Telling the Story: Part 4
Telling the Story: Part 4
Acts 7:35-53
by William Klock
Not very long ago I got into an online discussion with someone about evangelism. The people I was interacting with were telling me things like, “I don’t confront, I just plant seeds” and “We’re suppose to share the gospel, not tell the gospel” or “If people are getting mad at you, you’re doing it wrong” and “Jesus just loved people. He wasn’t confrontational”. I found myself wondering if these people read the same Bible I read. And I was thinking about that whole conversation off and on these last few weeks as I’ve been working through Stephen’s address—his very confrontational address—before the Sanhedrin.
Because there’s nothing namby-pamby or wishy-washy—or uh, I mean, “non-confrontational”—about Stephen’s address. I expect that if you set Stephen down in our context today and let him do what he did, a lot of modern Christians would be misquoting Matthew 7:1 at him. You know, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” But, of course, being confrontational, calling people to repent, proclaiming the good news about Jesus and the truth that he is Lord as something more than just another choice on the religious smorgasbord has nothing to be with being judgemental. It has everything to do with knowing and having experienced the reality of God’s goodness in Jesus and the Spirit and it’s about having a vision, a hope of this broken creation—and of humanity—set to rights and God coming to dwell with us forever.
We’ve made our way through Stephen’s address over the last three Sundays. They accused him of blaspheming the torah and the temple and Moses and instead of defending himself, Stephen instead told the story they all knew so well. But going back to Abraham and working through it all the way to their present day, he showed how the law and the prophets, the torah and the temple had been signposts pointing the people to Jesus the Messiah. And so it wasn’t Stephen who was blaspheming torah and temple—it was them—because they’d rejected Jesus. The Christians were the true followers of the law and the prophets, the true children of Abraham and Moses, because they recognised that that’s what the story was working toward all this time. But that wasn’t what they wanted to hear. But if we’ve heard the story that Stephen told, we ought to be prepared. Rejection is how God often works. Joseph had been rejected, but God worked something amazing from it. Moses was rejected, but God worked something amazing from it. Jesus was rejected, but God worked something amazing from it. So if Stephen is rejected, we can be confident God will work something amazing from it. I think they understood, which made them all the more angry, because they understand: if they reject Stephen, they’re actually playing right into his narrative. But they do it anyway.
We’ll pick up with Acts 7:54. [Page 1088 in the pew Bibles.] Luke tells us: “What Stephen said was a blow right to the heart. When they heard it, they gnashed their teeth against him.” Picture them, sitting in their dignified counsel, the priests and leaders of Israel. But there’s no response they can give that won’t condemn them, so they just sit there glaring at him as they gnash their teeth.
To us that’s probably just a picture of rage, but Luke is pulling this image of gnashing teeth from the Old Testament—particularly from the Psalms—where it’s always the wicked who gnash their teeth at the righteous or the wicked who gnash their teeth in frustration, aguish, and rage at God after finding themselves on the wrong end of his judgement. Luke wants to make it clear that these are the leaders of Israel—the men who were supposed to know and to represent God—but instead they’ve rejected his Messiah and are revealing their wickedness. Think of Jesus in John 8, addressing a crowd of angry scribes and Pharisees. “We’ve got one father and that’s God,” they yelled at him. And he said back, “If God were really your father, you would love me, because I come from God…No, you are from your father, but your father is the devil.”
And then, in stark contrast, Luke describes Stephen in verse 55: “He, however, was filled with the holy spirit, and looked steadily up into heaven. There he saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at God’s right hand. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘I can see heaven opened, and the son of man standing at God’s right hand!’
They’ve rejected Jesus. They sit there, almost demonically gnashing their teeth at him—the posture of the wicked who stand condemned before God. And Stephen stands before them full of the Spirit and with the very vision of heaven those men had longed for. Luke said at the beginning of all this that as they looked at Stephen his face was like the face of an angel. And Stephen shouts out to them, “Look!” I can imagine them looking around, wondering what he’s insisting they look at, because of course, no one else is seeing what he sees. But the fact that his own face had been transformed—or even transfigured—says that he must have been seeing something and they knew it. And he goes on, “I can see heaven opened and the son of man standing at God’s right hand!”
I think that whenever I’ve read this, I’ve tended to picture Stephen looking up, pointing past the ceiling of the room they were in, as if he’s been given a glimpse into—you know—heaven—up there. But the more I think about the imagery and context here, I don’t think that’s it. I think we should be thinking back to episodes like the one in 2 Kings 6. Israel was under attack by the Arameans. The Prophet Elisha and his servant, Gehazi, were staying in the city of Dothan when it was surrounded by the Aramean army. They woke up in the morning to see the huge army surrounding the city and Gehazi began to worry. “What shall we do?” he asked Elisha. And Elisha calmly told him, “Don’t be afraid, for those who are with us are great than those who are with them.” I picture Gehazi standing there wringing his hands. And so Elisha prays, and as he prays, Gehazi’s eyes are opened and on the hills all around he sees horses and chariots of fire surrounded the Aramean army. And that heavenly army didn’t arrive when Elisha prayed, like heaven, it was there all along. The miracle was simply God’s gracious allowance to open the eyes of Elisha’s servant to see it.
It’s a reminder that heaven isn’t up there, some far away place. Heaven is here. God created earth and heaven to overlap, for us to live in his presence. Our sin has driven a wedge between the two. But God and his realm are never far away. As Gehazi was reassured that day as he saw a glimpse of heaven, so Stephen was reassured as the stood before the Sanhedrin. As the highest court of the Jew was about to render a judgement against him and condemn him to death, I think we should understand what he saw as a sudden revelation of the heavenly court. And there stood Jesus, the son of man. The son of man was the character in Daniel’s vision who rose to take his throne at God’s right hand and from there to quelled the angry kings and nations that raged against God. And now Stephen sees the ascended Jesus, not now sitting on his throne as Lord, but standing at the right hand of God, the great judge, to act as his advocate and witness. The court of Israel was condemning him to death, but the heavenly court, the heavenly judge was ruling in his favour.
What’s interesting about this comparison between the chariots of fire and Stephen’s vision of the heavenly court, is the result, the aftermath, the response of God’s man. Because the chariots of fire didn’t swoop down to crush the Aramean army. Instead, Elisha prayed again and God blinded the Arameans. And Elisha then went out and convinced the blinded Arameans to follow him to Samaria, where Elisha prayed again and the Lord opened their eyes. The king wanted to slaughter Elisha’s “prisoners”, but Elisha warned the king. It wasn’t the king who defeated and captured them, God had done that. So instead the king prepared a feast for them and then sent them on their way home. This was Israel in one of her finer moments, obeying God, being light to nations, making known the grace and glory of God. And I’ll come back to it shortly.
I think Luke’s main point in telling us about this heavenly vision of Stephen’s ties in closely with the theme of Jesus and the church being the new temple—something that comes up over and over through Acts. Remember that for the Jews the temple was the supposed to be the place, not just where heaven and earth overlapped, but the thin place between them where God’s people could meet him. Not fully, of course. His presence was in the holy of holies where no one could go. But if they offered the sacrifices that would purify them from the stain of sin and death, they could draw near. The irony was that God’s presence had been gone from the temple for hundreds of years. They’d rebuilt it when they returned from their exile in Babylon, but God’s presence had never come back. As if God was hinting to them there was something new and better to come. And Stephen’s been preaching on that theme. The old temple was a signpost pointing to Jesus and to a new temple, not this time made with hands, but established by God himself and filled with is Spirit. And in as much as I expect this miracle vision of the heavenly court was a gift to Stephen to encourage him—even though he doesn’t seem to have needed much of that kind of encouragement—the gospel was enough—it highlighted to everyone present that day the thing that Isreal so longed for in the temple—the convergence of heaven and earth—was now happening in Jesus and his people.
And while Stephen’s vision seems to be unique in Christian history, we see saint after saint, martyr after martyr going to their deaths with the same sort of calm and composure that we see in Stephen. I have to wonder if God has given others similar visions to which, for obvious reasons, we simply aren’t privy. Polycarp, Perpetua and Felicity, Ignatius, Thomas Cranmer, Nichols Ridley, Hugh Latimer, Maximillian Kolbe—all died with the gospel and prayers for those who killed them on their lips. Brothers and Sisters, that’s the witness of men and women who are confident in the gospel, in the lordship of Jesus, and in the hope of resurrection and new creation. These are men and women who understood what the gospel is—not good advice, not another option to try on the religious smorgasbord, not something you should give a try; they knew it to be true and they knew it to be truly good news—the way, the truth, and the life. They knew the grace of God so powerfully, that they went to their deaths praying that those who killed them would one day know it.
So Luke goes on in verse 57: “But they yelled at him at the tops of their voices, blocked their ears, and made a concerted dash at him. They bundled him out of the city and stoned him. The witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul. So they stoned Stephen. “Lord Jesus,” he cried out, “receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and shouted at the top of his voice, “Lord, don’t let this sin stand against them.” Once he had said this, he fell asleep.
“Now Saul was giving his consent to Stephen’s death.
That very day a great persecution was started against the church in Jerusalem. Everyone except the apostles was scattered through the lands of Judaea and Samaria. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. 3 But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.”
It’s not just that Stephen stood firm on the gospel before the Sanhedrin and it’s not just that he had a vision of heaven in which he was vindicated and could go to his death with calm and confidence. His prayer for his enemies speaks volumes—it’s a powerful witness—to the gospel itself.
I can’t image what it was like for Stephen. In high school I was hit in the throat by a softball trying to catch someone’s pop fly. It hurt. Apparently I was lucky it didn’t crush my trachea. And that was a softball. Stephen stood there—and I expect pretty quickly knelt and then lay there—as people threw rocks at him. The biggest rocks they could find and still throw with force. It was an absolutely brutal way to die and I can’t imagine what kind of sadistic person would take joy in doing it to someone. I guess that’s yet more testimony to the influence the gospel has had on our culture. And there, at a little distance stood Saul of Tarsus, having given the green light to the angry mob, supervising them as they threw their stones. Keeping guard over their coats. But as the rocks were hitting Stephen—imagine a rock breaking your jaw, crushing your nose, breaking your skull—Stephen cried out to God. He cried out for mercy on those who were killing him.
And that stands out as another witness to the gospel. Because the whole going to a martyr’s death, calmly and confidently and stoically, that’s admirable, but other people had done that before Stephen. About two centuries before, in the days when the Greek king, Antiochus Epiphanes, ruled Judaea, there had been a lot of Jewish martyrs. Antiochus wanted to break the Jews, get them to forsake their “law”. Get them to become more Greek, and they’d be an easier people to rule. And so he desecrated their temple. He made it illegal for them to circumcise their sons. And his soldiers would round up the openly rebellious and force them to eat pork on pain of death. 2 Maccabees 7 tells the story of one family of Jewish heroes. Seven brothers are tortured and, one by one, martyred as they stand firm in their faith, as they refuse the soldiers’ order to eat pork. They bore witness to their faith in God, to their hope in the future resurrection of the dead, but they also call down horrible curses on those pagan soldiers as they died. With their last breath, they called down God’s judgement on their enemies.
But Stephen: Like those Jewish martyrs, he stood firm in faith. He warned his accusers and his killers of God’s coming judgement. But he didn’t lay it down as a curse. He laid it down as a warning, a call to repentance—and with his last breath, a prayer for grace. One of those Maccabean martyrs had yelled out, “This mighty power will torture you and your descendants!” And Stephen, raised on those same stories of the martyrs, he saw that same divine persistence, but in light of Jesus he saw it very differently. Stephen knew there is no escaping the Hound of Heaven. But instead of divine judgment pursuing his enemies, he saw divine grace hounding them, the redeeming love of God pursing them—and if they would not be caught by it—it would pursue and catch and enfold and transform their descendants. Somehow, someday the grace of God in Jesus, the renewing power of the gospel would catch them, because—Stephen was absolutely certain—that power will one day change the entire world. That was the point of his powerful speech before them, after all. From Abraham to Joseph, from Jospeh to Moses, from Moses to Jesus. That’s what the story is about: the grace and glory of the God of Israel to save his creation—not just Abraham’s family—but all of creation. It’s about God, in love, giving himself to purify us from the stain of our rebellion, so that he can come home to live with us. To restore heaven and earth. And that gospel knowledge, that good news changed everything for Stephen.
Brothers and Sisters, think about this. Imagine people knew nothing of Jesus or the gospel or Christianity other than the astounding fact that Christian martyrs go to their deaths, not hurling curses, but calling down blessing and forgiveness from heaven on the very people torturing and killing them. That, in itself, says something powerful about Jesus and the gospel and Christianity. That in itself, would, I think, make a lot of people constructively curious. That this is what we see from Christian martyrs down through history is witness to the gospel and to the very nature of our faith in the God of love who shed his blood to reconcile his enemies to himself. A witness to the Jesus who, as he died on the cross, prayed that those who killed him would know God’s forgiveness.
Would that we, Brothers and Sisters, would be captivated by this same gospel of grace and the same sure and certain hope of reconciliation and resurrection and new creation. Because our generation of Christians seems to be losing it. We no longer think of the gospel as good news to proclaim, but as good advice to share, because Jesus is no longer the way, the truth, and the life, but now a way, a truth, a life. We no longer have a clear hope and vision of creation set to rights by Jesus, maybe because we twisted this idea of “heaven” into a distant, ethereal, disembodied realm, instead of God’s realm, present, but unseeable because of our sin. And so we’re afraid to speak of sin as that great evil that keeps us from God and we’re afraid to call people to repentance and we’re afraid to speak of that day when God will, once and for all, wipe the last traces of sin and evil from the world, to heal the breach between heaven and earth, to pull out the wedge we’ve so firmly driven between them. And, in the same way, having consigned Jesus’ lordship to a distant heaven, we fear to proclaim that most basic Christian creed—the one carved on our lychgate: “Jesus is Lord”. Lord, not just in a far away heaven, not just someday in a far away future, but here and now.
Brothers and Sisters, we need Stephen’s witness just as much as the Sanhedrin did that day. I pray that we would take it to heart. And if we lack his confidence, if we lack his hope, if we lack his vision, or if—in contrast to Stephen—we find ourselves gritting our teeth in anger and calling down curses on our enemies, that the Lord would give us a clear vision of his grace, of his kingdom, of his glory. Amen.