Pushing Buttons with Stephen (part 3)
Acts 7
After Stephen speaks about Joseph, he delves into Moses, the law, the tabernacle, and the temple. And then, he makes his accusation against the Sanhedrin:
“You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors. You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him – you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.” (Acts 7:51-53 NIV)
These comments incite the Sanhedrin to the point of boiling over with murderous rage. And it’s not a rage that will be extinguished with the death of Stephen.
Keep reading into chapter 8 and you’ll find that the death of Stephen was just the beginning. It was the start of a great persecution, and the day that the young man named Saul, at whose feet the murderous throng had laid their coats while they stoned Stephen, began “to destroy the church” (Acts 8:3 NIV)
Let’s pause a moment before going galloping ahead. When Stephen accused his listeners of being just like their ancestors, was he only speaking of how they killed the prophets?
No. I don’t believe so.
If you look back in chapter 7, you’ll see that their ancestors rejected Moses’ first attempt to help them when they were slaves in Egypt. This caused Moses to flee to the desert for forty years before he was sent back by God to lead Jacob’s descendants out of Egypt and back to the land that God had promised to Abraham.
Even as Moses led them away from bondage and into freedom, they refused to obey him, they rejected him, and they turned their hearts back to Egypt (v. 39). They made a golden calf and worshiped it.
Stephen then jumps forward in time to the construction of the tabernacle and later, the temple, concluding his recitation of Israel’s history with…
“However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:
‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord.
Or where will my resting place be?
Has not my hand made all these things?’”
(Acts 7:48-50, Peter is quoting Isaiah 66:1-2, NIV)
They had a history of rejecting, rejecting, rejecting the things of God and of worshiping things other than God. They didn’t listen to the words of Moses – remember listening doesn’t just mean taking sound in via the ears. It means hearing and doing. They heard the law. They even added to it and used it to lift themselves up as people to be venerated. But they didn’t obey the law. They worshiped it and used it to gain glory for themselves.
And the temple… well, that also became a thing they were idolizing. As I heard Peyton Jones say in the Through the Word episode for Acts 7:
God was the prize of Judaism, not the temple.
The land was just a place to worship God.
The focus was to be on God, not the place, the land, or the building.
They had replaced God with the temple.
Read that last line again: They had replaced God with the temple. With the trapping of their religious system. How they did things, where they did things, what they did, how they were perceived… all of that became most important. It helped them create an illusion that they were “godly” or “spiritual.” But within, their hearts were filled to overflowing with themselves and traditions and quote-unquote sacred spaces.
The truth of God and who He is, the responsibility of being a nation of priests ministering to the world, was ignored and lost. As Jesus said, they loaded the people up with unbearably heavy burdens.
Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.” (Luke 11:46 NIV)
And while we might be tempted to point fingers and talk about how evil these religious leaders were, we should instead take a look around us. Worship of places and people and religious rules and activities has not disappeared.
Take a small step back in time to the year 2020. Remember that year? Remember the lockdowns and closures of places and events? Remember the outcry and defiance from part of the religious community when they were told they couldn’t meet in their buildings? When they were told they couldn’t do in-person services the way they always had? (For example, when meetings were allowed but singing wasn’t?)
Oh, they were “standing up for God” and “religious freedom.” I know. I don’t doubt that many had good intentions in doing so. But as I heard and read the news reports about acts of rebellion against the mandates, as I watched that spirit of “we must be allowed to do things as we always have” play out around me, my heart ached and my emotions were stirred with disgust and even anger. Not at the mandates (though I was not a fan of those either), but at the behaviour of God’s people.
Had how they did things and where they did them replaced the One they were to worship and represent to the world?
What if, instead of going against the mandates and meeting in gatherings that were deemed illegal by those mandates and facing hefty fines and jail time to make a point that religious freedom is important (and don’t get me wrong, I believe it is)... What if every church group everywhere had looked for ways to still worship God, to still proclaim His love to a world that was hurting – some of them so much more than they had ever been before, even to the point of contemplating (and acting upon) the idea of leaving their painful existence behind forever?
What if we had all focused on proclaiming freedom to those in spiritual bondage? What if we had all focused on healing the spiritually ill? If we had all focused on encouraging and lifting one another up during a dark, chaotic, and painful time?
Could we not have carried out our mandate to be light to the world, to proclaim the gospel, to bear one another’s burdens in groups of two or ten or twenty-five, meeting in homes? Could we not have found a way to gather online in personal and meaningful ways?
Did some of us reject / resist the Holy Spirit who was trying to move us from our place of comfort and how things have always been into a world, outside the doors of our church, that needs God’s light and love and healing touch?
What opportunity did we miss? Would the world we live in now be different than how it is if we had remembered that the focus is always God and not a “house made by human hands”?
Imagine if those churches who paid thousands in fines had used that money to reach out to people who had lost jobs and homes and family. If they had focused on the second greatest commandment rather than the tradition of meeting in a church building.
I know there were bodies of believers and their leaders who did an excellent job pivoting and re-imagining how things could be done, and who continue to this day to do things in new and innovative ways, and who are effectively carrying the hope of the gospel to a needy world while uplifting their fellow believers at the same time.
But these are not the examples of Christians the world is going to remember. No, they’re going to remember the groups that gathered against mandates and seemed to glory in their defiance.
We must ask ourselves: Have we become like Israel and the Sanhedrin from Acts 7? Do we worship the way and place of worship more than the God we claim to love? Do we obey the Spirit or resist Him?
I know I have touched on some touchy subjects while journaling about Stephen, and I know that this last topic is a hot button for many. I assure you that I am not pushing it to rile people up. Instead, I’m pushing it to hopefully make each of us, me included, stop and ponder the story of Stephen and the brief history he gave as more than just a story to show how brave and Spirit-filled Stephen was or to show how he was willing to give his all for Christ.
I want us to step into the story and examine it for where we would be if we had been present in that day. Would we be on the benches with the accusers and examiners? Or would we be standing with Stephen and giving a defense? Or would we be the fellow disciples, praying as we awaited news of the trial’s result, who would soon be scattered or dragged off to prison? Or would we be the curious general public following the religious leaders and venerating tradition?
Stephen’s sermon was not recorded in our Bibles to simply entertain us. It is there to teach us. What lesson will you take away from it?