Acts: Genuine Gospel Witness Involves Confrontation & Transformation (6:8-7:2, 51-60)

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The second lesson is from the Book of Acts, chapter 6.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.

Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the freedmen, as it was called, and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen.

But they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking.

Then they secretly instigated men who said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.

And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes.

And they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council.

And they set up false witnesses who said, This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law.

For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.

And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.

And the high priest said, Are these things so?

And Stephen said, You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit.

As your fathers did, 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.

Now when they heard these things, they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him.

But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

And he said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him.

Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him.

And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.

And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

And falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them.

And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

You stiff-necked people.

That includes Creighton, by the way.

Uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit.

Happy World Mission Sunday, right?

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we give you thanks because all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to you.

We give you thanks that you stand to receive those who bear witness to you.

We give you thanks, Lord Jesus, that you call us to participate in your own triune life, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through our baptism.

And we give you thanks that you're with us in bearing witness in ministry and mission until the very end of the age.

So, Lord, would you be with us now?

Would you send your Holy Spirit to illumine this text in front of us?

Apply it to our hearts.

Draw us into your love and life.

And it's in your precious name, Lord Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

Well, please be seated.

Well, have you ever been halfway through a story?

Maybe it's at the dinner table during Thanksgiving dinner or whatever else.

You're halfway through telling a story, and then your spouse or your sibling, a close friend, interrupts you and goes, Hold on.

That's not how this story goes.

We've all had that happen to us, right?

If you ask Rachel and I about who held the who held the other's hand first, you're gonna get a version of the story where I reached out and grabbed Rachel's hand if you asked her.

And if that's what I was telling you, she would interrupt and say, Hold on.

She's shaking her head right now.

That didn't happen.

You reached out and took my hand.

Some would say that's debatable.

Others would say that's wrong.

But the point is we tell the stories rightly.

That's why we jump in and we might interrupt.

Maybe sometimes we're coming to our own defense or to defense of something else.

But uh but we want the story to be told rightly.

Because unless we tell the story rightly, we're not going to take from it the right truth or the right application, and especially something something as small as, you know, grabbing each other's hand, and arguably Rachel did.

I did.

Don't want to say it out loud.

But um even something as small as gestures that has huge implications for everything that follows.

This is a really significant moment in our budding romance in our relationship and in the life that we're building together.

So telling the story rightly matters.

And this is the burden of any historian, right?

This is the danger of any kind of revisionist history or selective history.

We want to remember history, we want to remember what happened rightly, we want to tell the story rightly so that we draw from it the right truths and we can make the right application.

So here we are in the book of Acts, and we're figuring out what it means to be go and tell disciples.

We're taking up Jesus' commission that we will be his witnesses.

If we are followers, disciples of Jesus, we are called to bear witness to the good news that he has taken our sins on the cross and done away with them, that he is raised up to new life, and that he offers us that new life as well.

That's an announcement, that's news, and that's what we're called to bear witness to.

And this Greek word for witness is really interesting.

The Greek word uh transliterated is martyr.

Martyrs.

You will be my martyrs, is what Jesus says.

Now that puts a really different spin on it, doesn't it?

Because for us in English, the word martyr takes on a much heavier connotation than being a witness.

You can stand on the witness stand and that's serious business, but to be a martyr, to bear witness by giving your very life, demands that the story is told rightly.

We're making no mistakes here.

People don't die for stories they know are made up, right?

So here we are in Acts chapters six and seven, where Stephen is bearing the ultimate gospel witness with his life.

He is giving his life to make sure that the story is told rightly.

Because if we don't tell the story rightly, we miss, or potentially we miss what makes the gospel the gospel, what makes it good news, what offers us hope.

And here's what Stephen's defense, his speech, his sermon, here's what it boils down to.

I think this is what we need to take away from it, what Luke, the author, wants us to take away.

It's this genuine gospel witness involves confrontation and transformation.

Genuine gospel witness involves confrontation and transformation.

This is what we see exemplified in Stephen's own defense in his own sermon.

This is also what's exemplified through the history of God's people, if the story is told rightly.

And if we are going to be witnesses, if we're going to take up that commission that isn't optional, but is something Jesus calls us into as his disciples, then we will have to grapple with the reality that genuine gospel witness involves confrontation and transformation.

Let's understand what those two things mean.

If you will, open up the book of Acts, uh, chapters six and seven.

Ideally, you'd open up in your Bible or your Bible app, because you might have noticed uh in our reading this morning, we've skipped over about 50 verses or so.

That's because Stephen's speech is a long speech, and it is the single longest discourse in the book of Acts.

So it's very important for Luke that we're tracking with Stephen, but just for the shake of our reader, so that we don't destroy Susan's voice here, uh, we've had our the the verses in front of us here, which gives us the context for Stephen's speech, gives us the conclusion and the consequence of his speech, but largely uh leaves the content untouched.

So we're going to explore the content just a little bit together so that we can get a better sense of Stephen's conclusion here.

Genuine gospel witness involves confrontation and transformation.

So we meet Stephen at the beginning of chapter six.

Stephen is made a deacon.

Matt serves as a deacon presently, and he'll be ordained later this year, Lord willing, uh, to serve as priest.

But deacons are set aside as authorized, commissioned servants of the church.

And specifically the deacons here have been given uh responsibility to care for widows who are otherwise being uh neglected because of a cultural language barrier there.

So Stephen is a set-aside servant of the church.

He's been entrusted with this public ministry, and Stephen is described, verse uh eight, as being full of grace and power.

This is a life transformed by the gospel.

This is a guy who gets the generous love of God shown on the cross, the hope of eternal life through Christ's resurrection.

His whole life is caught up in God's grace and power, and it shows forth in his ministry.

He was doing great wonders and signs among the people, is what we read.

And we have to remember that wonders and signs in the book of Acts always validate the message.

They aren't the message themselves, but they bear witness to the fact that God is doing a renewing and restoring work in our world through Jesus.

So that's what Stephen is about.

But Stephen encounters opposition.

He encounters rejection.

Verse 10 Some of those who belonged to the Synagogue of the Freedmen, uh, kind of an international uh multi-ethnic uh uh gathering, church gathering, called the Synagogue of the Freedmen, likely because it's it's uh largely made up of freed Jewish slaves.

So whether they purchased their own freedom, whether they were released from slavery.

Anyway, this is kind of the demographic of the church there.

So Stephen is bearing witness to the gospel, and this congregation, this uh synagogue rises up in opposition because they could not withstand, verse 10, the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking.

So, in other words, Stephen is faithfully, boldly proclaiming the gospel, and these folks can't stand it.

And we're gonna come to understand why.

So, they bring forward an accusation.

They grab Stephen and they take him to uh the council of the Sanhedrin, kind of like the religious authorities.

They want to put him on trial.

It's time to take this guy to task.

And so here's their um accusation.

This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place that is the temple and the law.

We've heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place, the temple, and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.

In other words, hey, this heretical preacher is rejecting God's word and rejecting the place that God promised to meet us.

This guy needs to go.

He needs to be dealt with.

That's what these folks are saying.

And Stephen's defense is all about telling the story rightly.

You think I'm doing away with God's word that he delivered to his people.

You think I'm doing away with the temple that he established.

But if we tell the story rightly, we see that what I'm proclaiming, what Jesus proclaims, what he embodies, is not doing away with everything that God has done in the life of our people, the Jewish people Israel.

It's actually fulfilling it.

It's actually the culmination of it.

It's the climax of all of this.

If we tell the story rightly, we're going to see how it all builds to this point.

And so Stephen's whole speech is telling the story of Israel rightly.

The story of God's saving purposes at work in history rightly.

And here's four themes, at least, that stand out in Stephen's lengthy speech.

It's helpful to sort of have the Bible in front of you because we're going to touch on a few things here.

Theme number one that runs through Stephen's sermon: God reveals himself and his saving purposes in history.

And that's really key.

We have a God who speaks.

We have a God who wants to make himself known, not a God who stands at a distance, not a God who is, we know we speculate at.

That's the history of God's people, Israel.

And it's not that he privileged Israel over every other nation, it's that he called Israel to be his witnesses to all the nations of the world, that they'd be blessed through him.

That's the commission we just read in Abraham, isn't it?

Or Genesis 12 with Abraham.

So, theme number one, God reveals himself and his saving purposes in history.

Theme number two, God characteristically calls unlikely, outcast, and uh unlikely, outcast, and afflicted people to be his agents.

God characteristically calls unlikely outcast afflicted people to be his agents of his saving purposes.

So this is where Stephen reviews some of the great uh Hall of Famers of the Old Testament, what we'd call the Old Testament, beginning with Abraham and then moving to Joseph and then moving to Moses, touching on David and Solomon.

Stephen is taking us through this whole sweep of God's saving activity with his people and observing that God has this interesting way of calling very unlikely people into his service.

Abraham was no one special.

He was just some guy living in a pagan land until God called him to go out and be about his mission in the world.

Moses was a murderer, and uh Joseph was despised by his jealous brothers.

David was a youngest brother, run to the litter, so to speak, and a shepherd boy.

God calls these unlikely and outcast people to be the agents of his salvation, not the superheroes that we might expect.

Theme number three: God's people characteristically reject God's agent.

They've got their own ideas of how God should be at work in the world.

And so uh Abraham is let out, he he, you know, he he's promised this promised land, and yet his people are brought into subjugation uh in Egypt.

Or Joseph has uh is is God reveals himself to Joseph in dreams.

He's despised by his brothers, he's left for dead, he's sold into slavery.

Um again, Moses was uh a murderer who was despised and rejected by the very people God was calling him to go back to and save.

God has this interesting way of calling these people, and yet these people are rejected as God's saving agents.

God is working through them, and yet God's people don't recognize how God is at work there because they've got their own grid that they're sorting through God's activity with.

Is that tracking?

Is that making sense so far?

Okay.

Theme number four even though God's people are characteristically rejected, pardon me, God's people characteristically reject his agent, God's saving purposes aren't tied down or thwarted.

Even though his agent is rejected, his purposes aren't thwarted.

They aren't tied down.

God remains God, and he is sovereign, and he is moving his plan forward in history one way or the other.

And so Abraham and Joseph and Moses, David, Solomon, culminating in the temple, which represents God's commitment to dwell with his people forever.

All of these things bear witness to the fact that God reveals himself, that he calls agents to be agents of salvation, that God, uh, God's people reject those agents, and yet God moves his plan forward.

That's what Stephen's speech is all about.

And the conclusion of his speech is what we catch in verse 51.

Stephen pulls no punches.

You stiff-necked people, he says, uncircumcised and hardened ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit.

As your fathers did, so do you.

What's Stephen saying?

He's saying, throughout the history of our people, God has sent people to work salvation, to work deliverance, and they've been rejected.

All of this salvation history is leading to this moment where God sends his own son, Jesus, to rescue us, and guess what happened?

Verse 53, pardon me, 52.

They killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the laws delivered by angels and did not keep it.

You've rejected the righteous one.

You've rejected the one who brings salvation to its fullness.

Do you see how God works characteristically?

Jesus is such an unlikely candidate, at least on paper.

He was born in a manger in the backwoods.

He's not a powerful ruler, he's not a warrior.

And yet Jesus is the agent, ultimate agent of God's salvation, the one to which the whole Old Testament and all of the agents he's called before then point.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the salvation that God is working in the world, and yet, just like everyone before him, Jesus himself was rejected.

You're making the same mistake that Israel, our forebearers, have made.

Israel's error is your error.

You've rejected God's agent of salvation.

It's a little like this.

It's a little like, you know, movie trailers these days, they just get longer and longer, don't they?

Oh boy.

And I'd like a good trailer, but sometimes you're like, okay, I'm kind of ready to get to the movie here.

And the thing about long movie trailers is they give you this false impression like you've seen the movie.

Do you ever have that feeling?

It's kind of like, yeah, I'd be interested in see that movie, but I feel like I saw the start, middle, and end, you know, in that like five minutes, right?

Now, have having that feeling, that sense of, okay, I know what the story is about, is still a different thing than seeing the movie, isn't it?

Especially if that movie has a twist ending that we wouldn't have seen coming based on the trailer.

And here's what Stephen is saying, in a way, he's saying, you have confused the trailer, the previews, the coming attractions with the movie itself.

And guess what?

The movie of God's salvation, the fullness of it, has a twist ending.

And the twist ending is this God has taken on flesh and dwelt among us.

God has come Himself to be the saving agent.

He's taken humanity into his very own life.

Who would have seen that coming?

What a twist.

You think based on the trailer you saw that you get the movie, and so you're you're dedicated to the content of the trailer, but I'm bearing witness to the fullness, the thing that's anticipated by that.

Does that make sense?

So here's why Stephen turns around and accuses them of being stiff-necked.

That is, they're self-centered, they're stubborn, they refuse to acknowledge that God is doing a new thing and working salvation in the fullest way through Christ.

They're uncircumcised in heart and ears.

Circumcision, we know, is the sign of the covenant amongst the people of Israel.

And he's Stephen is saying this: look, you practice piety outwardly, but inwardly, inwardly, you are hypocritical.

Inwardly, you would rather have your own way than submit to God's way.

That's what he's saying.

You're uncircumcised in your heart inwardly.

You're uncircumcised in your ears.

You're not hearing God's word.

And so therefore, you always resist the Holy Spirit.

You always push back against God's empowering personal presence with his people.

And here's the thing.

Friends, this is what happens when God speaks his word.

A combination of confrontation and transformation is what results from God's word.

I was reading this really fascinating book called The Mediation of Christ by Thomas Torrance, who's very quickly becoming one of my favorite Christian thinkers.

And Torrence is describing this relationship that God has with Israel, where he very uniquely speaks his word to Israel.

But when he speaks his word, two things happen.

He calls them into newness of life, he gives them his promises, he calls them into restoration, but also his word pushes back against anything that runs contrary to that.

All of their self-centeredness, all of their self-interest, all the things that we cling to like idols, God's word pushes back against all of that.

God's word simultaneously transforms them, it calls them in, and it confronts them, it calls them out.

So Torrance says this the mediation of divine revelation, God speaking, through Israel, has the effect not only of disclosing something of the nature of God, but disclosing the natural offense to God deeply embedded in the human heart.

And he goes on to say, the more deeply revelation pierces into the roots of human being, the more it intensifies the enmity that the human heart of the human heart against God.

And then the destined function of Israel in bearing and mediating divine revelation for mankind cannot but have the effect upon us of rousing and bringing to the surface our own latent enmity against God.

What's Torrents saying?

Torrents is saying when God speaks his word, in our hearts, life is called forward, but death is called out.

And here's the thing when darkness is called out, we still cling to those things that speak to our own self-interest, that speak to our own self-centeredness, the things that we don't want to let go of.

Sometimes God points exactly at those things and says, That's what you need to give up if you're going to follow me.

We cling to that.

So God's Word has this interesting dialectic.

It comforts us, yes, and it confronts us.

It transforms us and it calls us out at the same time.

It's not genuine gospel witness if it's not doing both of those things at the same time.

And so here's the result of Stephen's sermon, his martyrdom.

Verses 54 to 60.

Stephen, who's told the story rightly, knows that telling the story rightly means confrontation.

God's word confronts us in our selfishness, in our stubbornness, in our hypocrisy, calls these things out.

It will not abide these things because it's calling us into deeper life still.

But here's what we should notice.

Though Stephen gives his life for gospel witness as a consequence of the confrontation that that witness demands, we need to notice Stephen exemplifies the transformed life of the gospel.

Right from the get-go, the first thing we learned about Stephen is that he is full of grace and power.

His whole life is characterized by the goodness and generosity of God.

And so everything flows from that.

It's because Stephen is full of grace and power that he has this heavenly vision.

Earth is transformed, it's transfigured, as it were, into the throne room, and he beholds his Lord Jesus.

And he cries out to the Lord Jesus with two phrases that should remind us of Jesus' own words on the cross.

Luke is being very intentional with this design.

Stephen expresses his trust in the Lord Jesus.

Lord, receive my spirit.

And he expresses his forgiveness for those who persecute him.

Lord, do not hold this sin against them.

Stephen's whole life is transformed by the goodness of the gospel.

Genuine gospel witness involves confrontation and transformation.

So this is a heavy word, isn't it?

But here's a few things we might want to take away.

If we're just checking out who this Jesus guy is, that's great.

And I'm glad you're doing that.

We can't make a mistake that we can have Jesus on our terms, that we can have the gospel only in part or compartmentalized from the rest of our life.

When Jesus says follow me, he's calling us to follow him with everything we are.

Don't be stubborn.

Don't be stiff-necked.

If we are trusting Jesus and figuring out what it means to follow him, maybe Stephen would tell us don't be uncircumcised in heart or ears.

Let the gospel penetrate into the depths of our being.

Don't be content with outward piety.

Seek a transformed and renewed heart.

I think that's what Lent is all about.

Ash Wednesday did such a wonderful job reminding us that God does this work in us to create in us a clean heart.

And finally, if we endeavor to be his disciples, if we endeavor to go and tell, then we're going to bear witness.

And when we bear witness to the gospel that God has wrought new life in Christ, we can expect confrontation.

Some of us might be thrilled by that, because maybe we're kind of confrontational just by our own personalities.

It's like, bring it on, let's take it.

I want to say this.

The gospel will confront those parts of the world that God is calling out.

We just had a, just before service, we had a learner's exchange.

We're talking about medical assistance and dying.

Here's one area of our culture that we need to let the gospel push back against.

But before the gospel pushes back against the culture we occupy, we need to let the gospel confront our own hearts.

Anyone who wants to confront the world without letting their heart get confronted first, that person worries me.

We need to let the gospel call us out.

Because we cling to idols.

Because we cling to stubbornness and hypocrisy and selfishness.

We're sinners.

This is what we do.

And the gospel pushes back against those things.

If we feel a weight of guilt, that's not the Lord's work, but if we feel conviction, if we acknowledge this as wrong and we hand it over to Jesus, we can rest assured that He has forgiven us and we can expect transformation.

If this seems like a heavy word, bear in mind that God doesn't call us all to be martyrs, but God does call those to call us all to bear witness.

And so here's Stephen bearing witness with his own life, and we meet an interesting side character right here.

Did you catch it?

So easy to miss.

Someone's minding the coats, and his name is Saul.

And Saul shows up again in chapter 8, verse 1.

He's nodding with approval at Stephen's execution.

We did good work today.

That's what Saul was thinking.

Saul will come to know later on as the Apostle Paul.

See, Saul has a powerful con a powerful encounter with the risen Lord Jesus on his way to go murder more Christians in the name of God.

And Jesus will say, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Jesus speaks his word, and his word confronts Saul.

It says, This is what you need to give up, this is what you need to turn away from.

But his word transforms Saul's life.

It gives him new hope.

It gives him new purpose.

It gives him new mission.

It changes everything about him.

And so Saul later on can write to a church in Corinth.

He acknowledges something like, I'm the least of the apostles.

Everyone who's sent in God's name, I'm the least of them.

Unworthy to be called an apostle, he says, because I persecuted the church of God, and I have to think Stephen comes to mind as he writes that.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.

On the contrary, he says, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Do you see what's happened to Saul, now Paul?

He's encountered Jesus.

He's met the gospel.

He's been confronted, yes, but he has been transformed because he knows his Savior.

His life, like Stephen's, is now full of grace and power.

It's changed everything.

That's what the gospel does for us, friends.

It doesn't do that without confronting those parts of our hearts that we'd well cling to sometimes.

But we discover a deeper, more powerful, more life-giving, more transforming way to be.

If we are willing to let the gospel confront us, it will transform us.

So telling the story rightly matters, doesn't it?

Bearing gospel witness involves confrontation and transformation.

So let's pray.

Lord Jesus, you call us into mission to bear witness to who you are.

Lord, who you are calls out those parts of us that we try and separate from you, we try and hold back.

Lord, perhaps some of those things are coming to mind right now, and I pray that you would minister your grace, your goodness.

You are patient with us, Lord.

You are slow to anger, and you call us faithfully to follow you.

So, Lord, by grace, would we be willing to just hand those things over to you right now?

Would we know the transformation of your grace and your gospel and your good news?

Would we find our lives transformed, renewed, restored, and given hope and purpose in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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