Acts 7:1-53
You may be seated. And please
turn in your copy of God’s word to the book of Acts, chapter
seven, verses one to 53. Usually we do stand for this
particular reading, but it’s a long one and I figure you could
use a break and I’ll hear about it. So we’ll let you be seated. I want you to not be overwhelmed
by these 53 verses. These are 53 verses where Stephen
is going to give a defense, a defense of the accusations against him.
He’s been accused of blaspheming the temple, blaspheming God,
and blaspheming Moses or the law. And so he’s gonna say, no,
it’s y’all, y’all are the blasphemers. But I want you to think of three
important things as we make our way through this passage. They
love the temple. They love the territory or the
promised land. and they love the Torah or the
law. So three T’s, temple, Torah,
and territory. They idolize these Israelites. They idolize the promised land,
the temple, and the law. And so you’ll see, as we read
through this, Stephen’s saying, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
You need to idolize God himself. Hear the word of the living God.
This is Acts chapter seven, beginning at verse one. It says, and the
high priest said, are these things so? And Stephen said, brothers
and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to
our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived
in Haran and said to him, go out from your land and from your
kindred and go into the land that I will show you. Then he
went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran.
And after his father died, God removed him from there into this
land in which you are now living. Yet he gave him no inheritance
in it, not even a foot’s length, but promised to give it to him
as a possession and to his offspring after him. though he had no child. And God spoke to this effect
that his offspring would be sojourners in a land belonging to others
who would enslave them and afflict them 400 years. But I will judge
the nation that they serve, said God. And after that, they shall
come out and worship me in this place. And he gave them the covenant
of circumcision. And so Abraham, because of the
father of Isaac, became the father of Isaac and circumcised him
on the eighth day. And Isaac became the father of
Jacob and Jacob of the 12 patriarchs. And the patriarchs, jealous of
Joseph, sold him into Egypt. But God was with him and rescued
him out of all his afflictions and gave him favor and wisdom
before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt
and over all his household. Now there came a famine throughout
all Egypt and Canaan and great affliction, and our fathers could
find no food. But when Jacob heard that there
was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers on their first visit.
And on the second visit, Joseph made himself known to his brothers,
and Joseph’s family became known to Pharaoh. And Joseph sent and
summoned Jacob, his father, and all his kindred, 75 persons in
all, And Jacob went down into Egypt and he died. He and our
fathers, and they were carried back to Shechem and laid in the
tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the
sons of Hamor in Shechem. But as the time of the promise
drew near, which God had granted to Abraham, the people increased
and multiplied in Egypt until there arose over Egypt another
king who did not know Joseph. He dealt shrewdly with our race
and forced our fathers to expose their infants so that they would
not be kept alive. This time Moses was born and
he was beautiful in God’s sight. And he was brought up for three
months in his father’s house. And when he was exposed, Pharaoh’s
daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. And Moses
was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. And he was
mighty in his words and deeds. When he was 40 years old, it
came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of
Israel. And seeing one of them being
wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking
down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers
would understand that God was giving them salvation by his
hand, but they did not understand. And on the following day, he
appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile
them saying, men, you were brothers. Why do you wrong each other?
But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside
saying, who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you want
me to kill you as you killed the Egyptian yesterday? At this
retort, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian
where he became the father of two sons. Now, when 40 years
had passed, the angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount
Sinai, in a flame of fire, in a bush. When Moses saw it, he
was amazed at the sight. As he drew near to look, there
came the voice of the Lord. I am the God of your fathers,
the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. And Moses trembled
and did not dare to look. Then the Lord said to him, take
off the sandals from your feet for the place where you are standing
is holy ground. I have surely seen the affliction
of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their groaning
and I have come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send
you to Egypt. This Moses, whom they rejected
saying, who made you a ruler and a judge? This man God sent
as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared
to him at the bush. This man led them out performing
wonders and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness
for 40 years. This is the Moses who said to
the Israelites, God will raise up for you a prophet like me
from your brothers. This is the one who was in the
congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him
at Mount Sinai and with our fathers. He received living oracles to
give us. Our fathers refused to obey him,
but they thrust him aside and in their hearts, they turned
to Egypt saying to Aaron, make for us gods who will go before
us. And for this Moses, who led us
out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of
him. And they made a calf in those days and offered a sacrifice
to the idol and were rejoicing in the works of their hands.
but God turned away. He gave them over to worship
the host of heaven as it is written in the book of the prophets.
Did you bring to me slain beasts and sacrifices during the 40
years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? You took up the tent
of Moloch and the star of your God, Rephan, the images that
you made to worship. I will send you into exile beyond
Babylon. Our fathers have the tent of
witness in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed
him to make it according to the pattern that he had seen. Our
fathers in turn brought it with Joshua. When they dispossessed
the nations that God drove out before our fathers, so it was
until the days of David who found favor in the sight of God and
asked to find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. But it
was Solomon who built a house for him. Yet the Most High does
not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says. Heaven is
my throne, the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build
for me, says the Lord? Or what is the place of my rest?
Did not my hand make all these things, you stiff-necked people? Uncircumcised in hearts and ears,
you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.
Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced
beforehand the coming of the righteous one, whom you have
now betrayed and murdered. You have now received the law
as delivered by angels, and you did not keep it. Pray with me.
Lord, let us have ears that hear, eyes that see, hearts that perceive,
and hands and feet that willingly go and do all that is before
us. We ask and pray this in the strong
name of Jesus, our great Savior. Amen. I have a friend who was
not an elder in the church I served, but he was an elder at another
point in time in his life. He would, from time to time,
have our family over to dinner and he would get me off to the
side and kind of give me a little chit-chat about life and ministry,
tried to be very encouraging. I remember one time he said to
me, sometimes you preachers, sometimes you preachers overthink
your preaching. And I said, well, you know, we’re
supposed to study, we’re supposed to pray, we’re supposed to, you
know, have a messy desk for three or four days and then by Sunday
have something to say. He said, I bet I bet if you had
to, you could stand up on a Sunday and start talking. And because
of what you know, and because of what you’ve studied, and because
of the blessing of the Holy Spirit, you could probably bless your
people more simply than if you had put in 30, 40 hours. And
he’s right. And that’s exactly, I think,
what we see in the life and ministry of Stephen in this very hour.
Stephen is put on the spot. He’s accused of blaspheming.
He’s accused of speaking against the temple, against God, against
Moses, against the law and against the promised land. And he’s hauled
in rather violently before the council, the same council that
would have overseen Jesus’ trial and than crucifixion. He’s hauled in before them and
the high priest simply says, are these things so? Never ask a preacher a question,
right? They’ll give you a really long
answer. Here it’s 53 verses, 52 verses
of answer. As these verses were being read,
we just read, I think about eight minutes of scripture, eight minutes
of Bible reading. As God’s word was being read,
did you not feel the power of the recounting of redemptive
history? Who God is and what God has done
in the life of his people. It’s gonna make these people
angry. It’s gonna make them so enraged that they will go out
and stone Stephen on the spot. We’ll think of that next week
as we look through verses 54 through the end of chapter seven.
But I want us to think for just a moment about Stephen’s refutation
of the three idols of Israel, the temple. the Torah, the law
and the territory and how he through recounting God’s work
in redemptive history, how he shows that God’s ancient promises,
his eternal plan of redemption unfolded before their eyes. It
has unfolded before their ancestors, their father’s eyes. It has culminated
in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And yet they have resisted
it. They have persecuted those ministers
of it, and they have broken God’s law. There are three sacred cows. And mind you, they bring up the
sacred cows, not Stephen. Their three sacred cows are the
territory, the promised land. And the way that Stephen so carefully
and boldly, but also in great detail,
refutes this is quite an amazing thing. He says to them, first
of all, brothers, fathers, men of Israel, he addresses them
very carefully. You don’t want to upset your
accusers. You don’t want to walk into a court of law and say,
Hey judge, you’re going to let me off today. Or, you know, what’s
up there? You know, we get so colloquial
and casual in our day and age, but we want to be respectful.
And he says, men of Israel, brothers, our father, Abraham was blessed
by God. But did you notice that he refers
to, I think what we covered on Wednesday night in our study
of Genesis, by the time Abraham dies, he doesn’t even own but
a square inch of the promised land. God had promised, you leave
your country, you leave your people, you go to this land of
Canaan. There I will establish you. There I will give you offspring
that will outnumber the sand on the seashore and the stars
and the heavens. And yet you read about the life
of Abraham. He had to sojourn in Haran on
his way out of Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan. He stopped
for a time, still in his own country, but on the edge. And
God continued to bless him. He was not in the promised land
and God still related to him and God almighty still blessed
him. And then when he finally gets to the promised land, there’s
a famine. And so he leaves and goes to Egypt. Guess what? God blesses him there. He comes
back with so much more livestock that he and Lot must separate
into different territories because their shepherds, their sheep
herders began to quarrel because there was not enough space for
the both of them in the same territory. He goes on to say,
Abraham was blessed by God without the promised land. And if that’s
not enough, Abraham had Isaac, Isaac had Jacob, Jacob had many
sons, and those sons, the 12 patriarchs, sold Joseph, the
baby, into slavery. And instead of Joseph being in
the promised land, being blessed by God, he went to Egypt. And
you know from your Bible lessons, your Bible reading, that Joseph
suffered greatly in Egypt. Eventually accused by Potiphar’s
wife, he was imprisoned. When others would get out of
prison, remember me to Pharaoh, they forgot him and he languished
in prison until finally it was recognized he was wise and he
became steward over Egypt. And during a famine preparation,
he made enough, enough food for provisions for all the surrounding
nations, including his own brothers. And so out of, the promised land
in Egypt, God took care of the patriarchs. And he goes on to
explain how Israel was in Egypt. Israel was enslaved for 400 years
under the yoke of Pharaoh, under tyranny, under duress. Israel was in Egypt and yet God
Almighty was with them. They grew, they became great
in number. The midwives could not keep up
with the birth rate. And then finally, when he speaks
about the promised land and their love for the territory, he says
yet again, the people were often not in it and yet God blessed
them. And he speaks of It speaks of
Moses, who was born not in Canaan, but in Egypt. He was not raised
in a godly household, but he was raised as a daughter of Pharaoh,
a son of an Egyptian. And when he went to identify
with his people and to rescue and redeem one man, they said,
get you out of here. Who are you to judge over us? Yet 40 years after living in
the Midianite wilderness, God came to him in a burning bush.
and said, you will go, you will redeem, you will rescue your
people. And so Stephen makes it abundantly clear to us. He
makes it crystal clear to this council of religious leaders
who should have known their Bibles backwards and forwards. He says,
very often, if not the case, most of the time, Israel was
not in the promised land and God was with them. Well, there’s a second sacred
cow that they bring up in their accusation. They tell him, you
blaspheme the Torah, the law. You blaspheme what was handed
down at Mount Sinai through angels to Moses, this law which we should
obey. This is a little bit simpler
one to refute here. Moses, the receiver of the law. Moses, the giver of the law to
Israel. Moses said even of himself, there
will come after me a prophet greater than I. And it is his
voice, his law, his word, his prophecy that you should hear. And you can feel the tension
probably in this semi-circle of judges who, by just a deacon,
Remember, that’s what Stephen is. He’s just a deacon of the
church, a mighty deacon. He is telling these learned men,
these wise men, these old men, you’ve rejected Moses and you’ve
rejected Jesus, the one who’s come after him. You can feel
the tension. You can feel the rising climax of this story. They accuse him of a third blasphemy,
blasphemy against the temple. That’s their other sacred cow.
You know, Israel worshiped in a tent in the wilderness. The
tent was brought into Palestine when, when David was on the throne
and David said, I want to build a house. And God says, no, you’ve
had too much blood on your hands. So Solomon would build the temple.
And they would build this temple and it would be destroyed a few
hundred years later by the Babylonians because of their disobedience.
It would be rebuilt in a small, tiny way by Ezra and Nehemiah
and others who would return with Israelites to build. The temple
would be destroyed yet again. And then it would, it would be
added onto the, the, the temple they now speak of and now minister
in is not their temple really, is they are an occupied nation.
Very often occupiers say, what’s the religion of the people? Whatever
the religion of the people is, we’ll work at it. We’ll emphasize
it. We’ll give them, you know, bathrooms and concession stands.
And, you know, we’ll make it really nice. Widescreen TVs and
whatnot. We’ll make it really nice. And
if we give them their religion, gold-plated, they’ll respect
us and they’ll love us. And our occupation will be successful.
The temple they’re now worshiping in was really enhanced. through
several hundred years of renovations by Herod and others. And so it
was a really fine place that guess what? They really had nothing
to do with it, but it was the place of their power. And it
was the place of their ability to Lord over people and make
a significant sum of money. And so when they, they tell him,
You blaspheme against this holy place. They’re standing in a
very majestic place with big massive stones, a place that
people stood in awe over. And he simply says to them, God
is not contained in a building that is built by human hands.
God is not contained in this temple as much as you revere
it, as much as you love it. God is He’s not even contained by the
highest heavens. And so you can imagine their rage, their indignation. You can imagine they’ve got their
clipboards. They’re taking their notes. They’re making a list
and checking it twice. And as soon as we can get our
hands around this man, Stephen’s neck, we’re going to wring his
neck till he takes his last breath. Well, this is Stephen’s defense
against the territory, the land against the, the, the Torah,
the law, and against the temple. But he goes for the kill. Now, some of you, as spring is
coming, you’ve begun to do some yard work, and maybe you’ve been
out mowing the grass, and you’ve done, as I’ve experienced in
years past, you, unknown to you, you roll over a yellowjacket’s
nest. There’s a hole in the ground,
but the spring growth is there, and you just pass right over
it with your mower, and it vibrates, disrupts their life. And so as
your mower goes on past, then come your feet. And if you’re
silly enough to mow in shorts, you know the rest of the story.
They get in hot pursuit. And they make their displeasure
known to you. Now remember, a bumblebee, a
regular bee, can sting once. Oh, but not yellow jackets. They
have machine guns. And they fire away at you. And
you know to go back later that night and maybe mark the hole
and pour some gasoline in there and not light it, just pour the
gas, leave it, don’t light it, you’ll be on the Darwin Awards. But you don’t know the nest is
there. Now, if there were a hornet’s
nest hanging up here in the corner and one of you were to come in
here with a stick and say, I’m gonna take care of this, we would
all begin to back away and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
don’t do that. You never stir up a hornet’s nest. That’s exactly
what Stephen has done. This council, these 70 men plus
the high priest are a hornet’s nest of hatred towards Jesus. A hornet’s nest of hostility
towards his servants, who after Jesus resurrection and ascension
into heaven have been sent by Christ himself to continue the
ministry that we read of all throughout the book of Luke.
The book of Luke is the life and ministry of Jesus. The book
of Acts is the life and ministry of Jesus through his apostles. And this hornet’s nest has been
stirred up by his reading to them, their own law, their own
prophets. These are all things they know.
They know by heart. And then he goes for the kill. And in verse 51, he says, you
stiff net people. Can you imagine which way his
finger was pointing? You stiff-necked people, you are uncircumcised
in heart and ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit
as your fathers did so, so do you. Which of you prophets, which
of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? And they killed
those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one,
whom you have now betrayed and murdered. You who received the
law as delivered by angels, and do not keep it. Now, some of
you in the room have been married a long enough time to know there
is one hydrogen bomb that you do not drop. That nuclear bomb
that you do not drop against your spouses, you’re just like
your father or your mother. Never drop that one. If there’s
any marriage advice you want to know, that’s the one that
will save your life. You won’t be sleeping on the
couch. If you say that, no, you’ll be dead and out in the front
yard left for the buzzards. Well, if Steven has stuck a stick
in a hornet’s nest here, he’s done so much more. He’s gone
for the kill. You are no different. You are no different than your
fathers before you. Why does it offend us when we
have that hydrogen bomb dropped? You’re just like your father.
You’re just like your mother. It’s because we understand sin. We understand sin so well that
sin is hereditary. It comes to us from Adam, no
doubt. But it passes on, and certainly
our parents are shaping influences in our lives, and we mother like
our mothers, we father like our fathers, we wife like our mothers,
we husband like our fathers. It’s supposed to be like Jesus,
isn’t it? And when that bomb gets dropped, it’s nuclear in
our house, right? Well, that’s exactly what’s gone
on here. He has gone for the kill and
said, you stiff necked people, you stubborn people, you are
not ignorant. You know the word, you are the
most learned of men, yet you reject Moses. Okay, that’s bad. But you reject the Holy Spirit.
And if you reject the Holy Spirit, Jesus says that is the sin from
which no one may recover. You transgress God’s law. You
are men who know the law, yet you deliberately transgress it. That’s a that’s a tough pill
to swallow. Stiff necked. Have some friends in the ministry
who one time were, uh, they were talking about, um, getting the
family to read the Bible around the table. And they talked about
how they let the kids read. And, uh, when the kids would
read a passage that contained this little phrase, they would
always say stiff naked. And it had to say, dad had to
explain, no, it’s stiff necked. And that means you’re, you’re,
you’re gonna do your stiff neck. You’re stubborn. You’re gonna
do what you want, when you want, how you want, when you want.
And you’re also going to say, and by the way, You’re not the
boss of me. It’s not just two-year-olds that
say it. It’s the council of Israel. It’s us. We say it as well. They are stubborn. And as if
calling them stiff-necked is not enough, that’s a good left
hook. He’s gonna give them a right
hook. He says, you are uncircumcised, oh boy, in your hearts and in
your ears. He has just called them Gentiles.
He has just given them a racially charged accusation. You are not
the covenant people of almighty God, he says to them. And then
he gives a kick in the shin. So the right, the left is stiff
necked. The right is you uncircumcised
hearts. He kicks them in the shin. You’ve
not obeyed the law. And essentially is saying, you’ve
accused me of blasphemy. No, you’re the blasphemers. Well,
the rest of the story we’ll pick up next week is they murder him. They stone him as quickly as
they can, but I want you to think about yourselves for a moment.
Every time you come to the scriptures and there’s a wicked person,
every time you come to the scriptures and there’s somebody who’s stiff
neck, hard hearted, uncircumcised in ears, uncircumcised in the
hearts, Maybe you live like a Gentile, you live like someone not converted.
You should be pricked in the heart. When has God spoken and
I’ve disregarded it? When has the Holy Spirit prompted
me to obey and I’ve resisted it because I wanted to be stiff-necked
and hard-hearted and do what I wanted, when I wanted, how
I wanted, and even God, you’re not the boss of me. You know,
this is everyday struggle for us, isn’t it? This isn’t just
about a council, a Sanhedrin. This isn’t about a 70 plus one
high priest. This is at the end of the day
about each of you. This is about me. This is God
shining the searchlight of his word and spirit into your minds
and into your hearts and saying, where are you stiff necked? Where
are you stubborn? Where are you hard hearted and
uncircumcised in your ears and in your hearts? Where are you
rejecting Moses? Where are you rejecting Jesus?
These, these men, these 70 in this council, plus the high priest,
oh, they know it all. And maybe you walked in today
with your Bible thinking, you know, I look good today. And
this, this thing really rounds it off. Maybe you walked in today
with some esteem of yourself in your mind and heart, but you
are harboring You are entertaining, you are feeding and nurturing
sin in your life. And you are no different than
the Sanhedrin. And you need a Stephen, you need a Christ to say, you
hard-hearted, you stiff-necked people, you uncircumcised in
heart, snap out of it. Listen to the voice of God and
be redeemed before it is too late. You know, Stephen is going
to be received by Christ into heaven. But what of these men?
They’ll go on doing their religious stuff. They’ll go on for the
rest of their religious careers, judging and proclaiming and pontificating
and getting rich and fat and whatever else, while Stephen
is in glory with Jesus. And I want you to be careful,
be very careful not to cloak your unrighteousness with religious
activity. It’s very easily done. You can
justify your living. Oh, I’m godly. You can justify
your living, I’m to be respected. You can justify your ungodly
living and you can put up boundaries around yourself and say, nobody
touched me, nobody come near me. But friends, God knows, God
sees, and Stephen’s warning to us, don’t resist the Holy Spirit. He may be speaking to you now
through his read and preached word, and I hope your neck is
loosening. Your heart is softening and you’re
willing to say, God, whatever it takes, that I must do. Pray with me. Our God, we thank
you so much that in the scriptures we see ourselves. Oh, we’d like
to be the hero. We’d like to be the heroine.
We’d like to be the one who preaches and many are saved. We’d love
to be the righteous one. We’d love to be picked the king
or the one of whom Solomon wrote about in his song. We’d love
to be all those things, but no, we’re the villain. We’re the
beggar. We’re the leper. We’re the mockers
and the scorners and even the crucifiers. So let your word
and spirit show that to us this hour so that we might repent
before it is too late. Lord, let not an hour pass from
this and the tenderness of your word and message Let our cement
harden again, where we just go on back doing the things we do
the way we do because, well, that’s the way we like it. But
may it be a point of change for every one of us to seek your
face, to repent of our sin, to receive your grace and to live
a life of Christ likeness to one another and to the before
the watching world. We need your grace. And so we
ask for it now in the name of Jesus. Amen.