| CHAPTER 6 Verses 1-7 The church chooses Seven Men
The church at Jerusalem had two groups of people in it by now. There were
some Jews who had always lived in Judea. They spoke the ‘Aramaic’ language
most of the time. This was more like the old Hebrew. Almost all of the Old
Testament writers used Hebrew. There were other Jews who spoke mostly Greek.
Some of them were the children of people that the Romans had taken away as
slaves. The slave masters often set good slaves free. The slaves then became
‘freedmen’. Their children would then be ‘free men’, not just ‘freedmen’.
This was a way to become Roman citizens. So these Greek-speaking Jews had
the pride which went with being a Roman citizen.
Many Jews did well in trade outside Palestine and made money. Often in old
age they wanted to die in Jerusalem. So when they were old they came back.
Of course, the husband might die first, leaving a widow. Some of the Jewish
teachers knew how to get money out of these widows. See Mark 12:40 and Luke
20:47 and perhaps 2 Timothy 3:6. Jews from Babylon and the countries in the
east would also come back to Jerusalem in old age. They would speak Aramaic,
not Greek. So there would be some widows in the Jerusalem church who spoke
Aramaic, and some who spoke Greek. These two kinds of Jew often did not get
on well together.
From this point on, there are two ways in which we can read these verses. We
will follow the more usual one first. Each day the church gave help to the
poor widows. The Good News Bible thinks that this help was money. The NIV
thinks that it is food. We do not know. The widows who spoke Greek thought
that they did not get their fair share. They began to say this.
There are important things to learn here. This happened when the church
grew. Any church should grow. A church should divide before it grows too
big. There will be problems in a church when it grows bigger. Then we see
(verse 2) how the Apostles dealt with this. They are called ‘the Twelve’
here.
a) They must have talked this over first. They knew what they would say
when ‘the many disciples’ met. Church leaders should get ready for meetings.
That means prayer.
b) They did not worry much about who was right and who was wrong. They might
have found that the Greek-speakers really had not been fairly treated. They
would then have some one to blame. If the work had been done fairly, the
Greek-speakers would still have talked and caused bad feeling.
c) So the Twelve suggest (verse 3) that the body of the church should choose
seven men for the work. They must be wise and filled with the Holy Spirit.
Notice that Peter does not do this on his own.
d) So the body of the church put forward seven men (verse 5).
e) The Twelve then prayed with these men. We think that it is the Twelve who
also ‘laid hands on them’. This was to show that they had the right to do
this work.
This is often thought to be the first time that deacons were set apart to
work in the church. As always in the New Testament, what matters is not the
exact work to be done. It is the quality of the men who do the work.
Now we said earlier that there is another way to read these verses. [6.1] In
verse 1 there is the grumble. But we do not know who handed out the help at
this stage. It was not the Twelve. In verse 2, the Twelve say quite rightly
that they ought not to give their time to handing out help. It is good and
right to help the poor. Yet prayer and preaching are even more important.
But they mean that if they handed out the help, no one would find fault with
what they did.
In verse 5, the church put forward the seven men. Their names are all Greek
names, and the last of the seven was not a Jew at all. If these men handed
out the help each day, the Aramaic speakers would grumble. They would soon
say that they did not get their fair share.
So we may well feel that here the Jerusalem church became two churches. In
that case, the Seven were ‘elders’ for the Greek language church. The two
churches would each then also have a group of ‘deacons’ to care for the
poor.
There is one more thing to say about this. We shall read about Stephen from
verse 8 down to the end of Chapter 7. We shall read about Philip from 8:5
until we reach the end of Chapter 8. See also 21:8 and 9. These men were
more than ‘deacons’. [6.2] These two at least were great men of God. If this
reading is right, the Greek language church only lasted a short while. See
8:1.
Verse 7 gives us another picture of the life of the church. The Word of God
was like a tree or a plant. It grew bigger. See Matthew 13:31 and 32 or Mark
4: 30-32. [6.3] Perhaps it was because the Twelve had settled the problem in
the church wisely. The blessing of God was with His people, and the number
of believers in Jerusalem grew quickly. It was the number of people who
loved God’s Word and who wanted to hear it which grew.
It has been said that there were 18,000 priests (and Levites) at Jerusalem.
They would be part of the Aramaic church. Only a few of the priests were
rich. Many were quite poor. They would know what had happened in the Temple
when Jesus died. See Matthew 27:51. .
We wonder what these men thought about the worship and prayers in the
Temple. They knew about these things in a way which no one has done since
AD70. That was the year when the Romans destroyed the Temple. Its worship
came to an end. God’s people could worship Him in any place. These priests
knew that the death of Jesus began a new age. The special clothes for
priests would come to an end. No longer would they kill animals as offerings
to God. These men ‘obeyed the faith’. When we know the facts of the Good
News, we have to obey the will of God. We have to follow Jesus. Jesus had to
learn what it could cost to obey God’s will. See Hebrews 5:8. Now we must
obey Him. See Hebrews 5:9.
Verses 8-15 Stephen’s work and words
We know quite a lot about Peter and John from the Gospels. Luke has told us
what they did. But there were new Christian men. (Verse 8) So now Luke
writes about Stephen, the first of the seven men in verse 5. He was ‘full of
grace’. [6.4]. Every part of his life showed that he was a real Christian.
See 2 Corinthians 12:9 and James 4:6. Grace reigns! See Hebrews 4:16 and
5:21, and 2 Peter 3:18. Remember too Acts 4:33. Really, of course, grace is
a part of the very nature of God. Yet when we become real Christians, the
Holy Spirit makes us more like God. We do more than just know that God loves
us. We feel His love and that changes us. So we should become ‘full of the
grace of God’.
Now this is so important. It is put first. Then Stephen had power as well.
Grace is always good. Grace is so good that it makes what is bad become
good. It makes sinners into saints. Now power may be either good or bad. It
is bad if evil use is made of it. Power is good if good people use it
wisely. Some Christian people pray for power. They are not wrong. It would
be better if they prayed first for more grace.
Stephen’s power came from God and he used it well. He did ‘wonders and great
signs’ among the people. No doubt the simple people thanked God for this.
This may have worried the Jewish leaders. It was not only the Twelve that
God used to do wonders in the name of Jesus. We can see that not every one
who knew about these ‘wonders and signs’ believed. We might think that a man
who did ‘wonders and signs’ would be safe. Miracles do not save those who do
them from the cruelty of their enemies.
(Verse 9) So some of the Jews who spoke Greek began to argue with Stephen.
We are not sure whether Luke writes about one ‘synagogue’ or two here. There
could even be four. There was only one Temple in Jerusalem, and that was the
place for prayer. It was also the place where the priests killed animals as
offerings in the worship of God. The ‘synagogues’ were places where the Jews
met together. A Jewish writer said that there were 480 synagogues in
Jerusalem, but this seems far too many.
There is a stone which was found in a well in Jerusalem. The Greek words cut
into it say:- ‘Theodore..............built this synagogue for reading of the
Law and for teaching of the commandments, and the hostel, rooms and baths
for the lodging of those who have need from abroad...........’. Some people
have thought that this stone came from the synagogue which we read of here.
This is only a guess. Yet it shows what sort of synagogue this was.
a) It was a place where Jews met. These were Jews who loved
Jerusalem. They were free Roman citizens. But they came back to
Jerusalem from the places where they had lived and worked.
b) The synagogue was a place to read God’s Law. The reading of God’s
Word should still be a great part of our worship. It still is in Jewish
worship. Notice that the Synagogue was not so much a place for prayer.
The Temple was the place for prayer and offerings.
c) There were rooms where people who came to Jerusalem for feast times
could stay.
d) A water supply would be needed.
e) There would be one or more special baths. The steps down into them
were split. You went down one side. Then you bathed and you were ‘pure’.
You came up the other side. You could be ‘pure’ without being clean. You
could also be clean but not ‘pure’ enough to go to the Temple! See Acts
21:24 and 26; 24:18. The water had to be right: see John 2:6. You had to
wash in the right way. See Mark 7:1-5, for example. [6.6]
For Cyrene and Alexandria and Asia see what we said on 2:9 and 10.
Cilicia is now part of Turkey. It is in the south east of that country. At
this time, the Romans had joined it with Syria to form one big province.
They split them again in AD 72. Tarsus was the most famous city in Cilicia.
[6.7] (Verse 10) These Jews who did not believe could not stand up to
Stephen. See Luke 21:15. Jesus kept that promise. He gave Stephen wisdom and
the Holy Spirit when he needed it. Jesus has kept that promise many times
down the years.
Luke does not say anything about Paul until near the end of Chapter 7. See
verse 58, where he is still called ‘Saul’. No doubt he belonged to the
‘Cilicia and Asia’ synagogue. We know that he was a Roman citizen. This was
because years before one of the family had been a slave. His master had made
him a ‘freedman’. That meant that he became a Roman Citizen, and so were his
sons. They were ‘freemen’.
(Verse 11) Stephen was wise. He would know what not to say. Christians can
speak about the Good News without making people angry. This verse means that
what was said against Stephen was not true.
(Verse 12) The priests do not seem to have joined in the attack on Stephen.
His enemies jumped on him. They were like a wild animal which jumps on
another one that it wants to kill and eat. They brought Stephen to the
Council.
In verse 13, ‘the holy place’ is the Temple in Jerusalem. The ‘customs’ are
not God’s law. They are all the extra rules which the Jews had added to the
law down the years. These people did not want to think that all their effort
to keep these rules was wasted.
(Verse 14) We need to look at John 2:18-22. The Jews did not understand what
Jesus had said. They did not forget it either. (Verse 15) No doubt it was
Paul who saw that Stephen’s face was like an angel’s face. Perhaps we would
need to see Stephen to feel the force of what he said. No one who was there
could look away from him. |