Delivered by Angels - Acts 7:51-60

Special delivery

Special delivery. You don’t hear those words much anymore. Remember the days when you heard those words? That’s the mailman stopping his route, knocking on your door and announcing “Special Delivery” to let you know something other than normal mail was being delivered. Congress introduced Special Delivery for the Postal Service in 1885. For an extra fee, you could send mail marked as urgent. Special delivery mail was not delivered through the normal carriers. Special mail carriers would deliver those packages as soon as they reached the post office. That service was discontinued about 100 years later. In 1997, special delivery was retired… we now had FedEx delivering overnight. The Post Office had special categories for Express Mail that could be delivered in two or three days. Deliveries were express. They were not special.

Our text today includes a delivery so special, you could stake your life on it. What occurs in our text this morning seems, for us, a bit out of touch. This story suffers, I think, from too much familiarity at times. I remember this story as a kid… the pictures were scary. In fact, the picture we had in our children’s Bible story book was probably a bit too real for me. But the moral of the story was… "Look what this man was willing to do. What an act of courage. Let's be like him. Jesus needs more guys like that.” And I’m supposed to think I wanna be that guy. I want that kind of courage.

But like we’ve seen before… this story isn’t about courage. It’s not about having the internal fortitude to look death in the face and be a winner for Jesus. Stephen, the main character in the immediate story, is not the point of the story. Stephen was one of the early stars of the church. Twice, Dr. Luke tells us that he is full of grace and power and the Holy Spirit.

And up to this point in the book, a lot had been going right for the church, including the selection of Stephen to be one its first leaders. In spite of all of the heat from Jewish religious leaders being vented at the young church, the church was flourishing.  As the word of God in the gospel increased, the number of Christ followers increased.  As Luke records it, the activity of God’s salvation of His people, the salvation that he had promised, is actually picking up speed. 

Stephen, the rising star

But all is not well.  Just as Christ’s proclamation of the Word in Jewish synagogues invited enemies during His ministry, so too Stephen’s proclamation and wisdom in His handling of the word attracted the attention of opponents. Verse 11: 

Acts 6:11–13 “Then they secretly persuaded some men to say, “We heard him speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God.” They stirred up the people, the elders, and the scribes; so they came, seized him, and took him to the Sanhedrin. They also presented false witnesses who said, “This man never stops speaking against this holy place and the law.”

Stephen, the rising star of the church in infancy, is arrested; a trial is set with false witnesses on dubious charges. He’s charged with denigrating the law and the temple. Where have we heard this before? An invalid trial.  False witnesses.  Dubious charges. The very same charges made against Jesus. It hasn’t taken long… no more than a year or so... and the religious leaders who thought they could rid themselves of Christ now find themselves again at a boiling point with Christ’s followers who are preaching the very same message He preached.

Stephen stands in front of his accusers facing the same false charges as Jesus, and this is what happens:

Acts 6:15 And all who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at him and saw that his face was like the face of an angel.

Is it any wonder that the one who now stands accused of denigrating Moses and the law has a face that looks like it has just descended from Sinai with a set of tablets in his hand?  We are told in Exodus 34 that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands, the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. And now here, Stephen, who has been proclaiming the One who is better than Moses, has the shining face of Moses.

The reaction is stunning… it’s basically “whatever”. Brazen and unfazed by the obvious Moses figure in the room, Caiaphas says, what do you have to say for yourself?  And again, this question is reminiscent to the question this same Caiphas put to Christ after hearing from the two false witnesses. At his trial, Jesus doesn’t say anything. Here, Stephen, full of grace and power, full of the Spirit and with wisdom has plenty to say. With a glowing, shining face, Stephen delivers the longest sermon in the book of Acts, and one of the longest in our Bibles.

It’s here that we start to doze off, right? In fact, that’s true of a lot of the book of Acts. More than 25% of the book of Acts is made up of people talking… speeches and sermons. There are 36 speeches in Acts… with 28 chapters that’s more than a speech a chapter. Ever stopped watching a TV show because there was too much talking? Wake me up when people start moving around.

Stephen’s Old Testament school

But there’s a lot to learn from Stephen and his long sermon. He’s telling a story. And if we’re not paying attention, we miss the part where we figure out that he’s telling our story. This is us. This is our history. This is who we are and where we’ve been. And this is how we think about life and history and too often, our worldview needs an adjustment provided by Stephen.

We’re not going to cover all that Stephen says in his sermon. But he effectively answers the two charges by giving the Sanhedrin a lesson in how to read their Bibles. Stephen’s understanding of the Old Testament is that of a scholar. He schools the ones who should know better on their own history. He’s so good at it, in the end, their only response is rage and anger.

From the Old Testament, Stephen responds to the charges by saying that he’s not the one who is insulting Moses… they are, because they are ignoring the One that Moses talked about… Jesus. And he says he’s not the one insulting the temple… they are, because God never intended for the temple to be his final dwelling place. Stephen, the one whose face is shining like an Angel, is charged with blasphemy against God and his temple and Moses.  Yet he defends Moses. He defends David and Solomon as those who really understood the meaning of the temple.

The indictment

And then at the end of his journey through the Old Testament showing how Jesus is the One who was Promised and changed everything… Stephen delivers his own indictment. 

Acts 7:51 “You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are always resisting the Holy Spirit. As your ancestors did, you do also.”

Along the way one begins to wonder, "do you know what you're doing, Stephen? Is this really what you want?  Did you kiss your wife and hug your kids before you were led into the Sanhedrin? The turn Stephen takes over the course of his sermon is more than a rash statement made in the heat of the moment.  This has clarity. This has comprehension. This has composure. And it is calculated. 

He ends his sermon with this:

Acts 7:53 “You received the law under the direction of angels and yet have not kept it.”

There’s your special delivery. We read earlier from Deuteronomy 33… the law was delivered to Moses and Israel at Mt. Sinai in glory by angels. This law had been delivered by angels and proclaimed by Moses with a shining face. But all that glory and all those angels couldn’t produce faith or obedience. Historically, Israel had no room for Moses.  They wanted delivered from the Egyptians, but they were not interested in the deliverer.  They wanted a temple, but only as long as they could confine God to a box as their captors had done with their own gods in Egypt. 

Stephen stands there in that court room and says, “My shining face is a witness against you. In rejecting me, you have rejected Moses and the law.”  The indicted becomes the indicter. 

And the religious council was having none of it:

Acts 7:54 When they heard these things, they were enraged and gnashed their teeth at him.

Stephen’s effect on his accusers was the same as Christ’s had been: rage with a mob mentality. One must wonder as the crowd seethes under its own indictment: Will no one come to Stephen’s defense?  Is there no one who will make a statement on his behalf against these charges?  If the Sanhedrin thought Stephen stood alone in their courtroom, what happens next proves them to be dead wrong.

Acts 7:55–56 Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven. He saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. He said, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”

We now know why Stephen’s face has been shining like Moses’ face did on Mount Sinai.  Stephen was not alone in this courtroom.  This is no mere vision. This is the same language as

At the end of his defense Stephen sees the exalted Christ standing at the right hand of God. Standing?  Why is Christ standing?  Christ is standing because standing is the posture of the defense attorney… the Advocate. It is the Advocate who stands in defense of the accused. Stephen has been confessing Christ to the Sanhedrin.  Now Christ confesses the preacher full of grace and power who had been doing signs and wonders among the people.

Jesus in the courtroom

The turn of events against the Sanhedrin is complete.  They’ve accused Stephen of blaspheming the temple and Moses only to have his face shine like Moses’.  And now Christ is in the courtroom as heaven breaks into the invalid trial.  This is no longer the Sanhedrin’s courtroom.  This courtroom belongs to heaven.  Stephen’s shining face should have been a tip-off that this trial was, all along, coram deo, before the face of God in the courtroom of heaven. 

It hasn’t been Stephen on trial, but Christ on trial... again.  At the end of Stephen’s defense of the gospel, Stephen (unlike the popular phrase attributed to Martin Luther) does not say “Here I stand”, but “There Christ stands. There stands the Righteous One who is greater than Abraham, greater than Joseph, and greater than Moses.” 

The Sanhedrin has been trumped. Regardless of what the Sanhedrin will do, Stephen cannot be condemned because He has been vindicated by the Righteous One in the courtroom of heaven.  Stephen’s vindication is from none other than the One who himself had been delivered by angels years earlier in Bethlehem. And that’s been the undercurrent all along. That night in Bethlehem, angels ushered to the earth a Savior who would take away the sin of the world. They did not bring law this time. They were not bringing Moses this time. They brought Grace and Truth… Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the hero of the story

Stephen pays the price with his life. The mob kills him. I do want to say this: what Stephen did was courageous. No doubt. Stephen is the first recorded Christian martyr and he didn’t wilt. I don’t know what I would have done in that situation.

But this story isn’t about courage. The Bible wasn’t written to give us ideals to live up to. The Bible is the story of Jesus. And Jesus is the hero of the story. This story is about Stephen understanding and seeing that Jesus is the point and meaning of everything. This is about Jesus’ vindication of Stephen and the Gospel that he articulated. This is Jesus’ vindication of Stephen’s proclamation of the meaning of history. Stephen sees Jesus as the culmination point of all of history. Greater than Moses. Greater than a humanly-constructed temple. Stephen isn't simply attempting to win an argument. He isn't simply convinced of right theology. Jesus is so big, so grand, so *final* in being all that God has promised to His people that nothing, absolutely nothing else matters. That thought, proclaimed through the blood of martyrs and vindicated by the Son of Man standing, turns the world upside down.

Stephen’s story is our story

But what about us? If we’ve been paying attention, Stephen’s story is our story. In fact, the Sanhedrin’s story is our story. There have been moments this past week in which we, including Bresson, have spit bullets at the thought that we need a Messiah, a Savior. In fact, I’m all about vindicating myself. Justifying myself. Trying to win the argument, like the sinner I am.

But that’s just the moment we need to see ourselves in Stephen’s story. Jesus is constantly interrupting our lives to save us, deliver us… again. Jesus steps in to save us from our self-justification. We may not have our lives on the line, but the threat to our faith and our spiritual lives is very, very real. And in those moments, we have an Advocate… we have a deliverer. When Satan accuses us of not being enough, of being a traitor to Jesus, of the need to be more for Jesus because we blew it yesterday, or to pay some kind of penance of good works to make up for the fact that we blew it… you name it, you know the accusations, I hear them constantly. And we need to come here to Acts 7 and take our place next to the angel-faced Stephen who sees nothing but his Vindicator, his Savior, his deliverer. We are not alone as we face the accuser. Jesus bears witness to the accuser and to the world that we are his, we belong to him.

It’s not an accident that Stephen’s death changes everything. There’s a very real sense that nothing was ever the same again. What happened to Jesus happens to his followers. And that reality fueled mission. There’s a guy at Stephen’s trial who is there approving everything that happened. The one we know as St Paul wasn’t a saint. He was an enemy of the gospel. And the bounty hunting of Christians by Saul lit a fire under the church and the Gospel exploded to all four corners of the globe. The story of Stephen is the story of mission. We’re not the only ones looking for vindication. We’re not the only ones who need a special delivery of someone to save us, forgive us, give us life. Our neighbors and community need the same vindication and justification and salvation that we have.

Jesus came, delivered by angels to be our Advocate, our grace, our salvation, our forgiveness. And that’s our hope, that’s our confidence, that’s our mission.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

Jesus came special delivery for us. To be here for us. Right now. You want to see, and feel, and taste, and smell vindication? You want to taste your salvation and deliverance? That’s this right here, right now.. in Christ’s body and in Christ’s blood.

Benediction