Let's take our Bibles once again and turn back to Acts and chapter 7. Acts and chapter 7. Stephen, one of the seven chosen to serve in chapter six, to serve tables and carry out and administer the ministry to the widows and the vulnerable people among the church in Jerusalem, is faced with accusations from many of the Jews in Jerusalem, particularly from what are called the Hellenists, which is somewhat ironic considering these are the very people who in the church he is being tasked with helping. It is those in the synagogue of the freedmen from Cyrene, from Alexandria, Sicilia and Asia who are disputing with him at the end there of chapter 6 and who raise these accusations against him, who bring forth these false witnesses, who stir up the people, the elders and the scribes to come against Stephen. and they seize him and take him down to the council, to the Sanhedrin in the temple for a hearing. It's a somewhat pop-up trial, isn't it? Which reminds us very much, perhaps, of the Lord Jesus' own trial that took place out of order at night in the darkness. In chapter 7, Stephen addresses the members of the Sanhedrin with this speech which is recorded at length for us in Acts chapter 7, the longest speech in all of Acts given over to this history of the nation of Israel. I don't intend this evening to explore every nook and cranny of what Stephen had to say. Actually, we did that a few years ago in the Bible studies on a Tuesday night. So if you want to listen, I've still got recordings of those sessions and notes from those sessions. So if you want to dig into a bit more detail of what's going on here, I can let you have those recordings. I don't think they're online, but I do have copies of them. But what I do want to do is to give you an overview this evening of the primary themes and the purpose of what Stephen had to say, because as a statement for the defence, as a man who's standing in the dock as it were, with all these accusations flying, as a statement for the defence, it's very unusual. For most of the speech he's speaking about things that particularly those men who sat in the Sanhedrin, those men on the council, they would have known all this, he's not telling them anything new. But the context in which he is telling it is different and that's important. Stephen is emphatic throughout his recap of Israel's history that the Lord is the one who is acting in it That's a very subtle thing, but it's one that flows all the way through it. It is always God who is acting it is God who brought Abraham out of the land of the Chaldeans it is God who delivered Joseph It was God who sent Moses to them. It was God who brought them out of Egypt. It's always God who is doing the acting in the history of Israel as Stephen sets it out and that's worth noting. Through the whole thing, Stephen is appealing to a great cloud of witnesses. to demonstrate his and the gospel's continuity with Israel's past and God's plan of redemption. He's showing them that this is not something new, this is not a new teaching, but an old one. However, his intention is not simply to justify himself or defend himself from his accusers. No, his speech is ultimately accusatory in tone. That becomes clearer and clearer the further you go through it, and particularly when you get to the end in verse 51, he's very clearly, he's attacking those who are accusing him. He's not defending, he's attacking. He makes this counter-attack against those who are accusing him, particularly those who make up the court before which he's just been dragged. So there are three elements in Stephen's speech that I want to explore this evening under three headings. The first one is the patience of God, the patience of gods. Then we'll look at the people's resistance. And finally, the martyr's end. So firstly, the patience of God. And it's worth noting, as Stephen begins his speech, he starts by defying their charge of blasphemy. It's what they've accused him of, blasphemy against God, blasphemy against the law, blasphemy against Moses. But what's his opening statement? Brethren and fathers, verse two, listen, the God of glory. And it's interesting because he begins speaking of the God of glory, or some translations have it, the God of all glory. And his speech ends with a vision of the glory of God. He goes from talking about God's glory, the God of all glory, to standing before God in all his glory. But instead of pleading innocence to the charges, which you might expect would be the standard thing to say when he's charged, the high priest says in verse one, are these things so? Stephen gives them instead a lesson in redemption history. Defying that charge of blasphemy, speaking of the God of all glory. And there's an echo here as Stephen goes on to talk about and to expound the history of Israel. There's an echo perhaps of the event that Luke himself, who is obviously reporting this, he's writing this, this history for us. Luke writes in chapter 24 of his gospel of the two disciples on the Emmaus roads. You remember those two disciples who found themselves walking with the risen Jesus but didn't recognize him at first? And as they walked, and they caught him up, they caught this stranger up with all the events that had taken place in Jerusalem over that weekend. The events of Jesus' trial and crucifixion. How many were now saying that Jesus was risen from the dead? Luke tells us there that Jesus took the man in a Bible study from the Old Testaments. from Moses and explaining to them everything that God's word had to say concerning the Messiah. I'm sure as Luke put this together, as he compiled these reports, as he writes this speech that Stephen made, I wonder if that was in his mind. As those men spent time with Jesus over dinner, he was revealed to them and suddenly he was gone from their sights. They just had a course in Old Testament history from the Messiah himself. And their hearts, we're told, burned within them as they heard him speak. And Stephen does something likewise here. Something like that. But he's telling his story, he's telling the history of Israel to a group of men who knew this story backwards and forwards. He's taking, rather, the teachers back to school. Because he's trying to show to them how patient, how much God has borne with the faithlessness of Israel. beginning with Abraham and the promise of an inheritance, that glorious promise first given to Abraham in Genesis 12, a promise which Abraham never saw, never fully received, but which was passed on to Isaac and Jacob and to Jacob's sons. But then what happens? The sons of Jacob rise up against their brother. They rise up and they sell him off to slavers. They rejected him. They cast him away. Joseph was put in prison and forgotten. Yet even in that, he was raised up to be the prime minister of Egypt. And in the forbearance and the providence of God, Joseph became the redeemer of his people. The Redeemer that the brothers had at first rejected became their salvation. When a new Pharaoh came to power, we're told he enslaved the people of Israel who suffered under the burden of oppression for generations until God, once again, hearing their groanings, sent Moses to them. But Moses, too, was rejected by his people, cast out into exile, where he received the word of God to take God's message to Pharaoh and to tell him, let my people go that they might worship me. Stephen summarizes the Exodus through his speech, the repeated rebellions of God's people against Moses, their failure to keep the law. Yes, that wasn't the whole story. There were times in which they did as they were bidden. There were times of obedience, times of blessing upon the people, but repeatedly they kept falling into the same failings over and over again, rejecting those that God sent to them, rejecting their Redeemers, rejecting their Deliverers, rejecting God's prophets. But God continued to reach out to them. He continued to work with them, even when he had to send them into exile, that was for their benefit, for their good, that they might learn that lesson. He continued to reach out to them, despite the fact that they rejected and killed his prophets. Because God is a God of patience. And today, the Lord, in his mercy and in his grace, continues to reach out to men and women and children. He calls people to repentance and faith, even while we're his enemies. Christ died for us. This is the patience and the forbearance of God. And he looks down upon this world and sees the sin, and sees the filth, and the muck, and the destruction, and the death, and the violence, and every other sin that we commit in the lusts of our flesh. And he has pity. He shows mercy. He shows grace and patience. But the warning here that Stephen is giving as he draws to the end of his speech is not for us to depend on that patience, as it were. We can depend on God's faithfulness. We can depend on his love. But his patience with our sin will not last forever. His forbearance with us will not last forever. It did not last forever with his people, Israel. It will not last forever in this age. It will not last forever with you and me. And so he must heed that call to turn in repentance and faith and not become stiff-necked. That's the charge that he brings against them, isn't it? At the end of the, in verse 51, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart. We're getting on to our second point, but I think it's relevant here, isn't it, to note this, that God is patient and forbearing in the face of such provocation, not just then, but today as well, with us, with our sin. Let us not become stiff-necked. Let us retain that ability to turn and repent each and every day. for the house of Israel was stiff-necked. They may have been circumcised in their flesh, but not in their hearts. And so their resistance, that's our second point, their resistance, the people's resistance, came up against this message, this gospel. that Stephen and the others in the church in Jerusalem, the apostles and the other believers were bringing. And the further we get through, as I've already said, the further we get through Stephen's speech, the more we realize that he's not on the defensive, he's on the offensive, he's on the attack, not setting out to prove himself right or to justify himself or the church. He set out to show the consistent and rebellious and resistant heart of the people of Israel in the face of the grace and the mercy and the love and the patience of God. Their savior, their redeemer, their deliverer. And so that does bring us into that final part of the message in verse 51, you stiff necks. and uncircumcised in heart and ear. That's an incredible tactic for a man who's standing in the dock, isn't it? Not only to attack his accusers, but to start calling the judge names. You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. There's a reason he's doing it, you see. The church has been preaching this message of Jesus for some time by this point. The church is growing massively in Jerusalem. Thousands of people have become believers. Thousands of people have turned to Jesus and had their sins forgiven. Nobody could have been nobody in Jerusalem in those days could have been ignorance of the message that the church was preaching of the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and of the things that were going on the work that God was doing in that place and Even a vast number, we're told at the end of, sorry, in the middle, rather, of chapter six, verse seven, that even many of the priests themselves were coming to the faith, turning to Jesus. But in the Sanhedrin, in the council, in the temple, there was a group, including the high priest, who had heard this truth on many occasions, at least twice from the apostle Peter himself. We get that in the earlier chapters, didn't we? They've heard the truth. It's been preached to them. Jesus has been preached to them But as the word went and spread across the city surely they have heard of it Elsewhere as well, but their hearts were hardened against it Just as Stephen said that said they were stiff-necked They would not turn You always resist the Holy Spirit, says Stephen. And so they continued in their resistance to God and to his Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. In Reformed theology, we talk about something called irresistible grace, which is a wonderful doctrine. But it doesn't mean that human beings are incapable of resisting God's grace, because we do that every day. Every time we sin, every time we forget, every time we ignore God and his word, we are resisting his grace. We're actually quite proficient at it. But what it means, what this doctrine of irresistible grace means, that despite our resistance, the power of the Holy Spirit overcomes our sinful rejection of Jesus and gives us ears to hear and hearts to receive him. But the council here in Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin, they didn't respond like that, did they? They had heard the word who knows how many times by now. and they were unmoved by the truth, unmoved by the evidence of their eyes and their ears. There may even be some here this evening who remain unmoved. There may be some hearing my voice either on the recording that are unmoved by the truth of the gospel. Hearts hardened against The Lord and against his Redeemer. Hearing the gospel but never penetrating beyond their ears. Stephen is facing a body of such people here. And therefore the Lord's in his providence and in his mercy and grace, he's no longer knocking gently on the door. He's no longer tapping away, waiting for the door to be opened to him. The door of these men's hearts. And he's trying to bash it down. To leave them with no excuse for their unbelief. In some ways, we might see this, and in the context of acts, it can be seen like this, that this is kind of the last time that there's an appeal to the Sanhedrin, to the council. This is the last time that the gospel is proclaimed before them, at least on the pages of Acts. And so Stephen is all in, if you like. He's all in. You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, He screams at them. You always resisted the Holy Spirit, just as your fathers did. He wants them to think about what he said. He wants them to be cut to the heart. He wants his words to have an effect, to go in beyond the ears, beyond the mind, into the hearts. He wants to break their hearts, but they won't have it. They won't have it. Hebrews 4, verse 12, the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and joints and marrow, a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. And Stephen's words have an effect all right. The word of God, that living, that powerful word, that word that is sharper than any two-edged sword, it cut their hearts all right. But they were not humbled before it. They were not grief stricken over their sin. They were not broken hearted because they had offended their God and they realized it. No, these grown men, these community leaders, these religious leaders, what did they do? They gnashed their teeth. Their fury and their anger. spills over into a murderous rage that this man, this man should accuse them in such a way. Stephen's words are important for us. There is a time for us when we're sharing the gospel with people to do so in a gentle way. To present Jesus as the Savior and the Redeemer. There's a time to do that. But is there not also a time for words that are stronger? Words like those of Stephen. Words that condemn. Words that cut to the heart. This is just as much the truth of the gospel. Listen to Stephen's words. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute, he says, and they killed those who foretold the coming of the just one, whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers. You who've received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it. It's a hard thing, isn't it? It's a hard thing. But there is a time, there is a time and a place and a purpose for words like these in sharing the gospel. Yes, we should plead with our families. We should plead with those we meet on the streets. We should plead with our friends and our neighbors to come to Jesus, to find salvation in Him. But sin is real. Rejection of God is real and has real eternal consequences. Those consequences are more real than anything that we might consider to be true today. Because they are eternal. What does Stephen do? He's faced with this murderous crowd who gnash their teeth at him. What does it say of Stephen? Verse 55. full of the Holy Spirit. He gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. He's not looking for an escape route, is he? As they gnash their teeth and as they run at him, he's not looking for a way out. He looks up. And God, in his grace, gives Stephen a glimpse of heaven. While they're begging for his blood, he looks up, he sees the glory of God's. And in a sense, he did find his escape routes. One puts it this way, he saw his escape route, it was not back, it was up. And so we come to the martyr's end. Stephen tells them what he has seen and they cry out with a loud voice. They plug their ears, you know, like children do sometimes when they don't want to hear and they're being told off or told to do something they don't want to do. Put their hands over their ears, don't tell me they don't want to hear, I don't want to know about that. They cover their ears, they rush at him, they grab him and take him outside the city and they begin to stone him. But it's almost like Stephen is oblivious. It's almost like he's somewhere else. He's not thinking about the furious enemies that are surrounding him. He's not thinking about those hands that are grabbing at his clothes and his hair and dragging him along. He's turned away from the world, towards God, and in his final moments, that's where his treasure is. So caught up in that vision of the glory and the spirit of God as they drag him from the courtroom and they stone him to death. He sees Jesus at the right hand of God's. R.C. Sproul points out something I find really interesting. Note how Jesus is standing. When Stephen sees him, Jesus is standing at the right hand of God. Not sitting, but standing. Usually when we think of Jesus, it's seated at the right hand of God because his work is finished. But what's going on here? Who is it who stands in a courtroom? Well, the judge sits. The accused sits in the dock. It's the lawyers who stand, the prosecution and the defense lawyers, they're the ones that stand. And while Stephen was on trial for his life in the highest earthly court of Israel, he looked up and saw Jesus standing. At the right hand of God, he saw Jesus standing. Here's what R.C. Sproul has to say about that. Imagine, he says, that you were on trial for your life. You come into the courtroom, you're sitting down, you've already made your plea, arguing that you're innocent, but now comes the opening statement from the prosecuting attorney. He charges you with everything imaginable for the heinous crime that you have committed. When he is finished with his opening statement, the judge asks for the defense attorney to give his opening statement. He looks around and there is no attorney, no counsel for the defence. What would you think if that happened to you? If you did not have anybody to defend you? But then suddenly the judge gets up off the bench, comes down to the floor and looks up at the vacant bench and says, Your Honour, I am counsel for the defence. It does not get any better in a trial than to have the judge as your defense attorney. And that was what Stephen saw. The heavens are open. Look, I see, I see the judge of heaven and earth rising in my defense. End quote. Christ is our advocate. Jesus is the one who stands in defense of his people. For his father has appointed him as both the judge and the defense. And if you are in Christ, then he is your advocate, as he was for Stephen. He is your advocate. He is your defender. But if you are not in Christ, if you resist Him, if you will not have Him at any price, then you will have Him simply as your judge. Where are you this evening? You found in Jesus Christ. Is he your Lord and Savior? Is he your defense? Your strong high tower? We began this evening reading a couple of verses from the beginning of the 61st Psalm, isn't it? Psalm 61. Hear my cry, O God, attend to my prayer. From the end of the earth I will cry to you. When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I. You have been a shelter for me. a strong tower from the enemy. I will abide in your tabernacle forever. I will trust in the shelter of your wings. For you, O God, have heard my vows. You have given me the heritage of those who fear your name. You will prolong the king's life, his years, as many generations. He shall abide before God forever. O prepare mercy and truth which may preserve him. So I will sing praise to your name forever that I may daily perform my vows. That's Psalm 61. Psalm of David, his assurance of eternal protection, divine protection, divine intervention on his behalf. Do you have that same surety? Do you know the Savior? Will you have him as your defence? Will you have him as your Lord? Because you will certainly have him as your judge. Let's pray. Oh God and heavenly Father, we thank you for your words. And we pray that as we consider it, you might build us up. You might do us good. you might bless us with all your richest blessing, that we might hear what we have thought about this evening, that we might read it and learn it and inwardly digest your words, that we might take hold and cling to the blessed hope that you have given to us in your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Soften our hearts, Lord. Loosen our necks. And turn us in repentance and faith to you in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, we ask, according to your grace and your love. Amen.