29
Acts 6:8-15 A GROWING OPPOSITION TO THE CHRISTIANS
Introduction:
The
opposition to Christianity started with opposition to Christ. After
the crucifixion of Christ the opponents of
Christ centered their opposition upon
the apostles of Christ. In this text the opposition is focused upon a
deacon in
the church at
I.
A quick review of the opposition as it was directed against the Christ
and
His apostles
The
opposition to Jesus started at
religious leaders of
announced that Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God, the Lamb of God that taketh
away the sin of the world, the top Jewish
religious leaders began to watch
Jesus.
You would think they would watch Him to see if He is the Christ as John
had said that He is, but that was not the
case. They began to watch Him to see
if He would say something or do something
which they could use against Him to
convince the Jewish people that He is not
the Christ.
The
Jewish leader at
of the synagogue at
the synagogue there as a place to teach
the people His doctrine.
We
can see their influence upon the masses of common people at
following the miraculous feeding of the
multitude with five loaves and two
fishes.
On the evening following the miracle, the people wanted to forcibly
take Jesus and crown Him as their
king. But on the very next day at
great numbers were challenging what He
said about being the Bread of Life and
they were ready to turn against Him.
In
the meanwhile, back at
Council held a meeting to discuss what
they could do to stop the ministry of
Jesus.
It was in that meeting that it was decided that they would seek to put
Jesus to death. This they succeeded in doing on the very next
trip that Jesus
made to
After
the crucifixion of Jesus the great masses of people started coming
to the twelve apostles, bringing their
sick to them and listening to their
message about Jesus being the Christ. So in order to put a stop to the people
bringing their sick to the apostles, the
Jewish leaders arrested two of the
apostles. They forbid those two to preach,
teach or even speak in the name of
Jesus any more. Then they threatened them and let them
go. Soon thereafter
they arrested all twelve of the apostles. This time they intended to put all
twelve of the apostles to death, but
Gamaliel persuaded them not to kill them.
So they beat them and let them go.
II.
An entirely new opposition which arose
The
new opposition was not directed against the twelve apostles. It was
directed against a deacon. It was directed against a deacon named
Stephen. V.
8, “And Stephen, full of faith and power,
did great wonders and miracles among
the people.” Stephen was a man full of faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ and he
was also full of power from the Holy
Spirit of God. It was by the Holy Spirit
that he did great miracles much like the
miracles which the apostles had been
doing in the name of Jesus. He was healing their sick, giving sight to
the
blind and causing the lame to walk. Luke does not say so, but it is to be
understood that, like the apostles,
Stephen told the people that had no power to
perform these miracles. He told them about Jesus and that Jesus had
been raised
from the dead. He told them that it was Jesus who sent the
Holy Spirit to do
the Holy Spirit upon him enabling him to
do the miracles which he was doing.
The great masses of people responded to
these miracles by bringing more and more
people to him to be healed. And they listened to what he had to say about
Jesus.
There can be little doubt that many of them believed what he said about
Jesus and accepted Him as the Christ and
as their Savior.
But this new attention which the great masses
of people gave to Stephen
also brought new opposition. The new opposition did not arise directly
from the
chief priests, the scribes or the members
of the Sanhedrin Council. Rather the
new opposition arose from the leaders of
the five different Jewish Synagogues
which were located at
V. 9, “Then there arose certain of the
synagogue, which is called [the
synagogue] of the Libertines, and
Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and of them of
Cilicia and of Asia, disputing with
Stephen.” The leaders of the synagogue
of
the Libertines, the leaders of the
synagogue of the Cyrenians, the leaders of
the synagogue of the Alexandrians, the
leaders of the synagogue of
the leaders of the synagogue of
Stephen.
They would object to him performing miracles in the name of Jesus.
They would object to him teaching that
Jesus is the Christ and that He has risen
from the dead. They strongly disputed the things that
Stephen was saying about
Jesus.
But
in spite of their vocal opposition to what Stephen was saying, they
were not very persuasive in their
arguments and they were not persuasive with
the people. V. 10,
“And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the
spirit by which he spake.”
I want you to take note that these men who
were disputing with Stephen were top-
notch scholars. But they were no match for that Baptist
deacon who was filled
with the Holy Spirit of God. I suspect that he used Old Testament
Scripture to
support what he was saying about Jesus and
the Scripture gave evidence that
Stephen was right. Apparently the people just kept bringing
their sick to
Stephen in spite of what the leaders of
the synagogues said.
In
spite of what the leaders of the synagogues said Stephen continued to
heal the sick who were brought to him and
he continued to tell the people about
Jesus Christ by whose power the miracles
were done. He continued to cite Old
Testament Scriptures which gave evidence
that the things he was saying about
Jesus were in keeping with the Old
Testament prophecies.
III.
The opposition intensified
V. 11, “Then they suborned men, which said, We have heard him speak
blasphemous words against Moses, and
[against] God.” Stephen got the best of
the argument by the means of Old Testament
truth and by means of the Holy Spirit
of God who helped him, but he was unable
to persuade the leaders of the
synagogues of the truth. Rather their opposition to the truth just
intensified.
The
leaders could not win the argument based on truth so they resorted to
other means. V. 12, “And they stirred up the
people...” They stirred up the
masses of people against Stephen. They could not appeal to the people on the
basis of truth, so they stirred up their
emotions against him. The masses of
people who had been so enthralled at the
miraculous healing done by Stephen now
had their emotions stirred up against
him.
Once
the leaders had the masses of people on their side, they arrested
Stephen and brought him to the Sanhedrin
Council and pressed charges against
him.
(V. 12), “...and the elders, and the scribes, and came upon [him], and
caught him, and brought [him] to the
council.” This was the Council that had
brought about the death of Jesus. This was the Council which had arrested and
beat the apostles. There was no way that Stephen could get a
fair trial before
this Council.
Furthermore,
the leaders of the synagogues who had arrested Stephen
brought false witnesses to the Council to
give false witness against him. V.
13-14, “And set up false witnesses, which
said, This man ceaseth not to speak
blasphemous words against this holy place,
and the law: For we have heard him
say, that this Jesus of
customs which Moses delivered us.” The false witnesses testified that Stephen
had spoken against the
to change the laws and customs which had
been given by Moses.
V.
15, “And all that sat in the council, looking stedfastly on him, saw
his face as it had been the face of an
angel.”
IV.
Some things of importance that we should note
Even
though God loves the world, yet the world does not love God. In Old
Testament times the world rejected God’s
prophets. Many of God’s prophets were
stoned to death and many were imprisoned
and left to die. The very Son of God
was crucified by the world and His
apostles were persecuted. They were
arrested, threatened and beaten. Stephen was arrested and falsely charged
before the Sanhedrin Council.
Many
Christians down through the years have been martyred. They have been
fed to lions, burned at the stake and some
have been thrown in dungeons where
they died.
Even
today it is hard to get the world to take the gospel of Jesus Christ
seriously.
It is hard to get the unsaved to even listen to the gospel message.
This is true at the house of God where the
gospel is preached and it is true out
in the world when God’s people witness to
them about Jesus.
When
lost souls do hear the gospel message it is hard to convince them of
its truth.
They want to go to heaven when they die, but they think they can get
there by some other means than by trusting Jesus Christ as their
Savior.
They
often judge Christ by the Christians that they know and that is a big
mistake.
Christ is perfect and no Christian is perfect, not even the best of
them.
Many times the unsaved even misjudge the Christians.
In
addition to this, they listen to the Devil’s lies about Christians and
about the Bible, about churches and about
the Christ Himself.
But
lost people still need to be saved and, like Stephen, we need to be
faithful to tell them about Jesus. Listen, men may stand in opposition to God
and to the gospel truth, but anybody who
stands in opposition to God’s word is
also in opposition to God Himself.
Now
of us are going to stay in this world very long and we are all going
to stand before a Great and Holy God and
be judged. The only way that a man can
be spared in judgment is by repenting of
his sins and trusting Jesus Christ to
save his soul. But he must trust Jesus to save his soul now
in this lifetime.
God
has sent His Son Jesus Christ to the cross that you might be saved and
HE offers to save you if you trust His Son
for salvation, Rom. 10:13.