Today's Word Radio

Brett Meador: If you kind of follow the Bible's narrative, faith and power... faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. And power comes by the power of the Holy Spirit. And Stephen's got both of those. He was full of faith and power.

Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador reminds believers God doesn't call on those who are qualified. He qualifies the ones he calls.

Brett Meador: You and I, even though we feel sort of outgunned intellectually, this is where you and I have to not depend on our own wisdom and knowledge. This is where we have to be full of faith and power by the Holy Spirit. That's kind of the key.

Guest (Male): In Acts chapter 6, while Stephen is preaching about Jesus, a group of men came against him by spreading lies and accusing him of sharing misinformation. As Pastor Brett Meador examines how truth is distorted, we learn how to combat such attacks by knowing what scripture actually says, and how we can be people full of faith and power just like Stephen in today's word.

Brett Meador: One of the things the Bible warns us about over and over is deception. And Satan, who is called the father of lies and is a deceiver. That's one of his names, as a deceiver. You see, we're introduced to a guy named Stephen here in our Bible story. Stephen's truly one of the heroes of the Bible. He doesn't have a giant story recorded in the Bible. It's really a single event that we read about, but it's impacting and it's important.

And there's some things before we read... I'm not going to read the whole story. It's going to take us a week or two to get through the story of Stephen. But I do want to kind of give you a snapshot of what gets him in a predicament. He's going to find himself in a big predicament, but it's going to have everything to do with the same kind of lies we see and deception that we see today. And it's something that we should be aware of.

In Stephen, who is this guy Stephen? Well, first of all, he's the first named member of the Hellenists that are going to be talked about here in Acts chapter 6. Now what's a Hellenist? It's a person who's been influenced by Hellenism, which is basically the Greek worldview. Now why is a guy who's possibly a Jew a Hellenist? Maybe he's not a Jew. Stephen's a Greek name. The word Stephanos... does anybody know what a Stephanos is? It's a crown. The diadem is a kingly crown. A Stephanos is like the Olympic wreath around your head if you won the victory.

We're going to see Stephen's name is appropriate as he's going to win the victory. Some people might say, no, he lost. But if you know the whole story, he actually won. It's kind of cool. But Stephanos, it's a Greek name. And most believe he was sort of a part of the cultural diversity of the church, which Jesus mandated, if you remember, to preach to all nations in Acts chapter 1 verse 8.

Stephen is also the first non-apostle who's going to now stand before the Sanhedrin and defend the Christian faith. That's kind of important. We're going to see that. He was also a deacon in the church. But you might find yourself in a similar spot someday of Stephen. Who knows? The church has been persecuted through the centuries all around the world. We've been insulated from that as American Christians for the last couple hundred years.

But who knows? So this is the story. We pick it up here in verse 8 of chapter 6 here in the book of Acts. Acts chapter 6 verse 8. It says, "And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people."

"Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which are called the synagogue of the libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and them of Cilicia, and of Asia, disputing with Stephen. And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake. Then they suborned men, which said, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God.

And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him to the council, and set up false witnesses which said, this man ceases not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place, and the law: For we have heard him say, that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us. And all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel."

What a story. Can you imagine Stephen? What's going on? He's disputing, debating with all these guys from really all over the world, the known world. Parts of Northern Africa and Asia Minor. Like he's just there and he's disputing, debating. But they don't know what to say. Like he's out-debated them. That's what it says verse 10. They were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake.

So what does the other side do when you're trying to argue or debate or make a compelling case? What does the other side do when they don't have a good argument? They start attacking character and they make lies and they start calling people names. And that's exactly what's going on here with Stephen. Stephen's just been speaking truth.

And we also know the people in the church love Stephen. That's why they chose him to be one of the seven deacons in the early church. But these guys are still saying, he speaks against Moses and the law. He said he was going to tear down the temple. And so Stephen, defending himself very well and soundly, they resort to lies and name-calling and all this stuff.

That's what happens. Don't be shocked when people do that to you. Don't be surprised if you're actually saying something that makes a difference as a Christian. Don't be surprised if people take your words and will twist them and make them go a different direction. That's just human nature. That's what we're seeing today in our culture, in our politics for sure. When people speak lies against you, when Satan, the author of lies, is wanting to put you down, the key is to just be patient. The Lord's going to work all that out.

You say, well, Brett, I know the end of this story. It doesn't work out for Stephen. But it kind of does, and I'll show you why. So they look over at Stephen after all the lies, and yet there he is, sitting there with the face of an angel? What is that? The answer: I have no idea. Was he glowing? I think maybe, because in the next part of the story we're going to see his face shining and glowing. I think the glow part started there as they were accusing him in the courtroom of the Sanhedrin.

They're all yelling and screaming and "Ah, he's this and he's that! He hates God and he hates Moses' law and he said he's going to tear down the temple and talking about this Jesus of Nazareth!" And then they look over at him and there he is just smiling, glowing. I think that's what the face of the... he had innocence, maybe. He had a bright shininess about him. He wasn't sitting there scowling.

See, that's where we have to be careful in this modern day. Our temptation is to scowl back and to start bashing back. In fact, I've seen where conservatives have made up their own lies to try to speak against the other side. Like human nature is just tit for tat. If you lie against me and say horrible things, then we're going to lie about you and say horrible things. And that's not the Christian way.

I love Stephen here. He's artfully, powerfully defending his faith so that they can't say anything against it. And then they resort to the lies and stuff. So what does he do? He now is silent and his face is glowing. That kind of reminds me of someone else. You know, Jesus could have blown them away when they accused him. He could have intellectually, philosophically wiped the floor with them.

But once they started spewing vitriol, Jesus just was silent and didn't defend himself. That's kind of interesting. And Stephen is sort of taking a note from that chapter and what have you. Now, by the way, who are these guys, the libertines talked about here in verse 9? Some people believe Stephen was one of them. He was a libertine. You say, what's a libertine? A Hellenistic Jew. And the reason they were called libertines is because they were freed from slavery... liberty.

And they were freed from probably slavery of Rome. So they were Jews taken into slavery by the Romans and then the Romans let them loose or let them go and they were called libertines. But when they were in Rome, when they were under slavery, they picked up Hellenistic worldviews and then came back. Not exactly practicing Jews, but practicing libertine-ism, that is they had more of a Hellenistic view.

So some people, they believe that's who Stephen was. He was probably one of them who actually accepted Christ and became a Christian. So he's arguing with his own people, the libertines. We'll talk more about them probably as we get into the story. But there's some things here that we see that I want you to note. Where did Stephen get his power, his strength? What made him so able to confound these people who were debating him?

There's some noteworthy things and it's in verse 8 and verse 10. The first thing is, verse 8 it says he was full of faith and power. Those are two important things. If you're going to go and talk about Jesus and shine the light into the dark world that's going to hate you and despise you and level false accusations against you, make sure you're doing it not by your own might or your own power, but by the power of the Lord, by the power of the spirit. See, full of faith, full of power. Question: Quiz time. As a Christian, where do you get faith?

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Faith, but also power. Where do you get power? The Holy Spirit. And by the way, those two are linked. If you said the Holy Spirit on the first one, you're actually technically correct. It's faith and power. But if you kind of follow the Bible's narrative, faith and power... faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word, power by the Holy Spirit through faith. That's kind of the key.

So where does it say faith comes by hearing and hearing? That's Romans 10:17. And then remember John 14:26. Jesus said, "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things." And I love this one, "bring those things to your remembrance, whatsoever things I have said unto you." See, if you're studying the word and learning from the Bible, the Holy Spirit will help lock those things into your mind.

And you know what? Even if you forget them, the Holy Spirit will sort of get the old Rolodex flipping in your mind and start finding... oh yeah! And when does the Holy Spirit pop those scriptures back in your mind? When you most need them. How many of you guys have ever experienced that where the Holy Spirit just reminded you of something that you totally forgot? It's kind of cool because it feels very supernatural when you're talking to somebody and you're like, man I wish I could remember that scripture and all of a sudden ding! It's like, oh thank you, Lord. I forgot that I even knew that scripture. That's happened to me a lot of times.

Now, what were they debating about here in this? I just want to show you that they're kind of throwing the same arguments against Stephen as they did Jesus. And they were false arguments. Remember they said Jesus is going to tear down the temple and Jesus is against the law of Moses. Question: Was Jesus against the law of Moses? No. Did Jesus break the law of Moses? No.

Did Jesus break the laws of men? Yes, the dumb traditions that they added to laws of Moses. But the lie was he breaks the law of Moses. No, he didn't. He broke your dumb traditional laws that you added to the law. Jesus was a fulfiller of the law, not a breaker of the law. And so they got these guys to lie. In fact, they're hired liars. Does that sound familiar?

There's a word here in the King James that's kind of interesting. It's the strange word "suborned." It says verse 11, "Then they suborned men." The word suborned means they instigated bribery to induce unlawful or secret false witness. They did that to Jesus. Remember they hired sons of Belial, which are liars basically, to make up stories. And it's the same stories they made up with Jesus.

They said Jesus said he's going to destroy the temple. And did Jesus say he was going to destroy the temple? No. What did Jesus say? Let's just go back and remember that for a second. John chapter 2 verse 18. "Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body when therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them, and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had said." The accusation was basically that Jesus was going to destroy the temple. He didn't say that.

Even on face value, he said, "If you destroy the temple, I will raise it up in three days." He's not talking about himself destroying the temple. And then not only was he not talking about the literal temple, he was talking about the temple of his body. Paul said, "What? Don't you know that your body is a temple to the Holy Ghost?" That's what Jesus was referring to. But they took it out of context and they twisted his words and railed against him and lied.

And it would eventually be the evidence used to crucify him on the cross. That's human nature. That's what we see happening today. That's what's going to happen in the future. In fact, in the end times, it's going to get worse. Deceit, deception, lies against God's people. That's going to get worse and worse, even culminating in the tribulation period when there's going to be mass deception the Bible says during this tribulation period.

So, accusation basically number one is that Jesus was going to destroy the temple. Accusation number two, that he was going to change the customs and the laws that Moses gave. And that's what they were saying about Stephen. But it's funny how the world will do the same kinds of criticisms out of context to Christianity today. What does the world say today about Christianity?

You know, I remember I had a college professor that said, "Well, God's schizophrenic." Boy, someday, dude, you're going to stand before God and have to answer for saying that. Is God schizophrenic? This was my professor in Southern Oregon University's argument. He said, "One minute in the Bible, God's saying take your children out if they're disobedient and stone them to death with stones. And then the next minute the Bible's saying love your children and fathers, don't provoke your children to anger. Which one is it? God is schizophrenic," he said.

Now, this is the same sort of argument we hear all the time from the world. If you put a little twist on scripture, do you know what you end up with? Twisted scripture. You don't want to do that. That's a bad idea. But that's what the world does. In the same way that we see all the time today in our politics and in our world, we see that kind of twisting of things that were true or partially true, but just a little twist on it and they'll lie and make lies out of it.

So what does the Bible actually say? Yes, it's part of the Old Testament law of Moses. And if your child was disobedient, they were in the law told the righteous thing to do would be to take your child out and be stoned to death. Now, good news. There's no record or account of Jews doing that actually. And that's because they were not keepers of the law. In fact, the Jews broke the law all the time.

Did you know, if you're a Bible student, you actually realize that's the whole point of the law? The point of the law is to say, "Well, if you want to live perfectly righteous without any sin or error in your life, you got to keep the law." And then the Bible says, "Good luck doing that because not anybody in the world is ever going to be able to do that." That's the point. And even the Sermon on the Mount is the same thing.

Jesus gives this heavy thing that makes the law look even easy compared to it. Remember, Jesus said, "The law says thou shalt not commit adultery, but I say to you if you're a man and you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you're guilty of adultery right now." And Jesus puts even a higher... like, good luck being saved then. Who gets to go to heaven?

But then Jesus, he doesn't give the answer to the Sermon on the Mount. He leaves everybody kind of hanging because Jesus is the answer to the Sermon on the Mount. This is the whole point. And so this idea, Jesus is not saying, good luck trying to be good enough to go to heaven. He's going to say, "I am the way to heaven. I'm the truth, I'm the life. No man comes to the Father but by me." Not by keeping the law, not by being good enough.

So when you realize the purpose of that scripture, you know, that you're going to take your child... by the way, how many of us would have survived that if people really practiced that? I wouldn't have lasted until one and a half. I'd have been dead early, man. And many of you would have died early too if we kept that law. But that's the point. So people that misquote the Bible or don't understand the purpose of that sentence, they're missing the love of Christ and the goodness, and it's sad how people twist those things.

You know, we could talk about a bazillion things. I remember in college they said the Bible condones slavery. And not every 18-year-old in college can say, "No it doesn't." It is a little tricky, I'll admit, when it comes to slavery. God never condoned slavery. But what he does do is seeks to regulate slavery. And if you follow the biblical model, you'll actually be shocked if you do it the way God says when it comes to things like slavery.

Slavery eventually gets abolished altogether. Like God was always pointing toward freeing the slave. Let's go back to ancient times. Let's say you're a soldier and you just happen to say, "Oh, you're the soldier for the Amalekites." And the Amalekites had a thing for killing Jews. They loved killing Jews. So they were constantly attacking the Jews. But the Lord would constantly give the Jews victory over the Amalekites because they were God's people. So what happened was you read the Old Testament, the Amalekites kept attacking.

But what do you do if you're Israel and this group of people just keep attacking you? You kind of got a couple options after you win a battle. What do you do? You kind of have to deal with your enemies, especially the ones that just keep coming over and over again. There's a point where you either kill them all or you enslave them. Well, Brett, I think you should put them in prison. They didn't have prisons back then. Remember that.

Do you remember when Goliath challenged... the Philistines challenged the Jews and said, "If our champion wins, then you'll be our slaves, and if your champion wins, then we'll be your slaves." That's the way things worked in those days. That's why slavery's been every nation, every people group. There's been slaves all over history. But God in his word says, "Guess what? I understand human nature and sin and all that's going to bring slavery about."

But God, if you read his word carefully, it eventually is where God says, "But you need to let those slaves go and free them." The regulation is kind of the deal. But it's funny how the world will take the twist of scripture, "See, there's a slave in the Bible and the Lord says when you have slaves, here's what you're supposed to do." They deem that as God condoning slavery. Not so.

There's a million of these. God is anti-woman. You know, like they love to quote stuff like 1 Corinthians 14:34, "Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted for them to speak." Some of you ladies are like, "Yeah, that is... hey, God hates women!" Well, you got to understand what's going on there. If you kind of look at the context, the Bible is basically saying God says I'm divvying out the duties and God's giving out the responsibilities.

And for some reason, God says I want the men to be the one teaching the word, the scriptures in the congregation. God says that's... I want the men doing that job. There's a bunch of other roles and amazing things women can do. God just says I want the men teaching. It's not hating women. If you actually do a careful read of the Bible, part of that is because the Lord says I want to give women a place of honor.

Now, it's in our little hairbrain minds we figure the guy that's yakking at the front, that's the place of honor. But that's not really what the Bible says. In fact, you know, there's scriptures like 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 7 says, "Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to your wife, according to knowledge, giving honor to the wife." The Bible actually honors women if you read it carefully and puts women in a place of great esteem.

We could go on and on about, you know, this what the Bible says and how people like to put a twist on it. But the idea is, you know, the law kills and people... that's one of the biggest mistakes they make is they take the law. What was the purpose of the law? You know, it's interesting because that's one of the things they're saying of Stephen. Stephen is against the law. He's speaking that the law is no good.

Is that what Stephen was saying? Stephen, Jesus, Paul never dissed the law. They never did. But they're actually articulating what the purpose of the law was. And let me just remind you from Galatians, this is probably the most definitive description. This is Galatians 3:21. It says, "Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.

But the scripture hath concluded all under... we're all breakers of the law, that the promise of faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should after ward be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified... not by keeping the law, but justified by faith.

After that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For you are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador providing the scriptural context for how Jesus came not to discard the law, but to fulfill the law, as found in today's word. And Pastor Brett has much more to share from the encounter of Stephen in Acts chapter 5 next time. I also invite you to stay right there as Pastor Brett will join me here in a moment. But first, Today's Word is the radio ministry of Athey Creek Church, just south of Portland, Oregon, where Pastor Brett Meador's the senior pastor.

We invite you to find out more by going to todayswordradio.com. If you missed any portion of this study, you'll find all of Pastor Brett's messages online at todayswordradio.com. All right, Pastor Brett has joined me now. Brett, I know you've been the pastor at Athey Creek Church since 1996, so this is making 30 years for you.

Brett Meador: Yeah.

Guest (Male): And this church has grown from a small group meeting at a middle school to now being one of the largest churches in the Pacific Northwest. What do you attribute that growth to?

Brett Meador: Well, Kurt, I really think that it's because the pastor is so handsome. No, actually quite the opposite. No, I really believe that it's attributed to people are hungry for the word of God. People have told me, Kurt, that I have a radio face. You'll appreciate that. But actually, as it turns out, people are hungry for the word of God and I think that's what's drawing people is they're not as interested in my opinions or me trying to talk about even wonderful topical type things. But what does the Bible really say? And we've just found people are really spiritually starving for that.

Guest (Male): Oh, that is true. The Bible is so powerful. Thank you, Pastor Brett. Well, if you'd like more information about Athey Creek Church, Today's Word, or Pastor Brett Meador, just go to todayswordradio.com. On our site, you'll also find more information about our main Athey Creek campus in West Linn, Oregon, or our other campuses around the Portland area.

For more information, go to todayswordradio.com and click on the link locations. Again, todayswordradio.com and click the link locations. Well, that's all the time we have. Next time, Pastor Brett will share how Stephen faced continued opposition, yet that didn't stop him from sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Today's Word with Pastor Brett Meador is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in West Linn, Oregon.