The First Church Complaint - Acts 6

Church.

Welcome back to the Bible study podcast where we read the Bible.

We read the Bible together, but also hopefully together with with you, with the people watching.

You're looking at me though.

Right, right, right.

With like you.

With you.

Yeah.

You read this.

Uh, and then we talk about it, and hopefully the things we talk about are helpful.

I feel really bad.

Why?

Because, well, I felt really bad last week.

I had a day where You were sick.

Yeah.

I never had any like obvious, it wasn't like uh fever or whatever like that.

I just was like, I feel not myself.

I tried to get pushed through, and I was like, I think I need to stop.

I didn't mean for that to be one of the hardest chapters.

No, no, it was fine.

It was good.

Yeah, yeah.

But I was like, you and Megan.

Did Megan come home and give you an earful?

She said, you promised you'd be there.

And I was lying about being sick the whole time, which was perfect.

You just avoided the story.

Yeah.

No, I just uh I don't know.

I felt super weird.

Did you ever have that?

Where you're like, you feel like almost out of like disconnected from your body.

Disassociation.

Yeah.

I think it's like a clinical thing.

You're like disassociate, like you're uh having a prolonged out-of-body experience.

No, no, no.

I had really bad stomach issues the next day.

So I think I was experiencing a normal symptom, but you're just like funked.

I was super funked in beats.

So I wasn't here last week.

But here I am, here we are for Acts chapter six, which is no one's favorite chapter in the Bible.

But it's short.

It's super short.

In fact, okay, so full disclosure, it's so short that I was listening to it on the Bible app, like being played, and it just stopped.

And I thought my connection lost.

Because it doesn't end at a moment.

Like the last line is at this point, everyone in the high council stared at Stephen because his face became as bright as an angel's.

That doesn't seem like chapter end.

That seems like the first sentence of a new paragraph.

Right?

You're like, so wait, what happened?

So I'm just like, what?

I'm like looking at my because it takes it a second to move on to the next chapter in the audio version.

And I was like, something's wrong.

I was like, oh no.

This is a this is a question I don't know the answer to is what delineates, like, why are the chapters where they are?

I don't know.

It's just tradition.

Like over time, this has like become a thing that's Yeah, it's well, it's over people did it.

I I'd be really actually that would be a really interesting study for a very small segment of people.

Right.

Like who are the people that decided the verses and chapters?

When did that sort of when did that get canonized?

Yeah.

You know, because that's not the the Bible wasn't written in chapters.

There weren't verses in it.

If you have the scroll of the book of Acts, it was one document, one letter.

For the sake of referencing and you know, study, chapters and verses were added later.

Chunked it out.

But now those chapters, like we wouldn't create our we could, like, hey, we created a his hands version of the Bible, and chapters six and seven in Acts are joined together now.

Right.

Because it's really one thing.

So Acts has fewer chapters in our version of the Bible than yours.

But we wouldn't do that.

So at some point in time, everyone's like, this is it.

Yeah.

This is and I have a feeling may I think someone maybe made a mistake.

Maybe the scroll ran out of page there, and they they were like, well, you turned the page on the scroll.

Right.

Like it's a new scroll.

I don't know.

I mean, this would have been, I don't think chapters and verses were added for quite a while.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

No, but I'm saying like the original documents might have had like a break.

And so that was like, well, I guess that's as good a place as any.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Like the very next the first verse of the first verse of Acts 7 is then the high priest asked Stephen, Are these accusations true?

And so this actually reads really well.

At this point, everyone in the High Council stared at Stephen because his face became as bright as an angel's.

And then the high priest asked Stephen, Are these accusations this does not sound like transitions through it.

It does.

So I think whoever originally did this, I think they were wrong.

They messed up, and then they just were like, No, I really prayed about it.

And got to keep it.

It's supposed to be.

Well here we go.

Now in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, It's not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.

Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom will appoint whom we will appoint to this duty.

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.

And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Procorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Par Parmeneus, Parman, Parmen, I got it, here we go.

Parmenus.

Parmesan cheese guy.

He's a who invented that.

And Nicolaus, a proselyte from Antioch.

These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid hands on them.

And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

Because we can pause there.

Yeah.

It's funny, Antioch, in my train, you know, it says an earlier convert to the Jewish faith.

So that means Antioch would have been a non-Jew who converted to Judaism, who then became a Christian.

So he had to like do a bunch of stuff to be a Jew, only to learn that really shortly after he made that decision, you no longer have to do all those things.

I wonder if he was like mad or relieved.

If he was like Jewish for the least amount of time, you could have been like Poor Nikolaus.

Poor poor yeah, that is Antioch.

All right.

Oh yeah, Nikolaus of Antioch, so where he's from.

Yeah, so basically, here's what we got.

The church has been going for a while.

Things are going great.

Now, though, there's some there's some uh disunity in the church body, and you have the you're you're what are you reading from?

ESV.

ESV.

Yeah, it's Greek, right?

Yeah.

Greek Greek people, Greek.

Greek speaking people.

Yeah.

So the people who spoke Greek, which probably implies that a lot of them were non-they could have been naturalized Jewish people who had Greek heritage, so they spoke Greek.

Or by this point in time, actually very few so okay.

At this point in time, you actually would have a very small percentage of the Jewish population that speak Hebrew.

Right.

Because you didn't need to speak Hebrew for life.

So Hebrew, this is kind of what happened with Latin.

Like, and I when I say very small percentage, I don't know what the percentage is, but there would have at the very least been a large number of Jewish people, okay, who uh were obviously born centuries after Israel had been an independent nation.

They live in the Roman Empire.

Greek is the official language of the Roman Empire.

Uh you know, Aramaic is actually probably the most common spoken language of their region.

And it's like the usefulness of Hebrew.

It's more of an academic religious thing.

It's becoming an academic religious thing.

So you you go, you could learn Hebrew.

If someone did speak Hebrew, they're either probably uh went through formal training for it, you know, in uh like in Jewish school, essentially.

I feel like Latin's a good, um, not that Hebrew gets phased out like Latin does, but we hear a lot of Latin phrases in the context of like for us, it's like Christmas, like in X Gelsey's Deo, where it's like that's not more in medical terms.

Like that's true.

Yeah, like Homo sapiens.

Right.

There's like the vestige of that, but in like the high church Catholic church stuff, they do a lot of stuff in Latin still.

So there's like an application for that language.

Latin, Latin was the official.

So I my uh my foreign language in college was Latin, and I chose it because the book only costs$17 and you used it for both semesters.

There you go.

And it was hard.

Um died for a reason.

Um, like how many conjugations does Spanish have?

I don't know.

I don't know, it's like six or seven.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Latin's like, we got 30.

Wow.

And you're like, wow, why?

You know, I get it.

So anyway, so these would have been um a lot of these people were would have been Jewish, but they never spoke it.

They didn't need to.

It wasn't the everyday language, it wasn't the official language of Rome, and they weren't spiritually uh religious elite.

They didn't so they're just living lives doing jobs.

And they probably would have been looked down upon by those who did speak Hebrew because you would have seen, you know, you don't see it.

This is more of a common situation.

Like this is like an eth, not an not so much as it's totally an ethnic group.

I mean, I'm asking, I'm not saying uh at this point in time, the church really hasn't spread beyond the Jewish community.

Right.

Right.

So I would say that these are Jewish people.

It's a type of Jewish person.

It's a Jewish people who doesn't speak Hebrew.

Gotcha.

And that um and there would have been clicks, you know, that would have been a diff a differentiator, a distinction, of like, oh, you're a Jew, well, but you're a Jew that doesn't speak the language.

You know what I mean?

It almost would have been viewed as like lesser.

Well, it's it's also just simpler to provide for people in your own language because you can fully understand them the whole time.

Sure.

So it's like so this is the first point, though, that we have where there things aren't going great.

There's like there's division in the church, and it boils down to um The Greek-speaking Jews are being overlooked.

The the widows are being overlooked when it comes to that idea that we had in the earlier chapter.

We're all sharing their wishes.

We're sharing everything, and then it's like, but there's one group that's missing out on that.

So people are complaining and figuring it out.

Yep.

That's what complaining in church.

Never experienced it myself.

I've heard stories, I've heard other pastors talk about people who complain.

It for me, it's just it's never happened.

No, it's look, this is like that's why I said I love this chapter when I walked in, because I so relate to this.

Because you know, what the apostles are interesting.

We're like, not gonna deal with it.

This is silly.

We shouldn't be spending our time running a food program.

Right.

We should be praying and you know, preparing for the the teaching of the word.

I will tell you that as a pastor, I have spent this actually convicts me because I should be spending more time dedicated to prayer and the teaching of the word.

And very often I do spend a lot of my time um dealing with a logistical, church-related matter.

Someone someone was upset.

Now, as time's gone on, we do have a great church, and I will say this like I joke, like there have been people in the past that it's we have a our church as a whole we have very few complaints.

You know, people I'll give you an example though.

Okay, you know this story.

Years and years ago, uh years ago.

A different era.

Three years ago.

Three fourscore, whatever that is, 18 months ago.

Yeah.

We had uh we have free coffee at our church, right?

We always do free coffee and always have.

And uh we used to uh do creamer in these little creamer dispensing.

Yeah, canisters.

And you know, it was fresh cream, it was like, you know, just bought it the store and dump it in there, but they actually were kind of a pain to clean.

And you can't just not clean them because it's dairy.

Right.

So if you if they're not clean, it's gross.

So every week, people on the coffee team.

So it was like how the complaining happened.

So people on the coffee team complained that they were having to spend a lot of time cleaning those, which I thought was like a legitimate complaint.

I'm like, yeah, that's that's not I don't want someone to have to be here.

Complaining, even as we've talked about it, like there's there's different kinds of complaining.

There's like I'm bringing to attention an opportunity that will make things better.

Or there's like I'm just frustrated on it.

Or express myself.

Yeah, they weren't, they weren't nitpicking.

They were complaining, it was a legit complaint.

Like, hey, we it's This is a lot.

And there were like seven of them, and each of them had to be completely disassembled and cleaned and carefully and it was just taking this people and we have like one sink in there.

It's not like we have we're not and there's other things that need the sink too.

Yes, there are.

So it was like, okay, so I go, well, uh and I'm not a coffee drinker.

And I'm like, well, then what if we just went to the little cups, you know, of creamer?

I see those at all kinds of places, little cups.

And so we're like, yeah, that would great.

They keep forever, and let's do that.

So we we roll it out.

We didn't announce it from the stage, we just decided to surprise people.

No more creamer.

We took a vote.

We just yeah, took it, had a big church meeting, and so the next Sunday there's just creamer, you know, cups.

So the next Sunday rolls around and I see the the pump things back out.

And I'm like, what happened?

We were using the cups.

So I go to the person who's in charge of that whole thing, and they're like, oh, a lot of people complained about the cups because they preferred the creamer.

And I was like, Well, how many is a lot?

And they were like, five, you know.

And at the time we probably had 12, 1,300 people come in here on a Sunday.

I was like, I'm okay with five complaints if we keep the cups.

This is what we need to do.

Where we don't need to like pivot.

But just that concept of and I was directly involved in the coffee creamer stuff.

And I should have said, I can't I can't.

I have to prepare for the message and pray.

And that's part of part of what a question that jumped to my mind in this is like there's can having the context that like, hey, sharing the gospel and speaking and and being in prayer uh with people or with, you know, on your own, like that is a a centrally important part of what's happening at the church.

But there's also this idea of like, how do you know when taking out the trash is not a waste of time, but it's an act of service.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like like it the attitude feels very like uppity in a way that's a good thing.

It does feel uppity and hard to do.

And I'm not even saying that the apostles were right in that.

You know what I mean?

I think that it is, I will say this.

I do think, and obviously the people, you know, everyone listening is probably isn't a pastor.

So I do think it's easy for pastors or church leaders to get so wrapped up in the logistics and in all the minutia of the event planning, the the website building, the whatever it is, that you're actually neglecting to spend time with the Lord.

And you know, I'll I'll never forget the first you were you would have been on this.

The first road trip we ever had.

I think you were a student.

You were a rising ninth grader on the very first ever student trip.

The logistics of planning that were so in for and I'd never done it before, renting vehicles.

You know, we're gonna do our own food because we only we only charged for that first one.

I think we charged$150.

And that included transportation, food, lodging, lodging, and all of that planning where we're gonna go, what we're gonna do, and all these things.

I it is just I got we got there, and that night we had worship time and pra and like teaching, and I hadn't even thought about what I was gonna talk about.

And it like hit me like, oh no.

Wow.

And I literally had no clue what to talk about.

Right.

And it was like year two, I had a I was like, all right, I'm gonna go in with a plan to teach.

But I was just there was a lot to do.

So um, I'm not saying the disciples were right, and the apostles were right here, going, we don't have time to get into it.

I think what's happening here is really simple on a few fronts.

One is that a lot of things, even the church, they start out as just organic movements.

Everything takes care of itself because it's like see a need, fill a need.

And then I was kind of reminded of the um Moses when everyone's coming to Moses to judge.

Like Jethro's like, what are you doing?

Yeah, and there's like, here, here's this problem.

This this situation happened with this ox, and all these like complaints are coming to Moses.

And Jethro's father-in-law, father-in-law says, like, hey, this is too much work for one man to do.

You should just appoint some people over the different areas, and they'll handle that.

And then the stuff that they can't figure out, they'll bring to you.

Yep.

It's like starting to systematize.

Yes, it has to happen at a certain scale.

And so here we go.

Now it's all of a sudden like, okay, this is starting to shift from just an organic thing that happened and everyone's really happy about it, and everyone loves it, to now there's there's issues, there's there's human beings and growing pains, and someone's got to handle these.

And then by the time we get to Paul's letters, which are gonna be, you know, decades later in terms of their timing, you see a lot of what Paul is writing about are instructions on how the church ought to be organized and how churches ought to, and a lot of it is like a lot of infighting is happening, right?

It does it isn't this by the time it's at Paul, it's not just like we all just we all sold our houses and we just share our resources, and it's great because at some point in time, like you said, things go from being just an or just an organic movement to they do need order.

And in some ways you could say, well, that's oftentimes when things die.

There are a lot of companies that you know, there's this big explosion, it's organic, and there's a buzz, and then all of a sudden they go corporate and it dies.

You know what I mean?

Um I think that like the thing that you need to care about is that like here, the system that is starting to be established and then gets developed by Paul later, it's like the priority is still caring for the people.

And so the system is serving the people.

Right.

That's what yeah.

Once the people start to serve the system, and it's like, well, here's this rigid structure that you have to abide by.

That's correct.

But on the flip side, just like going corporate, so to speak, and implying, when I say that, I mean like you know, methods and structure and all these things, it can kill that.

On the flip side, there's a lot of things that die and fizzle out because no one ever comes along and and says, hey, this is great, what's happening, but we got to create some structure so this can actually function appropriately.

And that's what's starting to happen.

And it's just, you know, this is the the original pain point of the church is that people are being treated uh differently differently.

Yeah.

And um overlooked or yeah, it's an interesting um And this is gonna continue because there's gonna be a whole lot more different types of people joining the church because the Church of Jesus, whatever you say, the movement of Jesus Christ, it is really the first ever multinational, multi-ethnic, uh, multi-socioeconomic movement where it did not matter where you were from, whether you were a man or a woman.

There's nothing like this in history up to this point.

There's never been a like come wealthy, poor doesn't matter.

Man, woman doesn't matter.

Uh Jew, non-Jew doesn't matter.

This is never there's no blueprint for how to have all these different people.

The blueprint is like we go to war.

Yeah.

The blueprint in history is like you speak a different language than us, we'll kill you.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

So it's kind of cool.

It is cool.

And so they get organized.

Yeah, they get organized, and they choose among them Stephen.

This is kind of like our intro to Stephen.

I think, well, I guess we can read this next part and then Yeah, because there this becomes really the next this and the next chapter really become about Stephen.

Yep.

And he's a very significant person in the story of the church.

Mm-hmm.

So verse 8, and Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.

Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the freedmen, as it was called, and the of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen.

But they could not withstand the wisdom and spirit with which he was speaking.

Then they secretly instigated men, who said, We've heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.

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.

This seems familiar.

Yeah, I feel like I've heard this story before.

And they set up false witnesses who said, This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law.

For we've heard him said that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.

And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.

So why don't you do more miracles in your uh daily ministry, Justin?

I don't know, man.

I uh What's the deal?

I guess I've never tried.

I'll try it.

I know we talked about this already.

I'll try it.

What's the deal?

I'll try it here.

Go ahead.

What do you what's the just hold your hand and figure out what miracle you need?

Yep.

What is the That's a word of knowledge miracle that will lead to the next miracle?

Uh I feel like I have participated in a miracle before, but a pretty low-level miracle.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What was that?

Well, I don't know when I get weird.

I mean, we're reading the book of Acts.

It's probably impossible to not.

Okay.

So I was in the gym.

There's a guy who goes to a church named Neil.

Okay.

Okay.

This has only happened once in my life.

I was working out in the gym, and Neil was working out in the gym.

I'd never met Neil before.

He didn't go to church here.

He he he's like he's like a big dude.

You know, he's on the security team and he looks like he should be.

Um and so Neil I I it was I was actually listening to a Christian audiobook, and I was just very mindful of the Lord while working out at that day.

I was like very and I was talking to God.

And I was specifically talking to God about wanting to be just able to you know help people, minister to people.

Because it's easy for me as a pastor to just uh do that at church on Sundays.

Right.

Or when I'm and then when I'm when I would go to the gym and play basketball, like I'm here to play basketball.

Am I here to encourage you?

Am I here to pray for you?

You know, a kid hurts his ankle, I'm like, all right, we gotta keep playing.

So someone would sub in, not like, hey guys, let's stop and pray for this.

Like, I'm here to it's very easy for me to compartmentalize ministry.

So I was I was thinking, so as as this guy walks behind me, I hear just one word in my brain.

And I'm not, you know me, I'm not this is not my normal bent as like how I operate as a leader of the of the church.

Like I don't come in and go, guys, I had a vision or I had a dream.

So we're changing everything.

This is not how I, you know.

Um I tend to maybe sometimes think too much and try to think things through instead of stopping and even asking the Lord.

Like, I can do that.

But anyway, this day I just hear the word daughter in my brain.

You know, just like very clear, daughter.

And I'm looking at this guy and through the mirror, like I'm looking at he's behind me.

And then as soon as I'm like, daughter, I hear his daughter needs to know he loves that she loves him.

His daughter needs to know she loves him.

And then he goes to the locker room.

And I was like, It was actually kind of like that was he needs to know that his daughter loves him.

Yes.

His daughter, he needs to know that his daughter loves him.

Gotcha.

So I hear I hear daughter and I go daughter.

And then just clear as day in my brain, he needs to know that his daughter loves him.

So then he goes to the locker room, and I can tell he's like probably wrapping up his workout about to leave.

And I was actually like, oh my gosh.

Like, I don't want to go talk to this guy.

I know God, I know what I just said, Lord.

I really want to be able to be a minister to people.

But I'm in the middle of my reps.

But also, and it's and I don't know this guy.

I've never met him.

I've never talked to him.

You don't know what's going to happen inside the locker room.

No.

He could be getting changed.

I don't like people talking to me in the locker room.

Like I don't engage in stranger conversations.

That's happened.

It's starting to happen.

I'm starting to know too many people at the gym.

I'm talking about strangers.

Someone comes up to you and is like, hey.

I think I might be the guy that talks to people at the gym.

Well, I just, it's just not, I don't know.

Sorry if I talk to you in the locker room.

Look, whatever.

But I don't want to be that guy today.

So I'm I'm like, but I know in my heart, I'm okay.

So what do you do in that moment, right?

You either participate or you don't.

So I'm like, I'd rather And that would be a quenching the spirit sort of thing.

Like we had there's that word of like don't quench the spirit.

And there's like grieve the spirit and blaspheme the spirit.

It was like kind of categories.

This would be like the Holy Spirit's prompting you, but you still get to choose to participate or not participate.

And so choosing to participate is saying, like, I'm only by the way I'm not yawning because I'm bored.

I'm yawning because our dog got neutered.

And we had to get up like three or four times in the middle of the night to take care of him.

I'll pray that that that he heals, that God restores his body full.

I didn't even think to pray for my dog.

Like, how bad of a pastor am I?

I'm just like, you know, I get it.

So anyway, so yeah, I gotta put four.

So you go four to two.

Okay, you go into the locker room.

So I go into the locker room.

And I'm like, oh man.

So I end up like, hey man.

How you you know?

And I just said it like this.

I just decided to do it.

I said, hey, this may sound really weird.

I I'm I'm a I didn't say I'm a pastor.

I said I'm a I'm a follower of Jesus.

And I was praying while working out, and you walked by and I felt really strongly like I'm supposed to tell you that your daughter loves you.

And then you're like, does that mean anything?

I don't know if this guy has a daughter.

I have no and he just like double takes and he's like, I can't remember the time he used.

He goes here now, so you can ask him.

He he'll back the story up.

But he's like, uh, I haven't spoken to my daughter in years.

He said a certain number of years.

I can't remember, but it'd been a long time.

Like he and his daughter, or maybe it was like months, right?

But it was a significant like he and his daughter weren't on speaking terms.

And he kind of like you know shaken, shaken and teared up.

And you know, and then he started coming, and he didn't start coming here right away, but we got to talking a little bit, and then he started coming here.

Well, that's never happened to me since.

You know?

Um well, actually, it's funny, not since, but before that, there was one time when I was a youth pastor, and there was a girl named Emma who was the hard one of the hardest students I'd ever had.

She was a pretty intense personality, and she was at church on a but she didn't want to be there ever.

She was on a Wednesday night and she like was like you look at her and like, hey, Emma, do you want to participate?

She's like, shut up.

Okay.

She was kind of intimidating.

And I was during it was a worship night, which were kind of rare.

We did those like once a month back in the day.

And I remember looking over at Emma, and similarly, I felt really strongly that I was supposed to tell her that she was that from God's perspective, she was wanted.

Like God wants you to know that He He wants you.

Not in like obviously a I I think in my head I kind of understood, oh, she feels unwanted right now at home.

Right.

So But I didn't do it.

I like this had been years before I had to.

So it was awkward, felt awkward.

I just felt awkward and she did not like me.

Like if so I didn't, and then she ended up kind of not coming back for a long, long time.

Funny enough, years later, she came on a Sunday randomly and she was just like tapping me on the shoulder.

I turned around, I'm like, oh my gosh, Emma.

And that moment came back and said, Hey, listen, I felt like years ago I was supposed to tell you something and I didn't because you know, whatever.

But I felt like God wanted you to know that he really wants you, that you were wanted by him.

And she started crying.

So I should have done that.

But that that's like, I don't that guy had a daughter.

That wasn't even like a general, like you could look at anyone and say, hey, God wants you to know.

Yeah, he wants you.

He loves you.

He loves you.

Yeah, like, okay.

But that one was like specific.

He could have been like, I don't have a daughter.

Yeah.

I'm like, all right, well, I heard wrong.

Yeah.

You know.

But that I had that happened.

That's a real thing.

So I go low level.

Low level miracle worker.

I love it.

You know, junior.

Junior.

Uh no, but I didn't, that wasn't me.

And that's the funny thing.

And there's a certain version of the church world be like, oh, you have the gift of the word of knowledge.

And then you would take that and you would, you know, I'm a word of knowledge guy.

And you go up to lots of people.

And maybe that's how it is, and maybe certain people just have that and do it all the time.

I would say, like, for me, I like frequently have dreams that are God trying to show me something.

That's cool.

And that is like something that has happened a couple times, and I was like, okay, maybe this is like part of my life, and it is like part of my life, but it's not an always, it's not like a I don't go to bed at night and be like, Lord, I'm really struggling with this.

Give me a dream to explain it.

And he can fully explain.

And I've had those types of dreams as well.

And you've shared some of yours with me.

I know I've shared some of mine with you.

And yeah, it's it's a way God speaks, right?

So that stuff does still happen.

Um, but it was obviously happening in a pretty powerful way here.

Um anyway.

So much that it's like a notable trait of Stephen.

Yes when they're like looking performed many miracles and like they're looking for a wise person.

He's this is like miracle worker and amazing speaker, but it's because the Holy Spirit is with him.

And I think that's the we keep falling back on like this where the Holy Spirit is the main character of acts.

It's like the spirit with which he was speaking.

And even, you know, Luke, who's writing this book, is like, I'm drawing attention to Stephen, and it's so crazy how well, and and there is two, not to cut you off, there are two moments in this chapter where it separates the idea of spirit and wisdom.

So it's possible for someone to have the spirit but not necessarily be particularly wise.

Sure.

I've known that.

Right.

And it is very possible for someone to be very wise but not have the spirit.

Right, which is probably where these guys who are all mad are coming from.

They're like, they know all of the the Moses stuff.

Right.

They have a lot of wisdom, and they could probably give you good advice for a lot of things in life, but they don't have the spirit.

And so having the spirit and wisdom, and that's something that's unique about Josh about uh Stephen, is that he is filled with both, the spirit and with with wisdom.

And it's it's crazy to me how Christianity didn't become like a cult of person cult of personality around any of these like early church leaders.

Like I mean, maybe it did a little bit more.

Paul writes a little bit about some follow Apollo, some follow Paul, some follow right.

That that was happening.

Right.

Not right off the bat.

But there's not like this in the name of Stephen, once Stephen is killed, like where you very much could have built around this, but I think it's because everyone at the time they're acknowledging like this is God moving amongst us.

Stephen is an example of it.

But there's also all these other guys Parmen Parmenius, Timon, Nikolaos, Nicanor.

They just get mentioned a couple times, but they're in there though.

They made it.

You know?

And so yeah.

They start to arrest him.

Do you think that the Moses, okay, do you think that the face shining like an angel?

Or yours says shining.

Mine doesn't say shiny.

Well, you're saying mine just says his face was like the face of an angel.

Yeah, okay.

And so I I'm imagining that it's shining.

Um, because when angels appear, there's lots of shiny There's either like they're so unnoticed that they look super normal, or it's like this devastating thing of like, I cannot believe I'm in the presence of you.

Yeah.

Is this a Moses callback to when he sees the presence of God and then he comes down from the mountain and his face is shining?

And they're like, he's saying all this stuff about Moses, and it's like, well, I don't know, like a validating thing.

I don't know, like God sort of because they would have that would have been their hyperlink, right?

Right in the minds of the like we have a category for this and it is Moses.

Like a face shining is Moses.

And here we are accusing him of being anti-Moses, essentially, and like, oh, well, hey, he's a little bit Moses-y.

I I mean, they've they've got guts.

If if I was a if I was a Pharisee and I really did believe the scriptures, and I see a dude whose face is shining like an angel, I'd probably be like, hey guys, let's like, let's take a pause in this whole let's like yeah.

Um yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

Um, and I'm reading from the New Living translation, so I imagine that there's a lot of contextual clues or even language that kind of in indicates brightness as part of that.

So who knows?

Because the New Living does a pretty good job of you know, but it could also just be inferring that based on the language.

I don't know.

So I'll have to study that.

But yeah, this I mean it is a callback to Moses in the sense that there's the only is that the only other story we have of someone who is other than an angel?

Right?

I'm trying to think about a human being who is shiny.

I'm trying to think.

I that's like the the biggest one that stands out to me.

Well, I think it might be the only one that I can think of.

Are there any like presence of like Isaiah?

I feel like there's like some prophet of some sort that has a sip similar situation.

Or Daniel sees the man standing by the river and he's shiny, but he's not like a dude.

Well, Jonah was discolored, right?

From the when he came out of the field.

That is a speculation thing.

That's not in the word?

No.

So it's like they had like there's Yeah, my brain is like connects to that somehow.

There's this Ninevite god that's a fish god.

Okay.

Yeah, I think it was somebody has to be.

And so there's like a historical thing of like the theoretically, and this is like this is where it's like I was talking with a friend, like, how do you know when something's like been taught a lot but is a Christian myth, or it's been taught a lot, but is like a true like Mary uh Magdalene being a prostitute.

Exactly.

It's like not actually in the scriptures.

But I thought it was because it's like and even like in The Chosen and things like that, well, she's it it's pretty commonplace.

And I think it was actually a Pope that wrote that about Mary Magdalene years and years later, like and it just became part of the tradition.

Or I was taught that men had one less rib bone than women.

Yeah.

Like adults straight up taught me that.

Like, and I was like, did I teach you that?

No, no.

Okay, good.

Um That's why men have one less rib.

I had I heard that too.

It was like, oh, okay.

And then, like, wait a minute, we don't.

We can count those.

Like, I could count those right now.

And so um it's just this interesting thing.

So the the Jonah thing is like the stomach acid of the fish would have discolored his skin and plopped him out, and the Nineveh would have recognized that he like resembled a pagan god.

I actually had a guy, not to go too far on this tangent, but I had a guy coming to me on Sunday after church asking me.

This Sunday was a weird one because I I'm trying to get out to the stripy corner in the main lobby.

Yeah, you just need to decide it's front of the stage or something.

I just got to tell people.

No, I'm gonna go out there.

And I just need to tell people, hey, meet me out there.

Because I could not.

Well, one guy needed to get baptized on the spot.

Another guy had a major marriage situation, another guy had a question.

I couldn't, I didn't get out of the big room.

Like I couldn't get out by the time an hour had gone by before I made it out.

Made it out like it was a fire.

You should leave through the back door and then walk around the outside of the building and then come in.

Oh yeah.

Normally, yeah, this should not even Because I saw you guys stop by the coffee shop the other day.

You're like, I'm like, he's just trying.

People are gonna flag him down.

Anyway, so this guy had questions about miracle stuff.

He was struggling, and he mentioned Jonah.

He said, Well, how is it how is that even possible, you know, to survive in the belly of a fish fruit?

And I was like, Well, I don't think it is.

Yeah, it's a miracle.

Right.

I think that's the point.

And there is this weird thing what you just talked about, where there's a lot of people who are like, okay, so a miracle happened.

And actually, in this situation, scientifically, if you were in the fit, the it's like, yeah, yeah, hold on.

I mean, I think scientifically you would die.

Plenty of people have been eaten by fish.

They don't come out slightly discolored.

Yeah.

So I think the whole point of a miracle is that the laws of science and nature are suspended.

Yes.

And it so he asked what he was struggling with.

He's like, how would that have even worked?

And I was like, well, it it was a miracle.

Yeah.

God supernaturally kept him alive, right?

Like, what would he have breathed?

God he had highly oxygenated lungs.

Right.

God gave him gills for a few days.

I don't know, but God got him.

It's not about how did the it's it's a miracle.

There's no, but anyway, all that says.

So miracles are happening, and this one happens to be uh shiny like Moses.

Shiny like like Moses.

And yet these guys are gonna persu uh persist in their persecution of Stephen, which is what next week's all about.

So yeah.

I th have you ever met someone, not like in the they're shining like an angel though, but have you met someone who's a believer who just sort of radiates like in a different way?

Yes.

Like there's something about him.

Yes.

Is it is it me?

It's you.

Oh Zach.

It's Zach, isn't it?

Look at how shiny Zach is right now.

It's Zach.

It's Zach.

Actually, Zach, your skin is very like uh I don't know what you're using for skincare, but you do have like a sheen.

I'll say this about Zach.

Is uh he's very uncomfortable.

I know he hates this.

But I I I'm off I'm off Facebook.

And when I mean I'm off Facebook is like five years ago I think I permanently deleted my Facebook.

But the only I I deleted my Facebook app and I uh I think I've logged on on a computer on Facebook like five times the last three, four months.

But though when I was considering deleting my Facebook, I was like, you know, Zach's can contributions to the Facebook discourse like really actually like built me up actually.

That's true.

I've seen Zach post things that are like great.

Like Zach, you in the comments?

Zach's in the comments, and it's like makes the actual commentary.

Yes.

So I was really encouraged by Zach.

But so yes, I've been around Christians like Zach and like you, Justin.

But I have I have uh I had a guy in college named Drew, who's a pastor now in Turkey.

And Drew was like, he'd walk around campus, and the I remember the first time I ever saw him, I didn't know he was a believer, didn't know anything about the guy.

He just walked past me uh on like on a walkway, and I just noticed him, and I was like, something about him was very joyful.

It was different.

Yeah.

And he just and I never even talked to the guy.

And then later I learned that he's this really passionate believer, and I'm like, oh yeah, that makes sense that makes sense.

Just a dude walked by me, and I was like, and I think my friend's like, What's up with that guy?

You know what I mean?

Like, oh, he's uh he's got a little something different.

He's got a little yeah, so you know, this is obviously a greater version of that because but I have been around people who obviously they're filled with the Holy Spirit and they're living in maybe they're just operating in that and they're full of joy and wonder and awe of God, and they're just they're really content and they're really brave about how much money they're they have in their bank account.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

They're yeah, they're content, they're bold, they're brave, but they're loving.

Yeah.

As we will see next week.

Sweet.

So this is Acts chapter six.

Acts chapter six.

People complained, they figured it out.

They get mad at Stephen.

And get and someone else gets mad.

Someone lies about Stephen.

Okay, but before we leave, that wasn't a voice crack.

Oh, I didn't hear that.

It was like before we leave.

Oh, I was like, what are you doing?

Um It is interesting that this chapter, as short as it is, it like perfectly encapsulates problems the church is gonna experience forever.

There's the internal problems and then there's the external problems.

Where it's like, here's how you can ruin the thing from the inside.

Right.

Complaining, favoritism, favoritism, overlooking things, like or, and I guess complaining actually solved the problem, but you you know my point.

Um, or it's the the outside is gonna find a way to weasel in and say, This is wrong.

We need to take this, take this apart.

And so those maybe that's why this was the way the chapter was broken down, because it was that like internal, external, and then they wanted to save the Stephen conversation for the next one because it's a long one.

So if we were teaching this chapter, we would probably go that would that would be like where I go towards the case.

That's where you would go, and I would probably uh never even see that because I have a tendency to look at things in like two verse chunks.

I was gonna say you teach the one verse that's and Stephen, full of grace.

Let's stop there.

I'd be like, the number of believers greatly increased.

Guys, we're just what we want to talk about the word greatly today.

Like greatly.

What do you do greatly?

What is greatly, what is God greatly doing in your life in the world.

No, no, no, no.

But but two verses you definitely I would do two at a time, and it's good to see it as a whole.

Yeah.

It's good to see, okay, yeah.

Well, cool.

Acts chapter seven next week.

Sounds good.

Boom.

Look forward to it.

Oh.

Definitely keep that in there.

That was meant to be smooth, but it would uh what if we just keep all this in there?

The whole even when this this intro or this outro just keeps going and it just slowly fades into the background.

It fades so gradually.

Very gradually that it takes you minutes to even discern that the tinting has changed.

Like exactly going to black.

So like this is like the last like three minutes you can barely see us.

This is like a this is like an 83 minute podcast.

You're like, wow, this is a long one.

That's how we try to trick the YouTube algorithm to like how long our content is, but it's just a bunch of and the viewer retention is just great right here because everyone's hanging on the edge of their seat wondering they all want to actually end this.

What do you have for lunch today?