Books of the Book: Acts

Call to Preach

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Jim & Mark Howard

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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.


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Revised 2014-12-17