Three Who Saw God — Carl Armerding

Stephen’s Testimony in Acts 6–7

Let us turn again to the book of the Acts tonight, chapter 6. Acts chapter 6. I cannot refrain from saying how delighted I am to see so many people out on a wet night. This, I think, indicates an interest in the Word of God which is most encouraging to one whose ministry is just along that line, and that's all.

We have, as you know, been pursuing a little simple series of studies here in the book of the Acts, in looking at various ways in which our blessed Lord is presented in the chapters. Tonight I want to take just a little different line of things.

I want to talk about three men that saw God. In order to lead up to the subject, I want to read a few verses in chapter 6 of Acts, beginning at verse 8 and then continuing on into chapter 7. And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people.

Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines, and the Cyrenians, and the Alexandrians, and them of Cilicia and of Asia, disputing with Stephen. They were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake.

Then they suborned men which said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God. They stirred up the people, and the elders and the scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him to the council, that is, the Sanhedrin.

That was the highest Jewish court, an ecclesiastical court, of course. And they set up false witnesses which said, This man seetheth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law.

For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us. And all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.

Then said the high priest, Are these things so? And he said, Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken. The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charon, and said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee.

Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Charon. And from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land wherein ye now dwell. And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on.

Yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child. And God spake on this wise, that his seed should sojourn in a strange land, that they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil four hundred years.

And the nation to whom they shall be in bondage will I judge, said God. And after that, they shall come forth and serve me in this place. The text which I have particularly before me for the first part here is this second verse, The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charon.

Abraham’s Vision of the God of Glory

According to the last chapter of the book of Joshua, the Israelites' ancestors were all idolaters. Joshua, you remember, when he told them that if it was evil for them to serve the Lord, they could either serve the gods whom their fathers served on the other side of the flood, that's the Euphrates River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land they dwelt.

But as for him, says he, as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord. But here's a text which shows that they had an idolatrous background, and it's remarkable that God does not choose an outstanding ecclesiastic to deal with this subject.

As we look in this sixth chapter of the book of Exodus, of Acts rather, this sixth chapter of the book of the Acts, we have here what I think of the first Christian businessmen's committee. The apostles, you remember, said it was not right for them to leave the ministry of the word of God and prayer and to wait on tables.

But they said, you look out seven men of good report to look after this business. And the word business is used right there in the third verse. So this is a businessmen's committee. But this one who leads the list of these names here, Stephen, was a man who was full of the Holy Ghost and of power.

It seems he must have been an outstanding Christian man. But I repeat, he wasn't one of the great ecclesiastics of the day. But he was a man whom God could use to bring before his ancient people some of the great truths of the Old Testament, some of the wonderful things that God had done for his ancient people Israel.

And the most wonderful thing of all was the conversion of the very head of their nation. That is Abraham himself. Now sometimes you get the idea when you read about these characters in the Bible that they were sort of gypsies, you know, wandering around because they lived in tents.

People get the idea that Abraham probably was just another one of those little gypsies moving around in this way without a home. The fact of the matter is that he must have had a wonderful home back there in Ur of the Chaldeans, which of course was his hometown in Chaldea, in Mesopotamia, as we read here in this second verse of our chapter.

Mesopotamia is a word which simply means between the rivers. That is, between the Tigris, which ran past the city of Nineveh, and the Euphrates, which ran past the city of Babylon. And these two joined together and went into the Persian Gulf.

It's the part of the world that we now know as Iraq. And you can see it was important way back in those days. And this man was a man of some consequence. We read in the Old Testament that he had 318 servants born in his own house.

That is, I take the word house there to refer to his establishment. 318 servants born in this establishment. And evidently he was of such princely bearing that when he came into the land which God had promised to give him, and his wife Sarah died, and he wanted a place to bury her, the men of Heth, the sons of Heth, recognized him as a mighty prince among them.

He was a man of some consequence. In other words, friends, he wasn't a down-and-outer that you would pick up in the gutter. He was a man who was atop of things. And God gives to this man a most wonderful experience.

How this experience was implemented, we do not know. God doesn't tell us. But Stephen here says that the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham. He had what the theologians would call a theophany, which is such a $20 word for a vision of God.

He had a vision of God. Now somebody says, but doesn't the Bible say no man has seen God at any time? That is true. No one has ever seen the sun at any time, and yet we talk about seeing the sun. We haven't seen it today, of course, but we talk about seeing the sun.

But none of us has ever seen the sun. No one has ever seen the sun. It is back of those great long flames, some of them a hundred thousand miles long, I understand. Terrific. Yet we say we've seen the sun, and we behold its light.

In the same way God manifests Himself in His glory, in a way which probably had a very wonderful effect upon this man Abraham. I'm going to suggest two effects that it would have. First of all, it would be in direct contrast to those gods of wood and stone that he was worshiping.

When he got this wonderful vision of God Himself, he couldn't help but notice the difference between the two. It was so evident that nobody needed to argue about it, that these gods of wood and stone with whom he could put wherever he wanted to put them, and if he didn't like them, he could knock them over.

But here was something that you couldn't do that with. But the second effect that it would have, and this may even have been a primary effect, would it be that it would reveal to Abraham what kind of a being he was in himself.

You know, we sometimes pass over lightly a verse in the third chapter of Romans, but I want to fit it right into the picture here tonight where it says, "...all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.".

Seeing God and Seeing Our Sin

God manifesting His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, and this is something which can be evident even to a person reading the Scriptures. I was greatly blessed through a little book written by J. B. Phillips, the man who gave us what is known as the Phillips translation of the New Testament and a few of the books of the Old Testament.

This book by Mr. Phillips is called The Ring of Truth, and he tells us in this book that when he started to make his translation of the New Testament, he wasn't altogether convinced of its divinity nor yet of its divine inspiration.

In fact, he goes on to say he didn't believe in verbal inspiration. But before he finishes this book, he says he's convinced that this book has the ring of truth. There was something about it. So that Mr. Phillips, in writing this little book, tells you of a spiritual experience which came to him in no other way except through the reading of the Word of God.

And you know, when I was just a little boy, I can remember my father talking to souls about their need of a Savior. And some of them would say, Well, but I don't see myself like this. And Dad would say to them, Now, I want you to just pray two prayers.

Just pray two prayers. They'd say, What are those, Mr. Ammerding? He says, First of all, I want you to pray to the Lord, Show me thyself. And after you've prayed that a while, then I want you to pray this prayer, Show me myself.

And friends, you don't need to pray the second prayer if the first one's answered. I know this from two examples which we have in the Old Testament. A man called Isaiah, to whom we are indebted for one of the greatest books in the Old Testament, the prophecy of Isaiah.

In the sixth chapter of his book, he tells you of a similar experience to the one that Abraham had here. He says, In the year that King Uzziah died, and it is thought by some of the commentators that he was related to the king, and the king died a leper, and no doubt Isaiah, like the rest of us, would feel well.

At any rate, I don't have to die under that stigma. But God soon shows Isaiah what he is. And he saw the Lord, eye lifted up, and his train filled the temple. And what did he say? Oh, he heard those seraphim crying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory. Then said I, woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips. And that's exactly what a leper would say. He covered his lips and says, Unclean, unclean. Get the language back in the thirteenth chapter of the book of Leviticus.

He is the man who, when he sees God, he saw the Lord, high and lifted up. Woe is me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Yes, you say, probably there was something about his history that isn't revealed in the book, and maybe he was just that, but we weren't told about it before.

Even though in the first chapter of his book he tells you that from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot there's nothing in man except wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores. In other words, he's utterly corrupt.

But we've got another example, and a man called Job. And you know, one day Satan came into the high court of heaven, and God says to Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there's none like him in all the earth, one that fears God and eschews evil?

Oh, yes, says Satan, but he doesn't fear you for naught. You've given him a lot of good things, and he knows on which side his bread is buttered. You know, I'm just fitting this into twentieth century language for you.

That's not a translation of the Hebrew, don't get it wrong. But he's as much as telling God, this man doesn't fear you for naught. And God gave Satan permission to take everything from Job except his life.

And even his wife, when she saw his abject condition, said, Why don't you curse God and die? He turns and says, You're talking like one of those silly women. He would not curse God. And God was justified in what he had said about Job.

Well, you see, that evidently proves that he was a pretty good man. Yes, but wait a bit. You get to the last chapter of that book, forty-two chapters, and if you've never read that book through, read it through in one sitting.

It's a wonderful, wonderful piece of literature. It's to say nothing else about it. In the last chapter of that book, you hear Job saying this. He says, I've heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee, and I abhor myself.

I repent of dust and ashes. Friends, that's the effect of a sight of the glory of God. And I'm inclined to believe that while the first doubtless was true, that Abraham could see the difference between the living God and these dead idols that he'd been worshiping.

But, oh, what more important was he to learn what he was in himself. And in the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle Paul gives us some of the steps of our father Abraham by which he entered into the fullness of blessing.

Yes, this is the beginning tonight. This is where every one of us has to start in our spiritual life, is to get a vision of God like this. Well, you say, brother, do you mean that I'm going to have some wonderful experience, some ecstatic experience, and perhaps in my bedroom at home to see a picture like this?

No. I'm just simply suggesting to you that you can get the same effect by reading the Word of God. The reason I say that is because it actually happened to me just this way. I don't think any arguments would have convinced me that I was such a rotten sinner that I would go to hell if I didn't believe in the Lord Jesus, and yet that's exactly what was true of me.

But I didn't believe it, because I'd been born and brought up in a Christian home. I never learned to swear and to curse like others. I didn't do things like some of them. I was never seen staggering down the street under the influence of liquor.

I never went over the moral limits set by my parents, never went over these. I was a self-righteous sinner. But when God revealed Himself through His Word, showed me what I was then, I learned what Isaiah learned, I learned what Job learned, and I'm sure I've learned what Abraham learned as well.

The God of glory appeared, and it made all the difference in Abraham's life. It made all this difference that he could leave behind his home with everything he had and travel along like a pilgrim, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, we read in the Bible, to the very end of his life.

This is what he was, a man who demonstrated by his life that this vision had made a tremendous difference in his life. It'll make a tremendous difference in yours, my friend, if you have never had such an experience.

But you can get it just through reading the Word of God, the Holy Spirit of God bringing this wonderful one before you on the pages of Holy Writ. It'll have this same effect. But now we come to a second character in this book, the seventh chapter of Acts.

I want to speak about him. You notice it says down here in Acts 7, verse 17, When the time of the promise drew nigh, that's the promise that God had given to Abraham, which God swore unto Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt, till another king arose, which knew not Joseph.

The same dealt subtly with our kindred, and evil entreated our fathers, so that they cast out their young children, to the end they might not live, in which time Moses was born, and was exceeding fair, and nourished up in his father's house three months.

And when he was cast out, Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and nourished him for her own son. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds. Yes, Ph .D. degree, learn a Phi Beta Kappa key.

That's how we would interpret this in twentieth-century language, you know. This man really was educated. He was learned in all the learning of the Egyptians. He's a wise man, mighty in words and deeds.

Now, he's forty years old, we read here, in verse twenty-three. When he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel. And he sees one of them being abused by an Egyptian, and he kills the Egyptian.

The next day, he wants to set two of his own brethren right. They're fighting together, and one of them says, You're going to do to me like you did to the Egyptian yesterday? And the result is that Moses has to flee.

But now, after forty years, in verse thirty, same chapter, Acts 7, verse thirty, when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush.

And when Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight, and as he drew near to behold it, the voice of the Lord came unto him, saying, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.

And Moses trembled and durst not behold. Then said the Lord to him, Put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place where thou standest is holy ground. I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them.

And now come, I will send thee into Egypt. This Moses, whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? The same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush.

This is another theophany, another vision of God granted to this man Moses. The details are given to us in the third chapter of the book of Exodus, if you care to go back to that sometime and just look at it for yourself.

But you'll really get quite a summary of it right here in the seventh chapter of the book of the Acts. This man Stephen really knew his Bible history. And here he pictures a second man who had a vision of God.

Not now God in his glory, but God appearing in a flame of fire in a thorn bush, as the word actually is in the original language, in a thorn bush. And when you hear God saying, I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people.

I have heard their groanings. I am come down to deliver them. You've got a wonderful picture of what actually happened when God in the person of his Son came down to this world 1900 years ago. And that burning bush out there in the desert, while we may think of it as being a picture of Israel and her sufferings under her enemies, I'm inclined to believe that the primary application of that vision is a picture of our blessed Lord upon the cross being made a curse for us.

Because as I've said, that word bush is really a thorn bush. It was the emblem of the curse. And the Lord Jesus Christ hanging upon that cross was a curse for us. For cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.

What a vision. Oh, friends, if we had no other vision of God than this one tonight, given to us in such detail in Psalms 22 and Psalm 69 and even in Psalm 40, and again in the book of Zechariah, and coming to the New Testament to find the details in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and even some details further on in the book of the Acts and into the Epistles, this is an important subject.

It's so much so, dear friends, that when we get a vision of our Lord in glory in the fifth chapter of the book of Revelation, what is it? It's a lamb as it had been slain. There it is. What a vision. Why did God give Moses this vision?

We've already suggested why he gave Abraham that vision, that he might learn to know himself as a sinful being and come and put his trust in the living God. But here is a picture which God is presenting to a man whom he has chosen to lead his people across the desert.

And if ever there was a need for any minister of the Lord Jesus, whether it be what people call a layman or what they call him a clergyman or a laboring brother or whatever title they give him, if that man hasn't had a vision of Christ crucified, he's not qualified to minister the Word of God.

This was the thing that Paul himself insisted on. He says, I determine to know nothing among you, saving Jesus Christ and him crucified. And this is the vision that God gives to this man Moses. And I wouldn't be surprised that when the writer to the Hebrews sums all this up, speaking of Moses, he says he endured as seeing him who is invisible.

A contradiction in terms, isn't it? And yet, dear friends, as we said at the outset this evening, this is exactly what happens when you and I look at the sun. We say we see the sun, and yet we've never seen it.

So Moses, he endured as seeing him who is invisible. And what an impress it made on his life. He was a man who had all the riches of Egypt at his disposal, who could easily have said, why, sheer gratitude would lead me to stay right here in the palace.

And not only that, he had good precedent for it, because Joseph, his great ancestor, also was there. And he stayed in the court. He never left it. He died in Egypt. They carried his remains, as you know, with them across the desert.

So he could have argued, he said, well, I guess I would have been dead like all the other Israelitish babies. Pharaoh's daughter saved me. Sheer gratitude requires that I stay here. And then, as I said, you could plead the example of Joseph, say I'll stay because he stayed.

But no, there was something that impelled Moses to go. He would identify himself with this people who were downtrodden, this people who were being crashed under the heel of the oppressor. And what a missionary text this is.

Am I talking to anyone tonight who perhaps has heard the call of God at some time or other in your life, to devote your life to the ministry of the Word, to see that others hear about the Lord Jesus Christ?

Friend, you'll never, you'll never move until you get a vision like this. This is it. When you hear the living God say, I am come down to deliver them, I want you to lead them. And so this man Moses gets his commission inaugurated by this wonderful vision of God.

This is something that Moses could never forget through the last 40 years of his life, as he led those children of Israel from Egypt to the very doors of the promised land. All before him would be this vision.

And these words ringing in his ears, I have heard, I have seen, I am come down. Oh, beloved, may God grip your soul and mine with more of this spirit of the divine Lord himself saying, I'm interested in these people who are downtrodden.

I'm interested in lost souls. And friends, you and I'll never be more interested than when we learn from God how interested he is. This is a thing of which has impelled one down the years. Sometimes people wonder why you keep going even after you reach the age of retirement and all this sort of thing.

Friends, we feel there's no let up to this business. And there's nothing I would rather be doing when the Lord calls me if he, if he tarries a while. Nothing I'd rather be doing than be pleading with some precious soul and leading him to the feet of Jesus.

Oh, what a wonderful thing that would be. To have the Lord interrupt that little conversation and say, Carl, it's enough. Come on home. Mm-hmm. Just like that. Now we're going to see a man, the third man in this chapter, to whom God did just that.

Stephen’s Vision of Christ and Faithful Witness

Cast your eye down, please, now in this same seventh chapter of the book of the Acts. And here we hear another fearless individual by the name of Stephen. This is the man that we talked about at the beginning.

And he says in verse 51 of the chapter, and this is not very flattering language. He says, Ye stiff-necked, and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your fathers did, so do ye.

Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which showed them before the coming of the just one, of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers, who received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.

That's pretty strong language, isn't it? How many preachers do you think in the United States would dare to use this kind of language today? Their jobs would be at stake. The session would meet at them after the meeting and say, Look here, Pastor, if you value your job, no more of this.

I want you to know you have a very choice. The audience of people here, the members of this church, they belong to the best families in the community, and we don't want any of this because I'm going to talk.

But these old preachers, they'd had a vision of God, see? They were not careful to answer to men. They were like the one of whom we were hearing this morning in the fifth chapter, who said, We must obey God rather than men.

And so he uses this strong language. And you know, dear friends, it's been interesting down the years in dealing with souls and using language pretty much like this to have some people say to me afterwards, You know, when you first talked to me about the Lord Jesus and brought before me the fact that I was a lost, ruined, hell-deserving sinner, I could have killed you.

I had one woman tell me that. But she lived long enough to say, Oh, how grateful I am that you didn't let up. We didn't always use the soft self. Sometimes we use the hard self. That's what this man's doing here.

And now see the effect. Verse 54, When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they bashed on him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfast into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God.

This man with another vision of God. He says, Behold, I see the heavens open, the Son of God standing on the right hand of God. You know, this to me is terrific. First, God revealing himself to a man to show him what he is.

Secondly, revealing himself to a man because he wants him to lead out his people and have some of the Spirit that's in God's own heart toward those whom he's leading. But here is a man who's at the end of the journey, and God gives him a vision, a vision of himself.

He sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And friends, I've had enough experience with dying people. I suppose I've seen more people die than a good many of you. For ten years, I was chaplain of a TB sanitarium in the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Scarcely a week passed that we weren't called up, mostly in the middle of the night. People seemed to have a way of slipping out of this life about 1, 132 o 'clock, when life was at its lowest end. And of course, we had told them, and we lived up to it, I'd say to them whenever I left them, remember, I'm on the other end of your telephone line.

Don't hesitate, day or night. And they took me up at my words. And many a night, when I had just gotten off into a sound sleep, the telephone was right there at my bed, it would ring. Mr. Ammerding, this is the nurse calling from such-and-such a hospital.

Could you come? I don't think Miss So-and-So is going to make it through the night. You know, friends, it was really wonderful to sit with these people as they entered into the presence of God, and again and again to notice the look of surprise and pleasure that was on their faces as they went home to glory.

You know, I would need no other apologetic for my Christian faith than just that. I've had enough physical evidence, dear friends, to prove the reality of eternity, the reality of the Savior waiting to welcome His own.

Yes, and I saw it in the case of the one who was nearest and dearest to me a little over three years ago when I was with her the last five minutes of her life. And that face that had been drawn with pain suddenly smoothed out as if somebody had just given her a perfect facial, her eyes opened with a look of recognition.

And I'm sure if she could have said anything at that time, she would have said this, There he is. There he is. Friends, this is wonderful. You know, that's one of the things that makes it easy for a Christian to leave this life behind.

That's what enabled this man, Stephen, when he knelt down to receive those stones that they were throwing at him. He says, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. You know, there's no revenge in a man like this.

He's already been repaid with this look at his Savior. And knowing that his Savior prayed a similar prayer on the cross when he said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Friend, I wonder if after Lord's Day such as we've had this, this Lord's Day, I don't know when I've had a more precious Lord's Day than this one.

The meeting this morning for remembrance of our Lord was remarkable. I was thinking of a little Scottish tract I read years ago called Young Lovely Man, about a half-wit boy who saw the Lord at the Lord's table.

Yes, I believe the Lord does give us visions of himself in our hearts as we come together to remember him. But this doesn't have to be the part of a corporate service such as we had this morning. It can be your own individual experience.

Seeking God’s Presence Through Scripture and Devotion

And I do trust, dear friend, that you will not, you're not to exclude yourself from this and say, oh yeah, that was all right for Abraham, that was all right for Moses, that was all right for Stephen, that's all right for somebody else.

But it's all right for you. He wants to reveal himself to you. And this is one of the things which I've kept insisting on in dealing with young souls, especially in their devotional life. I've had a good deal of this to do because much of my life has been devoted to teaching young people.

And they've come into the office for counsel. And most times I find that many of their troubles stem from the fact that they've neglected the devotional aspect of their lives. And they say, well, how do you go about it?

And then I tell them, to open the Word of God, have some system about the way you read it. Begin with this prayer, show me thyself. And friends, so many times when I've prayed this prayer in opening the book, I've seen fresh glory in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's sweetened the whole day for me just to get a vision of himself. And these young people are very practical. They say, yes, that's all right. I'm not quite that much of an idealist, and so on. That's sort of transcendental for them.

They feel like they're getting on too high ground for them. But you know, the Lord says he dwells with him as of a contrite spirit. The lower you and I are, the easier it is for him to reveal himself to us.

This is what he does. And so, dear friend, take these things to heart tonight. And I do trust that as you close the day with God tonight in your evening devotions, and if left here till tomorrow morning to open them again in your morning devotions, that God will grant you this wonderful experience of giving to you a sense of his presence.

Nothing like it. There's just nothing like it. I say this out of experience, sometimes out of sad experience, because there are times when one is traveling, for example, travel all night, you don't have the opportunity to enjoy this like you do in the quiet of your own home.

And this always makes a difference in the day. But on the other hand, even on such occasions, one has taken out his Bible or his book, and people themselves have noticed the look on your face, and they've said to you, evidently, that book does something to you.

It does. It really does. And friends, it'll do something to you and something for you. May God give you a vision of his glory. In keeping with the thought of martyrdom which we have in the chapter, I would like to have you join in singing hymn number 13 in the book.