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Acts 8:1-3 If you haven’t read this yet, you can find it here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts%208%3A1-3&version=NLT

As it turns out, the stoning of Stephen was a turning point in the relationship between the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem and this gathering of believers in Jesus.  By turning point I mean things took a distinctly downward turn.  

Judaism & the church

I want to take a couple minutes to think about why this was.  Most of our Bibles use the term church when they mention this group of people who were following Jesus, but the word from which it is translated just means a gathering.  Over time the word took on other connotations, and became most closely associated with the Christian church, at least where the Bible is concerned.  So when we think of a church we usually think of some sort of group of Christians. But I think it gives us some insight into the situation to recognize that Peter and John would have called themselves Jews.  The first time he was mentioned, Stephen was identified as a Greek Jew.  The people who believed in Jesus and were sharing his teachings would have absolutely told you that they were Jews. Jesus was the one the Jewish scriptures spoke about.  He was the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy.  Jesus was born into a Jewish family.  He was the Messiah who had been promised to the Jews.  Followers of Jesus were Jews.  

Having said that, some of the things Jesus said, and some of the ways his followers were practising their faith looked different from what the religious leaders were teaching.    

For one thing, the religious leaders were still waiting for God’s rescuer to swoop in, destroy their oppressors and liberate Israel.  The followers of Jesus knew the rescuer had come and he had liberated them, but they were their own worst-oppressors.  They had enslaved themselves to sin and the rescue they had received wasn’t a political takeover, it was a personal surrender to the power of forgiveness and life.  It changed some of their practises.  They understood that God’s perfect law was the standard for how they were to live, but when they failed, they came to understand that the sacrifice for their sin had been made.  So instead of offering an animal on an altar, they confessed their wrong behaviour to one another and asked God for forgiveness, gratefully understanding that their punishment was taken.  In later letters written by some of the church leaders you see them encouraging people to make sacrifices of praise and to consider their bodies to be living sacrifices, which meant to use their bodies to honour God rather than for their own benefit.   As we read this book we will notice that early believers in Jesus still took part in many temple rituals.  We specifically hear of some men who took a vow and go to the Temple and give a monetary gift and shave their heads as a symbol of the completion of the vow.  They were Jewish men who believed that Jesus had paid the penalty for their sin and they were trusting in him rather than their perfect compliance to the law to make them right with God.  

As we are about to see, soon non-Jewish people would come to believe in Jesus and their daily lives would look quite different from the Jewish believers.  But at this moment, the believers, this new church, was made up of Jews.

Monotheism and a perceived problem

So here is where the problem arose.  The Jews are mono-theists.  There is one God.  Over the centuries they had gotten themselves into a lot of trouble by worshipping other gods.  So when some of their friends started worshipping Jesus, that looked dangerous.  If they had studied their scriptures very closely they may have begun to see that God has always had this strange habit of talking to himself.  In fact sometimes their words for God are a word that is singular and sometimes it’s a plural noun.  It was odd but they hadn’t focused on it because their scriptures were very clear.  They were to worship no one but him.  While Jesus was teaching his disciples he brought this up more than once. He said things like, “If you have seen me, you’ve seen the Father.  I and the Father are one.”  Honestly, anyone who tells you they have figured this out is wrong.  We try to explain and simplify it and sometimes those simplifications help.  But if you have a moment where you have thought about it a long time and say to yourself, “Oh! I get it!” 

Trust me.  

You don’t. 

The fact of a self-existent God

Here’s what we do know.  There is a God who is self-existent.  He just has always existed.  Philosophically and scientifically for anything at all to exist there actually has to be something that always existed. It’s a fact.  People try all kinds of mental gymnastics to get around it, but the fact that anything began to exist requires that something always has.  In the Bible (which includes the Jewish scriptures) God declares himself to be one God.  He tells us he sits alone on the throne of heaven and he doesn’t share his glory with anyone.  We also know that Stephen has just looked up and saw a vision of Jesus with the Father being worshipped in heaven.  And Stephen’s revelation is one of many in which it is clear, worshipping Jesus is the right thing to do.  The only way that makes sense is if Jesus and the Father really are one.  As we read other parts of the Bible we also notice that the Holy Spirit is revealed, not as some weird part of God but also as God himself.  This is a lot to unpack.  Volumes have been written.  No one really gets it.  What we do know is God is one, and there are three persons who are identified as God.  God in each person is completely of one mind and one purpose.  When you worship and glorify God in any person, you worship and glorify God in all his persons.   I’m not smart enough for this stuff.  I used to think it was kind of a weird distinction, why do we insist on this.  But I’ve been reading the Bible a lot for a long time and it turns out, this is what it says.  I don’t have to understand it.  There are a few things that I have just had to say, well, I don’t get how this is the case, but the Bible says it is.  Admittedly, it would be crazy to just blindly say, “well I read it in a book so it must be true.”  But in this case, it’s a book that Jesus said was true.  Again, it’s a little crazy to say, “Jesus said it, so I believe it.”  Except that Jesus proved himself truthful in the most extreme way. 

The reason to believe

Yes, he lived an amazing life and performed many miracles.  But he did something so much crazier, remember? He told his followers (and the scriptures had predicted hundreds of years before) that he would be persecuted and killed and then come back to life.  And he did.  The evidence within the Bible AND outside of it is quite overwhelming when you examine it.  And THAT doesn’t happen. People don’t die and come back to life, not after three days, not after warning their friends it was going to happen.  They don’t get executed by the very professional kill squad that was Rome, get wrapped in grave clothes and placed in a tomb and then show up alive and well three days later.  That happened!  Something that doesn’t happen, happened.  It’s crazy.  The impossible happened.  So if Jesus said other things that our brains say, “that can’t happen,”  well, the last time we told Jesus he was wrong, he proved us wrong by doing the impossible.  So now, we listen.  We may have to say, “Ok, that makes no sense to me.” But we listen and we believe him.  He has proven himself in an impossible way, at this point we would be foolish not to believe him.  

Deep breath.  Back to the problem the Jews were having with their Jewish friends who were worshipping Jesus.  A lot of people had seen Jesus after he came back from the dead.  Other than a few who still couldn’t make their brains believe their eyes, many believed all his other claims.  His brother James who had thought he was nuts before he died suddenly is working with the believers and telling others about Jesus.  To the Jews who didn’t believe for many different reasons, these people were disrespecting their God and their traditions.  Remember, if you’ve read one of the gospels, Jesus had made a few enemies among the religious leaders.  That’s why they had him killed.  So they were not favourable to worshipping him.  Now this guy they had killed had a following that really started growing after he died, which must have been so confusing to those who really didn’t believe he was the Messiah.  From their perspective, this blasphemer, this heretic, this guy who won every argument they picked with him, was threatening their faith and their way of life.  And so we hear that persecution broke out against his followers.  

The result of the controversy: persecution

Stephen’s stoning was like picking the last stick out of a bursting dam.  Suddenly, it was ok to go after this new sect publicly.  The response was fast and ferocious. It wasn’t just the leaders anymore.  The believers who could escape fled throughout Judea and Samaria.  Sanctioned mobs went house to house dragging both men and women off to prison.  And whose name pops up here as leading the mobs?  The guy who provided coat-check while Stephen was being stoned.  Saul hated the church.  We will learn from his later writings that he was a very intelligent, well educated, zealous Jewish man, and he did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah about whom he had studied since childhood. He had more than enough of Jesus, and he wanted every trace of him destroyed.  He made it his personal mission to wipe out those who believed in Jesus.