Acts 07_44-53 Stephen's Defense (5)_Turning the Tables

Read Acts 7:44-53 – Stephen has been indicted for undermining God, the temple and the Law by preaching Jesus. In answer, he gives a brilliant defense showing that all of Israel’s history was one long neon red arrow pointing unmistakably to Jesus of Nazareth. He alone embodied and fulfilled all that Stephen’s accusers claimed to believe in. It was they who had perverted the Law and the temple, not him. In rejecting Christ, they condemned themselves.

The key phrase is 51c: “You always resist the HS,” meaning, “God has made Himself available to you over and over again – and you always resist Him in favor of your own devices.” They are “stiff-necked”, a term used to describe oxen who refuse to yield to the yoke the farmer puts around their neck -- a term God uses in the OT to describe the disobedience of those who refuse His grace. They’re physically circumcised, but “uncircumcised in heart and ears.” They follow the rituals, but their heart is not in it. Uncircumcised ears hear, but don’t get the message. They don’t get that outward circumcision means nothing without inward repentance. Jesus describes them in Mt 23:25: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.”

This is easy for any of us to do. R. C. Sproul says, “Any time a large group gathers for worship, it is inevitable that some are not true believers. They may be members of the church, but they still resist the Holy Spirit, and their necks have become stiff; they are set in their ways and their hearts have been calcified. They have no hearing in their ears for the things of God. Oh, they hear the sermons, but it never gets past the outer canal of their ears. There are people like that right now in all our churches.”

So, how can we be sure that’s not us – trusting our perceptions rather than listening to the HS? Luke gives us 3 characteristics of Spirit-resisters!

I. They Resisted the Spirit by Turning Ritual Into Religion

Is there anything wrong with ritual? Not at all – as long as it reflects a heart of love for God, abhorrence of sin, and reveling in grace. Then rituals – like baptism, Communion, church attendance – are beautiful reminders of the wonder of being a child of God. But the moment we attribute saving power to those rituals, they become an albatross of condemnation around our necks. That’s what had happened to Israel. They allowed ritual to replace relationship and developed hearts of stone – resisting the HS.

They’d been privileged. They had the “tent of witness” (44) in the wilderness. Witness to what? Well, recall the Holy of Holies at the center of the tabernacle housed the Ark of the Covenant which contained the 10 commandments, bearing witness to the holiness of God which condemned the people. But God’s presence, in the form of a cloud was also there – and the mercy seat separating the commandments from God. Sacrificial blood, sprinkled on that mercy seat in faith, provided forgiveness for the people’s failure to keep the law. That tabernacle was a witness to God’s presence, God’s holiness, God’s love and God’s grace. Solomon’s temple had the same witness. To circumcised ears and heart, it bore witness to the faithfulness and love of God.

But the tabernacle had hardly been completed, and the temple barely constructed before they were turned into ritual. Instead of seeing them as a place of God’s presence and grace, they people began to treat them as literally God’s house. They put God in a box. Just go thru the motions and all is well.

It wasn’t Stephen, but the Jewish elite who destroyed the temple. God’s glory was graciously displayed in both the Tabernacle and Sol’s temple: I Kings 8:10: “A cloud filled the house of the Lord 11) . . . for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.” But very quickly true worship degenerated into religious formality. Soon, the idols of the surrounding people were placed in the temple and the glory of the Lord departed as Ezek 8-11 describes. God could not be put into a box after all. Solomon himself had prayed at the dedication: “Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands.”

By Stephen’s time, Israel had long ago put away outward idols. Babylonian captivity had cured them of that. But they still had God in a box. In his examples of Abe, Joseph and Moses, Stephen has been showing that God is not limited to a particular place. But to the Sanhedrin, Israel was the center of all nations; the center of Israel was Jerusalem, and the center of Jerusalem was the temple – where God dwelt -- the Jewish counterpart to Mount Olympia. Indeed, the temple was a place of worship and prayer, but it was never God’s home. It was a symbol of God’s presence, but not the prison of His essence. Stephen quotes Isa 66:1: “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?” Stephen wasn’t degrading the temple; they were, by having ritual without reality and by making it a marketplace of greed.

They thought they could placate God by honoring His temple instead of loving His Person. They were wrong. Remember how Israel constantly complained in the wilderness? So Num 21:6: “Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.” The people repented so Moses prayed and Num 21:8: “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.’” They had only to “look at the bronze serpent and live” (9b) – another wonderful illustration of salvation.

But do you know the rest of the story? 700 years later, Hezekiah became king – a rare godly king. II Kings 18:4: “He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah [foreign idols. But then this strange note]. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it.” They had taken a beautiful exhibition of God’s grace, and made an idol of it! – just as Stephen’s generation had done with the temple. Hezekiah rightfully destroyed the bronze serpent, and God rightfully destroyed the temple a few years later – having already replaced it with the person of His own Son, Jesus Christ.

The point is we can make a ritual of any item of God’s grace – trusting in that ritual for salvation. But it will not play. Your baptism, your confirmation, all your good deeds piled end to end will never make you right with God. If you are depending on any such thing, today is the day to destroy it and enter into a heart-to-heart relationship with God by accepting Christ as Lord and Savior.

A parable. Satan was standing outside a church as the people sang, prayed and worshiped. A passerby asked Satan if that didn’t bother him. Sneeringly, he replied, “Not at all. They get that way on Sunday, but they will be all right on Monday. It’s just a little ritual they’ve acquired.” Check it out. If your ritual has turned into a religion, and you’re counting on it for heaven, you are resisting the HS – big time. It’s time to welcome Him in rather than resisting.

II. They Resisted the Spirit by Rejecting Revelation

The Sanhedrin thought they were the center of the universe – God’s chosen people, in God’s chosen city, in God’s temple. But Stephen calls them out. God said thru Isaiah, “Heaven is my throne.” When it came to Scripture, they took what they liked and ignored the rest. But in so doing, they were resisting the Spirit. Stephen says, 51) “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.”

Israel was hard on prophets. They exasperated Moses; put Jeremiah in a pit; mocked Elisha; killed Zechariah and sawed Isaiah in two. Those bringing God’s truth were rejected and dishonored. Israel didn’t want truth if it didn’t line up with their worldview. So they persecuted and killed the prophets – thus resisting the Spirit by rejecting God’s revelation.

When we twist the Word, Beloved, we are resisting the Spirit. II Tim 3:16: “All Scripture is breathed (spirited) out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, 17) that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” To willfully turn aside from the Word of God is to reject God Himself. It is to call Him a liar.

Lewis Carroll of Alice in Wonderland fame was the son of a preacher. He accepted most of the Word. But he had a hang up: “If the Bible really teaches the doctrine of hell, I would give up the Bible!” He didn’t mind the doctrine of heaven – but you can’t have it both ways, can you? Reject hell; you reject heaven! When you rip hell out of the Bible because you don’t like it, guess who your authority is? Yourself. Human wisdom. Your own deeply flawed self is now your god. We’ve rejected the Spirit by rejecting the Word. We like what it says about honesty and integrity and love and grace – but about sexuality and greed and loving enemies – not so much. We break God’s heart.

III. They Resisted the Spirit by Repudiating the Righteous One

Stephen’s final indictment of his accusers is devastating. 52b-53: “And they (your fathers) 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.” The irony of ironies. Those most invested in the coming Messiah killed Him when He did come. And those most intently interested in the law, did not keep it. By their traditions, they defined it out of existence. And killed the true Law-giver.

Why does Stephen call Jesus the Righteous One? Because only He was truly righteous -- kept it outwardly and kept it in His heart. Imagine that!

Jesus said in Mt 5:48: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Could you claim that? That is the problem with trying to be saved by Law-keeping. You can’t do it, nor I, not anyone. But Gal 3:10: “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse (meaning if you think you’ll get saved by your own goodness, you’re cursed before you ever start. Why?); for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.’ 11) Now it is evident that no one is justified [righteous] before God by the law, for ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” In other words – to be justified by law-keeping, you must be perfect. Close won’t cut it – not that any of us could claim even that.

So God’s solution? “The righteous shall live by faith” (Rom 1:17b). Faith in what? Faith in the only One who ever did keep the law – every word, deed and thought reflecting the Father. Faith in Jesus – the Righteous One. But this gang – rather than believing in the Righteous One, murdered Him. Thus, they killed the only solution to their sin problem. They buried themselves.

Suppose you had a rare disease – so rare only one person in the world can pull off the needed surgery. But that person is someone you knew years ago in college, and you hate them. They were popular. Never made a misstep. Got the job you wanted, the girl you wanted; the life you wanted. So, you say, “I will never let you operate on me. Never. I don’t believe you could do it, and even if you could, I refuse to be in debt to you. If I could, I’d kill you.” That’s was Stephen’s audience except they actually did the execution. Rather than be in debt to God, they thought they could put God in debt to them. But there was only one righteous One. Just one. And they murdered Him.

Conc – So is that it? Story over? The killed their only solution, so it’s all over for Him and them? No. Not over. Remember how Joseph told his brothers in Gen 50:20: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.” That’s the story of Jesus. What men meant for evil, God meant for good. God raised Him, and the death they imposed God used to bring eternal life to all who believe, even them. Satan’s greatest victory was also his greatest defeat. He bruised Jesus’ heel; Jesus bruised his head. And through His death, even those who murdered Him could be delivered if they ultimately put their trust in Him.

And aren’t we glad of that, for if our sin put him on that cross, then we all killed Him, did we not? If he was indeed “crushed for our iniquities” (Isa 53:5), then we have all put Him there. But since He did not have to die for His own sin, the Righteous One died to my sin – and your sin and all who will believe. God turned the tables completely, making the most shameful act in human history the basis for the most glorious rescue to all who believe.

C. S. Lewis said it this way: " In the end, that face which is the delight or the terror of the universe, must be turned upon each of us – either with one expression or the other. Either conferring glory inexpressible, or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised. It is written that we shall stand before him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise almost incredible, and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God -- to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness -- to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work for a father and his son -- it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain, but so it is." And so it is for those who are “in Christ.” But don’t think you could stand this divine scrutiny with your own meager efforts. Be “in Him” – be in Him today. Let’s pray.

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