In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, "It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word." This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.
Now Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people. Opposition arose, however, from members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called)--Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria as well as the provinces of Cilicia and Asia. These men began to argue with Stephen, but they could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke. Then they secretly persuaded some men to say, "We have heard Stephen speak words of blasphemy against Moses and against God." So they stirred up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law. They seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin. They produced false witnesses, who testified, "This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us." All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.
Then the high priest asked him, "Are these charges true?"
(Act 6:1-7:1 NIV)
Mike has already done a wonderful job covering the first section, on church leadership, so I am just going to focus on the second part today.
Steven was chosen by the church to handle a division that had arisen internally. As we’ve been paying attention to the attacks on this early church, we might be inclined to see the dispute over food distribution as another assault mounted from the inside. Though we certainly have no grounds to be dogmatic about it, I believe that’s what’s going on. You’ll remember that the Hellenists were displaced Jews and that they were complaining that their widows weren’t getting the same treatment as the native born. 7 men were chosen to make sure everything was handled evenly. , and of them, Steven is introduced to us as being “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit.”
Next we see that Steven did not limit himself to waiting tables and heading up the Jerusalem branch of the “Meals on Wheels” ministry:
Now Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people. (Act 6:8 NIV)
Which, and it should be no surprise to us at this point, earned him his own personal enemies:
Opposition arose, however, from members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called)--Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria as well as the provinces of Cilicia and Asia. These men began to argue with Stephen, (Act 6:9 NIV)
These men were Jews who had been sold into slavery and brought to Rome, where they had been freed. What precisely they were doing in Jerusalem at this time, I’m not sure of the time of year for these events. Regardless, these men took it upon themselves to defeat the arguments that Steven was presenting. That word “argue” there is a specific Greek word, and I’m not sure why they didn’t translate it like this, but it means a formal debate. When we hear argue now-a-days we think of 2 angry people screaming at each other, and I’m sure the whole thing probably got pretty heated, but it wasn’t a shouting match. They were debating the issues, most likely stuff like the Resurrection, the true nature of the Law, and the Old Testament basis for Jesus being the Messiah.
but they could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke.
(Act 6:10 NIV)
The Holy Spirit had so empowered Steven that he always had the right answer to all of their arguments. I’ve been in a lot of debates before, and a lot of dirty tricks get pulled, but the Holy Spirit was handling these men. They, being the godly, spiritual defenders of the one true faith that they were, reacted by spreading lies and rumors all around, observe:
Then they secretly persuaded some men to say, "We have heard Stephen speak words of blasphemy against Moses and against God." So they stirred up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law. (Act 6:11-12a NIV)
This, of course, is a time honored debate technique which you can still see in operation today, especially around election time. Part 2 of this technique is getting your opponent arrested, which is the harder of the two to pull off, but these guys manage to do it:
They seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin. They produced false witnesses, who testified, "This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us." (Act 6:12-14 NIV)
Alright, so is everyone on the same page? These men were formally debating Steven in public and were losing. They then proceeded to smear his character, have him arrested and falsely tried before the Sanhedrin. We’ve certainly been seeing a lot of these guys, haven’t we? How did Steven react to this?
All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel. (Act 6:15 NIV)
Then the high priest asked him, "Are these charges true?" (Act 7:1 NIV)
And Steven begins my favorite sermon in the whole Bible. So much of it just speaks for itself that I’m just going to read it and comment on a few sections.
Act 7:1-53
Then the high priest asked him, "Are these charges true?" (2) To this he replied: "Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. (3) 'Leave your country and your people,' God said, 'and go to the land I will show you.'[1] (4) "So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. (5) He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. (6) God spoke to him in this way: 'Your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. (7) But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,' God said, 'and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.'[2] (8) Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.
This is a story so familiar to these men that they may have had cause to ask why Steven even bothered to say so much about it. This would be the equivalent of telling the Christmas story to a bunch of angry Seminary professors. Especially since they asked him a pretty direct question and this, at least at this point, is not an answer. The answer they were looking for was “Yes”, what they got was 53 verses of preaching. What Steven is doing, and it will help us to keep it in mind, is setting up a pattern that will become obvious as he repeats it. God sends a man as His representative, and His own people reject them. Steven has just set up this story with the Patriarchs as the promised sons of God’s appointed servant. Now watch what Steven does from here.
(9) "Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt.
The great patriarchs, the leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel, sold their brother into slavery and lied to their father Jacob, whom God had renamed Israel, telling him that Joseph was killed by wild beasts. Why did they do this? Well God had given Joseph a dream and in that dream the brothers were bowing down to him. They were jealous of God’s appointed servant.
But God was with him (10) and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh king of Egypt; so he made him ruler over Egypt and all his palace. (11) "Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our fathers could not find food. (12) When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers on their first visit.
If you remember the story God had reveled to Joseph that there would be a famine and so he had enacted an emergency management program, that’s why the brothers went down there, to get the food their persecuted brother had stored.
(13) On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph's family. (14) After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, seventy-five in all. (15) Then Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our fathers died. (16) Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money. (17) "As the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt greatly increased.
OK, got that. Through the rejection of God’s appointed servant by God’s own people, the genetic and spiritual fathers of the men Steven is addressing, God accomplished His plan of getting Israel into Egypt.
(18) Then another king, who knew nothing about Joseph, became ruler of Egypt. (19) He dealt treacherously with our people and oppressed our forefathers by forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die. (20) "At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. For three months he was cared for in his father's house. (21) When he was placed outside, Pharaoh's daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. (22) Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action. (23) "When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. (24) He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian.
Bad call, but his heart was in the right place. Even at that stage in his life, Moses was trying to be a defender of his own people.
(25) Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. (26) The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, 'Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?' (27) "But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, 'Who made you ruler and judge over us? (28) Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’
Again, God’s chosen servant is rejected, by whom? God’s people, the Jews.
(29) When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons. (30) "After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. (31) When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to look more closely, he heard the Lord's voice: (32) 'I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.' Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look. (33) "Then the Lord said to him, 'Take off your sandals; the place where you are standing is holy ground. (34) I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.'
Alright, now catch this…
(35) "This is the same Moses whom they had rejected with the words, 'Who made you ruler and judge?' He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. (36) He led them out of Egypt and did wonders and miraculous signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the desert.
Through the rejection of God’s appointed servant by His own people, God accomplished His purpose of getting His own out of Egypt.
(37) "This is that Moses who told the Israelites, 'God will send you a prophet like me from your own people.'
This, by the way, was a prophecy that John the Baptists said was fulfilled in Christ Jesus. These guys would have known that.
(38) He was in the assembly in the desert, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers; and he received living words to pass on to us. (39) "But our fathers refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. (40) They told Aaron, 'Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt--we don't know what has happened to him!'
You know, ‘cause he’d been gone for a month receiving God’s law.
(41) That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and held a celebration in honor of what their hands had made. (42) But God turned away and gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets:
" 'Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings
forty years in the desert, O house of Israel? (43) You have lifted up the shrine of Molech
and the star of your god Rephan,
the idols you made to worship.
Therefore I will send you into exile' beyond Babylon.
This is what Mike has been going through on Wednesday nights. During periods of waiting on the Lord, the Israelites were constantly turning to idols. The first instance took all of 4 weeks, but it would continue on through their history until finally the last remnant of Israel is carried away in chains by Nebuchadnezzar over 600 years after that event.
(44) "Our forefathers had the tabernacle of the Testimony with them in the desert. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen. (45) Having received the tabernacle, our fathers under Joshua brought it with them when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them. It remained in the land until the time of David, (46) who enjoyed God's favor and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. (47) But it was Solomon who built the house for him.
It’s important to note that Solomon’s Temple was eventually destroyed. Nehemiah started rebuilding it about 400 years before this story, but the temple that Steven was now in was completed by Herod the Great. It was the pride of Israel and some considered it to be one of the wonders of the world. It was covered in gold and set on a hill above the city. They say you could see it for miles while you were approaching Jerusalem. I think it’s also important to keep in mind, as we near the climax of Steven’s response, the one thing the Jews never did after returning from Babylon, was turn to idols. After their captivity they had learned that lesson, at least. These men were clinging desperately to their traditions, and though they were the traditions of men, they found their root in the Holy Scriptures given to the people of Israel, and they were not going to turn away from them for fear of worshiping idols. The Jews have been out of “The Captivity” for 2400 years now and that hasn’t changed. The traditions have been expanded upon, changed, revoked, jumbled up, but the difference between these Jews and the religious Jews of today are very little. That temple was central to life. They had lost all independent political power, but they still had that temple. With that in mind, we continue.
(48) "However, the Most High does not live in houses made by men. As the prophet says: (49) " 'Heaven is my throne,
and “the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord.
Or where will my resting place be? (50) Has not my hand made all these things?' (51) "You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit! (52) Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him-- (53) you who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it."
These men had accused Steven of wanting to change the traditions that were handed down by Moses, but Moses himself had promised that one day a prophet like him would come. The accusation behind the accusation was that if God’s chosen servant had come, these men would have been able to discern him, not some little upstart with a Greek name, certainly not some Galilean fishermen and especially not that tax collector, Matthew. Steven points out that their ancestral and spiritual fathers tossed God’s chosen in a pit and sold him to enemies.
Steven’s question has echoed down the corridors of time coming as a warning to all who think they are secure in their religion. That question is the same one I would ask you tonight. What makes you think you’re any different? The Old Testament is the history of a people who continually turned away from God. We sit here in this room and all of us make the claim that we are Christians, and I certainly hope that’s true. But these men trusted in their religions, too. What’s the most important thing to realize is that these men were following the right God, studying the right books and they had devoted their lives to it, sacrificed for it. These were sincere men of faith. But their faith was in a religious system, not in God. Oh, sure, they called the object of their devotion God, and attributed their affections and loyalties to acts of faithful worship, but Jesus called them whitewashed tombs. All pretty on the outside, all death and decay on the inside. Steven told them of worshiping falsehoods and resisting theHoly Spirit, even of murdering the Promised One. Their religious devotion had betrayed their rebellious hearts.
So where are you? Are you trusting in some ceremony in the past? Perhaps your attendance in a building every Sunday is your proof of faith. Can you provide us with a perfectly clean voting record? You may even point out to me and to everyone that you can check off 9 out of 10 points of compliance with some establishment or another, demonstrate a life spent working within that establishment for its betterment and provide to us a full portfolio of credentials that would make it obvious to anyone that you were a devoted member of “The Right Team”. Paul had that list, circumcised on the 8th day, tribe of Benjamin, Pharisee of Pharisees, a devoted adherent of the Law. But all that he counted as dung and loss as compared to the incomparable riches of Christ.
Is the thing you put your trust in a “what” or a “who”? A “what” will only blind you to the truth. Jesus said:
Rev 3:17 NIV You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.
A “who” requires you to surrender and admit that you are unworthy. A “who” will require that you stop trusting in yourself and rely on someone else. A “who” demands things of you and requires your obedience. A “what” is certainly easier. But a “what” is an idol, and is powerless to help you.
1Co 10:12 NIV So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!
