Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 6:8-15 (October 14, 2025)

October 14, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Acts 6:8-15

Good morning in the Name, and by the Power and Love, of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I would like to ask for your prayers for my sleep patterns. Of late I have been having many dreams, none of them frightening, but they cause me to talk in my sleep, and thrash around. Last night I woke up to having gone over my side guard and was almost on the floor. Thankfully, I was able to get back up without a fall. I don't feel stressed before bed, but this pattern started on our vacation to Colorado last week. I thank God for your prayers, and I am certainly praying about this too. Good news about the unsheltered situation at the church. I have been there every morning before nine, afternoons after school at 3:45PM, and at night after sunset at about 7PM. Everything has been quiet over the last two days. Our property chairperson has ordered a fence to be erected on the north side of the parish hall which will only open from the inside as an emergency exit. We are hopeful that this will take care of anyone hiding for the night along the Parish Hall north wall.

Today's study on Acts begins a long section about Stephen. We may already be familiar with part of his story, but in the content of this chapter and the next we are able to read a complete telling of how Stephen got to the place of being stoned at the hands of the Sanhedrin and Saul.  We have just finished a section on the growth of problems over the equal sharing of support for the less fortunate in the new Christian community. The answer was to bring on board men of strong character and strong faith to administer that distribution. It is in the process of this taking place that Stephen, who is an extraordinary person of faith and courage, whose life is guided by his hope in Christ, and the LORD'S call on his life to serve in the capacity of a leader by word and deed.  What you and I know about his end is that he was stoned for the distribution of food on the Sabbath, which was a deep offense to the Jews who were in power as leaders in the Temple. However, in this reading today, and in the coming readings for the next couple of weeks, we discover that there was far more involved that that simplistic explanation about his death. We start at the beginning of Stephen's story in our text for today.

The very first things that we find out from Luke are about Stephen's character and faith. To say that his work was Holy on behalf of Christ's kingdom seems hardly enough. Stephen is the man who we would all like to get to know, a man to whom we could turn in any circumstance in our lives, no matter how difficult or troubling it might be. Though miracles of healing are not specifically mentioned, it seems clear that Stephen was capable of, and willing to do, such miracles since he was filled with the LORD'S Grace and Power. He was just the right man to take care of the aid distribution each week, and he would be the one who would be certain that no one was being treated with distain or being shorted on the help they received. How wonderful this all was, and to know Stephen was a great and special blessing. But then the naysayers came on the scene. They are from a wide variety of places, nearly as many as are mentioned in Acts 2. and Pentecost. These men could find no way to intervene in Stephen's grace filled ministry. Instead, they plotted against Stephen, telling lies about the things that Stephen had said. They said that he uttered blasphemous words against Moses and God, and they became witnesses through these lies before the Sanhedrin, telling those in authority that Stephen constantly said that Jesus would act to destroy their power (which for the Sanhedrin members was their wealth, and source of power in the Temple).  Some things never seem to change, the uber wealthy tend to think that their money and resources grant them privilege over everyone else. The same thing was true in Jerusalem in Stephen's time in the new Christian church too. So here we are in this passage today. Another trial before the most powerful men in Jerusalem. But at the end of our passage today, we discover that Stephen appears to not be troubled by the trial. Despite the lies, the anger, and the threats, this passage ends by telling us about the countenance of Stephen. As they looked on him with derision, they only saw the face of a man which looked as if he held the countenance of an angel. The confidence of Stephen's faith, and his trust in Jesus kept him calm and filled with the blessing of the Spirit's presence. This must have been a real surprise to the powerful men who were gathered there. They were accustomed to people quaking in their boots when they were called up before them, but this was not Stephen in any way. I know that this ending to this passage feels incomplete, but there is so much more as the revelation of God's compassion and frustration gets revealed by Stephen as he witnesses on behalf of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! This is what's coming next, as Stephen offers a telling of the Jews from the time of Abraham until their present time in their own relationship with God, and of course, what they had done to the Messiah Himself. There are times in the lives of the faithful people in Christ, when the only true thing to do is to once again tell the truth of God's Will, and Love, even when it is rejected by those who hear it, who are willing to come in anger as so many have done, filled with wrath and no understanding of God's Love for them.  So, God sends those who can repeat and repeat this message, with the expectation that the Spirit's work is still being done, no matter the outcome of that anger and hostility towards those who have the courage to live immersed in God's truth for His Children.

As for me and my house, we will love the LORD and cherish His only begotten Son every day of our lives!

With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim