Acts 6
Not every trouble that comes upon the church should automatically be assumed to be bad news. We know that God is working all things together for the good of His servants who love Him. We cannot always see that immediately in the trials that we face, but we are given many examples of triumph coming through trouble in the Scriptures, examples that help us to see that the general principle is not without supportive biblical evidence.
That is not to say that God applauds the trouble. Misery may have come, in part, from behavior that is against His precepts. In Acts 6, we cannot imagine that Jesus Christ was happy that there was a division brewing between Hebrew-speaking Jews and Greek-speaking Jews based on accusations of neglect of needy Christian widows. This was a situation that needed to be addressed. When it was attended to, the result was so excellent that there must have been a great expression of gratitude to God for His wise decree.
It is worth our noting that this conflict would never have come forward unless the church was already committed to feeding those within her number who truly needed help. Already, at this early point in the life of the church there was a daily distribution of bread to needy widows. Remember that not all of the members of the
Among such people there could naturally arise great suspicion that could have easily led to a sad division in the opening decades of the church. This budding conflict needed to be addressed. There was great potential here for distraction from the good news of Christ. While the church had an important problem that could not be ignored, it was, in a sense, a secondary issue, since the primary mission of the church is not bread distribution to widows, but the proclamation of the Bread of Life in the person and works of Jesus Christ.
The apostles recognized all of this, and they had an excellent solution with far-reaching implications for the future of the Christian movement. They affirmed the centrality of preaching, teaching, and prayer to their own calling as servants of God and servants of the Word. That meant that they could not be the leaders who would sort out the various issues that needed to be addressed in order to restore the right distribution of bread to widows in trouble. Instead, they looked for the Lord to supply other servant leaders, seven wise men, well thought of by all, men who were full of the Holy Spirit as evidenced by the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. These seven men would consider all the matters before them, and seek to find and follow the Lord’s will in solving this matter with a minimum of disruption to the Word-based prayer-saturated ministry of the apostles.
This was the beginning of the New Testament office of deacon, which means “servant.” These men were chosen by the church, and then set apart by the apostles with the laying on of hands and prayer. The end result was the establishment of something wonderful, not only in that situation, but in the distinction between the ministry of elders and deacons throughout the centuries of the church that have followed.
One of these men, Stephen, was soon unjustly put to death, as we shall see in the next chapter. His story begins in the concluding verses of Acts 6. This Stephen was not only involved in solving the problem of bread distribution, he was also himself proclaiming the message of Christ. He was soon accused of being an enemy of Moses and of God. He became a target for those who hated Christ and the cross. The old enemies among the Pharisees and the Sadducees were not all converted immediately. Those who continued to reject Jesus as the risen Christ were filled with hatred for this man Stephen. They accused him of blasphemous teaching, and prepared false witnesses to testify before the Jewish council, claiming that He had spoken against the temple and the Law.
There was some small amount of truth in what they said against him, although they certainly twisted his teaching for their own purposes. The fact is that there is something very new in the teaching of the gathering of Christ. We do proclaim a new temple, which is His church. We celebrate the fact that Jesus of Nazareth has fulfilled the Law in His life and death, and that the ceremonial regulations of the Old Covenant are no more, though some voluntarily continued in the ways of Judaism until the destruction of the temple in
Despite the fact that the enemies of the gospel persecuted the church, they themselves would come to see something that they could not yet admit; that those who they had come to hate had experienced some transformation that was undeniably and even visibly good. That is why we are told that as the council prepared to listen to the message behind the life change of so many thousands of their neighbors, when they looked at this great servant/deacon Stephen, they “saw that his face was like the face of an angel.” It is a fact that there is something of a glimpse of heaven that can sometimes be seen in the countenances of those who have most thoroughly yielded themselves to God as true servants of the One who came to serve, the Man who gave His life as a ransom for many. May His church today be so full of the truth of that great message of the cross, that even our adversaries would be brought to wonder what the reason is for the hope that lies within us, a hope that can yield an expression of true peace and sincerity on the faces of those who most fully embrace it.
posted by Pastor Magee @ 12:00 AM
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