Good morning, brothers.
I always begin with a simple principle. We have just sung it and prayed it, and all of our hearts are in that direction: we want to see the Lord.
So let me just begin by giving a Bible verse, and then I’ll pray, and we’ll look together in God’s Word. The verse is from the book of Hosea, chapter 10, verse 12:
Break up your fallow ground,
For it is time to seek the Lord
Until He comes to rain righteousness on you.
Isn’t that a wonderful verse? I didn’t understand the word fallow for a long time. I looked at my heart, and even prayed, “Lord, break up this fallow ground.” But what I had in my mind was ground full of thorns and briars, with weeds growing where they should not grow. I called that fallow ground.
That is not fallow ground. Fallow ground does not have weeds in it. Fallow ground does not have thorns or briars growing in it. Fallow ground is ground that has been plowed up and does not have seed in it. It is ground without life. That is what fallow ground is, but it is prepared. It is already prepared.
There are no weeds in it. It has been plowed; it is all prepared, and it is waiting for life. So that verse is very precious: “Break up your fallow ground. It is time to seek the Lord until He rains righteousness.”
If there is fallow ground—ground without life—let us lay that before the Lord. Is it too much, brothers, to ask Him to rain on us this morning and give us that life, give us that seed, so that that ground can be good soil? Let us pray.
Father, again we bow before You. We are so thankful that, for moments like these, You have not left us on our own or put us at the disposal of some human teacher. But You have given us Your Holy Spirit. You have given us Your precious Word. You have covenanted with us to dawn Christ upon our hearts.
We do desire life. You have promised that those who seek You will find You. We have Your permission to seek You.
And so we come now and ask, by Your grace, that You administer the Lord to our hearts. Take us beyond just the words; enable us to see You. And we thank You, Lord, that what You have done for Stephen is Your heart for every one of us.
We pray that we might enter into that vision You gave him, that we might taste the fruit that he experienced. We commit our time now unto You. May it be precious unto You. Minister to our hearts.
We ask in the precious name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Before we begin, I want to say a special welcome. It is so delightful to see some of these young fellows with us today and this weekend, and we are so glad.
You know, I think about 1 Samuel 3, where the priest got old and fat and was just not really sensitive. Yet the voice of the Lord came, and there was a child there before the ark, and that was the one who heard the Word.
So we are glad you are here, and pray that God will open your ears as well, that we might all behold the Lord. We are thankful for that.
I want you to turn, please, to Acts 7. I want to begin again by reading the text of that wonderful vision, beginning in verse 55.
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 and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears, and rushed at him with one impulse.
When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him;
And the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul.They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, “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!”
Having said this, he fell asleep.
Precious text, precious text.
As I suggested for this weekend, one cannot really study that record of God’s servant Stephen and not see how to die victoriously. We are heading toward that. I want to share from that text some of the great secrets, principles, of how to die victoriously.
You cannot look at the facts of that vision—filled with the Holy Spirit, standing under an open heaven, beholding a glorified Savior, being transformed by that revelation—and not get some idea of how to live victoriously.
He not only died victoriously; he lived victoriously. It is my understanding that the vision God gave Stephen was what enabled him to live victoriously and die victoriously.
I believe that if we have the vision he had, we will have the life he had and die the death that he died. That is what we are looking at now.
Last evening I began to introduce it, and this morning we will do a little more donkey work—just to lay out that vision God gave Stephen. Then, Lord willing, we will begin to look at how to live victoriously, illustrated by that vision, and then how to die victoriously.
There are two parts to the vision. The part we looked at last night had to do mostly with the individual. The part we are going to look at today includes the individual, but it is now expanded to the body, to the group, illustrated by God’s people in the Old Testament.
Last evening, I attempted to answer the question: What was Stephen’s contribution to the history of redemption? In other words, why does God tell his story? Why does God put that in there at all?
I believe that Stephen was the first one, by God’s grace, to discover who he was in Christ and to discover where his life really was: in Christ, in heavenly places. He was the first one to have that vision of union with Christ, what it meant to look unto the Lord.
Everyone around him at that time, though they all had the same experience—they had the indwelling Christ—still thought that they were Jews. They did not know who they were.
They were so locked into the holy place, the city of Jerusalem, and the holy temple in Jerusalem—the Jewish temple. They were Spirit-filled Jews. They had all the traditions and all the ceremonies. They followed the strict laws of Moses, attended all the meetings, and went to the annual pilgrimages. They were very good Jews.
But Stephen saw something else. God opened his heart and opened his eyes as he stood under the open heavens and gazed, and he saw the precious Lord Jesus. He saw it with the eyes of faith.
You know, in Acts 1, they were asked, “Why do you stand gazing into heaven?” They were looking up into heaven too, and they were rebuked for it because they were looking with these eyes. Stephen was looking with these eyes, and he saw the glorified Lord.
He also saw where his life was: in heaven, not on the earth. He had nothing here but a grave. There were no friends here. What was true at the end was simply an illustration of what was true in his life.
He had come to see, “This world is not my home. I have another place.” God gave him a new focus, and he began to focus on the Man in the heavens.
Because of that vision, as we closed last night, I showed you that this man enjoyed a fullness: full of the Holy Spirit, full of wisdom, full of grace, full of faith, full of power. That fullness was all a byproduct of that vision.
In Acts 7, Stephen sheds new light. It is the same vision, but it is a further development of it. That illustrates, by the way, that he had that vision before he had the vision. In other words, it was in his heart before God literally opened the heavens for him and he saw that wonderful revelation.
In this section, he begins to see the church. Actually, we are going to look at the sermon he gave in Acts 7, but it begins in Acts 6. Let me read this as background, beginning at verse 8.
Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people.
But some men from what was called the synagogue of the freedmen, including both Cyrenians and Alexandrians, and some from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and argued with Stephen.
But they were unable to cope with the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking.Then they secretly induced men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.”
They stirred up the people, the elders, and the scribes, and they came up to him, dragged him away, and brought him before the Council.
They put forward false witnesses who said, “This man incessantly speaks against this holy place and the Law; for we have heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us.”Fixing their gaze on him, all who were sitting in the Council saw his face like the face of an angel.
In Acts 6:8-9, some commentators say that there may have been as many as five different synagogues coming together in order to confront Stephen.
In verse 9, you may have a translation that says libertines or freedmen. Now, the way we use the word libertine today, we speak of those who are loose with the law and abuse their freedom in Christ. This is not a synagogue of libertines—though they may have been that. This is talking about freedmen, those who were once slaves and had been set free, or the children of slaves who had been set free.
Some say there are only three synagogues here; some say two. We do not know for sure. We know some were from Europe, some from Asia, and some from Africa. But they all united together against God’s servant Stephen.
In that day, it was not uncommon to gather in the synagogues in order to discuss and dispute. They had gone from teaching in the temple to disputing in the synagogue. We are told that, at that time, there were about 480 synagogues in Jerusalem alone.
Depending on your topic—what you liked to argue about or discuss—you could choose your synagogue. That is pretty much what they did. They were disputing there when they turned on Stephen.
The Bible says that they were overwhelmed by the wisdom the Holy Spirit gave to His servant. Then, you know the story: they suddenly grabbed him and dragged him before that religious court, the Sanhedrin.
This was the same court that condemned our Lord Jesus, the same court before which Peter and John were dragged, and later the same court that condemned the apostle Paul. Now Stephen stands before them on trumped-up charges.
Listen again to the charges, please. Acts 6:11:
They secretly induced men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.”
Now, he actually did say things they did not understand because they had no spiritual insight, and so they twisted his words. It was not as though he never said anything and they simply made it up. He said something that sounded an awful lot like this.
For example, you can say, “Rest in the Lord; do not get involved in works.” Then someone could stand up and say, “He teaches people to be lazy. He teaches people that works are not important.” Well, he did not say that at all, but they can twist it to mean that. He said something that triggered that accusation.
Then, Acts 6:13-14:
They put forward false witnesses who said, “This man incessantly speaks against this holy place and the Law; for we have heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us.”
My guess is that he probably said something like, “Christ has fulfilled the law. These are pictures, and they are going to pass away. This temple is a wonderful picture, but you do not need that; you need the reality.”
But they did not hear it that way. What they heard was, “He is against this place. He is against the temple. He is against the law. He is against Moses. Kill him.” That is how it all took place.
This is the longest discourse in the book of Acts. You can take the three times Paul spoke and add them all together, and you will not have a discourse as long as Stephen’s. Stephen’s is the longest discourse.
That alone, to me, is God’s invitation to study it. If God gives us that much inspired space, He is saying, “There is something here. You ought to take time and pay attention to this.”
This has been called Stephen’s defense. Technically, it was not that. You say, “How do you know?” Because I know what the charges were, and I know what his sermon was, and he never defended himself.
In the whole text, he did not answer the charges. He did not defend himself at all. So they call it Stephen’s defense, but it is not really Stephen defending himself.
Instead, it is Stephen sharing the burden, sharing the vision God had given him. God had given him a vision, and he was trying to lay it out before the unwilling.
When you lay out what God has given you before the unwilling, you might end up outside the city under a pile of stones. That is what happened here.
Stephen unfolded that great vision God had given him. He said, “I have learned who I am, and I have learned where I live. God has shown me the church, the people of God.”
He begins to take their Bible, their Old Testament, and little by little says, “Let me show you what I have seen.” The more he showed them, the angrier they became.
From day one, they had resisted that message. This discourse, this sermon, shows us pretty much what the legalist is willing to kill for and what the true Christian is willing to die for, because what is in here is something very, very precious.
Because Stephen was dragged from the synagogue before the Sanhedrin, he did not have the luxury that you brothers have given me. Quite a while ago, I was invited to come and share. That meant I had time to study.
I have a library. I have commentaries. I have books. I had time to see what others thought about this text. I have a computer—that does not help much.
I have notes, as you see. They delivered them in the truck. I have a lot of notes. I can prepare my remarks.
But if they just came to me in a discussion, dragged me across the street, and said, “Speak,” I would probably say, “Nicht gemacht—not prepared. Give me a couple months. Let me work on my notes. I’ll get back to you, Mr. Sanhedrin.”
Stephen did not have that opportunity. Some people can be dragged across the street and speak without notes.
I am only kidding about that because of the promise Jesus gave in Matthew 10. Listen to this promise:
Beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues;
And you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles.But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say;
For it will be given you in that hour what you are to say.
For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.
I tell you, you do not need notes when that takes place. That is what happened to Stephen. I call attention to that because the Bible says Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit, and God was speaking through Stephen.
Commentators point out that Stephen made at least nine historical errors in this sermon. When you go through the sermon, you say, “Well now, the Old Testament does not teach that, and the Old Testament does not teach that.” Nine different errors.
I suggest that if Stephen made nine historical errors, then the Holy Spirit made nine historical errors, because the Holy Spirit put in his mouth what he was to say.
Many account for those so-called errors by saying that the text he was using was Greek, and he was using the Septuagint version, and that is a little different, and so on. Do you think that when God spoke through Stephen, He forgot what He had written in Genesis four thousand years before that? He did not forget that.
The accuracy of Stephen’s overview of church history did not depend on his memory. It did not depend on his preparation. Acts 7 is Stephen’s speech, but it is also God’s speech. It is God’s interpretation. It is a chapter in our inspired Bible.
I could take a lot of time. I went through all of those so-called discrepancies and could at least give a possible answer to them. That is not our purpose for being here. I do not want to do that, and you are saying, “Good, because I do not want to hear all of that.”
But in case you are interested, let me recommend a book to you that does that in great detail. Many commentaries answer these questions, but a lot of the answers are just surface. They give you the right answer, but they do not develop it.
This particular book goes into wonderful, satisfying detail. The problem is that you might not be able to find it, but let me give it to you anyway: Christopher Wordsworth, Commentary on Acts.
If you can get hold of Wordsworth’s commentaries, it would be a good investment for you. He has twelve volumes in the Old Testament and four volumes in the New Testament. I only have four volumes of the whole set. I cannot find them; I have looked everywhere.
So if you see them and you do not want them, you can just give me a call.
Anyway, it is called The Greek Testament with Introduction, Notes, and Index. It is sort of scholarly. Even though much of his commentary is in French, Latin, German, and Greek, what he says in English is worth the price of the commentary.
He says a lot in English, but he keeps quoting, “Nothing better has been said than what was said here,” and then he gives you Latin—the whole page of it. You are going to miss a lot. But if you can get hold of it in English on this section, he takes every argument: “This is what they say; here is how that is reconciled with the Old Testament text.” It is very excellent.
Lillian said to me, “Why do you not just photocopy that section and give it to the brothers?” I was going to do that, but I take such notes all along that I almost obliterated the page. You would not have appreciated it because I put yuck faces and all kinds of stuff on it.
It was not a clean copy, and that is the reason I did not do that. However, if you cannot find it and you want it, just email me. I will photocopy it, if you want all that junk with it. Anyway, having said that, let us get into the text.
It is so easy to read these things, la, la, la. I want to give one other piece of background before we begin to look at this wonderful text of Stephen.
What was it that he said that caused these men, these elders, these Jews, to commit cold-blooded murder? Look at Acts 7:54:
When they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him.
Why were they so furious? Why were they so violent? Why were they so angry? What did he say that got them so upset? If they were going to drag him out and stone him to death, what did he say?
If we are going to enter into the powerful revelation God gave His servant Stephen, it will help us to see where the Jews were coming from. So let me give that little background, and then we will look at the message itself.
Once again, the charges: Acts 6:11 says he blasphemed Moses and God. Acts 6:11 and 13 say he incessantly spoke against this holy place and the law.
We need to understand their love for the holy place, Jerusalem. That was where God was—in Jerusalem. We need to understand their love for the temple. That was the focus of their worship. That was everything to them.
They would tolerate a lot of weird things. You could believe what you wanted—A, B, C, and D—but do not touch Moses. Do not touch Jerusalem. Do not touch the temple. Those things were off limits.
You could have strange views—and they did. The Sadducees and others had some wild views, and they were tolerated. Just do not touch the temple. Do not touch Jerusalem. Do not touch the holy place, and do not touch Moses. Do not touch the law.
If you could avoid that, they would not stone you. But if you started touching that, you came into their territory.
Take the temple as an example. You have to enter into this. All their lives, they had gone to the temple. For a thousand years, their fathers had worshiped in the temple.
In their thinking, by God’s command, they did not make it up. This was from heaven. God told them to do that. Kings, priests, prophets, and holy Israelites worshiped in the holy city, in the holy temple.
They lived according to the priesthood. They offered sacrifices according to the laws God laid down from heaven. They kept the Sabbath. They kept the annual pilgrimages. This was from heaven. This was from God.
They were not quite ready to hear, “That is all temporary. That is going to pass away. That is just a shadow. That is just a picture.”
“You do not tell me that is just a picture. God gave that from heaven.” They were not ready for someone to come along and say, “Let it all go and just embrace Jesus.” They were not ready for that.
I hope, dear brothers, that the Lord gives us a real heart and sympathy for those who are steeped in tradition.
It is amazing. It takes a mighty miracle of God to undo tradition. What you have learned from your mother’s knee, what you have been brought up with—then suddenly someone says, “Let it go. You are wrong. This is right.” That is difficult.
These people were so loyal to this tradition. They would feel guilty if they left the priesthood, the sacrifices, the ordinances, the observances of the law, and the ceremonies—especially since they believed God had handed that down from heaven.
“We got that from God.” If it is not from God, it is easily discerned and easily forsaken. But when you think it is from God and someone says, “Get rid of it,” that is pretty hard to do. It takes a miracle of God.
The temple was everything to them. Thousands of workers had worked for years on this particular temple. In Jesus’ day, Herod made it a special project to enlarge and beautify what was then Zerubbabel’s temple—the temple rebuilt after Solomon’s temple and enlarged by Herod.
Historians tell us that one thousand skilled men and ten thousand laborers worked just on the courts of the temple for eight years.
You remember, in John 2, when our Lord Jesus cleansed the temple and said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” they answered, “It took forty-six years to build this temple.” They had already worked on the temple for forty-six years.
As far as the record goes, they did not finish it until AD 64, only six years before God swept it all away in AD 70 through Titus and the Roman armies.
When Jesus went in to cleanse the temple, His eyes were just dazzled with what they had done. Herod’s temple, from the human standpoint, was magnificent. No cost was spared in its rebuilding.
On the whole east side, they had highly polished golden plates to reflect the rising sun. Much of the temple was white marble. Many of the walls were overlaid with pure gold.
The temple Herod enlarged had chambers, nine gates, gate rooms, porticoes, women’s porches, priests’ courts, Gentile courts, pillars, altars, elaborate carvings, golden vine, and grapes the size of human beings. This was an amazing thing.
Wait until you hear what Stephen says about the temple. You have to understand that they were so locked in: “Do not touch our temple, and do not touch this holy place.”
Inviting the Jews to leave the pictures and embrace the reality was shocking to the nth degree. They just could not believe what they were hearing.
To leave the temple and do what? Meet in an upper room? Go to a cave? It made no sense to them. There were no church buildings for another two hundred years.
We need to understand where they were coming from. Their view of God was that He is worshiped in Jerusalem, in this holy temple. Stephen suggested that there might be a temporal nature to all of that.
Stephen had discovered, by God, who he was in Christ. He had discovered where his life was, and now he begins to lay out his burden.
Let me give it as a principle, and then we will follow it in the history. The first burden Stephen is about to share is this: we talk about the church invisible. Stephen was the first one to ever see that.
He was the first one to see the invisible church—that it is not local, not nailed to one place or one building. You cannot limit God. You cannot put God in a box. You cannot say, “Here is where God is, and He is nowhere else.”
Let me give a general outline of this wonderful discourse, and then break it down.
He begins to look over their history, takes their Bible, and opens it up. In Acts 7:2-16, he begins way back before the law and the temple. His illustrations are Abraham and Joseph.
Then, in Acts 7:17-43, he looks at the period of the law, and his illustration is Moses.
Then, in Acts 7:44-46, he describes their history before the temple—in other words, between Moses and David—and focuses on the tabernacle.
Finally, in Acts 7:47-50, he traces the history of the temple, and his illustration is Solomon.
He shocks them with what he emphasizes. They thought they knew about Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, and Solomon. He was not picking lesser Old Testament saints you find somewhere in Chronicles. He was talking about the big names.
He was talking about Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, and Solomon. He was not trying to sneak in some truth hidden in 2 Chronicles somewhere. He was taking their Bible.
By the way, since he was going through their history, if there had been nine errors, they would have said something about it. That was their history, and they never mentioned anything about it.
By going through their history, Stephen was about to show them that God cannot be nailed down to a single place or a single building.
Let us begin with Acts 7:2—Father Abraham:
Hear me, brethren and fathers! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.
Where was Abraham when God first appeared to him? In Palestine? In Judea? In Jerusalem? In the Holy Land? No. He was in heathen land, in Mesopotamia, northern Syria.
Critics argue, “How come Genesis never mentions anything about that? It says God called him out of Ur of the Chaldeans.” Well, that was Gentile too. He had two calls. It is simple: he had two calls.
God called him from his country and kindred, and then from his father’s house in Haran. But Stephen is pointing out that before there was a law, before there was a sacrifice, before there was a priesthood, before there was a temple, and before there was a Holy Land, God appeared to our father Abraham.
What about Abraham’s seed? Acts 7:6:
God spoke to this effect, that his descendants would be aliens in a foreign land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years.
A foreign land—not Palestine.
Then he comes to Joseph. Those are big names. When was God with Joseph? When he was in Jerusalem? No. Acts 7:9:
The patriarchs became jealous of Joseph and sold him into Egypt. Yet God was with him.
In Egypt? God was with him in Egypt. He rescued him from all his afflictions and granted him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and made him governor over Egypt and all his household.
Then Stephen asks: Where were your great patriarchs buried? Acts 7:15:
Jacob went down to Egypt, and there he and our fathers died. From there they were removed to Shechem and laid in the tomb which Abraham had purchased for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.
Shechem. Where is Shechem? Samaria. You know how they loved the Samaritans. The patriarchs did not die in Canaan; they died in Egypt. Then they were carried to Samaria and buried in Samaria. How do you think that sounded to these Jews?
Abraham was in Mesopotamia when God spoke to him and called him out of Ur. His descendants were wandering around in the land as strangers. As far as the land is concerned, Abraham did not even own a foot of it. He was a pilgrim. He did not get an inch of it.
Do you see what Stephen is doing? He is showing them from their history how God constantly met His people outside Judea, outside Jerusalem, and apart from the holy temple.
One of the charges against him was, “He is against Moses.” So he says, “All right, let us discuss Moses. You think I am against Moses?”
Where was Moses born? Acts 7:20: in Egypt, not Jerusalem. Where was Moses educated? Acts 7:22: in Egypt, not Jerusalem.
When God finally appeared to Moses, where was he? Acts 7:30:
After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning thorn bush.
Where was that bush? Was it in Jerusalem? Was it in Judea? No. It was in Arabia, in the wilderness of Arabia.
What did God say when He appeared to Moses in Arabia? Acts 7:33:
Take off the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.
Holy ground—in Arabia? Jerusalem is holy ground. The temple is holy ground. Yet Stephen was overwhelming them as he took their own Bible and said, “Abraham was in Mesopotamia. Abraham never got to own the land; he only walked through it. His descendants were in Egypt, imprisoned and enslaved in a foreign land. Joseph was in Egypt.”
Where was Israel when God kept appearing to them? Acts 7:36:
This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years.
What about that precious law? “You say I am against the law. Where did God give His law?” Acts 7:38:
This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness, together with the angel who was speaking to him on Mount Sinai, and who was with our fathers; and he received living oracles to pass on to you.
Where did God hand down, by the mediation of angels, those holy oracles—the law? Was that in Jerusalem? Was that in the holy place? No. That was in Arabia.
Then Stephen begins to speak about the tabernacle. Acts 7:44:
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.
According to God’s pattern, God was not local. God was not in one place. God was not in one temple. He was traveling, according to the pattern. He was everywhere. He was in the wilderness.
Acts 7:44 says God gave the tabernacle from heaven as a pattern. “Follow this. Do not alter this. Do not change this. This is My will.”
In essence, what was the tabernacle? It was a house made out of skin that God wanted to fill with His glory.
God has always desired a house made out of skin that He could fill with His glory. Stephen saw that.
Stephen saw that you cannot say, “God is here in Jerusalem, and God is here in this temple.” God appeared in Mesopotamia. God appeared in Egypt. God appeared in Midian. God appeared in Arabia. God appeared in the wilderness. Wherever God appeared, that was holy ground.
Then Stephen pushed the button that caused everything to explode. He made a suggestion so radical, so controversial, that commentators are even afraid to call attention to it.
This ended his sermon right in the middle. I think he had more to say, but he could not say it after he said this. He was building up to this.
Do not forget: the temple was their darling. They had been warned even in the Old Testament. Jeremiah 7:4 says:
Do not trust in deceptive words, saying, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.”
Glance, if you would, at Acts 7:46-50. Stephen relates how David desired to build a temple for God—in other words, to give Him a place, to make Him local, to nail Him down.
God refused to allow it, because the tabernacle was God’s picture. God was not nailed down. Wherever God manifested Himself in His tabernacle, there He was.
Do you remember the history? David desired to build God a temple. He went to Nathan the prophet and said, “Is this God’s will?” Nathan got all excited: “Do it. Yes, that is God’s will. It is all about that. You ought to do it.”
Then the Lord came to Nathan and said, “You are wrong. You had better go back and make it right. Go tell him that is not My will for him.”
What did David say when Nathan came back and said, “I made a mistake. It is not God’s will”? The Bible says David went before the Lord. In 2 Samuel 7:27-28, he prayed:
For You, O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, have made a revelation to Your servant, saying, “I will build you a house.”
Therefore Your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to You.
Now, O Lord God, You are God, and Your words are truth, and You have promised this good thing to Your servant.
Do you get what happened there? David said, “Lord, I want to build You a house.” God said, “No, I will build you a house.” Not a house for you—that is not what He said. He said, “I will build you a house.”
You are the house. You are the temple. “I am going to build you into a house.” David said, “Because You said this, Lord, I have found the grace to pray to You.”
You know how having a king for Israel was not God’s original intention, but they insisted on it, and so God gave them a king. It seems like Stephen is making an argument something like that.
Acts 7:47-50 says:
It was Solomon who 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 repose?
Was it not My hand which made all these things?
See, it was not David, the man after God’s heart, who built the temple. It was Solomon, who turned from the Lord and turned to idols, who built the temple.
Stephen was saying that God’s temple is the universe, and God’s temple is His people. God said, “I will build you a temple,” no matter where they are.
When Stephen suggested that it was not God’s will to have a temple in the first place, they could not stand that. They were so locked into the temple, and suddenly he said, “God just allowed that. It was never God’s will to have one place.”
When Stephen said that, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It is a powerful point: God is universal. God cannot be limited to one place.
All the world over, Stephen is saying, wherever individuals by the Holy Spirit stand under an open heaven, see the glory of the Lord, and are transformed by that glory, that is where His temple is. That is where holy ground is.
The first part of his revelation is that the church is invisible. It is everywhere God appears, and anytime anybody stands under the open heaven, God has His church. God has His place.
I spent a lot of time on that first point. Let me give you a couple of other observations Stephen made.
Not only can God not be restricted to a certain place or building, but Stephen began to show that the message is spiritual.
The church, the people of God, is a spiritual thing, not a physical thing. It does not have to do with externals, the physical, or the outside. It is always the revelation of Christ and the response to that revelation of Christ.
It is Christ and the change that comes by seeing Christ. We call that redemptive change. The only change that is real is the change that comes by seeing Christ.
Any change that comes in my life, any change that comes in your life, in any other way than by beholding the Lord, is unreal. It is not real change. The only changes that are real are redemptive.
That is why sometimes we hesitate to write letters to the governor, march for this cause or that cause, or get involved in those things and get this kicked out or stop that. It may be change, but it is not redemptive change. It is not change that comes from within.
Stephen begins to lay out this marvelous history to show that there is nothing else except God in my heart, and it has to come from the heart.
He is going to read their Bible like they have never read it. I do not know if you have ever had that experience. Sometimes I will share a principle of truth, a stray ray God has given, and someone will say, “What Bible are you using? I did not see that in my Bible.”
They are only joking, but you get the idea. That is what the Sanhedrin said after he got done: “What Bible are you using? I do not see what you are seeing.”
When Stephen went through the history, all he saw was Christ and the heart’s response to Christ.
Some commentators say that when Stephen says, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” in Acts 7:59, that is the only time he mentions Jesus in the whole sermon.
They say, “He does not mention the Lord. Go through the sermon—he does not mention Jesus by name in the whole sermon.” I am suggesting they are not seeing it. They are not reading it right. That is all he does: talk about the Lord Jesus.
For example, when he sees Joseph’s brothers selling Joseph, he sees Christ being sold and rejected. God was with Joseph; God was with Christ.
You can see what is in his mind as he teaches. God delivered Joseph from the pit. God delivered Christ from the pit. He does not have to state it. That is what he is talking about.
God exalted Joseph to be the bread of life for the whole world. God exalted Christ to be the bread of life for the whole world. The brothers were rejecting him. That is the heart’s response.
“You are rejecting Christ,” he says. He did not see Joseph; he saw Christ.
It is just so with Moses. Peter, in his sermon, does what Stephen does in his. He quotes Deuteronomy 18:15:
The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen; you shall listen to him.
That is a prophecy of Christ. He is talking about Christ. When Stephen saw Moses, he saw Christ.
Moses came to visit his people after forty years. After forty days, Christ was presented in the temple. Moses came as a deliverer; Christ came as a deliverer.
“He came to His own, and His own received Him not.” That happened to the Lord Jesus. The brothers did not understand Moses’ mission; they did not understand the mission of Christ.
They said of Moses, “Who made you a ruler and a judge?” They said of Christ, “We will not have this Man reign over us.”
Forty years passed, and Moses came out of the wilderness. Forty days passed, and Christ came out of the wilderness in the temptation. He is seeing Christ.
Your fathers rejected Moses; you crucified Christ. Moses was mighty in words and deeds; Christ was mighty in words and deeds.
Moses said, “God is going to raise up one like me. Him shall you hear.” It is Christ that he is talking about everywhere in this sermon.
While they saw history, Abraham, Moses, and Joseph, Stephen saw Christ revealed and the heart’s response. Christ revealed, and the heart’s response.
When Stephen saw Joseph, he saw Christ. They rejected him, and God made him lord anyway. God raised up Moses; they rejected him, and God made him lord anyway.
Just so, in Acts 7:51-56, God appointed Jesus, and you rejected Him.
You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did.
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 keep it.
They claimed honorable descent from Abraham. They loved circumcision. Stephen said, “You are uncircumcised in heart.”
They loved to speak about the prophets. He said, “Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?” They killed those who announced the coming of the Righteous One, and now they had become His betrayers and murderers.
They were proud that they received the law. He said, “You received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you do not keep it.”
They loved the Bible. They were experts on the Bible—as long as it did not reveal Christ and as long as it did not touch their hearts.
As soon as Stephen said, “This is about Christ, and it is about your heart,” they said, “You have got to die.” They could not take Christ. They could not take redemptive change. They were not open for that.
They were cut to the quick, and they rose up in violence.
Stephen was trying to say that the church is invisible. Wherever God appears, wherever there is anybody who will stand under an open heaven, that is the church. You are the temple. It is a people. “I will build you a house.” That is the real house.
Then there is redemptive change. It is not the pictures. He said, “You are holding on to pictures.”
What would you brothers rather have if you were hungry: a banquet or a picture of a banquet? I would rather have a banquet.
If you were cold, would you rather have a picture of a fire, or would you rather have a fire?
If you were lonely, would you rather have a picture of a brother and sister in Christ, or would you rather have a real friend?
If you were poor, would you rather have picture money, or would you rather have some cash in your hand?
If you needed to get from point A to point B, would you rather have a picture of an automobile, or would you rather have an automobile—some transportation?
Would you rather have a picture of a vacation if you wanted to go on vacation, or would you rather be able to go on that vacation?
I will tell you, I have a picture of my family. I love it, but I would rather have my family. I do not want a picture of my family.
If I am tired, do not give me a picture of a bed. I want a bed. I want the reality. I want the real thing.
If I am sick, I do not want a picture of a doctor. I want a real doctor.
When I die, I am not going to have a picture of being in the presence of the Lord. I am going to be in the presence of the Lord. I want the reality.
Stephen is saying it is Christ and your heart’s response. It is the reality. But you are involved in all the external things, especially the law of Moses.
My grandkids like to play Simon Says. “Do this. Do this.” They were playing “Moses says”: “Do this, do this, do that,” and all of that.
That was one of the charges: “You are going to destroy the customs that Moses handed down.”
Stephen says, “Look, the church is invisible. It is everywhere God appears. You are the temple.”
The church, the real church of God, is not only every place that God appears, but it is spiritual. It is internal. It is redemptive change. It is the revelation of Christ and your heart’s response toward that revelation. You have rejected that.
One more thing, and we will close. This is a truth you brothers are very familiar with. Stephen does not develop it, but he is the illustration of it. The apostle Paul picked it up and, by God’s grace, developed it.
It is the universal priesthood of all believers: that we are all on level ground, every Christian is equal, and we are all before God.
Stephen illustrates this because he was the grand nobody. He was chosen to wait on tables. He was just a nobody.
He erased the line between apostle and deacon, servant of the Lord, because the same qualifications were required. He had to be filled with the Holy Spirit. There was no difference.
Now he is standing before this august group, this Sanhedrin, these spiritual hotshots. This Hellenistic Jew stands before them, just an average Christian, just a nobody.
The scribes and Pharisees had this idea: “You must answer to us because we are somebody. We are up here, and you are down there. We have been to seminary. We have our degrees.”
They had their degrees: Rab, which was like an associate degree; Rabbi, which was like a bachelor’s degree; and Rabban, which was like a doctor’s degree. Those were degrees.
“We have all of that, and who are you? You are just a nobody.” He said, “Yes, I am just a nobody who has stood under the open heavens and has seen an exalted Savior.”
He begins to explain that all Christians, like our brother shared this morning in the prayer meeting, are one body. We are all one.
God cannot be nailed to a place or a building. We are the temple. He is building us a house.
Stephen saw all this. It is spiritual, not physical. It does not have to do with externals, rule-keeping, and all that kind of thing. It is redemptive change from within.
He saw that every believer is on level ground. We are all the same. Every place where God’s people have come under an open heaven by the power of the Holy Spirit is holy ground.
That vision, brothers: I know finally who I am, and I know where I live.
I know that every place on this earth where God appears, that is holy ground and that is His church.
I know it has to do with the heart, the response to the revelation of Christ, and redemptive change. I know we are all the same.
Stephen becomes the great illustration, and that is the vision God gave him.
Because of that vision, Lord helping us, we will look at it tonight, he was able to have this amazing life, so full, and he was able to die this amazing death.
We will close there. Ask the Lord to make that real.
Father, thank You so much for opening Stephen’s eyes so wide, and then preparing Your servant Paul to see that same vision, to have that heavenly vision.
By Your grace, Paul expounded it in epistle after epistle so that we might know what it is—who we are in Christ and where we live in Christ.
Thank You so much, Lord, for this vision. Now make it real in our hearts, and prepare us for this evening and tomorrow morning as we look together and study these precious principles.
May we indeed know how to live victoriously and how to die victoriously. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Thank you.