Stephen's Speech, Sinai

Today's text is from the Book of Acts, chapter seven, verses thirty-five through forty-three.

This Moses, whom they rejected, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge?

This man God sent as both ruler and redeemer, by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt, and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty 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 is in the congregation in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and 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 they turned to Egypt, saying to Aaron, Make for us gods who will go before us.

As for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.

And they made a calf in those days, and offered a sacrifice to the idol, and were rejoicing in the works of their hands.

But God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets, did you bring me bring to me slain beasts and sacrifices during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?

You took up the tent of Moloch and the star of your God Rephan, the images that you made to worship, and I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there.

Great job.

I probably chunked this up too much and should have uh include just taken us to the end of the speech.

But then I was thinking just now, as uh Blake was reading it, it's actually kind of nice to not have a sermon on someone being stoned to death on Mother's Day.

So this really this really was providential in our uh in how it was broken out for us.

Instead, we get to learn all about the Mosaic Covenant, um, which is the most motherly of covenants.

I will try and make that happen today.

Um yeah, I I mean there's uh how do you thank a mother?

How do how do you thank someone for for the life that you have?

And then when um I don't think I realized how grateful I should be towards my own mother until I saw my wife become a mother, and you realize where where people come from, and it's uh it's insane.

And you look at just the the sleeplessness and the labor and the emotional burden, and you see the um the heroic courage of of mothers to have this part of their body uh that they feel more connected with than I've ever seen, uh, and then raise that up and send it off into the world.

It's an unthinkable level of heroism and uh is so worth honoring today.

So it's a great thing that we get to honor that today as a sort of national holiday for for mothers by that hallmark lobby and the depth of power that they have over us.

Let's pray, and we'll move into our text for the for the morning.

Holy Father, we thank you that you saw fit to bring us into the world, not all in the same manner of Adam as being made directly by you, although that could have been possible.

But instead you desired us to be linked together uh by one another, uh to be fruitful and to be the uh uh progeny of that fruitfulness, Lord, so that we all come into the world uh with mothers.

It means we all have people on earth, even despite the difficulties of relationships that may be there, whatever whatever may be, all the taintedness of sin, uh, there's still a level of gratitude that we can offer just for our very existence, even to people that we can look at and know.

Lord, that's a beautiful aspect of your creation.

We're so thankful to you for that.

Lord, we're we're thankful that in our mothers we get to see a tenderness that is reflective of your tenderness towards us.

And we get to see what it means to be let off into the world, Lord, as just as you sent your son into the world.

Lord, we get to be cared for by the church, which is the this uh the this picture of this sort of ultimate picture of a mother in the world, Lord, where we are cared for and fed by your church, Lord, and uh we're we're held and protected by your church.

And Lord, you as our father, defend and care for uh uh your church, your bride.

Lord, we thank you that the the the way that you revealed yourself to us are not some some distant things that we can't understand, but they're the deep longings of our hearts that we get immediately.

We get in uh at intuitive levels that are um uh exactly how you've created us to be, Lord.

We praise you for that.

We thank you for the mothers uh in this church, Lord.

I thank you in particular for the mothers in Redemption Church Denver.

It's such a picture of glory.

Uh we've heard from so uh many people who have joined our church that they came in and they looked around and they saw the happiness of the families, and that is such a testimony, Lord, to the great mothers and the witness that they are uh for your church, Lord.

We praise you, pray that you would bless them especially today.

Lift this up in Jesus' name, amen.

So we are continuing on through the story of Stephen's speech, or I guess not the story of it, but Stephen's speech itself.

Stephen is the first martyr in church history.

He was one of the seven men who were chosen to be deacons.

And he is brought before the Sanhedrin, who is the same court that uh condemned Jesus.

It's likewise the same court that Peter and John were brought before, uh just you know, a little bit earlier in our text.

And he is on trial at the beginning of each of these as we move through this longest speech in Acts, which makes it one of the longest speeches in the Bible, outside of perhaps Deuteronomy.

It is the um uh he's brought before the Sanhedrin, but we need to remind ourselves as we get into it what the charges are.

We have to do that before each sermon on this, just so we keep our wits about us and remember what it is that we're talking about as he relays the history of God's people.

And the charges in particular are told to us in Acts 6, 14, which say, we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.

So they're told that Jesus will, Stephen has is being accused of saying that Jesus will destroy the temple, and that he will change the customs that have been given to them by Moses.

Now there's a background charge in all of this, which is that Stephen is blaspheming God and Moses, and all the customs that were handed down to them by Moses.

But last week we saw as Stephen relayed the story of Moses, and he showed us his birth and his call from God at the burning bush, and his being sent back to deliver the people of God from the oppressive hands of the Egyptians, that Stephen certainly honors Moses.

In fact, he probably he honors Moses in a way that no one else in the Sanhedrin is honoring Moses.

And one of the moves that he makes is he demonstrates that their resistance to Stephen's message is the same type of resistance that Moses experienced from the Hebrew people that he went to save.

Now, that theme will continue on through this story that Stephen continues to tell about Moses.

But this the story turns as he he narrows it and he's he stops, in a sense, relaying history and he begins interpreting it.

And he interprets the story of Moses, especially around the incidents at Sinai.

In order to understand what they mean by blaspheming Moses, what they mean is that the vision and the and the wisdom from God that Moses received, the word of God that he received on Mount Sinai, that gave them the tradition, that gave them the laws that they were to abide by, their relationship with those laws, their relationship with Sinai, with the Sinai event, we have to understand that in particular, in order to understand how the charges are really coming at Stephen.

Because here's the charges.

That means he's going to change what God, he's going to change what Moses received from God on Mount Sinai.

Now that seems like a bad idea because Moses received it from God.

It's the word of God.

This would be like if somebody showed up today and they were like, hey, I'm going to change what's written in your Bible.

This week on the internet.

You guys ever go to the internet?

There was the this all over my feed, because it's a pastor feed, was like there was a secret meeting where they called in a group of pastors to tell them about aliens.

Was that in your feeds?

Hey, we all have the same feed.

We all have pastor feeds.

I thought it was kind of me.

So uh I initi I saw this and I uh and they said, this is going to change uh everything that in Christianity, this is going to change the way that you see your your Bible.

And I thought, I can't believe I wasn't invited.

I feel like I'm a pastor, I feel like alien stuff.

Like, come on.

That's like you can, I mean, you know what I mean.

You you know we've we know each other.

I'd I'd be I feel like I should have been in the room.

Anyway, there's a big alien release, and it's like like 30 videos of like a dot, you know, moving a moving places.

And I'm like, I don't know if that so like totally changes the way I understand my Bible.

I feel like I'm I feel pretty fine with what I've seen.

But this is this is the sense that the Sanhedrin would have, is that Stephen is coming in and he's saying, I'm going to change everything that you understand in your Bible.

But there's this layer to this that we must get, which which we can only understand by understanding the Mosaic covenant, which is that the Sanhedrin, at one level, are they pretending to not get what Stephen is really saying.

They're pretending to not understand it.

Because Stephen has more than had the opportunity to explain what is changing.

What does this change mean?

And he uh what Stephen understands is that at one level, the customs of Moses, are they changing?

At one level, we could plainly say yes.

At one level is the temple being destroyed.

We can plainly say yes.

It it is the customs of Moses and your experience of them are changing.

The temple will be, in one sense, destroyed.

But they're changing because they've been fully realized.

They're changing because the essence of them, their nature has been fulfilled.

The nature of the Mosaic covenant has been fulfilled.

And so, in that sense, all that they meant, all that they foresignified, all that they point, all that these customs pointed to that Moses received from the Lord at Sinai, Stephen is not denying them.

He is recognizing the fullness of their reality.

While the Sanhedrin are clinging to the shadows.

And they're clinging to the shadows because the shadows they've related to as though they were the work of their own hands by which they were able to save themselves.

This is the way that they had misunderstood the essence of what Moses had received.

And instead they had transformed it into a means by which they could shake off the power and the grace of the Redeemer that they had been sent and maintain their own control over their salvation, and thus maintain their own control over the gods which they sought to worship.

That's the dynamic that's taking place.

And Stephen will lay this out in clear terms.

In Acts 7, 35 through 43, Stephen he goes on this, I wish I could have heard it, because you can hear the cadence in what he's um in what he's saying.

He he gets on this sort of like rhythm in the speech.

The speech has been sort of a narrative up until now, but then he hits this, this Moses, this man, this Moses, this Moses type of rhythm.

And it was, I think it would have been really compelling to hear in person.

He says, This Moses, whom they rejected, this man God sent as both ruler and redeemer, this man led them out.

This is the Moses who said, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.

He is showing to them they they don't know the Moses that they claim to be defending, that they're actually standing opposed to him.

Verse 35, this Moses, whom they rejected, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge?

This man God sent as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

They think of themselves, the Sanhedrin who are placing Stephen on trial, think of themselves as standing in the lineage of the men who honored Moses.

But the reality is they are standing in the lineage of their fathers, who rejected Moses when he was present with them.

And they rejected Moses by saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge?

This is after they had seen Moses ascend the mountain, from which they heard the very voice of God speaking to them, and they asked for Moses to make sure that never happened again, because it was too horrifying.

That's the man which these same Hebrews say, Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?

Well, it's a blasphemous question.

Because God himself is the one who made Moses a ruler and a judge over them.

There was no one that they could appeal to.

It was like it was as though they stood around and the the elders of Israel looked around at one another and they said, Who made him?

Did you make him ruler and a judge over us?

Did you?

Do you remember when we did we get together and elect him ruler and judge over us?

Did we choose his rulership and his judgment over us?

And they looked around at one another and they concluded that no one did, because they didn't.

But of course, God himself is the one who granted Moses this authority over his people.

They looked around at one another for the source of authority, and they neglected the true source of authority, who is God Himself.

And the way that they neglected is they say, Who made you a ruler and a judge?

But the man that they're rejecting is more than a ruler and a judge.

It's a worse rejection than just rejecting a ruler and a judge, because look at what Stephen says.

This man, God sent as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

He was not merely a ruler and a judge that they're rejecting.

He was the ruler and redeemer.

He was the one who came to rescue them from the oppressive hand of the Egyptians, to rescue them out of the slavery and bondage that they were under.

They were rejecting the one who was to bring them salvation.

You see, they weren't just rejecting judgment, they were rejecting mercy.

This is the heart of their rejection.

They were rejecting the faithfulness of God, the patience of God towards them, the mercy of God towards them.

That is what is being rejected.

And this should, I'm sure it was present in the room as we've learned, as we've continued looking through this speech, that we have to interpret all of this with an understanding that the story of Jesus is the main story that's in the room.

It's the one thing that they don't want to bring up explicitly, but they want to talk around.

And because it's in the room, it would have been plain that when he describes Moses as the ruler and redeemer, and he shows that Moses, the ruler and redeemer, was rejected by the people that he came to save.

What's in the room is just like Jesus.

Just like Jesus of Nazareth, whom this very council, the Sanhedrin, rejected, who came as the ruler and redeemer, who is called by God Himself in a way more incredible than Moses, more wonderful, more profound than the way that Moses was called on the mountain, but is God Himself, the God the Son, manifest in the flesh.

This is the one who is rejected.

And the pattern of Moses and Jesus continues in Acts 7.36.

This man led them out, Moses, of course, this man led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years.

What did they reject?

The man who was testified to by signs and wonders.

Why did the crowds gather around Jesus?

Why was the threat experienced from the Sanhedrin because of Jesus?

It was because of the signs and wonders which testified to his authority.

It is the very same pattern which happened with Moses.

And by the way, if you look at the miracles themselves, we can see that the miracles of Moses are taken up by Jesus because they testified to him.

What is the first plague?

Do you remember?

I preached through this, so this is really a you know one of those tests for me.

What's the first plague in Egypt that Moses does?

Nile to blood.

The Nile turns to blood.

So I heard somebody say Nile to blood.

Because you don't want to be like the know it all in class.

I get it.

He turns the water into blood.

What's Jesus' first miracle?

Do you remember?

He turns the water into wine.

They at least rhyme.

You know?

The water turns into blood.

It's an act of condemnation.

The water turns into wine, which Jesus, when he institutes the new covenant, will take up the wine and he will say, This is the new, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

So the the blood of condemnation against the Egyptians, Jesus takes up and says, This is my blood, and it is a wine of joy for those who come to me.

How can the blood of condemnation be the same thing as the wine of joy?

Because Jesus takes the condemnation that we deserve upon himself and transforms it into a wine of joy for us who receive the freeness of his grace towards us.

Moses, he he when they move into the wilderness, he brings the water from the rock.

Remember?

Moses brings the water out of the rock just by speaking to it.

And Jesus tells us that he is the living water.

That if we drink it, we will never be thirsty again.

How is it that they are fed in the wilderness?

It is the bread that comes down from heaven, the manna from heaven.

And Jesus tells us that he is the bread from heaven that is given to us for eternal life.

So that in him we will never be hungry again.

When the serpents are biting everyone in numbers, one of the what stories we have.

And the serpents are biting everyone, they're becoming ill and dying.

And then God instructs Moses to take a copper serpent and to place it on a staff and to raise it up, and whoever looks at it will be healed.

Jesus, for The conclusion of his earthly ministry is the serpent who is raised up on the staff.

He became sin, is treated as sin.

He's treated as the serpent.

And he is raised up on the staff so that all who look to him will be saved.

These are the signs and wonders of Moses, which are fulfilled by the acts, by the signs and wonders of Jesus Christ.

And Stephen is saying, all that saw these signs, the generation that bore witness to these signs and wonders is the generation that rejected Moses.

Just as the generation that bore witness to the signs and wonders of Jesus Christ, who had every reason to know because of what they'd seen in the signs and wonders of Moses.

If they had honored Moses truly, they would be able to perfectly understand the things that they were seeing.

Instead, they rejected the one who was sent by God to be the ruler and redeemer.

In verse 37, he continues, This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.

So he's saying, consider who Moses was promised to be and how he was rejected by his people.

Consider the signs and wonders that Moses did, which continued to be rejected.

Now consider that this Moses, who you claim you are honoring, who you clay who you likely claim you would have honored had you have seen these things, that they would have been sufficient for your belief to have borne witness to such signs and wonders.

This is the same Moses who said, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.

That's the second time so far in Acts that the Sanhedrin have heard this quote from Moses relayed to them.

Because Peter says the same thing to the Sanhedrin when he was on trial before them only weeks ago.

It makes you wonder if Stephen heard that from Peter and thought, great point.

Moses did say that.

He said that there would be a God would raise up a prophet like him.

And who is this prophet like Moses?

Well, I hope you can see as we've we've moved through how Moses acted prophetically, that this is fully fulfilled, this is fully realized in Jesus Christ.

And the response to Jesus Christ by the chosen people whom he came to save is precisely the same as the response was to Moses.

He continues on this is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai and with our fathers.

He received living oracles to give to us.

And Moses is the one whom they were gathered under.

He is gathered with the congregation.

God had taken this people and he had made them a body.

He had made them a congregation, no longer just a crowd, but the mixed multitude had become a congregation.

And on the mountain, on Mount Sinai, he received living oracles to give to us.

This is a way of honoring the law of Moses.

Saying the law of Moses will not die.

The law of Moses is a living law.

It is the promise of life, is what they were given in the law of Moses.

These oracles, when received, that Moses had received from God on the mountain, they are received as the very words of life.

And this is exactly how Jesus acted as our prophet.

How doth Christ execute the office of a prophet?

Christ executeth the office of a prophet in revealing to us by his word and spirit the will of God for our salvation.

That's the shorter catechism, question 25.

What is it that Christ comes as our true prophet?

You know, you wonder, you you you what is what is the truest prophet that God sends into the world reveal?

You read the prophets of the Old Testament, and you can you can there's there's almost like a, you know, when you're you're starting a prophetic book, like you start Jeremiah in a Bible reading plan, and it's like, I'm gonna I'm gonna be sad for a month.

Because that's what the experience of the prophets is like.

And what is the fulfillment?

What is the greatest prophet?

What does he come to reveal the will of God?

What is the will of God that is revealed by our true prophet Jesus Christ?

Our salvation.

Our salvation.

That's what the true prophet Jesus Christ reveals.

That's what the oracles that Moses was meant to reveal.

This is their function in God giving them to us, is that they reveal the will of God for our salvation.

Now, what happens when the people of God, the congregation, receives these oracles from Moses, from God through Moses.

In verses 39 and 40, it says, Our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him aside, and in their hearts they turned to Egypt, saying to Aaron, Make for us gods who will go before us.

As for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.

What happens is they refuse to obey him.

They all make a vow together.

A vow that they will keep the law that they had received from Moses.

They make that vow to Moses in the sight of God, but they refuse to obey him.

They thrust Moses aside, and in their hearts they turned to Egypt.

In their hearts, they turned to captivity, they turned to slavery, they rejected the freedom that was offered to them by Moses on the mountain.

And they turned to Aaron when Moses was on the mountain, and they said, Make for us gods who will go before us.

It's close to Moses, it's Moses' brother.

And they tell him, Make for us gods who will go before us.

As for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.

You know, they're pretending to not know what has become of him.

Because they know that he's on the mountain.

They know that he is receiving the oracles from God.

They know that he's receiving to deliver to them the very words of life.

But they thrust Moses aside.

They reject the oracles of God for salvation, they long and they pine for a return to Egypt.

They love the world.

They love the things in the world.

The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life.

You know, at least when we were Egyptian, we got to be Egyptian, you know?

Egypt.

You know, you know what Egypt rules?

You know, it the world.

Egypt rules it all.

Egypt has the chariots, they have the pots of meat.

And we're being called out, and we're we're not even a people.

They have a pantheon.

What do we have?

Nothing that I can see.

And so they demand a return to the world.

They want something that could be manifest that they could look at and see and understand.

Now we have to talk about what is it that Moses received?

What is the covenant that Moses received at Sinai?

Because oftentimes the way that we understand the Mosaic Covenant, even intuitively, even us now, is a lot like the way that the Sanhedrin would have understood the Mosaic covenant.

The way that we understand the law that Moses received is that the law was the means of salvation that God had given to his people.

That this was a mechanism by which they may be saved.

We think of this as what's happening, what Moses received is a renewal or a refreshment of the covenant of works.

That is, just like Adam was in the garden, and he was given this covenant of works, do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And then in breaking that, it would lead to death.

And we read the Mosaic covenant, and we think, well, this is just that same thing.

That the law that they had received, if they had perfectly obeyed that law, then they would have regained their righteousness before God.

And that if they perfectly honored the law of God that was shown to them, then they would have, in essence, been able to regain their own righteousness and thus save themselves before God.

But that is not what the Mosaic Covenant is.

That is not the nature of the Mosaic covenant.

What we have to understand, and this is a helpful way to understand the covenant, is I'm going to give us some categories, some old categories, some Aristotelian categories.

The things have a substance and an accident.

The substance is the nature of a thing.

The accident is something that can be transformed or changed about something without changing the nature of the thing.

You know, if you buy a new car and it's a white car, the and you transform the car into a red car by, you know, probably not painting it.

We don't really do that anymore.

We wrap it, and you have the car wrapped in some color that you like more.

You changed the accident, the accidental feature of the car.

You didn't change the substance of the car.

Now what happens is we mistake the accident of the covenant, the administration of the covenant, for the nature of the covenant.

The nature of the Mosaic Covenant is a covenant of grace.

The nature of the Mosaic Covenant is the covenant of grace.

The law was not given to them so that by the law they might be saved.

The law was given to the people of God so that their hearts might be trained and tutored, so that they might, so that this church that's described as in Scripture as the church under age.

The church underage might have a tutor, a guide, which is able to, in a sense, hold the hands of the people and train their hearts towards what the heart of God is like.

And in having their hearts trained toward what the heart of God is like, it would be revealed to the people of God what their own hearts were like.

And then they would be driven to understand that their only hope of salvation was the grace of God alone.

And that within the signs that they were given, within the practices that they were given of temple sacrifice and of offerings, that they were shown in the pattern of temple worship that they were given by Moses, that their hearts would be trained to understand a sacrifice must be given to us.

And the promises of God entail that there must be coming one true, all-sufficient sacrifice that is able to fulfill what we are unable to fulfill, weak as we are in our flesh, the requirements of in the Mosaic Covenant.

In the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 7, paragraph 5, it says, This covenant, which is the covenant of grace, this covenant was differently administered in the time of the law and in the time of the gospel.

We are in the time of the gospel.

It's great.

This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law.

Same covenant, different administration.

Under the law, it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all for signifying Christ to come, which were for that time sufficient and efficacious through the operation of the Spirit to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins and eternal salvation, and is called the Old Testament.

How is it that those in the time of the law before the appearing of Christ, before the appearing of the gospel, how is it that they were saved?

They were saved by faith in the coming Messiah.

They were saved by faith in the promised Son.

They were saved in precisely the way that we are saved.

The nature of the covenant is the same.

What has changed is the accident of the covenant.

What has changed is the administration of the covenant.

Now, why has it changed?

Because that which was foresignified has been realized.

The one who was promised to come has come.

And so we look at the fulfillment of these types and these ordinances that were shown to us.

The promises of Christ have been realized.

The prophecies of the Son have been realized.

The sacrifices pointed towards the one true sacrifice of Jesus, the circumcision, the cutting off so that we might be brought in.

Jesus is the one who was cut off so that we might be brought in.

He is the Paschal Lamb, the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world.

All of these types and ordinances are fulfilled by Jesus Christ.

And so when they look at Jesus Christ and they reject him for the sake of honoring Moses, they are rejecting all that Moses was proclaiming.

They are rejecting the substance of what the covenant that was established with Moses was pointing towards.

We can tell that the covenant with Moses was not a covenant of works, but it was a covenant of grace.

Because you know the Ten Commandments?

You've at least heard of them.

The Ten Commandments have a prologue.

In the prologue of the Ten Commandments says, the Lord your God who freed you from slavery in Egypt, this is the one who is giving the commandments.

You know, it would be a different story.

It would be a different covenantal shape.

If God had shown up to Moses at the burning bush and he said, The Israelites, you're one of them, I have a plan to rescue them.

But before I rescue them, they need to make themselves sufficiently righteous that I might rescue them.

And so rather than ten plagues against the Egyptians, I actually have ten commandments that you need to deliver to the Israelites.

And then in delivering these ten commandments to the Israelites, insofar as they fulfill them, then I will rescue them.

And now we have a different story on our hands.

And we they, you know, we say they fulfill the Ten Commandments, and then they are delivered from Egypt, and they arrive at Mount Sinai, and Moses might re-proclaim the Ten Commandments to them, and he would say to them, Remember the Ten Commandments, these are the mechanism by which you were saved from Egypt.

But that's not what happens.

What happens is the Lord frees his people from Egypt, an act of his grace alone.

Not because they had deserved it in their righteousness.

He did not love them because of their righteousness.

You know, this is the difference between our love and God's love.

Our love is fixed on things because of their loveliness.

That is why we love things, because of their loveliness.

We should not love things that are not lovely.

Do not love the world or the things of the world.

The lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life.

We shouldn't love those things because they are not lovely.

God's love is not like ours.

God's love is transformative.

It is creative love.

It is a love which, when it is placed upon things, it makes them lovely.

It makes them lovely.

That is the way that God's love works.

That's why God can place his love upon us while we were yet sinners.

And it makes us lovely.

These commandments are given to us so that our hearts might be trained how to respond to the grace that the Lord has freely given to us.

This has been instantiated by God alone, by the work of God alone.

These commandments that are given to us are ways by which we Might participate in the grace of God.

Ways in which by the whole of our lives we might live in a place of worship, of gratitude-filled worship, recognizing the deliverance that God has given to us by the freedom of his grace alone.

That is the nature of the Mosaic Covenant.

We have to understand this.

We have to understand what the nature of the Mosaic covenant is that was missed in order to see how the Sanhedrin mistook the administration of the covenant, the accident of the covenant, for the substance of the covenant, which is grace.

In Acts 7, 41 through 42, he continues on.

He says, And they made a calf in those days and offered a sacrifice to the idol, and were rejoicing in the works of their hands.

But God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets, and I'll read that next.

God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven.

What happens is that when Moses is gone, they turn away from God.

They do not receive the grace that was given to them.

And instead, they immediately begin violating the Ten Commandments by not honoring God as God, not honoring Him as the one true God, but instead creating gods for themselves that they might worship, that they might count on for their salvation.

And what they begin trusting in is the works of their hands.

And this disposition of their heart to reject the grace of God and instead entrust themselves to the works of their own hands, that same disposition of heart is the way that the people of God begin relating to the law of Moses.

They do not receive it as a gift of grace that is to be responded to in gratitude by a transformed heart, by a circumcised heart.

Instead, they receive it as a new opportunity to trust in the works of their own hands for their salvation.

And so, with this divided heart, one that does not fully receive God, but instead turns itself also to the gods of the world, they reject the mercy of God and only trust in the works of their own hands for their salvation.

This is why they make the golden calf.

There's always golden calves.

And so, what is God's response to this idolatry?

To their denying God is God?

What God does is he turned away from them and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets.

And then Stephen quotes from Amos chapter 5, in verses 42 and 43, and says, Did you bring to me slain beasts and sacrifices during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?

Amos 5 · chapter mention

You took up the tent of Moloch and the star of your God Rephan, the images that you made to worship, and I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.

Now the first question is a rhetorical question.

Did you bring to me slain beasts and sacrifices during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?

The answer to that question is yes.

They did.

They did bring slain beasts and sacrifices to God while they were in the wilderness.

But what were they doing while they were doing that?

They were likewise worshiping the gods of the stars.

Worshiping the gods of the heavens.

They had imagined that something would come down from outer space and change everything that they knew about their Bibles.

One way you might frame that.

The gods of the heavens, you know what's here's what's nice about the gods of the heavens as being described here.

Not the god of heaven, but the gods of the heavens, the gods of the stars, the local deities that they were worshiping.

They can be satisfied by the gifts and the offerings of men.

We have enough to sufficiently appeal to Baal so that he might bless us with rain.

These gods of the heavens that we worship in our lives, you know why we like to turn from the true God and worship the gods of our own hands, the gods of our own makings?

Because we know that those gods can be appeased and we can be in control of them.

That we can be like gods in our interaction with them.

We can give them enough so that they might be satisfied.

We can sacrifice enough of ourselves or of ourselves to them.

And we don't talk in terms of gods anymore, of course, although more and more we do.

But we talk in terms of the assets that we can gain.

We talk in terms of the values that we know we must hold to as a culture.

We talk in all sorts of terms that any ancient person would come in and look and be able to say, oh, those are your gods.

Those are the things that you worship, that you look to and you offer yourself up to so that you might be saved.

And so they treat God with this divided heart.

And therefore, the offerings that they offer up to the one true God are offered up in the same way that they are offered up to the God of the heavens.

They're not offered up from a state of grace which says, There is nothing I could truly give to satisfy God.

There is nothing I could give to the Lord who has everything which could atone for my sinfulness.

There's what can a man offer in return for his own life to God?

There is nothing that a man could offer in return for his own life to God.

Instead of receiving the Mosaic covenant in the context of the grace which it was given, they receive it and they say, This is what we can use so that by the work of our own hands we might be saved.

And therefore they reject the free salvation of God.

Here's the question: Why in our hearts do we reject the free salvation of God?

Because the grace of God that He freely gives, do you know how much control over that we have?

When you receive that, you are saying, I am not God.

I am the one who needs to be saved.

And what could save me?

Only the mercy of God Himself.

Only His grace could save me.

Do you know what that makes of the works of your own hands and his presence?

It makes them nothing.

Instead, the way that you would participate in the law is as a gift itself.

You receive the law of God and you say, This was given to me in his grace.

That means it is given to me for my good.

These are living oracles that are meant to bring life.

But when they are used as a mechanism for our salvation, they cement us in death.

And so when the one who fulfills them and therefore transforms the nature of these covenant signs so that he demonstrates, of course, the blood of bulls and goats cannot save you.

Of course, you finding yourself in your own heart cannot save you.

We might say in our culture.

You need to be saved from your Creator.

So here's the question that Stephen is placing upon the Sanhedrin, and it is our question today.

Jesus says, Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

We think, well, what is the offense of the one who came to offer freely his own life in grace towards us?

You see, when you really grasp the depth of the freedom of the grace that is given to us by God alone, it's offensive to us.

And the offense is you cannot save yourself.

In order for you to be in right standing before God, in order for you to be who you truly are, who you were truly made to be, this can only be received as a gift, one that you did not earn.

And so there is nothing in this that allows us to point to ourselves for our salvation, but instead, all of the glory is reserved for God Himself.

This is the wonder of what's revealed in Jesus Christ.

This is the glory of the gospel.

So that is the question for us today.

Do you see the wonder as Stephen saw it?

Do you see the freedom of the grace of God that is offered towards us?

Or would you rather cling to the works of your own hands that you might continue to love the world and continue to trust in the world for your salvation?

Our hope is, our proclamation is, along with Stephen, it's all been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

It was free from the beginning, it's free right now.

We humbly come to him in worshipful praise and we take up the law as a living oracle, a life-giving oracle, so that we might live lives of a living sacrifice of worship to him who laid down his life that we might be saved.

Let's pray.

When you hear the news, our flesh rages against it and says, it can't be that good.

It can't be that free.

It couldn't be that sufficient.

But your love is beyond understanding, beyond comprehension, Lord.

It will take an eternity that we might fully realize it.

Holy Father, we pray that you would shape our lives so that we would come to understand more completely the depth of your love towards us, that we might rest in it, and that in resting in it we might see the goodness of your law, the goodness of your Ten Commandments, which have been given to us, Lord, that we might lead lives of living sacrifice.

Because on the other side of that sacrifice, we know that there is resurrection, there is life, fullness of life.

Help us not trust in the work of our hands, Lord, but trust in you.

And from that seek to live righteously before you.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.