Participants: Jim & Mark Howard
Series Code: ABOTB
Program Code: ABOTB00011A
00:22 Welcome to Books of the Book where we are studying the book
00:25 of Acts. My name is Jim Howard and I'm here with my brother 00:29 Mark. We are pastors in the Michigan Conference of Seventh 00:32 day Adventists who have the privilege of studying with you 00:36 today about this wonderful narrative of the early church. 00:40 Now, Mark, last time in our last episode we left off at the 00:45 end of chapter 7 and in Acts chapter 7 we saw the stoning of 00:51 that powerful missionary for Christ, Stephen. Stephen was one 00:56 of those deacons who was appointed to assist with so many 01:02 things that were needed in the church that the apostles didn't 01:05 have time to get to, but yet he still had this great mission of 01:09 preaching the word and that was just a powerful lesson we 01:12 learned last time. But as we come to the close of chapter 7, 01:16 and prepare for chapter 8, I'd like to review just briefly the 01:20 last few verses of chapter 7. So if you are watching at home 01:24 and you have a Bible, we'd invite you to take that now and 01:27 open it. But before we begin to dive into the Word we want to 01:31 take a moment and just ask the Lord to bless our understanding. 01:34 So let's bow our heads together. Father in heaven, we're so 01:38 grateful for the privilege of studying your word which is 01:43 living and powerful and can change our lives. Bless our 01:47 study now we pray. In Jesus' name, Amen. 01:51 All right. I'll be picking up in verse 57, right here at the 01:55 conclusion of chapter 7 in the story of Stephen. It says, Then 01:59 they cried out with a loud voice after Stephen's appeal, stopped 02:03 their ears and ran at him with one accord and they cast him out 02:07 of the city and stoned him. So here we have the Sanhedrin and 02:12 the leaders of the nation of Israel, in some ways sealing 02:17 their fate with what they accomplished here. And the 02:20 witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young 02:24 man named Saul. And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God 02:28 and saying, Lord Jesus receive my spirit. Then he knelt down 02:32 and cried out with a loud voice Lord, do not charge them with 02:36 this sin. And when he had said this he fell asleep, that is he 02:41 died. And then it says, Now Saul was consenting to his death. 02:46 Now I can imagine that as Stephen is feeling the weight of 02:50 these stones and surrounded by so many who had stopped their 02:55 ears and who were grinding their teeth and just looking at him 03:00 with venom in their eyes, that he had to wonder what the value 03:05 of that sermon was that he gave and what the outcome would be, 03:10 but I think he's going to be pleased one day to find out that 03:15 his words, Lord, do not charge them with this sin, had to have 03:20 pierced the heart of Saul the persecutor. Saul was right there 03:24 and I believe that Stephen's death and the words surrounding 03:29 it planted a seed in the heart of Saul and Stephen's death in 03:33 some ways gave birth to the life of the apostle Paul. Now 03:38 that doesn't happen yet, but that conviction has begun and as 03:42 a result of that conviction some incredible things begin to 03:45 happen in chapter 8. Why don't you take us down that path? 03:48 Well you know we are going to hear more about Saul and what 03:53 the impact is on Saul, but Stephen is such a great example 03:57 of the power of the laity or lay people. Maybe that's not a word 04:01 that our viewers may use as much It's kind of fallen out of 04:04 practice with some but it just means those who aren't the 04:08 pastors or the clergy; the common church members and they 04:12 are anything but common. Here we see in the book of Acts that 04:16 Stephen is working his mighty work for God and it's almost in 04:20 a way of beginning of what we're going to see here in chapter 8. 04:24 As Stephen lays down his life, we find that he doesn't just 04:30 give birth in the life of Paul, but we see the Lord brings about 04:35 a revival. In chapter 8, it says that at that time, after Saul 04:39 was consenting to Stephen's death, a great persecution arose 04:42 against the church which was at Jerusalem and they were all 04:46 scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the 04:51 apostles. So you have to picture the church is growing, growing 04:56 3000 and then 5000 and the Bible says we're counting 5000 men 05:00 not counting women and children. So the church is really having 05:03 this exponential growth. You know, it feels good to be a part 05:07 of a church like that. You don't really want to leave a church 05:09 like that. I mean, they're fellowshipping and we've talked 05:12 quite a bit about this rich experience that they've all 05:14 shared together and I imagine that there was probably quite a 05:20 tendency among the believers now to congregate and forget their 05:26 responsibility to push the gospel message into regions 05:30 where it hadn't reached yet. So at this point in time, once 05:34 Stephen is stoned the Jewish leaders now look at this as an 05:39 opportunity to start ridding the church of others and the Bible 05:43 says this great persecution arose and as a result the 05:48 believers now, as much as they might have wanted to stay there 05:52 in Jerusalem, were scattered for safety. It's interesting that it 05:56 tells us there that everybody was scattered except the 05:59 apostles. The reason that's important is as we go on here 06:03 verses 2 and 3 talk about how Stephen was carried to his 06:06 burial and Saul continued to make havoc of the church it says 06:10 in verse 3 entering every house and dragging off men and women 06:13 and committing them to prison. So he's trying to stamp out the 06:17 faith. Then verse 4 says something powerful. It says, 06:21 Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere 06:24 preaching the word. Oftentimes when we hear that preaching and 06:28 we think of preaching in the New Testament church, who do we 06:32 think of. The apostles right away. I mean so many of us would 06:36 say, Oh the apostles did the preaching in the New Testament. 06:40 But what's unique here and maybe not so unique but kind of an 06:45 eyeopener to us is that it tells us in verse 4 that the ones who 06:49 were scattered are the ones who did the preaching. But in verse 06:54 one it tells us that the ones who were scattered was 06:57 everybody except the apostles. So the ones who did the 07:01 preaching here were not the apostles but everyone but the 07:05 apostles were scattered and preaching. I might add here that 07:08 that word preaching comes from a Greek word, Caruso, which does 07:12 not mean to necessarily stand in some pulpit or podium and give a 07:17 like address but to tell or to communicate or to share. So not 07:21 everybody here was necessarily giving a sermon, but they were 07:26 vocally, verbally proclaiming the gospel message and it wasn't 07:30 just a few. This was the church, the laity of the church, the 07:34 members of the church now were each and every one out sharing 07:39 gospel message. You know I can't help but think 07:42 when I hear you speak about the church members going out and 07:47 sharing their faith about what must have happened because as we 07:51 look through history there was a change that came over the church 07:55 Gradually there began to be more and more of a protective element 08:00 Perhaps they were trying to protect the purity of doctrine 08:03 or whatever the case might be but it seems that the clergy 08:06 took on more and more of a role of being the expositors of truth 08:12 It even got to the point during the middle ages where the common 08:17 lay person as it is, the church members, were not the ones that 08:21 had the Bible and explained the Bible and persuaded others to 08:26 accept Bible truth, because it was almost as if they were not 08:30 qualified to do so and only the clergy could do that. So you've 08:35 got this mindset that the clergy were paid to do that. 08:38 They were especially called to do that and gifted to do that. 08:44 Very much so. So something had to happen and I believe during 08:49 the time of the protestant reformation we see this picture 08:54 begin to shift back to the biblical model where the 08:57 priesthood of all the believers in the sense that every believer 09:00 was called as a disciple of Christ to bear witness for 09:04 Christ and to share the truth that they had found. That began 09:07 to shift the model of church. But I think that we're somewhere 09:11 caught in the middle now. We have a situation in many of our 09:15 churches here where we live in North America. It's very 09:18 prominent that for some reason pastors are looked upon as and 09:24 those who are in official positions as being the primarily 09:30 qualified to share the truth. It almost has gotten to the point 09:33 where the environment makes it so that a lay person doesn't 09:37 feel comfortable doing it because they might mess up. 09:40 That is hardly what we see in the early church. In the early 09:46 church we see not a structure that ultimately is full of busy 09:50 activity but doesn't include the sharing of the word. But we see 09:55 the sharing of the word that happens throughout the whole 09:58 region and that causes a need for structure and this 10:02 particular biblical model of church where every disciple of 10:06 Christ is a witness for Christ and by witness, 10:09 I don't mean silent witness, 10:11 merely a representative which is a very important aspect 10:14 of witnessing but I mean also giving voice to that which has 10:20 won their heart through literature, through their own 10:24 confession. These are the things that the early church had that 10:28 I believe we need to recapture. 10:29 That's right and so when you even bring up the idea of the 10:32 silent witness, that word preaching, while it may not be 10:36 standing in a pulpit certainly isn't silent. It's verbally, 10:39 it's vocally communicated, it's audibly communicated and so here 10:43 we have the church proclaiming. The question would be, and you 10:48 touched on this, this mindset that we've now come into in our 10:53 day that has this idea that those who are preaching the word 10:58 are specially gifted. I mention that specifically because 11:01 sometimes when I talk to people about witnessing and sharing 11:05 their faith the response that I hear a lot, Jim, is well that 11:10 isn't my gift. That's fallen into vogue today in the church 11:14 but it's not at all biblical. There are four spiritual gifts 11:18 lists in the Bible and not one of them contains witnessing 11:22 and I tell people this because witnessing is standard equipment 11:25 in the church and I'm going to look at a text for that in a 11:29 moment. But I tell people when I bought my car I had options; 11:32 I could get a GPS built in, I could get air conditioning, 11:35 power windows, but it came with a steering wheel and tires. 11:38 Right? Those are standard equipment and what we find in 11:41 scripture and what we're seeing here in the book of Acts in the 11:45 experience of the early church is that that power to witness 11:48 was standard equipment for the Christian and Jesus spoke of it 11:52 in John Chapter 4 when he was talking to the woman at Jacob's 11:56 well. I'm not going to go through the whole passage, but 11:59 he's telling her of living water which is an offer for her to 12:05 receive the gospel. He says in John 4 and verse 13, Whoever 12:12 drinks of this water will thirst again, speaking of the water in 12:15 the well, but then he says, but whoever drinks of the water that 12:19 I shall give him will never thirst but the water that I 12:22 shall give will become in him, in that person that drinks it, 12:27 a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. Now what 12:31 he's saying is everyone who takes the living water, that is, 12:35 anyone who receives Jesus for salvation, that experience 12:41 become a fountain of water that then gives the water to 12:47 others and so Jesus made it very clear that anyone who becomes a 12:51 consumer of his grace immediately becomes a producer 12:54 of it. I want to interject also on that 12:57 point of the spiritual gifts. You know, we've used in 13:01 different churches spiritual gift inventories that have 13:05 talked about different people's characteristics and then they 13:08 determine where their gifts are, whether it's administration or 13:12 teaching or helps or whatever it might be based on this inventory 13:15 and while there's value to that and it can help to give us a 13:20 sense of where we may be able to fit into the ministries of 13:24 the church, I wonder what would have happened if these fishermen 13:27 had taken spiritual inventory tests. I mean when you really 13:32 think about it why was it that they needed to pray for boldness 13:37 why was it that they needed this external, supernatural power to 13:41 help them to overcome the fears that they would have naturally 13:46 had. Now what we have to remember is that naturally very 13:51 few of us are really wanting to say things that can be ridiculed 13:59 or looked at in negative light. So it takes power from God for 14:04 any of us to be able to preach and witness and we can't just 14:09 look at what comes naturally and say that what God is calling 14:13 me to do. We have to say what can God do for me 14:16 supernaturally? That's right. Well we've got to 14:19 take a break but when we come back we're going to dive back 14:22 into the book of Acts so stay tuned. |
Revised 2014-12-17