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Scripture Reading: Acts 6:8-15
Acts 6:8-15; 7:1-60; 8:1-3 describes the increase in persecution by the Jewish religionists. In 6:8—7:60 we have an account of the martyrdom of Stephen. In this message we shall consider 6:8-15.
Verse 8 says, “And Stephen, full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people.” As we have pointed out, these wonders and signs were not part of God’s central testimony of the incarnated, crucified, resurrected, and ascended Christ; neither were they part of His full salvation.
Verses 9 and 10 continue, “But there arose some of those of the synagogue which is called the synagogue of Libertines, and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, and discussed with Stephen; and they were not able to withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke.” Verse 9 speaks of the synagogue of Libertines. The Libertines were Freedmen. There were a number of synagogues in Jerusalem composed respectively of the returned Jews according to the languages they had acquired in their dispersion (see Acts 2:9-11). The word “synagogue” is the anglicized form of the Greek word sunagoge, composed of sun, together, and ago, to bring; hence, a collecting, gathering, congregation, assembly; by transition, the place of gathering. It is used in the New Testament to denote the congregation (Acts 13:43; 9:2; Luke 12:11) and the congregating place (Luke 7:5) of the Jews, where they sought the knowledge of God by studying the Holy Scriptures (Luke 4:16-17; Acts 13:14-15). In Jerusalem there were quite a few synagogues of various kinds of Jews.
Acts 6:11-12 say, “Then they instigated men, saying, We have heard him speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God. And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and led him to the Sanhedrin.” The Sanhedrin, the highest court of the Jews, was a council composed of chief priests, elders, lawyers, and scribes. The Sanhedrin condemned the Lord Jesus to death (Matt. 26:59) and persecuted the believers. This indicates that Judaism had fallen into the hand of God’s enemy, Satan, and was being used by him to frustrate God’s move in His New Testament economy for the carrying out of His eternal purpose.
Acts 6:13-14 go on to say, “And they set up false witnesses, saying, This man does not cease speaking words against this holy place and the law; for we have heard him saying that this Jesus the Nazarene will destroy this place and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us.” In verse 13 “this holy place” refers to the temple (Matt. 24:15; Psa. 68:35; Ezek. 7:24; 21:2).
Verse 15 says, “And all those sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at him and saw his face as the face of an angel.” The fact that Stephen’s face was as the face of an angel indicates that it had a heavenly appearance. Stephen was a man on earth, but he bore a heavenly appearance while being persecuted.
According to verse 14, the opposers accused Stephen of saying that Jesus would destroy the temple and change the customs delivered by Moses. This indicates that there must have been words circulating among the believers concerning the destruction of the temple, as prophesied by the Lord in Matthew 23:37-39 and 24:2, and words concerning the termination of the dispensation of law, as spoken by the Lord in Matthew 11:13. The opposing Jews twisted the believers’ words, as they did in Matthew 27:40 regarding the Lord’s word in John 2:19 when they crucified Him. Undoubtedly, the Jews’ opposition was instigated by Satan to frustrate God’s New Testament economy. But the ground used by Satan for his instigation was the change of dispensation, which contradicted the Judaic traditions. God’s New Testament economy is to have a new dispensation absolutely separated from Judaism. This offended the Jews by touching the traditions they had inherited for generations and stirred up their opposition, which began with the Lord’s ministry in the Gospels and grew more fierce toward the apostles’ ministry in the Acts, during which the Lord’s New Testament move was passing through a transitional period.
According to Luke’s narration in Acts, the church among the Jews, including the early apostles, did not pass through this transition successfully due to the remaining influence of their Judaic background and the entangling opposition from their Judaic kinsmen. This trouble returned to them again and again in Acts (11:1-3; 15:1-5; 21:18-26). Even the apostle Paul was in danger of being brought back to the Judaic practices in his last visit to Jerusalem (21:20-26).
In Acts the Jewish believers still practiced the keeping of the Old Testament law, as indicated by the word in 21:20 spoken to Paul by James and the elders in Jerusalem. James, the elders in Jerusalem, and many thousands of Jewish believers still remained in a mixture of the Christian faith and the Mosaic law. They even advised Paul to practice such a semi-Judaic mixture (21:17-26). They were unaware that the dispensation of law was altogether over and that the dispensation of grace should be fully honored, and that any disregard of the distinction between these two dispensations would be against God’s dispensational administration and would be a great damage to God’s economical plan for the building up of the church as the expression of Christ.
The children of Israel had been given the law through Moses. They also had a system of worship involving the temple, the priests, and the offerings. With the children of Israel the two main things were the law and the temple as the center of their worship. Both the law and the temple were types of Christ. It is not God’s intention to have a written law and a material temple. God’s intention is to have the living Christ as the law of life and also to have Christ as the living temple for God’s New Testament economy. God desires to have Christ as the living law within us and as the living temple outside of us so that He may carry out His New Testament economy. This economy is absolutely a matter of the Triune God mingling Himself with His chosen people to produce a corporate entity for His expression. This was God’s intention from the very beginning in the book of Genesis. However, the children of Israel regarded the law and the temple in a traditional way according to dead letters.
About fifteen hundred years after the law was given, the Triune God came in incarnation. One day this incarnated One said, “All the prophets and the law prophesied until John” (Matt. 11:13). This indicates the termination of the Old Testament dispensation. Although the principles of the law cannot be terminated, the dispensation of the law was ended.
Furthermore, in Matthew 23:37-39 the Lord forsook Jerusalem with its temple. In verse 38 He said, “Behold, your house is left to you desolate.” Here “house” denotes the house of God, the temple (Matt. 21:12-13). This prophecy concerning the desolation of the temple corresponds to that in Matthew 24:2, where the Lord said concerning the temple, “Truly I say to you, A stone shall by no means be left upon a stone which shall not be thrown down.” This was fulfilled in A.D. 70 when Titus destroyed Jerusalem with the Roman army. Therefore, in Matthew 23:38 and 24:2 the Lord indicated to His disciples that the material temple, which had become a frustration to God’s economy, would be destroyed.
The Lord Jesus indicated plainly that the law would be terminated and that the temple would be destroyed. No doubt, His word made a deep impression on the disciples. They must have had fellowship concerning the termination of the law and the destruction of the temple, since both the temple and law were great matters to the Jews.
After the Lord ascended to the heavens and the Spirit was poured out, there was a prevailing move among His disciples. The opposers began to twist the words that must have been circulating among the believers concerning the termination of the dispensation of the law and the destruction of the temple. In particular, the opposers accused Stephen of “speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God” and of saying that “Jesus the Nazarene will destroy this place and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us” (Acts 6:11, 14). To be sure, the opposers were twisting the truth. The Lord Jesus had spoken concerning the termination of the dispensation of law and the destruction of the temple. But the opposers twisted His word.
The old dispensation was the dispensation of the law and of the temple. The new dispensation is the dispensation of Christ as the law of life and as the living temple. Between these two dispensations there was a transitional period in which God was transferring His chosen people from the old dispensation into the new. All the early disciples, including Peter, were undergoing God’s transfer. They had been born into the old dispensation, and they had been raised with the knowledge of that dispensation. Thus, they were people of the old dispensation. However, they had been called by the Lord and had spent three and a half years with Him. Moreover, they spent forty days with Him after His resurrection in a wonderful, spiritual way. We may think that this would be sufficient for God to transfer them fully out of the old dispensation into the new, that is, out of the law in letters and the material temple into Christ as the law of life and as the living temple. Although they had come to know Christ in this way, they were still under a strong Judaic influence, and they were surrounded by their Jewish kinsmen. Therefore, it was very difficult for them to be released from their old background.
This was especially true of James, a flesh brother of the Lord Jesus. James was godly, pious, and highly respected by the Jews. It was very difficult for him to be transferred out of the Judaic background. On the contrary, he took the lead to remain there, as indicated by the record in Acts 21.
According to Acts 21, when Paul made his last visit to Jerusalem, he went in to James, and all the elders were present (v. 18). James encouraged Paul to come back to certain Judaic practices: “Four men are with us who have a vow on themselves; take these and be purified with them, and pay their expenses that they may shave their heads; and all will know that there is nothing to the things of which they had been instructed concerning you, but that you yourself also walk orderly, keeping the law” (vv. 23-24). Paul followed this advice and went to the temple with those who had made the vow. It is difficult to believe that Paul could do such a thing after having written the book of Romans and the book of Galatians, books that indicate that the dispensation of law is over. But Paul in Acts 21 was not able to overcome the Judaic environment.
According to the record in Acts, the church in Jerusalem, including the twelve apostles, did not pass through the transitional period successfully. Rather, they had a failure. Their failure to make the transition in full was one of the reasons the Lord sent the Roman army to destroy Jerusalem with its temple. The religious mixture there in Jerusalem was also destroyed at that time.
Concerning the need for a transition from the old dispensation to the new, we do not care merely for Bible knowledge but for the application to today’s situation. Not only have the Old Testament things been made into a traditional religion; even the things of the New Testament have been used in a traditional way. Even before the end of the first century, Christians began to make the things of God’s New Testament economy into a religious tradition. If you study church history, you will see this degradation coming in after the time of the apostles. Eventually, when Christianity was presented to us in the twentieth century, it was presented in a traditional way. As a result, we did not see the genuine New Testament economy of God.
What a mercy that we are in the Lord’s recovery! We can say honestly that, at least to some extent, we have been brought back to God’s New Testament economy in a genuine way. I believe that if those in Catholicism and in the denominations would visit a Lord’s table meeting in the church and were honest about what they observed, they would admit that among us there is something real of the New Testament economy of God.
Christianity has become a religion of tradition. Throughout the centuries, some of the things of God’s New Testament economy have been used as elements to form a tradition. Just as Peter and John were born into the traditions of the old dispensation and raised up in them, so many of us were born into the traditions of Christianity and raised according to those traditions. Thus, there is the need for the Lord to recover His genuine New Testament economy.
As Peter and John were in a transitional period, we today are also in a period of transition. As we are making the transition into God’s New Testament economy, we should be warned by the failures of James, Peter, and the others and learn of their failures. We should learn not to care for any tradition and not to be under any religious influence. We need to be definite and absolute for the Lord’s transfer in order to be brought out of tradition and brought back to God’s pure New Testament economy. What is the New Testament economy of God? It is nothing other than Jesus Christ, the God-man, as everything to us. He is our law, our temple, our everything.
In this Life-study of Acts, we are not merely learning the Bible according to letters. We are not interested only in gaining biblical knowledge. By the Lord’s mercy we need to be willing to be brought by Him into the depths of His truths so that we may see what is on His heart. God’s people need to realize that the situation of today’s religion is far off from God’s intention. I hope that God will have mercy on all His chosen people, including all the believers in the Roman Catholic Church and the denominations, that they may see the genuine light and revelation in the Bible concerning His New Testament economy. As those in the Lord’s recovery, we thank Him for what He has shown us in the Word regarding His economy. May we all be helped by the Lord to see the light of the divine truths in the Bible so that we may be brought fully into God’s New Testament economy.
