing the futility of temple sacrifices and the ritual law. While
we don’t know exactly what Stephen taught or preached day by day we do know
that Jesus had said he would destroy the Temple. The clock was ticking on that.
This may have been the root of the foreign Jew’s problem with Christianity.
They had been separated from the Temple for so long that they really bristled
up at the idea of the Temple as a shadow and that Jesus, as the living Temple,
had walked on earth and fulfilled prophecy.
In any case, they worked secretly because they couldn’t
face him directly and they were distorting his views. And in the mean time, the
Holy Spirit was making his face glow like an angel. God was pouring grace out
on this man in this moment.
Stephen’s speech is quite different from what we’ve read
previously.
First, he doesn’t defend himself. It really doesn’t
address the charges against him. Peter went after the charges but Stephen,
under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, addresses the Jews. In a way he
prepares us for the transition to the Gentiles in his extended presentation to
the Jews.
Second, he doesn’t really quote very much Scripture. Peter
was quoting and explaining. Stephen mostly does a biblical history of the Jews
and confronts them with their sins.
Thirdly, while Peter preached about Jesus from beginning
to end, Stephen, addressing these Jews, presents their history, and then mentions
Jesus as “the Righteous One” only at the end. On Peter’s day, everyone was
getting saved (Acts 3:26) but on Stephen’s day, these guys were not getting
saved and they were heaping up sins for the day of God’s judgment. Both Peter
and Stephen shared what needed to be shared. Both gave the right message at the
right time but the Holy Spirits purposes differed.
Acts
7:1-7 … And the high priest said, “Are these things so?” And Stephen said:
“Brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham
when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, ‘Go out
from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show
you.’ Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And
after his father died, God removed him from there into this land in which you
are now living. Yet he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot’s length,
but promised to give it to him as a possession and to his offspring after him,
though he had no child. And God spoke to this effect—that his offspring would
be sojourners in a land belonging to others, who would enslave them and afflict
them four hundred years. ‘But I will judge the nation that they serve,’ said
God, ‘and after that they shall come out and worship me in this place.’
You can see here how historical Stephen is going to be.
He wants to drive home the blessed position that the Jews have in history as a
result of a long line of God’s gracious promises manifested in godly men.
Abraham had the promise but he was a sojourner in that way similar to Jesus.
The audience that Stephen was addressing should have been the fulfillment of
God’s promises. They were supposed to be worshiping God in this place as a
result of God’s mercy in taking them out of Egypt. But they should not have
settled for temporal blessings.
Abraham had the grace to trust God’s word. The Book of
Hebrews says, “By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign
land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and
builder is God (Hebrews 11:9–10).” Abraham looked forward to God’s fulfillment
and these guys were convicted because they were fighting against God’s
fulfillment and for the old Temple. We should never let the blessings of this
world take our eyes off of God’s promise.
Acts
7:8-16 … And he gave him the covenant of circumcision. And so Abraham
became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him on the eighth day, and Isaac
became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs. “And the
patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him and
rescued him out of all his afflictions and gave him favor and wisdom before
Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt and over all his
household. Now there came a famine throughout all Egypt and Canaan, and great
affliction, and our fathers could find no food. But when Jacob heard that there
was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers on their first visit. And on the
second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph’s family
became known to Pharaoh. And Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father and all
his kindred, seventy-five persons in all. And Jacob went down into Egypt, and
he died, he and our fathers, and they were carried back to Shechem and laid in
the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in
Shechem.
Joseph is an illustration of Christ in the Old Testament and
these Jews hearing with Jewish ears are hearing of the sins of the patriarchs
and knowing that Stephen is drawing a parallel. Joseph was abused by the
patriarchs. They abused Christ. Joseph saved the patriarchs from a throne and
now salvation is in Christ in His throne. The patriarchs died believing that
God would fulfill His promises so they were not buried in Egypt. Stephen was
preaching to a crowd of angry Jews and these points were hitting home.
Abraham’s faithful sojourning in the Promised Land and his faithfulness in looking
forward to God’s promises being fulfilled were convicting. They had rejected
the promise. Like the patriarchs had tried to eliminate Joseph and found him to
be the savior, they had tried to eliminate Jesus and now He is being proclaimed
as savior.
When I was at the University of Arizona I took a class in
historical speeches because I didn’t like public speaking and I needed another
speech credit to graduate. The instructor was funny but made fun of preaching
styles by imitating sort of a backwoods preacher off and on during the
semester. So our last assignment was to pick a speech and write a term paper on
it. I had put up with this guy all semester so I picked Stephen’s speech and
tried to address the questions we were supposed to answer for the paper. It
seemed to unhinge the instructor. I only saw him once more at the final. He ran
in and ran out. He said he didn’t know how to grade my paper because – since
the speech was found in the Book of Books – it was already judged to be good so
how could we judge it. That was some answer from a smart-alecky instructor who
had made fun of preachers for a semester. Conviction by the Holy Spirit is a good
thing but it doesn’t produce a pretty sight in the lives of unregenerate men.
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