Water or Kindling

I am betting that most of us have woken up with a stiff neck before; some of us might have even experienced that this week! In fact, I saw a meme recently that said “Age 8: Fell out of a 10 foot tree house, rode my bike home, jumped on trampoline and played football and felt fine. Age 40: Sneezed too hard and now I cannot bend over properly.”

A few times in the Bible prophets and others used the term “stiffnecked” to describe the relationship between the people of God and the Holy Spirit. In today’s passage the term is used by Stephen, and it is actually the last thing that Stephen says before he is stoned to death.

The exact words are these in v51:

English Standard Version Chapter 7

You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit.

Today I would like for us to dig into these phrases for just a few moments and ask ourselves, are any of these tendencies present in our own lives?

And this is an important question for us to ask, because we need to remember the context of Stephen’s statement- Stephen was about to be stoned- by people who called themselves followers of God! It is not an audience of pagans or heathens that he is talking too- it was a Council of synagogues- this was a church business meeting. And Stephen’s speech that we read was in direct response from a question by the High Priest. Stephen’s indictment of them stiffnecked, with uncircumcised hearts and resisting the holy spirit was not him calling out the world- it was him calling out the church! He is calling out people like us. He is calling out the people who go to church, the people who prayed, and gave offerings, and sang the worship songs- he is talking to the community of faith; not the community of the world.

First, he addresses them as stiffnecked. This was likely a reference to the camels, donkeys, and other animals used for travel and life in the land in that time. Some of you all have livestock so you know what it can be like to try and lead an animal on a halter. You know, as long as the animal remains loose in the neck things are usually fine, they are following your lead and lots of animals enjoy their walks.

The problem is when the animal stiffens their neck; their muscles begin to flex; and the fight is on. They do not want to go where you are leading them. They want to follow their own direction. They will kick and fight and do almost anything to get away.

Let’s face it, we can do the same thing as followers of Jesus. Sometimes we follow Jesus with a lose neck- he leads us and we follow easily with no resistance. But other times when God starts to lead us we can be like the stubborn goat- we can pull and fight and try to do anything to go our own way- sometimes even trying to drag Jesus along with us.

This is why so much of Christian life is rooted in self-denial. Because there is a cost- a price of self denial- to follow Jesus with our whole selves. I know I have used this quote from JC Ryle in the past, but I love it so much:

"It costs something to be a true Christian. Let that never be forgotten. To be a (lukewarm) Christian, and go to church, is cheap and easy work. But to hear Christ’s voice, follow Christ, believe in Christ, and confess Christ, requires much self-denial. It will cost us our sins, our self-righteousness, our ease, and our worldliness. ALL must be given up. Our Lord Jesus Christ would have us thoroughly understand this. He bids us count the cost."

--J. C. Ryle

The second thing Steven says about these people is that they are uncircumcised in heart and in ears.

Remember, the metaphor of circumcision was important in Jewish faith, and was a hot button issue in the early church. Being circumcised was on of the main ways that the people of God would show their commitment to the covenant of faith.

John Rittenbaugh once wrote about the effect of an uncircumcised heart:

An "uncircumcised heart" is one that is closed and impervious to God's attempts to affect it. It resists them, which is why Stephen calls them "stiff-necked." A stiff-necked person is unyielding. His head is set, his jaw is outthrust, his ears are closed, and his teeth are clenched. He says, "I won't do it!" This is the effect of the uncircumcised heart.

You see, an uncircumcised heart is one that has not been trimmed, or pruned, by the Word of God. Listen to Hebrews 4:12-13 “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

You see, God’s word comes into our hearts and can trim them. God’s Word can show us what needs to be taken out of our hearts, like anger, greed, jealously, pride- so that Christ can dwell in us richly.

And the thing is, sometimes we don’t even realize what the Bible is doing in us, even if it is doing a great work.

There was an old man that lived in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. The old man had a big family. One day one of the old man’s grandsons approached him with a problem.

The Grandson said, "Pap, I read the Bible and I don’t understand it, and what I understand I forget as soon as I close the Bible covers. What’s the use of reading the Bible!"

The Grandfather ordered the grandson to get the basket they used to carry the heating coal into the house and run down to the river and bring back a basket of water to the house.

To please his grandfather, the lad grapped the basket, ran to the river and got a basket of water. The lad ran back to the house with the water. By the time the lad reached the house the basket was empty.

The grandfather chided the young boy, "Hurry and go bring me a basket of water. DO IT NOW!"

The lad ran quickly from the river. The basket was full when he left the river, but by the time he arrived at the house the basket of water was dry. After his third trip, the boy told his granddad, "It is no use, I can not retain the water in the basket until I get here. It is useless."

The grandfather looked at the disgusted young boy and said, "So you think it is useless?"

"Yes, Pap! It is useless to try!" the boy replied.

The Grandfather said to the boy, "But look at the basket. Do you notice something?"

The small boy was amazed. After three trips to the river, the dirty coal basket was clean.

Pap said, "See, that is what the Word of God does to you. As you read, you say you don’t retain and understand it, but your basket is cleaned."

But our hearts have to be open to trimming. There are all kinds of people that read the Bible, but never allow it to do work inside of them. You can read the Bible everyday for the rest of your life, but if it never drives you to repentance, to change, to action; it is as pointless as if you never picked it up at all.

After all, the problem was not that the people didn’t read the law of God, or that they did not know the law and prophecy of God-it was that what they read and studied did not transform them or impact how they lived.

The catch the last thing that Stephen said about the people that day- they resisted the Holy Spirit.

After all, their resistance to the Holy Spirit was exactly why Stephen was in this situation in the first place. Listen to the story’s beginning in 6:8-9

English Standard Version Chapter 6

And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. 9 Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen. 10

Have you ever resisted the Holy Spirit? I have… several times; but I will tell you about one of the most recent....

Last year I was approached about doing some revival services for a church about an hour from here. Now, I love doing revivals, but for some reason I just was not sure about this one. I put off making a final decision for a couple days, I didn’t return an email as quickly as I usually would have, and I had pretty much made up my mind that I was not going to do it. But still, there was an aching, a nagging feeling, deep in my heart that I needed to do this. But I looked at my calendar- we had so many other things going on that week. That is a pretty long drive and they want me to do it 5 days, so I am going to be driving almost 1.5 both ways- I was making every stupid excuse I could.

I was resisting the Holy Spirit. Finally about a week later I ran into a friend that attended that church and he told me about all the things that church had been through since COVID. They had lost a pastor; a few key people had passed away; their church had been vandalized; and he ended with a statement something like- “we are in a funk and just need something to spark some positive in our church” and it was like God smacked me upside the head. This is why he was calling me to go; and Satan was trying to make me say no because he was doing a really good job keeping this congregation discouraged and doubting their ministry.

Long story short, we had a great revival and many people accepted the Lord or rededicated their lives; and many people reflected about how they felt renewed or refreshed- to GOD be the glory.

How do you resist the Holy Spirit? You know, when you can feel God speaking and you say things like “there is no way I am doing THAT!” or “What if people look at me like I am weird?”

Whole churches can resist the Holy Spirit too. I have seen churches that God has lead up to a decision and it is obvious to most that the Holy Spirit is leading them in a particular direction, and than when the time to make the decision comes they back away. Not because of anything other than fear.

Can I tell you that as a pastor that was one of my main anxieties when we built the new section of the Sanctuary- not that we would build, but that we would not because it was obvious what God was calling us to do.

Notice too that that Bible says that these people were suffering from a generational curse of resisting the Holy Spirit. Changing the culture of a church is once the most challenging things that Christians can do. It takes prayer, fasting, devotion, and intentionality. We have all known churches or Christians who have suffered from generational type curses in resisting the Holy Spirit. It’s almost like they learn it from their ancestors.

As parents and grandparents we can teach our kids how to respond to the HS. Many kids and teens think that the old Devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other is how God works. We have an obligation as parents to teach our kids. Resisting the HS can be a generational type curse if we allow it.

And we must be careful how we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit’s leading. Because in this story their resistance to what the Holy Spirit is what would ultimately lead to Stephen’s death.

And while I do know anyone who has lost their life because the church failed to listen to the Holy Spirit- I know a lot of people who have lost their faith. We may not pick up physical stones and throw them, but there are people that we hurt with out inability to allow the work of the Spirit among us.

God speaks to us about gossip and we fail to change- until someone finally gets hurt too bad and leaves their faith behind.

We do not allow true transformation to come into our lives. We proclaim Christ but still live filthy sinful lives. Many people see us live this way and think “if that is how Christians are then I do not want to be one”

And many people have spiritually killed themselves in this kind of behavior. Listen to Romans 1:21-24 “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves”

So how do we respond to the Spirit in our lives? Well, if Stephen called them out for suppressing the HS in their midst, then Timothy said in right in 2 Tim 1:6 when he said “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”

We are to fan the flame of the Holy Spirit. Next week we will talk about some specific ways we can do this.