Acts 7

¹ And the high priest said, “Are these things so?” ² 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, ³ and said to him, ‘Go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you.’ ⁴ 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. ⁵ 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. ⁶ 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 four hundred years. ⁷ ‘But I will judge the nation that they serve,’ said God, ‘and after that they shall come out and worship me in this place.’ ⁸ And he gave him the covenant of circumcision. And so Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him on the eighth day, and Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs. ⁹ “And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him ¹⁰ 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. ¹¹ Now there came a famine throughout all Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction, and our fathers could find no food. ¹² But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers on their first visit. ¹³ And on the second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph’s family became known to Pharaoh. ¹⁴ And Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father and all his kindred, seventy-five persons in all. ¹⁵ And Jacob went down into Egypt, and he died, he and our fathers, ¹⁶ 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. ¹⁷ “But as the time of the promise drew near, which God had granted to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt ¹⁸ until there arose over Egypt another king who did not know Joseph. ¹⁹ He dealt shrewdly with our race and forced our fathers to expose their infants, so that they would not be kept alive. ²⁰ At 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, ²¹ and when he was exposed, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. ²² And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds. ²³ “When he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. ²⁴ And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. ²⁵ He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand. ²⁶ And on the following day he appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile them, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why do you wrong each other?’ ²⁷ But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? ²⁸ Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ ²⁹ At this retort Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. ³⁰ “Now when forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush. ³¹ When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight, and as he drew near to look, there came the voice of the Lord: ³² ‘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. ³³ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. ³⁴ 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.’ ³⁵ “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 in the bush. ³⁶ This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years. ³⁷ This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.’ ³⁸ 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 to us. ³⁹ Our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him aside, and in their hearts they turned to Egypt, ⁴⁰ saying to Aaron, ‘Make for us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ ⁴¹ And they made a calf in those days, and offered a sacrifice to the idol and were rejoicing in the works of their hands. ⁴² But God turned away and 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 forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? ⁴³ You took up the tent of Moloch
and the star of your god Rephan,
the images that you made to worship;
and I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.’ ⁴⁴ “Our fathers had 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. ⁴⁵ Our fathers in turn brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our fathers. So it was until the days of David, ⁴⁶ who found favor in the sight of God and asked to find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. ⁴⁷ But it was Solomon who built a house for him. ⁴⁸ Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, 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 what is the place of my rest? ⁵⁰ Did not my hand make all these things?’ ⁵¹ “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. ⁵² 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, ⁵³ you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” ⁵⁴ Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. ⁵⁵ But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ⁵⁶ And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” ⁵⁷ But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. ⁵⁸ Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. ⁵⁹ And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” ⁶⁰ And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

In Frederick Haime’s 1865 book about his father,  An Itinerant Preacher: Or Sketches from the Life of Charles Haime, he speaks of a particular sermon his father preached that offended a wealthy man.  Here is what he wrote:

On another occasion, a rich man who gave largely to the circuit funds, deemed himself personally referred to in the sermon.  Greatly offended, he followed my father to his home, and there gave vent to his excited feelings in words by no means smooth or gentlemanly.  The reply, however, betokened nothing of fear:  “I knew not that you were in the chapel, but if the cap fitted, wear it.”[1]

I can say that I have experienced a similar occurrence in my ministry.  When I was first beginning to preach I preached a sermon on not giving up, on not stopping in our devotion to Christ, on persevering.  I can honestly say before all of you that I had nobody in mind and was not aiming it anybody.

A few months after that I was at the home of an elderly church member who was unhappy.  A deacon was with me and we listened to his complaint.  Among his complaints was this:  that I had targeted him some months before in that sermon.  Genuinely confused, I asked him to explain.  He said, “A few months ago you preached a sermon on not quitting.  And when you said that you looked right at me.  And I cannot believe you would accuse me of quitting.”  I was, and am still, flabbergasted by that, though I have since seen it happen a few more times.

It is indeed a difficult thing when you feel that you have been preached at, that a shot has been taken at you personally from the pulpit.  Oftentimes the accusation is inaccurate and the preacher was not directing anything at you in particular.  But there are times when the accusation is accurate and a preacher does in fact preach at wrongdoers.

That is the case in Stephen’s great sermon in Acts 7.  He has been harassed, lied about and drug before the Sanhedrin, the religious authorities.  When questioned about the accusations, he launches into a sermon that will end with violence and bloodshed and the creation of the first Christian martyr.

In my estimation, this is a stunning and powerful sermon.  It does have its critics though.  John Stott has outlined some of the modern complaints:

Many students of Stephen’s speech have criticized it as rambling, dull and even incoherent. A good example is George Bernard Shaw in his preface to Androcles and the Lion. Calling Stephen “a quite intolerable young speaker” and “a tactless and conceited bore,” he describes him as having “delivered an oration to the council, in which he  … inflicted on them a tedious sketch of the history of Israel, with which they were presumably as well acquainted as he.”   Others have found his speech lacking not only in interest but in point. Dibelius, for instance, wrote of “the irrelevance of most of this speech.”[2]

It seems that this sermon has never been without its critics!  That being said, none have reacted with the bloodthirsty rage of those who first heard it.  Let us consider this today.

Stephen preached that human beings have a habit of opposing, ignoring, or killing those whom God sends to announce salvation to them.

This is one of the longest sermons recorded in the New Testament and there are numerous ways to approach it.  One way to approach it is to see in it Stephen’s response to the accusation that he had blasphemed against Moses and God, against the law and the temple.  This approach will tend to point to the twenty verses (v.20-39) in which Stephen tells the story of Moses thereby demonstrating his grasp of who Moses is and what his crucial place in Israel’s history is.  Then it will emphasize Stephen’s explanation of the wilderness tabernacle and the eventual construction of Solomon’s temple, culminating in Stephen’s bold pronouncement about the limitations of a physical building:

⁴⁸ Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, 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 what is the place of my rest? ⁵⁰ Did not my hand make all these things?’

Or one might also choose to approach this sermon by seeing in it Stephen’s argument for God’s covenant faithfulness to His people.  Stephen begins with God’s covenant with Abraham, tells the story of Israel, and ends with the Jews killing Jesus, the One who fulfilled the covenant and the promises.  Clearly this is one of his themes.

These are important points and valid approaches to this sermon.  For our purposes, however, let us consider another of Stephen’s apparent intentions:  the desire to show the Jews how human beings have a habit of opposing, ignoring, or killing those whom God sends to announce salvation to them.  The great New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce correctly argues that this is one of the major themes of the sermon, the “insistence that the Jewish people’s refusal to acknowledge Jesus as Messiah was all of a piece with their attitude to God’s messengers from the beginning of their national history.”[3]

Consider how often in the sermon Stephen points to the people of God’s rejection of the people sent by God to proclaim to them the truth.

• Stephen tells of how Joseph’s brothers opposed him. “And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him” (v.9).  However, Stephen goes on to say that Joseph, though hated by his brothers, became the chosen instrument of Israel’s salvation.

• Stephen tells of how the Jews were saved from starvation from fleeing to Egypt.  However, after growing and multiplying as a people there, they too were opposed by Pharaoh.  “He dealt shrewdly with our race and forced our fathers to expose their infants, so that they would not be kept alive” (v.19).

• Stephen tells of the coming of Moses during the persecution of Israel in Egypt.  He tells of how Moses rose up to try to help and advise the Jews, but he was opposed.  “He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand” (v.25).  The Lord Himself, Stephen stresses, chose to use the rejected one as the instrument of liberation.  “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 in the bush” (v.35).

• Stephen tells how Israel ultimately rejected Moses even as he was delivering them from bondage and turned instead to paganism and idolatry.

Time and again Stephen turns their attention to this most uncomfortable fact:  the people who should be able to hear God the most clearly often reject Him when He speaks!  The climax of the sermon is in verses 51-53.

⁵¹ “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. ⁵² 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, ⁵³ you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.”

“Do you not see,” Stephen seems to thunder, “that we who are so close to the truth have oftentimes been the very ones who have missed it and, worse still, have opposed the truth when God announces it in our midst?  And do you not see that you have done it again in killing Jesus?!  Do you not see that in striking His people you are continuing the long, sad, tragic history of our people missing the truth when it is staring us in the face?!  You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit!  As your fathers did, so do you!”

Oh friends!  What a terrifying truth!  What a sobering reminder!  How often in our lives, we who profess to know Jesus, do we miss the truth because we find it too uncomfortable, too unsettling, too invasive, too life-changing?

On September 6, 1955, Flannery O’Connor, in writing to Betty Hester, said, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.”  I repeat:  “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.”

The statement, “Jesus is Lord,” remains the most controversial and true statement ever uttered!  The story of Acts is simultaneously the story of (a) the power of this truth to embolden some people to salvation and revolution and (b) the offensiveness of this truth that leads other people to hate it and want to stamp it out of the record of humanity.  It is, in other words, the most glorious, powerful, saving, offensive, divisive, enraging truth in the world.

It is all these things…but it is still the truth!

In response to his sermon, the crowd proved his point by murdering Stephen.

As if missing the irony of their demonic actions, the listening crowd proves Stephen’s point by rushing upon him, the bearer of the truth, in order to murder him.  “A speech like this,” William Barclay said, “could only have one end; Stephen had courted death, and death came.”[4]  Listen:

⁵⁴ Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. ⁵⁵ But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ⁵⁶ And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” ⁵⁷ But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. ⁵⁸ Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. ⁵⁹ And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” ⁶⁰ And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

Take note, Church:  “they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him…[and] they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him.  Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him.”

Here is a mob mentality if ever there was one.  Stephen speaks the truth, and is killed for it.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s amazing 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse Five, he keeps repeating the phrase over and over, “And so it goes.”  He repeats it in the novel whenever anybody dies or is killed.  One is tempted to say it here with the death of Stephen:  “And so it goes.”  For so it does go, does it not? Is it not the case that there are those who will seek to destroy any who dare to speak that which is true and eternal and life-giving?  Do you remember what Jesus said of Satan in John 10:10?  “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

They stop their ears, grind their teeth, and murder brave Stephen.  He seals his sermon with his blood.

I recall in high school having my Art teacher Mrs. Nancy Blue tell us how Frederic Chopin, while once playing the Military Polonaise bled on the keys as a result of his intense playing.  There is definitiveness about the shedding of blood.  It is as if a man is saying, “This is all I have to give.”

Stephen shed his blood in concluding his amazing sermons!  All he had to give for Christ was his life. And he gave it.

But in his death, Stephen reflected the One who was killed but who overcame death:  Jesus.

Stephen dies, but even his death is a sermon.  Listen closely again.  Pay attention to Stephen’s actions as he is killed.

⁵⁴ Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. ⁵⁵ But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ⁵⁶ And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” ⁵⁷ But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. ⁵⁸ Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. ⁵⁹ And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” ⁶⁰ And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

There are hints here of something almost unbelievable, almost too beautiful for words, happening here.  Did you catch them?  As Stephen was being stoned, he said two things.

⁵⁹ And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

⁶⁰ And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

Did you hear that?

⁵⁹ And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

⁶⁰ And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

Do these words sound familiar to you?  They should.

Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46a)

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34a)

Amazing.  Unbelievable.

⁵⁹ And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46a)

⁶⁰ And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34a)

Stephen has become so identified with Jesus that he speaks the crucifixion words of Jesus during his own stoning.  Having embraced Jesus in his life, Stephen now embraces Christ in his death.  He proves his discipleship with his repetition of the words of Christ.  And this is no mere mimicking.  Stephen may not even be aware that he is speaking the words of Christ.  He is simply speaking from the depths of his heart, but his heart has been seized by Christ.

This is what it means to take on the mind of Christ:  to live His life and speak His words in a manner that is not premeditated, to walk so long with Christ and to have our minds and hearts so taken over by Jesus that we begin to look and sound like Him.

Is it surprising, then, that Stephen sees what he sees when he looks into Heaven?

⁵⁵ But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ⁵⁶ And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

It has been frequently pointed out that Jesus is normally presented as sitting at the right hand of the Father.  But here He is standing.  He is standing for Stephen.  Why?  There may be many reasons why He is standing, but the explanation of the great 4^th century saint, Ambrose, probably says it better than any other could.

Jesus stood as a helpmate; he stood as if anxious to help Stephen, his athlete, in the struggle.  He stood as though ready to crown his martyr.  Let him then stand for you that you may not fear him sitting, for he sits when he judges…[5]

“Let him then stand for you…”

He stands to receive His own.  He stands to welcome His people home.

Do you know Him?  Have you trusted Him?  Are you, like Stephen, being conformed to the image of Christ?  Is His life yours?  Are His words yours?

Does He have you to that extent?

Is He yours?

Are you His?