Again, as we've seen before in some of these sermons, what I really want you to hear is to hear the sermon in its whole context, or at least in the context that the Holy Spirit has preserved it for us. Because again, we don't know whether there were other words that were spoken, but this is what was spoken and the Holy Spirit considered it necessary for us to hear. And so I wanted you to hear it in its whole context, And so we'll read it through together and then afterwards I'm simply going to make some observations because there's obviously no way that we can dig deeply into every single aspect of what it is that Stephen talks about in this sermon. But I'll remind you, in terms of our text last week, Stephen has been arrested. There are false charges that are trumped up against him, and he is responding to those charges in this sermon. And the high priest said, are these things so? And Stephen said, brothers and fathers, hear me. the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham as he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran. And he said to him, go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you. And then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And after his father died, God removed him from there into the land in which you are now living. He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot's length, but promised to give it to him as a possession and to his offspring after him, though he had no child. And God spoke to this effect, that the offspring would be sojourners in a land belonging to others, who would enslave them and afflict them 400 years. But I will judge the nation that they serve, said God, and after that, they will come out and they will worship me in this place. And he gave him a covenant of circumcision, And so Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. And Isaac became the father of Jacob and Jacob of the 12 patriarchs. And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt. But God was with him and rescued him out of all of his afflictions and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. who made him ruler over Egypt and over all of the households. Now there came a famine throughout all Egypt and Canaan, and a great affliction, and our fathers could find no food. But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers for their first visit. And on the second visit, Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph's family became known to Pharaoh. And Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father, and all of his kindred, seventy-five persons in all. And Jacob went down into Egypt, and he died there, he and our fathers. And he went back to Shechem, and they laid him in a tomb that Abraham had bought for the sum of silver from the sons of Amor in Shechem. But as the time of the promise drew near, which God had granted to Abraham, The people increased and multiplied in Egypt until there arose over Egypt another king who did not know Joseph. He dealt shrewdly with our race and forced our fathers to expose their infants so that they would not be kept alive. At that time, Moses was born and he was beautiful in God's sight. And he was brought up for three months in his father's house. And when he was exposed, Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own. And Moses was instructed in all of the wisdom of the Egyptians. And he was mighty in words and deeds. When he was 40 years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended an oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand. And on the following day, he appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile them saying, men, you're brothers. Why do you wrong each other? For the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside saying, who made you ruler and judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday? And in this retort, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became father to two sons. When 40 years had passed, the angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame and the fire and the bush. When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. And as he drew near to look, there came the voice of the Lord. and the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And Moses trembled and he dare not look. Then the Lord said to him, take off your sandals from your feet for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their groaning and have come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send you to Egypt. and Moses whom they rejected, saying, who made you ruler and judge? This man God sent as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. The man led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for 40 years. This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai with our fathers. He received living oracles to give to us. Our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him aside, and in their hearts turned back to Egypt, saying to Aaron, make for us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. And they made a calf in those days, and they offered a sacrifice to the idol, and they were rejoicing in the works of their hands. But God turned away and gave them over to the worship of the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets. Did you bring to me slain beasts and sacrifices during the 40 years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? You took up a tent of Molech. and the star of your God, Rafaam, and images that you made to worship. And I will send you into exile beyond Babylon." Our fathers had the tent of witness in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it according to the pattern that he had seen. Our fathers in turn brought it with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our fathers. And so it was until the days of David, who found favor in the sight of God and asked to find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. But it was Solomon who built the house for him. Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands. As the prophet says, heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord? And what is the place of my rest? Did not my hands make all of these things? You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in hearts and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit, as your fathers did, and so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered. You who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you and we thank you for not only your word in general, but this word and this sermon that you have preserved for us that was given by Stephen shortly before his death. Father, I pray that you would bless the hearing of your word. I pray that it would stir our hearts. I pray that it would be something that you would use to build us up in our faith. And I pray that if there are those here who do not know you as Lord and Master and Savior, that you would use these words to call them to faith. In all things, I pray that you are praised and honored and proclaimed. through these words, in spite of these words, through my efforts and in spite of those efforts. These things we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Again, there's a lot of material here and there's no way in any kind of reasonable sense that we could break this down and really look in depth. This is the kind of things upon which books are written and not necessarily sermons or even sometimes series of sermons are given. There's more depth here than we simply are able to take in and digest. in one sitting. What I do want to do though is make some observations both in terms of the context to help you understand what is going on and why Stephen is preaching the way he's preaching. and then make a couple observations in terms of some highlights within the text and then application in terms of our lives as well. The immediate context, though, this is a court scene. Stephen is basically defending himself against the charge of heresy before the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin, of course, is the equivalent, if you will, of the Supreme Court in the Jewish world. Okay, and so he has charges that have been trumped up and charges against him. And one thing that you need to understand something is that the charge of blasphemy carries with it the death penalty. And the death penalty in Jewish law required that two or three witnesses needed to be present to charge you with such a crime. That was a matter of Jewish justice. It was a matter of equity and fairness so that one person couldn't blame another person and a judge show preference for one person over another person. And thus, two or three witnesses needed to be present. What I think is interesting about this is the way that Stephen kind of structures his sermon, because he structures his sermon by giving several witnesses in his defense, very much like Jesus does when he is accused and stands before the people in John 5, verses 30 through 47. So they're saying, who testifies to you? And Jesus is saying, look, here are all of the people that testify to me, including Moses. one of those who Stephen appeals to. So Stephen appeals really to four as he's making his defense. He appeals to Abraham. He appeals to Moses. He appeals to Joseph. And then he appeals to the temple and the tabernacle and the witnesses that those things contain and says, these are my witnesses to defend me against these trumped up false charges. You may have your witnesses, I have my witnesses. Who are you going to believe? That's the context that we find this passage, this sermon being preached in. And I think that's interesting for us to make note of because we oftentimes think of witnesses only as those people who are, you know, kind of standing there near us. You know, when we go to court today, we typically have a witness that, you know, testifies to our character or testifies that we didn't do something that we're being charged of doing or say they were with me when this thing occurred or that thing occurred. and things like that, but we sometimes forget that witnesses can also be things. Maybe I think that's the power of that CSI show that was popular for, and it still may be popular, I'm not sure how much TV that I watch, but the demonstration that science, if you will, the evidence that is left behind in a criminal event can be a witness. History, too, can be a witness. And that's what Stephen is appealing to. Now, I think that's important for two reasons. One, as a reminder to us, because we're always being challenged as Christians, that the Old Testament really isn't history. It's just a bunch of mythology. It's just a bunch of folklore. It's just a bunch of stories that have been gathered and put together. I hear that from people all the time. Understand that people who lived in the church and even those who were in the Sanhedrin, did not consider any of these Old Testament events to be myth, or legend, or stories that were made up to illustrate something, kind of moral tales. They considered every part of this to be real historical fact. just as historical fact as you standing in front of me or sitting in front of me as the case may be today. I think that's valuable to remind us and maybe encourage us when we're challenged about that reality because everybody in the Bible considered the Bible to be real the truth. ought we not also take their example and their witness? None of those guys considered it to be myth. The second thing is it helps us understand how a courtroom works in those days. And you go, okay, well, that's just kind of a fact, but it helps us understand our Bibles in light of that. When you read the prophets, Okay, this would be, you know, Isaiah and Jeremiah, and of course, we call Daniel a prophet, but the Jews did, they considered him historical writings, but also Ezekiel. And then you get into the 12 minor prophets. So when you read those books of the Bible, One of the things that you see is something very similar to what Stephen is doing, kind of a recounting of history. If you want a very simple way to understand all of the prophetic works and what Stephen is doing here, you can understand it in two phrases. God is being faithful to his covenant. Man is not being faithful to the covenant. If you can remember those two ideas, you can understand the context of every single prophetic book in the Bible, the long ones and the short ones alike, because that's all what they're doing. And many scholars today will say that what you have here in these prophets is really God's court cases against Israel, saying, look, here's the covenant that I made with your forefather Abraham. and have reinforced it with those who descended from Abraham. You've been unfaithful to it, but look how I've been faithful to it over and over and over and over again. And guess what, folks? So much of the New Testament is structured that way too. God being faithful in spite of the fact that we're not always faithful. Read the letters to the Corinthian churches as an example, the Galatian churches, the churches in Galatia. People of God have not had a good history of being faithful. But God has a perfect history for being faithful to His covenant. Jesus being the climax of that. Okay, and so if you're going to understand what those prophets are doing, I think it's helpful to understand what Stephen is doing. Because he's demonstrating to us, again, that God is being faithful. in spite of the fact that we are typically faithless. Stephen is giving himself a legal defense. not only in terms of what he's saying, but of Christ, who is the Lord, Master, and Savior. So he begins in verses two through eight and mentions Abraham. And again, so much that we can go into, but let me simply remind you that God gave the covenant promises to Abraham. That's Genesis chapter 12. And those promises included the fact not only that he would raise up a nation, but that the nations would find their blessing in him. Okay, understand that context as it's applied to the church because in Christ, all of those promises that God gave to his people are yes and amen. Okay, so they belong to us. We are the inheritors of those promises. So the world around us, should look at the church in their midst and say, I am blessed or I find my blessings by the fact that that church is there because of the way they live, because of the things that they stand for and because of the things that they do. I'm not always sure that the unbelieving world looks at the church that way. It's a testimony in terms of oftentimes how we don't live the way we ought to live and how we oftentimes end up living very hypocritically rather than living and worshiping in spirit and in truth. Joseph is mentioned then. Of course, the patriarchs are mentioned from Abraham kind of working our way down to Joseph. But Joseph is the next larger section from verses 9 through 16. And of course, we know the accounts of Joseph as he's sold into slavery in Egypt. Understand one thing about Joseph's life, is Joseph's life is a little picture, a mini picture of what Israel would follow up doing. If Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt, Joseph's family, Israel, would end up in slavery in Egypt. And eventually he would rise up to power and influence as a nation would grow. And eventually after Joseph's death, what is the request that he makes? He requested his body not remain in Egypt. And so he, when the Israelites exodus Egypt, they take his body with him and they bury him with his fathers in the promised land. Israel then also with him leaves Egypt. Okay, and so we see a little picture, a snapshot of what's to come. In Joseph was to come in terms of the nation, and God is again giving that to us kind of as a type of foreshadowing of what is about to come. I want to give you a little piece of trivia, because this is kind of one of those things that I find interesting. In 7.14 here in Acts, chapter 7, verse 14, it speaks of 75 people coming down into Egypt. If you cross-reference that with Genesis 46, verses 26 and 27, it says 70 in all. and you go home. There's a difference between 70 and 75. How is there a discrepancy there? And again, people who are unbelievers like to say, look, this guy is talking about that stuff back then. He can't even get his numbers right. He said 75 and not 70. About 400 BC, the Israelites had been scattered all over the known world. And they realized a lot of people in the synagogues couldn't read Hebrew anymore and could only read Greek because that was the language that everybody spoke. That's the language they learned in school, as it were. And so they began translating the Bible into Greek so that everybody could read the Bible. It's a great concept. It's why we have the Bible in English too. But when the Greek was translated, the Septuagint translators gave us one additional piece of information. You see, Joseph not only had two sons, he had five grandsons, according to the Septuagint translation. Stephen is quoting not from the Old Testament Hebrew, he's quoting from the Septuagint, which is why the number difference. Simple answer, doesn't have to be complicated. One of the things that you will see as you go through the New Testament is a lot of the New Testament authors are quoting from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament and not just the Hebrew Old Testament. They mix and match. And there's a whole lot of interesting things around that. But if anybody kind of says, well look, this is an error, it's not. You're just looking at a different translation that Stephen was reading from, or had studied from. Moses, it takes us the largest section of the sermon from verses 17 through verse 43. And Moses, again, is a picture of Christ. Notice how all these guys become pictures of Israel and pictures of Christ. Moses is a covenant mediator. God gives the covenant. He is the one that God uses as a redeemer. but also as a lawgiver, just as Jesus is a redeemer and a lawgiver over the people. He works great and mighty works. And in the context of Joseph in verses 42 and 43, Some of the chain references don't always include this reference, but he cites from Amos 5, verses 25 through 27. That's kind of that part that's kind of broken up kind of in poetry, a poetic structure in many of our Bibles if they do that. But verses 42 and 43 are a quote from Amos 5, verses 25 through 27. Essentially what Amos is getting at is that God is allowing the people to fall into sin because that's what they want. They are pursuing their idols and God's basically going, all right, if that's what you really want, I'm gonna give you hands off for a while and I'm gonna show you what those idols will really do to you as a form of my judgment. Kind of the same argument that the Apostle Paul will make in Romans 1. And what's interesting to remind you about, remember, the Apostle Paul may have been there. There's a pretty good chance that the Apostle Paul was there. The people who were complaining from the area of Tarsus are there making charges against this deacon named Stephen. And that's where Paul is from. I find those kinds of dot connections interesting. Then he goes in verses 44 through 50 in terms of the tabernacle. The tabernacle represents more than anything else, as does the temple, represents the presence of God with his people. When we get into Advent in a couple of weeks, we're gonna spend a little bit more time talking about the presence of God with us, what theologians call the Immanuel principle, okay? God with us is what Immanuel means in Hebrew. But that's what the temple represents, is God's presence with his people. And thus, the temple always points to something else. The temple points to Christ who is the greatest temple, who is the presence of God with his people. And again, so we have this connection again, foreshadowing and pointing to Christ that Stephen is citing. Even citing Isaiah 66 verses one and two about, you know, I don't dwell, you know, heaven's my throne and earth is my footstool. And alluding to Daniel chapter two, verse 45. Okay, the point, the conclusion of his sermon. All of this simply being a history lesson up until this point, but a very specific history lesson. A history lesson showing how their history always pointed to Jesus. Every bit of it pointed to Jesus. If you want to defend Christianity, one of the ways to do it is simply to point to Jesus. Okay, because you're not defending yourself. You're not defending what you believe. Really, you know, because people in our world today believe all kinds of goofy things. You can just be one of them. Your goal with that is simply to point to Jesus. Because he's the one that governs what you are believing and saying. When Jesus was charged and challenged, Matthew 23, 35, one of the things that he says is that you, Israel, kill all the prophets. Every time God sent you a prophet, you kill them off. He was foreshadowing his own death. Stephen is picking up on that when he quotes again from this language of you stiff-necked and stubborn people, which of the prophets will you not kill? because even the greatest of the prophets, Jesus the Christ, they killed and they put to death because he threatened the establishment. He threatened their power. It's the theme of the sermon. That's the theme of what he's trying to get at. But what are some practical things that we can walk away from this sermon, just kind of surveying the whole? Well, the practical thing is, let me say, I challenge you to go back to the sermon and dig deeply into it because there's so much that is found within. But let me also say a couple things. Notice the decorum. I was trying to figure out maybe a word that might be more common in terms of our use, but I couldn't think of a better word, a respect maybe. that Stephen shows, the restraint that Stephen shows when challenging. He even begins, his fathers and brothers, that is a term of respect that a lot of denominational groups still use today. It's where it comes from, it's a good biblical model. Showing respect, but he's also saying, look, I'm one of your peers now. He's a leader of the church, the continuing church, standing up against an assault by those people who are part of an apostate body. who have moved into their sins. But he still shows them respect. He doesn't bad mouth them. It's a reminder to me of the book of Jude in verse nine, where in that context, you know, here's even the archangel arguing for the body of Moses. And he says, the Lord rebuke you. He doesn't slander even the devil. Decorum, respect. Watch in your words, even when you are defending something important. Remind you of the importance of justice, not only within the Jewish system, but also within the Christian system of understanding the idea of two or three witnesses. This is the basis of Christian church discipline, Matthew 18 kind of language, is that we don't slander one another, but we desire justice to be done. And so when something ill or someone is in sin, we, again, two or three witnesses are employed to speak to that person and to speak than against the sin that is done. The importance of Old Testament history. One of the themes that you will find throughout the Bible is that of remembrance. God is always saying, remember what I've done. And the people, when they remember, seem to worship God more faithfully. But when they forget, they fall into idolatry over and over and over again. We live in a society that doesn't like looking back to history, especially ancient history, because they see it as ancient and irrelevant and all of those kinds of things. Our technology has changed, folks, but the nature of the human person, the nature of our sin hasn't. Okay, we need to look back to see what God has done in the ages of the church, and then look to that and encourage ourselves with that. And one more thing. Notice, especially illustrated in the life of Moses, but really illustrated throughout the history of God's people, the contrast between God's timing and man's timing. Moses knew he was gonna be a redeemer, tried to do it in his own strength, and ended up fleeing into the wilderness because it wasn't God's timing. We see that with Abraham and the birth of Ishmael. We see that over and over and over again in the life of God's people. We sometimes can't wait for God to do it, so we try and do it ourselves. We need to wait on God's time. We need to be faithful in working, but we need to trust in God's timing as we work and as we labor. There is so much, so much here. But let me close with this, as we remember not only the past in our church, but the past throughout church history in the book of Acts that takes us here all the way back to Abraham. Remember that the God that we worship today is the same God today as he was yesterday, and will be the same God tomorrow. He is unchanging, and the promises that He offers to us are unchanging as well. Trust in them, stand upon them, find your strength in them, and never let somebody compromise them in your life. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you and we thank you for your word because it is infinitely deep and infinitely rich and infinitely glorious and worthy of our time and we don't give it the time that we ought. Father, I pray that you would give us a taste in this passage and with that taste, help us to hunger all the more and draw us deeper and deeper and deeper. into your truth. Father, we praise you. And we praise you for both the challenges and also the things that we celebrate. And we pray that you would be glorified in us in all things. And this we pray in Jesus's name. Amen. Beloved, hear the words of benediction.