X Chapter 6. The passage that has been given to me is from X Chapter 6 verses 9 to 15. 9 to 15. We have just read the whole passage. The whole chapter there and then the passage is given. That's verses 9 to 15. You'll find that in verses 9 to 15, uh, concerns, uh, Stephen. Uh, Stephen, the one of the seven deacons, the one that's been chosen by the apostles and the Jews at that time, the believers at that time, the seven people full of faith and Holy Ghost, choose them. For example, in verse 9 there, in verse 9 regarding this, There are certain people before that. You have these seven men from verse three, honest men, honest report, honest people, full of the Holy Ghost, meaning full of the Holy Ghost that all of us have the Holy Ghost. The meaning of full of the Holy Ghost is that the Holy Ghost has full control of them. They submit themselves. to God the Holy Ghost who indwells them. Each one of us who are believers have the Holy Ghost indwells us. And so how much we allow the Holy Ghost to control us will determine whether the measure of the fullness of the Holy Ghost in us. If we fully submit to the Holy Ghost in our life, then the phrase says, full of the Holy Ghost applies. So in this case here, you have these seven chickens. The first one is Stephen here. He's full of faith. The faith here is the objective faith. Faith in believing the Word of God and all that God has taught in his, his word and you believe in it. Like many of us here, if not all of us who are Christians, when you read the Bible and then we see that many things are said in the Bible, we believe it and that is our faith and we believe it. So, so Stephen was full of faith and full of the Holy Ghost. And you can see these seven deacons, they were called upon to serve tables. The apostles are serving a ministry, a minister, the Word of God, preach and teach. But serving tables, no one. There are very few people because the Grecian, the believers who are Greek speaking, or especially Jews who are Greek-speaking and Hebrew-speaking Jews, they have certain problems there. The Greek-speaking Jews have been sidelined, and they murmur and complain to the apostles, and that's how the apostles have appointed these seven people to look into this matter. And so at the end of this chapter, you'll find that Stephen is the leader of this ... seems his name was mentioned first. It looks like he's the leader of these Deacons and he ... the Jews at that time. Now this apart from the Jews, the Jews in Jerusalem at that time, they have rejected Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, as the Anointed One. They don't believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. And here you have Stephen who believed in Jesus Christ as the Messiah. And so when he preaches, they all hate him. They don't like him. They want to remove him. And so they dispute, have a dispute with him. So in, in verse 9 it says, in verse 9 it says that Stephen had dispute with him. and these Jews not from Jerusalem and also from the other neighboring states. They're also from the Cilicia and they're also from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and Asia. And then from a synagogue, there are many synagogues there. How Jews, whenever there are 10 Jews, believing Jews, they all can form a synagogue. And so you have all these synagogues. And those, there are some synagogues that believe, the synagogues called the Libertines. who believe that they are free to do anything. And that's why they call the synagogue a libertine. So these are Jews. And they don't like Stephen. And they want to remove Stephen. And they complain. And so it seems that nothing was done to remove Stephen. And what did they do? And so these Jews, supposed to be believing Jews, they suborned men. Suborned means they bribed people. They bribed people to do the wrong thing. To bribe people to do the wrong thing. In other words, they bribed people to say write them to say that Stephen has broken or blasphemed Moses. That means break the law that Moses given and also blasphemed God. That means Stephen has preached against the temple of God. So the Jews or They take a high regard for the Lord of God. And how to remove Stephen? To charge him for this. To say that Stephen has preached and taught things that they should not and in that case has blasphemed the Lord of Moses. And so you hurt the other Jews because they think very highly of Moses. So Stephen has blasphemed and teached against Moses. Therefore, he should die. You should destroy him. On top of that, in addition, he has blasphemed against God's temple. He said that Stephen has preached that the temple will be destroyed, that Jesus of Nazareth say that the temple will be destroyed. And in three days, we'll build it up to destroy the temple. The Jews at that time were looking at the temple. The temple is where the tabernacle is, where the presence of God is. And to say that they destroyed the temple, that means you are blaspheming against God. And so you must put to death. So when you blaspheme or you say blasphemous words against the law of Moses and against God, the temple of God in Jerusalem, your penalty is death. And they caught Stephen and they brought him. to the Sanhedrin. That means the religious leaders who are the authority of the temple. So Stephen is arrested and brought to the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin here is the council. It says there they brought him to the council in verse 12. The council, that is the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders. where you have the high priest and then other religious, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the scribes. So these are the religious leaders. And they thumb up these two charges against Stephen. And now Stephen has to answer how to defend himself. So first of all, in life, we sometimes face accusations by people, by even fellow Christians also. They do. And some of these accusations could be lies or not truth. If they are truth, okay. The truth will itself reveal itself. The truth is the truth. But when it is a lie, it is difficult. When the person still insists and press on and stubbornly hold on to that lie and always accuse you, how are you to defend? So I pray that our study of this passage can help us. Now the defense of, uh, of Stephen in the face of such accusations in blaspheming, blaspheming Moses and God is found all in Chapter 7. That is maybe for later on someone will preach on that. But if you look at Chapter 7 very carefully, you see how Stephen, how graciously he defended himself. In such accusations, when you have such accusations, one of the ways to do is to give a chronological answer. to the accusations. How did the accusation come about? How did this person who charged another person of this wrong, to give an analogy of a history of that particular accusation? That's what Stephen did. I talk about the blaspheme against Moses and he gave a chronicle study of how the Jews got the law of Moses. And so it's such an accusation against us, such lies against us. Whatever it is, we examine the matter and then we try to give a chronological history or how did it come or how did he come to have this kind of thing? And in this way, we can disprove his lies. And so Stephen did that. It tackled the accusation right on and gave them a historical history of that matter. In our case, when we have accusation against us, we look into the matter seriously, carefully, and gave a chronology or how the thing built up to what they concluded in. So in that way we can find out that their conclusion is wrong just as Stephen should. That the people who say that he has blasphemed against Moses were wrong. Their conclusion were wrong. Yes. So there's one way that when people accuse us, make an accusation against us personally, we listen first. What is the matter? What is the content of that accusation? And we work on it. How did he come to know this accusation? What is this accusation all about? And then we tackle. We find how wrong they are. So in other words, you can find the history of this. Sometimes this accusation may not come out from him, from the other person. They had heard from somebody else. and somebody from somebody else and then you find the source of it and the source of it sometimes could be that person who say it Out of his own mind, imagination, and wickedness, he say it, and to him, and he believe it wholesale, and he spread it to others, and then spread it, it come to your ears. And someone who knows you, like you, or who knows you, say that to you. And therefore, you must find out the beginning of this accusation. And so you debunk this accusation by knowing how did it come to him. So this is one way. Another way which Stephen did was this. He would divorce blaspheme against God regarding the temple. Now here he told, he said that Jesus Christ is the one. How did Stephen know about the destruction of the temple? Jesus Christ has preached. When he was on earth, he preached. And he was pointing to the temple, that this temple will be destroyed. And in three days, this temple will be built again. But you find that Jesus was not referring to the temple itself. The temple itself one day will be destroyed here on earth because a new temple from heaven will come down. But Jesus was not referring to the temple per se, the building itself. Jesus was actually referring to his body. He Himself, in three days, He said He will be destroyed and in three days He will live again. He said Jesus Christ was referring to His body, His resurrection. It was not this temple. So they misunderstood, just like the Sadducees, you see, misunderstood about a man who married and then suddenly the wife died and the man died and then his wife, according to Jewish law, his brother supposed to marry her in order to produce children for the brothers, to perpetuate the mother's name, the family's name. And then the second brother also died. And then the third and the fourth and seventh. And the Sadducees don't believe in the resurrection, you see. And in the resurrection, they asked Jesus Christ, in the resurrection, will all be alive? Whose wife will he be? He got only seven, he married only seven. Whose wife will he be? And Jesus Christ said, you have made, you have erred. You have greatly erred because you do not know the Scriptures and the power of God. You see? And so here Stephen is saying that, you see. They will say about blaspheming the temple. You really don't know. You have misunderstood it, Jesus Christ. His Jesus Christ was reborn to his body. So he's not guilty of blaspheming God in order to destruction of the building itself. So that's how Stephen defended himself in Chapter 7 as you read it. And so these people who accused Stephen of that, when Stephen told them exactly that they are wrong, they disobeyed the word of God. They disobeyed the Moses, the law of Moses. And they have not submitted to the Lordship of God. And they got so angry. and they cast Stephen out and stoned him to death. In our case, we learn how to answer our accusations. We hear what the accusations are. We will answer how did these accusations came to be and how wrong it is. And we showed them. That means we have to do some work. Whatever accused, we have known the history of it and we told the person it's all wrong. And then with other things concerning, if concerning there's more serious things concerning the Word of God, then we must know the Word of God in order to show them that you have misunderstood. And when they don't accept our explanation, and they want to perpetuate the accusation that we cannot do anything. This is a free country. They want to keep on doing it. After your explanation, after defending yourself, they still want to do it. We cannot do anything. But someone has said to a non-Christian, you talk like this, and then a non-Christian say, sue the person. He has a right to sue. Yes, he has the right to sue. But if that person who accuse you, who charge you, who accuse you is a Christian, You, as a Christian, will you bring him to court? According to the word of God, you will not bring him to court. You want to obey God's word. Do not bring him to court. Actually, you can bring him to court. Sometimes you are so hard pressed to maybe go to court and finish off this thing. But you want to follow the Word of God. God says you don't take a brother to court. And so you do that. You don't do that. Even someone said, why don't you go? You can sue the person, you see. Yes. But you don't do that because you want to follow the Word of God. So the accusation, if they are false, they are lies, you don't have to be afraid. You have to know how to rebut it. You stick onto what is truth. The truth is the truth. Nothing else but the truth. The truth itself will reveal itself. Eventually, the person will know. later that all his lies will be exposed. God will take his time. But in the meantime, we have to stand. This is a test for all of us, for us especially, especially myself. For me, let's say, if I'm the person being accused, it's a test of my faith, of my patience, of my going according to the law of God, the word of God. It's a test for me, how patient I am in the face of this kind of accusations. They are serious accusations and if I'm not wrong and they still hold on to it, it's a test of my patience and my strength. And that's all. You will meet this kind of accusation, don't we, in our life? So don't be perturbed and disturbed in your mind and your heart. The most important thing, God sees, God knows. We believe in a personal living God, a God who knows everything. Whatever has happened to you or to us, God sees it. God knew these Christians, these Jews, what they have accused Stephen of. God saw it. God knew it. God allowed it. And it's how spanked Stephen was. He paid for his life, but he is saved. He paid off his life. In fact, when they were stoning him, they saw God in His great mercy have given Stephen like the face of an angel and they stone him to death. And of course he was, he went up to heaven. Correct? So also we Christians, we know our life here on this earth is temporary. And if we are, in this case, been blinded by other people and these accusations and take up, up to the time when we die, God knows the truth. He sees everything. And the one who accuses us, if he is non-Christian, it is all right. His judgment is already finished, done already. But if he is supposed to profess Christian and if he is saved, then God will deal with him. So when we die, we still live and God is there. And that's how we believe the Bible. We must realize that God is living. He's God of the living. He's there. He sees everything. He knows everything. He's all-powerful. We know that. We are taught all these things and God will take His time, His revenge. We don't take. What we need to do is to be patient. Be patient. I know sometimes it is difficult to be patient, but we have to pray to God. And I hope that With this knowledge, we can face all these troubles in our life. Let us pray.