Acts 7
RileyActs 7:1-60
THE HOLY SPIRIT’S Acts 6:1 to Acts 7:60. THE original intention of the present program was to make the Book of Acts a basis of our teaching on the subject of missions—an intention born of the conviction that the Holy Spirit’s model for missions at home and abroad could be found in that volume. Our program has in its progress reached the sixth chapter in this study.The opening sentence of chapter 6 is the sequel to the closing sentence of chapter 5. Men do not “teach and preach Jesus Christ” in vain. God never forgets His promise—“As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall My Word be that goeth forth” (Isaiah 55:10-11). The very language, “to teach and to preach Jesus Christ”, fruits in the speech,“The number of the disciples was multiplied.” Church growth without complications is an unusual thing, and probably an impossible one. It was “in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied that there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews”.
The record is clear! Factions in the body of Christ are not innovations.
They existed from the first, and the inspired pen made note of them. The Head of the Church had said, “There is nothing secret that shall not be made known”. The inspired Book does not hesitate to tell the story of ecclesiastical contentions. In the language of Joseph Parker, “The Church is not a secret institution. It was never meant to be a concealed force in society, or to have its inner life and inner mechanism upon which outsiders were not allowed to gaze. Christianity abhors all official secrecy. It is a religion which lives in the daylight. Its registers are not hidden away in iron safes; its writing is written as with a pencil of the sun.” Its conduct, like that of the Master, is not in a corner.
It has nothing to conceal. Men may be disappointed to have division in the body revealed thus early in its history, but wisdom will not condemn, it will consider rather; and in its consideration it will have to give attention toTHE UTILITY OF Let no man imagine that debate is always vicious, that contention is always contemptible, that division is always and everywhere the devil’s device. It depends entirely on who engages in the debate; it depends wholly upon what is the occasion of the contention, and why men divide.This division was made the occasion of counsel.“Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the Word of God and serve tables” (Acts 6:2).Here again is the beginning of that form of church government which develops itself to some fulness in the Book of the Acts. It seems to have been congregational, but congregational under proper leadership. That the twelve were advisers there seems to be no doubt. Leadership in church government is even more essential than it is in the government o£ states.And yet the church was never meant to be an autocracy.
The twelve were not dictators; they were advisors. “The multitude of the disciples,” or the church, was not to be ignored. “In a multitude of counsellors, there is wisdom,” provided the thought of the crowd is properly directed. Few men are leaders to the manor born.
Most men are fair judges of what is right when once they have had questions and problems properly stated to them. We are fully persuaded that a pure congregational church government is little better than ecclesiastical anarchy, and we are equally certain that an autocratic church government is far more offensive to God than the doctrine of “the Divine right of kings.” In church and state alike, leadership counselled, corrected, and if need be, chastened by the multitude, is both the Divine pleasure and the Divine plan. Beyond all doubt the Presbytery counselled, and the people voted in the early church.The conception of apostolic service was itself ennobled by the trust which the Apostles reposed in the people. The plea for organic unity in the church on the part of certain leaders finds more eloquent exponents among the uninspired than among the Divinely anointed. Rome would like an organic unity, which, in its judgment, would be the clothing of all “the professed church” with the papal name, and the expression of its life in papal forms and ceremonies. The Episcopalians have likewise pled for unity, but are willing to have it come only through Episcopalian confirmation and ordination.
The Interchurch made “unity” their slogan, but the ideal was unity of endeavor that despised alike doctrine and life!In this original church, differences of opinion not only took place, but passed without serious hindrances. In fact, they became the signs of life.
In the language of A. J. F. Behrens, “It is well to remember that dead men do not quarrel, and that a debating society is better than a burial ground.” Anything that calls a church into a prayerful counsel, and any church that can proceed in counsel without bitterness of spirit, exhibits one of the early and important lessons of church life, namely, the utility of division. Beyond all debate, hours of great spiritual uplift often succeed solemn counsels, consequent upon some subject of honest difference. In fact, any compulsion of opinion is churchly, not Christian; papistic, not spiritual!This division resulted in the creation of the diaconate.“Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.“But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the Word.“And the saying pleased the whole multitude; and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch;“Whom they set before the Apostles, and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them” (Acts 6:3-6).They are wise men who turn a conflict to good account, and certainly few disturbances in the Body of Christ ever resulted more blessedly than this debate over the care of the Jewish and Grecian widows.
Notwithstanding all the proverbs about a “horned deacon”; notwithstanding Mr. Spurgeon’s statement, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you; resist a deacon, and he will fly at you”—the fact remains that, second to the ministry itself, the diaconate has played the most conspicuous part in the Church of God.
In this Scripture, a principle of divinest wisdom is exploited, namely, that government in the Church of God is not so much a matter of personal accomplishment as of personal character; not so much a question of financial and social standing as it is a question of spiritual life. Of all the folly of which churches have been guilty, none is greater nor, in its ultimate reach, more ruinous than the notion that only leading people, speaking financially and socially, can direct the church. In my somewhat extensive travels and observation, I find more churches stranded, de-spiritualized and dying, because turned over to the domination of great financiers and smooth social autocrats, than from all other sources combined. I do not know one eminently successful church on the American continent whose official Board is not made up much after the manner of this Board—“men full of faith and of the Holy Ghost”.In electing officials, one may not wholly despise intellectual acumen, nor disregard personal and professional accomplishment, but the supreme consideration is this, “Is he a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost?” It is a grave question whether godless men ever well conducted the affairs of state. It is an absolute certainty that even non-spiritual men will never well conduct the affairs of the church. They cannot acceptably light a lamp, open a door, or preach the Gospel.
The lamp may be so lighted as to discredit the house of God; the door may be so opened as to affront the Holy Spirit; a visitor may be so received as to send him away from the sanctuary forever. The very breath of the church should be that of the Holy Ghost, and the moment men set foot across the threshold of the same, they should know themselves not only in the sanctuary, but should be compelled to admit the spiritual atmosphere of the same.
That is impossible where officials are not “men full of faith and of the Holy Ghost”.This division was cured and converts were multiplied.“And the Word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith” (Acts 6:7).We have heard of churches boasting that they had no dissensions among them, and yet they only illustrated a fact that cemeteries are without conflict. We have known others to be torn by dissension and yet the house was crowded and converts to Christ were constant. The explanation was in the fact that in the first instance the lack of spiritual life left the devil at rest concerning the whole assembly; and in the second, the expression of it rendered the devil busy to derange, and if possible, to destroy! The people are never deceived. By some sort of intuition they go where God is at work, and if the entire membership of a church so far yields itself to the Spirit as to amicably settle honest difficulties, the public is still more impressed, and to that public they can make a still more mighty appeal.In my first pastorate, three of my church officials had refused for full three years to speak to one another. A committee was appointed to investigate the cause of the difficulty, and either adjust it or bring in a recommendation for exclusion.
The night of trial arrived. The three officials were in their places, silent, glum, determined.
Much prayer was had before the committee’s presentation. The Spirit wrought! Hearts softened! At last one man arose and in penitence confessed his fault. Another followed, and yet a third. Men who had passed in the streets with a scowl, now locked in mutual embrace. For six months I had preached my heart out, without a convert. Next Sunday night the house was packed to the point where I was left but standing room in the pulpit, and a multitude of converts were made, and for two full years (the rest of my pastorate in that place) the inpour to the church was incessant.
A new house was erected; from half time service the church went to full time; from no gifts to large gifts, and in a lifetime ministry I have known no delights to exceed the blessed winters and summers brought about by a reconciliation of brethren.There was a logical occasion for Christ’s prayer for His disciples, that they “all may be one, * * that the world may believe”.I am fully persuaded that if at this moment the divisions in Protestantism could be healed, a practical unanimity of opinion, and still more, an agreement of spirit would so occur as to exalt the Christ and Cross, the world would instantly witness a revival, and converts would be multiplied by the thousands if not millions.But we pass now to a second theme, theFUTILITY OF “And the Word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.“And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people.“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.“And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake.“Then they suborned men, which said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God.“And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and the scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him to the council,“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 Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us.“And all that sat in the council, looking stedfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel” (Acts 6:7-15).Stephen, the natural leader in this diaconate, is opposed. The report of the opposition is fairly full and it involves several suggestions.First, opposition is commonly excited by some degree of success. Public opinion is a poor judge of spiritual realities! It will universally praise the man who gets along in the prophet’s office without opposition. It seems to have a notion, as one has said, that “when God has called a man to service, the road will be wide, clear of all obstacles, filled with sunshine, lined with flowers, and the man leaning on God’s arm will be accompanied by the singing of birds, if not the strains of angels”. But nothing of the kind is true to fact.
It was not that way with Abraham; it was not that way with Isaac and Jacob, nor with Joseph, nor Moses, Joshua, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, nor Daniel. It was not that way with New Testament Apostles.
As a rule, thorns were in their paths, opponents multiplied, scorpions stung, scorners hissed. It was not that way with Christ, the one Man who came to do God’s will. The Cross blocked His path and it terminated in an ignoble death. The path to spiritual success is not smooth, paved, or padded. The feet that walk there will find stones and thorns.The great Rufus Choate heard some one remark, “It is very wonderful how many great successes come of accident.” Instantly he hotly answered, “Nonsense! You might as well expect to drop the Greek alphabet and pick up the Iliad.”Success commonly spells ability and generally excites jealousy, hatred, opposition.
There may have been some foolish enough to suppose that Stephen was the least favored of all the deacons because he was the first to strike a snag. On the contrary, that is only an evidence of his aggressiveness, a result of his religious outreach, a consequence of his conviction of duty and courageous discharge of the same.The question of life is not the question of how to escape opponents, but rather of how to render Godgiven tasks and advance the cause of Christ.Opposition often combines very curious elements.Here the “synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and those from Cilicia and Asia” united against him.
It is a curious collection. It is doubtful if they agreed on ought else. Such is life! The Roman and the Jew hated each the other. The Sadduccee and the Pharisee were in eternal conflict, but when Christ came they were fused into a fraternity of opposition and they all united their voices in crying, “Crucify Him!” and joined their hands in accomplishing that devil’s deed. Germany once boasted itself the land of faith; Turkey has forever been the “unspeakable Mohammedan”.
The Christian and Mohammedan have nothing in common, and yet in the war of 1914-1918 they locked arms, became boon companions in battle, and the Christianity of Germany was at such low ebb by reason of rationalism that Mohammedan fraternity was no offense whatever.It is doubtful if any true prophet of God ever faithfully proclaimed a full Gospel without combining against himself social autocrats and social outcasts, financial barons and bankrupt bums, spiritual derelicts and devil’s dupes.There is a statement, “Tell me with whom thou dost company, and I will tell thee who thou art.” It can be paraphrased in reverse. “Tell me who your opponents are, and I will be able to pass upon the soundness of your preaching.”Opposition is sometimes best answered by silence. “And all that sat in the council, looking stedfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15).It is full of suggestions of silence—sweet, complacent, competent silence. “Silence is golden.” There are cases in court where the defendant had best not speak a word. His enemies will witness for him.
The very falsity of their testimony will turn the tide to his account and defend him more than words. There is a story of a sculptor who, when he had finished the statue of George Peabody, and it was unveiled in London, was asked to make an address. He laid his hand upon the magnificent product of his art, and said, “That is my speech!”You can strive to keep honorable office and official honors for ordained men only, but he who can point his finger toward a multitude of true, genuine converts, brought to God by the Gospel at his lips, need never make a self-defense. That is his speech, and that is the proof of his Divine ordination.But let us pass to our next point,THE OF “Then said the high priest, Are these things so”? The question effected the model sermon of the New Testament Scriptures.This man’s speech seems to have been Spirit-inspired. Read it!
Even the reporter’s abbreviation could not strip it of its strength. It is splendid, massive, cumulative, conquering.
Mr. Whittier once related how certain Quaker brethren came together, and after solemn consideration, passed a resolution to the effect, “It is the sense of this meeting that George C______ be advised to remain silent until such time as the Lord shall speak through him.” Evidently that is what Stephen did. How many speeches are born before their time! One can begin to understand the injunction of Christ, “Tarry in Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high. * * Wait, I say, for the promise from the Father”.One sermon, preached by a layman, a non-ordained man, Spirit-inspired, will live longer, accomplish more, reach farther, more profoundly effect the Church of God, than a dozen thought out at the professional man’s will, voiced by the professional man’s judgment, expressing the professional wisdom—“When He is come, He will guide you into all truth”. What failure when we run before Him, proceed without Him, speak when we have nothing of His inspiration!This layman’s appeal was wholly to inspired Scripture. The entire sermon is one succession of quotations.
It is a remarkable condensation of Scriptural facts. They are welded together and made indeed a thunderbolt of power.
He hurled them with dexterous hand. He smote the very men who opposed him by copious quotations from their own synagogue Scriptures. He forced upon them a dilemma. “Choose you this day between your traditions and the inspired truth; your prejudices and the Divine appeal” It is doubtful if any of the reformers in early centuries, middle ages or modern times have ever needed to adopt a new method. Stephen, the deacon, set an example for them all, expressed forever the standing ground of orthodoxy, raised a flag under which the faithful will continue their fight until the end of time.When Martin Luther was facing the Roman hierarchy, having been summoned to meet the Diet of the German Empire at the City of Worms, he uttered a long and eloquent defense, closing it with these immortal words, “Unless I shall be refuted and convinced by testimony of the Holy Scriptures or by public, clear and evident arguments and reasons, I cannot take back anything, since I believe that neither the Pope nor the councils alone (both of them having often contradicted themselves) have power to hinder truth; and since it is neither safe nor advisable to do anything against the conscience, I will so stand. Amen.” From that position no Protestant can ever decline and yet claim an evangelical faith. On Stephen’s ground, every loyal soul will continue to stand and for that conviction, if need be, die.If the Scriptures are not authoritative, the world is without light, the soul is at sea without chart or compass, the sun has gone down, even the moon is clouded, and the stars are blotted out.This layman’s charge was in defense of the inspiring Spirit. “Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye” (Acts 7:51).
Men who go away from church, announce their own spiritual experience and lay bare their own spiritual lives by what they say of the sermon. If it is an intellectual treat and they rejoice in it, then preaching to them is nothing more than an intellectual exercise.
If it is a poetical presentation and they praise it, then preaching to them is poetry. If it had in it eloquent phrases, sentences that flashed with facets of light, then preaching to them is simply an art. But if they ask, as did men on the day of Pentecost, “What shall we do?” then the preaching has been God’s Gospel, carrying conviction, revealing the Cross— such an antidote to sin as to make the sacrifice of Christ essential to salvation. Tell me on what ministry you wait with pleasure and I will sound the depths of your soul, measure the limits of your sacrifice and mark the extent of your salvation!Finally,THE OF “The Gospel is the savor of life unto life, or of death unto death”. It either regenerates man or renders him indignant, unreasonable, raging. It never produces any quasi effects, save in the souls of the inane and indifferent.
Mark the effect in this instance, and remember it is accounted for in the circumstances that ceremonies and professions, even clerical ordinations, and displaced spiritual convictions and experiences.This rage expressed not reason, but convictions of wrong. “When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth” (Acts 7:54).Men who have reason with them seldom rage. The man who is consciously right does not need to bluster, storm, threaten, foam!
Christ was often and grievously insulted and sometimes He spake in scorching language, but the lightning flashes of truth from His lips were not from the bosom of black clouds. They came from one whose face remained calm and clear as the sky of a midsummer day. It was the higher-critical Pharisee, the skeptical Sadducee from the synagogue, that raged, gnashed teeth, screeched in the frenzy of a fury. It is commonly so. In every debate, the man who makes the most noise, expresses the deepest outrage, seeks the most horrible fate for his opponent, is the man conscious of the weakness of his cause, yea, even convicted of its wrong. Orthodoxy can afford to be calm.
Yea, by its constitution, it is calm. This calmness is the consciousness of its own strength.This attempt at mob rule voiced a social insanity.
Loud leaders often produce insane assemblies. If outward conduct voices inner conceptions, then all sanity is gone.“Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord,“And cast him out of the city, and stoned him; and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul” (Acts 7:57-58).Ecclesiastical forms and ceremonies have always had their raging defenders. There have been men who have made more of the outward organization than of the indwelling Spirit; more of ecclesiastical than of Divine ordination; more of the ceremonies than of the esprit de corps. Sir Robert Anderson never said a truer thing than this, “The Lord Jesus Christ would never have been crucified, neither would Stephen have been martyred, nor Paul imprisoned, but for words and acts deemed derogatory to the tabernacle; and in these days a man may, with impunity, deny all the vital truths of Christianity and reject our Divine Lord’s teachings about the Scriptures which He came to fulfil, and remain in good standing in the church, but let one say a word in disparagement of any human element of the Christian religion and he is at once cast out of the synagogue.” In the judgment of many, it is more essential to remain loyal to the convention than it is to Christ; loyal to leadership of man than to the leadership of the Spirit; loyal to the drives and plans of ambitious program-makers than it is to the Divine program and the preaching of the Gospel itself.Oh, that the time might come when once more the Spirit of God would visit the churches and give us a discernment between that society, “the professed church”, and that true spiritual organization which is “His body”; between the “woman clothed in scarlet, drunken with the blood of the saints”, and the blessed “Bride”, whose crown is righteousness. But until the end of the age come, the martyrs of the second shall be made by the children of the first.The slaughter of the saint leaves his spirit unsullied.“And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,“And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep” (Acts 7:59-60).The figure is as of an infant going to rest in its mother’s arms.
What a beautiful ending and what a contrast with the brutal means by which it is brought about! But, for that matter, what can disturb the soul of the saint?“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?“I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,“Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35; Romans 8:38-39).When John Calvin lay dying, with his last breath he whispered, “Thou, Lord, bruisest me, but I am abundantly satisfied.”Richard Baxter uttered these words, “I have pain—there is no arguing against sense—but I have peace, peace”; Samuel Rutherford, “If He should slay me ten thousand times ten thousand, ten thousands times I will trust”; Mr.
Goodwin, “How have I dreaded as an enemy this smiling friend”; John Noyes, kissing the stake to which he was bound, said to his fellow martyrs, “We shall not lose our lives in this fire, but change them for a better, and for coals we shall have jewels”; while old John Huss, described as the greatest soul that the world knew, went from the stake by a chariot of fire, and left behind him a song as sweet as any ever sung by the lark, floating back to earth long after the singer had vanished out of sight, in the martyr’s immortal language, “Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good mil toward men. We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we glorify Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory”!