SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/8/2017 8:55 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Stephen’s Courage”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 6:9-14
Message of the verses: “9 But some men from what was called the Synagogue of the Freedmen, including both Cyrenians and Alexandrians, and some from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and argued with Stephen. 10 But they were unable to cope with the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking. 11 Then they secretly induced men to say, "We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God." 12 And they stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes, and they came up to him and dragged him away and brought him before the Council. 13 They put forward false witnesses who said, "This man incessantly speaks against this holy place and the Law; 14 for we have heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us."”
We mentioned in our last SD that we really did not know
exactly what the “debate” was all about between Stephen and these men from the
different synagogues was all about but whatever it was about his opponents did
not prevail and this made them so upset that eventually they will stone
Stephen, but we won’t get to that until chapter seven. Whenever I read this passage and look at
verse ten and see the word “Spirit” I have never thought it meant the Holy
Spirit, and the word “spirit” is the same as it is up to those who write the
different versions of the Bibles to determine whether or not it is the human or
Holy Spirit. John MacArthur writes “The
phrase ‘the Spirit with which he was speaking’ probably does not refer to the
Holy Spirit but to the energy, zeal, sincerity, and fervency with which Stephen
spoke. He thus had the two requirements
for effective public speaking and triumphing in debate: unarguable truth and potent delivery. The impact of those two was more than his
opponents could handle.”
I have to say that my vocabulary is not as extensive as
my wife’s as she is a walking dictionary which I take advantage from time to
time. John MacArthur uses a term
concerning the opponents of Stephen “ad
hominem” and I found out that this means that since they could not defeat
Stephen with the truth that they attacked him, and this is exactly what they
did. Verse eleven tells us how they did
it “Then they secretly induced men to say, "We have heard him speak
blasphemous words against Moses and against God."” MacArthur writes “Secretly induced’ is from hupoballo and means ‘to suggest or
prompt’ with an evil motive. They
recruited and coached false witnesses to accuse Stephen, the same tactic used
at Jesus’ trial (Matt. 26:59-61). Even
the trumped-up charges of blasphemy were like those against his Lord.”
I have always found it greatly offensive when I read that
people like this always seemed to go back to what Moses said, and yet these so
called experts in the Law had no idea of what Moses said otherwise they would
have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ whom Moses spoke of. This is the same tactic they used against
Stephen as we read that they accused Stephen of speaking “blasphemous words
against Moses and against God.” What
they accused him of was really a crime, and yet we know that Stephen never did
that kind of a thing. This reminds me of
a story in the Old Testament about Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab wanted a vineyard and the man who owned
it would not sell it to him because it was land that was given to him when the
tribes came into Israel passed down from his family. Jezebel got some men to say that this man had
sinned, gone against the Law of Moses and then had him killed and Ahab got the
vineyard, and yet in the end it cost he and his “lovely” wife their lives, not
right away, but later on.
The people who were around them when this went on got
really “stirred up” as seen in verse 12 because the men accusing Stephen
stirred them up over these lies. What we
now have is a mob scene as Stephen was “dragged away” and this word means to
seize with violence according to John MacArthur. He goes on to state that this word was used
in Luke 8:29 “For He had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had seized him many times;
and he was bound with chains and shackles and kept under guard, and yet he
would break his bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert.” When we get to Acts 19:29 we will see this
word used again “The city was filled with the confusion, and they rushed with
one accord into the theater, dragging
along Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s traveling companions from Macedonia.” This happened in Ephesus.
Hatred can cause people to do things that they would not
ordinarily do and people who are not in the light can do things to people who
are in the light because they hate the light and that is what happened here and
that is what happens around the world today including in our own country. People get involved in a false religion and
they use their “religion” to cause them to kill people for the head of all
false religions is Satan and he as Jesus states “"You are of your father
the devil, and you want to
do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth
because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature,
for he is a liar and the father of lies.” It is possible that these people that Jesus
was speaking to in this verse (John 8:44) were some of the people who desired
to kill Stephen.
We will continue to look at these verses in our next SD.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I have to say
that reading things like we are reading and studying cause me to get angry, and
yet Paul writes that we are not to let the sun go down on our anger, meaning
don’t go to bed angry, get things settled before you go to bed. Stephen as we will see forgives those who
were killing him so I guess I have some spiritual work to do here concerning
anger. When the bad guy gets it at the
end of a movie I like that, and so at the end of the world all the bad guys are
going to get it, but not because God is vindictive, but because God is
just. I suppose by that time my attitude
will be perfect.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to led me as I prepare to
teach Sunday school class this coming Sunday.
Memory verse for the
week: “Finally, brethren, whatever is
true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything
worthy of praise, dwell on these things (Phil. 4:8).”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “He died for our sins” (1
Corinthians 15:3).
Today’s Bible
question: “Who said ‘I have commanded
the ravens to feed you there’?”
Answer in our next SD.
11/8/2017 10:24 AM
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