Introduction
We are moving forward in our study in the book of Acts tonight. It’s been pretty exciting so far. This is the story of the birth of the early church, how God personally formed a community, a spiritual community of believers all indwelt by his Holy Spirit. He formed them together, he is protecting them, and ultimately it is his plan to use them as his witnesses, to tell people about Jesus. And not just people in Jerusalem, but (in the worlds of Jesus himself), ‘in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and even to the very ends of the earth.” As we have seen the early church, the early church has started off really strong; clearly with the presence of God, with excitement, and enthusiasm and incredible unity. The unity has been one of the things that has stuck out as much as anything so far. And yet, it hasn’t been a completely smooth ride the whole way. We can see we are kind of building toward a climax. There has been persecution, external to the church, where the religious leaders have been coming after the apostles, because of their jealously (we read last week). They have already stood trial once and were warned, they stood trial again and were flogged viciously. Interspersed with that, we’ve got these accounts of threats that have arisen from within the church. We saw hypocrisy threaten to break out as well as division and yet each of those was headed off at the pass. Tonight, all of this is going to come to a head.
One thing that has also been interesting; Jesus hasn’t really delivered on his promise that they are going to expand geographically to Judea and Samaria and even to the ends of the earth. In fact, we hear about them meeting from house to house, but we have barely left the temple up to this point. Between the public preaching, the miracles, and the trials (which all would have taken place right there on the temple mount), we have stuck pretty close to home base. It almost seems like there is a reluctance (or something like that) to venture out from the place that they have always been. We’re not going to have to worry about that anymore after tonight. Tonight, all of this comes to a head. We see yet another trial, and as a result of this trial the opposition to the early Christian church is finally able to come together and work together to oppose it. As a result of what happens here the Christians leave Jerusalem, not because they decided to but because they kind of had to, running for their lives. We are going to see that this story tonight centers not around one of the apostles, but actually on a guy named Stephen, who we met last week. Let’s start reading.
Now Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people.
Remember, he was one of the seven that read about earlier in this chapter who was selected because of this conflict that was brewing between the Hellenistic (Greek) widows within the church and the more Hebraic (Jewish) widows. The Greeks thought their widows were getting overlooked and so Stephen was one of the seven guys that was selected to oversee this program. It says that he was a man full of grace and power, doing great wonders and miraculous signs. This guy wasn’t just a pizza delivery guy, shuffling food around to different widows, this guy was a brilliant orator, a brilliant speaker. It says,
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.
What was this Synagogue of the Freedmen? When Pompey conquered Jerusalem back in 63 BC he took a bunch of prisoners of war with him back to Rome. These Jews were sold as slaves and were eventually given their freedom by various means. After that, in whatever city they were in at the time, they formed one of these synagogues and they were called the Freedmen. IF they got a chance, they would try and work their way back into Jerusalem. When they moved back here, hey still feltlike they wanted to worship separately or have their own synagogue on the side. They were composed of Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria as well as the provinces of Cilicia and Asia. They were really from all over the Roman Empire. Cyrene and Alexandria would have been northern Africa. Cilicia and Asia would have been modern day Turkey. The one significant place that we should notice is Cilicia because its chief city was a city by the name of Tarsus. If you have read your New Testament you know that there is a pretty significant figure, a guy named Saul, who was born in Tarsus. He apparently ran in this same circle with these guys, he may have even been a member of the synagogue. Tonight, we are going to meet this Saul guy, who eventually is going to go on to change his name to Paul and play a very significant role as the book of Acts unfolds.
These men began to argue with Stephen, but they could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke.
So empowered by God, full of wisdom. Nobody could take this guy down no matter how hard they tried, which is especially impressive when you consider the fact that the apostle Paul was probably one of the guys arguing against him, and not even the apostle Paul was a match for Stephen. A lot people think that Stephen may have been a part of this synagogue before he become a Christian and then after his conversion, he continued to dialogue with these men about what he has been learning about the true meaning of the Old Testament scriptures. They couldn’t take him down so when you are stuck you hires some goons to get them arrested.
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.
Again, we are standing in front of the court of the 70 most influential men in the nation of Israel. It was a big semi-circle right around the guy on trial, so it was a pretty intimidating setting.
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.”
The themes here are, he is speaking against the holy place, he will destroy this place (meaning them temple) and that he is also changing the law. So the accusations centered around these two ideas.
All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.
I am not sure what that means. Was his face glowing like at Pentecost when they were preaching there? Was it just a case where it was so obvious, even the people that were sitting there, even if they didn’t like it, they knew deep down that it is obvious that this guy has been with God and that this guy is a messenger of God that has something here to say to us. This is one of those eyewitness details, ‘I can’t explain it but as we were sitting there it was like I was looking at an angel.’
Then the high priest asked him, “Are these charges true?”
Stephen’s Defense: The Temple and the Law
The stage is set for the longest speech in the book of Acts. The reason why this is the longest speech, I think, is because Luke that this was super important. This is a pivotal event in the growth and the progress of the church. Like I said, up to this point it has been very Jerusalem and Temple-centric. And after this point the Temple and Jerusalem are kind of in the rear-view mirror and occasionally, they go back to check in but for the most part it is not revolving around the center anymore, it is moving out.
So, are these charges true? If you have ever read Stephen’s defense, it’s kind of confusing and you may find yourself asking, ‘what is he talking about?’ At times it seems like he is bringing up irrelevant details, it is hard to see how it all fits together, and it seems to be just a recounting of the history of Israel. It almost sounds like he is stalling at points, like he is just filibustering to try and think of something to actually defend himself. It’s not even clear at first how he is even answering the charges that are pressed against him. If you’ve read this and you’ve felt confused, I want you to know that you are in good company because over the years a lot of scholars have found themselves in the same boat. For example, Howard Marshall, here is what he has to say about it,
In form it is a lengthy recital of Old Testament history, discussing in detail what appear to be insignificant points and culminating in a bitter attack on the speaker’s hearers. What is the speaker trying to do? …it is not clear what the theological point of the details is.
Howard Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles, (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1980), p.131
Here is this other guy, Dibelius.
The irrelevance of this speech has for long been the real problem of exegesis… The major part of the speech shows no purpose whatever… The most striking feature of this speech is the irrelevance of its main section
Dibelius in Studies in Acts, pp. 167,168 cited by Richard N. Longnecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Gabelein, Frank, E., Editor (Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids MI. 1978), pp.337,338
These are what the professional interpreters are saying about this passage. Obviously, I think they’re wrong. A lot of work has been done on this in more recent years. I want to share some of the things I have learned and some of the conclusions that I have come to and hopefully we’ll be able to make some sense of this.
What is he talking about? In order to understand what he is saying it will help to understand the charges that he is responding to. They were saying some things about him and it does say they were false witnesses. We don’t actually have any of Stephens teaching up until this point, but I think we can reconstruct what he was saying based on the teachings of Christ and what his opponents were saying about him. Even though they were false witnesses, I don’t think they were false in the sense they were totally making it up, it was more of an exaggeration and misrepresentation. That was what they did at Christ’s trial. No attempt was made to understand him comments.
First of all, they bring up the issue of Holy Places. ‘You keep speaking against the Holy Place.’ Specifically, the Jews were very proud of the fact that they had the Holy Land, they had the holy city of Jerusalem, and they had the holiest place, the temple. This is way they thought about it; if you’re in Israel you were getting close to God, and if you were in Jerusalem you were closer to God, and if you were in the temple, that is about as close to God as you can get here on earth. Even the guys in the Synagogue of the Freedmen, this is probably why they moved to Jerusalem, why would you want to go anywhere else when the temple is where God is? They were very proud of this. Apparently, something Stephen was saying was threatening this system that they had in place. They felt like he was menacing their whole system of sacred space. He was probably just teaching the same kind of things that Jesus was teaching during his ministry. There is an interaction in John 4 when he is talking to the Samaritan woman. Now the Samaritans were not well liked by the Jews at all. He is talking to her and she says, ‘Okay, where are we supposed to worship? Our ancestors say we worship on this mountain, while your ancestors say we should worship in Jerusalem, which mountain is it going to be?’ Jesus says, does it really matter which mountain we are worshiping on? He says,
But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. For God is Spirit… (John 4:23-24).
Think about it. If God is an overgrown human, a large and lumbering oaf, then it does matter where you are at because you’re either closer to God or farther from Him. But if God is spirit, why does it matter what mountain I am standing on when I am talking to him? Can he hear me better in one place vs the other place? It’s like drawing a circle and saying that God is inside the circle but not outside the circle. That’s totally ridiculous. And so, Jesus is saying that he was in a transition phase where the concept of sacred space is going to be eliminated, wiped clear. Ultimately what Jesus taught about himself was that he is the true temple. He calls himself that. He confused his hearers by saying that. Jesus is the place where you meet God. It is not a city, it is not a mosque, it is not a temple that you go to, it is not any kind of holy place. Jesus Christ, “I am the way the truth and the life.” That is where you meet God for real. And what he says, if you come to him to receive forgiveness then you too can become a temple. You too can become the dwelling place of God. God will send his spirit to dwell inside of you. Ultimately Jesus is the fulfillment of the temple, he is not dissing the temple. He is saying that the temple pointed to something much greater. ‘Something greater than the temple is here,’ he says in the gospels, ‘and you don’t even see it.’ This concept of holy space; ultimately, what Jesus taught, what the apostles taught, and probably what Stephen taught, is that the temple is no longer necessary. The temple was just a picture pointing to Christ.
The other things that they accused him of is speaking badly about Moses, talking down about the Law of Moses, saying he was going to alter or completely change the customs that Moses had handed down to him. And again, the Jews were very proud of the fact that they were the caretakers of the Law. God had given it to Moses who had passed it down to them and they were responsible for studying it, for knowing it, for protecting it, for enforcing it. They felt like their role with the Law meant that they were holy, ‘God must be really happy with us since we have been given us this role, we know this better than anybody else.’ Apparently, something Stephen was saying was threatening their whole view of the Law. This would have included not just the moral requirements of God but also things like the covenant of circumcision, which was very important. It also would have included all of the sacrifices, all the things that you are supposed to do when you fail to keep the Law. All of these things would have been represented here by the concept of the Law of Moses. And Stephen, what he had been saying about Jesus and what he had done on the cross and through the resurrection of Christ, it sounds like he was saying some pretty nasty things about the Law. What he was teaching about the law was probably the same thing that Jesus was teaching about the law. What did Jesus say about the law? If you really want to approach God through the Law,
Therefore, you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)
Now the point of the Law, this was not a way to earn salvation. Nobody has ever earned salvation through the Law. Nobody can be good enough for the law, and if you think you can you are deceived. You have no idea how far short you fall of the perfection of God. If you want to come to God on the basis of how good you are, which was the way these guys were approaching God, you had better hope you are perfect, just like God is perfect. This is after Jesus has said things like, ‘if your eye causes you to sin you should just gouge it out,’ and ‘if you look lustfully at someone you are guilty of adultery,’ and ‘if you have an angry thought, you are guilty of murder.’ He says, ‘who cares if you love the people that love you, you need to love the people that hate you.’ He is raising the bar back up to where it is supposed to be and is saying nobody could ever earn salvation through the Law. Ultimately Christ is the only one who has ever been perfect. Christ is the only one who, in his words, has fulfilled the Law. He didn’t come to set it aside or do away with it, he came to fulfill it. Then, as a result of what he has done, (even though he was perfect he died anyways) he can serve as our substitute. He can take your place and my place, just like those animals that the Law prescribed. That never actually worked, Jesus is the only sacrifice for humans.
And, Stephen points out, nobody has ever succeeded at this. Not even the greatest figures from our history. In fact, not only did they fail to keep the law, they had this annoying habit of turning and rejecting and killing the people that God had sent to give them this very message, to give them the message that they are falling short, that they are not good enough, that they need the mercy of God, not a pat on the back for how good they are. Stephen was saying some of these things about the holy places, about sacred spaces, about holy hroup0d. He was also saying some things about the law. That is what he is responding to here. Let’s look at his defense.
Stephen’s Speech
To this he replied: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham
The very beginning of the Jewish nation, started through a guy named Abraham and it says that ‘the God of glory appeared to him.’ Well, Abraham, when God appeared to him in this way he must have been worshiping at the temple, he must have been a very observant follower of the Law of Moses. Actually no, he wasn’t. He couldn’t have done any of those things because of when and where this happened, as Stephen says,
while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.
He wasn’t even in the holy land! He was hundreds of miles away, in a place where no one even knows where it was anymore! You’re going to notice the geographical markers keep coming up as he makes this point about the holy ground. He was not a circumcised, devout follower of the Law of Moses because Moses wouldn’t even be born for another 600 years. How could he keep the Law when it wasn’t even around for 600 more years? In fact, we read in the book of Joshua that Abraham’s family was a bunch of idol worshipers, not holy, good, “we sought out God.” But God came into this idol worshiper’s life and started talking to him. He said, ‘I’m going to make you into a great nation.’
So, essentially what Stephen is saying is, “Okay now, what you are saying is that we have to be devout, we have to be temple dwelling, circumcised, law abiding followers of God in order for God to accept us, for the glory of God to appear to us. Well if that’s true, then we violated every single one of those commandments in the very first verse of our nation’s existence.’ You can see that this is not going to go over well with the Sanhedrin.
‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’
In a lot of man-made religions, there would be a massive temple, right there on the spot where God appeared to Abraham and people would journey to that from hundreds of miles away to come to this holy ground. God was having none of that. He said, ‘the first thing I want you to do is to go very far away and never come back.’ The holy ground is where God is. He says, ‘I want you to go because I am going this way, you should follow me, and I will tell you when to stop.’
“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.
Finally, he makes it down to the Holy Land when he is in his 80s.
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.
So how much Holy Land did Abraham possess? Zero square feet. He did actually buy a grave site for his wife when she died, so he had somewhere to put the body, but other than that he was a wanderer. Definitely never made it to Jerusalem, definitely never made it to anything remotely resembling a temple, unless you count the temple where he worshipped other gods back in Mesopotamia.
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. 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.’
They are going to move around a lot. It is going to take a long time before they ever settle down into this land God promised them.
Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth.
Long before anyone ever got circumcised, Abraham was a follower of God. That is what God really cares about, he really doesn’t care about Abraham’s foreskin. What he cares about is Abraham’s heart. Is Abraham willing to follow God? Does he have a heart that trusts God? That is why he says in Deuteronomy, “I need to circumcise your hearts/” that’s what’s really important. This is pointing to something different, something deeper. It’s a symbol.
Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.
The founding fathers. The patriarchs, finally! Circumcised, must have been very devout people. Actually, not really. This provides the bridge to the next major character, a guy named Joseph who was one of the patriarchs. From a very early age it was obvious that God was with this guy. God was giving him dreams about how he was going to be a great ruler someday. The patriarchs didn’t like what God had to say about that. In fact, it says,
“Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph,
Isn’t that interesting? God was behind Joseph and yet, the rest of the Israelites didn’t care because they were jealous. They were so blinded by their jealousy that they couldn’t see that this was God’s man, God’s ruler, God’s leader, God’s savior, the one that would deliver the people from a famine, from sure death that was coming just a few decades later. It’s interesting too, Stephen mentions the jealousy to the religious leaders. What was the motive of these very people in this counsel for crucifying Jesus? What was the motive for wanting to kill the disciples and for having them flogged? Scripture tells us that it was their jealousy. I think you can see the implications that Stephen is making. He is going to lay them out more clearly later, but I’m sure some of these guys were already picking up what he was laying down; ‘you’re just like your fathers.’
they sold him as a slave into Egypt.
Stephen names another geographical location, Egypt
But God was with him and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom
He was actually a slave in Egypt for a little while, but through a crazy series of events he is released from jail and is exalted to one of the highest government positions that you can get there.
and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh king of Egypt; so he made him ruler over Egypt and all his palace. Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our fathers could not find food. When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers on their first visit.
Stephen, I think we get the point. EGYPT. That’s where God is now. He is not in the Holy Land, he’s in Egypt. Just in case you missed the first five references, he is going to make thirteen more references to Egypt before the speech is over, just pounding this into their skulls like a great debater would do.
On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph’s family.
So, they went once to get grain, they had to go back to get more grain and this was when they final find out who Joseph was, and boy was that embarrassing. They thought they killed this guy, and yet now they have to come into his throne room and bow down before him and plead for his mercy. The deliverer they rejected; they can’t reject him this time because this time he is the one with the upper hand. Again, can you see how Stephen is preaching Christ without ever saying his name. Rejected the first time as a lowly servant, will return one day and those who rejected him will have to come into his throne room and give an explanation for themselves.
After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, seventy-five in all. Then Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our fathers died.
Why don’t you bring the whole family to Egypt, we’ve got plenty of food and I’ve got a sweet government job with great benefits. They didn’t die in the Holy Land, they died in Egypt.
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.
They died in Egypt, eventually they were brought back, but there was no great temple here. Most holy places in the world are the resting places for holy people or the holiest person and everyone knows where these are. He wasn’t buried at the temple, in fact, people kind of lost track of this for a while. He does mention that the place he was buried is right next to the place where the Samaritans have their temple, and I doubt that went over too well. This is a transition on to the next character that he is going to talk about.
“As the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt greatly increased.
They are still in Egypt, growing into a powerful and mighty nation just like he promised Abraham.
Then another king, who knew nothing about Joseph, became ruler of Egypt. He dealt treacherously with our people and oppressed our forefathers by forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die.
Four hundred years are passing here. The Pharaoh felt threatened by this massive population of foreigners living within his borders. He made them slaves and finally he started killing all the males, so the women had no choice but to marry Egyptians and be assimilated into the culture that way.
“At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. For three months he was cared for in his father’s house. When he was placed outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.
-Stephen says, ‘you want to talk about Moses, let’s talk about Moses.’ They had actually put him out in basket on the river and Pharaoh’s daughter happened to stumble upon him. He was just so cute he couldn’t throw him in the river but adopted him. Moses had the privilege of going to death row as a three-month-old, to being raised in the palace of Pharaoh.
“When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian,
Moses has a choice to make. Is he going to stay in the palace, is he going to grasp onto his royal privileges, (equality with Pharaoh is what he would have had) or is he going to empty himself of his rights as prince of Egypt and instead, become one with his people and go out and protect his people, to do something about the fact that his people are in slavery. Moses decided the latter,
he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian.
Moses gives up his throne and he goes to save his people.
Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not.
The ironic tragedy, his own people couldn’t see that God was sending Moses to deliver them. Instead, they start to turn on him.
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?’ “But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’
Well actually, God made him a ruler and a judge over you. They are attacking him as he is trying to save them. They couldn’t see the delivered.
When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.
There is another place, Midian, middle of nowhere out in the desert. He didn’t even marry a Jew and had two sons who didn’t even get circumcised until they were pretty old.
“After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai.
God visits Moses in the middle of nowhere.
When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to look more closely, he heard the Lord’s voice: ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look. “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals; the place where you are standing is holy ground.
Holy ground outside the Holy Land. And again, the holy place is where God is. In fact, up until now, God hasn’t done a whole heck of a lot in Israel. He seems to be really active everywhere else; he seems to be doing a lot everywhere but Israel, definitely nowhere near Jerusalem and no one has even thought about a temple at this point, and yet God is active. Moses can see that. God says,
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.’
He sends him back to be their deliverer.
“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. 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.
Just like Jesus, just like the apostles, just like Stephen.
“This is that Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will send you a prophet like me from your own people.’
Moses says, ‘I am not the end of God’s revelation.’ He says, ‘one day God will send a prophet like me who will come from your own people, you need to listen to him. Something new is going to come along at some point.’ Remember how Moses said that? We are not just making this up. Let’s think, what has Stephen told us about Moses so far? Well, (1) he has left his royal privileges to rescue God’s people, (2) he brought a new way of relating to God, a new covenant, if you will, (3) the fact that he was affirmed by signs and wonders, leaving no doubt that this was God behind this. And, yet, in spite of all these things, (5) rejected by the people he was sent to deliver. Boy, where have we seen that before? Where have we seen that throughout the history of the nation, especially in the most recent generation of leaders? Stephen is saying, ‘you guys are no better than your ancestors, in fact you are a whole lot worse.’ They killed the people who prophesied about the Messiah, but they killed the Messiah.
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.
Moses went up on Mt Sinai to get some revelation from God.
“But our fathers refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt.
Again, they reject God’s savior, God’s deliverer.
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!’
Moses was gone for a couple of weeks, they saw all this thunder and lightning and shaking on the mountain and they were like, ‘Eh, who knows if he is coming back, let’s make an idol.’
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.
‘This God who is scary, is actually scaring the crap out of us, let’s just make an idol. That’s a lot safer and then we can have a celebration in honor of what our hands have made!’ We will come back to that phrase in a minute.
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? 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.
You guys were just making idols the whole time, it wasn’t me that you were worshipping, it was the work of your hands. That is why God sent them out of the land, another move. And he goes on to talk about the tabernacle and he is finally moving into talking about the temple.
“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.
The tabernacle, this was like a big tent that God used. This was their place of worship. It was portable, kind of like a pop-up camper but a lot bigger. The nice thing about the tabernacle was that at any time they could pack it up, pack up the kinds, and drive somewhere else, find some sewage hookups, and they were good to go. Whose idea was the tabernacle? It was God’s idea. It was God’s idea to make this and this is was they used for about 500 years.
… It remained in the land until the time of David, who… asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.
Stephen says, for a long time the tabernacle was just fine. There was no veneration of it, for a while it was in this guys backyard. People had kind of forgotten about it, but it still seems like people worshipped there. Eventually King David came along and said, ‘I want to build you a temple.’ And so finally, after all of this that has happened, after all of this great works of God and all the great forefathers of the nation, finally someone is like, ‘how about a temple,’ this thing the leaders of the day thought they couldn’t do without. But notice the difference here. Notice whose idea it was to build a temple. This was not something God came up with, this is something that David thought of. At the time God was like, ‘I kind of like my tent.’ And yet, Solomon was the one that went on to build the temple and God’s presence was manifested there just like at the tabernacle. He worked with it. Yet, you see a subtle critique of the permanent, immovable, beautiful temple when compared with the ‘easy to pack up and move on the to next place’ tabernacle. He goes on and says,
However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands;
He is quoting Solomon at the dedication of the temple. That phrase is pretty significant. Let’s do a little review here of all the things that Stephen names as ‘made by human hands.’ (1) the golden calf, (2) the shrine of Molech and the star of your god Rephan and, (3) the temple. What is he saying here? According to their perspective, the temple was one big idol. They were bowing down and worshiping the temple instead of God. They were drawing their security from it. They couldn’t even hear what God was saying because they were so busy trying to hear what their temple was saying, a completely distorted perspective of what God intended this to be. God intended this to be a picture of (1) that God is different from you and you can’t just waltz into his presence, and, (2) that a sacrifice needs to take place to cleanse you. A penalty has to be paid for this sin. They did animals in the meantime until they could come up with something better. He really seems to be saying that the temple is an idol for these people. Here is what one commentator says,
The point of all three of these verses is not that God’s presence can’t be found in the temple… but that God’s presence can’t be confined there, nor can God be controlled or manipulated by the building of a temple and by the rituals of the temple cultus or the power moves of the temple hierarchy. What is being opposed is a God-in-the-box theology that has magical overtones, suggesting that if God can be located and confined, God can be magically manipulated and used to human ends. Such an approach is idolatry – the attempt to fashion or control God with human hands and according to human devices.”
Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles, 273
This was power, this was money. They were making a fortune off of the temple. This was their security base, and that was idolatry. They were trying to put God in a cage, they were capturing him and pedaling him away to the highest bidder.
As the prophet says: “Heaven is My throne, And earth is the footstool of My feet; What kind of house will you build for Me?” says the Lord; “Or what place is there for My repose? Was it not My hand which made all these things?”
God says, ‘You’re going to build me a house? What are you talking about? Heaven is my throne and earth is where I put my feet, you’re going to make me something with your hands? I’m the one who made everything by my hand. Don’t try and put me in a box, lock me up in a cage somewhere, telling me where I can and cannot go and who can come in and worship me.’ He says, ‘You can’t contain me anywhere.’ The prophet Isaiah says this in critique of the very same attitude in his day. Stephen finally brings it home. Some sermons end with a nice quote or a pithy statement like a Hallmark card. He just decides to give them everything he’s got.
“You stubborn people! You are heathen at heart and deaf to the truth. Must you forever resist the Holy Spirit? That’s what your ancestors did, and so do you! Name one prophet your ancestors didn’t persecute! They even killed the ones who predicted the coming of the Righteous One—the Messiah whom you betrayed and murdered. You deliberately disobeyed God’s law, even though you received it from the hands of angels.”
He says, ‘You’re no different. You’re just like every other leader of the people of God who didn’t like what God was saying through his prophet so they killed him. You act like the Law is awesome, but you deliberately disobey it all the time even though you received it from the hands of angel.’ Stephen sits back down; he is done with his defense.
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick,
Cut to the heart. If you remember back on the day of Pentecost, Peter brought some pretty strong words. Those hearers were pierced to the heart and the response was, ‘you’re right, we killed Christ, we need forgiveness. What must we do to be saved?’ The response from the leaders here is quite a bit different. It says,
and they began gnashing their teeth at him.
They were angry. When you’re so mad you are trying to control yourself and you are just grinding the enamel off of your teeth. They are furious, the whole time their anger was building and then at the end he says that in front of everyone, ‘can you believe he said that?’
But Stephen,[who is not angry] full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
Usually Jesus is seated at the right hand of God, but here he is standing I wonder if it was because he is getting ready to welcome Stephen. Just like Jesus said at his trial, ‘there will come a day when you will see the son of man standing at the right hand of God, coming on the clouds of heaven.’
At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.
Can you imagine this scene here? Imagine the senate holding a hearing, getting so angry that they cover their ears and begin running and screaming at the person they are interviewing, dragging him out of the city and then killing him. They have switched over into lynch mob mode here. With stoning, there were different ways of doing this, but one of the ways the rabbis talk about, they would find a ledge that was taller than the height of two men and the first witnesses would push the guy off. If that didn’t kill him the witnesses would drop heavy stone on him. If that didn’t kill him, the others would start hurling stone at him, bludgeoning him, tearing flesh until the person was knocked out and sustained enough injuries that they were dead. They take Stephen out and they began doing this to him.
Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.
Killing people is sweaty, you get fluids on your sometimes. Some of these guys took of their coats, and Saul who would later become Paul, was standing there, holding the coats and watching as Stephen is destroyed viciously.
While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”[Just like Jesus said on the cross] Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” [Again, just like Christ said on the cross]. When he had said this, he fell asleep.
Which was a nice way of saying that he died by being bludgeoned by stones. Yet another prophet, yet another mangled prophet’s corpse lies at the feet of the leaders of the so-called people of God.
And Saul was there, giving approval to his death.
Witnessing the whole thing and applauding, thinking, ‘man we need to see a little bit more of that around here.’
That’s an intense story. Stephen became the first martyr. The first person after Jesus to shed blood for this new way. It’s too bad, because Stephen would have been a pretty good candidate to take the gospel out into the surrounding countryside, and maybe even take it to the non-Jewish people. He seemed to have a good understanding of God being able to move around, he seemed to be able to understand and articulate things. Even the apostles didn’t seem to have this level of understanding at this point. God is going to need to find a replacement for Stephen. It is a little bit ironic, that Saul, who was standing there cheering on the death of Stephen is drafted by God to play the role that maybe Stephen could have played, taking the gospel to the Gentiles. You see these themes coming up again and again in Paul’s writing later in his life.
Conclusions
Stephen became the first martyr. The church lost a great man and yet God replaced him.
God has clearly set down the truth about sacred space, that there is no more sacred space, there are no more holy places. The temple is Christ, the temple is each individual believer, and the temple is when all the believers come together. We need to worship God in Spirit and in truth. Don’t feel like you have to go here or there to talk to God. Don’t feel like praying here is less holy than praying there. God wants an actual relationship with you.
And ultimately, God wants to be Lord of your whole life. He doesn’t want you to have a double life; here is my time where I follow God and the rest of the time, I can live for me. God is there, God is everywhere. God sees the secret sin; God sees everything that you are doing, and he wants you to bring your life fully under his grace and into the relationship with him that you were designed to live.
And, finally, we need to agree with the Law’s verdict. We can’t do a revisionist history that says that I was pretty good, I sought out God, and I didn’t really need grace that much; no way. You desperately need the grace of God. You don’t want to be like the Jewish people and many Christians ever since then, who forget about where they were when God came and found them. They start to think that God’s blessings are something the deserve, and they don’t really feel like going out and showing the love of God with other people.
Jesus fulfilled all the requirements of the law. Everything the law demanded Christ fulfilled and he has not paved the way, he has cleared things away so that now you can come to God through Jesus Christ. He says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me.” And he says that you, “have been saved by faith through grace, not by works. It is the gift of God so that no one can boast.” That is the offer that God is making to you tonight, to become a temple, and to become a part of the temple of God.