Stephen, The First Christian Martyr: Part 5

Introduction

Main Point of the Text (MPT)

If you will, please open your Bibles to Acts 7.

Stephen, one of the seven chosen to be in charge of the tasks of serving tables (Acts 6:5), a man who had a good reputation, who was full of the Spirit, full of wisdom, full of grace, and full of power (Acts 6:3; Acts 6:8) was performing great wonders and signs among the people (Acts 6:8).

At the beginning of Acts 6, we learn that during this time a group called the Synagogue of Freedmen, a synagogue comprised of Cyrenian, Alexandrian, Cilician, and Asian Jews who were once in slavery but had been set free, rose up and began to argue with Stephen (Acts 6:9) which led to Stephen being dragged away and brought before the Council (Acts 6:11-14), of which he accused of:

Speak blasphemous words against Moses (Acts 6:11).

Speak blasphemous words against God (Acts 6:11).

Speaks against this holy place, holy place being the temple (Acts 6:13).

Speaks against the Law (Acts 6:13). *Needed to add, my bad.

I mentioned that the flow of Stephen’s defense will be this: Abraham > Joseph > Moses (Joshua) > Temple (David and Solomon) > The Law (Murders of Jesus)

Today, we will finish Stephen’s defense.

Let’s recap and look forward to today’s reading:

Responded to the accusation of speaking blasphemous words against God (Acts 6:11) through the retelling of Abraham and Joseph’s stories (Acts 7:2-7; 7:8-16).

Responded to the accusation of speaking blasphemous words against Moses (Acts 6:11) through the retelling of Moses’s story (Acts 7:17-40).

Lastly, today we will explore how he responds to the accusation of speaking against the temple and the law (Acts 6:13).

And so let’s just hop right in to it, if you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word.

Scripture Reading: Acts 7:41-53

Prayer

Body

Recap:

Two weeks ago we took at look at the life of Moses in 40 year spans:

from his birth, being the designated person God had chosen to deliver His people from captivity in Egypt (Exodus 2);

to Moses defending his people, killing a man in the process, causing him to flee from Egypt to Midian where he would become a husband and father (Exodus 2);

to talking to God after encountering a burning bush, fighting with God about his ability to be the deliverer He wanted Him to be, to finally returning back to Isreal to live out his destiny (Exodus 3-4);

to living out that destiny, delivering God’s people while performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years, where God gave him the very law the Council lived by that day, the living oracles (Exodus 12-20).

And as we look at the end of our Scripture for last time, Acts 7:39–40, even after all of what God did through Moses right in front of their eyes, Stephen points out that their Israelite fathers still would not obey Moses, but instead they rejected him. And in their hearts they turned back to Egypt, saying to Aaron, “Make us gods to go before us; as for this Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

Their lack of obedience and patience led to idolatry, where they worshiped other gods, little g, rather than the one true God, which leads me into my first point for today...

Point 1: The Issue of Idolatry

Scripture:

Acts 7:41–43

Explanation:

Verse 40 of Acts 7 told us that after rejecting Moses, the Israelites had turned their hearts back to Egypt.

This story can be found from Exodus 19-31 when Moses first ascends Mt. Sinai to get a few things from God like the 10 commandments, multitudes of different laws, instructions for the annual feasts, and the instructions for the Tabernacle they were to build.

Moses had been up there for a while, forty days and forty nights to be exact (Exodus 24:18), and it is in Exodus 32 that after that time that the Israelites, grew impatient waiting on him to return, decided to say to Aaron, Moses’s brother, “Make us gods to go before us; as for this Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

Aaron would have them collect all the gold earrings from their people, and as our Scripture for today tells us, he would take the gold and fashion a golden calf from them, a representation of the Egyptian bull god Apis, then he would build an altar before it after telling them, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:2-5).

As Stephen told the Council, Aaron then would instruct the people of Isreal to offer burnt offering to this idol, rejoicing in the works of their own hands (Exodus 32:6).

This would lead to Moses pleading for God to remember His covenant as He had became angry at this, and although 3,000 people would die due to their idolatry, God would allow them to continue their journey to the Promise Land (Exodus 32:7-35), although very few of this group would ever see it (Joshua 1).

This wouldn’t be the last time they would worship idols, as the OT, Isreal would constantly either worship or allow the worship of other idols rather than God, and as Stephen brings forth, God would turn and gave them up to worship the host of heaven, the host of heaven was referring to the sun, the moon, and the stars (Deuteronomy 4:10), of which many worshiped.

And so as Hosea 4:17 alludes to, God, from time to time, would abandon His chosen people to their idols, allowing them to fall on their own from their choice of breaking the first of the 10 commandment, “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3).

This is a law that they would break ceaselessly throughout their history as they continually turned their back on the one true God, the one who had delivered them out of the hands of the Egyptians. This was a constant cycle and to prove that...

Stephen continues saying, “as it is written in the book of the Prophets: ‘Did you offer Me slaughtered animals and sacrifices during forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? You also took up the tabernacle of Moloch, And the star of your god Remphan, Images which you made to worship; And I will carry you away beyond Babylon.’”

This passage comes from Amos 5:25-27 and as you can read, Stephen’s offers more evidence of their fathers idolatry as the calf wasn’t the last idol they worshipped in the wilderness, as they worshipped Moloch, a god that required child sacrifice, and Remphan, a star god idol.

And perhaps, the major take away from this passage, look at what this verse says, “Images which you made to worship...”.

Application:

How quickly are we to turn from God? When God told Moses of the Israelites idol worship on Mt. Sinai, one sentence He said stuck with me, Exodus 32:7-8 reads, “And the LORD said to Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them...”.

Again, I ask you, how quickly are we to turn from God? Are we different or the same as the Israelites in the wilderness? The answer is the same, we are no different than them.

What have we done to ourselves? Why do we have the same trust, obedience, and patience issues with a faithful God such as our God? Why do we not heed the warnings of our Lord?

Maybe right now you’re trying to convince yourself that I am not speaking of you. Who me? You who have convinced yourself that you worship God and God alone.

Are you not a slave to sin? May I take you to Romans 1 for a moment?

READ Romans 1:20–25 from Bible. RED!

Can we not say that we have made idols out of our own sin? Let us consider lust, a sin, that even I, consider my greatest.

While men and women, one’s who struggle with lust, a form of sexual immortality, may not go around making every woman or man they see an idol in their life, do we not allow ourselves to enjoy the things of this world that we know will cause us to sin?

What am I speaking of? Pull out my cell phone. Take a look at your idol.

My mind travels back to the words of Jesus when He speaks of adultery in Matthew 5:27–30. READ Matthew 5:27-30 from Bible. BLACK!

Do you see how serious Jesus took the sin of adultery, of which lust is? We allow ourselves to be ignorant of our sin so much that we aren’t even willing to cut off the source of our sin, because we have made ourselves think that a smart phone is necessary to live.

Is a smart phone really necessary to live? No. We have allowed this new technology, yes new, coming out in 1994, only 30 years old, the iPhone, being only 17 years old, to replace not only our time with God, but God altogether. What have we done to ourselves?

Point 2: Idolizing the Temple

Scripture:

Acts 7:44–50

Explanation:

Stephen uses idolatry to segue to himself begin his defense against the accusation of that he speaks against this holy place, holy place being the temple (Acts 6:11).

He begins with by reminding the Council, his fellow Jews, that their fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, as He appointed, instructing Moses to make it according to the pattern that he had seen.

By stating this Stephen is showing his respect to the Council for the Temple by mentioning the tabernacle of witness, which was the first iteration of the Temple, a tent that the Israelites would move around with them in the wilderness.

He knows that God had called for the tabernacle to be built by Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness when He was with him on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 24-31).

It would be in Exodus 35 that this tabernacle would be begin to be built, being finished in Exodus 39.

The word tabernacle is an English rendition of the Hebrew word miskan, or “dwelling place” as this would be the place where God’s divine presence would reside while they were traveling throughout the wilderness.

The Israelites literally had a place where God’s presence resided, but even then, they maintained their idols, but as we will read, even the physical temple would be turned into an idol for the Israelites.

Stephen continues, “...which our fathers, having received it in turn, also brought with Joshua into the land possessed by the Gentiles, whom God drove out before the face of our fathers until the days of David, who found favor before God and asked to find a dwelling for the God of Jacob. But Solomon built Him a house.”

Quickly Stephen recalls a history the Council would have known, how eventually the Israelites would bring the tabernacle with them into the Promise Land (Joshua 18:1), how God then gave them the land he had promised them through the many battles fought by King David and his armies (2 Samuel 8:1-14), how King David, being convicted by his own house of cedar, whilst God dwelled in a tent, would eventually ask God if he could build a permanent dwelling place for God (2 Samuel 7:1-17), but how He would reject David due to the blood that was on his hands (1 Chronicles 22:8) that would lead to God chooses Solomon to be the one to build Him a house, a temple, Solomon’s Temple (1 Chronicles 22:6-7), which would be constructed in just thirteen years, as 1 Kings 6 tells us.

The Jewish leaders, would make this Temple an idol. The Temple was a place they could control, they could enforce the Law, and a place they had completely defiled with their worldly obsessions such as money as we see when Jesus drove out all who were buying and selling there, overturning the tables and benches (Matthew 21:12-13).

They would worship the building and not the One it was built for. Defiling the Temple, placing it over God. They would glorify the Temple rather than glorify God, making it the focus of the Jews rather than God.

They would try to confine God to the Temple, but God would not allow for it, allowing it to be destroyed, not only this one, but the two others they had built after it (Ezra 3-8; ~516 BCE).

Even Solomon knew that trying to confine God to a Temple wasn’t possible as in his prayer of dedication he said, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built” (1 Kings 8:27).

And so, Stephen, in his own way, using Isaiah 66:1, accuses the Council of continuing to idolize the Temple, quoting the prophet's words, “However, the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands, as the prophet says: ‘Heaven is My throne, And earth is My footstool. What house will you build for Me? says the Lord, Or what is the place of My rest? Has My hand not made all these things?”

He is defending himself, by telling them that he is not the one who has wronged the Temple, they are, by making it a place of their own and not a place of God, trying to confine God to the box they built with their own hands.

Application:

Just as I asked about the Israelites in the wilderness, I must as the same of the Jewish leaders, the Council, are we different or the same as the Israelites in the wilderness?

I hear statistics being thrown out all the time about the decreasing number of Christians in the world. Why does the number of Christians continue to decline?

I believe it is because we have distorted the identity of Christ and made a god of our own, one we can control, by taking the parts of Christ we agree with and instead of sharing all of what he has to say, we share only the parts we like with unbelievers.

Through this, many churches, if you will call them that, have been built or created based one a distorted view of Scripture, where we worship our version of God’s Word rather than God, through this we worship the church we have built on our own rather than the church that God began with Christ.

Kyle Idleman, the senior pastor of the Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky has this to say in an interview done by Christianity Today, “As I've spoken to different churches recently about what it means to be completely committed to Jesus, I have found that one of the chief problems is not lack of desire, but lack of alignment...”

When asked what happens when your church becomes your idol, he responds with, “We can worship the god of achievement, and put our hope in what we are able to accomplish. Ultimately that always leads to disappointment. As a preacher I constantly ask myself two questions: What does God want me to say? and How will the people respond? I get into trouble when I get those out of order. When the first thing that I consider is how people will respond, that's idolatry. That's me putting the response of people ahead of my faithfulness to what God has called me to. I think most preachers can relate to that, constantly struggling with those two questions, but we have to have them in the right order.”

The church of today has taken a back seat to the world, we have done this. We have elevated the world and their “wisdom” over God and His wisdom, the wisdom found in the Bible. We have made the house of God a place where we make God’s Word conform to us, rather than us conforming to God’s Word.

One thing he said in the interview has been on my mind since reading it, “The challenge to follow Jesus is the challenge to find our identity in Christ. Idolatry sabotages that by replacing him with something or someone else.”

Have you tried to give Jesus an identity of your own construction or have you found your identity in Him? Only one can be true.

Being a part of the church used to mean being different than the world, apart from it, but many have made the church just like the world, and so therefore, the church is now apart from God and not the world.

Point 3: Idolizing the Law

Scripture:

Acts 7:51–53

Explanation:

But not only had they idolized the Temple, Stephen also informs them that they have idolized the Law…verse 51, Stephen adds fuel to the fire he has already begun by saying all that he has thus far in his defense, he says one of the worst things you could say to a Jew, “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears!”

Holy smokes Stephen, in today’s words, he is telling the Council, the leaders of the Jewish faith, by calling the stiff-necked that they have become ignorant to the Word of God, to His plan of redemption, they have closed their eyes and ears to the things of God and have rejected the truth, that God had sent them the Messiah!

Not only does he call them stiff-necked, but proceeds to tell them they are uncircumcised in hearts and ears, there it was, the worst thing you could say to a Jew, circumcision meant everything to a Jew, by telling them this he was telling them that they have hardened their hearts to the truth of God and that they, instead of being set apart to God, have convinced themselves that the Law was all they needed, the idolized the Law, the Law they couldn’t uphold themselves.

Stephen’s goal here was to not to say he was against the Law, because just as the Temple, the Law was given by God, but what Stephen wants them to realize is that just as Jesus said, He did not to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

Jesus wasn’t against the law, He didn’t come to render it invalid, but Jesus had come to fulfill the Word of God, to embody it, and accomplish all that the prophets had said.

As Romans 10:4 tells us, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”

The predictions of the Prophets concerning the Messiah would be realized in Jesus; the holy standard of the Law would be perfectly upheld by Christ, the strict requirements personally obeyed, and the ceremonial observances finally and fully satisfied.

In His fulfillment of the Law and Prophets, Jesus obtained our eternal salvation.

The truth Stephen hopes for the Council to recognize is that a person’s heart can only change when they surrender it to Jesus, the only one who was ever able to uphold the Law, so they needed to take their focus off the Law and place their focus on Him, because through Him comes redemption, through Him and Him alone comes salvation.

But Stephen knew that their hearts were hardened to the truth just as their father, and so he tells them, “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 foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it.”

And so, he ends his defense by stating the facts:

They resist the Holy Spirit, just as their fathers did. They do not allow the Holy Spirit to break through their hardened hearts.

Their fathers had murdered the prophets, and they had betrayed and murdered the Son of God, of whom he refers to as the Just One, being the only one who was ever able to live a sinless life according to the Law (2 Corinthians 5:21).

They had recieved the Law from God and were not able to keep it.

Explanation:

And this is the reality for us today, we desperately need a Savior, while we may not be Jews and we may not hold the Law to the level of which they did, we still have made ourselves believe that we don’t need Jesus and God’s Word, that instead we can be whoever we want to be and live by the rules we wish to live by, but I am here to tell you today, the path is dark and leads to eternal separation from God.

Hebrews 8 speaks of a new covenant, one that was established by the finished work of Jesus on the cross, it says, beginning in verse 10 it reads, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

When we accept Jesus, He being the fulfillment of the Law, we change, our heart becomes circumcised, not by our own hands, but by the work of the Holy Spirit (Romans 2:29), we become new creatures and are forever changed.

The Law doesn’t become some that we try to live out on our own, because we know that on our own it isn’t possible, but instead the Law becomes a matter of the heart that we choose to uphold because of the saving faith we have in Jesus.

It is all because of God and what He did on the cross and so we must not find our identity in the Law, our sin, but in Christ alone, for He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father accept through Him (John 14:6).

Altar Call

As the worship team comes...

The mystery has been made known, Christ has completed the work that was necessary for all to be saved who call upon His name (Romans 10:13), Paul’s words echo loud as we think of what Christ did for us in Ephesians 3:14-19.

READ Ephesians 3:14-19. GOLD!