ey are not the good and honest heart Jesus talked about in the parable of the sower. In other words, when they get new and better information they won't accept it. They like what they have and they don't want to adjust their position. They don't want to adjust their position so they must depart from logic and use that one-sided thinking that we have talked about before. It's like killing the mailman because he brought you a message you don't like. Let's read verses 11 and 12.
Then they suborned men, which said, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God. And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and the scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him to the council.
Did you get the last statement? They brought Stephen before the council. Here we go again. It was the apostles before, but now it's a deacon, Stephen. Wouldn't you hate to face that prejudice court? The word 'suborned' in v. 11 is probably a word you are not familiar with. It means literally to secretly equip or to give false testimony. Thus you see, they secretly equipped some men to give false testimony against Stephen. That's another way of saying they lied or distorted the facts. The quotation in v. 11 is the distorted testimony they gave. Incidentally, I trust that you are aware, the King James Version translators did not use quotation marks, as we do today. Instead, it was the custom in those days, the early 1600's to capitalize the first word in the quotation and no convention was used at the end. Notice, in v. 11 the word 'We' is capitalized, thus the beginning of a quotation. It's a little confusing to those who are not familiar with it. Now, the quotation given of the false testimony of these suborned men was:
We have heard him speak blasphemous words again Moses, and against God.
The phrase 'blasphemous words' means to curse. Thus, their testimony was that they heard Stephen curse God and Moses. Now that's a little ridiculous. But, I trust you're aware blasphemy against God was an offense punishable by death under the Law ofMoses—I speak of Leviticus 24:16. Thus, I call your attention, a little distortion can be deadly, don't forget it. You will remember the Sadducees were the ones who brought the charges before. They made no attempt to prove or disprove anything the apostles said. They simply said: don't you teach in this name anymore! They implied, because WE said so. You will recall Gamaliel was a Pharisee, his speech appealed to logic. The friction between the Sadducees and the Pharisees before has actually been in the apostles favor, although there had been no public show of their disagreements in court.
Now, I trust you caught on, Stephen stirred up the Pharisees, not the Sadducees, this time. You can see, the Pharisees use different techniques that the Sadducees. Remember, the Pharisees pride themselves on knowing the law. They are more sly than the Sadducees. They have stealthy tactics. It is interesting also to notice, they narrowed the charge down to one man, Stephen, so as to deal with him independently. The apostles were teaching the same thing Stephen was teaching. But you see, the masses of the Jews, respected the Christians. So you see, they can deal with one man without running as must risk of upsetting the masses. The quotation in v. 11, as I said before, is the false actual words. But, I don't think one would have to be a detective to see, Stephen was teaching the Law ofMoses was replaced by Christ's Law. That is, God gave the Law ofMoses, the 10 Commandment Law, to the children of Israel at Mt. Sinai as their law or schoolmaster to bring them to Christ. Christ's law replaced or superseded the Law given through Moses. We have been through this argument before in this study. However, I think it is only fair to make you aware that this problem is still with us today. Some who claim to be following Christ today are still trying to keep the 10 Commandment Law. Some say they are keeping both, Christ's law and the 10 Commandment Law. That's really impossible, but that's what they say. Do y