7:17-53

“In the grip of glory”

I.) Intro.

II.) Vs. 17-36 From bondage in bondage

III.) Vs. 37-43 Living Word in dead hearts

IV.) Vs. 44-53 A well decorated shack

Intro.

Two weeks ago we left off with Stephen’s message before the Sanhedrin, which was like our supreme court. Stephen was on trial for his life & he was most likely only a year old in the Lord. He started his message out with the words, “The God of Glory appeared” & He will end his message by seeing the God of Glory as he gazed into heaven. Now the thrust of his message is using their Jewish history in which they were extremely prideful over as a basis of showing why they still were rejecting God. You see Israel was a lot like us in that they tended to over estimate the reasons for their success while down playing the reasons for their failures. Simply put they had a bad case of revisionism in terms of their ancestors. Perhaps we would call it “padding their stats”! As we have already seen their pride lay in their ancestors accomplishments as seen in three areas:

Land (2-16, 17-36)
Law (37-43)
Temple (44-50)

So those old relatives that had been a part of these three things were brought to the place of superstars, but while those people accomplished much they failed to recognize that the nation (their ancestors) failed to respond to these men. So like the nation of old they to were missing the move of God in sending His only Son to be their Messiah. Through the message of Stephen God is going to bring these rulers with their pride crumbling back to earth. Have you ever experienced that yourself?

This past weekend Donna & I got invited to a special party honoring Thomas Kincade the “painter of light”. He is probably one of the best loved & know artists in the world. He has just opened a museum in Monterey housing several million dollars of his original works & set up a foundation to help youth as well as others develop their talent in art that glorifies God! Well over a year ago when he first had this idea he was with several of his assistants painting the old Monterey courthouse in a style known as “plinair” which is quite different then the paintings most of us associate with him. Well anyway these two elderly ladies came up to watch him paint for awhile, when one of the sweet ladies leaned over to him & said, “You know your not to bad at this, if you keep practicing at this you might one day get good at it.” Thomas was very polite to her & thanked her for complement. This made her all the more bold as she began to instruct him on where to add color, quite pleased with herself she again made an attempt at a complement by saying, “You know what, you keep at this & one day you may be able to even sell one of your paintings.” “Well you know”, said Thomas, “I have actually sold several of my paintings already, in fact some of them have even gone to print.” “You mean you make a living at this, she asked?” “Yes I do”, replied Thomas. “Well you know I have a favorite artiest & have several of his prints on my walls at home, perhaps you have heard of him, Thomas Kincade?” Now by this time the assistants could not stand it any longer & they leaned over to the lady & said, “Miss, um, this is Thomas Kincade!” Puzzled by this new revelation she got close to Thomas looked at him real good then again looked at the painting she had instructed him in & said, “No way!”

II.) Vs. 17-36 From bondage in bondage

Vs. 17-19 In the first 16 verses Stephen spoke of the land in reference to Abraham to Joseph. His points were:

“Its not where you dwell that makes you special, It’s WHO you dwell with!”
“God is not limited in blessing us by our location only by a hard heart!”

So in these three verse he takes us to another stage in Israel’s history, “the time of promise” You will find that time of promise in Gen. 15:13-14 where God tells Abraham, “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions.” God is going to fulfill the promise of giving the land to his offspring. What is interesting is that by the time this took place all of the patriarchs were dead. So? Well if the land was what made them special then why did they never live to see it? Israel put way to much importance on the “holy land”. Yes it was the land promised by God & given to them as an inheritance but they had began to worship the land rather then the giver of the land. Is it not amazing how we Christians start worshiping the “things” God gives us to the point that they become a greater source of worship then the Lord? I mean we get all caught up in our possessions & all, then we end up being possessed by our possessions!

God had not forgotten His promise in fact He blessed the nation more in the land of bondage then He had in the land of promise as they “grew & multiplied in Egypt” from 75 to over 2 million. It was the fear of Pharaoh that he could no longer control the Jews that led to his policy of killing all the male babies.

Vs. 20-28 Now Stephen is going introduce another one their ancestors that they took pride in Moses. In doing this Stephen speaks of Moses life in 40-year periods.

Vs. 20-28 From birth to 40. Here we see Moses as deliver, but even in this Stephen is careful to show Moses failures as he spent the first 40 years becoming something. A good looking baby hidden for 3 months, then brought up in Pharaoh’s house, educated in the ways of the Egyptians & mighty in words & deeds. But Moses felt a call on his life at 40 & wanted to help his own people. You remember the story, as he sees the suffering of his people at the hands of the Egyptians he tries to do the work of God in the energy of the flesh & all that happens is that someone dies. The next day he thinks that he accomplished some thing for God & he sees two Jews fight & this time instead of being a deliver he tries his hand a being a reconciler attempting to bring the two combatants together. They don’t receive Moses’ attempt & question him as to whom made him boss. It is evident by their statement that they don’t respect his authority based upon his previous action. Hey, folks there are a big difference in Moses at this time & Jesus. Moses was willing to kill someone to accomplish his call & Jesus was willing to die to himself to accomplish His call. The people rejected Moses to be ruler & judge over them though now they esteemed him. Yet, now they were denying Jesus as ruler & judge over them as well.
Vs. 29-36 From 40 to 80. Now the next 40 years Moses spends in gentile lands thinking he was nothing. So over the next 40 more years Moses gets married has two boys & changes careers from prince to shepherd. Then Stephen says at the end of the 2^nd 40 year period God comes to him, (30-34). Notice how God speaks to Moses, “I have seen, I have heard, I have come” (verse 34). You see Moses had 40 years earlier “seen, heard & killed”, now God says, that He has seen, heard, & come so Moses must go! You see it took 40 years to work on the heart of Moses so that he would GO in the strength of the Lord not in his own strength. Now again if the land was so important as the meeting place of God then why did he meet with Moses while he was in Midian? So Moses had failed, the people had failed but God was faithful to the promise he made. Stephen is showing a pattern in the human heart in the history of their forefather’s Spiritual pride & ignorance has consistently caused them to reject God’s deliverance. The patriarch’s rejected their brother Joseph but God was faithful. Then the Israelites rejected Moses but the 2^nd time they follow him reluctantly only after God had worked signs & wonders in Egypt, the Red Sea & during the wilderness.

Vs. 37-43 Living Word in dead hearts

Stephen now further shows how their forefathers rejected those that God had sent by showing that they rejected Moses in the third 40-year period as LAWGIVER.

Vs. 37-43 From 80 to 120. This is the last 40 years of Moses life where God shows Moses that He can only do something through nothings. Now you will remember that in chapter 6:11-13 that they had accused Stephen of speaking blaspheme against Moses, (verse 11) & the Law, (verse 13). They made this claim because Stephen had spoken so much about Jesus. So in this section we see how Stephen answers their pride because of the law by using three points:
Vs. 37-38 By quoting Deut. 18:15. “Hey, Moses himself spoke of God raising up another prophet like him.” So they could not claim that God’s truth & plan was limited to Moses alone as the Sadducees believed. So the same guy they so honored as the one who brought forth the “living oracles” is the same one who said that God was going to bring another like him. Do you get his point? You received his words but you don’t receive the One whom his words foretold?
Vs. 39-40 Second point Stephen uses is that their forefathers had rejected Moses even after God had showed them that Moses was the anointed deliver. So it was not Stephen who was disobeying the law & rejecting Moses it was rather them as they were doing just what their father’s had done in not obeying the first two commandments of the law. Do you see his point? Moses & the Law, in which they held in such high regard that they were accusing him of blaspheming, did not keep their forefathers from making the same mistake as they were doing by rejecting the “Living Word”.
Vs. 41-43 Even after the 2^nd time God had Moses go up the hill to receive the Law as well as the sacrificial system the people still fell into pride & the worship of idols. Stephen quotes Amos to support this fact of their history. The worship of the calf of Egypt at the foot of Mount Sinai led God to give them over to that which they wanted to worship. The prophet reveals that what the Israelites had really been doing in the wilderness was offering sacrifices to idols while having a pretense of doing so before the Lord. They were all the while worshipping at “Molech” the god of prosperity & pleasure. They also worshiped before the Babylonian captivity their god for Saturn. Now we are not sure what that entailed other then it must have been real bad as the Jews latter used that name to mean abomination. So God said you want to worship the gods of Babylon then I’ll send you there for 70 years tell they got sick of it.

They accused Stephen of blaspheme & they were the ones by their very actions & pride that were blaspheme. So what’s the point? Well, it is not having a Bible that makes you right before God it is obedience to it!

Vs. 44-53 A well decorated shack

Vs. 44-50 Stephen now moves to the last issue of pride that they had the temple. They had also accused him of blaspheme the temple, (6:13). The first thing he does is show that in the beginning God was not concerned about its location. In fact the directions of how to build it made it completely mobile. Wherever they went He was with them, God sowed them that the place of the heart was more important then where the tent of meeting was pitched. The temple or tabernacle showed them that God wanted to be with them every where they went even when they went into the land of promise occupied by the gentiles. God would root out them because He was with them. The tabernacle remained movable for over 400 years until the time of David. God never asked for a temple to be built it was David that did that. It is not the temple that is great but God, is Stephens’s argument! No building is ever big enough to hold God, that’s not what God wants anyway. Were in the presence of God every moment of every day, all that any building does is facilitate service it is never to be seen as the “house of God”. Solomon understood this even though God allowed him to build the temple when he declared, “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).

Vs. 51-53 If they had not been all that sure that Stephen was talking about them he is going to make sure they get the pint now. Eight times the Old testament refers to the Jews as stiff-necked. The term describes a person’s refusal to bow down before the Lord. In other words Stephen calls them prideful. In Jeremiah 9:26 he says that “all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.” You see Israel had refused to surrender it’s heart & therefore it’s ears to the truth & so they were blaspheming One far more important then the temple, the law, or the land them were going against the Holy Spirit! They had committed an even far worse act then had their forefathers had who had killed God’s messengers who testified of the Jesus they had actually killed God’s only Son.

Man what a horrible thing pride is! It is the most dangerous thing known by man & every one of us battles it. Look at how Stephen distance himself for the final act of rebellion by saying (you = 4 times & your = 2 times), in these three verses. Maybe your hear today & you have been hard hearted & prideful don’t get made just surrender your heart to the truth of the person of Jesus.

This is a placeholder. Notes will be added

7:54-8:4

“Dying to speak about Jesus”

I.) Intro.

II.) Vs. 7:54-56 Being full of the Holy Spirit

III.) Vs. 57-60 Even the rocks will cry out

IV.) Vs. 8:1-4 Shattered & scattered

Intro.

This past Friday night my daughter Nicole reached a milestone in her life as she graduated from Merced High. As her father I’m extremely proud of her. As I listened to all the speeches from the students, there were several themes carried out. The fun they had during their Merced High years, hope for the future & yes the thought if their lives mattered. It got me to think does your or my life leave an impact?

As we come now to the end of the life of Stephen we are prone to call this the martyrdom of him. I think we Christians describe martyrs as those that were willing to die for Jesus. The truth of the matter is that a martyr is not a person who died for Jesus but rather it is all about how they lived. What? Think about it, a martyr speaks about how a person so lived their lives that even at death this world could not hold them down. You know the longer I’m a Christian & the older I get the more I begin to think about how one day I will be brought into the presence of my Lord. Oh dear saints that ought to cause you to live differently.

Hey, may I have your attention for a moment? If you or I were to go home with the Lord what impact would that have on those we left behind in the world? I mean would your or my life be remembered in such away that it would be a continual testimony to the person & work of Christ? I read this quote from a book by Elisabeth Elliot, widow of missionary Jim Elliot, whose life was taken along with four others on January 8^th 1956 by the Auca Indians in an Ecuadorian jungle. In one of his many journal entries he wrote this down, “When it comes time to die, make sure that all you have left to do is die!” Off the coast of Italy a young naval officer had been involved in an accident at sea. As he floated alone on a raft he pondered his mortality & these very words that he had read in the newspaper article about their death stuck in his heart. He prayed to God for he realized that he had more to do for God then to die. How about it are you & I ready to so live that we would be called a martyr?

II.) Vs. 7:54-56 Being full of the Holy Spirit

Vs. 54-56 In this section Luke quotes the three final sentences of Stephen while he was still on earth, (verses 56, 59, 60). In the first sentence he speaks of Jesus to those about ready to kill him, in the final two he speaks to Jesus about his readiness to be with Him & for forgiveness to those who have just killed him. I personally can think of no better way to leave this world then to end it by speaking of Jesus & to Jesus!

Luke graphically describes Stephens’s assassins as, “cut to the heart” & “gnashing at him with their teeth.” The words “cut to the heart” mean to saw in half. Simply put Stephen’s words ripped apart their religion veneer & they in turn acted as wild beasts literally snarling at him. Now lets not forget that Stephen is before the religious elite of his day. What a contrast between Stephen with his relationship with Jesus & the self-righteous religious. Stephen is said to look like Jesus with a face of an angel, (6:16) they look like, well hell! Seven different times Jesus describes hell as a place of gnashing of teeth. Look again at those words of verse 55! Truth! You can’t handle the truth! As the line in the movie goes. How about it, do you react more like the religious or Stephen when confront by truth? How was Stephen able to maintain such an right on attitude? Well, he was a supper saint knew Greek & Hebrew fluently. No, we do not have to guess as we are told over & over that he was a man controlled by the Holy Spirit. May I make a statement that may freak you out a bit? Both Stephen & the religious folks were acting possessed, but they were possessed by to opposite things, which caused exact opposite responses. Oh, to God that more of us would be possessed by the Holy Spirit!

And what does Stephen full of the Holy Spirit see? Well he sees, “The Son of Man STANDING at the right hand of God.” Many times we are told of Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father, (Matt. 26:64, Col. 3:1, Eph. 1:20) to mention a few but here Stephen gets a fresh glimpse of God’s glory in heaven & sees his risen Lord STANDING. Is that not cool or what?

Stephen is confessing Jesus before men so Jesus is confessing Stephen before God.
Stephen is in a moment of crises in his life & Jesus is standing at attention. Psalm 116:15 says, “Precious in the sight of the LORD Is the death of His saints.”
Stephen is seeing Jesus His Lord who he so lived for & now was about to die for stand to give him a standing ovation. Stephen, who’s name mean a victors crown is ready for his coronation.

Now what I really like is that which Stephen saw he proclaims. Can you imagine the look on his face as he gazed up into heaven & saw Jesus their waiting for him? “Hey, did you guys see that? It’s Jesus & he is standing at the right hand of the Father.” Have you ever known a Christian who so lived their life for Jesus that when you are around them you feel like they are continually in the presence of Jesus? I’ve got to tell you that they make my day! Man did this ever bust their chops, I mean Jesus had claimed to them that He would be at the right hand of the Father & Stephen says, “Yep, there He is alright!”

Vs. 57-60 Even the rocks will cry out

Vs. 57-59 Now that last statement before them was more then they could handle. Stephen looked up into heaven while the religious look down at Stephen. Pride had been their problem as Stephen had pointed out to them & now they are going to demonstrate it. Hey you know what you can see in the history of these fellows a progression of pride:

At the death of John the Baptist they did nothing & allowed him to be beheaded by Herod. In doing so they sinned against God the Father who sent him.
Then at the death of Jesus they asked Pilate to kill Jesus for them. In doing so they sinned against God the Son.
Now here they disregard Roman law, which forbid the Jews of capital punishment. They disregard the fact that they could not execute a criminal on the same day of his trial. In doing so they sinned against the Holy Spirit Who had filled him to speak of Jesus.

Folks, watch out for pride! You start out by just turning the other way when wrongs are being done. Then when you harden your heart still more in pride you get involved by in wrong doing by chuckling at others while they do it. Lastley, you progress to the pint in pride where you are actively pursuing wrong! Now notice how their three actions taken against Stephen mimicked their spiritual condition:

They did not want to listen.

Vs. 57 They stopped their ears: Faith comes by hearing & hearing by the Word of God, so they did not like the truth & like a child who does not want to hear what is being said they plugged their ears. Look at what that led to:
Cried out with a loud voice: Do you see that? Well they did not want to hear what God said so they shouted so they could only hear what they said. That is always what pride will do does it not? I mean you get in an argument with someone & pretty soon the voices start getting louder so that you don’t’ have to listen to what the other is saying. Sometimes people think if they say something long enough & loud enough it will actually become true.
They ran at Him with one accord: The word here run is the same one used to describe the demonic pigs that ran into the sea & drown. It also is used of Luke to describe the crowed that rushed the theater at Ephesus. They were religiously insane. Hey, if you want to silence the truth yell if that doesn’t work act crazy, out of control you know!

They were out side of a relationship.

Vs. 58 They cast him out side the city. Stephen had proclaimed to them that they were outside of a relationship with God. So they cast him out.

They were spiritually dead.

Vs. 59 They stoned Stephen. They were dead spiritually so they were going to kill Stephen.

Now we are told that stoning was a particular awful way to die. They would take a person to a cliff that was twice the height of a man. Then while he was not looking someone would push him into the hole. Then those who were the ones to testify against him would take a large bolder & throw it at his chest from about 15 feet. If that did not kill him then the next witness would aim for his head. After that then all there would start throwing rocks until he was dead. So here we are told that the witnesses of 6:13-14 lay off their outer garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. This is our first introduction to Saul who is said to be a “young man” literally a man in his prime. Now we know that he was a voting member of the Sanhedrin. What blows my mind is how Stephen’s death will be used to change Saul’s life. Paul would later in his own defense say (22:17-21), “Lord, they know that in every synagogue I imprisoned and beat those who believe on You. ‘And when the blood of Your martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by consenting to his death, and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.”

Vs. 59-60 Here then are the final two statements Stephen makes this side of heaven.

The first recorded here is telling of his readiness to go home to be with Jesus. So how about it, are you ready as Stephen?
The Last is Stephen interceding on behalf of his killers. Is that radical or what? And you know what? God heard the prayer of Stephen & touched the life of Saul! So when you get into heaven make sure you thank Stephen for Paul! Man think of the fellowship those tow are having now! Hey, I like what G. Campbell Morgan said; “Stephen was a martyr before they stoned him.”

Folks, the question is not are you willing to die for Jesus. No the question is are you willing to LIVE for him. Dying for Him is going to be easy; it’s the living that I have a problem with! Folk’s you & I have one life as an opportunity to impact the world with the life of Jesus so how about it? Paul would later challenge the Church at Rome to be “living sacrifices!”

Look at how the good Dr. describes Stephen’s death, even as horrible as it was he says that Stephen, “fell asleep”. Did you get that? Paul would later say in 1 Cor. 15:54-55, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is your sting?” As a Christian it does not matter the way you fall asleep you are still going to awake in the presence of God. The story is told of a couple who wanted to send a flower arrangement to a friend who owned a business that just changed locations. Well when the friend got the arrangement he was surprised to find the words from his friends that said, “Sorry to hear about your loss.” Confused by this he gave them a call to find out what the cryptic saying meant. Well the flowers were from them alright but the saying had gotten mixed up by the florist. Quickly they called where they purchased the flowers but it was to late the card had already been delivered to the mortuary with, you guessed it the words, “Congratulations on your new home.” Hey, for a Christian that it perfect is it not? Send some flowers to Donna when I go with those words!

Vs. 8:1-4 Shattered & scattered

Vs. 1 Now the Church was devastated at the loss of Stephen. They had forgotten the words of Jesus that they were to be His witnesses in Judea, Samaria & to the ends of the earth. Preferring to stay in Jerusalem. So for three years they stay in Jerusalem, until this event.

So God allows Saul to vote for the death of Stephen & all looks lost as this just inspires Saul all the more. But you know what all it did was blow air onto a burning fire scattering the embers every where.

Vs. 2 Further more even non-Christians became more open to the truth as they openly defied the religious leaders by openly weeping for a condemned man. You see the life of Christ as seen in Stephen’s death was at work.

Vs. 3 Saul set out to destroy the Church & no one was safe including women. We are told in Acts 26:11 that he, “punished them often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities.” Did you get that? He threatened some of them & forced them to renounce Jesus. Hey, you think God can’t forgive what you have done? You think that you have committed the unpardonable sin? Well, evidently Paul had not as God forgive Him 7 changed his life. So? Well that means if you will allow Jesus He will change your life as well!

Vs. 4 Look at this! There is a distribution problem in the Church, a bottle neck if you will. To many believers in one spot & a need to reach the world. So what is God going to do? Well He allows persecution to drive the believers back to where they came & everywhere they go they tell folks about Jesus. May I just say that we wanted to go where no one else was at when we started looking for a spot to build. Every body moving closer to where the college is going to be at. That’s Ok but I want to go where there is not a Church down the street. Now what we find out when the Lord is moving us no matter how He does so that He will already have been there before us preparing the soil, watering the crop, so that He can bring in an increase. So maybe your job is ending & you have to get a new job, hey sounds like God is at work. The place were we live is just not big enough. You get the picture? I love the fact that every day in Christ is a brand new day with great opportunities for our growth in Him & His growth in the world we live so how about us be ready to LIVE for Jesus? Your live been shattered lately? You’ve been scattered around a lot? Well wherever you go shattered & scattered do so telling everyone about Jesus!