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About Jesus Steve Sweetman This Section - Chapters 6 The Choosing Of The Seven (ch. 6:1 - 7)
Verse
1 of chapter 6 says that the number of “disciples” were increasing.
This is the first mention of the word “disciple” by Luke.
The word “disciple” simply means “one who is a learner”, or
“one who is learning, as in a student”.
Luke
mentions 2 types of Jewish Christians in this verse.
The Grecian Jewish Christians were Jewish people who had been
scattered throughout all of the The
point that Luke makes concerning these two groups was that the former were
complaining against the latter. The
Grecians felt that their widows were being overlooked in the daily
distribution of food. So
in order to rectify this problem “the 12 gathered all of the disciples
together and said, ‘it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry
of the Word of God in order to wait on tables.”
As we saw in chapters 4 and 5, people brought money to the apostles
and they would distribute this to those in need.
Well it became clear to the apostles that they did not have enough
time to administrate food and preach the gospel at the same time. It
was at this point we see what you might call “and evolutionary change”
in the infant church. The
change is seen in verse 3 which says,
“brother, choose 7 men among you who are known to be full of the Spirit
and wisdom, we will turn this responsibility over to them…”
There
are a few things to note at this point.
The believers would choose 7 men.
Why 7? We don’t know
for sure, but maybe it was because 7 seems to be the number of perfection,
or the number for God in Jewish culture.
We
need to note that the disciples did not
choose these men. It
was the church who made this choice Also,
it appears that the 12 apostles had to have discussed this matter among
themselves before presenting their plan to the church.
The adoption of this plan “appears to be a joint decision”
between the 12 . If this is
true, we see “plurality of leadership” in action in the early church.
Just how the believers chose these seven men we don’t know either.
Was it a vote? Was
there lots of discussion? We
do not know any of these facts, only that they chose 7 men who were filled
with the Spirit and wisdom. One
question that you might want to ask is, “how did the people know that
the men they were choosing were actually filled with the Spirit.
Obviously their lives had to show this to be the case, but what
specific things were seen, we don't know for sure. There
were 2 qualities that had to be found in the men they chose that were
specified by the apostles. These
men had to be filled with the Holy Spirit and had to have a measure of
wisdom. So even doing manual
tasks, such as administrating food distribution, one had to be filled with
the Spirit, as well as being wise. I
wonder, if this were to be a qualifications for churches today, how many
people might actually be chosen to do church work.
We'd probably have to redefine what being filled with the Spirit
means. We'd have to give
it some lesser meaning. Another
thing to note is that if these 7 men were known to be filled with the
Spirit, then it is obvious that not all of the Christians were filled with
the Spirit like them. This is
an interesting thought, and might suggest that all believers were not
filled with the Spirit. If all
of the believing men were equally filled with the Spirit, then the
apostles would not have had to make this a condition for the job. Some
have called these 7 men “deacons”, and perhaps they were.
Yet I think the job of deacons was not yet fully articulated at
this point. There was a need
among the believers and someone had to fill that need.
I do believe that the choosing of these men led to the ministry
that was “later” called deacons. I
call the choosing of these men an “evolutionary” event, because this
was not something that was previously planned out.
The apostles were
responding to a real need, thus the church structure evolved into
something a little different than it was.
Before this point, you had the 12 apostles and the new believers.
Now you have the 12 apostles, 7 administrators, and then the
believers. But the important
point to be made is that the addition of these men was in direct response
to a need. The 12 did not sit
down some day to draw up plans to change the structure of the church.
Besides, I really don’t believe that the 12 thought in terms of church
structure. You can tell by this event that their thoughts were on
preaching the gospel, not formulating church structure. Verse
5 tells us that “this proposal pleased the whole group” so they chose
Stephen, Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas from We
know nothing about these 7 men except for Stephen and Philip.
We learn about Stephen and his death in the rest of this chapter.
Luke says that he was “full of faith and the Holy Spirit”.(ch. 6:5)
All of these men were supposed to be filled with the Spirit, yet as
Luke names these men, he makes special mention that Stephen was filled
with the Spirit. To me this
suggests that even though all 7 were filled with the Spirit, Stephen might
have been more filled with the Spirit.
This in turn tells me that there are clearly different degrees of
being filled with the Spirit. To
me, Stephen seemed more filled with the Spirit, because Luke
specifically points Stephen out as being filled with the Spirit,
over and above the rest. On
the other hand, Luke might have mentioned this because it was an
introduction to the life of Stephen and what would come next in the
narrative. I
think life itself tells us that some are more filled with the Holy Spirit
than others, which in my thinking can be seen in this case.
Once
the 7 men were chosen, maybe by a vote, or some show of acceptance, they
were presented to the apostles. Then
the apostles laid their hands on them and prayed for them.
As a result the apostles got back to preaching, resulting in even
more people being added to the church, including some influential
priests. Verse
8 begins the short story of Stephen. Luke
says that he was “full of grace and power”.
Just a few verses earlier he said that Stephen was full of faith
and the Holy Spirit. So it is
quite clear that Stephen was living in the power of the Spirit as the
apostles were. He performed
great miracles Luke says. On
one occasion certain Jews began to argue with Stephen, “but they could
not stand against his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke”. (ch. 6:10)
Clearly Stephen was a powerful Christian.
Although his new job in the church was to be an administrator he
seemed to also be called to be a preacher of the gospel since that is what
he was doing on this occasion. Whether
he was actively engaging a large crowd, or simply in a personal discussion
with these Jews is not known. We
do know that he was sharing his faith. Verse
12 tells us that these Jews stirred up others, including certain elders
and teachers of the Law. They
could not win their argument with Stephen so they decided to make it rough
on him by blowing this argument up into unreasonable proportion.
By agitating many other Jews, things got so bad that “they seized
Stephen and brought him to the Sanhedrin”.
The
same men “brought false witnesses” to them to testify against Stephen
in the gathering of the Sanhedrin. These
witnesses claimed that Stephen “never stops speaking against this holy
place and against the law. For
we had heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place
and change the customs Moses handed down to us”.
(ch. 6:13-14) The
question that I ask from this verse is,
“just what was the lie that these witnesses were setting forth
against Stephen”? Was he
indeed speaking against the The
preachers of the gospel in those days were beginning to understand the new
identity of the people of God, and their relationship to the Law and the Luke
tells us in verse 15 that after Stephen’s accusers made their statement,
all in the Sanhedrin looked towards Stephen to see his response.
When they saw him his face shown like an angel.
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