The Holy Spirit Helps Stephen

54Now when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth. 55But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, 56and said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” 57But they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and rushed at him with one accord. 58They threw him out of the city, and stoned him. The witnesses placed their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59They stoned Stephen as he called out, saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” 60He kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, don’t hold this sin against them!” When he had said this, he fell asleep.

Just as Stephen wanted to resemble the life of Jesus, the believers and apostles of the early church strove to resemble Stephen. Because Stephen was faithful in every area he was loved by the believers, and as a member of the church’s organization he gave himself to caring for the poor, to service, and to the management of finances. He was an outstanding defender of the gospel, and he left behind a magnificent sermon that we can still hear and learn from today.

We often say that the times and the surroundings make a person. Worldly people are of course shaped by their times, their surroundings, and their institutions — but believers are never ruled by an age, an environment, or an organization. It is the person held by God who changes that age, and people changed by the Holy Spirit who lead that generation. History is made by people according to God’s plan; and because it is made by lives that have been called, that history is also God’s will.

Because Stephen — a man who might well die — took this moment of crisis as an opportunity to preach the Word, a precious vessel named Paul was born. In just this way, every circumstance is an opportunity for a believer to preach the Word. So we must never forget that we are believers. Worldly people use their circumstances for their own advantage, but a believer full of the Holy Spirit offers himself to accomplish God’s plan, so circumstances themselves cannot change a believer’s life or plans.

Acts 7:1

1The high priest said, “Are these things so?”

When the high priest heard Stephen and asked whether these things were so, Stephen was in a terribly dangerous position — and yet it is astonishing that he took that moment of crisis as an opportunity to preach. He was on unlawful trial before the council on the word of false witnesses. When the high priest gave him a chance to defend himself, he did not offer a human excuse to save his life. A believer with faith does not witness because an opportunity has been given. Whatever the moment, he makes the opportunity to witness by faith.

So what does your faith look like right now? When illness comes, or a household falls into despair, faith is nowhere to be found and an unbearable anxiety takes over. When no way out is visible and the time of suffering drags on, people fall all the more easily into unbelief and despair. Instead of looking through the crisis they are in to see God’s plan, they resent and give up, complaining, *what sin have I committed that I should be refined like this?* They only grumble — I did my very best, so why give me such a trial; I served and I gave generously, so why must I suffer? Many people spend the whole time of refining given to them in resentment and never even take hold of the edge of hope. Only after being refined and refined again, after the pain of having every jagged part of themselves ground away, do they discover what their problem was.

However much we hate passing through the tunnel of suffering, we must know that there is no way out until God says it is finished. God refines us because he means to make his child a complete child and use them in a fitting place. He gave wisdom to Peter, who had no knowledge or learning at all, so that he preached a gospel that astonished the Pharisees; and when Paul, who had a great deal of knowledge and learning, counted it all as garbage, only then did God have him write the letters of the gospel.

As pebbles take on a round shape through a harsh stretch of time, so people who have been refined are ground down and ground down again, and only when they have taken on a round shape that does not wound others are they finally used as spiritual instruments. God is waiting until we are able to show him faith and trust. So we must be wise believers who set the world down and throw off greed and craving.

Stephen began his sermon with Abraham, whom they knew well. What matters in preaching the gospel is where the hearers actually are, and what they care about. When Paul preached, he too began with the Old Testament for Jews, and with a pagan god for the Gentiles living in Athens. Only when we preach with plain words the hearer can follow can we present Jesus Christ whole.

Looking at Acts 7, Stephen summarizes the Scriptures they knew, from Genesis to Malachi, laying out clearly Abraham, the training and instruction of the people of Israel, Joshua, First and Second Samuel and First and Second Chronicles, and the God who does not dwell in the temple. And then at last, in Acts 7:51-53, to people who claimed they had never once killed the prophets who foretold the Messiah, he declares that although the law testified of Jesus, they have become the murderers of Jesus Christ. Stephen laid out the whole Old Testament for them like this in order to expose their wrong thinking and their falsehood. Preaching must present the work of God like this, with the facts.

Acts 7:51

51“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so you do.

The bombshell Stephen dropped after finishing his survey of Old Testament history was this: that Israel, which did not believe God, killed God’s servants and killed the prophets.

At that time the priests, the people, and the elders held a spiritual pride in being the chosen people. They were proud — we are Abraham’s descendants, a people who received the promise; we received the law and know God’s will and providence well — and because of that pride they could not receive Jesus Christ as Messiah. To people who said that only the traditional faith was right, he rebuked them: you who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears cannot hear the truth as truth.

Stephen’s sermon was factual, confrontational, and shocking; its message shook the very existence of those who heard it. Even now, when you tell people who think faith means showing God something by their works that the gospel is believing in Jesus Christ himself, and that salvation is a faith simply believed and not a work, they cannot let go of their own righteousness, and like the Pharisees they grow angry and complain. And they ask: then what was all this — keeping the Lord’s Day, holding office in the church, giving offerings to overflowing?

But those are the things a believer who has received Jesus Christ naturally does. It is not that faith is full because one has done such things; it is that for a believer who loves God and believes his work, these things are natural. Just as the Jews thought it natural to kill Jesus and to kill Stephen, so a believer who believes God knows that salvation is God’s gift and grace, given from his side alone, and therefore places no righteousness in his own works. It is a sad thing that so many believers still think they are saved by works.

Acts 7:52-53

52Which of the prophets didn’t your fathers persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, of whom you have now become betrayers and murderers. 53You received the law as it was ordained by angels, and didn’t keep it!”

The people gathered in the synagogue listening to Stephen’s sermon felt no guilt, because they thought themselves different from those who had persecuted or killed the prophets. They were righteous like Abraham, they thought; they kept the law thoroughly, and it was right to persecute Christians who opposed God. The wicked, as they saw it, were people who did not serve God in holiness and did not keep the law — so they considered themselves the chosen people, the righteous who kept the law completely. But Stephen poured out the enormous claim that they were the wicked who had killed the prophets and killed the Messiah, and they must have been utterly astonished.

And so they could not let Stephen live — the man who called the faith they had guarded like their own lives a faith that had killed the Messiah. This is how people are: when someone says something different from what they know, they do not accept it, and instead persecute the one telling them the truth. That is why Stephen had preached the Old Testament to them from the beginning, and why he told them the work of God exactly as it was. But the Jews would not listen to Stephen’s sermon at all, and because they would not receive his warning, they committed a still greater sin.

In 2 Samuel 11 and 12 there is an account in which David, though he had committed a sin that deserved death, received correction and was forgiven by God. While the people were out at war fighting at the risk of their lives, he stayed behind in the city relieving his boredom. And then he saw Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, bathing. Having taken Bathsheba by force, he became uneasy about her husband Uriah. So he gave orders that Uriah be placed at the very front of the battle, and when Uriah was struck by an arrow and died, he took Bathsheba as his wife — a perfect crime, as he planned it.

He deceived many people and took Bathsheba, but God, who saw David’s every movement, sent the prophet Nathan to David to rebuke his wickedness. The prophet Nathan spoke to David in a parable: in a certain town there was a rich man and a poor man, and the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, so he slept beside it, ate from the same cup with it, and loved it like his own child. Then one day a guest came to the rich man, and because the rich man begrudged taking one of his own sheep he served the guest with the poor man’s lamb — so, he asked, what does the king think of that rich man?

David was furious and swore before God that the rich man deserved to die, and that since he had shown no pity to the poor man and had taken his lamb, he must repay fourfold. Then Nathan told him that he was that man — and that the sin he had thought a perfect crime, God had known all along.

God in his anger said: I anointed you to make you king over Israel, I saved you from Saul’s hand, I gave you so that you lacked nothing, and if you had lacked I would have given you more — why then have you despised God and done evil? For that sin, he said, the sword shall not depart from your house; I will raise up disaster against your house, and your wives shall lie with another man in broad daylight. David had thought his crime was perfect, but God had known everything he had done.

David’s shock must have been beyond words. Hearing God’s word, David repented on the spot, and wept until his bed was soaked, asking God for forgiveness.

Why did he repent, weeping like that? Because although his body had sinned, he knew what God’s word and God’s grace were. He received even the rebuke as grace, and he repented. He was king; he could have killed Nathan, and no one would have blamed him for not repenting. But before he was king David knew he was a child of God, and he acknowledged that God was the Sovereign who had created him. Before Stephen, a situation entirely different from David’s — who repented so utterly when he saw his own fault — was unfolding.

The world says that whichever side has the most people standing on it is justice and goodness. So when a person who thought they were standing in the ranks of the righteous hears God call it evil, they will not accept it easily, even though it is God’s word. If someone who lived their religious life exactly as they had been taught, and thought their faith was right, comes to see in the light of God’s word that they themselves killed the Messiah and the prophets, then like David they must acknowledge the sin and repent.

Acts 7:54

54Now when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth.

When people hear a true word, they respond in one of two ways. The first sort look at themselves, beat their breasts, and repent. These are people like David, who repent and turn because they fear God. The second sort, on hearing a true word, gnash their teeth, grow angry, and persecute the speaker; and such a person grows angrier precisely because he knows what the other said is true. If what he knew were the truth, there would be no need to be angry — he could simply wait for the outcome. But to gnash the teeth and lash out is to admit that the other’s words are true, and to try either to excuse oneself or to kill, in order to hide one’s own sin. Wicked people are driven by an evil spirit, and that is why they do foolish things beyond anyone’s imagination. You may not understand how a person can say such a thing or act that way, but anyone in Satan’s grip can act foolishly. So before you judge and criticize others, you must first look at yourself, repent, and become a good person who asks forgiveness.

Acts 7:55

55But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God,

A good person does not lose the look of one filled with the Holy Spirit, even when the other party is enraged and murderous. So although Stephen was in crisis, the Holy Spirit was helping him overcome that situation by faith. No one can be serene in the face of death. People were surrounding him with stones in their hands. Where is the person who could wear the face of an angel and smile while forgiving them?

God opened the door of heaven to Stephen and showed him Jesus standing at the right hand of the throne. He did it to let Stephen know that what he was doing was right. It was to let him know that life is finally a process of coming to rest in the arms of a Jesus who stands with both arms open. So he was strengthening him: do not be afraid, come here. When believers live according to the truth, God opens their spiritual eyes so that they win the spiritual battle, and helps them by the Holy Spirit — which is how, like Stephen, one can forgive an enemy and be held in God’s arms.

Even now Jesus is interceding for believers. Through the four hundred and thirty years the people of Israel spent in slavery in Egypt, he neither slumbered nor slept, but led the people of Israel. We too have times in life when we are hemmed in on every side. When the song of suffering is heard everywhere we go, the fear is beyond imagining. But there is nothing to worry about, because God is not one who abandons his child to bear pain alone. Believe that whenever you are struggling and in pain he is nearest of all, and pray.

When Simon Peter and Thomas and Nathanael and the sons of Zebedee cast their nets all night, caught no fish, and came back to shore at dawn, they did not recognize Jesus standing on the beach. They had labored all night and caught not one fish, and worn out by the work of the world, they did not recognize the risen Jesus standing right in front of them. When one’s own sorrow looms larger, one does not recognize the almighty Lord even on meeting him. When you are suffering and being refined, God is waiting to help you if you pray — but our circumstances are so frightening and painful that we fail to look for Jesus.

Stephen, though, saw Jesus Christ in the most painful moment of all, and even while the stones struck him he met the Lord standing at the throne. So it is that, according to what faith and what thinking a believer holds, one may meet Jesus who is the truth, or may only stare at one’s own pain. Consider deeply whether you are failing to see the Lord who is near because of the suffering you are enduring in the world, and whether you are still being refined because you have not met the God who is holding your answer.

Stephen was dying under the stones, yet because he knew this pain was for a moment and that he was entering an eternal kingdom, his face could shine and he could be martyred with joy. Because Stephen had always lived looking up to heaven, his heart was already in the kingdom, and he had nothing to fear as he looked at the people pointing at him. What he hoped for was more precious to him than what he could see, and the calling Jesus had given him was more precious than his own thinking.

Not every eye is an eye, and not every ear is an ear. What use is a mouth that does not preach the gospel, and what use is an ear that cannot hear the truth? If we cannot tell this world and the Lord’s kingdom apart, the Lord will not count us precious as believers either. Stephen, who always wanted to give God glory, preached the gospel boldly, and in the moment of death he saw the glory of God and Jesus Christ.

Heaven is where God is, and it is a place full of God’s glory. From Scripture we know that the light of that glory shines out of the faces of believers who have met God. Where there is God’s grace and fullness, a believer’s face naturally gives off a radiance. And the owner of that radiance, Jesus, could not sit and receive Stephen — a man being martyred while preaching the gospel to lift up his name — and so he stood at the throne, ready to receive him. This passage shows us clearly what kind of character Jesus has. Though he gave his own life to save Stephen, he did not take Stephen’s suffering for granted — and that is the Jesus you and I serve.

Stephen looked at the Lord who was about to receive him, and gladly met his death. Like Stephen, I pray that you too will be clothed with that glory within the truth. You cannot be martyred by giving your life as Stephen did, but the martyrdom available to you now is to keep and preach the word of faith and truth. If you preach the truth boldly as Stephen did, you will receive great grace from God and enjoy the joy of heaven here on this earth.

May you be precious, always showing the light of that glory to the world. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.