Summary:

Stephen is on trial for his life before the Jewish council (7:1), but rather than defend himself, he preaches Christ from the shadows of their Old Testament.  God isn’t called “the God of glory” (7:2) until the Psalms, so Stephen was telling them he was going to read Him back into the story of Abraham.  That would get them to thinking about how he would be reading Christ back into their Old Testament as well!

God telling Abraham to leave his home was a shadow picture of Galatians 4:4.  Abraham waited till his father was dead (Acts 7:4), and the Lord waited till his father Joseph was dead before starting his ministry (Jo. 2:11,12; 19:27).

Abraham didn’t get his inheritance in the promised land on his first trip to earth (Acts 7:5 cf. Heb. 11:9), but he will in his second trip in the resurrection.  That pictures how the Lord didn’t get His inheritance on His first trip to earth (Mt. 8:20) but will inherit all things in His resurrection (Heb. 1:1, 2).

God told Abraham that his seed would have to suffer bondage to Pharaoh (Acts 7:6), a shadow-type of how Christ’s seed will have to suffer bondage to the Antichrist.  God judged Pharaoh (7:7) and He will judge Antichrist (Rev. 19:20).  Abraham’s seed had to go through that time of trouble because the iniquity of the Amorites wasn’t full (Gen. 15:14-16), and Christ’s seed will have to endure the Tribulation because the iniquity of the Antichrist will not yet be full (Dan. 8:23,24).

Of course, before Abraham’s seed could inherit the promised land they’d need a Savior, and we see one pictured in Abraham’s son Isaac (Acts 7:8).  God promised Abraham a son and he got tired of waiting for him and produced his own son named Ishmael.  That’s a shadow of how God promised Abraham’s seed a messiah, and they will get tired of waiting for him and will produce a false messiah in the Tribulation.

Joseph’s brethren (Acts 7:9) conspired to kill him (Gen. 37:18) like the Lord’s brethren did (Mt. 21:38; Mark 3:6), and for the same reason (Gen. 37:11; Mt. 27:17).  They stripped Joseph (Gen. 37:23), another shadow of the Lord (Mt. 27:28).  Of course, Joseph’s brethren got the Ishmaelites to do their dirty work (Gen. 37:22, 28), just like the Lord’s brethren got the Romans to do theirs. God was with Joseph in the pit (Acts 7:9) the way He was with the Lord in the tomb (John 16:28, 32).  In all this, Stephen is reminding the Jews that Joseph’s brethren were wrong when they thought they got rid of him, just as they were about Christ when they crucified Him.

God not only delivered Joseph out of the pit, He made him governor of Egypt and the world (Acts 7:10).  Just as God delivered Christ out of the “pit” of the tomb (Ps. 40:1, 2) and will someday make Him “governor” of the world (Ps. 22:28).

That’s when the Lord was supposed to be made Israel’s king, but something else had to happen first, the “dearth” of Acts 7:11 that foreshadowed the Tribulation.  Joseph’s brethren had no sustenance then, and the Lord’s brethren will have nothing to eat in the Tribulation either without the mark of the beast (Rev. 13:16, 17). The Tribulation would have had to come to purify unbelievers out of Israel before the kingdom even if they’d received their messiah (Zech. 13:7-9).

Joseph’s brethren didn’t recognize him the first time they went to him for food, but did the second time (Acts 7:12, 13).  That’s a type of how the Lord’s brethren in Israel didn’t recognize Him the first time He came, but they will the second time He comes (Zech. 12:10).  Joseph’s brethren were troubled at his presence (Gen. 45:3) as the Lord’s brethren will be at His second coming (Rev. 1:7).

Joseph’s brethren were made known to Pharaoh (Gen. 45:16-18 cf. Acts 7:13) and they were soon enjoying “the fat of the land,” and someday the Lord’s brethren will be enjoying the fat of the land in the kingdom of heaven on earth.

At this point in Joseph’s life, there was nothing left to do except call “all his kindred” (Acts 7:14) to enjoy the fat of the land with them, just as the Lord’s brethren will do with His brethren to enjoy the fat of the land in the kingdom (Mt. 24:31).  Stephen’s hearers among the Jews must have seen these types or they wouldn’t have stoned him!

Video of this sermon is available on YouTube: Preaching Christ in the Shadows – Acts 7:1-14

Summary:

Stephen was filled with “faith” or faithfulness (cf. Rom. 3:3) and miracle working “power” (6:8) because he was filled with the Spirit (Acts 2:4; 6:5) and faith and power were gifts of the Spirit (I Cor. 12:8-10).  The Spirit filled and controlled them (Ezek. 36:27) to where they couldn’t sin (I Jo. 3:9), but that didn’t mean He overpowered their personalities.

We know that because the 12 told the disciples to pick 7 men filled with wisdom and the Spirit to settle a dispute (Acts 6:1-3).  But they were all filled with both, so how could they choose?  Well, they were also to pick men “of honest report,” which can mean fair and equitable men.  But honesty wasn’t one of the gifts of the Spirit, so we know the Spirit didn’t eclipse their personalities in that taste of the kingdom of heaven on earth—and He won’t eclipse ours either when we get to the kingdom of heaven in heaven.  They weren’t a bunch of mindless robots, and we won’t be either!

Why Stephen (6:9) and not Peter?  A year has now passed since Acts 2:4 and God is about to cut Israel down for rejecting Christ’s apostles (Luke 13:6-9).  Since Stephen’s name means “crown,” he’s about to become an example of how Tribulation Jews will have to be faithful to death to get eternal life (Rev. 2:10).  God needed the 12 alive to continue the kingdom program during the “diminishing” of Israel (Rom. 11:12), to write epistles to kingdom saints that will be in the Bible for the Tribulation.  So He couldn’t have Peter die.

After the persecution of the Jewish council (Acts 5:40,41) the “disputing” came from average Jews, not the leaders (6:9), as the Lord predicted (Mt. 10:17).  The “Libertines” may have been formed to look for liberty from their enemies in Rome (Lu. 1:70) but now the Lord’s disciples were their main enemy.  So now they were fighting for the “liberty” found in the law (Ps. 119:133, 145).  In the measure they followed the law, they were free from sin.  They later charged the 12 with blaspheming the law (6:13) because the 12 were preaching freedom from sin through Christ, just as He did (Jo. 8:32-36).  That’s why James called it a “law of liberty” (Jam. 2:12).  The Lord wanted to give the Jews complete liberty from their sins by filling them with His Spirit and making them able to keep the law perfectly.  The Libertines thought they didn’t need that, because they thought they were keeping the law well enough to be saved on their own.

The Alexandrians (6:9) were probably also strong for the law, like their favorite son (Acts 18:24).  “Them of Cilicia” produced Saul (22:3) so they were also zealous for the law, and they too joined the Libertines in championing the law.

But all those zealots of the law couldn’t compete with Stephen’s gift of wisdom (6:10)—and he was just a waiter (6:5).  Men won’t be able to resist your wisdom either if you have the truth rightly divided, unlike the Jews who clung to the law here.  They couldn’t resist his gracious “spirit” either, the spirit of grace—and you can have that too (Col. 4:6).

They suborned men to lie (6:11) so they could get the kingdom, like Jezebel did (I Ki. 21:1-10), a type of how Israel’s religious leaders got men to lie to kill the Lord (Mt. 21:38) and kill Stephen, the rightful owners of the vineyard of Israel

They “caught” Stephen (6:11), meaning he was running away.  If the government persecutes you, you can run, but you must follow David’s example and not resist them (I Sa. 24).

Since they bore false witness about Stephen and then gnashed on him (Acts 7:54), I have to believe he prayed for his enemies in between (cf. Ps. 35:11-16 cf. Mt.5:44).

They claimed Stephen was saying the Lord would destroy the temple (6:14) because they purposely misunderstood when He said He’d destroy the temple of His body and raise it up (Jo. 2:19-21).  And Stephen was preaching Christ’s resurrection.  We know neither the Lord nor Stephen destroyed the “customs” of the law, for the Lord always observed the “custom” of the feasts (Lu. 2:41,42) and Stephen was there at this next Pentecost a year later.

God replied to these charges by saying, “You want to charge him with speaking against Moses and the law?  I’ll make him look like Moses when he got the law!” (6:15 cf. Ex.34:29-34).

Video of this sermon is available on YouTube: The Fullness of God and Men – Acts 6:8-15

Summary:

When the Grecians complained, the apostles had to come up with a formula to address their complaint (6:1).  But if this was a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven on earth, does that mean there will be complaints when we get to the kingdom of heaven in heaven? 

Yes!  That’s why we’ll have to “judge angels” (I Cor. 6:3). Angels are sinless but not perfect.  They will have disputes similar to this one in Acts 6 that they’ll need us to settle.  Meanwhile, the 12 apostles will be doing the same thing in the kingdom of heaven on earth (Mt. 19:28) among saved Jews who will be sinless but not perfect either.  And we’re seeing this pictured here in Acts 6.  We’re not seeing a breakdown of the harmony in the church here (Acts 1:14; 2:1,46; 4:32).  We’re seeing how the harmony was maintained, and how it will be maintained in the kingdom.

Heaven will be perfect, but not in the way many people think  Many Christians think we won’t have to go to work, but Eden was perfect, and Adam had a job (Gen. 2:15).And being a judge is a job, so we’ll have to go to work to judge angels.

People of other nations that spoke Greek were called Greeks (Mark 7:26).  People of the Jewish nation who spoke Greek, who grew up in other lands, were called “Grecians.”  The “daily ministration” that was neglecting the Grecian widows was the distribution to the needs of the saints (Acts 2:44,45).  It couldn’t have been on purpose, for neglecting widows would have been a sin (Ex. 22:22), and these saints couldn’t sin (I Jo. 3:9).  They were sinless, just not perfect.

The apostles didn’t think helping with this was beneath them, but passed on helping (6:2) because, in order to look into this neglect, they would have had to do some neglecting of their own.  They’d have had to neglect their spiritual gift of teaching (Rom. 12:7 cf. I Tim. 4:14).

Instead, they helped by delegating authority (6:3), as Moses did when the Jews were multiplied in his day, as they were here at Pentecost (Deut. 1:10-17).

When they deferred to give themselves to teaching instead (6:4), that suggests men needed to be taught the Word there in the kingdom of heaven on earth, and that suggests that men will need it in the kingdom of heaven in heaven.  That answers the question I’m often asked, if we’ll know the Bible perfectly the instant we enter heaven.  No!  The Bible is an eternal Book, and we’ll delight in studying it for all eternity.  Imagine how boring eternity would be otherwise!

We’ll talk more about Stephen and Philip (6:5) in Acts 7,8. And these other men aren’t mentioned elsewhere, so there is nothing we can know about them.  Although “Nicolas” might have been the father of the cult in Revelation 2:6,14,15 that was associated with fornication.  Church history says Nicolas started taking  that business of living with all things common (Acts 2:44; 4:32) too far, saying men shouldn’t say their wives were their own (Acts 4:32), leading to fornication

They ordained these men by laying hands on them (6:6) to give them the gift of ministry (Rom. 12:6) to help them operate “the daily ministration.”

But while we know nothing about these men, we know they were all Grecians, as their Greek names indicate!  You wouldn’t pick a fox to guard the henhouse that he’s most likely to rob, but these disciples picked Grecian leaders who were most likely to side with Grecian widows in this dispute!

That’s grace!  The Jews could have said, “It’s a Jewish church, we’re picking Jewish judges, and if you don’t like it, you can leave.”  Of course, unsaved men would say, “That’s not fair, you need to pick 3 Hebrews, 3 Grecians, and 1 proselyte,” thinking no one could propose a better solution.  But God did!  Grace is always a better solution, for grace always goes above and beyond the call (Eph. 3:20).  Do you?

If you could settle all your disputes as graciously, you might see the same results these saints saw: priests who a short while ago opposed them (Acts 4:1-3) believed (6:7).

“The faith” you had to be “obedient” to in the Jewish nation was Acts 2:38, but the faith to be obedient to among “all nations” was Paul’s gospel (Rom.1:5; 16:25,26).  It still is!

Video of this sermon is available on YouTube: The Grecian Formula – Acts 6:1-7

Summary:

When the religious leaders in Israel began plotting to kill the twelve apostles (5:33), a doctor calmed them down (v. 34, 35).  His willingness to oppose this murderous mob of powerful men shows that Pharisees weren’t all bad, as did Nicodemus (Jo. 3:1-3), who later got saved (Jo. 19:38-40).

Gamaliel was a doctor “of the law,” i.e., a lawyer.  In Israel, that meant he was a doctor of the law of Moses.  Moses’ law wasn’t just Israel’s religious law, it was their civil law, as the constitution is ours. There were lots of lawyers (Lu. 2:46,47).

Gamaliel was “had of reputation,” and reputations aren’t built quickly.  So he was probably one of the lawyers the Lord offered to heal a few years earlier (Lu. 5:17), but who refused Him.  Don’t ever feel sorry for those Pharisees and lawyers, thinking that they never had a chance to be saved. But if Gamaliel didn’t get saved that day, why’d he stick up for the apostles?  Well, for one thing, he was a Pharisee, and the ones opposing the apostles were Sadducees (Acts 5:17,18).  That made Gamaliel friendly toward the enemy of his enemies.  We’ll see more reasons he defended them later.

But if his name sounds familiar, it’s because Acts 22:3 says that he trained Paul before he was saved.  He must have been a big shot in Israel to have “commanded” (Acts 5:34) these rulers not to harm the apostles.  And as all good lawyers do, he cited some legal precedents to help make his case.

Theudas (5:36) is only mentioned here, but if you’re going to boast yourself to be somebody in Israel, it was probably messiah.  Everyone knew messiah would be the son of David (Mt. 22:41,42), and 400 men joined themselves to David too (I Sam. 22:1,2 cf. Acts 5:36).  Israel’s rulers probably didn’t know what do with Theudas when he got popular, but Gamaliel pointed out they didn’t have to do anything. He got himself killed and his followers scattered—and so will the apostles, is what Gamaliel was suggesting.  It was illegal for them to kill anyone (cf. Jo. 18:31), so killing the twelve might have gotten them killed.  Gamaliel knew those “men of Israel” (Acts 5:35) would know the principle of Zechariah 13:7.

Like most lawyers, Gamaliel cited more than one precedent.  This “Judas” (5:37) wasn’t Iscariot.  “Judas” was the Greek version of the popular Hebrew name Judah, father of one of the 12 tribes.  There were even two men named Judas among the apostles (Lu. 6:13-16).  But Iscariot is the Greek form of “Kerioth” (Josh. 15:25), a city in Moab, or a city in southern Judah, and this Judas was from northern Galilee (Acts 5:37).  Besides, he died in the “taxing” (5:37 cf. Lu. 2:1-5), 30 years before Judas even became an apostle.  The reason Gamaliel mentioned “much people” followed him is that the leaders were worried that much people were following the twelve.  But Judas too died and his followers were scattered.

So far, Gamaliel has been warning those leaders about what Rome would do if they killed the apostles.  Next he warns them about what God might do (Acts 5:38,39).  Here he’s probably citing a Jewish legal precedent that he knew those men of Israel would be familiar with (Jeremiah 26:18,19).

Gamaliel was a type of Antichrist.  You say, “Won’t Antichrist try to kill followers of Jesus, not stick up for them?”  Not at first.  He starts out as a peacemaker, probably telling the Jews to leave the followers of Jesus alone, as Gamaliel did.  By the way, Antichrist will rise in the day of taxing (Dn. 11:20,21).  He’ll talk smooth like Gamaliel with war in his heart (Ps. 55:21), war that will come out later when he persecutes the Jews he’ll stick up for initially—like Gamaliel did.  Gamaliel later authorized Saul to slay the followers of Christ.

All doctrines are either of men or of God (Acts 5:38 cf. Mark 11:30).  But will all doctrines of men come to naught as Gamaliel said?  It doesn’t seem that way, but Paul said it was so (II Tim. 3:8,9).  But he meant in eternity to come!  That’s when “all men” will see the folly of the doctrines of men.  Until then, don’t let the success of false doctrines get you down.  Focus on things you can’t see instead (II Cor. 4:16,18).

For religious leaders to tell men of God not to preach what God said is nothing new (Isa. 30:9,10; Amos 2:12; Micah 2:6), but the apostles remembered what the Lord said (Mt. 5:11,12) and rejoiced and continued to preach Christ.

Video of this sermon is available on YouTube: Just What the Doctor Ordered – Acts 5:34-42

Summary:

When the law commands believers to do something that is contrary to what God says (Acts 5:27, 28), we are to stand with Peter and obey God rather than men (v. 29), like the 3 Hebrews did in Daniel 3.

God’s people must always obey the law, even in the Tribulation when the devil makes the Antichrist the law (Rev. 13:1, 2).  We know God will expect His people to obey the Antichrist because while Paul’s epistles are written to us, the epistles that come after Paul’s epistles in the Bible are written to the people who will come after us, the Jews in the Tribulation.  And in one of those epistles, Peter tells them to obey the king (I Pe. 2:13-17).

At first it will be easy to obey the Antichrist, for he will rebuild their temple and protect them from their enemies.  But when he declares himself God (II Thes. 2:3, 4) and the false prophet erects an image of him and demands it be worshipped (Rev. 13:11-15), they will have to obey God’s command against worshipping graven images rather than men.

God “raised up” Jesus (Acts 5:30) to be Israel’s king in the same way He raised up David to be their king (Acts 13:21, 22).  Peter says they hung the Lord on a “tree” instead of saying a cross in reference to Deuteronomy 21:22, which says men hung on trees are cursed.  In quoting that verse, Paul says Christ redeemed us from that curse (Gal. 3:13).  And the tree of Exodus 15:25 was a type of Christ!

God “exalted” the Lord (Acts 5:31), and exalt means to raise high or elevate someone, as it does in Isaiah 52:13.  Verse 14 talks about how the Jews brought the Lord low by beating Him before the cross, described in the next chapter (Isaiah 53:5, 6, 12).  The “therefore” of Acts 2:32, 33 means that the Jews also brought the Lord low by killing Him, but God exalted Him by raising Him from the dead.

Now if you think exalting Him to be “a prince” wasn’t exalting Him very highly, it’s because we think a prince is below a king.  But the word prince often means the sovereign of all, as when the Lord is called “the prince of the kings of the earth” (Rev. 1:5 cf. I Tim. 6:15).  That’s what the Lord would have been exalted to become if the dispensation of the mystery hadn’t interrupted prophecy.

It used to be that Israel’s king couldn’t be a priest.  Saul lost his kingdom offering a sacrifice.  But Christ will be a priest and a king (Zech. 6:12, 13), a prince and a savior (Acts 5:31).

Jews looked for a Savior to save them from their enemies as well as from their sins (Lu. 1:68-75), but the Lord knew He couldn’t do one without the other and still be a just God and a Savior (Is. 45:21).  Rome had conquered them because of their sins (cf. Lev. 26:14, 17), so someone had to pay for their sins before He could save them from their enemies.

In the past, God had other nations pay for Israel’s sins (Isa. 43:3).  When Assyria threatened Israel, God caused Assyria’s king to hear a rumor that those other nations were attacking Syria (II Ki. 19:6-9), and so he left Israel alone and attacked them instead!

But when Israel didn’t let their land rest every 7^th year (Lev. 25:4) for 490 years, God let them be conquered by Babylon for 70 years to give their land the 70 years of rest it missed (Lev. 26:27, 33, 34; II Chron. 36:20, 21). In other words, God made the Jews themselves pay for their sins that time.

When they were captives in Rome, God had His own Son pay their ransom (Mt. 20:28).  Peter didn’t understand that yet here in Acts 5, nor that He planned to ransom the Gentiles too, so He could be a just God and a Savior to them as well (Rom. 3:24-27).  That wasn’t revealed until Paul (I Tim. 2:5-7).  Repentance was being given to the Jews in Acts 5:31, but not to the Gentiles till after Paul was saved (Acts 11:18).

The Holy Spirit witnessed to the Jews (Acts 5:32) by the miracles He was empowering the apostles to do (5:12-16).  Now you’d think the Jews would listen to the witness of the Holy Spirit of God, but they sought to kill the apostles instead (Acts 5:33).

Video of this message is available on YouTube: It Was Time to Break the Law – Acts 5:28-33