Acts chapter 7. We've been looking at Stephen's speech now for the last several weeks. I think we have only two more sermons on it after this one. We're looking at more or less the center of the speech today, starting in verse 30, the main section on Moses. One of the big questions of the Christian faith from the time of Jesus is What is the relationship between the teaching of Moses and the teaching of Jesus? That is, who is the genuine heir of Mosaic religion? And that was the issue in dispute between Stephen and his assailants. Jesus answered that question, saying, if you believe Moses, you believe me. I am in total continuity with what Moses taught. And Stephen now says the same thing. Moses was right, and because I follow Moses, therefore I'm right too. You don't follow Moses. Synagogue establishment. Let's read again what he says about Moses, starting at verse 30. When 40 years had passed, an angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire in a bush in the wilderness of Mount Sinai. When Moses saw it, he marveled at the sight, and as he drew near to observe, the voice of the Lord came to him, saying, I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses trembled and dared not look. Then the Lord said to him, take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. I have certainly seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send you to Egypt. This Moses, whom they rejected, saying, There it is. Moses, whom they rejected, who made you a ruler and a judge, is the one God sent to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. He brought them out after he had shown wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, in the Red Sea and in the wilderness 40 years. This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, the Lord, your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren. Him you shall hear. This is he who is in the congregation in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, the one who received the living oracles to give to us, whom our fathers would not obey, but rejected. And in their hearts, they turned back to Egypt, saying to Aaron, make us gods to go before us. As for this Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. And they made a calf in those days, offered sacrifices to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. Then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets." Thus far, the reading of God's word. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, help us to believe Moses. If we believe Moses, we would believe Christ, because Moses wrote about Christ. We thank you for the testimony of Stephen regarding the company Moses kept, and especially his presence with the angel who dwelt in the bush and who spoke to him on Mount Sinai. Father, help us to listen to the voice of that same angel this morning, for we know that angel is your Son. Give us the grace to hear him and what the Spirit says from him to the churches. free us from distraction, clear our minds of junk, so that we can come into Your presence, listen to Your Word, and meet with You through it. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. So who's really blaspheming Moses? Is it Stephen? Or is it the men from the synagogue of the freedmen with whom he's having this argument? Of course, the Synagogue of the Freedmen had kicked it up to the next level. Stephen is now before the Council of Seventy, the Sanhedrin. As he makes this speech, in response to the charge that he blasphemed Moses, he says, no, you blasphemed Moses, and in fact, you've been blaspheming Moses since the time of Moses. This section of his speech that we read begins and ends with references to the people of Israel rejecting Moses. You reject Moses and this is nothing new. This has been going on for over 1400 years. That's Stephen's message. And the message then to us positively is listen to Moses. If you belong to Jesus, you need to know what Moses said. And if you reject Moses, if you think Moses is not worth reading, then you reject Jesus. Even the most Moses negative of the New Testament writers, John, the law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, clearly means that only as a relative contrast. He's not saying that Moses gave the law, but Jesus gave the truth, i.e. the law was false, because if he was saying that, then the entire New Testament is false. What Moses said is wrong. The whole Bible falls apart. Which is, of course, why the higher critics have directed their main assaults against Moses for almost 300 years at this point. The Sanhedrin was trying to get rid of Moses. Stephen was sticking up for him. And those who reject Moses, Stephen warns, will be handed over to their false gods. So let's look at the story that Stephen tells, starting in verse 30. The angel of the Lord appears as a flame of fire in the burning bush. Who is this angel that speaks with the voice of the Lord? Well, obviously, we know it's the Lord Himself. That's what the text makes clear. An angel of the Lord called to Moses, and in the next verse, the Lord said to him, Moses, Moses. So here's already the main thing that Stephen is trying to get across. This Jesus that I serve, He's the one who talked to Moses. The angel of the Lord is the pre-incarnate Christ. Now, could Stephen have said that in so many words? I don't know. It took the church 400 years, roughly, to read this enough times to say, that's what Stephen meant. To put all the pieces together. But clearly that is what Stephen meant. The angel in the bush is the Lord of hosts himself. One who calls to Moses and gives him this commission, describes himself the God of Moses. I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. Now, why did God start introducing himself that way? Simply say his promises travel in families. Moses, you're a descendant of Abraham. Yes, I was God of your father, Amram. And I was God of your fathers long before that. 400 years ago, your ancestor Abraham, I was his God. And that means I will be your God today. God doesn't just deal with individuals. He deals with families. And of course, Stephen majors on that as he refers throughout his speech repeatedly to our fathers, our fathers, were with Moses. Our fathers did these things, heard these things. God not only is the God of the fathers, He's the God who sets the terms of approach. Take your shoes off your feet. Not because there's anything wrong with shoes. Some churches actually still practice this. They perform all their worship services barefoot in order to honor God. It's not what God meant, that shoes are unholy. No, he was saying, I set the terms of approach. I tell you how you come into my presence. You don't decide how you come into my presence. So this is the God that Moses was dealing with, the God who controls access. What is Stephen saying? Temple personnel, you don't control access. You don't decide who gets to come into God's presence. God is the one who says no shoes or nobody without blood or nobody without a special ephod and head turban. He's also the God who delivers. I have certainly seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt and I have come down to deliver them and now I'll send you. The God of Moses is the God who saved his people out of Egypt through Moses. He's the God who sends a man. And how did Moses respond to hearing this? Well, he trembled so much that he didn't dare to look. He wasn't trying to get a good look at God. He wasn't staring at the bush far from it. And again, Stevens point to his persecutors. If you had any genuine fear of God, You wouldn't be telling me that you have God on a leash inside this temple. You would be afraid of the divine reality rather than being impressed with your own power over the Almighty. Moses is afraid when he stands in the presence of the real God. So if the thing that you worship and call God is not something you're afraid of, you may not have the right God. Moses becomes ruler and judge after being rejected. People reject him initially. God says, no, he is ruler and judge. He will bring you out. And he's empowered by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. This angel of the Lord was a key part of Moses' career. He was present throughout the entire deliverance from Egypt. For all of those 40 years of coming out of Egypt, being at Sinai, wandering in the wilderness, the angel of the Lord was there. Of course, Stephen is claiming to be empowered by that same angel of the Lord. Anyone who is against Jesus, then, anyone who's against the angel of the Lord would also be against Moses. Well, Moses' ministry. This is kind of the most important section of Stephen's speech for our purposes and perhaps for his. He brought them out after he had shown wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness forty years. What kind of wonders and signs did Moses do? Well, He parted the Red Sea. He brought water out of the rock. He provided manna for 600,000 men on foot for 40 years. He kept them all alive. And far greater than these, what's Moses' greatest work? The book of Genesis. Or perhaps the book of Exodus. or perhaps the book of Deuteronomy. Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and from the Pentateuch comes the most revolutionary religious idea in history, what we call in our Greek language monotheism. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Deuteronomy 6.4. That message was not a message that Moses heard in his pagan Egyptian upbringing. That message was not a message that circulated in the late Bronze Age in the ancient Near East or anywhere else in the world at that time. If you could pluck the guy off the street, if you could pluck the high priest out of a Mesopotamian temple, you could ask either one of them, how many gods are there? And they would say as many as there need to be. There are lots of gods. Everybody knows that there's different gods for the storm and for childbirth, for fish and for farming. There are gods for everything out there. That explains the diversity of life on this planet. Moses comes into this milieu and he says, no, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. So Moses asserts the absolute unity of the Godhead along with an absolute and inviolable creator-creature distinction. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Not, in the beginning, God was part of the heavens and the earth. And in so doing, Moses turns human religion upside down. He sets off a bomb on the playground of the theologians whose reverberations are still being felt today as the revolutionary monotheism of Moses destroys and overturns the rampant polytheism of civilization after civilization after civilization. So Moses did wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness 40 years? Absolutely. But the biggest, the most important thing he did in all that time was to write the five books of Moses and to found a family line, a nation, a culture that would preserve those books. We aren't even talking publishing them to the world at this point. We're just talking keeping them written in fresh copies as age takes out the old ones. And Stephen says, this is Moses. He brought them out. He did miracles. The greatest miracle of all is the giving of the word of God, which Stephen cites down at the end of verse 38, the one who received the living oracles to give to us. He doesn't give it as much space. He didn't need to describe to his audience what was in the five books of Moses. They already knew. They knew them inside out. They searched the scriptures because they thought they had eternal life there. But of all the miracles Moses did, surely we can agree that the five books are the greatest. And that means, Christians, that we are on the hook to know those books. You should know the Ten Commandments. You should know the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You should know about the Israel in the wilderness. You should understand and be able to recite portions of Deuteronomy about what it takes to stay in the land that God is giving you. Because Stephen and Jesus agree that Moses is the foundation of everything they taught. To be a Christian is to be a Mosaic follower, a follower of this man who brought God's people out of Egypt. Moses performed wonders and signs and Moses did not consider himself to be it. He was open about his status as a prophet. Verse 37, this is that Moses, quoting Deuteronomy 18, who said to the children of Israel, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brethren. To him you shall listen. One can think of Mohammed. I'm not it. I am merely a prophet. But Mohammed did not say, after me comes one who is greater than I will be. Somebody else is coming who will tell you the full story. So Mohammed says, I'm not it, but there will be nobody else like me, and so I am it. Moses says, I'm not it, and my boss is coming. So I'm really not it. This is the whole argument between Stephen and the people putting him on trial. Did God keep this particular promise to raise up a prophet like Moses from among the children of Israel? Already, this puts the Sanhedrin on the back foot because any argument of the form, God has not kept this particular promise is a tough argument to sustain, especially when the other side has somebody who looks like a promise, walks like a promise, talks like a promise, and does the things promised. Which is, of course, exactly what Jesus did. He looked exactly like the Prophet, like Moses, and that's why this text keeps coming up in Acts. This is already the second time that we've seen it in the first seven chapters. Moses said, a greater than I is coming, and He is God's anointed. He's the true prophet, and you all need to listen to Him. That's the point of dispute. And then Moses, Luke adds, Stephen adds, A couple more bombshells on top of what he's already said. Verse 38. This is Moses who was in the church in the wilderness. This is the first occurrence of the word church in the book of Acts. And what church does it refer to? The Old Testament church, the church that was with Moses 1400 years ago. Yes, nitpicky people, the word church does appear in the majority text in Acts 2.47. Critical text, it's not there. I think it's likely that, yes, the first occurrence of the word church in the Book of Acts is here in Chapter 7. So what does it mean? Why does Stephen deploy this word? Why does he say Moses was with the church in the wilderness? He's not pulling this out of the Old Testament. This word ekklesia, Greek word for church, doesn't appear anywhere in the Pentateuch in the Greek translation, doesn't appear in the book of Joshua, first occurs in Judges chapter 20 in the Greek translation. Stephen is independently putting the pieces together and saying, I'm with the church, the church of Jesus. And it's the same entity, the same church that came out of Egypt with Moses. In other words, what does Stephen do? He drills 15 holes in the distinction between Israel and the church, and he packs them all with dynamite. And then he lights those fuses and stands back. Boom. The distinction between Israel and the church is obliterated in the theological mindset of our first martyr. The church that Luke is describing has its origin not on the day of Pentecost, but when Moses brings the people out of Egypt. And that's why our Reformed fathers didn't like to speak of Israel. They preferred to talk about the Jewish church. Where did they get that way of speaking? Well, they got it from Stephen, who called it the church under Moses. If you have an original King James version, the 1611 edition, the headings in the Psalms, almost every one of them mentions the church. The church complains, the church cries out to God, the church prays for this, that, and the other. The theologians of that era were unabashed in describing, like Stephen, the congregation under Moses and under David and under Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah as the Jewish church. So who is the authentic assembly of God's people? Who are the real heirs of Moses? That's the point under dispute. And Stephen says, churches. The synagogue is not. This church, of which I am a member, is one and the same as the church that followed Moses out of Egypt. The Sanhedrin did not call themselves an ecclesia. They didn't self-identify as the church. Stephen does, and he puts himself in continuity with Moses and the church in the wilderness. And what other company did Moses keep? He's not just with the church, he's with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai. Now wait a second. If you read Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, what phrase do you see on every page at the beginning of every chapter and halfway through most chapters? Now the Lord spoke to Moses saying. It comes up all over the place. Because Moses is on Mount Sinai through those books and he is hearing from God. The one on Mount Sinai is not described as the angel of the Lord in the Pentateuch. And yet Moses, or Stephen rather, calls the one on Sinai the angel. He's deliberately conflating the angel in the burning bush with the God who spoke to Moses on Sinai. What is he saying? The angel of the Lord who spoke from the bush, is the angel of the Lord who spoke on Sinai, is the angel of the Lord who was manifested in Jesus of Nazareth, whom you crucified. If you believe in the Ten Commandments, you have to believe in Jesus. If you hold the Sinai revelation as binding, then you need to hold the Galilee revelation as binding. Another blow against this Israel-Church distinction that the Sanhedrin is making. We're Israel. Get out, Church. Stephen says, I don't think so. We listen to the one who brought Israel out of Egypt. The one who received the living oracles to give us. Well, before that, He was with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and with our fathers. This explains the problem. There's no conflict like church conflict. There's no conflict like family conflict. And this is a toxic combination of both. Stephen is related to the people who have put him on trial. That's why he speaks consistently, not of your fathers, but of our fathers. The grandparents we share were with Moses. This is a dispute that's in the family. And that's why they're so angry. That's why they're ready to kill him. He's not some stranger. He's their own flesh and blood. and they can't bear it. The legacy of the exodus is being contested. Who owns it? Who's in continuity with it versus who's left it behind? A pointed issue. Who's honoring their fathers and who isn't? If you argue with somebody about an event in ancient history, they might have their own opinions on ancient history, but they tend to not get too upset if your opinions are wrong. But if you argue with someone about whether they're honoring their parents correctly, it tends to get people a little more upset. And that's what Stephen is doing. You are dishonoring your fathers who were with Moses in the wilderness. Who's truly faithful to the letter and spirit of the Old Testament, to the revelation to Moses, to the words of the prophets, the cries of the Psalms? Who owns that? And the Christian answer is, and always has been, that we do. Synagogue worshipers have left their fathers behind and have gone down a different path. Stephen insists that he's the one honoring the fathers, that Moses would have endorsed Jesus. Of course, Israel's fate, Israel's sin, stands as a warning to us. Every congregation, every individual can go down that same road and say, I've got it made. I'm right. And in so doing, in that conviction of rightness, leave behind everything Jesus actually stood for. Stephen says Moses would endorse Christ, but would Moses endorse us? If Moses heard our preaching, saw our worship, watched our daily lives, would he also shake his head and say, you have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you. Or would he say, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile. Finally, Moses had the living oracles. So the company Moses kept, the church, the angel of Yahweh, the fathers, and the granddaddy of them all, the source of them all, the living oracles of God, The Word of God written in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1.1 to Deuteronomy 34.8. No one knows the place of his burial to this day. That Pentateuch is what created the church in the wilderness. That Pentateuch was the gift of the angel of the Lord. That Pentateuch is what constituted the fathers, somebody different from Egypt and the rest of the tribes of the ancient Near East. Theoretically, of course, Stephen's Jewish opponents would have sent to all of that. But in practice, Stephen insists, they rejected the life contained in the Word of God. They took the living oracles and made them dead oracles, dead letters. Letters that kill, as Paul went on to say. Stephen insists, in fact, that in repudiating the oracles of God, the people putting him on trial carry on the legacy of their fathers who repudiated Moses, whom our fathers would not obey. Verse 39, write this list of the four incredible things the company Moses kept, the church, the angel of the Lord, the fathers, the living oracles, and the fathers rejected him. And so can we. Psychologically, they turned in their hearts back to Egypt. They wanted to go back to slavery. They preferred it to freedom. Generations of slavery to sin are not thrown off in months of freedom. It can happen to Israel, it can happen to us. It's a big part of why we still sin. The message is, stop letting yourself think sin would be fun. Don't long in your heart for Egypt. And they wanted this visible God. They made a calf in those days. They rejoiced in the works of their own hands. They were sick and tired of following an invisible Yahweh who was represented by an absent Moses. And this same problem exists in the church today as we are sick and tired of following an invisible Jesus or an absent Jesus who's represented by an invisible Holy Spirit. That can get hard when we're stuck with our visible enemies and problems. And so we like to create a visible Savior. Maybe it's our right theology, our correct politics, our good practices, our good attitudes, Our heroic withdrawal from the comforts of society, or, the flip side of that, our wealth and splendor. These things will save us. Stephen says, that's so many golden calves. Be content with a hidden God, an absent Christ, an invisible spirit. This is what the book of Acts is about. Jesus is gone, the spirit is invisible, yet Christ is still reigning through his spirit over the visible church in the real world. God's people of old couldn't handle that. They needed to see a golden calf and give it credit for bringing them out of Egypt. Are we able to be content with a Jesus who's in heaven and a spirit we can't see and be sure that Jesus still reigns. That's why Luke wrote this whole book, so we can know that Jesus reigns even when we can't see him. You can't see God, but you can see the church. Can you trust that Christ reigns here? And can you submit to his reign in the church, even when it doesn't measure up to his standards or yours? Well, what happens if you don't submit to his reign? Well, Stephen goes there, then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven. If you repudiate Moses, here's what happens. You become an idolater. Stephen isn't the one blaspheming Moses. His opponents are the true heirs of the crowd that made the golden calf and wanted to go back to Egypt. Luke is saying that's the path of least resistance for church people. Make something visible, call that your God. Whether it's building worship, pastor worship, creed worship, Bible worship. We have our hymnal and we've never changed it. And so we sing songs with 18,000 words we don't know. We have our Bible translation and we've never touched it. So it's just as foreign to us as Greek. You name it, church people have done it. Luke's message, Stephen's message, is don't do that. Don't blaspheme Moses by pridefully deciding that everything you want to do is okay. Instead, worship Jesus. Trust Him for salvation. Walk with Stephen. You may be martyred, but you'll definitely be saved. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would give us the grace to pay attention to the writings of Moses. That you would help us not to just switch onto autopilot, as the Jewish church did at some point. Help us to keep going back to your word, to keep being corrected by it, to keep being challenged by it, to keep growing in our understanding and application of it. Lord, we thank you that we are the true heirs of Moses. Help us not to be like our fathers, who in their hearts rejected him and wanted to return to Egypt. Don't let us reject Moses in our hearts and want to return to the supposedly better morality and greater freedom that the world around us claims to offer. Help us instead to submit to those living oracles that Moses received as he did signs, wonders, and miracles in the land of Egypt, in the wilderness, and at the Red Sea for 40 years. Father, we thank you for the legacy of your servant, Moses, who is faithful in all your house. And we ask that you would help us to keep it undefiled. In Jesus' name, amen.