e17
A Church in Transition
Acts 8:1-4
Previously
6:10 And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke.
7:54 ¶ When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth.
7:58 and they cast him out of the city and stoned him (to death). And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.
The words spoken by Stephen had angered the crowd in the courtroom to the point that they wanted to kill him. They could not answer him. They knew he was right, but they did not want to hear what he was saying. It would appear that even the officials, the judges in the court, did not try to stop the lynch mob.
We need to remember that taking a stand for Jesus, still produces angry listeners if they have already made up their minds to reject your words. Jesus said, 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
18 ¶ "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
21 But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. John 15:17-21
But whether we are hated or not we need to continue boldly presenting Jesus as the only way to God.
Writer, Luke, has pointed out that a young man named Saul is standing on the sideline and taking care of people's garments until they are finished killing Stephen.
58b And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59 And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
60 Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
We will take a closer look at Saul in a moment, but first I want to skip ahead and read one more verse regarding Stephen.
2 And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him.
Remembering that the church has grown to huge proportions within the city of Jerusalem, we must also remember that the entire church of multi thousands knew of Stephen. Just recently the collective body of the church had chosen seven men, full of faith and the Holy Spirit, to oversee the food distribution for the whole church. Stephen’s name would have been known in every home. So now the news of his death has spread throughout the entire church.
‘Great Lamentation’ takes place. I am sure that many would be recognizing the fact that Stephen is now in heaven. Why the great lamentation? Probably it was a combination of a couple of things. This is the first ‘death’ of a church member, directly related to outside persecution. That would be a shock to realize that people would actually go that far. Twice there were short term imprisonments, and even a beating. There would be a feeling of ‘loss’ also, in the sense that a ‘front-line’ soldier is no longer with them. And I am sure that Stephen was a well-loved person within the church
We can only imagine what words were spoken at his burial. Perhaps the entire church has, for the moment, paused in quiet reflection.
But during this quiet time, evil was not quiet. The enemy was at work. The leader of a massive effort to stop the church was a young man named Saul.
We read two things about Saul in this section of Acts. First we read that he was standing by and taking care of the ‘coats’ of those who were throwing rocks at Stephen. That statement alone does not tell us much. We might even assume that he was too young, or too timid to throw rocks himself. But we also read this about him. 7:1a Now Saul was consenting to his death…
These words tell us that Saul is some kind of an ‘authority’. And in fact, Paul was a member of the Sanhedrin court. He tells us in one of his writings that he was taught by the most prestigious of all the Jewish Rabbis, Gamaliel, also a member of the court. So what we are seeing is an officer of the court saying, “Do it!”
At this point a question may have been going through your mind, and that would be, ‘How does Luke know all of these details?’ There are a couple of possibilities, First, this is scripture. In other words, the Holy Spirit has inspired every word of the whole Bible. However, He did not dictate, word for word. The personalities and knowledge of the writers was used by the Spirit as well.
So we ask, what does Luke’s personality or knowledge have to do with the writing of the book of Acts? The answer leads us to the second aspect of scripture. Luke was not at the scene, so he was not an eyewitness of Stephen’s death. Luke was not even a Christian at this point in time. And, as a matter of fact, the way Stephen had been grabbed, dragged into court and then dragged out of the city and stoned to death may not have been witnessed by any in the church at all. He could have been all alone in this.
So how does Luke know any of this? The answer is, at the time he is writing this, Luke has become a Christian and a traveling partner with the Apostle Paul. And Paul is none other than this evil Saul that has been mentioned here.
So, as I see it, many years after the facts of this ‘news story’, Luke, who has travelled with the apostle Paul right to the time of his imprisonment in Rome, has heard Paul’s side of the church history story. He has collected as many facts as possible, and moved by the Holy Spirit, put it all together into a complete history of how the church became empowered and began spreading throughout the known world.
So who would know better than anyone else about this young man, Saul, standing there, and authorizing Stephens' execution? That would be Saul himself. Saul, (Paul) told his story to Luke. We might ask, why does Paul paint such a ‘black’ description of himself to Luke? This reference helps us understand. Galatians 1:13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.
And later he said to the Corinthians, For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 1 Corinthians 15:9
So, the former chief persecutor of the church is sitting in the same room with Luke and telling him his side of the story.
Luke continues, 3 As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house, and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison..
Suddenly, and without warning, the entire church is under persecution. What a shock. The prisons would be crammed full of Christians. Then Luke says, (going back to verse 1) Now Saul was consenting to his death. At that time a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.
The church scatters to the south throughout the province of Judea, and northwards into Samaria. But we note that Luke says, ‘except the apostles’. So how much of the mega-church remains? It sounds like not many at all. All of a sudden there are thousands of displaced Christians having to find shelter.
The apostles remained. They would have to start over and rebuild the church in Jerusalem. And, as we will read much later in the book of Acts, the church re-grew into the thousands.
The Christians who scattered all over Judea and Samaria would likely form into small fellowship groups. Since a scattering like this had never happened before, the apostles would not have given an actual name to such groups. But shortly the groups in a town would be called a church, identified by the name of the town.
Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” Matthew 18:20
What did Jesus mean by this? God is omnipresent - present everywhere. And when I go into a private area to talk to God, He is there. So why mention that He is there when there are two or three? He said it for a very important reason. Two or three is the lowest possible number of people to form a church. If a church has only two people in it, it would be very limited in what it could do as a ‘body’ of believers. And yet, Jesus clearly points out that in some kind of a unique capacity, He is there. So what is the difference between God being with me every day, or God being with two or three people? There is only one possibility, and that has to do with the work, the ministry of the church.
The ministry of any church involves making ministry decisions. These decisions are to be based on unity. We can assume that most, if not all of the decisions a small church will make, or should make, will have something to do with bringing the unsaved to salvation in Jesus. So we can reason that the ‘two or three’ would start by talking about the most likely place to begin. If they agree that the local market would be a good starting place, they make the decision, pray about it, and decide how to go about it.
Or they may decide to start in one of the local Jewish synagogues. They would discuss various approaches … who would do most of the talking, what to do in case of serious opposition, etc. Jesus is saying that when such decisions are made … if it was a decision by two people, now it is a decision by three, because He is there. His guidance for them to make the right decisions, His endorsement, His encouragement is there in a special way. When we walk with Jesus as individuals, He leads, He comforts us, He causes us to understand His word, etc. But as an individual, I am not the church …nor am I ‘a’ church. But when two or three decide together, Jesus is there guiding the ministry of His body.
Apostle Paul said it this way, To Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Eph 3:21
But for reasons known best by Him, He created a special avenue for receiving glory, and that is through each local church.
This is good for us to know. If persecution were to divide our church totally, as it did here in the book of Acts, we need to know that there would be some decisions that we would not have the authority to make … but if there were two or three, Jesus joins us, and we can make binding ministry-related decisions.
Let’s re-read verse three and move ahead.
3 As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house, and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison.
4 ¶ Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word.
The first church is in transition. From the comfort and strength of great numbers, suddenly that security is taken from them. They likely have had no ‘heads-up’ preaching, telling them, ‘Don't get too comfortable, persecution will be coming’.
Or I may be totally wrong here. Perhaps the apostles DID teach that this can only last so long, and that as Jesus taught, in this world you WILL have persecution.
At any rate, small groups formed in many dozens of places, and from there they preached the word.
We are not told how Saul received knowledge of exactly which house had Christians meeting in it. At first, the Christians had no reason to ‘hide’ their activities. But once Saul went into ‘high gear’ with his apprehensions, one would think that Christians would meet in a less obvious manner. In that case, did Saul depend on informers? Human nature has not really changed over the years. The enemy’s use of informers is a constant threat to illegal house churches everywhere.
Jesus said, 10 And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. 11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.
13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. Matthew 24 10-14
These verses are describing our present church era. Our homework is clear; proclaim the gospel to the whole world, but expect betrayal by believers who are ‘not on the same’ page, believers who would not have ‘bought into’ Christianity had they known it would cost them their safety and security.
If and when present day churches find themselves in a situation of severe enemy persecution, I wonder if small groups would actually be formed. I certainly hope so. I wonder if many believers would just pull back, from each other, and possibly from God. I hope none would do that.
Jesus was speaking of the last days when He said that the love of many in the church will grow cold. He said that many in the church would betray one another.
I believe that is our ‘heads up’ from Jesus. This does not have to happen in our churches if we will take measures to prepare now. The natural tendency is to wait and see how bad things are getting before we prepare. Why? I think we do not want our normal lives to be ‘disrupted’ so we try to carry on as long as possible, changing our course of action only when it looks like we are being forced into it. But if we are really honest, the counsel of Jesus very clearly is to prepare. This was the counsel given to the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3. Jesus says that the church was happy and well, but did not realize that they were spiritually in no position to take a stand for Him.
He warned them that ‘lukewarmness’ in regard to walking closely with Him would result in their ultimately being ‘spewed out’ of his mouth. Whatever that means, it is not good.
For continuity sake, let’s re-read from verse 4.
4 ¶ Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word.
5 Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them.
Philip, if you recall, was also a deacon. He was mentioned second on the list of the seven. What takes place in Samaria becomes an important development following the day of Pentecost. We will take a close look in the following chapter
6:10 And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke.
7:54 ¶ When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth.
7:58 and they cast him out of the city and stoned him (to death). And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.
The words spoken by Stephen had angered the crowd in the courtroom to the point that they wanted to kill him. They could not answer him. They knew he was right, but they did not want to hear what he was saying. It would appear that even the officials, the judges in the court, did not try to stop the lynch mob.
We need to remember that taking a stand for Jesus, still produces angry listeners if they have already made up their minds to reject your words. Jesus said, 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
18 ¶ "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
21 But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. John 15:17-21
But whether we are hated or not we need to continue boldly presenting Jesus as the only way to God.
Writer, Luke, has pointed out that a young man named Saul is standing on the sideline and taking care of people's garments until they are finished killing Stephen.
58b And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59 And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
60 Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
We will take a closer look at Saul in a moment, but first I want to skip ahead and read one more verse regarding Stephen.
2 And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him.
Remembering that the church has grown to huge proportions within the city of Jerusalem, we must also remember that the entire church of multi thousands knew of Stephen. Just recently the collective body of the church had chosen seven men, full of faith and the Holy Spirit, to oversee the food distribution for the whole church. Stephen’s name would have been known in every home. So now the news of his death has spread throughout the entire church.
‘Great Lamentation’ takes place. I am sure that many would be recognizing the fact that Stephen is now in heaven. Why the great lamentation? Probably it was a combination of a couple of things. This is the first ‘death’ of a church member, directly related to outside persecution. That would be a shock to realize that people would actually go that far. Twice there were short term imprisonments, and even a beating. There would be a feeling of ‘loss’ also, in the sense that a ‘front-line’ soldier is no longer with them. And I am sure that Stephen was a well-loved person within the church
We can only imagine what words were spoken at his burial. Perhaps the entire church has, for the moment, paused in quiet reflection.
But during this quiet time, evil was not quiet. The enemy was at work. The leader of a massive effort to stop the church was a young man named Saul.
We read two things about Saul in this section of Acts. First we read that he was standing by and taking care of the ‘coats’ of those who were throwing rocks at Stephen. That statement alone does not tell us much. We might even assume that he was too young, or too timid to throw rocks himself. But we also read this about him. 7:1a Now Saul was consenting to his death…
These words tell us that Saul is some kind of an ‘authority’. And in fact, Paul was a member of the Sanhedrin court. He tells us in one of his writings that he was taught by the most prestigious of all the Jewish Rabbis, Gamaliel, also a member of the court. So what we are seeing is an officer of the court saying, “Do it!”
At this point a question may have been going through your mind, and that would be, ‘How does Luke know all of these details?’ There are a couple of possibilities, First, this is scripture. In other words, the Holy Spirit has inspired every word of the whole Bible. However, He did not dictate, word for word. The personalities and knowledge of the writers was used by the Spirit as well.
So we ask, what does Luke’s personality or knowledge have to do with the writing of the book of Acts? The answer leads us to the second aspect of scripture. Luke was not at the scene, so he was not an eyewitness of Stephen’s death. Luke was not even a Christian at this point in time. And, as a matter of fact, the way Stephen had been grabbed, dragged into court and then dragged out of the city and stoned to death may not have been witnessed by any in the church at all. He could have been all alone in this.
So how does Luke know any of this? The answer is, at the time he is writing this, Luke has become a Christian and a traveling partner with the Apostle Paul. And Paul is none other than this evil Saul that has been mentioned here.
So, as I see it, many years after the facts of this ‘news story’, Luke, who has travelled with the apostle Paul right to the time of his imprisonment in Rome, has heard Paul’s side of the church history story. He has collected as many facts as possible, and moved by the Holy Spirit, put it all together into a complete history of how the church became empowered and began spreading throughout the known world.
So who would know better than anyone else about this young man, Saul, standing there, and authorizing Stephens' execution? That would be Saul himself. Saul, (Paul) told his story to Luke. We might ask, why does Paul paint such a ‘black’ description of himself to Luke? This reference helps us understand. Galatians 1:13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.
And later he said to the Corinthians, For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 1 Corinthians 15:9
So, the former chief persecutor of the church is sitting in the same room with Luke and telling him his side of the story.
Luke continues, 3 As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house, and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison..
Suddenly, and without warning, the entire church is under persecution. What a shock. The prisons would be crammed full of Christians. Then Luke says, (going back to verse 1) Now Saul was consenting to his death. At that time a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.
The church scatters to the south throughout the province of Judea, and northwards into Samaria. But we note that Luke says, ‘except the apostles’. So how much of the mega-church remains? It sounds like not many at all. All of a sudden there are thousands of displaced Christians having to find shelter.
The apostles remained. They would have to start over and rebuild the church in Jerusalem. And, as we will read much later in the book of Acts, the church re-grew into the thousands.
The Christians who scattered all over Judea and Samaria would likely form into small fellowship groups. Since a scattering like this had never happened before, the apostles would not have given an actual name to such groups. But shortly the groups in a town would be called a church, identified by the name of the town.
Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” Matthew 18:20
What did Jesus mean by this? God is omnipresent - present everywhere. And when I go into a private area to talk to God, He is there. So why mention that He is there when there are two or three? He said it for a very important reason. Two or three is the lowest possible number of people to form a church. If a church has only two people in it, it would be very limited in what it could do as a ‘body’ of believers. And yet, Jesus clearly points out that in some kind of a unique capacity, He is there. So what is the difference between God being with me every day, or God being with two or three people? There is only one possibility, and that has to do with the work, the ministry of the church.
The ministry of any church involves making ministry decisions. These decisions are to be based on unity. We can assume that most, if not all of the decisions a small church will make, or should make, will have something to do with bringing the unsaved to salvation in Jesus. So we can reason that the ‘two or three’ would start by talking about the most likely place to begin. If they agree that the local market would be a good starting place, they make the decision, pray about it, and decide how to go about it.
Or they may decide to start in one of the local Jewish synagogues. They would discuss various approaches … who would do most of the talking, what to do in case of serious opposition, etc. Jesus is saying that when such decisions are made … if it was a decision by two people, now it is a decision by three, because He is there. His guidance for them to make the right decisions, His endorsement, His encouragement is there in a special way. When we walk with Jesus as individuals, He leads, He comforts us, He causes us to understand His word, etc. But as an individual, I am not the church …nor am I ‘a’ church. But when two or three decide together, Jesus is there guiding the ministry of His body.
Apostle Paul said it this way, To Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Eph 3:21
But for reasons known best by Him, He created a special avenue for receiving glory, and that is through each local church.
This is good for us to know. If persecution were to divide our church totally, as it did here in the book of Acts, we need to know that there would be some decisions that we would not have the authority to make … but if there were two or three, Jesus joins us, and we can make binding ministry-related decisions.
Let’s re-read verse three and move ahead.
3 As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house, and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison.
4 ¶ Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word.
The first church is in transition. From the comfort and strength of great numbers, suddenly that security is taken from them. They likely have had no ‘heads-up’ preaching, telling them, ‘Don't get too comfortable, persecution will be coming’.
Or I may be totally wrong here. Perhaps the apostles DID teach that this can only last so long, and that as Jesus taught, in this world you WILL have persecution.
At any rate, small groups formed in many dozens of places, and from there they preached the word.
We are not told how Saul received knowledge of exactly which house had Christians meeting in it. At first, the Christians had no reason to ‘hide’ their activities. But once Saul went into ‘high gear’ with his apprehensions, one would think that Christians would meet in a less obvious manner. In that case, did Saul depend on informers? Human nature has not really changed over the years. The enemy’s use of informers is a constant threat to illegal house churches everywhere.
Jesus said, 10 And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. 11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.
13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. Matthew 24 10-14
These verses are describing our present church era. Our homework is clear; proclaim the gospel to the whole world, but expect betrayal by believers who are ‘not on the same’ page, believers who would not have ‘bought into’ Christianity had they known it would cost them their safety and security.
If and when present day churches find themselves in a situation of severe enemy persecution, I wonder if small groups would actually be formed. I certainly hope so. I wonder if many believers would just pull back, from each other, and possibly from God. I hope none would do that.
Jesus was speaking of the last days when He said that the love of many in the church will grow cold. He said that many in the church would betray one another.
I believe that is our ‘heads up’ from Jesus. This does not have to happen in our churches if we will take measures to prepare now. The natural tendency is to wait and see how bad things are getting before we prepare. Why? I think we do not want our normal lives to be ‘disrupted’ so we try to carry on as long as possible, changing our course of action only when it looks like we are being forced into it. But if we are really honest, the counsel of Jesus very clearly is to prepare. This was the counsel given to the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3. Jesus says that the church was happy and well, but did not realize that they were spiritually in no position to take a stand for Him.
He warned them that ‘lukewarmness’ in regard to walking closely with Him would result in their ultimately being ‘spewed out’ of his mouth. Whatever that means, it is not good.
For continuity sake, let’s re-read from verse 4.
4 ¶ Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word.
5 Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them.
Philip, if you recall, was also a deacon. He was mentioned second on the list of the seven. What takes place in Samaria becomes an important development following the day of Pentecost. We will take a close look in the following chapter