Sermon Tone Analysis

BRING/READ/THINK/PRAY

Last week we took up the story of Stephen.

Stephen was a deacon and a preacher.

Those two tasks do not normally go together, but in Stephen’s case they did.

And like many prophets before him, and like many preachers after him, Stephen’s faithful, clear, accurate, God-centered and convicting sermons got him into trouble.

People did not like hearing the truth anymore then than they do now.

Well, now Stephen is before the Sanhedrin.

He is called upon to defend himself, to explain his actions.

The charges were these:

Charges against Stephen:

Making blasphemous statements about Moses

Making blasphemous statements about God

Undermining the OT law

Stephen is called upon to give a defense of these statements.

What say you, Stephen?

Do you stand by what you said?

Do you really believe what you said?

Stephen didn’t really do any of these things.

But you know how when someone important makes a big important speech and someone takes some statements out of context?

And then the news gets ahold of those statements and plays them on a loop?

That’s kind of what’s going on here.

By that point it really doesn’t matter at all what Stephen actually meant; what matters is that he said it, and how it was interpreted.

Stephen is standing in the center of a large amphitheater surrounded by the most powerful religious leaders in Jerusalem.

They’re old, and they have beards.

And they’re wagging their heads at you and whispering about you.

Finally, the high priest who presides over the council stands up.

The room goes dead silent.

And he says to you? “Are these things so?”

Here’s my question to you: how would you respond?

For Stephen, it was a divine opportunity.

Stephen decides to tell them God’s story of redemption.

And as he does so, he reminds us of four things.

We need to be reminded of biblical events and people we’ve heard about all our lives

The first thing he reminds us of is that we need to be reminded of biblical events and people we’ve heard about all our lives.

Here’s why I say that and how I get that from this text.

Look with me not just at verse two but verses 2-8:

So he starts with Abraham, goes through the call of Abraham to leave his country and go to the promised land, talks about the sojournings of Abraham and his family and ends with Abraham’s genealogy up through Jacob and the 12 patriarchs.

And then he does it again in later verses starting Joseph through Joshua up through David.

Why are we hearing about this?

We know about Abraham and Moses and Joshua and Joseph and David.

We learned about all of these guys in Sunday School, for crying out loud.

But if that’s what you’re thinking, consider this: so did the men who he’s telling the story too.

Remember where he is: before the Sanhedrin.

Remember who’s on the Sanhedrin: high priests and scribes and other religious leaders.

These are the biblical scholars, the theologians, the pastors.

And for some reason he thinks they need to hear these stories.

Why?

Because they know the stories one way, but Stephen wants them to see him his way - the right way.

They needed to read the stories correctly, with an understanding that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and David the way that points to Christ, the Christ they have rejected.

They needed to see that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Joshua and David — that all of these men point to Jesus, the better Abraham, the true Joshua, the better David.

They need to understand that without Christ in the picture of the whole Bible, even the OT, there’s nothing but moralism - be good, don’t be bad; be like Abraham, not Lot; be like Joshua and Caleb, not the unbelieving spies.

Every person, every event, every institution, and ever law and verse in the OT points forward to and has its fulfillment somehow in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Messiah, the Son of God.

Chuck Swindoll tells a story about a pastor named Dr. Louis Evans.

Dr.

Evans was the pastor at Hollywood Presbyterian Church.

He was preaching to a group of college students one night and Dr. Swindoll was there.

Dr.

Evans was talking about how if we don’t believe parts of Scripture we don’t like, or if we fail to see Christ therein, we’ve missed the point.

So one night he’s preaching and he says, “you know what, if you don’t believe the virgin birth really happened, then you should have some integrity and tear those pages out of your Bible.

If you don’t believe Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, rip those pages out.

If you don’t believe the resurrection of Christ, rip it out.

And he actually did that as he was talking.

It was powerful.

He ripped out the pages of his Bible and threw them over the edge of the pulpit as he proclaimed the truthfulness of Scripture.

Now lest you think he was being irreverent toward the word of God, you need to know the point of this, and here it is.

After he was finished, he paused, lifted up the tattered Bible, as fragments of paper continued to drift downward, said this: “What do you have left?

All you have left is the Sermon on the Mount, and it’s not worth anything unless a divine Christ preached it.”

And with that he closed his sermon.

It had an impact, because dozens of young men in the congregation stood up and asked him to keep preaching and teaching.

There is power in the word of God if and only if we see that Christ is the blazing center of it.

[Swindoll, p52]

Jesus himself said this.

Jesus himself said we should read the Bible this way.

Talking to this same group of men that Stephen is talking to, he said this: John 5:39-40

We tend to think of those stories like the ark and the red sea as Sunday Schools stories, stories we tell children but not of much value for us.

We fail to see how Jesus is on every page.

And that is why we need to be reminded of the things and stories and people in the Bible that we’ve been hearing about all our lives.

We need to be reminded that our church involvement does not save us from our sins

The second thing Stephen’s speech shows us we need to be reminded of is that our church involvement does not save us.

I ask again: Who was Stephen preaching to?

It always helps to know your audience.

Who was in the audience?

The Sanhedrin (there’s an image for you).

Again, priests, religious leaders, scribes.

And what do we know about how those guys tended to think about their relationship with God? Their relationship with God was, in their eyes, something that was automatic.

“Of course we’re in right relationship with God - we’re Israelites, the chosen people!

God and us - we’re good, just because we’re Jews and not Gentiles.”

Their attitude was the attitude of the Pharisee praying in the temple in the parable Jesus told.

Remember him?

Luke 18:9-12

It’s legalism.

Do you know what legalism is? Legalism is not working really hard to obey God’s commands.

Legalism is working to obey God’s commands in order to get Him to accept you.

No, things don’t work that way.

No one in the first century was in right relationship with God simply because they were a Jew.

And no one in 2022 is in right relationship with God simply because you go to church, or pay your tithes, or serve on a committee, or occupy a position of leadership.

Those are good things, things precious to God.

That’s what faithfulness as a church member looks like.

But as good as those things are, none of those things will make you right with God.

Faith alone makes a person right with God.