Sermon Tone Analysis

Last week we read through chapter 7 of the book of Acts.

This chapter is the response of Stephen to the false accusations being made against him by the members of the Freedman’s Synagogue and by the members of the Sanhedrin itself.

They were accusing him of blasphemy.

They said he had threatened to destroy the temple and was advocating changing the Law which had been handed down to the nation of Israel by God through Moses.

And if you read through that chapter like we did last week you’ll see that Stephen doesn’t directly speak to the accusations.

What he does is to give the people gathered there a history lesson.

He reminds them of the history of their nation.

He reminds them of God’s covenant with Abraham.

He reminds them of Joseph saving his family from the famine.

He reminds them of their time as slaves in Egypt and of God using Moses to lead them out of that slavery.

He reminds them of all the times that the people had turned their backs on God down through the years.

But He also reminded them of all the times that God had saved them.

And he turned the accusations around on them and reminded them that God didn’t dwell in the temple and he showed them that it was them who were changing the Law by adding so many layers of their own rules on top of it.

He reminded them that God had sent saviors for them down through the years and many times they had rejected these saviors, at least at first, as they had done with Moses.

And then he showed them how God had sent the ultimate Savior, Jesus, and he reminded them that once again they had rejected God’s savior, and this time they had even had him killed.

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And what happened?

When Stephen reminded them of all these things, what did they do?

Let’s turn back and read the end of chapter 7 again this morning.

Acts 7:51-53

So here’s Stephen telling them they have uncircumcised hearts and ears.

And last week I told you that this is referring to the fact that they were so concerned with the outward appearance of righteousness, of following the Law and the covenant that God had with the nation of Israel, that they had forgotten that this covenant and this Law, was simply an outward sign of the relationship that God wanted to have with them.

They focused on the signs of the relationship and let the actual relationship fall by the wayside.

Stephen points this out to them and look what happens as we continue reading with verse 54

Acts 7:54-

As usual, the Sanhedrin gets mad.

But remember from a couple of weeks ago, it’s not just the Sanhedrin this time, it’s the people also.

And the Bible tells us that the people rushed at him, drug him out of town and threw rocks at him until he died.

Stephen was the first Christian martyr.

He was the first person in history to die because of his faith in Christ.

And that’s where we ended last week.

So let’s pick up reading now with the beginning of chapter 8.

Now I know I’ve been saying for a few weeks now that we are at the end of the first phase of Christ’s mission to the church and transitioning to the second phase.

Well here is the beginning of that second phase.

Remember before Christ ascended into heaven back in chapter 1 he told the apostles that they would be his witnesses.

In he said

Up to this point in the book of Acts the witness has been confined to the city of Jerusalem and, as we’ve seen, almost exclusively to the Temple Mount.

But now that Stephen has been killed the Christians are scattered throughout the country and the witness begins to spread.

In fact verse 1 tells that one that very day, when Stephen died, was when this scattering began.

The second part of verse 1 reads “On that day a sever persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the land of Judea and Samaria.

So here we go.

This is the beginning of phase 2. The believers have left Jerusalem and gone into the rest of Judea and into Samaria.

The gospel is beginning to spread.

Now one question typically comes up here when we read these verses.

People read this and see that it says “all except the apostles were scattered,” and the question is, why weren’t the apostles driven out.

And the answer is that it probably wasn’t all believers, all Christians, who were driven out of Jerusalem.

We’ve already talked about how there were basically two groups of believers.

You had the Jews who had been born and raised in Jerusalem or at least in Israel who spoke Aramaic and had been raised within the Jewish culture.

Then you had the Greek speaking Jews, the Hellenist Jews, who had been raised in the prevailing Greek culture of the day and who had migrated back to Jerusalem.

While they were both Jewish by birth, they had been raised in different cultures and there were disagreements between the two groups.

Stephen was part of this second group, he was a Hellenist believer and it was likely these Christians who were persecuted and driven out following his death.

The Hellenist believers had a vision of an “unbounded God,” a God who was for all people.

This clashed with the nationalistic view that the traditional Jewish people had.

They saw God as being the God of Israel and in order to follow him one had to convert to Judaism.

Since the Aramaic speaking believers followed the traditional Jewish customs and culture more so than the Greek speaking believers they were probably spared the brunt of this persecution.

That’s why the apostles were able to remain in Jerusalem and to continue the witness there.

Because the mission Christ gave wasn’t to go to Jerusalem and then the to stop witnessing there and move to Judea and Samaria and then to stop there and move on to the rest of the world.

No, the mission is to witness in Jerusalem, continue there and spread to the other places.

So that’s what we see happening here.

The apostles remain in Jerusalem and the Hellenist believers move out to Judea and Samaria.

One other thing happened, however that would have angered the Jewish authorities.

It’s listed here in verse 2

So why is this such a big deal?

Why would that anger the authorities, the Sanhedrin?

It’s because Jewish law forbade funeral observances for anyone condemned of a crime.

Since Stephen had been put on trial in front of the Sanhedrin and had been executed by stoning he would have been considered a criminal and under the law was not entitled to a proper burial.

Now a case could be made that he was actually the victim of mob violence, but that was semantics that the Jewish authorities weren’t typically very apt to listen to.

So these devout men who buried Stephen and mourned deeply over him were showing great courage in doing so.

They actually risked the same fate.

Now before we get in to the things that happened in this second phase of the mission I want to look a little deeper at the mention of Saul here in the end of chapter 7 and the beginning of chapter 8.

He is mentioned 3 times quickly in just a few verses and I want to look at the escalation of his involvement.

I. Bystander

The first time we see Saul is in chapter 7 verse 58 and he seems to be simply a bystander.

This seems like a minor detail but there’s actually quite a bit in this simple sentence, “And the witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.”

First it establishes the fact that Saul was trusted by the witnesses and by the Jewish authorities.

We’ve already talked a couple of weeks ago about the fact that Saul studied under Gamaliel.

He was an up and coming leader with the Jewish power structure and the fact that he is the guard for the cloaks shows not only that he was present, but that he was on the side of the Jewish authorities.

Now it also shows that he did not actively participate in the stoning of Stephen.

He didn’t throw a rock, but he was there.

He witnessed the whole thing.

But the second thing I want you to see is, I think, even more interesting.

At that time, in that culture, they would have typically worn a simple light weight tunic covered by a heavier outer cloak.

As they began to stone Stephen many if not all of them took off the outer cloak and laid it at the feet of Saul.

So what’s the big deal about that?

I mean, it’s only logical that they would take it off to avoid getting it sweaty, to avoid possibly getting blood on it, or just to be able to move easier right?

And that’s all true, but what’s interesting is that under Jewish law it’s the criminal who is to be stripped down before execution, not the executioners.

Since these witnesses bore false testimony against Stephen, under Jewish law, they are guilty and they are the ones who should be the subjects of the stoning.

So the fact that they strip down themselves speaks to their guilt.

They likely didn’t think of this, but it’s still an interesting parallel in the story.

II.

Agreer

So we first see Saul as a bystander, but then chapter 8 begins by acknowledging him as an agreer.

And I know that may not actually be a word but we’re going to use it anyway because it fits in the outline.

Chapter 8 begins by saying:

Here we see that although Saul didn’t participate in the stoning, he agreed that it was the right thing to do.

In other words he agreed with the people who were bearing false testimony against Stephen.

Now I want you to remember something I brought up last week.

Saul was a Cilician Jew.

And as such he was likely a member of the Freedman’s Synagogue.

These were the people who were bringing the false testimony against Stephen.