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.

As Stephen longed to resemble the life of Jesus, the members and apostles of the early church in turn strove to resemble Stephen. The church loved him because he was faithful in every respect, and as part of its organization he gave himself to caring for the poor, to service, and to managing its finances. He was an outstanding defender of the gospel, and he left behind a remarkable sermon that we can still hear and learn from today.

We often say that the times and circumstances make the person. People of the world are, of course, shaped by their times, their circumstances, and their institutions; but God’s people are never ruled by any one age, circumstance, or institution. This is because those whom God has taken hold of change their age, and those transformed by the Holy Spirit lead their generation. History is made by people according to God’s plan, and since it is made by lives he has called, that history is also God’s will.

Facing a crisis that might cost him his life, Stephen made it an opportunity to preach the word, and out of that a precious vessel named Paul was born. In the same way, every circumstance is an opportunity for those who belong to God to preach the word. We must never forget, then, that we belong to him. The people of the world use their circumstances for their own gain, but those who are full of the Holy Spirit give themselves to fulfilling God’s plan, and for that reason circumstances themselves cannot change the life and purpose of such a saint.

Acts 7:1

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

When the high priest heard Stephen’s words and asked whether these things were so, Stephen stood in grave danger; yet, remarkably, he made that moment of crisis an occasion to preach. He was being tried unlawfully before the council on the testimony of false witnesses. When the high priest gave him the chance to defend himself, he offered no merely human defense to save his life. People of faith do not share the gospel because an opportunity happens to come their way. At any time, by faith, they make the opportunity.

Then what of our own faith today? When illness strikes or a family falls into despair, faith is nowhere to be found, and we are wrapped in an anxiety we cannot bear. When no way out appears and the season of suffering drags on, we sink all the more easily into unbelief and despair. Instead of looking through the crisis to God’s plan, we resent and lose heart, and we complain, asking what sin we have committed to be put through such a fire. We do nothing but grumble, asking why he sends us such trials when we did our best, and why we must suffer when we served and gave so much. Many people spend their time in the furnace resenting it, and never grasp even the last thread of hope. Only after passing through the fire again and again, after the pain of having every rough edge ground away, do they finally discover where their own problem lies.

However much we may hate passing through the tunnel of suffering, we must know there is no way out until God says it is over. God tests his children in the fire because he means to make them whole and use them where they are fit to serve. He gave wisdom to Peter, a man with no learning or schooling, and made him preach a gospel that astonished the Pharisees; and only when Paul, a man of great knowledge and learning, counted all of it as rubbish did God cause him to write the letters of the gospel.

Over hard years pebbles are worn into a round shape. In the same way, those who have been refined are ground down again and again until they take a rounded form that no longer wounds others, and only then are they used as spiritual instruments. God waits until we can show him our faith and devotion. So we must be wise enough to lay the world down and cast off greed and lust.

Stephen began his sermon with Abraham, a figure his hearers knew well. When we share the gospel, what matters is where our hearers actually are and what they care about. The apostle Paul, too, began with the Old Testament when he preached to Jews, and with their own gods when he preached to the Gentiles of Athens. We must preach in words our hearers can readily grasp if we are to proclaim Jesus Christ in full.

In Acts 7, Stephen sums up the Scriptures they knew, from Genesis to Malachi, laying out in clear order Abraham, the training and lessons 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. Finally, in Acts 7:51-53, he declares to those who insisted they would never have killed the prophets who foretold the Messiah that, though the law bore witness to Jesus, they had become the murderers of Jesus Christ. Stephen set the whole Old Testament in order before them to expose their wrong thinking and their falsehood. This is how preaching must proclaim the work of God: from 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.

Having finished his survey of Old Testament history, Stephen dropped a bombshell: Israel, in its unbelief, had killed God’s servants and murdered his prophets.

The priests, the people, and the elders of that day carried a spiritual pride in being the chosen people. They were proud to be Abraham’s descendants, a people of promise who had received the law and therefore understood God’s will and providence well, and because of that pride they could not accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah. To those who held that only their traditional faith was right, Stephen gave his rebuke: stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, they could not hear the truth as truth.

Stephen’s sermon, with its factual, challenging, and shocking message, was shaking the very being of those who heard it. Even now there are people who think faith is real only when they show God something by their deeds. Tell them that the gospel is believing in Jesus Christ himself, that saving faith is not a work but a faith by which we simply find ourselves believing, and like the Pharisees they cannot let go of their own righteousness; they grow angry and complain. Then they ask what all their keeping of the Lord’s Day, all their faithfulness in church office, and all their lavish giving have been for.

But those are things anyone who has received Jesus Christ ought naturally to do. We are not full of faith because we have done them; they come naturally to those who love God and believe in his work. Just as the Jews took it for granted that Jesus and Stephen should be killed, those who believe in God take it for granted that salvation is God’s gift, given from his own side, a gift of grace; knowing this, they place no righteousness in their own deeds. Yet it is a sad thing that so many in the church still think as if salvation came 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 to hear Stephen’s sermon felt no guilt, because they believed they were different from those who had persecuted or killed the prophets. They thought that, being righteous like Abraham, they had kept the law strictly, and that it was right to persecute Christians who opposed God. In their eyes the wicked were those who did not serve God in holiness or keep the law, so they considered themselves the chosen people, righteous in keeping the law perfectly. But when Stephen poured out the astonishing charge that they were the wicked who had killed the prophets and killed the Messiah, they would have been stunned.

They could not let Stephen live, for he called the faith they had guarded as their very life a faith that had killed the Messiah. People are like this: when someone says something different from what they know, they do not accept it but turn and persecute the one who tells them the truth. It was to say this that Stephen had preached the Old Testament to them from the beginning, setting out God’s work just as it happened. But the Jews refused even to hear Stephen’s sermon and would not accept his warning, and so they committed a still greater sin.

Second Samuel 11 and 12 tell how David, though he had committed a sin worthy of death, accepted rebuke and was forgiven by God. While the people were out at war risking their lives in battle, he stayed behind in the city, whiling away his idle hours. Then he saw Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, bathing. After he had taken her by force, her husband weighed on his mind. So he ordered that Uriah be placed at the very front of the battle, and when Uriah fell to the arrows, David plotted the perfect crime by making Bathsheba his wife.

He deceived many and took Bathsheba, but God, who saw David’s every move, sent the prophet Nathan to rebuke him for his wickedness. Nathan told David a parable: in a certain town there were a rich man and a poor man, and the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which slept beside him, drank from his cup, and was loved like a child. Then one day a guest came to the rich man, and because he begrudged slaughtering one of his own sheep, he served the poor man’s lamb to his guest. What, Nathan asked, did the king think of that rich man?

David burned with anger and swore before God that the rich man deserved to die, and that because he had shown no pity to the poor man and had taken his lamb, he must repay it four times over. Then Nathan told him that he was that man, and that God already knew all about the sin he thought he had hidden so perfectly.

God spoke in his anger: he had anointed David to be king over Israel, delivered him from the hand of Saul, and given him all he needed; had that been too little, he would have given him more. Why then had David despised God and done evil? Because of that sin, God said, the sword would never depart from his house; trouble would rise against him from his own household, and his wives would lie with another man in broad daylight. David thought he had committed the perfect crime, but God knew everything he had done.

David’s shock would have been beyond words. As soon as he heard God’s word, he repented on the spot and begged God for forgiveness, weeping until his bed was soaked with tears.

Why did he weep and repent like this? Though he had sinned in the flesh, he knew what God’s word and grace were, and that knowledge led him to receive even the rebuke as God’s grace and to repent. As king he could have killed Nathan, and no one would have blamed him had he refused to repent. But David knew that before he was king, he was a child of God, and he acknowledged that the God who had created him was his sovereign Lord. Before Stephen, though, a scene utterly unlike David’s bitter repentance over his wrong was now unfolding.

The world says that justice and goodness lie on whichever side most people stand. If, then, people believe they stand among the righteous and God calls them evil, they will not readily accept it, even though it is God’s word. If we have followed the Lord as we were taught and believed our faith was sound, and then, holding it up to the light of God’s word, we realize that we ourselves are the ones who killed the Messiah and the prophets, then like David we must acknowledge our 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 the truth, they respond in one of two ways. Some look at themselves, beat their breasts, and repent. Like David, they fear God, repent, and turn back. Others, when they hear the truth, gnash their teeth in anger and persecute the one who spoke it; and frankly, they rage all the more because they know that what was said is true. If what they hold is the truth, there is no need for anger; they can simply wait for the outcome. Gnashing their teeth and lashing out is an admission that the other person’s words are true, and to hide their own sin they either make excuses or try to kill the one who spoke. Driven by evil spirits, the wicked commit follies beyond imagination. You may not understand how anyone could say such things or act in such a way, but anyone in Satan’s grip can behave foolishly. So before you judge and criticize others, you must first look at yourselves, repent, and become good people who ask 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,

Good people do not lose the fullness of the Holy Spirit even when others rage at them and seethe with murderous anger. Therefore, although Stephen was in grave danger, the Spirit was helping him to overcome the situation by faith. No one can remain unmoved in the face of death. The people now surrounded him with stones in their hands. Who could wear the face of an angel at such a moment, forgive them, and smile?

In opening the doors of heaven to Stephen and showing him Jesus standing at the right hand of the throne, God was telling him that what he was doing was right. He was showing him that life, in the end, is a journey toward the embrace of Jesus, who waits with open arms. He was giving him strength, as if to say, do not be afraid, come here. When God’s people live by the truth, God opens the eyes of their spirit so that they win the spiritual battle, and he helps them by the Holy Spirit. That is how they can forgive their enemies as Stephen did and be gathered into God’s arms.

Even now Jesus is interceding in prayer for his people. When the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt for four hundred thirty years, the Lord neither slumbered nor slept but led them all the while. We too come to times in life when we are hemmed in on every side. When songs of sorrow rise wherever we turn, the fear may be beyond imagining. But we need not worry, because God will never abandon his children to suffer alone. I hope you will believe that whenever you are struggling and in pain, he is closer to you than ever, and that you will pray.

Simon Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, and the sons of Zebedee cast their nets all night but caught nothing, and when they came back to shore at dawn, they did not recognize Jesus standing on the beach. They had toiled all night without catching a single fish, and worn out by the work of this world, they had no idea that the risen Jesus was standing right before them. When our own sorrow looms this large, we fail to know the almighty Lord even when we meet him. When you pass through suffering and the fire, God is waiting to help you if only you pray; yet we are so frightened and pained by our circumstances that we cannot find Jesus.

Stephen, however, saw Jesus Christ at his most agonizing moment; even as the stones struck him, he met the Lord standing by the throne. So it is with God’s people: depending on the faith and the thoughts we hold, we either meet Jesus, who is the truth, or stare only at our own pain. I would ask you to consider deeply whether the suffering you face in this world is keeping you from seeing the Lord who is near, and whether you remain in the fire because you have not met the God who holds your answer in his hands.

Though Stephen was now dying under the stones, he knew that this pain would last only a moment and that he was entering the eternal Kingdom; so his face could shine, and he could die a martyr with joy. Because Stephen always lived looking up to heaven, his heart was already there, and he had nothing to fear from those who pointed their fingers at him. The place he hoped for was more precious to him than anything he could see, and he held the calling Jesus gave him dearer than his own thoughts.

Not every eye truly sees, and not every ear truly hears. What use is a mouth that does not proclaim the gospel, or an ear that cannot hear the truth? If we cannot tell this world from the Lord’s Kingdom, the Lord will not treasure us as his saints. Stephen, who always longed to give glory to God, proclaimed the gospel boldly, and at the moment of his death he saw the glory of God and Jesus Christ.

Heaven is where God dwells, a place filled with his glory. We know from the Bible that the light of that glory shines from the faces of those who have met God. Where God’s grace and fullness are, the faces of his people naturally give off a radiance. Jesus, the Lord of that radiance, could not stay seated to receive Stephen, who was dying a martyr for preaching the gospel to exalt his name; so he stood at the throne, ready to welcome him. This passage shows us plainly what kind of heart Jesus has. He gave his own life to save Stephen, and yet he did not take Stephen’s suffering for granted. That is the Jesus you and I serve.

Seeing the Lord ready to receive him, Stephen met death willingly. May you, like Stephen, be clothed with that glory in the truth. You cannot lay down your life as a martyr as Stephen did, but the martyrdom open to you now is to keep and proclaim the faith and the word of truth. If you proclaim the truth as boldly as Stephen, you will receive great grace from God and be able to know the joy of heaven here on earth.

May you always shine the light of his glory into the world as his treasured people. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.