Acts 6:8-15--Stephen Is Seized

Acts 6:8-15
English Standard Version
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Stephen Is Seized
8 And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. 9 Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen. 10 But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking. 11 Then they secretly instigated men who said, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” 12 And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council, 13 and they set up false witnesses who said, “This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, 14 for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.” 15 And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.

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Luke is usually good about listing names in an order where the first one or two names in the list are ones that we'll be seeing come up later in the story and it is a bit of a hint to "keep your eyes on this one."  Stephen's name was the first among the deacons chosen by the people, so it should not surprise us that the next part of the book of Acts is about Stephen.

We have already been told that Stephen is full of the Holy Spirit.  Now we are told that he is also full of grace and power and that he was doing great signs and wonders among the people.  Remember that signs were important to the Jews to validate any new revelation that came from God to His prophets, so God is allowing Stephen to do these signs and wonders to point the Jews to the fact that this message--the gospel of Jesus Christ--is a message from God and is His revelation to His people.

However, there was a dispute that arose between a synagogue of mostly Proselytes (Gentiles who had converted to Judaism) who were Cyrenians, Alexandrians, Cilicians, and Asians.  They rose up to disrupt Stephen and the message he was speaking, and in today's vernacular, I think it is safe to say that they had the intent of "cancelling" him.  They tried first to publicly argue with him, but Stephen being full of the wisdom given by the Holy Spirit and having the Spirit's words in his mouth answered all their objections so that they were silenced.

They were not content to end things here as they sought to bring trumped up charges against Stephen, just like the Jews had done against Jesus.  In fact, they end bringing the same charge of blasphemy against Stephen that ended up being brought against Jesus, however, their argument is different here as they claim that Stephen is trying to teach people to break the Law--this is what they mean when they say that he was speaking words against Moses and God.  These men then stirred up the leaders and the people to a point where they seized Stephen to have him arrested brought before the Council, that is the Sanhedrin, for trial.  Like with Jesus, there are false witnesses brought forth, but this time they had their ducks in a row and got the witnesses to get their stories straight ahead of time so that they would not have the same issue they had with Jesus that the witnesses wouldn't agree with each other about any of the facts.  The two charges that they falsely brought against Stephen were:
1) He spoke blasphemy against the Temple because they claimed he said that Jesus said He would destroy the Temple (this is one of the same charges that was leveled against Jesus)
2) He spoke blasphemy against the Law of Moses because they claimed he said that Jesus would change the customs of the Law of Moses (again, a similar charge was brought against Jesus)

Then the Council looked upon him and they saw that face was like that of an angel (reflecting the glory of God).  We don't see many other people in the Bible who this happened to.  One of them is Moses after he met with God on Mount Sinai to receive the Law, and the people could not stand to look at him when he came down off the mountain and asked him to put a veil over his face.  The same glory shown on his face every time that he met with the LORD in the Tent of Meeting (the Tabernacle).  See Exodus 34:29-35 for this reference.  We see Jesus transfigured and that His clothing became as white as light or snow, but I don't recall any other places where someone's face showed the glory of God save Moses and Stephen, so the connection should have been obvious to the Jews.

This is the end of this particular passage, but not the end of the story.  Next time we'll see Stephen's speech that he gives, as it is a history of the Jews from Abraham to Jesus.  The theme will be that the Jews have always been a rebellious, stubborn and stiff-necked people who have resisted the Holy Spirit.  They are not going to take too kindly to that and they will stone him to death at the end of chapter 7 and Stephen will be counted as the first Christian martyr.  It will be here at this execution that we'll be introduced to another main character in the book of Acts--Saul of Tarsus who many of you know better as Paul the apostle.  At this point, he is just a Pharisee under the training of Gamaliel who just spoke in the Council recently.  This part of the book of Acts is a transition point from focusing on Jerusalem to starting to focus on Judean and Samaria and ultimately our focus will shift to the gospel going to the uttermost parts of the earth.