Acts 07_30-43 Stephen's Defense (4)_How Moses Points to Jesus (2)

Read Acts 7:30-43 – The most tactful firing I ever heard of went like this: “Son, I don’t know how we’re ever going to get along without you, but starting Monday, we’re going to try.” That’s how a lot of people treat Jesus. Some reject Him outright – hate His name – reject everything about Him. But others, sit in church week after week, year after year – all the time saying, “You’re a great guy, Jesus. But I’ll make it to God on my own, thank you.”

That was Stephen’s audience. So, we’ve seen him show how Moses’ life prefigured Jesus as a redeemer. He tried to help, but was rejected by those he came to save. So he left the palace and spent the next 40 years herding sheep.

But God sent Moses back to finish the task. So let’s examine further. Last time we saw I. The Promised Deliverer and II. The Deliverer Rejected. Today I. The Promised Delivery and II. The Delivery Rejected. God is persistent, but His patience is not forever. So, there is great warning here.

III. The Promised Delivery

17) But as the time of the promise drew near.” What promise? The one in 7:6: “And God spoke to this effect – that his (Abe’s) offspring would be sojourners in a land belonging to others, who would enslave them and afflict them four hundred years.” This refers to 400 years before Moses, when God told Abe: Gen 15:13: “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14) But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. . . . 16) And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” God had both predicted that Abe’s descendants (Israel) would go into captivity, but also that He would bring them out. So, 400 years later, the people are enslaved, Moses grows up in the palace and at age 40 shows up expecting the people to rally behind him. Instead – total rejection!

So, the deliverer shows up and is rejected. So God gives them up, right? No. God sends Moses away for 40 years humility training, then He sends him back. Moses meets God, not at a temple but at the burning bush, showing wherever He is, is holy ground. At the burning bush, Moses gets his marching orders. The rejected one returns to effect God’s promised deliverance – a vivid pix of Jesus. Israel rejected Him, but God wasn’t done. Oh, no. He sends Him back into the Garden of Gethsemane and then onto the cross at Calvary to effect the spiritual deliverance He had always promised – a deliverance illustrated by Moses in at least three ways.

A. Divinely Activated – When Moses was rejected and exiled in Midian, he considered it over. Had it been up to him, he’d never have returned to Egypt, and they’d never have asked for him back. But if Moses is done, God’s not: 34b: “I have come down to deliver them.” What a grace phrase. “I have come down to deliver them.” Yes, He is going to use Moses; and some very human means, but the ultimate deliverer is God Himself. This deliverance is divinely activated or it never would have happened.

God came down – for Israel and for us, too. Israel was faithless for 1500 years between Moses and Christ – yet God had promised. He promised Adam and Eve a seed of the woman who would bruise the head of the serpent, Satan. He promised Abe when he stopped him sacrificing his own son He would provide for himself a lamb. He promised Isaiah someone would be “pierced for our transgressions” (Isa 53:5). He promised Daniel a Prince who would “put an end to sin and atone for iniquity” (Dan 9:24). Israel was faithless, but God is faithful, and, He delivered, in the person of Jesus. The one the builders rejected had become the chief cornerstone. By his death and resurrection, the rejected Deliverer had delivered on God’s promise – just like a rejected Moses led Israel out of Egypt. But God was the Initiator, in Christ.

He’s showing we can’t do it on our own. You think you’re a pretty good person, and perhaps you are. But how would you like to be in a heaven where everybody is just as good as you and no better. My inability to meet my own intentions, to get along with my own family, keep my own resolutions is proof enough I wouldn’t want a heaven with a bunch of me’s! The only way to God is His way. Had He not come down, we’d never get to Him on our own.

Dad shows his 5-year-old son around Grandpa’s farm. In the barn is the ladder to the hayloft. “That’s where Grandpa keeps the hay to feed the cows.” The boy said, “I bet it was hard for those cows to climb that ladder.” Hard? It was impossible. Just as it was impossible for Israel to rescue itself from Egypt – like it was impossible for the Jews in Jesus’ time to deliver themselves from sin – just like it’s impossible for any of us to climb the ladder to God. But, He came down. Mark 10:45: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.” If He doesn’t come, we’re done.

B. Supernaturally Authenticated -- 36) This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years.” Moses showed up with 10 miraculous plagues that established his bona fides as God’s servant. When the people were between Pharaoh and the Red Sea, he opened for Israel, and closed on the Egyptians. His was a supernaturally-authenticated deliverance. Stephen’s audience should have perked up. A deliverance with signs and wonders? They knew full well Jesus of Nazareth had spent 3 years performing authenticating miracles that far exceeded anything the world had seen before or since.

That included raising Laz: John 11:45: “Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, 46) but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 47) So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs.” They’d asked for signs and gotten them, by the bushel-full. Far beyond anything Moses had done. Jn 21:25 tells us, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” Jesus majored on preaching, but miracles attached to Him everywhere He went – the greatest of which was His own resurrection. And John 20: 31) but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

People say, “If God is real, and Christ is the Savior, why not just write it across the sky for everyone to see?” You know how I think God would answer? Respectfully? “Look, I sent my own Son in human flesh. He did the greatest miracles the world has ever seen. When He let you kill Him, I raised Him up. I authenticated my apostles with further miracles. Then I wrote it all down and preserved it for two millennia. So, what else is it exactly you think I ought to do for you?” Let’s be honest, Beloved. God has done way more for us than we would ever have done for Him. He owes us nothing; yet has given us everything. We have a thoroughly validated message.

C. Redemptively Accomplished -- 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.” Ruler and Redeemer. How did he become their redeemer? You know the story. Moses kept asking for Israel’s release. Phar kept resisting. Then came the plagues. Each time, Phar agreed to let them go, but each time, he reneged. Until the last plague – death to all firstborn who did not put the blood of a sacrificed lamb on their doorposts. Redemption for all who believed on the basis of a bloody sacrifice. Israel believed; Egypt did not. Thus Moses became ruler by bloody redemption of Israel as they by faith obeyed.

The parallel to the recent substitutionary death of Jesus was too obvious to require elaboration. Stephen is not rejecting Moses. He was showing him as a ruler and redeemer whose life pointed to the greater ruler and redeemer – the Lord Jesus Christ. And he notes while Moses received “living oracles to give to us” (38) – the Law – that came after deliverance – not before. It was a guide for how a rescued person lives, not a guide for how to become a delivered person. His defense is brilliant: “There is Moses – yes – but don’t you see Jesus in seed form in him? Don’t you see how all of this points in only one direction – to Jesus? Don’t you see the rejected One is both Lord and Savior? Don’t you see that deliverance is redemptively accomplished, by means of substitutionary sacrifice, not by law-keeping? Don’t you see that?

More importantly, do we see it? Do we see adding anything to grace destroys it? The Galatians were told it was Christ plus circumcision and Jewish feasts. Paul said, Gal 1:6) “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7) not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.” “Distort” means “to reverse.” Paul’s saying, “You add anything to Christ to be accepted by God – you say Christ plus anything else, and you turn the gospel on its ear! It’s another gospel which is no gospel at all. You’ve destroyed your only hope of salvation by adding to it.” Is that you today – adding your merit to Jesus’s work on the cross?

Listen to Gal 2:21: “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were thru the Law (by trying to be good), then Christ died to no purpose.” Do you see his argument? Trust your own goodness, and you’ve just declared Jesus’ death null and void. Gal 5:2: “Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision (baptism, ritual, good deeds), Christ will be of no advantage to you.” People tell me, “I’m not afraid to die. I’ve been a pretty good guy.” You just told God He wasted his time; Jesus never need have died. Never say, “I’ll get there bc I’ve been good.” No, you haven’t, and neither have I. It must be, “I’m not afraid to die bc Jesus died for my sins and forgave me when I asked Him to be Lord and Savior.” That’s the only way.

Offering our good is like walking into the Louvre, and deciding you need to broaden Mona Lisa’s smile. “Just a little touch here and one there and I’ll make her beautiful.” No you won’t. You’ll ruin a masterpiece. You’ll reverse the value from priceless to useless, just what any effort on our part does to our redemption. We take God’s masterpiece in Christ and render it useless. Our only hope is mercy. Our contribution ruins the whole thing. Meantime, isn’t God amazing – taking the rejected Deliverer and graciously providing deliverance through Him anyway, for anyone who will believe? d

IV. The Delivery Rejected

A. The People Rejected God – So God delivered thru Moses – but tragically, for many, their hearts were not in it. 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.’” They were physically out, but their hearts preferred Egypt to God. It’s a pix of those who desire the pleasures of this life more than eternal life. 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.” But sin never pays, does it?

Tozer once wrote: “The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions. It hushes their fears and allows them to practice all pleasant forms of iniquity while death draws every day nearer and the command to repent goes unheeded.” Israel rejected God for their gold calf. Is it possible our hearts are in Egypt today rather than after God? Then look what came.

B. God Rejected the People – They rejected Him. So He rejected them. He waited 800 years, but eventually, 42) God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, [saying] . . . I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.’ Reject God in favor of your own idols and eventually, He will let you go. Pharaoh hardened his heart against God, but eventually God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. He gave him over to what he wanted most.

Paul notes in Rom 1:21: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but became futile in their thinking.” So God’s reaction? 1:24: “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity.” V. 26: “God gave them up to dishonorable passions.” V. 28: “God gave them up to a debased mind.” The ultimate price of rejecting Christ is that God will give us up to what we want more than Him. His judgment is giving us what we think we want. But by then it is too late. You can reject God’s grace in the person of Christ. You can say, “You’re a great guy, Jesus. But I’m a pretty good person. And anyway, the heart wants what it wants.” Eventually God will say, “Then I give you up to what you love most.”

Conc – C. S. Lewis said it this way: “In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: ‘What are you asking God to do?’ To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start …? But he has done so, on Calvary and they rejected it. To forgive them? They rejected forgiveness. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.” That’s what hell is. A self-imposed divorce from God. Lewis continues: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no hell.” So, as with Stephen’s opponents, it comes down to our choice. This could be your day to choose Christ. Let’s pray.

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