Clough Acts Lesson 19

Christ Stands to Receive Stephen, The First Martyr – Acts 7:44-49

We are studying Stephen’s sermon, remembering a principle that Stephen is giving us here; he’s given us many principles but one of the things is that at this point in the history of the Christian church you have the origin of missions. We can learn a lot if we want to from how missions began. Missions did not begin by having someone having some great spiritual experience, where they contemplated infinity or whether God the Holy Spirit appeared to them in a great cloud of glory and told them go. Missions historically did not begin that way. We ought to understand that and use that in understanding how God leads us today. Missions began in Scripture with Stephen’s speech. See, Acts 1-7 is the background for missions. By Acts 1:8 you have Christ telling the Church that it is to go into every area of the world with the gospel. The Church does not do that, operation snafu, it always happens, and so therefore Jesus Christ has to work through pressure, through adversity, through all sorts of problems to bring the Church, so that by chapters 8 and 9 you actually have the first rise of Christian missions, or the Church in experience following the great commission.

How did the Church start missions? They didn’t start it by some Holy Spirit revelation. It started because one man by the name of Stephen had studied the Word and studied the Word and studied the Word and made the great doctrinal breakthrough of this speech, and once Stephen made the doctrinal breakthrough, and this is why Luke writes it in chapter 7, then and only then do you have operations begin. The doctrine comes first, then the experience. This is always the way the Holy Spirit works in church history, that is the real Holy Spirit. Now there are a lot of spirits working but there’s only one Holy Spirit and when He works He always works this way. He works through His Word; He does not work through idiotic personal experiences.

So understand that we are viewing in Stephen’s speech a model of the proper leading of the Holy Spirit and so we have Stephen organizing the theology of the Church, organizing the application of doctrine and in its first part, Acts 7:2-16, in this section Stephen deals with the patriarchal period. And he has to, in this section, root missions to a solid foundation and the solid foundation on which missions must be rooted, if they are to survive, is the foundation of universal absolute truth. In other words, during the patriarchal period Stephen says notice that God gave revelation to the Jews in Mesopotamia. In other words, when God says to you something it may be in category A, it may be in culture A, it may be in Iraq as it was in Abraham’s case, and when you come over here in culture B in Palestine the same truth applies. 2 + 2 is 4 in Iraq; 2 + 2 is 4 in Palestine. Jesus Christ died for sins for your salvation in Iraq; Jesus Christ died for your sins for your salvation in Palestine. That is what we mean by universal absolute truth. It doesn’t matter what culture you are in. And missionaries must defend themselves against the charge that is always being leveled against them, mind your own business, go back to America, don’t but into our culture, the missionary has fouled up our culture, the missionary has done this and the missionary has done that and all the rest.

Rachel Saint who was one of the great missionaries of the 10^th century made the best reply I have ever heard to that idiotic criticism of missions, when she said that missionaries, when they are following the Word, are giving back to the natives what the natives have lost. They’re not giving something absolutely new, they’re restoring the flow of revelation to that culture which that culture lost in history. So missions, from first to last, is grounded upon some truth that is applicable to the Hottentots as it is to 20^th century America. And this is Stephen’s point in these first chapters. This is why communism has been so successful in its missionary enterprise. Karl Marx was very careful when he wrote and the communists have been extremely careful since to ground what they say on what they say are economic truths that control history, sovereign economic truths, is you will, universal absolute economic truths. And therefore it doesn’t matter whether the communist is in Hanoi, Peking or Moscow or Bulgaria, East Germany, or Africa, the communist line is always the same. Communists haven’t worried about sending missionaries and upsetting cultural patterns and therefore the Christians shouldn’t either, but it’s always the Christians who wind up apologetic and scared of some loud mouthed anthropologist, who doesn’t know anything, sounding off in the classroom some place. Now just listen when you hear that kind of criticism and take it as being from the idiot that it’s from and move on. Ignore it, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Missionaries have not seriously disturbed culture in areas; where they have it’s always been in error based on the Word, it’s not been something that is implicit in the missionary enterprise. So Stephen in this first section has given missions its ground.

Then in the second section, from Acts 7:17-43 Stephen has dealt with the problem of the Torah or the Law. And the reason he does this is because he’s being accused of violating the Torah or the Law. He, it is claimed, has spoken against the Torah, so therefore he’s threatening Israel’s security. What’s Stephen’s answer? It’s very simple, Israel’s security never did from the very beginning depend one iota upon the Torah. He says if your security really depended on the Torah you haven’t got much security because you people haven’t obeyed the Torah at all; since it was given you have rebelled against the Torah. Over and over and over you’ve rebelled against the Torah, and you’re trying to tell me that your security depends upon the Torah? Not at all. Your security, says Stephen, depends on the sovereign gracious God who has called you into history. He’s given you the Torah, but your salvation doesn’t depend on the Torah, on keeping the Law.

Now Stephen moves to his third point beginning in Acts 7:44 with the tabernacle and in verse 44 he calls the tabernacle by a very peculiar name, he says, “The tabernacle our fathers had in the wilderness, the tabernacle of witness,” [“Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness.”] Now the usual name in the Old Testament for the tabernacle is the tabernacle of the congregation, not the tabernacle of witness. So if Stephen is using this title for the tabernacle we have to study the tabernacle and find out why he used this title for it and not the usual title for it, and when we do that we discover that Stephen is drawing our attention to a doctrinal principle.

Let’s look at the tabernacle for a moment and get clearly in our minds what it’s all about. [he shows slides] The tabernacle was a tent-like structure surrounded by a fence. This is what the Jewish people worshiped all during the wilderness period. And that fence had only one gate in it, on the east side. That gate was a picture of the exclusive invitation of salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Centuries ahead of time Christ is spoken of here in this format, in this tent-like structure, in the rituals of the tent-like structure. The person who came to worship God would have to come not from the north, from the west, from the south, but from the east, through the only one gat authorized. He would move up and the first article of furniture he would encounter would be the brazen altar, showing that the way to worship with God was through a blood sacrifice. After this point was reached he would walk around the altar and come to the laver showing that he must be clean; that is the result of the sacrifice should be applied to his account. If he’s already a believer then confession of sin. Looked at from the side and from the front we see it a little more clearly, a person would walk through the gate, up to this altar, up to the laver, and then on inside. And inside this entire structure being made of acacia wood, at least the walls, acacia wood covered with gold, picturing the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ was true humanity, undiminished deity, united in one person. And so we have the wood and the gold united together; two elements. Inside you would have the altar of incense at the very center. It was that altar that pictured God’s pleasure in the prayers of the saints; much like we’ve been studying Sunday evening God’s pleasure in believer’s maturity is equal to a man’s pleasure over a good glass of wine. Don’t tell some of the legalist fundamentalists that or they’d get out of fellowship.

Here we have the left side which is the lampstand picturing the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is the light of the world; and on the right side we have the table of showbread. These were the three items of furniture in the area of worship; the bread, speaking of life, the light speaking of the light of the world, discernment, and then the result, the altar of incense. The incense, rising up before the presence of God because God’s own very presence, the Shekinah glory, is behind that curtain area. The prayers would rise up as smoke in here, up through the top. As the smoke rose up all this area would smell, and it would be a very perfume like smell and so the idea there is that God enjoyed man’s worship, and man also ought to enjoy God. There’s an element of enjoyment in the Old Testament that many Christians really deprive themselves of spiritually.

Looking at it from the top you have the main worship area, the table of showbread, the lampstand, the altar of incense, and then behind that curtain area you have the ark. The ark, again made of acacia wood and gold, the hypostatic union of Christ. The ark had two cherubs and because we don’t know what the cherubs look like; cherubs were two angel-like creatures who were modeled in gold, sitting on the top of the ark and looking down; they were both looking down because they wanted to see what was on that platform of gold. What they were looking for was blood, shed blood, because the shed blood applied would mean that God is propitiated or God is satisfied, gives His approval of man’s status.

In that ark there was something called the witness; the ark was hollow inside, more like a casket, and inside this ark were certain items that were stored. And one of the items that were stored were two tablets; not four, two: one was a copy of the Ten Commandments and the second one was a copy of the Ten Commandments. One was God’s copy of the Ten Commandments and the other was Israel’s copy of the Ten Commandments and because these two were stored here they witnessed the two truths, the treaty. Now those who have studied know what those witnesses were about. The first truth was God was saying that I am faithful; that is what His copy said. In other words, God said this is the status, here are My do’s, here are my don’ts, here’s what I’m going to promise to do for you Israel, I have perfectly obeyed my side of the agreement. You people are not so the second witness was that you are unfaithful; that is the witness Stephen is describing.

And so when he describes the tabernacle of witness what is he talking about? He’s talking about orientation to God’s grace. He’s talking about the fact that look you people, all the time you had this great tabernacle you spoke of, what was in the very center of the most central piece of furniture in that thing? Confession of God’s perfection and your imperfection. What is the witness about? The witness is about man’s need for God’s grace. So this is why he begins his third point in his sermon by the phrase, “Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness,” for those of you who mark your Bible for Old Testament quotes, “tabernacle of witness” is an Old Testament quote, the rest of verse 44, “that he should make it according to the fashion that he had seen,” that is an Old Testament quote; verse 45 “into the possession” is an Old Testament quote; verse 46, “desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob,” is an Old Testament quote; verse 47 in its entirety is an Old Testament quote, once showing you our repeated principle here that you cannot expect to understand, appreciate or enjoy the New Testament unless you’ve done your homework in the Old Testament.

Okay, “Our fathers,” he said, “had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness,” notice where they had it; they did not have it on Mount Zion, they did not have it on the soil of Palestine; they had it amongst the sand dunes of Sinai, which means then, Stephen says, that God’s presence was not fixed in one point it was mobile, it was able to be moved around and because it was able to be moved around then, says Stephen, logically, you people who are standing here accusing me of speaking against the temple, accusing the Lord Jesus Christ of speaking against the temple as though this is some great sin of blasphemy; the temple says Stephen, is no more a proper absolute than the Torah was. These things, he says, have to be taken in their divine viewpoint context and these people were not doing it. So this is why Stephen takes their most favorite point of worship, the tabernacle, shows that it was temporary, shows that it bore witness of their sin and shows that it was mobile. All these things, of course, refuting their position.

Notice at the end of verse 44 in at least two ways he stresses that this is by God’s deliberate design. He says: “as He,” God, “had appointed,” and then he puts a comma, “speaking unto Moses,” and he quotes, “that he should make it according to the plan,” or “the type that he had seen.” Well what had Moses seen? Moses had a vision of looking into heaven and actually peering up there and seeing what it was like, and God projected it down in some way, some audio-visual projection system and Moses saw it and he copied the tabernacle from it. So the tabernacle, Stephen says, of which I’m speaking and of which I make my whole case, that tabernacle is not just the early stage and evolution of Israel’s religion, as a modern sociologist would put it. That tabernacle is not just a temporary building until we get our new building; that tabernacle was there by God’s direct design, His direct authorization and Stephen justifies it, he says the point I’m going to make is in the direct will of God. I’m not arguing from some secondary source, I’m arguing from God’s key ordained system of worship.

He then goes on to verse 45, and moves along to the next step in the divine viewpoint framework. This why there is no substitute for leaning the divine viewpoint framework, going over and over and over it until you know cold, backwards, forwards and sideways the key events of the Old Testament and their associated doctrine. Stephen gives an idea or a model of how to handle ourselves. Stephen is face to face with a group of critics who are shortly going to murder him and Stephen must answer a loaded question, which he refuses to answer without going through the divine viewpoint framework. And so he says okay, he would say to himself, let’s see, I’ve got a problem here, these people don’t understand the nature of our country; they don’t understand their culture and like any great man Stephen says the only way to answer that kind of a question is go back to origins. That’s what Americans ought to be doing in 1976, going back to the origins of our country, the origins of the Constitution instead of having some idiot parade down Broadway the city fathers ought to require, as a voting prerequisite a reading on the part of every registered voter the Constitution; if you don’t read it you don’t vote. Can you imagine the stir that would cause; well I can’t read, I just graduated and I still can’t read. Well, you shouldn’t vote then. How are you going to vote intelligently if you can’t read.

We ought to go back to the sources of information in history and Stephen did that. Stephen had the problem of how do I tell these people the history of their own country? I go back to the call of Abraham. So he starts right here because that’s the origin of the whole problem. Then he advances to the Exodus, he advances to Mount Sinai and now in verse 45 he’s going to move to the next one, the conquest and settlement. When he gets through with the conquest and settlement he’s going to go to the election and reign of King David; he follows exactly the divine viewpoint framework, as do all the great men of Scripture. These men used this framework system of thinking, I am convinced, over and over and over and over again; it was the core of their entire defense of the Christian faith.

In Acts 7:45 he refers to the generation after the wilderness wandering generation; he says, “Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus,” now here he pulls another one of his fast type deals off because the word “Joshua” in Hebrew, Yeshua, and Yeshua is the word from which we get Jesus. So watch here, in the Old Testament, same word, Joshua, which is equivalent to Yeshua, the Y comes over as a J and somehow the e came over as an o, but other than that it’s the same word, exactly the same word. That was Jesus’ real name, Yeshua of Nazareth, and Jesus is just from the Greek; here’s the Hebrew, here’s the English name and in the middle here you have a Greek name, Iesous. Now Iesous, Iesous, is the word that he brings up here for Joshua’s name. His real name is Joshua but Stephen, instead of going back to the real name goes back to the Greek name, Iesous which was proper because Iesous was the equivalent of Yeshua, except for the fact that Stephen wants to get across a point that Joseph as well as Joseph and Moses is a type of Christ. And again we have Christ following a pattern, a pattern which is duplicated in at least three outstanding fathers of the nation.

So, “our fathers that came after brought in with Iesous, into” or when they began literally, “the dispossession of the Gentiles,” when they began their holy war of removing the Gentiles from the land and during this holy war or this campaign, we have the land area attached with a military strategy that began with a crossing of the Jordan River; this is the western strategy, see they had a southern strategy forty years before which failed. So Joshua tried the invasion route that had always been tried, the Jordanians tried this in 1968, the eastern route, phase one, is to secure a beachhead on the west bank, and they did so, Joshua secured it at Jericho, that gave him the lines of communication, gave him food and water supplies, and then a place called Ai, and Bethel, and this gave him a military footing in the hills of Judah; after which phase two of the campaign was the southern part in which he looped down and secured this area. And after securing this, phase three of the campaign was the northern campaign that went up to a place called Hatzar, so that was the military strategy of General Joshua and his army.

But as he followed this, what went with him, and that’s what Stephen’s point is, what went with him all this time? The ark of the covenant. Mobility again, it wasn’t fixed in one place; it never got narrowed down so God’s presence is trapped this way. God isn’t in some sort of gold cage and it took him around on wheels; that’s not the picture of God’s presence in the Old Testament he says; and furthermore during this period you’ll notice in verse 45 how it ends, “whom God drove out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David,” so let’s see what he’s saying here.

He’s saying in the year 1400 BC on down to the year 1000 BC or a period of four centuries there was holy war. By the way, if any of you tend toward pacifism you’ve got a problem because the Bible authorizes war under certain processes and the Christian is authorized to kill and be the best killer he possibly can to destroy the enemy when that is just to do so. It is the Christian privilege, it is the Christian right to serve the Lord by killing the enemy when those situations arise in history. So for four hundred years it was God’s will that the enemy be annihilated; these people were degenerates, they had to be eliminated from history. And if they weren’t eliminated from history you and I would not be here today; certain races at certain times in history, certain cultures become degenerate and the only way God can save the rest of the human race is to eliminate them, as He did, for example, the people in Tibet, when the Chinese communists came in to eliminate a very gross form of demonism. And from time to time this has happened, it’s a horrible thing to watch and it’s not man’s desire, necessarily to do this, but God decides that when there’s a cancer it has to be removed.

So for four hundred years they tried to remove this cancer but they had some of the cancer in their own souls and one day they went down here to the area called Philistia with the ark, using it as a good luck charm and they lost it. And Stephen includes that in this verse; he doesn’t mention it but any Jew who knew his history would understand. He’s saying look, you people, that sacred ark, the ark itself, was lost. Now did the whole nation fall apart because the ark was lost? Did God’s plan come to a screeching halt because someone walked off with a sacred box? No, God’s plan rests upon God’s Word and you can ruin the ark, you can ruin the tent, you can ruin anything but God’s plan goes on; that’s his point.

So this is why in Acts 7:46 we now come to the second stage and that is the stage of King David. He says in verse 46, David, “Who found favor before God, and desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob. [47] But Solomon built him an house.” Now to get the background, what was going on all during this period turn back to 2 Samuel 7 for the correct rendition of this history, unlike Professor Friedman’s movie David, which was great historically but theologically left a lot to be desired. David, in David’s day, faced an international custom. So let’s first look at what the international custom was and then we’ll talk about 2 Samuel 7, but if we start immediately into this 2 Samuel 7 thing and you read all about David and many of you have read this before, you’re familiar with the story and it’s just one little story but you don’t understand that this was a radically new thing. This had never been seen before in ancient history. Here’s why; let’s go to Egypt for a comparison.

In Egypt there was the custom established that when the Pharaoh went out into battle, the cycle would be you go to war, he’d be victorious and he’d come back. Part of his victorious celebration would be giving thanks to the God who supposedly gave him the victory. We can think, for example of Pharaoh Thutmose III, the son of Hatshepsut, came back from a crusade in northeast Palestine, which we believe is Pharaoh [can't understand word] of the invasion of Rehoboam’s day, came back and he gave praise to Amun Re; Amun Re is the Egyptian god. And he gave praise to Amun Re in a very particular way; we have the document and this document is written as though Amun Re is speaking but we know that wasn’t done because Pharaoh Thutmose III actually wrote the document, a little braggadocio involved here of course, and so Thutmose had this written about Amun Re: “Thou,” said Amun Re, “have erected my dwelling place,” that is my temple, “as the work of eternity,” notice this, “made longer than wide than that which had been before,” in other words, Thutmose made a bigger temple for Amun Re than anybody else had. “My monuments are greater than those of the king who had been.” And then last, “I commanded you to make them and I am propitiated” or satisfied, “by them.” So here we have the theology of works involved that permeated the entire ancient world, that man would built great monuments for their gods and the gods would look down at these hand made things and say oh, that’s satisfies me, I am propitiated. This is the height of a theology of works, that the gods and goddesses are somehow dependent upon man’s works for their pleasure.

It was in that kind of a situation that 2 Samuel 7 occurred, so when you read in verse 2, “that the king,” this is at the end of all the wars, King David “said unto Nathan, the prophet, See, now, I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God dowels within curtains.” David, in part, is simply following the custom that any other king, in any other would do. Verse 3, Nathan hears the thing and he’s the advisor to the king, and he thinks it’s a pretty good idea, so he says go ahead and do it, “Nathan said to the king, Go, do all that is thine heart; for the LORD is with thee.” Now we have the bombshell dropped in David’s lap because in verse 4, “And it came to pass that night, that the word of Jehovah came unto Nathan, saying, [5] Go and tell My servant David, Thus saith the LORD, Are you going to build for me a house to dwell in?” See, it’s sarcasm. In other words, God says who do you think you are Buster, building Me a house. And David was probably genuinely shocked by this statement from God because it went against everything he knew as a king; Thutmose used to do this, the Assyrian kings used to do this, what’s the deal.

Well, what was the deal? The deal was that God was the God who was really there; it wasn’t any longer some finite polytheistic deity, it was the infinite personal God who was the Creator and because it was the infinite personal God, God could not have His character blotched by a theology of works. Suppose Yahweh went ahead and build the temple for Him as a gift. What would that tell you about God’s character. It would tell you that he’s no different from Amun Re, no different from any of the other great gods of the ancient world, that God was not qualitatively different. So God therefore said huh-un, huh-un David, I appreciate you attitude but I am not going to permit you to make Me a temple. As a matter of fact, He goes on, verse 6-7, “Whereas I have not dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt,” and I believe this is where Stephen got his idea for this sermon, “I have not dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle.” Notice the word “walk,” I’ve gone, I’ve been mobile from point to point, I haven’t stayed in one place, I’m not like an animal that you put in a cage and carry me around and display me like you would a piece in museum. [7] “In all the places in which I have walked with the children of Israel…,” did I ever ask anyone to build Me a house? So you see the sovereign gracious God of Scripture wholly…wholly rejects any system of works; ANY system whereby man adds to what God has done.

So this is the background for the temple episode and God’s saying I cannot permit a temple to be made for Me that defiles My essence. Instead, God said to David, tell you what, I’ll make you a temple, and in history God made David a house, but it’s a play on the word. In the Hebrew the word looks like this, beth, you see that word in the word “Bethlehem,” house of bread is what it means in the Hebrew word. But beth can mean two things; it can mean a literal house or it can mean a dynasty and so God says to David, David, I’ll give you a beth, I’ll give you a house, and this particular house, and this is the irony of the whole things, whereas a literal physical building would not hold Me, would not contain My infinite being, I’m going to give you a dynasty David, that’s going to go forever, it’s going to be an eternal dynasty. Now we now know that one of the sub clauses of that little particular contract was that I will incarnate Myself in one of your seed, so ironically David’s temple will be take up to house the infinite God but it won’t be a building it will be the humanity of one Jesus of Nazareth.

On our way back to Stephen’s speech let’s stop in the book of Psalms, Psalm 132 for a revelation of David’s attitude during all this, to show you that though David was mistaken, David tried to do something for God and he got corrected on it, we can’t be harsh on David because he did have the right attitude. His heart was in the right place and as long as we’re on positive volition we can make mistakes but God corrects us; so we can trust God to correct us. This is the attitude David had in Psalms 132:1-5, “Yahweh, remember David, and all his afflictions; [2] How he swore unto Yahweh, and vowed unto the mighty God of Jacob, [3] Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed; [4] I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to my eyelids, [5] Until I find out a place for the Yahweh, an habitation for the Mighty God of Jacob.”

Now modern critics of the Bible always like to make fun of what they call the anthropomorphic representation of God among the Hebrew people. By that we mean that the Hebrew people believed that God walked around, that God could be visualized in the form of a man. Now that wasn’t so naïve; David had this picture. David had the picture that God, after the war, would like a place to lie down and relax, have a good time, see again the element of enjoyment, that God wanted a place, a vacation spot and so David says I’m going to build God a vacation spot, a nice summer home. I’ve got one and I think God ought to have one. Now of course David, unknown to David, was anticipating the fact that God is anthropomorphic because He fits into the humanity of Jesus Christ and therefore show up as a man.

But in Psalm 132:1-5 we have just his overall positive volition toward wanting to do something, and this is why now when we come back to Acts 7:46 Stephen says David found grace in the eyes of God, he had the proper attitude of Psalm 132, and then he quotes, the last part of verse 46 is a quotation from this Psalm. Then verse 47, “But Solomon built Him an house.” Now Stephen doesn’t mean to knock Solomon here; that word “But” can give you a wrong attitude if you have a King James translation and you see that contrast there, because we know from 1 Chronicles 28:11-12 that Solomon’s design for the temple came from his father, David, who in turn got it from God Himself. So the problem was not the temple itself. You had a tabernacle, the tabernacle was mobile. We go now to the temple and the temple is fixed, in one spot. That was by God’s design. But, said Stephen, when God went to all this trouble to design a temple that would be static, fixed in one place, he hesitated to add a few little points, and says Stephen, you people who are criticizing me this day and our Savior, and all early Christians, forget what these added statements were, which he now gives in verses 49-50.

Acts 7:49-50 are a quotation from the Old Testament. “Howbeit the most High dwell not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, [49] Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my vacation [rest]? [50] Hath not my hand made all these things?” In other words, unlike Amun Re, who’s so concerned that Pharaoh Thutmose III build him something, give him a present, that this Amun Re can have pleasure in, God says David, you can’t give Me any presents; now I can give you some but you can’t give me some. Orientation to grace, see. That’s what we have to have, we don’t give God anything. Christian work is not a gift to God; God gives us everything that’s worthwhile; we don’t give Him anything. Same concept. But there’s something else that’s happened here. Verse 48, 49 and 50 represent Old Testament doctrine of the temple. Now let’s see if we try to put this in a picture for you. Here we have a temple and in that temple dwelt the Shekinah glory. Solomon watched, as he prayed in 1 Kings, for the Shekinah glory to fill that back part of the temple; it was built just like the tabernacle in that respect. And so as the Shekinah glory filled it, a man, believers could walk up to this tabernacle and actually have a true relationship with God at that point in space, because God has His presence there. That was correct. But what was not correct was to think that you could not have a relationship with God in any other point in space. That was false because God being infinite could not be compressed down to the size of that room. And therefore since the room did not hold God, God there was not confined, He did not lose his infinity by virtue of being in a temple.

All right, now let’s apply that in application to today. Today we have the presence of God; the presence of God, the Holy Spirit is in the Church, but the Holy Spirit has only spoken in the Bible that is a product of that early Church, or we’ll say the New Testament. Now we worship the Lord Jesus Christ through encountering Him in the New Testament. This is why John says in 1 John, if you have fellowship with the Father you only have it if you have fellowship with us apostles. Now is John around in a box so we can touch him? No, but we’ve got John’s writings. We don’t have Paul here today either, but we’ve got Paul’s writings. And so as we have fellowship with the apostles, as we have that apostolic dimension we have fellowship with Christ. Now that doesn’t mean, just like it didn’t mean back there, that doesn’t mean that we know everything there is to know about Jesus Christ, or everything there is to know about God. We know only what He had revealed in the place where we go, that’s all. As Stephen said, the only thing you knew about Yahweh in the Old Testament was what He was revealing in the temple, but don’t confine Him to just that.

So he adds, as he concluded, he’s going to conclude in verse 51 a very vicious kind of statement and critics do not understand why Stephen bridges what looks like a very dull history lesson with all of a sudden striking and lashing out with this vicious statement of verse 52. To see the context of why Stephen did this, and to get a little bit better prepared, turn back to Jeremiah 7:1 just to show you that what Stephen did had been repeated centuries before by another fiery prophet of God. “The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, saying,” now Jeremiah stands in the last generation of his country, he is a great patriot and a man whose heart is broken because he watches his country heed itself to degeneracy; he watches his country go down and probably the worst thing that any patriot could ever see is watch his country go down to military defeat; watch the enemy soldiers come in, tread upon your land, take it over, destroy your homes and so forth. This is a horrible, horrible experience that many, many families in many, many countries over many centuries have had to see. So far as Americans we have been very fortunate never having to witness such a horrible thing.

Jeremiah was the kind of man who had to live through that kind of a thing, and just prior to the fall of his nation and due to the fall of the nation they had a problem with the first temple, a problem that they had with the first temple that the people of Stephen’s day are having with the second temple. Watch how Jeremiah dealt with the problem. Jeremiah is giving a message; in Jeremiah 7:2 God tells Jeremiah, “Stand in the gate of the LORD’s house,” where is Stephen standing? The gate of the Lord’s house. “Stand in the gate of the LORD’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of Yahweh, all ye of Judah, that enter in at these gates to worship Yahweh.” In other words, the address is being made to Jews who are worshiping God in the temple, who are the temple crowd, the exact same crowd that Stephen is addressing. Verse 3, “Thus saith the LORD of armies, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.” Now watch verse 4, because here is the key, here’s where the sin was, “Trust not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these,” see, they were using the temple of the Lord as a good luck charm, just like they had previously used the ark of the covenant. This is always the danger of religion in history, that God give something very graciously to us and so what do we do? Instead of worshiping the One who gave it we worship what it is that He gave. We worship the gift, not the Giver, and God gave the temple so the people worshiped the temple rather than God. And Jeremiah sees it, he calls it. Verse 4, “Trust not in lying words,” the word “lying” here doesn’t necessarily mean wrong, it means words that will cave in, like thin ice, you skate on it, crash.

Jeremiah 7:5, “For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor; [6] If you oppress not the stranger and the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your harm, [] Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.” Verse 8, another warning, “Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit. [9] Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom you know not?[10] And come and stand before Me in this temple, which is called by My name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations?” Verse 10 is a misapplication of the doctrine of eternal security. These people are saying well, God gave us a temple, we’re save, we don’t have to worry, this temple is going to be here forever. They’re putting a false face on this oriented trust in the gift instead of the Giver. And so therefore what is God going to do? He’s saying you people have the arrogance to say that you can raise all the hell you want to and be immune. Well, God’s going to raise some hell, and in 586 BC that temple is going to come down brick by brick.

So God continues, Jeremiah 7:11, “Is this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the LORD. [12] But go now unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I sent My name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people, Israel.” Oh, says God, Shiloh, what happened at Shiloh? The tabernacle was destroyed. God says you want to see what I did in my gift; you people argued, you… to bless you, you turned from me to My gift, I’ll burn My gift, I would rather you have no gift and keep oriented to Me properly than become disoriented. So he cites the historical destruction of the tabernacle in verse 12 to remind people that in about 40 or 50 more years you people are going to live to see the destruction of the temple. [13, “And now, because you have done all these works, saith the LORD, and I spoke unto you, rising up early and speaking, but ye heard not; and I called you, but ye answered not; [14] Therefore will I do unto this house, which is called by My name, in which ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh. [15] And I will case you out of my sight, as I have cast out all of your brethren, even the whole seed of Ephraim. [16] Therefore, pray not for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to Me; for I will not hear thee.”]

Now that’s a very interesting passage, it fits very well with Stephen. But it fits doubly well with Stephen because what’s going to happen in about 30 years? The temple is going to be destroyed in 70 AD as Emperor Titus moves in with the legions and wipes it out.

Back to Acts 7; see, Stephen knew what he was doing and so when he makes this conclusion in verse 51 things are going to get real rough, fast! Now this is name-calling in the Word of God and Stephen has to lay it on the line because even believers at this point in history are snowed with the temple. For example, in Acts 2:46 we have the Christians going into the temple. In Acts 3:1 the Christians are going into the temple. In Acts 3:11 the Christians are going into the temple. In Acts 5:21 the Christians are going into the temple. In Acts 5:42 the Christians are going into the temple. So the Christians are about as imbued with pseudo-respect for the temple as the non-Christians are. So here is a man who has thought it through, who has arrived at a doctrinal position and now he drives home his point. And apparently these people were fixed, spiritually that is, not mentally but spiritually, and so he has to get his point across with a few names. He did not take a course in Dale Carnegie on how to win friends and influence people; he did not spend four years at seminary telling everyone how good they are, in verse 51 he let them have it, and he let them have it with two words borrowed from the Old Testament.

Acts 7:51, “Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit, [as your fathers did, so do ye.” The word “stiff-necked” is always used in the Old Testament for autonomy, an autonomous pride, man reaching out with his own standards, dictating to God what God must and must not do. And the word “uncircumcised” is a word that would be applied to the damned among the Gentiles. This is what David said when Goliath came to him, “you uncircumcised Philistine, what are you doing talking about our God.” The use of the idea of uncircumcision here means that you are a non-covenant person. Circumcision was given as a physical sign of spiritual regeneration and if you weren’t circumcised you were not part of the covenant. And therefore it would be equivalent in our day to saying you bunch of damned fools, what are you doing. That’s how Stephen ended his sermon. He didn’t learn that in seminary. You don’t get any courses on that. “You stiff-necked and damned fools, you do always resist the Holy Spirit,” now notice in the three illustrations that Stephen has used, from Abraham, from Moses, from the tabernacle and temple, in all three of those illustrations there is not one vision of the Holy Spirit, and yet here in this conclusion he says you are in fact resisting the Holy Spirit.

Let’s plug this together to see how he’s using “resisting the Holy Spirit.” What were they resisting, here, here and here? They were resisting the Word of God; they were resisting the Word of God in the Abrahamic Covenant with Abraham; they were resisting the Torah that Moses gave them here, given at Mount Sinai; they were resisting 2 Samuel 7 and the theology of the temple here. So Stephen says when you resist the Word of God you are resisting the Spirit of God; there is no difference in his mind between the work of the Spirit and the Word of God; none of this artificial modern day junction of the Holy Spirit over here and doctrine over here. The two are wedded together in Stephen’s thinking. And then he adds a last insult in verse 51; these people are very proud in their tradition. He says you people sure are traditionalists, you’re traditionally apostate, “as your fathers did, so do you. [52, “Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One;” there’s the title of Christ, borrowed from Isaiah 53, “of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers.” My, Stephen, you really believe in stepping on toes, don’t you.

He’s accusing them, outrightly, of the specific crime of the crucifixion of Christ. Verse 53, “Who have received” and verse 53 is the last slap in the face, “Who have received the Law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.” You had the greatest chance of any group of people in history to do a tremendous thing, live in peace, live in prosperity, enjoy life, have a wonderful home life, have a wonderful business life, have an excellent community, God gave you every asset under the sun to do it with and look what you did. Just look, great performance factor, real impressive record.

At this point, obviously the group breaks up and we have subjectivism in the court room. See, this is what happens when you have a group of people who go negative to God’s Word. Sooner or later people who reject the authority of the Word of God actually reject the authority of their conscience and as a result their minds become filled with human viewpoint, but the weakness of all human viewpoint is that it can’t control emotions. When a person gets to the point in their life where they just kiss of their conscience, kiss off inner standards, they are going to get to the point in their life where they cannot think objectively. They just react, they don’t think on the issue. They only respond with their emotions; this is where we are as a country, rapidly heading toward this direction where our democracy is going to become impossible. Democracy is presupposing the ability of the voter to think objectively and increasingly we have masses of people who can only think of one term, what more they’re going to get and as a result of this mentality we are generating a mob mentality in this country and here’s a mob in a courtroom, faced with an objective decision and emotionally they are unable to think.

So in Acts 7:54 the reaction of people that are on this emotional binge brought on by their own apostasy, [“When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart,”] Literally in the Greek it reads: “While they were hearing these things, they were being cut to the heart,” that means to their conscience, Stephen just blew over everything they trusted in. These people had placed their trust in tradition over trust in God Himself. And as a result, when Stephen came in and he crushed it and he destroyed it by historical proof they got the point, very quickly, but they couldn’t take it. “…they gnashed on him with their teeth.” Now somebody after the service asked what does that mean, did they bite him? No, that means they just ground their teeth together, they were so angry, the adrenalin was flowing, they were so intensely hostile to him that they couldn’t wait to get their hands on him.

Acts 7:55, “But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven,” because he knows what’s coming now, “and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, [56] And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” Now this magnificent passage in Scripture is the only one you’ll ever see in God’s Word up until Christ returns again where Christ stands. Never at any other place in God’s Word does Christ ever do this. In all other places He is always pictured as sitting at the right hand of the Father, reigning as the King upon His throne. But at this one point, Jesus Christ as the God-man, gets up off His throne in heaven and stands and looks at Stephen. This is remarkable; the Holy Spirit has preserved the vision of Stephen as a blessing for Christians who must die down through the years. We don’t hear much about Christian martyrs in our church in the United States but today your fellow believers behind the iron curtain are dying; husbands who are pastor-teachers re being removed from their families, their wives are cut off from any welfare help, their children are prevented from getting jobs while they rot in Siberia. That is the glorious religious freedom of détente operating, by the Helsinki accords, etc. And as evangelical pastor after evangelical pastor is killed, or has an accident like [not sure of name; sounds like: Bah blinko] did, on the way home he accidentally ran into a post or something and got a brain concussion and his wife found his body four days later, it’s amazing how these accidents happen, and so Christian pastor and Christian, the girl that you saw in the posters we had a few weeks back, she was witnessing in her high school and she was interrogated, brought down to the police station several times, 17 year old girl, and the last time she came back to the police station she came home and within six hours she was dead. Her parents don’t know what happened, she just keeled over and dropped dead. Obviously worked over by the secret police. So this is the kind of thing that Christians are giving their lives for today. They’re giving their lives in Africa; black Christians who have had unfortunately thanks to white missionaries very little preparation in the Word of God are having to face their fellow black pagan masters and these black Christians are fantastic, they’re standing up for Christ and they’re dying. They too are the martyrs for the Lord Jesus Christ.

And all down through the book of Revelation and into church history there’s a theme, that as I say, we do not recognize and we’re not familiar with it and that is that there’s a special place in the heart of God for those people who give their last dying breath for Christ. Martyrs have a special reward in Scripture; God blesses martyrs. God blesses those who have had to take physical torture and persecution for Christ.

And since God knows at this time, because this is all happening with Stephen outside the temple, since God knows that all down the centuries this is going to happen time and time and time again, He gives Stephen this great vision, which He will not give to many others. If you would like to do your own reading on how some of the great Christians have died there’s a book called Fox’s Book of Martyrs and it’s a classic history of the great men and women who have died for Christ over the centuries. And I think it would be a sobering experience for some of you who have had little or no suffering in your life to read that and it’ll give you a refreshing perspective on what it means to face what Stephen faced.

So God gives a special vision that will encourage martyrs down through the church history; Christ gets up off His throne and so doing He’s doing at least two things. He’s doing many things but at least two things. One, Christ standing up off the throne shows that heaven itself is responding to the torture in history; that heaven is not indifferent to evil on earth, that God is not sitting up there like some golden statue of Michelangelo, totally unchanged, totally unfeeling. But that what happens down here and the pain and the sorrow and the heartache immediately has a response in Christ in heaven. And so Christ knows that His beloved Stephen is going to be killed. They had a nice way of doing it at this time in history. They had, usually… the requirement in the Mishnah was that you had to have a wall twice the height of a man, first of all. And you had to get the person on top of the wall that was twice their height and they would stand up there with their hands tied behind their back and somebody would come along and knock them off the wall. This was hopefully to break a leg or a few ribs by knocking them off from this height. Then if that didn’t knock them out, you tried to knock them so they landed on their head and knocked them out, but if that didn’t knock them out then somebody else would get down below and they’d turn them over on their back and as they get on their back the first witness up from the crime would take a large rock, reach down and throw it down and crush their chest cavity, and by crushing their heart this was the first rock that was thrown and then everybody else would join in and smash them up with rocks. So this is what is about to happen to Stephen and Christ knows it. So he gets off the throne and He is giving Stephen the encouragement that don’t sweat Stephen, in a few minutes you’re going to be up here, so just relax and enjoy it, I’m giving you dying grace so it’s going to be painful for a few minutes but it’ll be all over and this is… in fact, you’ll notice the last word in this chapter in verse 60, Stephen “fell asleep.” It’s a very gentle word for a very vicious and violent murder, but God’s Word uses this. It is even in a passive voice, it says Stephen was put to sleep.

Now why does God’s word approach such violent death with such a gentle word? Because of dying grace; at the last breath of Stephen Christ gets up to personally administer dying grace. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” God gives dying grace at the moment of death. You don’t have to be morbid; if you’re a Christian today don’t worry about how you’re going to die. Just understand from the Word of God that it can be a very pleasurable experience. Instead of getting all out of kilter about it just look forward to it, going to enjoy it, it’s going to happen so just relax and learn to trust the Lord with it. If you happen to die in a horrible automobile wreck, airplane crash, someone blows your brains out or something else, it’s all right, God has sufficient dying grace for you and God’s attitude toward death is what you see here.

So Christ gently encourages Stephen, but Christ is doing more than just encouraging Stephen and just encouraging us. There’s another factor to all this and it harps back to Christ’s role of what He is doing now at the Father’s right hand. What does the Bible say Christ in fact is at the Father’s right hand today? The Bible has a term for Christ, our attorney, our defense attorney. Christ is our attorney in the throne room and when Jesus Christ gets up off the seat to stand there while Stephen is dying He is doing what He promised He’d do back in the Gospels when He said, “If you confess My name before men, I will confess your name before My Father who is in heaven.” That was especially directed to martyrs who would have to stand under physical threat to their life to either shut up and live or speak for Christ and die, and these men who would confess under that kind of pressure and confess Christ’s name, Christ gets up off His throne, as it were, and says to the Father, this one is one of My precious martyrs, I introduce you. So Christ is not only encouraging Stephen, He is getting up to introduce Stephen to God the Father.

So with this Stephen says, [56] “I see the heavens opened,” and he says not “the Son of God,” but “I see the Son of man,” that’s the title of Christ borrowed from Daniel 7, and it emphasizes Christ’s future reign over the entire human race. We would translate it “Jesus Christ is the Son of mankind,” that is, that in the future among the saved there will be representatives from every race, every culture, every strata. Christ is not the son of the white man, He’s not the son of black men, He is the Son of all men everywhere.

And then in Acts 7:57, you have the ultimate in subjectivism, as these apostate people with their emotions out of control now get to the point where they cannot even stand any further data; not only can’t they stand the conclusions of the truth, they can’t even stand any more facts that are truth. So they scream in 47, just all of them get together and they collectively scream to drown out Stephen’s last words, “Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, [58] And cast him out of the city,” that’s very nice of them because they weren’t allowed to stone someone in the city, it’s bad to get blood on the rocks, and so they threw him out of the city “and began to stone him,” it’s an imperfect tense, the constant imperfect where it’s just the beginning, “and the witnesses laid down their clothes [at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul],” the idea of the witnesses or the false ones in this case, would be the first one and the first witness has to take off his jacket so he can lift this big heavy rock because when Stephen gets shoved over he’s going to have to be the one that crushes Stephen’s chest, so Stephen is standing down there, apparently he has either been thrown off the wall, he’s survived it, and so he is going to be on his knees in a moment so the person hasn’t yet thrown the first rock, but he’s about to, and he takes off the outer tunic which they wore and he leaves it to the hat check boy, and the hat check boy is a young rabbinic student by the name of Saul, he was standing there while all of this went on. In fact, he mentions it later on in the book of Acts; it’s very impressive to Saul. And so they stone Stephen, [59, “And they stoned Stephen,”] they began and of course the first rock crushed his chest but it went along and what they usually did in those days, and as he did, Stephen called upon God; we don’t know whether this was his dying his breath, whether when the rock smashed it into his chest it also crushed his lungs or what, but he was able to get off one last statement, “Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. [60] And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he was put to sleep.”

Now the last statement he makes, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” was the last thing those people wanted to hear because that was a quotation from the Old Testament, and I’ll show you where that quote came from. Psalm 31; of all things, that Stephen had to say this as he died. There’s infuriated at the claims he was making for this Jewish carpenter from Nazareth, infuriated at his vision of seeing this Son of man, they couldn’t even stone him without him evangelizing them to his last breath.

So going back to Psalm 31, a praise psalm, and notice to whom it’s addressed, not to Christ, this is addressed to Jehovah God. “In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed.” Now I suspect the reason this phrase came to Stephen is that this Psalm was going through Stephen’s mind. Stephen was a man of the faith technique, and if as he stood there and knew that his hour was right there, and as he saw the people grabbing him and throwing him out of the city he had 15 or 20 minutes at least for them to take him from the temple out to the edge of the Kidron Valley where they threw him down, so for about 5 or 10 minutes he had nothing to do except enjoy the thing, and so what did he decided I know a good psalm, I’ll think of that. And he couldn’t talk to them, they wouldn’t listen to him, so the only thing he could do in that situation is just talk to the Lord about it. And so he began to recite to himself, I suspect, this psalm. “In thee, O Yahweh, do I put my trust; don’t let me be ashamed. Deliver me in thy righteousness. [2[ Bow down Thine ear to hear me; deliver me speedily. Be Thou my strong rock, for an house of defense to save me. [3] For Thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore, for Thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me. [4] Pull me out of the net that they have laid secretly for me; for Thou are my strength. [5] Into thine hand I commend my spirit, [thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth.]”

So it’s very interesting that the exact phraseology that he applies to Jesus is here applied to Jehovah God. And as Stephen utters his last breath what has he said: He has said Jesus Christ is Jehovah, and with complete abandon in front of his murderers he confesses this great fact.

Now let’s get point in all of this. Stephen’s message to the people has been very simple; it’s the message that we have seen so often and heard so often, going back to the simple, simple basics. Your trust, your faith, must have a proper object and as great as a religious organization and as religious associates may be, they cannot be trusted; not this way. Now I suggest one of the great ways we can personally apply what Stephen is saying in that day to our day is to learn to distinguish between respect and trust. You can respect a pastor-teacher or respect a local body of believers or respect other Christians or respect an offer that has meant a lot to you, and you ought to; this is your Biblical duty to respect, but never trust; never trust in the sense you place your trust as you would trust in God in any other person or organization. Christians over the centuries have been ripped off time and time again by endowing large universities with thousands and thousands of their hard-earned dollars in great trust funds because as the name implies they have trusted the organization to carry on after they’ve died, and shortly after they’ve died the organization has gone apostate and they’ve lost every penny they put into it. There is not one major liberal school or church in the United States today that is not funded by a large endowment fund put there by believers.

Why? Because believers trusted and they ought never to have done this; they ought to have listened to Stephen, you can’t even trust the temple, you can’t even trust the Torah, there’s only one object for your trust and that trust is Yahweh Himself.