Stephen Preaches the Gospel Ready to Die

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

2. Believers Who Receive the Lord’s Love

A Beautiful Song

Watching Stephen give himself even to death, we could see how wrong our own faith is, unable to tell the world and faith properly apart. For we think that by keeping one Lord’s Day a week and giving an offering we have done our duty to God. We ought to ask whether Jesus really gave his life wanting believers to live that kind of religious life.

Jesus gave believers a new commandment: love one another. Believers who have received this new commandment must now put away the old commandment and love the brothers and sisters of faith as the twelve disciples did. To love one another we must know what the other person is living for, and we must work to help our brother or sister toward what they long for.

To love Jesus, too, we must know who Jesus is, why he came into the world, and what he means to do at the last. The only way to know Jesus’ thinking and what he wants is the Bible. So we must read Scripture in order to know God’s whole heart. Just as no one receives a letter from someone they love and leaves it unread, believers must read the letter that is filled with God’s love.

Stephen too had knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures, and he understood well that Jesus could not but die on the cross for salvation. The message Stephen preached was that the Messiah would come, and that he is the Lamb who bore the sin of all people. To explain the faith he held, standing before people who served the God of the Old Testament with nothing but piety and fear, cannot have been easy. Yet Stephen began his sermon, logically and in order, from Abraham, whom they respected and loved.

Acts 7:2-4

2He said, “Brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, 3and said to him, ‘Get out of your land, and from your relatives, and come into a land which I will show you.’ 4Then he came out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and lived in Haran. From there, when his father was dead, God moved him into this land, where you are now living.

This is the account in Genesis 12. It explains how God called Abraham from his own side, and how he led him. It speaks on the ordinary theme that God called and led Abraham, the father of faith, but for people who believed in the law this was a very serious matter.

Stephen is stressing that Abram was an ordinary man before he became Abraham: until God called him, he was living in Mesopotamia like anyone else. That God came to an Abraham who was living an ordinary life is the heart of the sermon. What matters is that it was not that Abraham searched and searched and finally met God, but that God came to him first.

The reason for stressing that Abraham was an ordinary man is to convey that Abraham was not chosen because he had faith. There is nothing at all that he did to become the father of many nations. Because God promised to make him the father of many nations, God made Abraham into the father of many nations. Our nature too is sinful, but because God chose us we became God’s children and came to be saved. You were not saved because you did God the favor of going to church. What matters is knowing that God chose us from his own side and caused us to be saved.

All people are breathing, but some carry in their spirits the blessing called salvation while others have nothing but the nature of the flesh. And so Stephen wanted to give the people listening to his sermon a chance to think about what they had been born for and why they were living.

Stephen is asking you the same thing now. He is asking your conscience whether the life you have lived until now is something you achieved by your own effort, or whether Jesus has been the master of it and has led you to this hour. Ask your own conscience. Are the property, the health, the faith you have, things you achieved by your own ability?

God made all things for our sake. He sustains them. He is working to save souls. Faith is acknowledging that the initiative is his. Salvation is not something I asked God for. And so an office in the church is not ours either but something God gave in order to use us fittingly; and the church likewise is not ours but God’s. We must know that caring for the poor, service, and offerings are all things we are able to do because the Holy Spirit filled us and gave us compassion and mercy. If a human being becomes the subject in God’s place, we will fall and come under Satan’s power.

Stephen is telling them that the one who led Abraham to this place where they live is God himself. Just as the Abraham they respect became their ancestor because God chose him, so also the Jesus Christ they killed came by God’s planning and God’s work — and it is to convey this that he preaches so long a sermon.

John 15:16

16You didn’t choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you will ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

1 John 4:10

10In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Stephen is stressing that although God loved us first, the Pharisees, the scribes, and the priests did not truly love God and so did not know that love. When God’s children think of Jesus, a thankful heart wells up naturally from deep within. And so Stephen, because he knew what God’s love is, was able to return the love of the cross by being martyred.

God called us when we knew nothing, made us understand the Word, and will lead us into the Canaan that is heaven. The God who called the ordinary man Abraham and made him the father of many nations has called us, who cannot even tell darkness apart, and calls us his children, and has given us holy thoughts and the word of eternal life.

What Stephen stressed in his sermon is that the God who called Abraham is the God of glory and of eternal life. God is not some notion or concept, he preached; he is not a visible idol, and not a god believed in abstractly. God is One who exists, shining the light of his glory forever, and who is worthy to receive glory through all ages.

And Stephen saw that great, honored, almighty God with his own eyes. When Stephen looked steadfastly into heaven, he saw the glory of God and the throne. Having seen God’s glory himself, Stephen had no reason to fear death. Because he had met God he could not live as a friend of the world, and he could not bear to keep from preaching the Word.

Revelation 4:1-2

1After these things I looked and saw a door opened in heaven, and the first voice that I heard, like a trumpet speaking with me, was one saying, “Come up here, and I will show you the things which must happen after this.” 2Immediately I was in the Spirit. Behold, there was a throne set in heaven, and one sitting on the throne

The apostle John likewise saw God’s throne with his own eyes and recorded that beautiful sight. God’s throne is the high command that plans and carries out everything that will happen on this earth: that the antichrist will persecute believers in the last days, that the wicked who tormented believers will face the final judgment, and even that the Lord will return. It is not moved by some ruling class or particular person; because everything is accomplished from God’s throne, he showed John that the word of Christ’s prophecy — the revelation — will be fulfilled without the smallest addition or subtraction.

God’s appearance was described with three jewels: jasper, sardius, and an emerald like a rainbow. Jasper shows the glory of God’s holiness; sardius shows the glory of his justice and judgment; and the rainbow that looks like emerald shows the faithfulness of his promise, revealing that God is good and beautiful.

The apostle John saw twenty-four thrones surrounding the throne. The white robes the twenty-four elders wear are robes that only those made holy by the righteousness of Jesus Christ may wear, and they prove that these have been made holy by the blood of Christ. The twenty-four elders all wear golden crowns, and those golden crowns symbolize the honor and glory the church will enjoy in heaven. Therefore our hope and our glory are not on this earth but in heaven.

Heaven is a place that really exists. It is where believers must go one day, when they lay down the body. So believers ought to live looking toward the world they cannot see. This world will one day be burned with the fire of God’s judgment, but believers will live in the new heaven and the new earth where God’s righteousness and glory dwell.

Isaiah 43:7

7everyone who is called by my name, and whom I have created for my glory, whom I have formed, yes, whom I have made.’”

God said that he created us for his glory. Among the angels God made, the fallen angel rebelled against God in order to snatch away God’s glory, and was cast out of heaven and became Satan. The most beautifully created angel fell. Look at that, and you see how good God is, and how full of love. The angels were created for God’s glory and were given the calling of praising in order to lift up God’s name, but because the glory they enjoyed was so great they could not carry it and spilled it all away. And rather than repent, they drew still more angels into sin and rebelled, and in the end they were cast off by God. The love believers receive is just as great as that.

Yet although he called us to lift up God’s name and to be clothed together with that glory, we fail to carry the grace and end up betraying it. And so, when God calls and leads his children, he takes them through a process called suffering so that they may overcome sin and stand by faith. That suffering is like the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden of Eden: by our own will and by faith we must not eat that fruit. God gives wisdom and understanding so that we may judge sin for ourselves and overcome it, but because that alone cannot clothe us with glory, he gives us a vessel of faith so that we may share in God’s holiness.

When God helps our faith to grow, he gives believers many experiences so that they can solve the problem with wisdom of their own, and matures them so that they find the answer in the Word. Solving problems and finding answers oneself is, from a believer’s point of view, hard suffering. Just as a person is born and grows by eating and drinking, faith too must grow over time.

God led Abraham over time so that he could grow into a man of faith. He began the training by having him leave Ur of the Chaldeans, his homeland. By leaving the place where his blood relatives and parents were and where the estate he had built up lay, he was made to undergo a hard training that ordinary people could not bear. A homeland is a place where you may be forgiven even if you make a fair number of mistakes. To command someone to leave such a place is a command not to depend on people but to depend on God alone.

Fear and loneliness are the beginning of faith. Look at Abraham’s life: he showed no great zeal in order to become the father of many nations; he lived a life of staying when God said stay and going when God said go. We may think that because God appeared to Abraham directly and told him to leave, he must certainly have lived an extraordinary life — but Abraham simply lived his life faithfully.

Faith is exactly this: living faithfully the life given to us within the Word. Rather than some special zeal, it is a process of setting entry into Canaan as the goal and traveling until we arrive at that destination; so obeying God’s command is the shape of a believer who believes God fully.

We need not envy the faith of Stephen or Abraham, because if we go on obeying God’s commands without complaint, we will carry a calling as they did. When the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud moved, the people followed; when the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud stopped, the people of Israel lived in that place even for years. They had to spend time together with people they found difficult, however hard it was, and even in trying circumstances they stayed until the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud moved on.

That is the training of a believer for the accomplishing of God’s purpose. We think, if I do it this way it will happen quickly, if I use that method it will go well — and we hurry impatiently; but if God does not work, however fast we run we only circle in place. When we depend on the God who sees farther than believers do and leads them, we can go far faster than by what we thought was the quick road, and we can receive a far more precious answer.

This finite world is not a place where anyone at all can have an eternal goal, an eternal possession, or an eternally continuing human relationship. This world is like Haran, the place God told Abraham to leave. That is why our interest must be in the eternal kingdom of God. The world in which we stay a little while is nothing more and nothing less than a place of training so that we may be born again as complete children. And so we must have a faith that entrusts itself to God as he works.

God’s purpose is to lead us into the land of promise. In the middle of the training, God does not stop the training out of pity for believers. He will be patient until believers have finished the training safely and become mature, and he will set the mature believer up as a brother who helps the weaker ones.

Life may feel far too hard for you and the end of your pain may seem out of sight, but as long as you keep the Word in your heart and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, God will not let you fail. Because people are weak and cannot see even one step ahead, you may have no confidence, you may despair, you may even want to deny God. But if you believe God alone and walk one step at a time, before you know it you will come to have a faith that receives heaven’s blessing.

The world and Haran are only a place for grasping God’s will on the way to heaven, only a process of setting out in search of our true home. God’s purpose is not that we should suffer, but that our souls should be led into the land of promise. As the Word says, *I wish that in all things you may prosper, even as your soul prospers*, believers must have the faith that God will surely work. For without that faith we can neither please God nor bring him glory.

Stephen would be killed by enraged people for the simple reason that he preached the Word, yet he wanted to tell them about the God he had met, the God who loves souls to the end. Because he knew the word he preached would not fall to the ground, if even one among them came to receive God he would have been satisfied with that. Telling the people who held stones in their rage what sort of life their ancestor Abraham had lived, Stephen grew calmer still in the face of death. Faith is exactly this: living faithfully the life given to us within the Word. When we depend on God, make our lives holy in order to lift up his name, and offer up thankful praise, God will commend us as children of faith.

What did you think as you listened to the Word today? I am convinced that every believer is under God’s protection and leading. Because you must carry God’s work with a greater faith, I ask you not to let go of the watercourse of prayer, and not to let go of the watercourse of the Word either. I ask you to look into every corner of this church — those blessed with means, with their means; those blessed with health, with their bodies; those given fullness of faith. When we lower ourselves and sacrifice, God will bless everyone in the church, from the infants growing up in the church to the grown adults.

Friends, I pray you will receive and enjoy much blessing. The world is a hard and difficult place to live, but the blessing God gives carries us over every one of those hard circumstances, so we will be able to overcome. May you receive and enjoy more and more blessing, more love, more grace. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.