Acts 8:1-4
April 14, 2002
Prospering Through Persecution
The scene, unthinkable for many of us, is not uncommon elsewhere in the world. Christians, gathering for worship find themselves the target of hatred. You may recall just last month the grizzly scene where five people were killed and 45 injured in a horrific grenade attack upon a church in Islamabad on Sunday 17 March. The dead included an American mother and her teenage daughter, a Pakistani woman and an Afghan man.
"I was attending the service when all of a sudden explosions occurred. I found myself standing among the bodies soaked in blood." said Sarfraz Masih a devastated and stunned survivor.
The shocking assault began just before 11 a.m., when a loud explosion rocked the back of Islamabad’s International Protestant Church during the Sunday morning sermon. One assailant with a grenade in his hand and several more on his belt ran down the aisle, shouting and lobbing the explosives directly at the 70 people in the sanctuary.
“At that point I hit the deck,” a Briton working for the Tearfund aid agency told Reuters. “There were five or six more explosions.”
People dove to the floor for cover, and one woman hid under the piano until the smoke cleared. “Almost everybody was covered in blood,” one person said, with mangled and unconscious bodies covering the floor. Panicked parents began calling for their children, trying to grope their way downstairs to the Sunday School rooms. Among the injured were the Sri Lankan Ambassador to Pakistan and several members of his family, as well as the wife of a Japanese diplomat. Citizens of Pakistan, Germany, Iran, Great Britain, Canada, Ethiopia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Switzerland were also wounded. (from Compass 3/18/02)
What happens when persecution comes to the church? When the church is oppressed from without, what is produced within the church? Such bloody persecution is rare in our country, except in those cases of deranged assailants such as what happened at Columbine or in Houston a few years ago. But persecution is quite common throughout the history of the church and is present throughout the world in many places. Indonesia, South America, Africa, and Asia have numerous hot spots where it is not uncommon for there to be oppression and persecution sanctioned by the society.
So that while we may not face such pressures here, how are we to view the sufferings of our brothers and sisters in other places and times which have so suffered. Acts 8:1-4 is a powerful reminder that as much as it was God’s plan to use the suffering of his one and only Son to secure our salvation, so also God uses the crucible of cruelty to spread the gospel of grace throughout the world. While it is not the only means, God quite often pushes the church out into the world through persecution. That which appears to be setbacks and defeats, He uses to advance his kingdom.
READ Acs 8:1-4 Acts 8 is a turning point in God establishing his people.
What was commanded in Acts 1:8, that the church was to be God’s witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth, was realized in Acts 8:1 when God’s people, because of persecution, spread the gospel. Let us take a look to see what persecution produces.
Persecution produces fearless worship 8:1-2
Standing over Stephen, whose body broken by rocks hurled from the angry mob, is Saul, a young Pharisee. Saul was born in what is modern Turkey, raised as a devout Jew, educated in Jerusalem and desirous to maintain those tradition built on God’s Law. Luke informs us of his attitude, he approved of Stephen’s execution.
But this is more than a mere consent. The word Luke uses implies a hearty approval, a jubilant gratification. Saul’s satisfaction comes from his certainty that Stephen not only broke God’s law but blasphemed. To proclaim that sins are forgiven by the death of Jesus of Nazareth was unthinkable, so it was necessary to put an end to this perceived blasphemy.
Luke’s description of Saul as delighting in this barbarous act and in his ravaging the church in v3 is notable in that Luke’s material is supplied by the eye witness Saul himself, later named Paul. The forgiveness Stephen sought for his persecutors as he received the rain of rocks on his head, was received by Saul who himself became the apostles declaring God’s free grace. But before Saul could see his own sin, he would sin even more boldly in the days to come.
What Saul began others followed. On that very day mob mentality flowed from the Sanhedrin out into the streets. The word used here for persecution implies a pursuit, chasing down, with the desire to rid Jerusalem once and for all the stench of these believers in the Messiah.
We are told that all were scattered throughout the surrounding area of Judea and Samaria and that only the Apostles remained. Many scholars speculate that the “all” there refers to those who, like Stephen, were Hellenistic Jews, or at least Jews who were not native to Jerusalem. These Greek speaking Jews were often vilified as impure due to contamination with Gentiles, unworthy of the status to live in Jerusalem. Now that one of their number appeared to be a traitor, the whole lot had to be removed from the city.
What did this persecution produce? Verse 2 – devout men lamenting Stephen’s death.
The Mishnah, the rabbinic law code, stated that “open lamentation being inappropriate for one who has been stoned, burned, beheaded, or strangled under Sanhedrin judgment but allows mourning, for mourning has place in the heart alone.”(Sanh 6:5-6). Yet these mourners, described as pious, devout, those who revere God’s law, wept greatly. They didn’t hide their sorrow or their displeasure at what transpired, for they were neither ashamed of the gospel nor afraid of the wrath of the court.
It may not seem self evident that persecution produced worship. Yet the description here is not a simple removal of a corpse. Luke’s description here focuses on the reverence of those who attended to the corpse as well as their public sorrow. While many soon scattered for their lives, the church still saw the need to properly tend to the fallen martyr, to mourn his passing. Yet in so doing, look forward to the resurrection to come. The inclusion of this small detail I believe helps offset what might appear to be the interest of self preservation as the church flees for their lives.
Fearless worship produced by persecution is in the brave people who gathered in Islamabad last month is repeated throughout the church, a fact we often forget. Few of us can identify with those who gather to worship with the nagging questions whether they will be so arrested or killed.
John Rucyahana served as a pastor in Uganda during the brutal reign of dictator Idi Amin. During the `70’s Amin targeted 200,000 political opponents, Christian leaders, and members of certain ethnic groups for extermination. One day the government soldiers came for John.
He remembers, "One put the cold barrel of a gun against my ear and held his finger on the trigger. They put me in a vehicle and made me sit on a sack of explosives. As we began moving, I thought, Even the slightest jolt, and I'm dead." The soldiers finally released John, figuring they had successfully intimidated him and that he would no longer speak out.
What the oppressors meant for evil, though, God used for good. Two days after John's harrowing brush with death was Sunday. That day, John walked into the church to find it packed—people were standing in the aisles. People had heard what happened and had come to find out what he would say. Would he speak out for Christ? John did speak for Christ, only this time to a larger group than he could ever have gathered on his own. (Kevin A. Miller, vice president of resources, CT International)
What motivates such a decision is perhaps best expressed by Eusebius, the famed writer of the 3rd century. When the emperor Valens threatened Eusebuis with confiscation of all his goods, torture, banishment, or even death, the courageous Christian replied:
"He needs not fear confiscation, who has nothing to lose; nor banishment, to whom heaven is his country; nor torments, when his body can be destroyed at one blow; nor death, which is the only way to set him at liberty from sin and sorrow."
Down through the centuries, God has used persecution to point us again and again to Christ. The medieval mystic Thomas A Kempis wisely pointed out: “Adversities do not make a man frail; they show what sort of man he is.” In the same way, adversity drives the church back to who called her His own.
Unfortunately, too often adversities only reveal our weaknesses. What keeps us from worship? There are no armed soldiers threatening us. The worst we face is either the weather outside is too nasty to get out of the house or too nice to waste it inside worshipping. Our own prosperity is a deadly poison. In the simple aspect of worship through giving, studies have shown how financial prosperity stifles giving. The richer we are the less we give to the church proportionate to our income. The poorest fifth of the church give 3.4% of their income to the church and the richest fifth give 1.6%--half as much as the poorer church members. It's a strange principle, that probably goes right to the heart of our sinfulness and Christ's sufficiency--the principle that hard times, like persecution, often produce more prayer, more power, more open purses than easy times. (Piper, Spreading Spiritual Power Through Persecution 5/5/91)
An Amish Bishop once said: “Prosperity has often been fatal to Christianity, but persecution never.” (The Economist 7/22/89 CT V33, n16)
Persecution produces faithful witness 8:3-4
Persecution doesn’t stop with a single death, but like an animal with a taste of blood, crouches for the next kill. Saul’s delight in Stephen’s death was just the appetizer for what he would do next.
In v3 we are told he “ravaged the church.” The term expresses a brutal and sadistic cruelty, most often reserved for a wild beast. Saul’s fury is seen in the extent to which he went, irrespective of private homes or gender, he sought to imprison all who offended his concept of God.
Saul did not act on his own, for Acts 26:9-11 tells us he came with authority of the Sanhedrin. What is more he sought not just to intimidate them, but have them executed if possible.
For us such oppression is foreign. It has been said that the greatest criticism of the Church today is that no one wants to persecute it: because there is nothing very much to persecute it about.
The torment may not be murder or torture, it may not include harassment by the police or mob violence, but for some it could be the loss of a job, alienation from family, pressures to conform, ridicule or just the silent disapproval of disinterest.
But persecution only secured greater proclamation.
Verse 4 opens a new era as the gospel goes out from Jerusalem to the rest of the world. It was persecution, torment, death that moved the early church from the safety of Jerusalem out into the world. The strange but true principle is at work, the more the church is afflicted, the more it multiplies.
The providential scattering of the Christians was the scattering of the gospel. The attack had the opposite effect, instead of smothering the gospel, persecution succeeded only in spreading it. In time it would be one of those scattered, persecuted believers who would be God’s tool in Saul’s life. In God’s time, Saul, in search of Christians who fled to Damascus, was stopped by God. But that encounter was only the first step, for in a few days it would be Ananias who would be used of God to bring Saul to faith.
Knowing this about Saul, we can be encouraged that sometimes our worst enemies may become our allies. Saul, who sought the death of Christians, soon became the greatest human advocate ever. Adversaries can become advocates. Critics can become comrades. A persecutor becomes a partner and the proclamation of the gospel continues.
That persecution produces proclamation is seen throughout history. In our own century this axiom has been proved repeatedly.
In 1937 missionaries were forced out of Wallamo, Ethiopia, leaving the field with only 18 recently baptized converts and a few portions of Scripture in the language of the people. These new believers were cruelly persecuted, and some were martyred. But 5 years later, the missionaries returned to find that the 18 Christians had multiplied to 10,000! The glory of God's grace had shone through! During that time and throughout the war, the missionaries were able to work elsewhere, seeing converts won there.
Following WWII in China when the National Government was defeated by the Communists, 637 China Inland Missionaries forced to leave. It seemed a total disaster. Yet within four years 286 had been redeployed in South east Asia and Japan. New works sprung up, new churches founded. For decades Christians outside of China wondered what was left of the church there, as persecutions increased. When access was again possible 30 years later, the church in China, even under sever persecution, began to multiply and now total 30 to 40 times the number they were when the missionaries left.
The key to this kind of growth is in the simple word, “scattered”
There are different words for scattered in Greek. One means dispersed so that the item is gone from that point on, like scattering a person’s ashes on the ocean’s waves. That is not the word used here in vv1 and 4. The word used here means scattered in order to be planted. Just as in the Old Testament, God scattered the Jews throughout the world but then brought them back and planted them in their land. The disciples were scattered as a result of the persecution. But all the persecutors did by scattering the disciples was to plant them in the places to which they had been scattered. (Boice, Acts 133)
They were scattered, but never stopped proclaiming God’s grace, never ceased from speaking about what was done for us by Christ. Their sins forgiven was not something they could be quiet about.
When the church is tormented, they are not just refugees, fleeing persecution. Rather the church becomes a scattered people, sown by God like seeds in new soil. God directs each and every step of our lives so that we find ourselves here and now by God’s sovereign grace.
Wherever you find yourself – either scattered by work of family or education or some other means – have you considered yourself planted in that place? Have you put down roots and born fruit for Jesus Christ? That is what these early Christians did. It is because of this activity that even the bad things that had happened to them served to advance the cause of Christ.
We can choose to be refugees, wishing for the past and living in fear of the future. Or we can chose to be missionaries, having our eyes open for the new opportunities that God is giving us.
This realization of God planting us is a lesson God’s people needed to learn when in captivity in Babylon. Jeremiah wrote to God’s people living under the effects of terrible persecution in Babylon, but listen to what he writes in Jeremiah 29:4-7. The command there is important: “Seek the welfare of the city in which you live.” God placed them there and they should not rail against God’s work in their life. The simple reason is expressed in vv10-14.
For some of you – being in Wisconsin is like a scattering and a persecution all rolled up in one, you find yourselves in a foreign land or at least another state and wonder where God is. It need not take a calculated persecution for you to feel abandoned by God. Can you see that it is God who either brought you here or will take you to another place, that God is just as present in Wisconsin as he is elsewhere? If that is the case he has placed you here for a reason – to scatter you not to end your effectiveness, but to plant you here. Are you blooming where God has planted you? The church took the opportunity to see God’s hand in their life to proclaim his grace to whomever He would place in their lives.
How can we do this? The answer to that is found in reading we heard earlier, from Hebrews 11-12.
That great gallery of faith describes men and women who looked to God in times of adversity. The list includes names of the great leaders as well as nameless but faithful people who suffered. Those who have gone before us, who have suffered, those who, we are told in 11:36-38 form a great cloud of witnesses. They, having suffered before, cheer us on, to do as they have done. Not to find strength in themselves, but to look to Jesus. He is our author and perfecter of the faith. It is he who initiated it in us and who will bring it to completion when our lives on this earth are over. Even now he is seated at the right hand of God. His work accomplished, he awaits us.
