Phish Bowl Ministries
July 2012
Matthew 4:19
“Chummin’ for Saints…until the nets are full”
Dear friends and saints,
I love this time of year! I do my best to get outside to the yard at every opportunity. Because of this, I have to choose what I can and can’t do and what has to just fall off of my plate. You would think that a man in prison has all the time in the world on his hands. There are those who let time do them who have no life behind the bars. I do time which means I have a life behind the bars by God’s grace. I juggle church, including PBM and FCF church, work, yard time, and down time. As I look into Stephen’s life, he too had to keep these things in balance. I find that I need to stay healthy in all areas of my life or all areas in my life suffer. For example, when I was a free man, I had two jobs to keep up a certain life-style which took away time from family and self health to give time to work. So what was intended to improve our family with “things” broke down and broke up our family. The same is true today. I have to say “no” to things so that no one area becomes overloaded at the cost to others. Luke paints a good picture of Stephen despite the little information which we know about him from the Bible. We know that he was a man of good reputation. What does this mean? I believe that if we look at 1 and 2 Timothy, Paul will lay out some guidelines of what defines a good reputation, which I think were in Stephen as well as the other seven disciples.
(1 Timothy 3:1-3) This is a faithful saying: If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach; not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous;
(2 Timothy 2:14-15) Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord not to strive about words to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
(2 Timothy 2:22-25) Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. But avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife. And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth,
We all know from Acts 6:3 that the Apostles trusted Stephen with the business of the church and as we read in Acts 7, he had a good understanding of God’s word and the message of the gospel. So what I can see is a man who was trying to live a balanced life and others saw this. I ask you to look into your life and do the same. Understanding that our lives are busy, I plead with you to stay healthy.
Now on to Acts 7:1-8. I want to take Abraham, Joseph and Moses and break them into 3 teachings hoping to bring the message to light in this manner.
Abraham: God’s plan to bless all the nations is through Abraham’s descendents. His story begins in Genesis 13 with God’s call to Abram and Sarai (later renamed Abraham and Sarah) to become the parents of a new people---a new nation. This new nation would become God’s tool for blessing all people. Even though Abram and Sarai were merely an elderly couple with the means to travel, God chose to begin His plan of redemption for the entire world through them. Central to God’s blessing was His covenant with Abraham~ “the Abrahamic Covenant”~ see Genesis 12:1-3 and 15:1-21. God, the awesome Creator of the entire universe, freely chose to make everlasting promise to Abraham and his descendants. These promises in the covenant were the foundation for all of God’s other promises and covenants in the Bible.
In the last Phish Bowl the case against Stephen was presented and how he is asked to answer these charges. Stephen answers these charges in his own way by ignoring the accusations and choosing to give a brief history of Israel, beginning with short bits from Abraham, Joseph and Moses’ lives. He tells of Israel’s falling away from God the first and second times. Finally he accuses the accusers of betraying God by failing to keep the Law and for killing the Righteous One.
So, some major points about Stephen:
1: The Jews always reject God’s leaders (7:39).
2: God doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands (7:48).
3: God transcends the Law (7:30).
4. Israel’s tendency towards apostasy (7:51).
5: Israel rejects God’s messengers (7:52).
Now Stephen speaks. What would he say? Would he water down his message so as not to tick off his accusers?
(Acts 7:2-3) And he said, "Brethren and fathers, listen: The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, "and said to him, 'Get out of your country and from your relatives, and come to a land that I will show you.'
When Stephen said, “brothers” and “fathers”, he was calling attention to the fact that he is one of them. His mention of the God of Glory refers to the glory of God as seen in the Shekinah Glory, the visible radiance of God which appeared on Mount Sinai, into the tabernacle and later in the temples. Later it seems that Stephen’s point is that the Glory of God came to Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia. These religious leaders were too Jerusalem focused and too temple obsessed. They better get their eyes open or they would miss what God was doing. It was happening, not in the temple, in the Holy Place or Holy of Holies, but rather in the temple courtyard and in the streets of Jerusalem. There the Gospel of Jesus the Christ was being preached and confirmed.
(Acts 7:4-5) "Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran. And from there, when his father was dead, He moved him to this land in which you now dwell. "And God gave him no inheritance in it, not even enough to set his foot on. But even when Abraham had no child, He promised to give it to him for a possession and to his descendants after him.
“Faith is like radar that sees through the fog the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see.” ~~ Corrie Ten Boom
The land of the Chaldeans is the same as Mesopotamia that is mentioned in the previous verse. The first stop on Abraham’s journey to the land of Canaan was at Haran, a large city in the upper Euphrates valley. Stephen used his knowledge that all Jews know the story of Abraham to encourage his listeners into going deeper than the mere facts of the patriarch’s existence. (Editor’s note: I couldn’t translate this sentence well, and the writer may have meant something different. I apologize if I have missed his intent). Stephen pointed to lessons from Abraham’s life. He trusted God in situations where common sense would have led most men to doubt. Human reasoning convinced these Jewish leaders that a simple carpenter from Nazareth could not be the promised Messiah. Stephen reminds them their God hardly acts as we expect Him to. Don’t let you self-knowledge of the Bible blind you to see God working around you in the lives of the saints. We need to learn the lesson of faith reflected in the lives of biblical saints.
(Acts 7:6-7) "But God spoke in this way: that his descendants would dwell in a foreign land, and that they would bring them into bondage and oppress them four hundred years.’And the nation to whom they will be in bondage I will judge,' said God, 'and after that they shall come out and serve Me in this place.'
Here it may seem that we have a problem Houston! “Four hundred years” could be seen as a focus point of errors in the Bible by outsiders. In this recorded speech, we will have some difficulties concerning historical numbers, time lines, and Biblical quotations. For example:
(Genesis 15:13) Then He said to Abram: "Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.
(Exodus 12:40) Now the sojourn of the children of Israel who lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years.
(Galatians 3:17) And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect.
(See the length of time of the Egyptian enslavement). The reader must keep in mind that Stephen is a man just like you and I and when we are telling others about the Bible, we too might put things in wrong order or place. I once called Moses a minor prophet and put him in Genesis. None of this takes away from us sharing Christ with the world. Luke also shows that he did not try to clean up the story to make it sound good or right and these issues and others may be referring to traditions or perhaps even to popular writings of the day. Stephen seems not to be concerned with strictly quoting a particular passage either. He just wanted to share Christ.
(Acts 7:8) "Then He gave him the covenant of circumcision; and so Abraham begot Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot the twelve patriarchs.
Circumcision was an outward sign of the promise or “covenant” made between God, Abraham and the entire nation of Israel (See Genesis 17:9-13). Stephen cut right to the point: God had always kept His side of the promise, but Israel had failed again and again to keep its side.
The Jewish rule of circumcision, like Israel’s regular sacrifices and annual feasts, was intended to be a very meaningful event. As with all religious rituals, circumcision was designed to serve as an outer symbol of an inner reality. Those who participated would be reminded of profound spiritual truths. I know from my own experiences of repeating the church creeds, saying the Lord’s Prayer, or celebrating baptism and the Lord’s Supper, that it is difficult to avoid just going through the motions. At times we are all guilty of participating passively and mindlessly in these and other religious activities. As if God is pleased with these mindless, heartless acts of worship! Let’s make it our goal to give God our full attention; body, soul, and spirit, the next time we take part in a church ceremony.
Isaac was Abraham’s son who was born to him in his old age (See Genesis 20-28 for Isaac’s story). Jacob, in turn was one of Isaac’s twin sons born with Esau (See Genesis 25-35, 46-49 for Jacob’s story). These are the three men who formed the nation of Israel which is why God is called “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (See Exodus 3:16).
Now, a teaser for next month: Jacob was the father of the twelve patriarchs which means that Jacob’s twelve sons became the twelve tribes of Israel (See Genesis 49). One of those sons was Joseph and we will look at him next in Acts 7:9-19.
I hope and pray that you and your families have a great 4th of July. As a Marine, I love to celebrate anything to do with our country. I ask us all to pray to Father to continue to bless this Nation, even though I do believe we are too late and that we have handed it over to Satan in so many ways. This is just my view and does not reflect Phish Bowl Ministries or Calvary Chapel Loveland as a whole.
My fellow saints I pray for you and love you. Remember that it is a Spirit filled life journey to understand God. There is soul healing in God’s loving Word and in the church of the Messiah’s Misfits. Remember my chains as I remember yours. Watch! Hold fast in the faith. Be brave and be strong to the end. Let all you do, be done in love. Semper Fidelis!
I Corinthians 16: 13-14
Phish Bowl Coffee House/Ministries
276 E. 29th St
Loveland, CO 80538
An outreach of Calvary Chapel Loveland
