SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/9/2017 9:04 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “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 have been looking at Stephen’s arguing with men from
the different synagogues that are listed in verse 10 and we have seen that
these men could not stand up against the arguments that Stephen was presenting
to them and so they decided to attack him personally by bringing liars to
testify against him. We know that he
went before the Sanhedrin, but the length of time this took to convey this
court is not clear because Luke does not tell us how long it took. MacArthur adds “When the trial began, these Hellenists
‘put forward false witnesses.’ These are
undoubtedly the same ones referred to in verse 11. It was their false accusations that prompted
Stephen’s seizure.”
These false witnesses would have repeated the charges,
the ones that had stirred up the people, namely that Stephen “incessantly”
spoke against the “holy place” that is the temple and also “against the
law.” Why were there false witnesses?
Well what they did was twist the words that Stephen had said. John MacArthur quotes F. F. Bruce who writes:
“They are called ‘false
witnesses,’ as those who brought similar testimony against Jesus are called
(Matt. 26:59-61; Mark 14:55-59). But in
both cases the falsenesses of their testimony consisted not in the wholesale
fabrication but in subtle and deadly misrepresentation of words actually
spoken.” (The Book of Acts, 135)
As we look at verse fourteen, “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 are given an example of the slant that these
men put on Stephen’s words. Now when we
see the words “this Nazarene,” we remember what we talked about when we studied
the gospel of John as these words were demeaning to the Jews who lived in
Jerusalem as they looked down at people from Nazareth with great contempt.
If you remember when we studying the gospel of John in
chapter two Jesus stated that “if you destroy this temple I will raise it up in
three days,” and this was used against Him at His trial, but of course John
made it clear that Jesus was talking about His body which took place after
three days when He was raised from the dead.
Again when we look at the phrase that Jesus would “altar
the customs which Moses handed down” to them.
In this phrase we can see that this has to do with the Old Testament Law
was fulfilled by our Lord Jesus Christ and according to Jeremiah and then
repeated in the book of Hebrews we read:
“31 "Behold, days are
coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant
which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring
them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a
husband to them," declares the LORD. 33
"But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of
Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law
within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and
they shall be My people. 34 "They
will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying,
’Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the
greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their
iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."” Once again we see that these so called
“learned men” did not know as much as they thought they knew.
Now we are talking about the courage of Stephen, and have
been for these last three days, and we can see that throughout this ordeal that
his courage shines through, this despite the intense opposition that he
encountered, for throughout it all he did not back down or give any
compromise. We will see when we move
onto the next chapter which has more about his trial that Stephen’s courage did
not waver as seen in Acts 7:51-53:
“51 "You men who are
stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy
Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did. 52 "Which one of the prophets did your
fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the
coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become;
53 you who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep
it."”
John MacArthur concludes:
“Stephen’s courage stamped him with the mark of greatness.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Jim Elliot who
was slaughtered for his faith in South America on January 8, 1956 stated “He is
no fool to give up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” It took great courage to do what Stephen did
along with Jim Elliot and the others who gave their lives for the cause of
Christ. May God give me the courage to
live my life for the cause of Christ each and every day.
My Steps of Faith for Today: To live for the cause of Christ.
Memory verse until I
memorize it: Philippians 4:8 “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.”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “The Lord” (1 Kings 17:4).
Today’s Bible
question: “To what city were many of the
people of Judah taken as captives?”
Answer in our next SD.
11/9/2017 9:48 AM
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