Acts 8:1-8
In the animated Woody Allen movie, Antz, a ladybug and a dung beatle are at a garbage dump. They come across some animal scat, feces, excrement, poop, whatever you call it. The ladybug says, “This tastes just like crap.” The dung beatle says, “Really? Let me try some. Hey, it is crap! Not bad!”
It all depends on your point of view.
In a few months on July 4 Americans will celebrate Independence Day. The British call this Good Riddance Day.
It all depends on your point of view.
On the bulletin cover there is a picture of a woman. Is she old or young? As you shift your focus the picture changes from a young woman with a fancy hat to an old woman with a scarf.
It all depends on your point of view.
This is our fourth spring taking a look at the book of Acts. We finished up with chapter 7 last year which tells the story of the stoning of Stephen. We move into chapter 8 this year and begin the story of the persecution and scattering of the church.
Was this persecution and scattering of the church good news or bad news? It all depends on your point of view.
Think of this story from the point of view of a Greek-speaking family living in Jerusalem. This family belonged to what is known as the “Jewish dispersion,” meaning the migration of Jewish families from Palestine to other nations of the ancient world. Maybe it was their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents who had migrated from Israel. Whenever it was, this family had grown up in some part of the Roman Empire. This family was not alone. There were a lot of Grecian Jews. Most large cities of the Roman Empire had a synagogue and estimates are that 10% or more of the Roman Empire was Jewish. There were a million Jews in Alexandria alone.
And these Jews came to Jerusalem for the festivals, much like Muslims travel from all over the world to go to Mecca for the Haj. Muslims do not go every year, it is too expensive, and so it was for the Greek-speaking Jews. They could not come each year for each of the festivals, but at each festival there were some Greek-speaking Jews who had saved enough money and taken the time to make this pilgrimage.
Some of the Greek-speaking families who came to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost were there when the Holy Spirit was poured out in dramatic fashion on the disciples of Jesus and when the disciples spoke a language that each person heard in their mother tongue, they heard the disciples praising God in the local dialect they grew up with.
Some of these were among the first to respond to Peter’s sermon and were baptized. Rather than return home, many stayed to receive more teaching from Peter and the others.
Over the next few years, more and more Greek-speaking Jews became followers of Jesus and settled in Jerusalem to learn and grow in their new faith.
There were three and a half years between the resurrection of Jesus and the stoning of Stephen and in these years, more and more Greek-speaking Jews came to Jerusalem, discovered Jesus was the promised Messiah and stayed to be part of this new community of followers of Jesus. They found jobs and places to live. They developed new friends. They became comfortable in this new culture. They knew where to find food, where to find a good furniture maker, where to find pottery for cooking and pottery for decoration in the house.
They met to hear the teaching of the disciples and the Greek-speaking leaders appointed by the apostles to help the church’s distribution of food. They met to pray. They met to share a meal and have communion. They came to Jerusalem to visit and found a new home and a new life.
This was a dynamic, growing fellowship and then persecution broke out. The Jews became increasingly agitated at the growing number of followers of Jesus. The followers of Jesus began to be harassed and then they arrested one of the main leaders, Stephen, put him on trial and had him stoned to death.
This news horrified the community. If they had killed Stephen, who would be next? Each family talked about what they should do. Should they leave and go back to where they had lived before? Should they stay to support the other believers in Jerusalem? If they left to go back to their home country, where would they find the funds to make such a long trip?
But the terrible news about Stephen got worse. The Pharisee, Saul, who had stood as witness against Stephen, was now going from house to house, dragging off men and women followers of Jesus and putting them in jail.
There were eyewitnesses among the followers of Jesus who watched as the soldiers came with Saul to a home across the street and dragged the father and mother of one of the couples in the church off to jail. They had to rush to take care of the children who were left behind.
This happened to one family after another until a mass decision was made. In the middle of the night, essentials were packed up and families left. Not everyone left the same night or the next day, but within a few weeks or months, the Greek-speaking followers of Jesus had left Jerusalem.
Where could they go? It took time to save the money needed to make the trip from their home country to Jerusalem and there was not money to make that return trip. So they fled to the neighboring provinces of Judea and Samaria. Where they went was not as important as getting away from Saul and Jerusalem.
Was this persecution good news or bad news? It depends on your point of view.
On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.
When Luke wrote this account about twenty-five years after the events, he put it into historical perspective and this persecution was viewed by Luke as a positive development because it took the gospel and sent it out into the world, just as Jesus had told the disciples it would.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
The persecution had a positive effect because it helped the church to fulfill what Jesus wanted it to do, but I don’t think this was immediately obvious to those who were scattered. From the point of view of the believers in Jerusalem, this was a huge setback. One of their strongest leaders had been killed. Others were dragged into prison and the community they enjoyed was destroyed. They fled in all directions, some families here and some families there. What had been a large, growing community was now fractured and dispersed.
It is said there is strength in numbers and now that strength had been lost. They had lost access to the teaching and experiences of the eyewitnesses who had been with Jesus during his earthly ministry. They had lost access to the community structure that was encouraging them in their spiritual growth.
They were scattered and they despaired. Two or three or maybe even four families in a new town and who among them was going to teach from the Scriptures? Whoever it was could not teach as powerfully or as skillfully as Stephen or Phillip or the others. They no longer had the disciples who had been with Jesus to teach them or encourage them. They were alone and feeling overwhelmed by their inadequacies.
As we continue in Acts 8, we will read the story of Phillip and his evangelistic efforts in Samaria and Luke wrote that there was great joy as the gospel was proclaimed. But remember again that this is an account written some twenty-five years after the events and only select highlights are recorded. And even if Phillip had a powerful ministry, not everyone was scattered with Phillip. There were still small numbers of families in new communities who were feeling lost.
These small communities despaired but when the people in the community asked them where they had come from and why they had left, they told their new neighbors about Jesus. Some of those who heard received with joy the good news of Jesus and the church grew and spread, just as Jesus had predicted.
A network developed that once again linked the believers together. The apostles visited and encouraged the new communities of believers. Over time as new fellowships of believers were created, those who had fled Jerusalem were able to see the good news in what had been a terribly upsetting tragedy.
Our point of view changes with time. What seems tragedy to us can be seen more positively with the passage of time. I heard a wise man once say that God’s will is best seen in retrospect. In the moment it is often difficult to see how what is happening can fit into God’s plan. We believe by faith that it is, but when we look back several years later, we can often see how God was at work and how what happened fit into his plan.
At the time of this first persecution of the church, the followers of Christ thought this wave of persecution was a huge tragedy, a huge setback. With time, they were able to see this from God’s perspective as a great triumph.
This is how it is with us. When something happens, a country closes its borders to Christians or a constitution is created that ignores the historical Christian influence in the country or the justice system rules against Christian prayer in public functions or a Christian leader dies in the prime of life and ministry, we see a tragedy and a setback. Sometimes it is because God can creatively make good out of evil but sometimes what appears to be evil to us is really God’s plan to build his kingdom.
It all depends on your point of view and because we see things mostly from the point of view of this world with our limited lifespan of eighty or so years, we see very differently than those looking from the eternal perspective of heaven.
There is another example of this in Acts 8.
Seven men were appointed by the disciples to oversee the daily distribution of food and they picked men who were leaders of the Greek-speaking Jews.
They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism.
Of these seven, Luke focused on the ministries of Stephen and Philip when he wrote his history of the church.
If you had to choose, who would you rather be, Stephen or Philip?
Who was Stephen? The Bible does not say when he became a follower of Jesus. It might have been at Pentecost or some time after that, but when the Grecian Jews were asked to pick from among them seven men to lead their part of the church, Stephen was one who was picked.
This tells me that Stephen was an intelligent, talented leader. He understood the teaching of the apostles and was able to clearly articulate this himself. Stephen’s intelligence and leadership did not appear all of a sudden when he became a follower of Jesus so it is logical to infer that he had also been a leader in the synagogue before he became a follower of Jesus.
He most probably had a wife and children. He was the kind of man any church would be delighted to have as a leader and model for others.
Stephen played an important role in helping the followers of Jesus to see that Jesus had moved the worship of God beyond the temple and Torah, the law of Moses. Stephen took the teaching of Jesus and moved to a deeper understanding of it. Most followers of Jesus took the teaching of Jesus – Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days – to be a reference to his death and resurrection and nothing more. But Stephen saw that this was more than a metaphor. Stephen understood that Jesus had superceded the temple. He had replaced the temple. Stephen understood what the Hebrew believers were slow to understand and perhaps never understood. Later on when Peter went to the house of Cornelius, the Hebrew believers still did not understand that the temple had been superceded. When the Jerusalem council was convened twenty years later, they still did not understand. The Hebrew believers were tied to the temple and could not let go.
Stephen taught that the temple and law had been gifts from God, meant for good, but now they had found their fulfillment in Jesus and had been passed over. The Hebrew Jews were still tied to the temple but Stephen began the huge step away from the temple to a living faith not bound by buildings and rituals. Stephen began blazing a trail that Paul took to the Gentile world.
Because of the effectiveness of Stephen’s teaching and ministry, he drew large crowds and the Pharisees saw him as a critical enemy of the Temple and Torah. So they arrested him and in the prime of his life, in the prime of his ministry with many years of effective ministry to come, they put him on trial and put him to death.
His wife became a widow, his children were left without a father, the early followers of Jesus were deprived on one of their most effective leaders.
Who was Philip?
In the first persecution of the followers of Jesus, Philip was among those who fled Jerusalem. With his family, he went to Samaria and Luke tells us that:
Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ there. 6 When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said. 7 With shrieks, evil spirits came out of many, and many paralytics and cripples were healed. 8 So there was great joy in that city.
Philip was the first great evangelist in the history of the church. He was the Billy Graham and Luis Palau of the followers of Jesus – except that he had a ministry of healing and deliverance that accompanied his preaching.
Philip was led by the Spirit to walk on the road that led from Jerusalem to Gaza and there he met the Ethiopian eunuch who became a follower of Jesus. Philip then was transported back to Azotus. (I have been jealous for a long time of this experience. I hate traveling and would love to have God simply transport me from place to place.)
The next mention of Philip after this 8th chapter is some twenty years later when he provided lodging for Paul and Luke and the rest of their companions who were heading to Jerusalem. Here it is recorded in Acts 21 that he had four unmarried daughters who were prophetesses.
Tradition says he died in south-western Turkey as bishop of Tralles or at Hierapolis.
Philip died of old age after a long career of preaching, evangelizing, and a ministry of healing and deliverance.
Now who would you rather be, if you had to choose, Stephen or Philip?
It really depends on your point of view, doesn’t it?
Would you rather be stoned to death, or live to see your children grow up and see the church grow and expand?
Who had the most fulfilling life? Stephen had just a few short years in the prime of his live before his life was cut off. At the end of his life, he did not have a lifetime of experiences as a follower of Jesus to look back on. Philip, on the other hand, if they had made scrapbooks back then, would have had volumes of photos and notes and memories to comfort him as he lay on his bed dying.
Who was used by God most powerfully to grow the church?
It really depends on your point of view.
It was the death of Stephen that sent the church out into Judea and Samaria, as Jesus had wanted it to do. If Stephen had not died, how would that expansion have come? The Jews and Samaritans did not get along and what would have inspired the early followers of Jesus to take the gospel to people they did not really like, who were viewed as inferior religious beings.
Surely with God’s creativity, it would have happened anyway, somehow, but Stephen’s death sent the followers of Jesus out into the world.
When Saul was converted on the road to Damascus and began to try to understand what the resurrection of Jesus from the dead meant, he remembered the teaching of Stephen and that influenced him to move into an understanding that Jesus had come for Jews and Gentiles and for both, the temple and the law had been superceded. Paul’s letter to the Galatians is Stephen’s teaching taken further.
Stephen had an enormous influence on the early church.
So who would you rather be if you had to choose to live the life of Stephen or the life of Phillip?
Jim Elliot was a missionary to the Auca Indians in the jungles of Ecuador who along with four other men was killed in 1956 by the Auca Indians they came to help. He died at the age of 29. He was a dedicated, intelligent, gifted Christian man and yet his life was cut off before he was able to live up to the potential in his life.
Was his life a waste?
From our perspective, most of us would want to be Philip rather than Stephen or Jim Elliot. We want to live to see our children or nieces and nephews grow up.
But hear this truth: It does not matter how long we live, it matters how brightly we burn for Jesus while we live.
After Jim Elliot’s death, Elizabeth Elliot, his wife, wrote a story of his life titled, Shadow of the Almighty. In this book she revealed the writings in his diary and what he wrote inspired thousands and thousands of Christians, including Annie and myself, to live a live consumed with living for Jesus.
Listen to some of what he wrote.
God, I pray Thee, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.”
“I covenanted with the Father that He would do either of two things: either glorify Himself to the utmost in me or slay me. By His grace I shall not have His second best.”
Father, take my life, yea, my blood if Thou wilt, and consume it with Thine enveloping fire. I would not save it, for it is not mine to save. Have it Lord, have it all. Pour out my life as an oblation for that world. Blood is only of value as it flows before Thine altar.”
“God deliver me from the dread asbestos of ‘other things.’ Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be a flame for you.”
And finally this most famous of his quotes:
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
It does not matter how long we live, it matters how brightly we burn for Jesus while we live.
I recently finished a biography of the Fitzgerald/Kennedy family. Joseph Kennedy is known to those from Britain as the ambassador to England from the US in the years just before WWII. He and Rose were the parents of Jack Kennedy who was president of the US and was assassinated in 1963. They were the parents of Robert Kennedy who was assassinated while running for president just five years later.
Joseph Kennedy was a brilliant man. Everything he touched turned to gold. He graduated from Harvard in 1912 and although he came from a relatively middle-class family, he was one of the most prominent alumni of his class just ten years later, having made a lot of money in banking. He made a fortune in the stock market in the early twenties. In just nine months, he turned $24,000 into $650,000 in one stock deal. In just nine months he made more money than his father and grandfather made in their lifetimes. He made money in Hollywood in the film business. He made money in real estate. He made money every time he turned.
In 1960 he was worth $250,000,000. (That is 1 3/4 billion in today’s dollars.)
But he made money without any guilt of taking advantage of others. He participated in stock pools that inflated the value of a stock, attracting small, ordinary investors who bought the stock because it was rising, and then sold it, taking the money from the small investors who were left with nothing when the stock collapsed. He made money and used his power and influence to get what he wanted.
His genius was not so much that he made brilliant decisions on a day-to-day basis but that he was able to anticipate what was coming in the future and take advantage of it.
But he failed to see what was coming when he died. He spent no effort trying to figure out what would happen when his earthly life was over.
Who would you rather be, Joseph Kennedy or Jim Elliot?
It depends on your point of view.
Last week Tracy Troxel talked about living now in light of what will be the end. It makes all the difference in the world.
The book of Acts continues to be written. The growth of the church and our part in it are chapters in this ongoing book. I’m not sure what chapter we are on, perhaps chapter 29,375, but our stories are the continuation of this book.
How is your life portrayed in this chapter?
What challenges are you facing this week? How are you facing those challenges? If someone a couple hundred years from now were to read about this period of your life, what would they see? What would they say was your point of view?
Would they say you were living in a way that reflected your belief in life after death or would they say you were living as if this life was all there was?
How brightly is your life burning for God? In your pursuit of money needed to pay the rent and buy food and other necessities of life, are you willing to anything to get what you need? Or are you aware of the reality that you will stand one day before your creator and be held accountable for how you lived your life?
About what are you passionate?
What is the driving force in your life?
Do you want to live a long, comfortable life or a life lived brightly for God?
Paul faced a lot of challenges in his life. Listen to how what he was passionate about enabled him to face those challenges. (II Corinthians 4:16-18)
Therefore we do not lose heart.
Though outwardly we are wasting away,
yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
For our light and momentary troubles
are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
