Guilty Until Proven Guilty
(Acts 6:8-15)
1. Many changes come to us a step at a time.
I came across of illustration of this regarding trapping wild pigs.
You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side.
The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are already captive. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.
2. The enemy of the Gospel, Satan himself, often uses this tactic. If he can, he will hem us in and then we lose our freedom and our effectiveness for Christ. We forget how things used to be, and life gets to be just about us and our families. I wonder how many of us are trapped in this way?
3. But Satan also has another strategy for those too zealous to fall for the corn: persecution. What Satan knows but cannot accept is that God uses this strategy to seed and spread His church. Satan is so hateful and insane with destruction that he and his hoards cannot stop from frontal attacks, no matter how counter-productive they are.
4. After all, if you think about it, the whole "sin thing" is unreasonable.
5. In Acts, we have documented the beginning of Christian persecution. At first, the Jewish authorities scolded the apostles and ordered them to stop preaching. Then they flogged them. Finally, they began killing.
6. Stephen set an example for us about sharing our faith even in difficult circumstances.
Main Idea: As followers of Jesus, we must argue our case fairly, even when our opponents do not. They do not set our agenda.
I. The Conflict Begins With LEGITIMATE Debate (8-10)
A. Background: Stephen is having impact for the KINGDOM (8)
1. His name, Stephanos, means a "garland" or "crown," like that given to victors of the Olympic games
2. Whether coincidence or not, he would be the first believer to gain the victor’s crown for martyrdom
3. If he were not shaking things up, Stephen would have been ignored; but he was part of that pesky Nazarene sect of the Jews, and he was probably a trained and eloquent speaker in the Greek tradition of oratory…
4. Few people are offended by a contained faith, but even we are offended by cults and religions that seek to draw our people away… this is the same perspective they have of us!
5. They view us as preying on them and dangerous -- just as we view them. Have you ever thought about that?
6. Obeying Jesus Christ sometimes rocks the boat and sometimes creates conflict.
B. Synagogue members DEBATED him (9-10)
1. The ironical title, "Freedmen" -- this synagogue would be the source for a campaign to eliminate Christianity -- led by the zealous Saul of Tarsus.
2. Greek-speaking Hellenistic Jews and a Greek-speaking Hellenistic evangelist
3. Some of these Jews were probably gentile converts to Judaism; converts to a religion are often more zealous than those raised within it.
4. But even though Stephen had the stronger arguments, but we must remember, winning or losing an argument is but a factor
• Often times arguments are weak because the debater does not have all necessary information or is not skilled
• Sometimes new information is forthcoming
• Winning or losing a debate only deals with what is potentially known or knowable; logic can lead one in a completely wrong direction; there is a difference between a logically valid argument and truth!
• People are not purely logical creatures; we have emotions, and our emotions can over-ride our logic, and, sometimes, our instincts can be right while logic leads us in the wrong direction…intuitive people can smell stuff…
As followers of Jesus, we must argue our case fairly, even when our opponents do not. They do not set our agenda
II. The Conflict Moves Away from the ETHICAL to the DECEITFUL (11- 13)
A. A SECRET scheme (11)
The same men who met at the Synagogue and taught others about bearing false witness thought they did not have to play by the same rules as everyone else…
One of these men was the devout Saul of Tarsus; you can see here how even religious zeal can motivate a mentality of "the ends justify the means." Once people get this kind of obsessive bug, nothing will stand in their way, even fairness.
B. Manipulative SOCIOLOGY (12)
Both the common people and leaders were agitated to put Stephen to death. Mob violence comes when people will not stand alone, and when we trust other people’s judgments. This is hard not to do.
If we see people we respect saying something is right, we will tend to go along with him or her, despite our personal reservations. Something like this happened during the Crusades, when Roman Catholics invaded the Middle East on the basis of rumor and persecuted the Muslims there a thousand years ago.
Or this event:
The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre … was a wave of Roman Catholic mob violence against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants), during the French Wars of Religion. Traditionally believed to have been instigated by Catherine de’ Medici, the mother of King Charles IX, the massacre took place six days after the wedding of the king’s sister to the Protestant Henry III of Navarre (the future Henry IV). This was an occasion for which many of the most wealthy and prominent Huguenots had gathered in largely Catholic Paris…Starting on 24 August 1572 (the feast of Bartholomew the Apostle) … the massacres spread throughout Paris, and later to other cities and the countryside, lasting for several months. The exact number of fatalities is not known, but it has been estimated that over 2,000 Huguenots were killed in Paris and over 3,000 in the French provinces…The Huguenot political movement was crippled by the loss of many of its prominent aristocratic leaders, and those who remained were increasingly radicalized." [Wikipedia]
C. FALSE testimony (13-14)
1. Disregard for the written LAW (13)
This all stems back to Jesus saying, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," speaking of the Temple of His Body in John 2, the same trumped up charges they used against Jesus Who never threatened to destroy the Temple or lead Jews away from Temple worship…
Perhaps they distorted the teaching that Jesus is greater than Moses to be blasphemy against Moses; in 7:44-50, the crowd may have thought that Stephen advocated the destruction of the Temple…
In Acts 21, Paul has a sacrifice offered and takes a vow at the Temple to prove that he was not teaching Jews to forsake Moses or Temple worship…
Once you assign evil motives or behavior to an individual, you interpret everything he does in that light…
2. Change of ORAL Law (14)
aka, "the customs"
This may or may not have been a true charge
The Jews held that in addition to the Torah written down (the first 5 books of the Bible), another Oral Law was given to Moses, interpreting and applying those books. In addition, the rules or "fences" placed around the commands is considered authoritative in Judaism.
The probability that Moses’ additional teachings were accurately preserved for 1500 years without being written down seems unlikely; this is not to say that some information passed down by tradition is accurate, but it is an undependable source at best.
Although Jesus was not necessarily against all customs of the Oral Law, He made it clear that the written Word was binding, not the traditions handed down.
Mark 7: 5-10, 13:
So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, "Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with ’unclean’ hands?"
He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
" ’These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."
And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! … Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that."
• We can only focus on the Word of God or the traditions of men; we cannot divide our focus or we will disobey one or the other
• Christians are notorious to canonize their traditions as well, thus distracting us from focusing upon studying and obeying the Word of God…
D. Stephen had the look of INNOCENCE (15)
As followers of Jesus, we must argue our case fairly, even when our opponents do not. They do not set our agenda
III. Principles for US
A. We must avoid WORLDLY views of truth and winning
You don’t hear that old saying much anymore, "It is not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game that counts." I don’t think most people believe it -- or ever did. It expresses an ethic we need to embrace.
B. RUMORS and MISREPRESENTATIONS are facts of life
One of my duties as a pastor is to investigate and seek to quell rumors or clear up misunderstandings based upon misrepresentations. Unfortunately, sometimes the rumors are true; sometimes seeming misunderstandings are simply conflicts. Many times they are not.
Sometimes rumors and misrepresentations have a grain of truth in them, but the situation is exaggerated. For example, Stephen may have spoken out against some of the oral law’s ridiculous rulings -- as Jesus did -- but he never spoke out against the Books of Moses, the real Law.
A man hitting his fist on the table during an argument with his wife is not the same as a man beating his wife…
C. No matter how decent a person you are, some may HATE you
D. Things we say and do can easily be TWISTED
E. Serving Christ makes us vulnerable to SLANDER and INSINUATIONS
F. In some conflicts, winning is not enough: the quest for PUNISHMENT
G. Can do NO wrong if with me, if against, no RIGHT
As followers of Jesus, we must argue our case fairly, even when our opponents do not. They do not set our agenda
Stephen followed the Words of Our Lord Jesus Christ, as so must we:
"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you" (Luke 6:27).
