Acts 6 - Stephen's martyrdom

I've been reading Acts 6 - Stephen's martyrdom in the Greek group I attend on Tuesday nights. And now it has come up in the daily readings that I follow. Stephen preaches a very long sermon to the Sanhedrin. In our Greek group we laughingly wonder why Stephen took so long to get to his point. At first you wonder what the point is. The first time I was truly wondering what was the point of all the examples. This is the advantage of reading things over again. The second time it was revealed to me. I saw the point of each of his examples. Stephen finally states his point - you Jews have throughout history persecuted the prophets God sent to you. You killed the prophets who spoke beforehand of Jesus, the Messiah.

I guess you can say the best way to tell people something is, by your examples, to let them figure it out for themselves and then tell them the conclusion, which they already know. Surely they know his point long before he states it. I wonder why they let him conclude.

The Greek word order is very different than the word order in English translations. In English the subject of the sentence has to come early. In Greek the fact that a word is the subject is made clear because it is in the nominative case. Luke often buries the subject far back on the sentence. This makes the Greek awkward to translate. Certainly you cannot keep the Greek word order in the English. In Greek the first words are placed there for emphasis. So it is interesting to see the words Luke chooses to put at the beginning.

The synagogue of the Freedman (Acts 6:9) is probably the one Saul (Paul) attended. I think this was a group of foreigners who tried, out of insecurity, to "out Jewish" the locals of Jerusalem.

Jesus told them they would be persecuted just as he was and when they were brought before the courts to trust God to give them the words to say. This is our first example. It is certain one of many times where the new Christians would have to defend their faith and possibly die. The others are not recorded but they are just as precious to God. God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, is with Stephen with great power.

In Muslim countries today this same technique of bringing false witnesses is used to persecute Christians. These witnesses claim the Christian has said sometime to offend Mohammed or the Koran. As a result they are often killed by people who think they are doing God's will. As in this story in Acts false witnesses are a common tactic used by the enemy of God, Satan.