A Sermon to Die For

And so Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. And Isaac became the father of Jacob and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs. Let's turn to verse 44, and we'll continue from there. Our fathers had the tent of witness in the wilderness just as He who spoke to Moses directed him to make it according to the pattern he had seen. Our fathers in turn brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before the fathers.

And so it was until the days of David who found favour in the sight of God and asked to find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. But it was Solomon who built a house for Him. Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands as the prophet says. Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of a house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest?

Did not my hand make all these things? You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in hearts and ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?

And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered. You who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it. Now when they heard these things, they were enraged and they ground their teeth at him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And then falling to his knees, he cried with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them.

And when he had said this, he fell asleep. This is the word of the Lord. If I can encourage you, congregation, to leave your Bible or if you're following it this morning with your app on your phone, please leave it open before you. And there's a reason for that. Those of you who were here last time I was here may remember, if your memory is good, that last time we dealt with Acts chapter six, and we covered that in some detail, but there's only 15 verses in Acts six, and there's 60 in this chapter that we're dealing with this morning.

That's why I suggested last time that you bring a packed lunch. I didn't notice that anyone did that, but we did have mercy on you, not reading the whole of the chapter. Your homework is to read the rest of it sometime during the day, if that's possible, that would be great to fill some of the gaps. But we're going to try to get a good overview of this passage this morning. You'll notice if you've got an outline or if you've read the bulletin, that I've entitled the message this morning, A Sermon to Die For.

And brothers and sisters in Christ, I've done that for a reason, because sermons can actually kill congregations, but sermons can also kill preachers. When I was a lad back in 1951, we arrived in Australia and we attended a Presbyterian church in a small country town in Central Victoria called Bonnie Doon, and our minister was a lively Welsh preacher who faithfully preached the Bible, thumped it on a Sunday and said, thus says the Lord. The church was well attended and on special occasions, harvest thanksgiving services, baptism, communion service, it was even quite crowded. But our minister left very soon after we came there, and another preacher came.

And as a six year old, I have two important memories. First of all, I have a vague memory of my father always arguing with the preacher after church. I knew something wasn't kosher. I wasn't aware what it was at the time, but later on I found he didn't believe in the virgin birth. He didn't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, he didn't believe in miracles, he didn't believe in the substitutionary atonement.

I guess my father was saying to him, what are you doing in the pulpit? I have a second impression that's probably even more vivid as a six year old, and that is that overnight that little country church emptied. The day came where our family and the preacher and the organist and an elderly bachelor in town were the only ones in church. The sermons of that man killed that congregation. There have also been sermons, congregation, that have killed the preacher, and that's happened often throughout history.

Men were actually martyred for preaching Christ, and the list is very long. It's all the way back to the early church to a man called Polycarp, who preached the gospel of Jesus Christ, forgiveness of sins through His doing and dying and victory. They arrested him and told him he needed to deny Christ, which he refused. They burned him at the stake. Others followed, John Huss.

It's prior to the Reformation. And it still happens in so many countries today, congregation, where Christians are persecuted. I mean, would you dare to go onto the streets of North Korean cities, North Korea, and bring the gospel there? It'd be fatal for you to do that. But you know, even in The United States, there have been several church shootings.

A pastor by the name of Reverend Fred Winters was preaching in his Baptist church in Illinois, and a man walked up to the pulpit and fired three shots into him at point blank range. A little later in Florida, a street preacher was shot by a youth to whom he was preaching the gospel. So sometimes sermons, congregation, have been the death of a congregation, and very often, they've been the death of the preacher. A casual reading of this chapter of Stephen's sermon, you might come to that conclusion when you get home almost. You might be tempted to say, well, this is a sermon that could kill a congregation because at first glance, it's just a plain old retelling of some Old Testament history.

And it doesn't seem like, congregation, a powerful and effective sermon. It doesn't come across that way to us today at first, but it is. And in the end, we see that it was a sermon that cost Stephen his life. Stephen begins his sermon by talking about Abraham. Notice at the very beginning of it, he says, the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham.

Why does Stephen start off his sermon with the story of Abraham? Well, some people have suggested that Judaism begins with Abraham, so why not? Others have said, well, Abraham was a man of great faith, so again, why not? Both of those things are certainly true, but I don't believe that's the reason why Stephen started there. In fact, if you look carefully, his opening words of his sermon are not even about Abraham.

They're about God. That's where Stephen's putting the emphasis. God revealed Himself as the God of glory to Abraham. And so right at the outset, Stephen is saying the faith that I hold to is a faith that is based on God's self-revelation. Our religion is not something that we've made up that His followers have concocted.

Ours is a revealed religion based on God making Himself known already way back to Abraham. My brothers and sisters, that is an important starting point for Stephen, and it's an important starting point for us. I recall a friend of mine once was debating with someone at work about his religion. I was there many years ago when I was working in an office, and this fellow, Siddharth, my friend, he said, so what's the difference between us? You've made up your religion, and I've made up mine.

That's nonsense. We Christians didn't make anything up. Our faith is based on what God has done in history and the fact that this God whom we worship has revealed Himself, and He's revealed Himself as the God of glory. At this point, congregation, we need to keep in mind what's going on here, the context, that previous chapter that we dealt with last time where Stephen is standing before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council, to answer some serious charges. He's been accused of blaspheming God and blaspheming Moses.

He's charged with treating the temple with contempt, overthrowing the customs of Moses. And so the chapter begins. Notice the opening words. The high priest asking Stephen, are these charges true? And so this sermon this morning that we're looking at is Stephen's answer to that question.

And what a telling answer it is. Doesn't that make the charges leveled against him of blaspheming God totally absurd? For Stephen, God made Himself known to Abraham as the God of glory. So what could possibly be blasphemous about that? That's wonderful.

That's glorious. It's actually a balance, a good balance presented here by Stephen. This God is the God of glory, but doesn't the glory of God make God unapproachable? Hey, didn't we see that in Isaiah six? Isaiah saw God in His glory in that temple vision.

And over and over and over again in the Old Testament, when people are confronted by the glory of God, it overwhelms people. It freaks them out. It's a quality of God that makes Him transcendent, as we say, far above us, far beyond us, unreachable. And yet at the same time, this glorious God comes to Abraham and makes His will known to Abraham. Says to him, in the words of Stephen, go and leave your country and your people, go to the land that I will show you.

In other words, friends, this God of glory is also intimately involved with His people. He's not some distant out there God way out in the remote areas of the universe. In fact, this God of glory actually enters into a partnership with Abraham. God made what we call a covenant with him. God wanted Abraham to go through life in partnership with the Almighty Creator of the universe.

Now this idea of God being a God of glory helps us also to put something else into perspective. Stephen is charged with teaching that Jesus said He would destroy the temple. Well, if God's such a glorious God, how can He ever be contained within the walls of the temple? You cannot limit this God of glory to some earthly sanctuary, and Stephen mentions that later on in the bit we didn't read where he talks about Solomon dedicating the temple. And these are truths, friend, that ought to encourage us today.

First, that our faith is not something we've made up. It's revealed religion. God revealed it. And at the heart of it, there is this God of glory, this glorious God who wants to enter into partnership with us. Maybe you're wondering this morning whether I'm just reading all of this into Stephen's sermon, and I want to say absolutely not.

Because Stephen comes to this from yet another angle. He goes on to talk about Joseph, and again, it's in the bit we didn't read, and the way that God dealt with young Joseph. You know the story. And then we see something of God's glory in the amazing way in which God guided Joseph's life. Isn't it awesome to think how God overruled all things so that Joseph ends up in Egypt exactly where God wanted him.

We see it even more clearly as Stephen goes on to talk about Moses again in the bit that we skipped. Again, we've got a case of Moses, in Moses, God revealing Himself. Moses doesn't sort of sit on a mountain like some hermit and work things out for himself. No. God already began the process of revealing Himself to Moses at the burning bush and then especially on Mount Sinai.

And, okay, the phrase the God of glory is not mentioned in connection with Moses as it was with Abraham, but there is the mention of the burning bush, and it's on fire, and it doesn't, what's that if it isn't the glory of God? And think of Moses coming down from the mountain. Now his face was radiant with the glory of God. It's a picture of God revealing Himself to this man who was appointed to be God's leader of Israel. And if Stephen, the deacon here in this chapter, honours Moses in this way, how can he be guilty of blaspheming Moses?

All this revelation of God's glory, of course, climaxes for us, friends, in the coming of Jesus. And He's the one who in verse 37 of this chapter, if you get your Bible open, have a quick look at it, the one who was predicted to be a prophet like Moses. And while Stephen doesn't spell it out, we know that Jesus reflected the Father's glory, John chapter one. And so we've got this very encouraging picture to help us in our Christian life today. You don't have to be defensive about being a Christian.

I don't have to be defensive about it. It's not a human invention. We didn't make it up. The faith we have in a glorious God is because He's revealed Himself that way in history through to Abraham, to Moses, to Joseph, and especially in our Lord Jesus Christ. Go into the week with that confidence.

There's a second major theme, friends, that runs through this sermon of Stephen, and that is that revealed religion has always been resisted. And I think that's helpful for us to remember because in a sense, resistance to your faith is very common for you, isn't it? I'm sure you've experienced it. Maybe your boss in the office doesn't like it that you're a Christian, you go to church. Maybe you've got a neighbour who gives you a hard time because you've sometimes spoken about your faith.

Well, Stephen's sermon this morning reminds us that resistance to revealed religion didn't begin yesterday. And when you're opposed for your faith, you're actually in very good company. Let me show you some ways in which Stephen portrays this resistance. The first one's not all that clear, but I believe it's there in the text. You need to read a little bit in between the lines, and that is that Abraham was resisted.

He never did make it to the promised land until after his father died, and Stephen especially mentions that. It seems there was some resistance within Abraham's own family, and Abraham only found it appropriate, God had to give him another reminder by the way, to go after the death of his dad. And so resistance already begins with the patriarchs. By the time we get to Joseph, that resistance is very pronounced. And Stephen spells it out in this story, by the way, Joseph is a kind of a Christ figure. Stephen tells us in verse nine that the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph.

And so Joseph, who is the Christ figure in the story, was resisted by his own eleven brothers. And doesn't that foreshadow for us, congregation, the resistance that Jesus Himself suffered? You see why I said that your faith, if your faith is resisted, you're in good company. Hey, the Psalms often speak of that kind of resistance to faith David experienced. It also speaks of Jesus the cornerstone whom the builders rejected.

So the Messiah of our faith is the resisted and rejected Messiah. And that means you and I should never be surprised when our faith is resisted and rejected as well. I think that theme of resistance comes out clearly in the life of Moses, and please remember Moses too is a kind of a Christ figure. And look at verses 23 through to 29. Verses 23 to 29, we see that resistance.

Stephen relates the story of Moses visiting his people for the first time. And when he sees an Egyptian beating up a Hebrew, Moses kills the Egyptian, and then he tries as a self-appointed saviour to rescue one of the Hebrew people. He tries to separate two fighting Hebrews. And one of the men says, do you want to kill me the way you killed that Egyptian yesterday? See, the resistance is there. Resistance to revealed religion of the God of glory becomes ever so much clearer in the wilderness. Verse 41, Stephen tells us, Israel made themselves a golden calf.

What's that if it isn't resistance? Because the true faith in which the God of glory reveals Himself is always resisted. It's our natural sinful instinct to reject the God of glory. It's confirmed in a scathing way by a quote that Stephen makes a little later, verses 42 to 43, from the prophet Amos, where he spoke about Israel's history as a history of stubborn resistance to the Lord and a history of idolatry. They constantly fell back into it over and over ad nauseam.

They even worshipped the god Moloch, requiring child sacrifices. And for that stubborn resistance to the God of glory, the Lord threatens them through Amos with exile. You see, congregation, how Stephen very cleverly lays these two things side by side for our encouragement also this morning. On the one hand, God constantly reveals Himself in the Bible as the God of glory. On the other hand, man constantly resists embracing this revealed religion of a glorious God.

Please, please don't ever be surprised by resistance to the gospel. If your faith is resisted in the office, it lies within the very nature of our faith to meet that kind of resistance. If people in the factory take you to task for it, the Bible warns us over and over. Stephen even draws a line from the Old Testament into the New Testament, and he shows us the continuity of that resistance even in his present hearers in the Sanhedrin, and that's where Stephen becomes quite passionate. He said, you have betrayed and murdered the Righteous One.

And that really brings home to us that the only true Messiah is a rejected Messiah. It's something that present day Zionism, Judaism has never understood. They're still looking for the coming of Messiah, but a Messiah who will be popular, a popular leader of the people, and no, He was despised and rejected. You see, friends, the reality is that you and I have an enemy who hates the Messiah Christ and hates Him with a passion. In fact, he is passionately anti this revealed religion of the God of glory.

And he hates the gospel so much that today he still has his followers opposing the followers of Jesus. Sometimes I must confess that I am surprised at the passionate resistance to revealed religion. I find it very interesting, congregation. I don't know whether you've ever thought about it. Every time I hear a very vocal atheist who tells us that God does not exist, I wonder why.

I mean, I don't believe in Santa Claus, but I'm not starting an anti Santa Claus crusade. I'm not going to waste my energy or my breath arguing why Santa couldn't possibly tow a reindeer powered sled around the world in twenty four hours. And I think most of you would agree with me. We just don't bother with that. But friends, atheists spent thousands of dollars some years ago in The UK on very expensive bus advertising on why there is no God and books like The God Delusion being snapped up by the dozens.

Now this morning, it's as if Stephen is saying to us, don't let that surprise you. History is showing over and again that revealed religion has always gone hand in hand with strong resistance. I want to highlight one other key theme in Stephen's message this morning. In this sermon, we see that Stephen actually has a particular way of reading the Bible, and it's another important lesson we can draw from this chapter this morning. You see, you can read the Bible in all kinds of ways.

You can read it as a handbook of morality, and that's what our preacher back in Bonnie Doon did when he killed the church. He saw it only as a book about morals. If you want, you can read the Bible as a book of ancient history. You can even read the Bible just as good literature to inspire you. But Stephen reads it as the story of God's saving activity.

Or to put it another way, the Bible for him is the story of redemption. It tells us that the God of glory who's revealed Himself is the God who saves His people, and that work of salvation especially shows the glory of our great and wonderful God. I remember as a teenager attending a youth camp once where the speaker demonstrated this very clearly, this theme in the Bible. He had a copy of the Bible, and he punched a hole in the centre of each page. Now please don't think that he abused a Bible, because his Bible had a central margin where you had cross references and he punctured the holes in the central thing, so no text was destroyed.

He said, rest assured that was okay. But he had strung a scarlet thread through the holes in the middle, connecting all the pages. So he showed us as teenagers at this youth camp that wherever he opened the Bible, there was this scarlet thread. And the point he was making is that God's redemptive work goes all the way from Genesis right through to Revelation. It as it were connects all the pages of the Bible together.

There's a unity to biblical history. It's all about God's saving deeds and ultimately in Jesus Christ. And that you see that scarlet thread is also central in Stephen's sermon, salvation, the great unifying thread that runs right through from Adam and Eve, through to Abraham and Joseph and Moses, right through to Christ and beyond, and you and I need to have an eye for that whenever we read our Bibles. Let me share with you some of the ways this comes out in Stephen's sermon. Again, it will help us to understand why Stephen began with Abraham, because through the life of Abraham, God was making preparations, zeroing in very much on a focus, getting things ready for our deliverance.

He was getting ready a people from which Messiah would be born. We see then that all of God's promises to Abraham were fully realised only in Jesus. For example, think of the words God spoke to Abraham in Genesis 12, through you all nations will be blessed. That happened as Abraham's offspring, Jesus, brought salvation to all nations, not just Jews. We could even see that scarlet thread, that line of deliverance in some of the events in Abraham's life.

I'm thinking of times when God rescued him. I'm thinking of him offering his only son Isaac, or at least asked to do that, and last minute God stopped him. But that was a picture of the Father God, the God of glory, offering His own Son to save us all, when there was no voice saying stop, Jesus went all the way to death. We could go on noticing the common thread of salvation in the life of Joseph. Joseph's brothers in a fit of jealousy sell him as a slave into Egypt, and Mrs Potiphar's futile effort to seduce the young man lands him in prison.

But in all of that, God has deliverance in mind. The God of glory overruled, so that Joseph was used by God to preserve alive God's people. Joseph was the deliverer of his brothers, all to keep alive the family out of which Jesus would one day be born. You see, when you and I read our Bibles, we need to see the same big picture. The Bible's always the story of God's saving work, the God of glory's work of deliverance.

Let me just mention very quickly two other ways in which this comes out in this chapter. The idea of the Bible as salvation history can especially be seen in the life of Moses, so that the Exodus story becomes the great foreshadowing of what God will do through Jesus. God raises up this rejected deliverer to rescue His people out of slavery, so that much of the imagery, the Passover and the sea crossing, it's all fulfilled by Jesus. And so the Bible that you hold in your hands this morning is a wonderful book. It tells us the origins of your faith.

They lie in a God who reveals Himself. At the same time, that book is frightfully realistic about the fact that the true religion of the Bible is always resisted, but above all, it shows us God's immense love, His passion for saving lost people like us. The wonderful thing, congregation, is that that salvation is personalised at the end of this chapter in Stephen's own life, isn't it? We see that so very, very clearly. When all the rage of the Sanhedrin is levelled against Stephen, they rush out with blocked ears to stone him to death.

But you know, when Stephen dies, he dies as someone who knows personally the salvation of the Lord. Look at the way in which he's welcomed into heaven by Jesus, as he dies a martyr. Once more is there that wonderful theme of the glory of God. Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up into heaven and saw the glory of God. Look, he said, I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

You see, in each case, the lines continue from Abraham right through Stephen, and to us sitting here in church in Nerang this morning. The God of glory who revealed Himself to Abraham is the glory that you and I see in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ. The resistance that was there in the Old Testament was there in the Sanhedrin, and you and I know of it, we experience it. But in their rage, it led to the stoning of Stephen, and God's salvation is seen once again in a wonderful way as Jesus personally welcomes home His faithful servant. And I believe this morning, brothers and sisters, Jesus will do that for every one of us who embraces the faith of our glorious God.

It means this morning that you need to make sure that you too have embraced that faith as yours, that you trust in Jesus as your Saviour and your Lord. Because then when the time comes, and it will come, Jesus will welcome you home as He did Stephen. Let me lead us in prayer. Father, as we consider this sermon of Stephen's, we've been reminded again this morning that we have a wonderful God, a glorious God, and it's a delight to serve. And we thank You that we can do that through the saving work of Jesus.

We celebrated again this morning, His doing, His dying and His victory, and we're going to do that in a moment in the Lord's Supper. And what a confidence that gives us, Lord, as we go into this new week to live to Your glory and praise. Please fill us with Your Spirit, that we, like Stephen, may keep our glorious God central in all we do and say. And we pray that in Jesus' precious name. Amen.