Bible Study: June 16, 2021

Okay, so last week we got through chapter 6 verse 1 of the book of Acts. I'll let you know, I think I mentioned a couple weeks ago that we may take a review break after chapter 5 or 6, but looking at it going forward, I think we'll get through chapter 7, and then we have a natural break as the first part of the New Testament Church. And then we go into Paul and the beginning of the Gentile churches, if you will, and God calling the Gentiles. So probably this week and next week we'll be through chapter 7, and then we'll do a review week on what we've learned in the first seven chapters of Acts, and then take another break, another 10 or 11 chapters into it, and then do a review as well. That'll be a whole discussion time. I'll have some review questions to send out, you know, for you. Then we'll take a Bible study to discuss those and have everyone's input in those. So that's kind of the game plan for right now. But, you know, as we continue in the book of Acts, you know, the many, many things we're learning, Acts 6 is an important chapter as well, because God continues to show what His will is and His structure for His church in New Testament times, and it parallels what He did with the congregation of Israel in the wilderness, you know, with Moses. As we read in verse 1 of chapter 6 last time, there was a dispute that arose among the Greek-speaking Jews in the congregation that they thought their widows were being shortchanged, if you will, and the daily distribution of things. And, you know, the apostles never challenged them. They didn't refute it, but they did come to realize that it's a pretty big job when you have a congregation of 3,000, 5,000, or however many thousand that were living there in Jerusalem, all of whom were selling their property, giving it to the apostles to distribute to those that had needs. It's a pretty big job for 12 people to do what they were supposed to be, preaching the gospel, teaching the people, and doing the things that they do and continuing in prayer. And so God leads them to, you know, have some helpers, have some helpers, and under their direction to handle these physical affairs of the church. So we talked about, you know, widows, and talked about that last week because that's one thing even in today's, you know, church. We need to be mindful of the poor, the needy, the fatherless, the widows among us, that we're the church of God is taking care of it. That is our calling. We are all family. We are all bound by God's Holy Spirit, and that makes us one with God the Father, one with Jesus Christ, and one with each other. So it is our responsibility, and we're accountable for watching out for each other as God brings things to our attention. And so, so then we move into verse two of Acts 6.

Realizing this need that is there, the apostles, it says, then the twelve, summon the multitude of the disciples and said, it's not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables.

And so they're saying, our time is being taken up by this physical stuff. That's not what God called us for. And it was God who led them to this. This is their job was to preach the word, to teach the people, to care for the disciples, and to see that everything was being taken care of.

But it wasn't to do just the physical work. They were happy to do it, but it was a time-consuming, a time-consuming thing. And so God leads them to look to the congregation and have the congregation put forth some men that would serve in this capacity in a physical way to attend to the physical needs of the church. Before we go on to verse 3, though, let's look at some of the things because, you know, here's Peter.

Here's the New Testament church, and this is the first time it's happening in the New Testament church. But then there's Paul, who furthers, you know, well, Peter talks about it. We go to 1 Peter 5, you know, here, years down the road. And again, as we see Peter, you know, in his time and walking with Jesus Christ, in his time as apostle, and, you know, one of the leaders of the New Testament church doing God's will, and you read his epistles, you know, his letters in 1 and 2 Peter, you see some of what Peter, you know, has learned coming out in some of his words.

And it's good to recount, oh, Peter did this. He learns this lesson, and so he's reminding the people he's writing to about this. In 1 Peter 5, you know, he talks about the elders. He happens to be one of the elders at that time, one of the apostles, and he's, you know, they're determining we should be preaching the gospel. We should be caring for the disciples. We should provide for the spiritual needs.

That's the food that God wants us to have. These physical needs have to happen in the church, too, because God has called us to be part of a physical family together, as well as a spiritual family. 1 Peter 5, verse 1, he addresses, you know, this. He says, this elder is who are among you. I exhort. I, who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed.

And he tells to the elders, shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion, but willingly, not for dishonest gain, but eagerly. Do it from your heart, he says. And he, you know, as the apostles there, they were the overseers of that church. They're going to have someone else that they appointed to do these functions for them that they didn't need to be doing and that could be done in another way. Same instruction that God gives to the shepherds of the flocks today.

Serve them as overseers. Be aware of what's going on, you know, in Hebrews 13, it's around verse 17, I think, or verse 7, that it says, you know, you'll be giving account. You'll be giving account, elders, for what's going on in that church that you are overseeing.

And so you will find that the ministers are well aware and they're looking to see that everything is done according to God's Word and consciously aware of that and seeing that people are treated fairly in line with the Word of God and that the teaching that goes on there from everyone that's doing any teaching is in line with the Word of God, always caring for them. Serve as overseers, not by compulsion. Don't do it for dishonest gain, but eagerly. Do it because God called and because it's from your heart that you're doing this job.

Not as being lords over those entrusted to you. You know, God didn't call us to be, you know, the micromanagers in your life and say, do this, do this, do this. Call me on everything that's being done. You know, certainly there's counseling, certainly if anyone has any need for guidance. My congregation knows they can call and we're happy to help, but you know, we are here to work out our own salvation in concert with everyone, but we all are working with each other on that.

So it's not, we're not here to be, you know, lording it over people like the gentiles Christ said do, but to helping people, being helpers of their joy, helping people keep the focus on God, focus on the kingdom, focus on what God is doing with us and how He's preparing us. Because we need, if we need that encouragement, all of us do, to remember what God is doing and what we have been called to.

Nor is being lords over those entrusted to you, but be examples to the flock. And that's an important thing. You know, Paul later and Peter himself saw that as a responsibility, that if you're going to preach it, you better be walking it. Your words, your words mean nothing if you're not being an example to the flock of what it is, and that's why God set those, set elders over congregations.

And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive, okay, the crown of glory. But, you know, so Peter, Peter, you know, talks about that whole oversight thing. And in 1 Timothy, Paul, who comes later and is converted later, as we will see here at the end of chapter 7 when we get to it, he continues in the same fashion. As Christ leads him, it's His church, you see Him writing the same thing. I'm not going to read through all of 1 Timothy 3, but there in 1 Timothy 3 verses 1 through 7, you find the qualifications of an elder or an overseer.

You know, verse 1 there of 1 Timothy 3 says the word bishop, but it's translated from what could be overseer using the same word that Paul did. It's the same church that the same church that Jesus Christ oversees, the same church that Jesus Christ tells us what to do, whether it's in the Gentile cities or whether it's in Jerusalem, right, or in Judea.

And so he goes through the things, and you can see that a bishop, the overseer, what the qualifications are. And in there you see one of them is being able to teach.

That's what the apostles were talking about when we need to be teaching the people, not waiting on tables and not doing these things. We want to see that they need to be done. They have to be done. It's part of the administration of the church, but we need to be out doing the things that need to be done. Verse 6, it says, not a novice, not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride, you fall under the same condemnation as the devil.

And so that's one thing that God is aware of. We all have carnal nature in us. If we are given a position, if we go to our heads, and we certainly are aware of what Satan can do, we all have to watch out for ourselves, that we make sure that pride isn't entering into what we do.

And that we are doing it humbly, understanding that it's God who gives the gifts, it's God who gives us the means to do these things, it's God who gives us everything we need. And only as we yield to Him and follow Him and allow His Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us, can we handle His church well. Now, Mr. Shady. Yes, ma'am. Yes. So the bishop is the same as an overseer, right? Yes. Same, same thing.

Oh, okay. You know, I noticed out in the world, they have these garments on with the hat and the shoulder thing, and apparently, they do bishop ship as different from a regular, you know, person who preaches from the pulpit. I guess they want to show, you know, their position that they're... You're exactly right. So many times, it's the position, look who I am. Yeah, right. And that's not, you know, we're to be examples, but not, you know, just examples in service, you know, just as Jesus Christ was.

You remember they even had to, I mean, here He was the Son of God, right, in human form. And when they sent out, when the, when Caiaphas sent out His armies to arrest Him, they had to have Judas there, point out who He was, because He wasn't, He wasn't decked out in a different thing, like a king among them.

He was one of the people that He was there as an example in teaching them. And so that's the way of God. He was, He was there to serve. So, okay, well, we're in chapter three. Let's look down at Deacon, because that's what we're going to go back in Acts 6. And we can see that Paul, Paul is, he was the apostle to the Gentiles, has the same thing set up in the churches there that, that Peter is talking about, or the apostles are talking about in Acts 6.

We look at verse 8. He gives the qualifications. Likewise, Deacons must be reverent, must not be double-tongued. You know, they must, they must walk the walk and talk the talk. They must believe, they must believe the Word of God, and that must be evident in their lives, that they are here and they are committed completely to God. Deacons must be reverent, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy for money. You know, some of the same qualifications that you read up there for an elder, holding the mystery of the faith or the truth with a pure conscience. They're absolutely sure where they belong.

They are led by God's Holy Spirit. They're not, you know, they're not brand new in the church, and they're not there, and and they're not there as, you know, they're out there just for a position that they can hold or whatever. They're there because they are learning to serve, and that just becomes naturally part of who they are.

In verse 10 it says, but let those first be tested. So even in the church today, you know, recently in Orlando we had the organization of a deacon and a deaconess, and you know, it's, it's the people who were ordained had already been operating in those functions, you know. Many people knew it. I don't think there was anyone in the congregation who was surprised when they were ordained because they'd been serving that already, and they hadn't let it go to their heads. They had grown into the position. They were, they were humble. They were serving the people in whatever way they could, and they had the right attitudes, and that's what it's saying here.

Let them first be tested, then let them serve as deacons. Being found blameless. Well, blameless means spiritually mature, not perfect, right? Because none of us are perfect today. If we were looking for the perfect person to ordain, none of us, none of us would ever, ever qualify. But moving in the right direction, and you can see their heart and mind, that they're dedicated to God, and you can see the growth in those people as they walk with God, and it becomes evident as you see them from year to year and get to know them, that God is working with them.

Verse 11, you can see it's a family affair, if you will. The whole family, you know, when it's led in the correct spiritual manner, the family is there. And a good example of everyone, likewise, their wives must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things. Deacons should be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children in their own houses well. And so those are some of the things, you know, we look at in deacons, you can have all, you know, you can do all the service in the world, but if your house is a mess, if your your kids are a mess, and I don't mean houses a mess physically, but your family's a mess, you know, there's things to work out.

God is looking to us how, you know, how we live our lives at home, and the things that we overcome, and the way we grow together as husband and wife and family, all as one, which is God wants us to do. We see that fruit in the family, and that that transfers over, you know, to the church, and you can see that attitude that extends from the family into the family of God, as people are working on being one.

One thing you will notice, you know, that's missing in the qualifications for a deacon is the ability to teach. You know, able to teach, as it says about an elder, but it's not there for deacons, because that is not one of the things that God has set up, and that, and that, and we see that if we go back to Acts 6, you know, we see that the deacons, they were not there to become speakers and teachers, they were there to serve in a physical, in a physical way, and they were necessary.

They did it very well. They did it with, they did it selflessly, and I know that all of us, no matter what congregation we are in, we have those people who we know just serve selflessly. Year after year, decade after decade, they're not looking for anything. They're just happy to serve and to help out, and that's exactly the attitude God is looking for in the people, and that's what they're going to set up here in Acts 6.

So, you know, as they're looking for people to do the physical, help with the physical administration of the church here in Jerusalem, in verse 3, Peter, and I guess it's the, I always say Peter, but it is the apostles. It might have been another apostle who was saying this, but Peter seems to be often the spokesman for the apostles.

In verse 3 of Acts 6, he says, therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom whom we may appoint over this business. Of course, this business is the daily distribution that has come to their attention that they can handle this. But notice what he says. It's similar to what we read there in 1st Timothy 3. Let these people be of good reputation, you know, that among everyone, you know, that's why he says you choose them.

You know the people that you are looking at. You know the people that are there, and let the congregation put forth the people here in this situation. That should be the seven, you know, the seven deacons that he is asking for them to put forward. For people of good reputation, you know, they're fulfilling all those things that that is there. They're not problem people. They're not people who, you know, people that are absolutely committed to the church.

He says, full of the Holy Spirit. We can see the Holy Spirit working in people. You know, we can see that as we look at the fruits and we look at their demeanor and how they handle things and wisdom.

And where does wisdom come from? It comes from the Word of God. They were skilled in the Word of God. They were not only knowledgeable that they could recite chapter and verse, but they were applying it into their lives. Because wisdom comes from using the Word of God and applying it into your lives and letting it guide us, you know, as we learn to do that and discipline ourselves to do that, to pattern ourselves after the Word of God and what he directs us to do.

So, you know, sometimes people will ask, and I was looking at the commentaries to see if there's any significance of the number seven there. Was there any reason, you know, to pick seven? I don't know. You know, maybe someone has heard something in the past. I think seven is the number of completion. It probably was just good to the apostles. Seven likes, it's a good number. We have several thousand people. Seven men dedicated to this task should be able to to handle it. Beyond that, I don't think it has any significance. I don't think it indicates that we should always have seven deacons in every church of God or anything like that.

It just happened to be what was necessary to administer what needed to be done in that church that had several people. But if anyone's heard anything different on that, you know, feel free to speak up. But I haven't ever heard anything, seen anything, you know, that would indicate that that is a magic number for some reason other than it's the number of completion. So it would be something that the apostles would have.

So, okay, seven people that we can appoint over this business. And verse four again, he repeats, but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. And if you call, if you recall back in Acts 2, that was what the that was what we find the church doing. Those four components of the church that God started. They continued in the apostles' teaching.

What they were teaching was from the Bible, from the Word of God, not their own ideas, but from the Word that they'd been taught by Christ, from the scriptures that they'd been, you know, the scriptures that they had. They were continuing in prayer.

They were part of the fellowship. They were part of the body that God has put us in. Remember, that fellowship, koinonia, is a noun, not a verb. Yes, we fellowship, and that's a verb, but God puts us in a fellowship, in a family, in a community, in a partnership with Him, and they were going from house to house. They were, you know, they were getting to know each other. They were becoming family, that close-knit family that God wants to have all of us become. So that's what the apostles are saying here. We will give ourselves over to this. This is what we should be doing. Doesn't mean they weren't going to be involved in this daily distribution.

It wasn't meaning that they were just going to like, you take it over, we don't want to be part of it. They were still overseers. There was their responsibility to see that it was done right, and that's just kind of how it happened. Yes, someone had a comment?

Hello? Okay. Mr. Shaden? Yes.

Yeah, this is Ted Rudd. How are you?

Yeah, can you hear me? I can hear you, yes.

Can you hear us?

You're muted, Ted, if you can hear us. Okay, he'll join us. He'll join us here in a minute. So, okay, well, let's go on.

Let's go on, then. You know, so they were overseers. It was still going to be something they paid attention to, but the congregation will put forth these people that would oversee that part of it under the direction of the apostles. Okay, verse five. The congregation was pleased. Tell us where deacons should come from, right? It should be the congregation, which should never be surprised when someone is ordained as a deacon or a deaconess. It should be, you know, oh, yes, I mean, that makes sense. We've seen what they're doing. So, the congregation was pleased, and then they choose these seven men. And notable in these seven men is their names and some of the descriptions that God chose to give us of the men. First one listed here is Stephen, and it specifically mentions of Stephen that he was a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit. Notable, right? So, there's a characteristic here of Stephen, and of course, we get into chapter later on in chapter six and into seven, we see Stephen, while he was selected as a deacon, he certainly was able to talk and live by God's Holy Spirit. He gave a powerful sermon to the Council of Leadership there in the Jerusalem Judaism way of life. You know, that isn't why he was selected as a deacon, but it did happen. And God specifically said he was a man full of faith in the Holy Spirit. Then you have Philip. Mr. Shabe? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. I'm trying to begin. This is Ted. One thing I'm trying to get in here is that at least two of these deacons elders, or what it's not a bishop, or whatever title they wanted to go by, were known as preachy. Yeah, they're not bishops. These seven we're talking about are deacons.

Okay, we'll go on. I think you're, I see your light flashing. You're trying to say something, but we're not hearing. We know Philip.

Let me continue.

Anyway, they work. Anyways, they did have the...

No? Okay, I'll talk to you later about that. Okay, okay.

Later. Okay, okay. Yeah, don't forget. That's okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Okay, so we got... I'm just leaving them alone.

Yeah, go ahead. Okay, you're muted. You're muted, so that's fine. Okay.

Stephen, man full of faith, the Holy Spirit, Philip. You know, we're gonna see Philip later. He preached as well. He was able to teach. It grew out of being a deacon, so it doesn't mean deacons should never teach, but it doesn't indicate that every deacon will teach. God gives the gifts as he sees fit, and some people have the gift that God gives them, and others don't. Nothing wrong with that because God gives us all gifts, and so that the whole body fitly framed together by which every joint supplies. So we use the gift that God gives us, and everything. But then we have, you know, procuris here, nikonur, taimin, and parmenus. Okay, so here's four people that we don't really know anything about. So they, you know, but the Bible doesn't say anything negative about them. They, obviously, or probably we could, we can assume that they handled their job as deacon well. But that's, you know, there's no other descriptor of them. And then we have this man, Nicholas, at the end of the, at the end of the seventh, the seventh one listed, and God gives the descriptor of him that he's a proselyte, that he's a proselyte from Antioch. So we have three men that we're going to see going forward, two that God gives the scripter is for. And it shows us that, you know, deacons can progress and should, you know, I mean, as God leaves them, they will do whatever God wants them to do. Right? Stephen will talk about more. Philip, we're going to see later. Let's talk a little bit about Nicholas, because as it mentions about Nicholas, it says he's a proselyte from Antioch. Now, we've all heard about Nicolaitans, and sometime in the last year, I've given a sermon about the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, and, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of speculation about the Nicolaitans and where they, they came from. There are the early church leaders who will talk about this man, Nicholas. Right? And he so, and it specifically mentions he's a proselyte from Antioch. Anyone remember what a proselyte is when we read the word proselyte in there, what that would mean that Nicholas was?

I mean, was he a convert to Judaism from the Gentiles? Yes, exactly, exactly. So he was a convert to Judaism, you know, from the pagan way of the life of the Gentiles. We know he's from Greece, because there it says he's from Antioch. The other thing that I thought was interesting, some of the commentaries point out that all, all seven of those names that were listed there as Deacons, were all Greek names. So whether they were all Greek from the Hellenists that, that we talk about, or that's mentioned there in verse one, you know, no one knows, but it's interesting, it's interesting that, you know, that they say those are all Greek names, and perhaps, you know, was to ensure that the Hellenists were not, you know, were being equally treated in the, in the daily administration. Only God knows if that's, you know, if that's why, or if that's just a coincidence, or well, there's no coincidences with God. So, but he knows what these people are. But Nicholas, I'm going to pull up, I'm going to pull up a couple, a couple things here on Nicholas, because, you know, while we know what, we know what Stephen did, we know that Philip, you know, we believe that he remained faithful. No reason to think that Prochorus, Nicanor time, and Empowermentus didn't remain faithful to God. Nicholas, Nicholas could be, you know, something, something different in here.

Let me pull up something, you know, about Nicholas. You can all see this, I think, on your screens, right? Nicholas, you know, the actual Greek word there, his name is destroyer or conqueror of the people. And, you know, there we give a little bit of the, the background of Nicholas that we did, we talked about. But down there, where it talks about from the International Bible and Cyclopedias says, Church fathers, naming some of them, state that the founder of the sect called Nicolaitans is the Nicholas of Acts 6 verse 5. It may be that the opinions of this sect were an antinomian, antinomian means against the law, an antinomian exaggeration of the preaching of Nicholas.

Now, when it talks about an exaggeration of his preaching, here he was remembering his background, he was from a Gentile background, he became a deacon here in Acts 6 verse 5. So he was doing some preaching and people were listening up to him, listening to him. And he may have, he may have, you know, gone off the course a little bit, he may have led people into some other beliefs, turned the, turned the word of God a little bit around.

And then as people saw that difference from what the apostles were teaching, they exaggerated. Because that's a lot of what happens when people leave the church, right? They find a little thing and they keep it harbored in their mind and they don't go back and they don't look at exactly what the Bible says and put this other thought out. They allow themselves to think about it and pretty soon, you know, they talk to someone else and then you have, you have people leaving the church thinking that there's this new belief they have or someone else has a teaching of it that is not at all a part of the Bible, not at all what the Bible, you know, would believe.

You go down to that second page there, or it says it's in red there. It says, according to the writings of the early church leaders, Nicholas taught a doctrine of compromise, implying that total separation between Christianity and paganism was not essential. Now, we could see with someone with a background that had gone from paganism to orthodox Judaism and then came into Christianity and saw that Christ said, Judaism is not the religion, is not the religion that God would have you follow. Jesus Christ separated himself from Judaism. He began Christianity. The customs, the traditions, the teaching of Judaism, you know, are apart from what God said.

So, as Nicholas is going through this process from paganism to Judaism, finding out that Judaism is there and seeing some things in Christianity that might have led him to think, well, then what we did as a pagan may not be all that bad, may be all that bad. And his reasoning, right, that he began to teach a doctrine of compromise.

Well, this isn't so bad. I can look at this paganism and that's not really bad. You know, maybe the really bad things like the temple prostitutes and the suffering sacrifices to the idols, that's really bad. But this little custom isn't that bad. That's not so, you know, however we compromise. We can do the same thing today. You know, we could look back at what the world calls Christianity and say, well, why can't we do that?

That sounds good. If we can honor God that way, that really isn't bad. If we don't want to do that, we don't want to do that. Modern day world's Christianity is not biblical Christianity. We know that because they do almost nothing that Jesus Christ said. They don't follow the Bible in almost anything. And we know the Judaism, looking back to Judaism, isn't the right thing either because Jesus Christ rejected Judaism and started his own church. So we don't, we wouldn't go to the Catholic Church to look for truth.

We wouldn't go to the Methodist Church to look for truth. We don't go to the Jewish Church to look for truth. We look to the Bible for truth and to Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit that leads us in that way. Nicholas was beginning to compromise. He was beginning to allow some of those things apparently from, you know, what some of the commentaries say. Some of this compromise to come in. A compromise is a dangerous thing when we leave the door open. When we leave the door open for Satan and false teachings to come in, we can find ourselves all too often right out of the Church of God.

So it says from early church records going on there, it seems apparent that this Nicholas of Antioch was so immersed in paganism, Judaism, and Christianity that he had a stomach for all of it. He was going to learn it all. You know what? I already know Judaism. I already know paganism. Hey, Christianity is really good too, but he wasn't able to leave the paganism out. He wasn't able to separate himself from the Judaism and adopt the Christianity, that he had a stomach for all of it.

He had no problem intermingling these belief systems and various concoctions, and so on, no reason why believers couldn't continue to fellowship with those still immersed in a pagan world full of its mystery cults. So perhaps, perhaps, you know, in Acts 6 verse 5, we see a deacon who actually led some people away from the truth because of his position, because of his teaching, because he was double-tongued, because he was double-minded, because he wasn't committed completely to the Word of God, to following exactly what the Bible said he may have led some people astray. So right here in this group of seven, we see someone who's extremely faithful, willing, you know, as we see in chapter 7, Stephen, to give up his life.

Just be stoned, and continue to be stoned to death for the truth of God. And then at the other end, we have Nicholas, who may have led some people astray by the, by his willingness to compromise with his past and the other religions of the day. Mr. Chabie? Yes, sir. I mean, sometimes, I guess, you would wonder if Nicholas ever may have worked together with Simon Magus at some point in time.

It wouldn't surprise me, right? Because Simon Magus had, we're going to be introduced to him here in a few chapters as well, he had the same thing. He was in it for a different reason than pure, you know, pure commitment to God. So an interesting group of these seven people, we see some, we see some real faith and we see perhaps, you know, we also, so, you know, see that as Paul, you know, we, I guess, as long as we're talking about people leading astray, you know, Paul talks about, as Paul becomes an apostle to the Gentiles in Acts 20, you know, we see, we see that right here in this early church, if Nicholas is what some of the commentaries would indicate in some of the early church writings, that he would lead, he's there as a deacon, and he could lead people away by just some of the early things that he might say that aren't quite in concert with what the Bible said. We see what Paul says here in Acts 20 and verse 28, it's kind of the mark of the Church of God, and one of the ways that Satan can work in the church.

You know, we'll see here later on some of the other of Satan's devices that we should be very aware of in this chapter as the church gets off the ground, and we see some of the things that they go to here. With Nicholas, perhaps, we see what Paul is saying in Acts 20, yeah, Acts 20 and verse 28. He says, therefore, take heed as he's talking, as he's ready to leave Ephesus, he says, take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. So he's talking to the elders, take heed to them, to shepherd the Church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And there would be some who would just want to destroy the Church of God, but then there would also be, verse 30, he says, from among yourselves.

People who might have influence in the church, people who might lead people astray with some of their ideas, perhaps someone like Nicholas who was there, also from among yourselves, men will rise up. Speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch, he says, remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone day and night with tears.

So Paul, you know, Paul experienced that in his life, the people that he trusted and even ordained left him, went off with other doctrines, took people with them. It's a very sorrowful thing. You know, we mourn when we see people leave the truth and get led astray by various winds of doctrine, by looking back to old churches, or even, you know, someone within the church who might be not sticking close to the Bible and trying to convince people, or just like little things they say, leading them astray into another thought. We all need to be very judicious. We need to know the Word of God, we need to follow the Word of God, and if we see something that doesn't seem right, pay note to it. Pay note to it that we are all following God explicitly in the Word of God, explicitly, and not letting our own ideas or other little thoughts come in, you know, to lead us astray. So here, you know, in chapter six, we say the very, the very new church all together, all in one accord, and out of this, this group, we find some of the ascension that would mark the Church of God as Satan knows how he can attack, knows how he can attack, and will use anything he can to turn anyone, to take anyone away from the Church. So, first, if we go back to Acts 6, you see that these men were set before the apostles, and the apostles entered the ones who ordained them as deacons. Just as we do today, lay hands on them, ask for God's Holy Spirit to be in them, to direct them, guide them as they fulfill those offices that they are part of, exactly the same, exactly the same, uh, matter in which we would ordain deacons today.

God was pleased with the Church, right? When we do, when we do things God's way, He adds, He adds to us. We see that in Acts 2 and 3000 that were added to, later 5000. God was pleased with what the Church was doing. In verse 7, we see the Word of God spread. It's going out to the world and the number of the disciples multiplied, not just a little, multiplied greatly in Jerusalem.

Now maybe, maybe many of those people who we read back in chapter, uh, five that said, you know, after they saw what happened, they anodized and the fire was like, okay, we are still, we are still impressed with this group, and we are still, um, we still see the Spirit in them, but they were kind of unwilling, unwilling to join at that time, understanding the accountability and responsibility that comes from being a part of, of the Church of God. And here, maybe some of that group now, when they see this happening, they see the, the congregation God adds to them, and the, and the number grew greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the feast, to the faith. You know, that's, that's priest from the Jewish faith. You know, that, that's kind of a notable thing. It wasn't just the, the common people who were understanding the truth, but even some of the Jewish faith priests were seeing the difference between Judaism and Christianity. They left the priesthood to become part of the fellowship of the Church of God. A notable thing. Um, I have a verse written down here. Let me see if I can find it real quick. Where are we? Verse, uh, uh, yeah, let's look at John 7. John 7 verse 48.

Interesting that, you know, as, as the Pharisees and the leaders of Jerusalem are trying to discount, or discredit Jesus Christ, and, you know, he's, he's gathering these throngs that are following him, and people are, are listening to him intently. He's, you know, he's got the right personality. He's a man of the people. They see, you know, they see his, you know, they see his demeanor. They see his commitment to God. They see that he, you know, following, um, people in the following God in the way that, that he should be followed. Um, and John 7 and verse, now I lost my place, John 7 verse 48. Um, let's pick it up in verse 45, just get a little bit of the context. Here they are, you know, they're, they're, of course, not wanting Jesus. They're wanting Jesus Christ. They're beginning to pick up on him. They're leading to the point where they want him dead and everything. Verse 45 says, the officers came to the chief priest of the Pharisees who said to them, why haven't you brought, why haven't you brought him? Why didn't you arrest him and bring him to us? The officers answered, no man ever spoke like this man. I mean, they were kind of impressed. It's like, whoa, look at the authority, look at the command he has in the scriptures, look at what he's saying. It all makes sense. So they, it's like, we, you know, they had really no reason to arrest him. No man ever spoke like this man. And the Pharisees answered them and said, are you deceived? Are you also deceived? They didn't stop to think about that. Here's our guy saying this, no one's ever spoke like this man. It's like they just discounted it. They had kind of some of the same responses that we see in the world today. You know, it's like, well, blah, blah, blah. You know, apparently you don't agree with me. Therefore, you must subscribe to this theory or that theory or whatever. They just discounted it. Are you also deceived? You're just accusing them? Well, they weren't. They weren't being deceived. Their minds were being opened, right? The Pharisees answered the said, are you deceived? Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in him? And I was like, really? Have you seen any of us following this Jesus Christ? Have you seen any of the leadership following him? Have they been paying attention to what he's saying? You know, at that point, at that point, no. But here in Acts 6, we find, yeah, some of the priests, as they look at what Jesus Christ is doing, they are following him and they are leaving Judaism to follow the Christianity.

And that's a notable thing, a notable thing for the church to have noticed and for God to put in here for us to say that when the Word of God goes out, you know, it may take some people a while to acclimate it and to respond to God's call, but they do. Okay, so first, when we come into verse 8, then we come back to this deacon, Stephen. Stephen, we see, is a man who, you know, he's just been singled out. He's just been ordained as a deacon. And then he's out talking, you know, to he's out talking to people. He's witnessing of the other way of God, says Stephen. And again, it gives us the scripture, the descriptor of Stephen. As God sees it, he's full of faith and power.

Where did the power come from? It came from God's Holy Spirit. Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. You know, we've read elsewhere that the apostles did great signs and wonders among the people. But here's Stephen, a man in whom is full of God's Holy Spirit that God himself says. And God says Stephen did signs and wonders. You know, Stephen was a man who was completely dedicated to God. And, you know, you see that effect in him. And God used him. And so Stephen, you know, I guess developed a following where people paid attention to him as well. They could see God's Spirit in him. Verse 9, it says, there arose some from what is called the synagogue of the freedmen. And we'll get to that in a minute here. Saranians, Alexandrians, or those from Silesia and Asia, disputing with Stephen. Now, before I get to the end of verse 9, you know, that the New King James translation of what the original or what the King James version is, this is a little strange here. You know, you can read through the commentaries and think, what are these freedmen? And there's, you know, two or three different explanations of what the freedmen are. You know, Jews have been freed from slavery, etc., etc., etc.

But I'll pull up another thing for you here that as you come through the commentaries, I think this is it. No, I think this is it.

Now, here's what the King James version says. Their translation of that verse 9 is, Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines and Saranians and Alexandrians, and of them of Silesia and Asia, disputing with Stephen.

So the context from the King James version is a little different than what it says here in 9, that indicates there's a synagogue of the freedmen and includes all these people. Kind of the same thing, but, you know, as it discusses what Libertines, Saranians, and Alexandrians are, you know, from Barnes' commentary, and this is shared by a number of the commentaries, it talks about this group that has their own synagogue, right? I'll just read from Barnes here, just so we have kind of the context of what's going on, because we do find in Jerusalem, you know, we have Greek-speaking Jews, we have Hebrew-speaking Jews. Now we have a synagogue, that is of these people who have migrated or come to Jerusalem, they have their own synagogue, because they've come from various places. So Barnes says the Jews and proselytes, remember what proselytes are? We talked about that. The Jews and proselytes from various countries had now come up to Jerusalem to bring offerings to attend the Feast of Pentecost, as we rehearsed on the Day of Pentecost, as we have already seen. The persons mentioned here were foreign Jews, who appear to have had a synagogue peculiar or dedicated to themselves at Jerusalem, in which they were accustomed to worship when they came to the public festivals. So they had their own place. Yes. Could you make the text a little bit bigger? I could. Let me see if I can do that.

Is that better? Wonderful!

Okay. So then we have these various things in Jerusalem, right? We have the Hebrews, the Greeks, now we have the foreign Jews, the ones who have come, and the proselytes are there. They're in their own temple. And then just to kind of what these libertines are, whether it means freedom, it really makes no difference in the context of it, but just so we get the picture of what's happening in Jerusalem and these different sects of the Jews that are there, I'll just read a little bit of it, and I'll let you read down. It's commonly thought by the Jews and proselytes, it's commonly thought by this name, you know, Varn says, shared by many of the other commentaries, it's meant that sons of Jews, such Jews as had been slaves...

Well, I'm going to do the long and short of it here, okay? There apparently was a city called Libertina, if I come down to this next page here. From these two passages, it appears that there was in Libya, a town or district called Libertina, whose inhabitants bore the name of Libertines when Christianity prevailed there. They had an episcopal say among them, and the above mentioned Victor, that's where they come up with this town of Libertina, because he was a bishop in that town, and the above mentioned Victor was their bishop to the Council of Carthage and the reign of the emperor honor Honorius. So, not that crucial to our understanding, but freedmen, Libertines, whether they came from Libertina, what we have is we have a foreign temple of foreign Jews that are there in Jerusalem as well. It's these people, right? The proselytes, the people that have come to Jerusalem, maybe just for Pentecost, that are now talking with Stephen, because they're, of course, hearing this is widespread throughout Jerusalem, we said, as we saw the Council of Jerusalem tell the apostles, you have filled the city with your doctrine. And remember that, you know, they said your doctrine. It was different than the doctrine of Judaism. Your doctrine, you have filled the city with your doctrine. And so, they're asking Stephen some questions, right? So, there arose from some them disputing with Stephen. Now, when you look at the word disputing in the Greek, it doesn't mean that they were angry. They weren't yelling at each other. They were simply there. They were discussing, you know, just as you and I might discuss something. Someone might have a question. We sit down, we look at the Bible, we say, and we determine what the Bible says, and that's what we follow. And that's what they were doing. They were having, at this point, a, a, they didn't understand. So, they were talking with Stephen. He was going back into the Scripture. He was explaining to them what the truth was, likely that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, explaining to them the prophecies and showing them from the Bible that Jesus Christ is indeed the Messiah. And verse 10 tells us he did a really good job. Verse 10, they, these libertarians and Alexandrians and Saranians, they weren't able to resist the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke.

They couldn't deny it. He proved to them Jesus is the Christ. He is the Messiah.

You know, should be case closed. Now we see it. Now we see it, and we accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Messiah. Not so, not so with this group, though. You know, we, we learn another, we learn something about Satan and people who do not accept the truth. Here they were convinced, against their own will, because they really wanted to prove that Jesus Christ wasn't the Messiah.

Here they were, you know, and they, and they, you know, they weren't able to resist it. And so what did they do? What was their reaction? Well, we're just gonna, we're just gonna get rid of Stephen, the long and short of it. We're going to discredit Stephen. We're going to, we're going to do what Satan does when Satan is mad or when people get mad and they don't want to hear the truth. I'll rise up, I'll stir up people. I'll stack the cards against you, and I'll do anything I can to discredit you. And that's what we see happening here in verse 11, something that, you know, we would, you know, we would be wise to remember as we march forward from here, and so the rest of the time before Jesus Christ returns. The same, the same devices of Satan that he used with Jesus Christ, the same devices are, they're the same ones that he used here with Stephen, the same ones he will use against the Church of God in the future. You know, Paul says we're not ignorant of this to the vices. We know, we know what will happen because this is what he does. So in verse 11, what do they do? They can't convince Stephen they know it's the truth, they just simply don't want the truth. We don't, we don't want that. So what do they do? They secretly induced men to say, we've heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. Yes, ma'am. The Orthodox Jews today, do they still believe that Jesus has not come the first time? They believe Jesus. Orthodox Jews, they believe Jesus was a great prophet, but they do not believe he's the Messiah.

So they believe the Messiah came, but Jesus was not the Messiah. I don't think they believe that the Messiah has come yet. They're still waiting. They're still waiting. They're in denial, you know, they're in denial. And then while I bring it up, I'm going to repeat because I find that I need to repeat it. Messianic Jews will say, oh, they, you know, it's Judaism and we believe in Jesus Christ. The Messianic Judaism is not the answer. Jesus Christ is not Judaism or Christianity is not Judaism plus Jesus Christ. Christianity is the way of life that Jesus Christ preached.

And that's what we, that's what we learn. That's what we, that's what we do. So, okay. Matthew 5.

Let's see what I've got written down here.

That's not the verse I'm looking for. So, yeah, we'll just continue here. Let me look at my notes. Where are we here? Chapter 6 and verse 11.

Yeah, I've got a wrong verse written down there. That's nothing. Okay, we'll continue here.

6-11. So they, what do they do? They're going to discredit the messenger. They, they, they, you know, they went out and they found people to say, you know, Stephen is preaching blasphemy. You know, the same thing they did to Jesus Christ. They couldn't, they didn't, they didn't like what he's preaching, so they had to discredit him and kill the messenger, right? Verse 12. What they do, they stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him, seized him, and brought him to the council. So, you know, the same thing again. People who don't like the truth of God, who want to resist the truth of God, who want to just kind of just discredit it and not, not believe it and not do it, they're going to use, they're going to rise up people against them. This is what Satan does. This is, when we see this thing happen, we just understand it's, it's just, that's just what it is. That's just the way Satan operates. And if it happened to Jesus Christ, if it happened in the early New Testament church, Jesus Christ says it'll happen to us again. When you read through Matthew 24 and you see they will deliver you up to synagogues, they will deliver you up to the powers that be. They won't like what you're saying because they don't want the truth. They want to believe their own, their own thing. And so they stir up the people. They get everyone, you know, involved in all this stuff. And then in verse 13, it says, they also set up false witnesses. You know, here we go. You'll say this, and you'll say this, and they came forth and say, they're this man, Stephen, he doesn't seek to speak blasphemous words against this holy place in the law. Well, you know, that, that gets the Jews all riled up, all riled up, same way that Jesus Christ riled them up. I mean, in Matthew 23, he pretty much laid forth, well, I'll get to that in chapter 7 here in a bit. Tell them that what they were believing was wrong. Stephen, we're going to see, he is going to do that as he preaches to the council that's here. He doesn't cease to speak blasphemous words against this holy place in the law, for we've heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs which Moses delivered to us. Well, you know, Jesus Christ did change the customs of Judaism. He did, you know. So in a way, they were, they were, they were saying the truth. He did change the customs, and then the New Testament Church doesn't follow the customs of Judaism. It doesn't subscribe to Judaism. It's not the church that Jesus Christ taught, but they didn't like it because this is our church. We're not going to have our way, we're not going to have our way challenged. We're not going to have someone else come in here, no matter what the Bible says, no matter what the Scripture says, and have you upset anything, anything that we are used to and that we want to do the same thing that they did to Jesus Christ. We're not going to listen to you, no matter what the signs are, no matter what you say, no matter the words that you speak that we can't speak against. All we want to do is keep things the way that we want them, and we're not going to listen to you. Same thing happening here. And Jesus Christ did say that that temple would be destroyed, and indeed it was destroyed because it wasn't, Stephen is going to say later on in chapter 7, God doesn't dwell in temples made with hands. The New Testament church, He dwells in His church and in each of us individually.

But that isn't what the Jews wanted to hear. They didn't want to hear about changing customs. They liked things just the way they were and their positions. And all verse 15, who sat in the council looking steadfastly at Stephen, saw his face as the face of an angel. So there they are as they're looking at him. You know, for the Bible to record that indicates that indeed there was something different about Stephen. But again, they looked right by it. Whatever that means, as the face of an angel, you know, I don't know. You know, we have the Old Testament, you know, when Moses came down from lights Mount Sinai, remember his face shone. His face shone that the people had to look away away from him. Maybe there was this maybe there was this thing in Stephen's face that as they looked at him. But even as they saw it, there should have been a sign to them, what is it about this man? There's something different. They looked right past it. They looked right past it. But perhaps it did cause them to listen, because as we move into chapter 7, we see Stephen preaching a really powerful sermon. And for the first several verses of chapter 7, we see that the council that's assembled there doesn't say a word.

Doesn't say a word. Before we get into chapter 7 a little bit, though, any comments, questions on on chapter 6 as we move? Because we've done this with the New Testament church. We've set up, you know, the means of administration, you know, that God has put in the church. In 1 Corinthians 12, it tells us that it's apostles and, you know, right on down the line. We've seen this in 6, and now we see Stephen and we see Satan beginning to attack the church. Now we're going to have and now we're going to have Satan attacking. We've seen this Nicholas who later on is going to lead the people astray, but he's in a position of power. Well, I shouldn't say power. A position where people look up to him. Before we go into that, chapter 7, any comments or questions or anything?

Okay, well, if not, you know, I don't know that we need to read through every verse of chapter 7. I might ask you, so it's quite a long chapter, and it's a recount of all the history of Israel.

And Stephen does an exceptional, exceptional job here of recounting the history of Israel. It's there in a nutshell in one chapter, and this is, again, as we remember that Christ said, when you're called to account, don't worry about what you're going to say. The words will be given to you. Stephen didn't wake up that morning and put together this sermon. God gave him the words they recorded for us, and he gave a powerful, powerful witness to the counsel that's assembled there. And most of the time, when he talks, the counsel has no issues with it through the very, the first several verses, you know, as we have it recorded here, because he's saying things that they exactly would agree with. I would just read a few verses here and see that he's never interrupted.

You don't read any of any kind of adverse reaction to what Stephen is saying. It's the Old Testament is true. The history that we have is exactly the way it is. He, you know, the high priest asks him, are these things so? Are you blaspheming? Are you the one who's going to try to change customs and try to convince us that this Jesus is Messiah? And notice Stephen didn't just say yes or no.

He talked. He talked, and he laid out the case for what he is doing as God gave him the words. He said, brethren and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he dwelt in Heron. And he said to him, get out of your country and from your relatives and come to a land that I will show you. And he came out of the land of the Chaldeans, and he dwelt in Heron. And from there, when his father was dead, he moved into this land in which you now dwell. They have no issues with anything he's saying so far, and God gave him no inheritance in it. Not even enough to set his foot on. But even when Abraham had no child, God promised to give it to him for a possession and to his descendants after him. And then, you know, he continues on. Again, I would encourage you to take some time to read through that. You know, I think we know this, and do that. If we want to read through it, you know, we can just let me know. But I think you can read through it, and you can see what he's doing is summarizing, you know, the account of Israel through the New Testament. He goes through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. He talks about Moses. He talks about the time of the of the enslavement in Egypt. He talks about God bringing them out of Egypt, and everything that God had done. You know, if we come down to verse 30, he's, you know, he's talking about the end of the time, the 40 years of Moses going on down through it. We come to verse 37. Verse 37, as Stephen recounts the history of Israel. And in verse 37, you begin to see the tide turn with the with the counsel of the leaders of Judaism sitting there listening. In verse 37, he says this. They can't deny the scripture, but he says, this is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren. Him you shall hear. Him you shall hear. And, you know, that's a direct quote from Deuteronomy, you know, 18 verse 15, I believe it is. And where Stephen is going to go is that that prophet has been among them or is among them. The Lord your God will raise up for you. Him you shall hear.

This is he who is in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and with our fathers, the one who received the living oracles to give to us.

So, you know, he goes on and begins to explain. This prophet, what is being said here is he who was the one who was with the congregation of Israel. He's the one who gave the oracles to us whom our fathers would not obey but rejected. And in their hearts they turned back to Egypt. It's a very condemning part of Israel's history that they rejected God after all God had done for them, after every miracle that he worked, after he brought them through the wilderness, after he provided for them for 40 years. Their sandals never wore out, their clothes never wore out, he provided food, he provided water, everything there. And yet they rejected him, even while Moses was still up on there, he goes and he talks about the chaos that they built. Even in that short time that they turned back to God or turned back to paganism in such a short period of time, as Stephen is beginning to show the pattern of Israel, is that they rejected God. No matter what prophet God sent them, they would want to kill the prophets. No matter when he would try to call Israel back, they would want to, they would reject the prophets, they would reject the truth, they would always choose their own way and reject God. So whom our fathers would not obey but rejected, and in their hearts they turned back to Egypt, saying to Aaron, make us gods to go before us.

For this Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we don't know what has become of him.

No faith in God at all. The moment the hard trial came, let's go right back to the world. The same thing we might be tempted to do something. Oh, the easier thing is to just go to the world and look to see what their solution to this is. And that's what the Israelites did in a way that is so foreign to us, but we could be doing the same things if we look back to the world. Oh, this is a harder trial. This is something we didn't count on. I'm going to look to the world for salvation or to deliver us out of this trial at that time. And he goes on, he talks about they made a calf and everything like that. Let's drop down to verse 48. He goes through, he talks about the temple that was being built. Verse 47, but Solomon built him a house. So as you read through this, you can sense that that council of Judah's leaders, religious leaders, there are ears are perking up. There's something, there's somewhere that Stephen's going that we're not comfortable with because now he's talking about how we rejected and how the history of our people has been to reject God. And so Solomon built him a house. They still had that temple with them there at that time that, you know, they were there and they looked at God as dwelling in that temple, the Jews did. However, the Most High, he says, doesn't dwell in temples made with hands, as the prophet says, and he quotes from Isaiah 66 verses 1 and 2, heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. What house will you build for me? says the eternal. Or what is the place of my rest?

Has my hand not made all these things? Well, here's something that now they're looking at it, and now Stephen has moved into an area that, okay, where, what are you saying? This temple, this temple is sacred to us. This is God's house. We're not going to listen to this stuff about, you know, that God doesn't dwell in a temple made with hands. That's a Christian, that's a Christian doctrine. That's a New Testament doctrine. He still is building the temple, but he's building it in in you and me and the congregations of his around the earth, not in a physical temple. But this goes right to the core of what the Jewish leaders would be listening to. So you can feel the temperature beginning to rise in the room a little bit, and in verse 51 he hits them right between the eyes.

He goes right for it. As he gets to there, he says, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.

Wow. You spent a long time going through the history of Israel. We agree on all this stuff.

Look what the history of Israel has been. Look what you are doing. You are resisting God's truth. You are resisting what he has clearly shown in this Messiah, the Messiah that has come. You are absolutely resisting it. Now, Stephen, remember, led by God's Holy Spirit, God's giving him the words to say, and it's notable as we go through here, that his words are very similar to the words that Jesus Christ said when he found himself in the same position, responding to the Sanhedrin and the Council of Jerusalem. Let's go back to Matthew 23.

And we see near the end of Christ's ministry, before he is going to be arrested and they put him to death, he upraves the Pharisees. He takes them to task. He tells it like it is. They haven't been listening to him, and so when you get to chapter 23, he gives them some pretty stern words. He's given them words. He's shown them where they have been wrong. How many times? I didn't list all the times. Maybe I should have. I should have. Chapter 23 of Matthew, starting in verse one.

Yes. You can't hear me. Yep. Yeah, we're in Matthew 23. I'm not going to go to verse one, you know, but I'm going to go later on in the chapter here. But you remember, many times, Jesus Christ would tell them, you killed every prophet that came to you. Your history, too, is you always kill the prophets. The messengers of God, your history is you kill them. You don't want to hear them. I didn't catch the button to mute. Okay, so let's pick it up in verse 28.

You know, verse 29. He says, What do you scribes and Pharisees? Hypocrites. Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we wouldn't have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Really? You can look at what the history is and say, well, we would never have done that. We would have never put together, put to death, the prophets of God. Therefore, verse 31, your witness is against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

You did do that because he knew what they were doing to them. They weren't even putting two and two together. We're trying to murder. We're trying to kill Jesus Christ. We don't want what he has to say. We don't want to believe he came from God. We don't want to believe that we're not doing everything perfectly. And they were doing exactly the same thing. He was trying to point them out, but they didn't see it. They didn't see it. They just kept marching down the same way. Fill up, then, the measure of your father's guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers, how can you escape the condemnation of hell, of the grave? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes.

Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in their synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Barakiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. He lays it out for them. He lets them know, this is what you've done. This is your history. And, of course, they get very upset with them when he talks about them earlier in the book of John. In the book of John, when they're telling him they're the children of Abraham, and he's saying, no, no, no, you're not the children of Abraham. If you were the children of Abraham, you would know who I am. You would be listening to me. You would be listening to the voice of God just as she's just as Abraham listened, just as Isaac listened, just as Jacob listened, just as Joseph listened. But you are not listening. You are not hearing anything. You are a different people than sons of Abraham. Let's pick it up in John 8, verse 39. You know, here he is talking to them. He's told them, you know, that they're, they say, oh, we're the sons of Abraham. Verse 39, he says, they answered and said to him, Abraham is our father.

And Christ said to them, if you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham.

But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God.

Abraham didn't do this. Now, again, as we talk about the devices of Satan and how Satan operates, you know, Christ talks about that and says it here in John 8. And we see it play out in his life. We see it played out in the lives of the prophets of the Old Testament. And we're going to see it play out with Stephen, with Stephen as well, because Satan does things the same way. We have to be aware of his devices and not fall prey to it and be ready to stand up against it. The only way that happens is if we have the strength of God's Holy Spirit. That is, we're close to him and we're developing that spirit, you know, developing the strength of that spirit and the faith and trust in God, you know, through the time now. So verse 41, well, he finishes verse 40. Abraham didn't do this. You do the deeds of your father. And they said to him, we weren't born of fornication. We have one father, God. Christ corrects them. If God were your father, you would love me. For I proceeded forth and came from God, nor have I come of myself, but he sent me. And then he says, why do you don't, why don't you understand my speech? Because you're not able to listen to my word. Only those who God calls, who opens their minds, their minds weren't open. They had that natural carnal mind that's resistant to God, resistant to anything that he says that wants to kill the word of God and do things their own way. You are not you, he says in verse 44, of your, of your, you are of your father, the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. That's one thing for us to remember. There is no truth in Satan. There is no truth in his ways. Does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources for he is a liar and the father of it. He's a murderer.

He's a liar. He used lies to convict Jesus Christ and then he murdered him. He used lies and the people of that group of people that were gathered that did not want to hear the truth, that Stephen proved to them from the Bible, they used lies to have him arrested and brought before the council. What we see is the end result is they would want, they wanted to murder him and in this case they did. And Stephen, you know, would become really the first, well Jesus Christ really the first martyr of the New Testament church, I guess. Maybe John the Baptist we could say as well, but Stephen certainly the one after the church began and preached this sermon. Let me pause there.

Let me see where we are here.

Let me pause there and we'll pick it up there next week. I think we've covered a lot of ground today and a lot of things for us to think about. Let's pause there, but if there's any discussion, any questions, comments, observations, anything at all, we can do that here for a few minutes. Mr. Shady? Yes, sir. Thinking a little bit about the people of, you know, the religious elite, because the Jews and Judaism, I guess the Orthodox Jews, basically they just want to keep all wine in the old wineskins. I guess then the Messianic Jews, they just want to put new wine in old wineskins instead of biblical Christianity, which is what Jesus said is new wine in new wineskins. Yeah, yeah, that's a good, very good, very good. I'm glad you brought that up. That's a good way to put it. That's exactly right. So, Debbie, did you have something to say?

Well, not exactly on acts necessarily, but I just wanted to say that I just really enjoy the Zoom Bible study and how you conduct it in a relaxed manner and letting us jump in at any time to make comments. That is so valuable to have that, and I just really enjoy the format.

I hope people do feel comfortable. If you have any questions along the way, please ask. If you don't feel comfortable online, send them afterwards. We can address them at the beginning of the next Bible study, so anytime at all. So we're here to kind of learn what God has put for us and see what he has done. We've learned a lot. We've learned a lot in the first seven chapters about the New Testament Church. Just look how much we've learned about what happened before we go into the church being spread into the the Gentile areas. Look what's happened here in seven chapters. I would encourage you to read through chapter seven, just to see what Stephen did and to feel the temperature rise as the Sanhedrin, if I can call it that, as they begin to see where he's going because they kind of know where he's going. That's why, again, the typical reaction that Satan would have is anger and rage. That's what we see. When we see people react to our preaching with anger, that's not the spirit of God. There's a spirit of wanting to discuss and to do things. When we see it from the Bible, to accept it and to be humble enough that if we're wrong and if we've seen things the wrong way, to say, you know what, I was wrong. I accept what God said and do it that way. But that is not what these Jews did and that's not at all what the council did with Christ or here with the New Testament Church. I thought that Mr. Shavey was interesting that you pointed out some of the tools that Satan uses. He uses the same tools over and over.

The lies, the false accusations that he used against Stephen. Then they lace a little bit of truth in with the lies, even though the truth they've distorted it. Exactly. That's an interesting tool set.

So we shouldn't be surprised what happens, right? I mean, what happens later on in this society, we'll know, oh, this is the same thing. We know where it is. So we should not be frightened. We shouldn't be scared. We should be using the time now to build our faith in God. And then, oh, oh, we see that happening. That we certainly, you know, we put our faith in God and have to do that just like others did that. So, yeah, that's the way, you know, I mean, we live in a time that is greatly blessed. You know, God has not allowed Satan to do that now. He is giving us the time to build that strength, that faith, and that commitment to him. And we just need to be using this time to do that, you know, so that we're not caught by surprise when it begins to happen around us.

Mr. Shabia. Yes, yeah, bud. Can we go back to Acts chapter 6 verse 5? We may, yes. And look at Nicholas, and that's Strong's number G3532. It reads, Victoria's over the people.

Nicholas, a heretic, is what Strong's reads about Nicholas. Now, I don't know if anyone in the congregation has read the book.

Bialynite, primitive Christianity in crisis. And he addresses the Nicolaitans. Nicolaitans. And he talks about their conduct and his conduct that even offered his wife up to prostitution within the church. And I don't know. I highly recommend that book. I'm not a book reader. I try to stick to the source, which is the Bible. But I highly recommend that book, if we can get it or somebody can get it. It's Alan Knight's book, Primitive Christianity in Crisis. And it's a very good book. Yeah, you know that sounds familiar. If I read it, it's years ago. I'm going to have to look through my bookshelf. Right. Primitive Christianity in Crisis, right? Right. Alan Knight. We have it someplace.

We migrate between two different locations. We're in Illinois right now.

And I don't know where it is. I can't find it up here. Perhaps it's down. It's at home in Florida. Maybe somebody here has got it. Maybe somebody's got it. Yeah. You know what? I think you're being a good point. But I think that it's good to read those things. And all of us have some books, right? I mean, we I know in Jacksonville back a few years ago, we started kind of a library thing where people could bring in books and people could take them and whatever, you know, and then read them and bring them back. But if someone has that book, yeah, let's really, you know, share it. I mean, it doesn't do any good just sitting on our bookshelves. If someone's interested in it, maybe we can have someone bring it. They'd be interested in reading it. So I think, you know, we can't absolutely 100% prove that Nicholas was the father of the Nicolaitans.

It sure looks like all everything everything leads to that, right? And, you know, everything goes to that. And it's just noticeable that are notable that there he was, you know, in that church. And from him, probably many were led astray. It just kind of shows us again, one of the patterns of what happens we have to be we have to be aware of we all need to know the truth, love the truth and stick to it. Exactly. So real good book. Okay, okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna search my bookshelf and see if it's there, because that does sound familiar. So okay. Okay, anything else? Anyone?

Okay, so you heard me. Let me see for Orlando. In-person services 130. All our, you know, everyone is fine. Everyone is is the person that that had COVID is is is it will be cleared. So there's not a problem there. None of the family members ever came down with it. They're still negative. So we'll have live services in Orlando at 130 in Jacksonville at 1130 this week. The rest of you have a good rest of the week. We will look forward to seeing you. We'll still look forward to seeing you back here next Wednesday, I hope so. Okay, okay. Bye, everyone.