WWUTT 2582 The Speech of Stephen (Acts 7:1)

Stephen the deacon preached a tremendous sermon in the synagogue, telling the people how they opposed

God's word and stand condemned. They hated Stephen and they stoned him for it, when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it.

Visit our website at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Book of Acts, we come to the speech of Stephen in Chapter 7, longest sermon in the

Book of Acts. We were introduced to Stephen in Chapter 6, when he was made one of the first deacons.

And not just a servant, he was also a great teacher, and he went out proclaiming the gospel, and performing great signs and wonders to affirm that this message he proclaimed was the word of God.

But as he proclaimed faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, this incensed the men of the synagogue, and they brought him before the

Sanhedrin and have put him on trial, hurling false accusations of him. What we have in Acts 7 is

Stephen's defense. It begins with the high priest and then Stephen preaching from verses 2 down through verse 53, and then he's put to death in verses 54 to 60.

I'm going to read through this entire speech. Hear the word of the Lord. And the high priest said,

Are these things so? And Stephen said, Hear me, brothers and fathers, the

God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him,

Leave your country and your relatives and come into the land that I will show you. Then he left the land of the

Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to this country in which you are now living.

But he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground. And he promised that he would give it to him as a possession and to his seed after him, even when he had no child.

But God spoke in this way, that his seed would be sojourners in a foreign land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for 400 years.

And I myself will judge the nation to which they will be enslaved, said God. And after that, they will come out and serve me in this place.

And he gave him the covenant of circumcision. And so Abraham was the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day.

And Isaac was the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs. And the patriarchs, becoming jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt.

Yet God was with him and rescued him from all his afflictions and granted him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

And he appointed him governor over Egypt and all his household. Now a famine came over all

Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction with it, and our fathers could find no food.

But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers there the first time.

And on the second visit, Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph's family was disclosed to Pharaoh.

Then Joseph sent word and invited Jacob, his father, and all his relatives to come to him, seventy -five persons in all.

And Jacob went down to Egypt, and there he and our fathers died. And from there they were removed to Shechem and placed in the tomb which

Abraham had purchased for a sum of money from the sons of Hamer in Shechem. But as the time of the promise was drawing near, which

God had assured to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt, until another king arose over Egypt who did not know about Joseph.

It was he who deceitfully took advantage of our family and mistreated our fathers to set their infants outside so that they would not survive.

It was at this time that Moses was born, and he was lovely in the sight of God.

And he was nurtured three months in his father's home. And after he had been set outside,

Pharaoh's daughter took him away and nurtured him as her own son. And Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the

Egyptians, and he was powerful in words and deeds. But when he was approaching the age of forty, it entered his heart to visit his brothers, the sons of Israel.

And when he saw one of them being treated unjustly, he defended him and took justice for the oppressed by striking down the

Egyptian. And he supposed that his brothers understood that God was granting them salvation through him, but they did not understand.

On the following day, he appeared to them as they were fighting together, and he tried to reconcile them in peace, saying,

Man, you are brothers. Why are you treating one another unjustly? But the one who was treating his neighbor unjustly pushed him away, saying,

Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the

Egyptian yesterday? At this remark, Moses fled and became a sojourner in the land of Midian, where he was the father of two sons.

And after forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai in the flame of a burning bush.

When Moses saw it, he was marveling at the sight, and as he approached to look more closely, there came the voice of the

Lord. I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

Moses trembled with fear and would not dare to look. But the Lord said to him,

Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

I have surely seen the oppression of my people in Egypt and have heard their groans, and I have come down to deliver them.

Come now, and I will send you to Egypt. This Moses, whom they disowned, saying,

Who made you a ruler and a judge, is the one whom God sent to be both a ruler and a deliverer, with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

This man led them out doing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the

Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years. This is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.

This is the one who, in the congregation in the wilderness, was with the angel who was speaking to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, the one who received living oracles to pass on to you.

Our fathers were unwilling to be obedient to him, but rejected him, and in their hearts turned back to Egypt, saying to Aaron, Make for us gods who will go before us, for this

Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. At that time they made a calf and brought a sacrifice to the idol and were rejoicing in the works of their hands.

But God turned away and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets,

Did you present me with slain beasts and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?

You also took along the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rompha, the images which you made to worship.

I also will remove you beyond Babylon. Our fathers had the tabernacle of testimony in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it according to the pattern which he had seen.

And having received it, in their turn our fathers brought it in with Joshua, when they dispossessed the nations whom

God drove out before their fathers until the time of David. David found favor in the sight of God and asked that he might find a dwelling place for the god of Jacob.

But Solomon built a house for him. However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands.

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 rest?

Was it not my hand which made all these things? You men, stiff -necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, are always resisting the

Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. And which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?

They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become, you who received the law as ordained by angels and yet did not observe it.

Now when they heard this, they became furious in their hearts, and they began gnashing their teeth at him.

But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently 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 up, and the

Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. But crying out with a loud voice, they covered their ears and rushed at him with one accord.

And when they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him. And the witnesses laid aside their garments at the feet of a young man named

Saul. They went on stoning Stephen as he was calling out and saying,

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice,

Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And having said this, he fell asleep.

Even as Stephen was being stoned for delivering the truth of God's word to them, yet his love for them continued.

That God would not curse and destroy them, but that he would rather turn their hearts to him and they would come to faith in Jesus Christ.

It's Jesus whom they are opposing. The words that Stephen proclaimed filled with scripture, the very word of God.

And as he said to them, you are uncircumcised in your ears. You are continually resisting the

Holy Spirit. You will not listen to these words that have been proclaimed to you.

So over the next several devotional lessons here, we'll be looking at this speech in Acts chapter seven, a tremendous sermon and an expository sermon.

If you pick that up expository, by the way, is to expose the true meaning of the text.

It doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, like what I do on this podcast day after day where we'll read a section of scripture and we understand the meaning of the depth of everything that we're reading there and then give application to it.

Understanding the main point of what is being communicated through the Holy Spirit to the author and then not only to the original audience to whom it was written, but even to us.

How do these things apply to us today? So that's what we will do when I do expository teaching in that way.

Verse by verse understanding of scripture. Now Stephen is not necessarily doing that.

It's not like he's got scrolls in front of him here in which he is going through Old Testament scriptures and making the sense, but he's giving a summary of these things that have been written down in the scriptures.

Everything that we have here that we just looked through and read, it was a summary of everything from Genesis all the way up through David.

And even the prophets are quoted here showing that this people who are resisting the message of the gospel are the same people who had been resisting the word of God hundreds of years before.

Is there a prophet that you have not persecuted? They were always resisting what

God had said through his prophets. And so as we read this, may our hearts be softened to recognize the word of God as it is given in the scriptures that it would guide and teach us and form us as we grow in our understanding of the gospel and in our sanctification to be conformed to the image of Christ.

Now, if you read this Acts chapter seven in a in a translation that's like the legacy or the new

American standard, I was reading to you from the legacy standard, by the way, those translations will put

Old Testament quotes in all caps. And there were all kinds of Old Testament references in Stephen's speech and further testifying to the fact that this is an expository sermon.

He is teaching them what the scriptures say about them and giving the sense.

That's what said in Nehemiah eight, eight, we actually have a good definition of expository teaching there in Nehemiah eight, because this was exactly what the priests were doing when they read the law to the people in Nehemiah, eight, eight.

They read from the book, from the law of God, explaining and giving insight or in the

English standard. I know it says giving the sense and they provided understanding of the reading.

That's your biblical definition of expository teaching right there. And this is what

Stephen is doing. He's taking them through the scriptures and showing to them how

God has spoken from the beginning about the things that we are testifying to here. But just as your father's resisted it then, so you are resisting it now.

You are not the recipients of the blessings of God, but rather, as Jesus put it in John chapter eight, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

They needed to be rescued out of the world and out of their fleshly thinking and into the true understanding of the scriptures, giving the sense to them so that they may have their hearts turned from their wickedness to the righteousness that only comes by faith in Jesus Christ.

And again, this is what they are opposing. This is exactly the message that they are opposing. Remember what we read yesterday in acts six, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.

So then what does Stephen do? Takes them through the scriptures all the way up through Moses. Now I'm in agreement with Moses.

You're not. You're actually of the ones who opposed Moses and resisted the word of God.

That's what Stephen shows them in this sermon. Furthermore, as they were testifying against him at trial in acts six, 13, they put forward false witnesses who said, this man never ceases speaking words against this holy place and the law.

So when we get to the end of Stephen's speech and he makes that declaration about how

God does not dwell in places that are made by human hands, he is answering that charge that has been made of him.

You are claiming that I'm speaking words against this holy place. God is not even here is essentially what

Stephen is saying. And that's, that's what makes these men incensed. That's what enrages them.

Like their religion is, is being torn to the ground and they can't stand it.

So they stone Stephen to the ground instead. They go on to accuse

Stephen. This is acts six, 14. We have heard him say that this Jesus, the Nazarene will destroy this place and alter the customs, which

Moses handed down to us. Well, God doesn't dwell in this place anyway.

And so it is for you to turn to the true temple. Remember Jesus testified of himself as the true temple, the one that he said,

I would tear down and rebuild in three days. And then we become temples of God when we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ and the

Holy Spirit dwells within us. So Stephen doesn't really get to a bold declaration of the gospel here in acts chapter seven, even though he was testifying to the gospel and they heard it and they knew it.

According to this testimony that we're reading about in acts chapter six, this is just going through the law and the prophets convicting their heart so that they will recognize where they stand.

They don't stand with God. They stand opposed to God. So that hopefully through what is proclaimed here, they would be cut to the heart.

Just as Peter preached at Pentecost in acts chapter two. And what he said about you, you men, you lawless men, you put the savior to death.

They were cut to the heart over that when, when Peter took them through the scriptures and showed them their sin, they were cut to the heart.

What shall we do? Repent, believe and be baptized. And all of this was like, contrary to what was the testimony that was coming from the scribes and the

Pharisees at that time, repent and believe. That's not how you come into salvation.

That's not how you inherit the kingdom of God. You have to do all these rules and laws and regulations, but it's

Christ who saves. And that simple message of grace just enrages the men who buy their own religion, are relying upon their works to save them.

They believe that God is on their side. But as we've seen demonstrated very clearly before and after this sermon was proclaimed,

God is on the side of Stephen, even though they see his face radiating, just as Moses' face was glowing when he would come down from Mount Sinai.

Probably wasn't radiating like that because the people couldn't even look at Moses, but they are looking at Stephen and seeing him proclaim this truth to them, which they will not listen to.

Their hearts are hard. Even though they see this in Stephen, they still think God is on their side and that Stephen speaks blasphemous things.

So here at the very start, Acts 7 verse 1, the high priest says to Stephen, are these things so, these charges that have been brought against you?

And Stephen doesn't directly answer the question at all. Rather, he puts the blame on them.

He directs it back to them and gives this testimony of the scriptures that they would see.

They are the ones that stand opposed. They are the ones who are blaspheming God. I'm not the one on trial here.

You are. That's really the summation of Stephen's sermon.

He's innocent. He's innocent before God because of the precious blood of Jesus.

They stand condemned, imitating all of the works of their fathers who came before them, who opposed the word of God.

Let's read a little bit of it here. We haven't gotten to much exposition, really just done an exposition of verse 1 thus far.

The high priest saying, are these things so? We'll look at a little bit and kind of finish up with this. We'll come back to the speech of Stephen tomorrow.

And he said, hear me brothers and fathers, the God of glory appeared to our father

Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran and said to him, leave your country and your relatives and come into the land that I will show you.

Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. And from there, after his father died, God had him move to this country in which you are now living.

That's as far as we're going to get today. If I'm keeping with the time limits that I have set for doing these devotionals day by day.

But bring this point out of it. Okay. Just in what we've read so far, Abraham listened to the voice of God and he obeyed.

But these people who are standing opposed to Stephen and the word that he proclaims are not listening to the voice of God and they do not obey.

My friends, the voice of God has been spoken to us through his word, the scriptures. May we read it and understand it and do it heavenly father.

We thank you for what we have read today, even as we have covered this entire speech of Stephen. And as we are going to devote the next several devotionals to expositing this sermon and understanding it more clearly, may it deepen our love for your word and understanding how through your word we are sanctified and conformed to the image of Christ and brought all the more into holiness that we may be holy and blameless before you in love.

It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen. Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's word when we understand the text.