Stephen Preaches the Love God Gave First
5He gave him no inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on. He promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his offspring after him, when he still had no child. 6God spoke in this way: that his offspring would live as aliens in a strange land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. 7‘I will judge the nation to which they will be in bondage,’ said God, ‘and after that will they come out, and serve me in this place.’ 8He gave him the covenant of circumcision. So Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.
Stephen knew all too well that once this sermon was over, he would die at the hands of men already gnashing their teeth at him. Yet he did not stop preaching. He proclaimed Jesus, longing with all his heart that even one of them would listen to the word he brought. And the message he brought them was the Old Testament they knew so well. He preached it because the people of Israel were insisting that they were God’s specially chosen people, the descendants of Abraham.
Acts 7:4-5
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. 5He gave him no inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on. He promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his offspring after him, when he still had no child.
There is paradox and mystery in this passage, because it shows us what kind of promise God actually gave Abraham. God plainly commanded Abraham to go to Canaan and said he would give that land to him and to his offspring. Yet when Abraham arrived in Canaan, God gave him not so much as a place to set his foot. This was because God was telling Abraham in advance what would happen in the course of his life, and promising to bring it to pass at the proper time. If we keep firmly in mind what God has told us, we should be able to meet the circumstances and troubles of life without being thrown into confusion.
Hebrews 11:8
8By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out to the place which he was to receive for an inheritance. He went out, not knowing where he went.
Hebrews 11:11
11By faith, even Sarah herself received power to conceive, and she bore a child when she was past age, since she counted him faithful who had promised.
The writer of Hebrews says that Abraham obeyed by faith. Yet when we look at his faith as Genesis records it, we may well wonder whether he truly deserved to become the father of many nations. Abraham came to be that father through faith because of God’s promise, a promise God made by his own sovereign choice and gave from his own side. It was God’s very character that made Abraham the father of many nations: once God makes a promise, he never fails to fulfill it.
Genesis 18:14-15
14Is anything too hard for Yahweh? At the set time I will return to you, when the season comes round, and Sarah will have a son.” 15Then Sarah denied it, saying, “I didn’t laugh,” for she was afraid. He said, “No, but you did laugh.”
Did Sarah have faith? God said she would conceive Isaac, but Sarah did not believe; she would not accept what he said. Isaac was born by God’s sovereign work, not by Sarah’s faith. In the same way, unless God gives us faith as a gift, we have no faith of our own to go on believing in Jesus Christ to the end. If God made Abraham and Sarah the forebears of faith even though they lacked it, it was because he had promised first. For this reason Stephen wanted to teach them that whether a person becomes a forebear of faith or dies a martyr, it is possible only because God gives faith.
God told Abraham to go to Canaan without giving him enough land to set his foot on, because faith is believing what cannot be seen. If Abraham believed the promise that his descendants would certainly conquer Canaan and live there as God’s children, that land would indeed be taken. Jesus promised that he would prepare a place and come back for you. Since heaven is not yet visible to us, nothing but faith can lay hold of that word.
Just as Abraham did not receive the land of Canaan right away, we have not yet received so much as a foothold of our inheritance in the dwelling Jesus Christ has prepared in the New Jerusalem. But we can live with joy, because by faith heaven is already ours. In the same way Abraham believed that God, who is faithful and does what he says, would indeed give him descendants as many as the stars.
Acts 7:9
9“The patriarchs, moved with jealousy against Joseph, sold him into Egypt. God was with him,
Joseph had the unreserved love of his father Jacob. Jacob had many sons, but of all the children his four wives bore him, he loved Rachel’s son with a love he gave no other. Joseph alone wore a coat of many colors, the kind princes and princesses wore, and the other sons were jealous of him. Seeing him alone dressed in that coat, they envied and hated him, resented their father, and sold their brother into Egypt.
The brothers acted on their hatred of Joseph, but God used that hatred to accomplish his plan. Joseph must have felt deeply wronged, of course. But the wind of the brothers’ jealousy had to blow, because, just as a ship sails far faster in a strong wind, God’s plan moves swiftly only when that wind blows.
Stephen said that Joseph, sold into Egypt through his brothers’ jealousy and strife, was hated by them because he had to play a pivotal part in God’s work, and that God used their hatred. Joseph’s time in Potiphar’s house, his imprisonment on account of Potiphar’s wife, his meeting the king’s officials there, his interpreting Pharaoh’s dream and becoming governor over Egypt: all of it was God’s providence. To the Pharisees, the scribes, and the priests, so full of their own righteousness, Stephen made it known that however many sacrifices they offered and however righteous they claimed to be before God, God’s work moves under his absolute sovereignty.
Friends, let us imagine Jacob as God and Rachel as Jesus Christ. Because God (Jacob) loves Jesus Christ (Rachel), he loves his chosen ones, Christ’s fruit (Joseph), so much that Satan (the brothers) is jealous of them.
Seen this way, will Satan, the prince of the power of the air, really leave God’s people alone? Will he stand by while sinners, weak beyond words, receive God’s absolute love and enter heaven? Satan will stir people up without end, tormenting them and wearing them down, harassing them until they stop looking to God’s work alone and stumble.
If you cling to the Lord more firmly the more you are put through the fire, God will certainly begin something remarkable through you, because no branch can ever bear the fruit of the true vine unless it is grafted into that deep-rooted vine.
After all his suffering Joseph became governor over Egypt, yet he took no revenge on his brothers, because he knew what kind of God he served. So he had no need to quarrel with them, and because their sin was God’s to judge, there was no need for him to settle the score.
Through the story of Abraham and the twelve tribes, Stephen has been showing that God is faithful and keeps his promises. To fulfill his promise to make Abraham a source of blessing, God caused Jesus Christ to be born as his descendant and saved all humankind.
Acts 7:17
17“But as the time of the promise came close which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt,
As the time God had promised Abraham drew near, the people of Israel in Egypt grew and multiplied so that God’s plan could be carried out. To human eyes nothing seems to move, and we may grow anxious. But when the time God has promised arrives, the whole situation is transformed.
Acts 7:20-21
20At that time Moses was born, and was exceedingly handsome. He was nourished three months in his father’s house. 21When he was thrown out, Pharaoh’s daughter took him up, and reared him as her own son.
Stephen moves straight on to Moses to make the point that Moses, too, was born to bring God’s plan to completion, and that we too were not born without a reason. He is asking his hearers to consider why Moses was born at the very time when the boys were all being put to death, and why, when every other boy was being killed, Moses alone was found and raised by Pharaoh’s daughter. By rights any boy born to the Hebrews should have died at her hands, yet God guarded Moses’ life, and so, Stephen stressed, Pharaoh’s daughter herself became his protector.
Stephen divides Moses’ life into three. The first period, up to the age of forty, was a time of coming to know himself. Though he lived as a prince, he had been born where death could not be escaped; he should have died, yet he did not. When God’s promise and providence stand over a life, Stephen is saying, that life will never perish, whatever the circumstances.
We too came into the world under death, with no way to escape it; through Adam’s original sin we were born already dead. But by God’s wonderful providence we were led to the cross of Jesus Christ, where God raised us from death by the blood of Christ and declared us righteous. Moses, in the middle of a journey toward death, was given the standing of a son of Pharaoh’s daughter. In the same way, we who were born sinners and bound to die have been given new life as children of God through Jesus Christ.
Moses grew up a prince of Egypt, but when he learned that he was a Hebrew, he passed through a long season of inner conflict and pain. Then came the second period, when Moses’ eyes were opened to his people. Only at forty did it enter his mind to look in on his people, and a time of concern for his nation began. If the first stage of his life can be described as the day his sense of self awoke, the second was the time he woke to his nation. Thinking he was helping his people, Moses killed an Egyptian soldier, but that act drove him out into the wilderness and into hardship. From where Moses stood, he would have called it patriotism and love.
But because everything is relative, a single nation is divided into South and North Korea, politics into ruling and opposition parties, and even the church into separate denominations. Stephen is telling those listening in the synagogue not to judge and settle everything by their own knowledge and reasoning. From Moses’ side it was certainly an act meant to help his own people, but if the other side does not trust him or accept him, all that fullness of heart comes to nothing.
God saw that Moses’ thinking had to be changed, and so he did not stop him from going out into the wilderness branded a murderer. People set up the fine credentials the world approves and drive themselves hard to measure up to them. But God wants sound judgment, faith, and obedience more than human qualifications. God does not use people because they are clever, passionate, or strong. He uses us when we can do nothing in our own strength. God did not use Moses until he had been completely broken, and that tells us the wise course is to lay everything down, and to do it soon.
Acts 7:30-32
30“When forty years were fulfilled, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush. 31When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight. As he came close to see, a voice of the Lord came to him, 32‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Moses trembled, and dared not look.
After forty years in the wilderness, at the age of eighty, the third stage of Moses’ life began: the time when his eyes were opened to God. Meeting God in spirit was not frustration and despair but a beginning. Moses, who had lived as a prince, spent forty years shut away at Mount Sinai as if in a prison, and the best years of his life slipped away. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, he had no choice but to tend his father-in-law’s sheep. Yet there at the loneliest, most painful low point, he met God as he truly is.
The God who appeared to Moses was present in a flame of fire and introduced himself as the God of the living. Moses heard God’s voice with his own ears and saw with his own eyes God at work in the flame, yet he did not recognize him as God, because the God who appeared in the bush was not the God he had known. It was because Moses had been believing in a God of his own making that he did not know the one who was calling him by name.
Believers, too, go to church and serve, yet they make a God of their own and worship a God who works for them. In their minds God is supposed to answer just as they wish, and when he does not hand them what they want quickly, they are disappointed, they stumble, and they leave for the world.
Acts 7:33-34
33The Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you stand is holy ground. 34I have surely seen the affliction of my people that is in Egypt, and have heard their groaning. I have come down to deliver them. Now come, I will send you into Egypt.’
Moses began to understand that when the God of truth, the living God, steps into the lives of his people, they need not be afraid but can stand bold.
Those who have truly met God go through two stages. The first is taking off their sandals. It means this: break with your old self and with your past. Why? Because to come to God we must leave the past behind, and before we can launch out onto the sea of the word, the first task is to untie the ropes that bind us. And unless we put off the old self and cut ourselves off from the past, no amount of prayer, Bible reading, or praise will change us. People like that leave the vessel of their heart brimming with dirty water and refuse to pour it out, and then complain that God does not change them.
Yet the people God has chosen will in the end have no choice but to take off their sandals, as Moses did, before the great God who is worthy of all honor. He has given us time to repent and time to take off our sandals; we must not be so foolish as to disobey and be disciplined by the Lord on the last day. Let us all take off our sandals. Only when we put off our own lives, our plans, our goals, and our values will God come into our emptied hearts and work there.
The second stage is God sending Moses: having seen the affliction of his people and heard their groaning, he sends the man he has trained. In this stage Moses the shepherd receives his call; trained forty years in the palace and forty in the wilderness, he has grown into a leader and now takes up the task God has given him. In the same way, it is as though God were telling each of us that he entrusted us with wealth, wisdom, and honor, and caused us to hear his word, for the sake of his people who are yet to be saved.
Now God trains Moses the murderer, causes him to be born again, and sends him to the real murderer, King Pharaoh, putting into action his plan to free the people of Israel through Moses’ faith. This plan is what he promised Abraham, and by fulfilling that promise God makes known to his people that he is the living God.
John 8:44-45
44You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and doesn’t stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and the father of lies. 45But because I tell the truth, you don’t believe me.
The devil has no truth in him. He speaks lies, speaks on his own, and is a murderer who seeks to lead people to death. Since there is no truth in those who belong to him, they will not listen or believe, however often the words of Jesus Christ are preached to them. This is why Jesus came to this earth himself: to rescue his children from Satan, who wants to drag souls down to hell. Just as Jesus Christ fulfilled that charge completely, and just as Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt at God’s command, you too must live as God commands, and spend yourselves to save souls through the word of truth.
The heart of Stephen’s sermon is this: God called Abraham and chose Joseph and Moses because, to accomplish his work, he chooses his people and trains them, and then does his work through those he has chosen. To everyone listening he declared that although they were praying to God, giving to the poor, and offering sacrifices with all their devotion, they were doing it with a faith that refused to acknowledge that Jesus had come, which meant that in the end they did not believe God at all. When we worship God, bring our offerings, and pray with our whole heart, that too is possible only because God has given us grace. There is no reason at all, then, to be proud because we are a little more devoted or pray a little more than others in the church.
Blessed is the one who truly serves God as the God of the word and of truth, and as Father. This is because those who serve God by their own zeal and works may turn and blame him the moment they are hurt or life grows a little hard.
As the Lord said, the children of the devil never accept the truth. So you must know how blessed it is that the word now fills you, and what a cause for thanksgiving it is to be loved by God. I hope you will give thanks to Jesus Christ, who called us, insignificant as we are, sealed us as his children, and is working even now to seat us in a place of glory. And leaning on the Holy Spirit, who neither slumbers nor sleeps as he guards us from every temptation of the world and every power of darkness, we must grow spiritually so that we can hear his word.
Beloved, I earnestly hope you will lean on the word. And I ask you with all my heart that, standing on the rock of the word, you may be able to cry out, as Stephen did, with certainty and boldness, because that faith alone is the reason the Lord died on the cross, and it is his love.
May you always walk with the Lord. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.