[Prayer]
Today’s message is from Acts 7:1-8:1. It’s about Stephen’s speech to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish governing council, and their response to his speech (they killed him). The passage is long, so we won’t read the entire passage at once. I’ll read it a section at a time. It’s basically a condensed history of the Jewish nation from the time of the patriarch Abraham to the time of Christ. You can follow along in your Bibles as I read and talk about each section of scripture. Remember, as always, as we read, that we are reading the word of God. And the word of God is not just what God said, but also what he did and is doing. We know God through his word. (We know God through the Holy Spirit also. But the Holy Spirit uses the Bible to teach us and to confirm that it is he who is speaking to us.)
So, also, as always, I encourage you to read your Bibles every day. Study and meditate on the word of God. Pray for understanding. Read the Bible both quickly (so that you’ll get through the whole thing before you die of old age) and slowly and carefully so as to gain insight into all that God has to teach you.
Now, as I said, today’s passage is about Stephen’s speech to the Sanhedrin. But before I talk about the passage, I’m going to review what led up to Stephen’s giving this speech. Tom talked about it last week.
Stephen was one of the seven men appointed to see to the equitable distribution of food to the widows in the church. There were only two qualifications given that the men who were appointed to this office had to meet. They had to be full of the Holy Spirit and full of wisdom. Stephen met both of these qualifications.
The Bible doesn’t say anything about how Stephen did his job of distributing the food, but it does say that he did ‘wonders and miraculous signs’ among the people. And he apparently was also preaching the gospel. The miraculous signs would have been the way God confirmed that Stephen was preaching God’s message. And we know that he was preaching because opposition arose against him from a certain group of Jews and they began to argue with him. But it says that they could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit—the Holy Spirit—by whom Stephen spoke.
Well, the group that was opposing Stephen could have admitted that he was right since they couldn’t refute his argument, but they didn’t want to do that. (How long does it take you, by the way, to admit that someone else is right and you are wrong? I can tell you that it’s not something we tend to do quickly, if at all.)
Well, the group that was opposing Stephen couldn’t refute his arguments and didn’t want to admit that they were wrong. (My suspicion is that they wanted to be saved by works—by keeping the Law of Moses, not by grace, but it doesn’t really say.) In any case they recruited some false witnesses and brought Stephen before the Sanhedrin for them to deal with him. The accusation was that Stephen had been speaking “against this place” (that is, against the temple), against the law—the Law of Moses—and against the customs Moses handed down—really, some of the same things they had accused Jesus of before he was crucified. (And, by the way, here’s a side point: False witnesses don’t necessarily say anything that’s false, but may speak with the intention to mislead. We do it all the time: “How can I say this and get a favorable result without lying? How can I say it and have all the information there—that is, not lie by omission—and still get the desired result?” False witnesses are false not simply because they lie...or even intend to mislead. They are false because they reject God. Rejecting God is what makes them false witnesses.)
Now I’ve said that the reason that Stephen was brought before the Sanhedrin was that the group that was opposing him couldn’t figure out how to refute what he was saying. But God is sovereign over all things, he had a message for the Sanhedrin and he used Stephen to bring it to them. (And, as we can see, by God’s sovereign authority, the message is also recorded for the whole world to see and for us to see also. Why is that important for us to see it? I’ll say more later.)
Now let me read what chapter 6, verse 15 says. It’s the verse immediately preceding today’s passage. It says, “All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel. (Acts 6:15)
All of them—every one of them—could see that Stephen’s face was like the face of an angel. As Tom pointed out last week, we are not sure what this means. Sometimes when people see angels they are really impressed and, more often than not, really scared (the angels say, “Fear not”). But sometimes the angels just look like ordinary men.
In Stephen’s case I don’t think his face glowed, or anything like that—we don’t really know, but all those who were there, whether they were rejecting God or not, could see the power of the Holy Spirit in him. Stephen was a man who was filled with the Holy Spirit and with wisdom and they all could see it.
Now let’s look at verses 1 through 3 of the passage. Follow along as I read them:
1Then the high priest asked him, “Are these charges true?”
2To this he replied: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. 3‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’ (Acts 7:1-3)
The high priest and the Sanhedrin heard the charges—that Stephen had been speaking against the temple and against the Law of Moses. They asked Stephen if the charges were true. The charges weren’t true. Stephen had an opportunity to defend himself but didn’t take it (and I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t have taken it). But Stephen was there to speak what the Holy Spirit was giving him to speak, not to defend himself. Jesus is able to defend us when we are doing his work. (And Stephen wound up getting killed, too. Think of that! But Jesus told his disciples, “Not a hair of your head will perish.” (Luke 21:18) They killed Stephen, but not a hair of his head perished!)
Stephen addressed the Sanhedrin with respect—not as adversaries, but as brothers and fathers: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me.” And he began to tell the story of the nation of Israel. It started with God’s call to Abraham. God told Abraham to leave his country and people and go to some unknown place that God would not reveal to him until much later. Abraham left, not knowing where he was going. He left in obedience to God’s instructions—not blind obedience because he didn’t know where he was going, but obedience because he trusted God. Stephen didn’t mention it, but the Lord told Abraham that he would bless him and make him a blessing, that he would make a great nation out of him, the he would bless those who blessed him and curse those who cursed him and, finally, that all nations would be blessed through Abraham. The Lord sent Jesus through Abraham’s descendants and all nations are blessed through him. (And I should point out that to receive that blessing, which is the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life, we have to entrust ourselves to Jesus.) The nation of Israel was founded on Abraham’s trust and obedience. (Trusting God and obedience to him go together, by the way.)
Now let’s look at verses 4 through 8:
4 “So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. 5He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. 6God spoke to him in this way: ‘Your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. 7But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.’ 8Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs. (Acts 7:4-8)
Abraham settled in Haran. He still didn’t know where God was sending him at that point. After his father died God sent Abraham to the land of Canaan, which was his final destination, but didn’t even give him a foot of ground there. He just gave him a promise, the promise that both he and his descendants would inherit the land at some time in the future. Abraham had to trust God’s promise. God has given us a promise, too. If we trust him we will have an eternal inheritance that will never perish spoil or fade kept in heaven for us. If you trust Jesus, you already have that inheritance waiting for you in heaven.
God told Abraham that his descendants would possess the land, but that they would first have to serve as slaves. The nation of Israel started with the twelve sons of Jacob, the patriarchs, whom God multiplied and made into a nation.
Now let’s look at verses 9 and 10:
9 “Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him 10and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh king of Egypt; so he made him ruler over Egypt and all his palace. (Acts 7:9-10)
You know, all these guys that Stephen was speaking to knew all these stories inside and out. Some of them had even memorized them. What was the point of Stephen’s repeating them now?
Well, the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph because he was favored by his father Jacob and tried to get rid of him by selling him into slavery. They really expected him to die in slavery but didn’t want to get their hands dirty by killing him themselves.
But all of what happened was according to God’s plan for creating the nation of Israel from the twelve patriarchs. And just as Joseph’s brothers were jealous, the group that was opposing Stephen was surely also jealous. God was giving Stephen power to perform miraculous signs and wonders and not them. And you may remember that when Jesus was crucified Pilate knew that the Jewish leaders—these same people who were now listening to Stephen—wanted to put Jesus to death because they were jealous of him. I don’t think all of this was lost on them now.
Now let’s look at verses 11 through 16:
11 “Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our fathers could not find food. 12When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers on their first visit. 13On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph’s family. 14After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, seventy-five in all. 15Then Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our fathers died. 16Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money. (Acts 7:11-16)
You see, God used Joseph, whom the other eleven patriarchs had tried to kill, to rescue all of them from the famine in Canaan. God used one man to rescue eleven others who hated him (actually, ten—Reuben did not want to harm Joseph). And God used Jesus whom these present Jewish leaders had hated and had killed out of jealousy to rescue anyone in the world who would trust him from sin and death and hell. (And some of these leaders did trust Jesus, by the way and were and are saved.) And, as we’ll see (and most of us know), God used Jesus to rescue Saul who would shortly participate in the murder of Stephen.
Now lets look at verses 17 through 43:
17 “As the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt greatly increased. 18Then another king, who knew nothing about Joseph, became ruler of Egypt. 19He dealt treacherously with our people and oppressed our forefathers by forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die.
20 “At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. For three months he was cared for in his father’s house. 21When he was placed outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. 22Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.
23 “When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. 24He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. 25Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. 26The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’
27 “But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? 28Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ 29When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.
30 “After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to look more closely, he heard the Lord’s voice: 32 ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.
33 “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals; the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.’
35 “This is the same Moses whom they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36He led them out of Egypt and did wonders and miraculous signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the desert.
37 “This is that Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will send you a prophet like me from your own people.’ 38He was in the assembly in the desert, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers; and he received living words to pass on to us.
39 “But our fathers refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. 40They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt— we don’t know what has happened to him!’ 41That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and held a celebration in honor of what their hands had made. 42But God turned away and gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets:
“‘Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the desert, O house of Israel?
43You have lifted up the shrine of Molech and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship. Therefore I will send you into exile’ beyond Babylon. (Acts 7:17-44)
God multiplied the patriarchs in Egypt to become the nation of Israel. They were enslaved and mistreated by a king who was afraid of them because they had grown so great in number. They were enslaved just as God had told Abraham would happen many years before. The king of Egypt ordered all the male babies to be killed by the midwives at birth in order to keep the Israelites from becoming any stronger. But God arranged for one baby to survive. That baby was Moses whom God had chosen to rescue his people from slavery. (And I should point out again that this slavery in Egypt was part of God’s plan for creating the nation of Israel. It is referred to in several places in the Bible as the iron-smelting furnace of Egypt. God forged the nation of Israel through the slavery of Egypt.)
God arranged for Moses to be brought up, not as a slave with the Israelites, but as a prince in Pharaoh the king of Egypt’s household. He was trained to be a leader. (In fact, according to what I have read, it was possible that he could have become the next Pharaoh. But that’s not what God had planned for him.)
When Moses was 40 years old, he decided to visit his people. He rescued one of the Israelites from an Egyptian who was mistreating him. He killed the Egyptian. The next day Moses came back and tried to reconcile two Israelites who were fighting. They rejected him as a meddler. The rescuer was rejected again by those who would be rescued. One of them said, “Are you going to kill me as you killed the Egyptian.” When Moses realized what he had done was known, he fled Egypt and stayed away for another 40 years. It was for God’s further training. This time I believe God was training him in humility so that he would be a suitable rescuer. After 40 years God sent him back to Egypt lead the Israelites out of slavery. But even after they were led out of slavery in Egypt, they continued to reject God who had rescued them. Eventually God sent the nation into captivity in Babylon. (You know, we are also born into slavery—slavery to sin. Our rescuer (redeemer in the Bible) is Jesus. We must not reject him!)
Now let’s look at verses 44 through 50. I’ll read them:
44 “Our forefathers had the tabernacle of the Testimony with them in the desert. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen. 45Having received the tabernacle, our fathers under Joshua brought it with them when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them. It remained in the land until the time of David, 46who enjoyed God’s favor and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. 47But it was Solomon who built the house for him.
48 “However, the Most High does not live in houses made by men. As the prophet says:
49 “‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me?
says the Lord.
Or where will my resting place be?
50Has not my hand made all these things?’ (Acts 7:44-50)
I think Stephen made this point about the temple, that God does not live in houses made by men, because he was being accused of speaking against the temple. Actually, if you look back to the end of chapter 6, the false witnesses were saying that Stephen had said that Jesus of Nazareth would destroy the temple. What Jesus had actually said was, “Destroy this temple and I will build it up again in three days.” But Jesus was not speaking about a building when he said this, but about his body. He would be put to death and rise back to life in three days. Nevertheless, the temple—the building—would be utterly destroyed by the Romans in just a few years from when Stephen gave his speech.
Now let’s look at verses 51 through 53. This is Stephen’s closing summary. This is what he has been leading up to. Listen to what he says:
51 “You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit! 52Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him— 53you who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it.” (Acts 7:51-53)
He didn’t sound too diplomatic, did he? What about diplomacy? Should we use diplomacy when we speak? Our present culture condemns speaking bluntly. In fact if you rebuke someone plainly, you run the danger having the person you rebuke think your “sin” of bluntness reduced whatever you are rebuking him for to insignificance.
But Jesus called the Jewish leaders ‘hypocrites’ and ‘whitewashed walls’. John the Baptist said to those he was preaching to, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath.” They weren’t speaking this way because they had lost their tempers, but because they were calling sin what it was—sin.
Stephen told these Jewish leaders, “You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!” (Your father, by the way, it the one you take after. Jesus used the expression “your father the devil” in rebuking the Jewish leaders. They took after their father the devil who was a liar and a murderer.) These Jewish leaders were taking after all those who had rejected and persecuted and killed the prophets who were speaking the word of God by the Holy Spirit. (“You always resist the Holy Spirit.”) They were also rejecting Stephen’s who was speaking by the Holy Spirit. Do you remember that all of them saw that Stephen’s face was like the face of an angel? They really knew that God was speaking to them, but they were continuing to reject him.
And all of what Stephen had recited as the history of the nation of Israel was God’s work leading up to the coming of the Righteous One, Jesus, whom they had betrayed and murdered!
Now let’s look at verses 7:54 through 8:1. I’ll read them
54When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
57At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep. 8:1And Saul was there, giving approval to his death. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. (Acts 7:54-8:1)
These guys didn’t repent! When John the Baptist called the people he was preaching to a brood of vipers, they repented and asked what they should do. But these guys were furious. Actually it says they were “sawed through the heart”. Furious is the way the NIV translators translated the expression sawed through the heart. Many of the other translations say they were “cut to the heart”.
Do you remember how the people that Peter preached to at Pentecost reacted when he told them, “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ!”? They were “cut to the heart” and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” The word cut in cut to the heart is a different word from the one Luke, the human author of Acts, used in describing the Jewish leaders’ reaction to Stephen’s speech (the word was sawed through). But the point is that John the Baptist and Jesus and Peter and Stephen all spoke plainly and people either repented or gnashed their teeth. (By the way, how do you react if someone rebukes you plainly?)
Well, they killed Stephen. These dignified “brothers and fathers”, these leaders of Israel yelled and screamed (presumably to block out the supposed blasphemy), rushed at Stephen and dragged him out and stoned him (and so much for needing permission from the Romans).
But Stephen, after he had prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” prayed for Jesus to forgive them: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” He prayed just like Jesus. Then he fell asleep. Now he’s with Jesus.
One more thing: In this last passage we are also introduced to Saul who was approving of Stephen’s death and who would approve of the deaths of many other Christians, who would persecute them and put them in prison and... who would write at least a fourth of the New Testament. This Saul who was approving of Stephen’s death would write at least a fourth of the New Testament! Isn’t God’s grace amazing! It’s all because of Jesus. Praise the Lord! Amen!
[Prayer]